FBI Confirms Open Investigation Into Gamergate

v3rgEz writes In a terse form letter responding to a FOIA request, the FBI has confirmed it has an open investigation into Gamergate, the loose but controversial coalition of gamers calling for ethics in gaming journalism — even as some members have harassed and sent death threats to female gaming developers and critics.

Comments

Who?

[phantomfive]

Which ones are they investigating? The drama-mongers or the drama-mongs?

Re:Who?

[frank_adrian314159]

That would be the drama-mongers and the drama-mongees.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the frothing horde that sends out death threats and threatens to shoot up universities. There aren't two sides in #gamergate, just #gg, their victims, and people who think #gg are idiots.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

More realistically, whichever gets them more funding. The cybercrime division of the FBI has not evolved in any notable way since they let Kevin Mitnick play with their heads and continue cracking while "informing" on other crackers, then run away and laugh at them. They cost a lot more now and collect a lot more data, but there's no evidence it's being used for criminal prosecution.

If it were, they'd *bother* to convict some spammers.

Re:Who?

[Noah Haders]

+1 sensible and correct. I'm not afraid of the hate.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who are sending death and rape threats over the internet. The FBI doesn't give a shit about ethical lapses in gaming journalism or who fucked who as those are not crimes.

Re:Who?

[davester666]

Or just the drama-queens...namely, everybody.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who are sending death and rape threats over the internet. The FBI doesn't give a shit about ethical lapses in gaming journalism or who fucked who as those are not crimes.

That is what I don't get. Sure, the FBI doesn't give a shit about ethical journalism, but when did they give a shit about some commoner getting threats over internet?
I want a third option.

Re: Who?

[maccodemonkey]

Wait wait what? The FBI investigating threats against a "commoner" is now reason for concern? Gosh, I'm sorry you feel it's so alarming that the FBI has decided to take a phone call from one of the little people.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There aren't two sides in #gamergate, just #gg, their victims, and people who think #gg are idiots." ... and the victims of those that think #gg are idiots, and trolls that are attacking both sides stoking the hate.

I'd say in order of the number of victims it'd be:
1. Trolls playing both sides
2. Victims of people who think #gg are idiots (Because they are largely fueled by hate and outrage, and there's nothing as vicious and dangerous as someone who thinks they're justified in correcting a social wrong)
3. Victims of #gg, if any can be found.

While the small number of people who claim to be 3 seem to get all the press, there seems to be a hell of a lot more 2.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with you, that would be 3 sides.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that was mostly the cynic in me writing, but on the other hand, isn't a threat made against a single individual typically handled by the police? Why would FBI feel the need to get involved? Or is this on of the "because it happened on the Internet it's different" kind of situations?
Government agencies overstepping their boundaries and getting involved in things that aren't their business is certainly a reason for concern.

Re:Who?

[tinkerghost]

3. Victims of #gg, if any can be found.

I would say that people who've received death threats, rape threats, had their blogs vandalized, etc would count as victims. Given that a crapton of those threats were on twitter & posted in comments on blogs as well as e-mailed, the FBI isn't going to have a hard time showing they didn't come from the 'drama queens' looking for attention.

Have there been death threats - yes

Have there been threats of rape - yes

Have there been threats to shoot up a school - yes

To suggest that their are no "victims of #GG" is utterly inconsistent with known, provable facts.

Re: Who?

[tinkerghost]

Wait wait what? The FBI investigating threats against a "commoner" is now reason for concern? Gosh, I'm sorry you feel it's so alarming that the FBI has decided to take a phone call from one of the little people.

They threatened to shoot up a school if one of their targets was allowed to speak at a conference. That's most likely the only reason the FBI gives a shit.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

"To suggest that their are no "victims of #GG" is utterly inconsistent with known, provable facts."

I'm glad that you have absolute certainty that they came from 3 and not 1.

Re:Who?

[Schadrach]

Not really accurate. Mostly because you're pretending that #gg is doing all the threatening and doxxing.

