Slashdot Mirror
How To End Online Harassment
Presto Vivace sends this excerpt from an article at the Kernel, titled 'With Gamergate, it's not enough to ignore the trolls.'
Gendered bigotry against women is widely considered to be "in bounds" by Internet commenters (whether they openly acknowledge it or not), and subsequently a demographic that comprises half of the total human population has to worry about receiving rape threats, death threats, and the harassment of angry mobs simply for expressing their opinions. This needs to stop, and while it's impossible to prevent all forms of harassment from occurring online, we can start by creating a culture that shames individuals who cross the bounds of decency.
We can start by stating the obvious: It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. Not only is such language inappropriate regardless of one's passion on a given subject, but any valid arguments that existed independently of such rhetoric should have been initially presented without it. Once a poster crosses this line, they should lose all credibility.
Similarly, it is never acceptable to dox, harass, post nude pictures, or in any other way violate someone's privacy due to disagreement with their opinions. While most people would probably agree with this in theory, far too many are willing to access and distribute this humiliating (and often illegal) content. Instead of simply viewing stories of doxing, slut-shaming, and other forms of online intimidation as an unfortunate by-product of the digital age, we should boycott all sites that publish these materials.
We can start by stating the obvious: It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. Not only is such language inappropriate regardless of one's passion on a given subject, but any valid arguments that existed independently of such rhetoric should have been initially presented without it. Once a poster crosses this line, they should lose all credibility.
Similarly, it is never acceptable to dox, harass, post nude pictures, or in any other way violate someone's privacy due to disagreement with their opinions. While most people would probably agree with this in theory, far too many are willing to access and distribute this humiliating (and often illegal) content. Instead of simply viewing stories of doxing, slut-shaming, and other forms of online intimidation as an unfortunate by-product of the digital age, we should boycott all sites that publish these materials.
GamerGate is not about harassment or women. Here is a statistical analysis of #GamerGate tweets. Here is a case of GamerGate tracking down a harasser, and Sarkeesian refusing to report him. Here is a timeline of the many grievances #GamerGate supporters have against gaming journalists. Here is the transparent, open place we track our emails to advertisers on corrupt sites. Here is a blog about the corruption. Here is a discussion of one of the scum at Gawker. Here is my earlier Slashdot comment on media bias surrounding GamerGate.
Despite the many, many articles putting the word GamerGate next to the words "misogyny", "wu", harassment" and the like there is no evidence -- No Evidence -- actually associating GamerGate with any of those things, save a very tenuous link related to how the hashtag was coined and some third party trolls who it turns out harass GamerGate supporters more than GamerGate opposers.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I lost count at 30 people doxxed by those that claim to stand for "feminism" and against gamergate, starting with the black developer who lost his job to racists harassing his boss and going downhill from there to people's bank accounts getting hacked, their utilities turned off, their income held up by fraud, a couple attempts at SWATting, and even syringes, knives, and dead animals in the mail.
At this point the "mere" verbal abuse from so called "feminists" screaming racial slurs and making threats at anyone in gamergate is practically background noise compared to the sheer number of people getting doxed and sent fucking knives and dead animals in the mail. And disturbingly all of this has not only been explicitly encouraged at times even participated in by major public figures, it's also been subject to a near complete media blackout. You would think people who care so much about women and minorities would be writing a whole lot about black men losing their jobs because of racists doxing them, or women having their income held up by fraudulent reports, or any of the other thirty plus attacks against primarily women and minorities by mostly rich white men. Unless of course they don't actually give a damn and it's just political opportunism.
>Once a poster crosses this line, they should lose all credibility.... we should boycott all sites that publish these materials....
At this point the hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness is so staggering I'm almost starting to believe this is all some kind of kafkaesque modern art performance.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Because it's completely impossible to find out about serious criminal attacks like people getting sent dead animals without following each and every single person individually. Gotcha. If only there were websites where people talked about things that happened, all in one place.
Or even a website that lets you look for things elsewhere on the internet...
https://twitter.com/FartToCont...
https://twitter.com/GGfeminist...
https://twitter.com/ForemanEri...
https://twitter.com/milky_cand...
http://i.imgur.com/892hZ1A.png
https://twitter.com/FabioFacch...
https://twitter.com/CodeusaSof...
http://imgur.com/BNlLKcn (six people)
http://i.imgur.com/jpRvb52.jpg
https://twitter.com/Ash_Effect...
https://twitter.com/DanielleGi...
https://twitter.com/coolguyqui...
https://twitter.com/AlephXZero...
https://twitter.com/PlayDanger...
https://twitter.com/Nero/statu...
https://twitter.com/BlackTride...
https://twitter.com/TheBattleA...
http://hokuto-ju-no-ken.tumblr...
https://twitter.com/QueenyMart...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
It's not a straw man, it's a perfectly valid comparison.
There have been hundreds of articles primarily about death threats towards people involved in this saga over the last couple of months.
When Penny Arcade or Jack Thompson received death threats, they were halfway down the article, generally a single paragraph, usually in articles condemning them. There were very few articles primarily about the death threats. There was a tone of "well serves them write for not apologising for that comic" among a lot of the gaming media. There certainly wasn't anything approaching a universal blanket condemnation. As far as I know, Giant Bomb were the only major site that did make it the focus of an article.
I find it hilarious that I haven't seen one GG proponent say a damn thing about Chris Kluwe's complete skewering of GG.
https://medium.com/the-cauldro...
Buncha hardcore cowards as far as I am concerned.
There is a war going on for your mind.
You should reread the comment you posted, without your rage glasses on.
‘Games culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about
I've been a gamer for nearly 35 years now (from back in the day when we had to type the games in BASIC from books). This isn't talking about ME, its talking about the culture. Not only am I not offended, but from what I've seen, this is exactly right.
And even if I were to consider it a bit over the top, its nothing anywhere near as unacceptable as the treatment the "Gamergate" people have been meeting out in return.
To make matters worse, lets pretend I wasn't a gamer and was looking at this from the outside. We have two sides here. One side is claiming the other is being sexist and abusive, and the other side is responding with the same techniques used by crazed stalkers who get restraining orders put on them. Which side looks right to me?
Here's a crazy idea: Perhaps if we don't like how our community is being portrayed, we should attack the perpetrators, rather than the reporters?
You're why the article is relevant.
Thanks for playing.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.