Even if we utterly "listen and believe" the folks who claim to have been threatened and then whip out their "donate to me to show how non-sexist you are" buttons that it's exactly as bad as they claim it is, you still have more people being threatened by anti-GG folks than by GG. Of course, many of those don't count because they have the wrong genitals to count as victims, and the rest don't count because women who don't agree with anti-GG folks aren't *really* women, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Or to put it another way, no one in GG has sent filled syringes or dead animals to the anti-GG crowd, or called their employers to try to get them fired from jobs wholly unrelated to the topic at hand (this is actually a surprisingly common tactic from the SJW crowd when someone disagrees with them). The anti-GG crowd has done those things.

Though I'll admit, asshole that he is, I still find it funny how many times Roguestar has been suspended from twitter.

The only things anti-GG can claim against GG are people saying mean things over the internet, and a school shooting threat that both didn't claim to be related to GG (and let's face it, there are plenty of folks who hate Anita Sarkeesian in particular and feminist speakers in general who are wholly unconnected from GG), and was deemed not to be a credible threat by law enforcement.

Re:Who?

[Schadrach]

I, and most other pro-GG folks you'll find online will entirely agree with you that everyone that has engaged in threats and doxxing against anyone need to be tracked down and punished. I'm not worried, because I haven't done those things, nor have most other GG.

I'd love to see some kind of evidence linking the USU threat to GG though, because the threat certainly didn't mention it, and a *lot* of people hate Sarkeesian that aren't part of GG. I know you want to make every time someone says something mean to a woman a case of GG being evil, but then you have all the women that are part of GG and also get harassed (and men, but I don't think you'd consider them important enough to care about as victims). Guess who's doing that harassment? Hint: It's not GG.

Re:Who?

[Sique]

They exist. That can be proven. Who sent them is up to the FBI to investigate and not yours to speculate. Especially publicly stating that the victims have faked them without any further evidence amounts to libel.

Re:Who?

[dreamchaser]

One of the threats they are investigating was a threat to shoot up a school. If you don't think that's worthy of investigation and ultimately punishment (terroristic threats are a crime, you know) then you need a reality check.

Re:Who?

[ganjadude]

Probably the frothing horde that sends out death threats and threatens to shoot up universities.

as the OP said...which side?

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean gg don't harass gg people? Amazing.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since 9/11 the FBI has had "catch an actual terrorist" on their bucket list and GamerGate recently managed to commit some actual low level terroism (using threat of violence to force people who they disagree with to back down from public appearances).

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

So then:

Prove it,

prove it,

and prove it.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Especially publicly stating that the victims have faked them without any further evidence amounts to libel.

For someone so sure of themselves, you really lack a clue. Simply stating that it is your opinion, or "the only logical concusion from the evidence", etc. is more than enough to prevent its being libel.

                    http://dictionary.law.com/Defa...

Moreover, "publicly stating" could be slander, not libel. *Writing* it, to even one person, can be libel. And it doesn't have to be public, either.

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

They threatened to shoot up a school if one of their targets was allowed to speak at a conference. That's most likely the only reason the FBI gives a shit.

Really? Do you have proof of this? Right, you don't. Strange that your comment was modded informative. Anyone else remember when proof was required when someone was spouting bullshit. I guess "listen and believe" is a real thing for some people.

Re:Who?

[fche]

"other than that, the story was accurate"

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the administration at Utah State University are in on the whole conspiracy against #Gamergate.

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

So I guess there's nothing in that article that offers proof. Rather it's "you have to take me at my word" huh? That's some pretty good listen and believe right there.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

up until the second sentence, it was not clear which side you were talking about.

The real narrative here, what has Actually been happening(Not Literally), is that a minority within a minority within a minority was called out for shady behavior, and they used Feminism to shield themselves from actual scrutiny. Their followers yelled and screamed and doxed anyone who was not their type of minority. Plenty of death threats, plenty of neutral parties harassed.

It turns out, though, that supporters of #gamergate are incredibly diverse.

You're going to find this "hate group" narrative very difficult to stick in a court of law.

Re:Who?

[jedidiah]

Being a victim requires actual harm. What actual harm does a threat from some chickenshit web troll really do you?

If anything, the so-called victims here are happily basking in the glow of the spotlight happy to be the center of attention.

The real victims are people that have bought into all of this nonsense and have had the view of their own real world warped by it. There's the real psychological harm.

Re: Who?

[rochrist]

Because it's a federal crime.

Re: Who?

[jedidiah]

Unless you've ever interacted with the cops you really have no reason to say anything about anything. Many people have this romantic idealized notion of the cops (or FBI) giving a f*ck when they usually do not.

One troll threatening another on the Internet is probably not enough to get them interested.

These people have important things to do and they have their careers to think about. They aren't going to waste their time chasing their tails over every random piece of bullsh*t. Sorry, but YOU and your problem are probably not important enough for them.

A threat against a school is probably something that they are more interested in. Better collar. More interesting media potential.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not like The NYT posted fuzzy "screenshots" from KPChan as proof! Instead they wrote "The day before, members of the university administration received an email warning that a shooting massacre would be carried out at the event. And under Utah law, she was told, the campus police could not prevent people with weapons from entering her talk." I mean, "members of the university administration"? What does that even mean? Damn #SJWs, making up more lies!

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

So at the end of the day, it still comes down to "no proof." Except what people in the media keep saying is "true" when again there is no proof. Amazing how that works these days isn't it.

Re:Who?

[Zephyn]

Being a victim requires actual harm. What actual harm does a threat from some chickenshit web troll really do you?

In all fairness, they have been known to cancel the occasional movie.

Re: Who?

[Holi]

The FBI seems to think there is enough evidence to start an investigation.

Re:Who?

[MrHanky]

Out of interest: how old are you?

Re:Who?

[phorm]

everyone that has engaged in threats and doxxing against anyone need to be tracked down and punished

It will be interesting to see whom turns up in this. While I don't disagree that there's misogyny on the internet, I'd say that a lot of the contenders are part of a more general problem: self-entitled assholes and trolls. People who have little interest in the politics in the situation but plenty of interest in seeking attention, or people who don't just have issues with women but generally shit upon "anyone who isn't me." I'm not a woman, but I've had plenty of people in various games who've resorted to threats and insults, often based on ethnicity or sexual preference (even when they don't actually apply to me). I'd imagine that if I was visibly a female then that would just be an additional category to the usual insults and churlish behavior.

Rooting out some of the bigger contenders will likely do little for either side of the issue, but I'll still cheer if a couple of these bastards face some consequences for the bullshit they seem to dedicate their life to.

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

The FBI seems to think there is enough evidence to start an investigation.

Really? It seems to me having read the original information on it, that there's information in some investigation, somewhere, with regards to gamergate. The original FOIA request was a blanket term for "gamergate" and if you think that qualifies as "gamergate did it" there's something seriously wrong in your reasoning.

Re:Who?

[Falos]

I blame this one on lawyers being indulged by a trigger-happy legal system.

Someone team up with me, we'll stage an assault (the real sticks-and-stones kind) on the steps of a stock exchange or something and sue the theat- I mean bank. We'll draw lots for who has to get shot.

OT: People who insist they were harmed by colored lights on a square screen are victimplay demagogues. I don't care how many bad movies have shown otherwise, a computer can't "EMP your brain" or explode with the force of a grenade, it just sits there and glows.

Re:Who?

[DrGamez]

You cannot speak for a movement that exists solely as a hashtag.

Without any kind of organization and actual accountability for "GamerGate"'s actions, anyone can claim to be part of GamerGate - and they are.

GamerGate is a campaign of harassment of women games and PoC in gaming. I wish you the best in coming to terms with this fact.

Re: Who?

[DrGamez]

Proof! Proof! Proof! Proof! Proof!

It's as if you need to literally watch the person walk up to a woman and say "I will murder you, here is my social security number for verification of identity."

Have you ever stop to think that it's a little strange that these "made up threats" (or whatever you believe they are) are happening near constantly? Ever find it weird that outside of the small contigency that makes up GamerGate, the vast majority of major publications seem to believe the accusations?

But please, link me to some proof that you AREN'T sending the death threats, I'll eagerly await the link to encyclopedia dramatica or know your meme or whatever you kids use these days.

Re: Who?

[rahvin112]

Are you serious?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Sarkeesian was going to speak at Utah State University. An anonymous person threatened to go on a shooting rampage and claimed to have multiple weapons and bombs. So there's your proof, someone threatened to go on a school shooting to prevent her from speaking. Such threats are very serious, if they catch the person that made them they will be going to jail.

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

Considering that anyone with a cellphone can make a threat, that would be pretty much it. Since you can't actually provide proof that it's gamergate it boils right back to what it originally was. A singular person, mostly likely an anonymous singular person who was doing it for whatever reason. Considering that there's several tweets showing anti-gg making the threats, and members of gnaa(who also are prominent members of anti-gg), I guess that answers where all those constant threats are coming from right?

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

So, you've got an anonymous person. And that equates to gamergate how? Right. Thanks for proving my point so clearly.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am part of gg, I have never sent any threats.

Insisting that all of a group is the same is incredibly dumb. Just because OJ is a black male, doesn't mean all black males are former football players...

Re: Who?

[DrGamez]

So there is literally no reason to investigate any death threat because anyone with a cellphone can make a threat.

This logic, it's bulletproof.

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

That however isn't what the original statement was about though, now was it? It was about gamergate being behind the threat, to which there is no proof. Unless of course you have evidence of it.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have to ask? They are obviously investigating any death threats, other threats of violence, and general illegal actions.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not afraid of the hate.

That's 'cuz you are the hate.

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

GamerGate is a campaign of harassment of women games and PoC in gaming.

Every time I have ever seen the term "PoC" written - every single time - the writer has soon shown themselves to be a repellent bigot. Bet you are too.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

~You cannot speak for a movement that exists solely as a hashtag.~

But you can?
There are words for people like you, jackass and hypocrite spring to mind first.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't really interested in anything other than media hype and self promotion. To which they'll milk anything to death over anyhow.

Those are their only goals, notice I didn't list equality as that would leave them without a soapbox to stand on.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because everything is a federal crime, comrade.

FTFY

Re:Who?

[david_thornley]

Think of it as the web trolls finding a bug in the system and exploiting it.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

The dispute is not about the existence of the threats but the identity and affiliation of the sender. If you want to prove gamergate sent threats it's not enough to prove that Sarkeesian faced threats.

Re: Who?

[Pseudonym]

Putting yourself in the shoes of the FBI, you'd want to eliminate GG from your enquiries first. Hence the open investigation.

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

Putting yourself in the shoes of the FBI, you'd want to eliminate GG from your enquiries first. Hence the open investigation.

That much if obvious. However, the original statement that "gamergate did it" boils down to FUD, much like the original article.

Re:Who?

[davydagger]

I'm not worried, because I haven't done those things, nor have most other GG.

you should be worried because its the FBI, they have a lot of resources, and they don't give a fuck what you actually done. This is going to be a really good experiance for you on the effects class has with FBI investigations. You don't have to have done anything. They will find something to pin on you, and haul you before a court, and ruin your reputation, livelyhood and make you an outcast. Thats assuming you don't get charged with many of the guilty-by-association charges.

As far as "SJW"s, they are terrible people and massive hypocrits. Liberals true colors as capitalists show everytime this happens. Your ugly and your poor. the "SJW"s have connected organizations, and beautiful and rich celebrities. You are getting put on trial for being an outcast, nothing more.

I'd like to say its about misogyny, or women and minority rights, but sadly its not. Not a peep comes out of these liberals about the racism and sexism from either pop music, actors, or even hip hop. Even more grotesque is these are the same people they are using to dismiss your little movement.

Lets keep the attention on some loosers in the basement, because recent allegations of Bill Cosby raping little girls came back out, and Roman Polansky is looking to have his rape-of-a-13-year-old thrown out in court. Instead of any bit of outcry, you instead see rape apologists from people who should know better. We even have self-described socialists all hush hush about this bullshit too.

It seems in Capitalist America, morals are only relivant to how much status you have.

I think #gamergate is a gross over-reaction, but at the same time, its a bigger overreaction from the FBI, and stinks of a cover up.

Re: Who?

[davydagger]

my dear boy, that is not how law enforcement actually works in this country. Start doing research on some actual criminal trials, especially those marked by 'undesirables', or people who don't get favorable opinions in the press for an independant investigation to be done. We'll start here.

Read, read, and read some more. But you are thinking to yourself, "these people are organized criminals, I'm not an organized criminal, I'l white middle class and upstanding", but you are now.

The FBI also is not going to waste time with an investigation without arresting anyone, and is not going to arrest anyone without a conviction, because that would make them look really silly if they did.

Re: Who?

[davydagger]

ironicly weev was just mysteriously let out of prison with all charges dropped, after comming out as a nazi with his new buddist(and not nazi) swastika.

Now the FBI is investigating, and it really is starting to look a whole lot like Weev is an asset of the federal government. This is beginning to look like a new Sabu/Anonymous all over again.

As for proof, you don't need proof in a witch hunt, especially with terrism charges.

I never supported #gamergate, but my concerns about an immediate overraction by the government are fairly real.

Re:Who?

[x0ra]

Both side issued death threats...

Re: Who?

[Mashiki]

Considering that I know how law works, perhaps you should do some more reading on how it does actually work. See, when a group/individual/etc is named in an on-going investigation, even if innocent they're considered "part of the investigation" this is the standard MO in all FOIA/privacy IO/etc requests. Oh, there is most likely an investigation--after all, there's at least two people who attempted to swat someone...they individuals who attempted such are SJW's and anti-gamergate.

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

But stating the opposite isn't?

Re: Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be that the victims must prove that they ain't faking it. In court.

Re:Who?

[thejynxed]

Kek, and double-kek. Yet it's the feminist hate brigade who has been the ones getting women fired and chased out. Nice try, DrTroll.

Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

While GamerGate is about Ethics and putting a stop to gender Politics in games. There were a few Threats made.
I hope the FBI does look into who made the threats and charges pressed- I'd also be interested to find if any of the
threats were fabrications.

Re:Sounds good.

[Luckyo]

Some were admitted to have been fabrication. Some have been real but police advised people threatened that they were not credible, only to have those people go to the media claiming they were serious.

And then there were probably a few real psychos.

The saddest part is that most of the actual victims appear to be people who took part in the #notyourshield tag. The folks that basically made a point that "we're those minorities you opponents of #gamergate claim to be "protecting" and we're telling you under our own names - we need no protection from you". They and their families were brutally harassed and some were actually driven out of work.

It's going to be interesting to know if FBI is going to actually look at the whole thing rather than just #gamergate and what they will find out.

Re:Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be willing to bet that all the threats were fabrications, but I'd also be willing to bet that having charges filed against said fabrications would do a world of good.

At some point, someone, somewhere, somehow, for some reason will actually carry out such a threat and then everyone will be in a world of hurt. Its better if one or more of these provokers have the book thrown at them as an example to the others before that happens. The online culture of flooding death threats, personal harassment and defamation has gotten so out of control, the old adage of "just ignore it" literally does not work anymore.

Re:Sounds good.

[Iamthecheese]

the old adage of "just ignore it" literally does not work anymore.

I'm not disputing this but I don't agree either. Can you provide evidence and supporting argument?

Re:Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the FBI will enjoy that laughably bad multiple-choice, text-game on Steam.

If they don't, someone should advise the FBI to be silent. After all, criticizing hilariously shitty products on Steam is now apparently a form of sexual harassment. And pointing out the overwhelmingly obvious in a blog post, may be construed as "rape" here in bizarro world.

Dear FBI, please tread carefully. If you write up a critical report the feminazis will cry verbal assault.

Re:Sounds good.

[Znork]

Well, the practice of swatting would be one of those kinds of harassment where 'ignoring it' literally wouldn't work. Of course a cursory googling seems to show more gamergaters actually subjected to that than their purported victims.

Re:Sounds good.

[Maritz]

After all, criticizing hilariously shitty products on Steam is now apparently a form of sexual harassment. And pointing out the overwhelmingly obvious in a blog post, may be construed as "rape" here in bizarro world.

lol... Nope.

Re:Sounds good.

[Ashe Tyrael]

Being personally acquainted with at least one of the #NotYourShield folks, they definitely aren't all sockpuppets. There's people in back of there that really believe in what they're saying, There's also at least one developer in there who isn't either.

Now as to whether the people giving them grief are the anti-GG types, or the GG-types running a false-flag, that's another debate entirely.

Re:Sounds good.

[Vintermann]

Just shows how crazy it is to rely on Wikipedia these days.

By the way, anyone else missing comments they recall making in this thread?

Re:Sounds good.

[PhilHibbs]

This whole gamergate thing has been deeply confusing right from the start. It's hard to work out which side is which. Earlier this year, a couple of rape-threat trolls were jailed here in the UK - and one of them was a woman. Sending rape threats. To someone who was campaiging to get Jane Austen put on a UK banknote. I just can't make sense of the world any more!

Re:Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

This needs to be modded up heavily. The myth that the #NotYourShield campaign was a bunch of white male drooling nerds in a basement is provably false and needs to die. Here's another relevant graphic and I find it hilarious that this is exactly what the haters of #NotYourShield have done ever since it came out: dismiss the speakers completely.

Re:Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia*

I won't even touch WP hoaxes with ideological slants.

#notyourshield was largely a sockpuppet sham.

Like this well-known sockpuppet. No, I'm not even going to fucking joke about how disgusting the reaction to NYS was, misgendering people and denying them opinions unless they doxxed themselves. SJWs are not your friends, they do not fight for freedom; just look at how they deal with marginalized people who have the 'wrong' opinion. Just take a step back and take an objective look at upper class white people telling PoC they're objects, not actors, because they believe the wrong thing. Or straight cis males telling transgender people they're not really transgender, because you have to agree with them for that privilege.
Fuck that.

Re:Sounds good.

[Theaetetus]

According to Wikipedia*, #notyourshield was largely a sockpuppet sham.

Being personally acquainted with at least one of the #NotYourShield folks, they definitely aren't all sockpuppets.

Those are not inconsistent statements. You believe that the number of sockpuppets was less than 100%. GP says that according to wiki, it's greater than 50%. If it turns out anywhere within that range, it's still bad.

Re:Sounds good.

[rochrist]

Ok, all but that one.

Re:Sounds good.

[PhilHibbs]

You believe that the number of sockpuppets was less than 100%. GP says that according to wiki, it's greater than 50%.

It says "many", which could mean anything.

Re:Sounds good.

[DrGamez]

"Can you provide proof that doing nothing did something?"

You probably should have posted this as AC to save yourself the embarrassment. What purpose does your line of argument have here? That we should just allow death threats because they're "probably made up, lol"?

Re:Sounds good.

[DrGamez]

There is a clear reason you posted this as an AC.

Re:Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://i.imgur.com/sxMyVB7.jp...

twitter account in question, a_girl_irl participating in harassment and doxing and physical threats against a little kid. One of the other accounts involved with this was a somethingawful mod. Remember this when they claim they are against harassment and doxing. Btw, she is a 30-ish woman in NYC with a legal job, harassing little kids.

Re:Sounds good.

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI doesn't care about #gamergate or #notyourshield or whatever movements are involved. The only thing they care about are actual crimes. Threats of violence, harassment, etc. They aren't going to do a detailed analysis of what side is right here. They will just pick off the loonies on all sides that are breaking laws.

Re:Sounds good.

[Luckyo]

According to wikipedia, all gamergate related articles are edited by a one specific editor who was asked even by Jimbo Wales himself to stop editing because of his obvious extreme bias.

He's still editing the articles and they're all extremely obvious hit pieces.

Re:Sounds good.

[Luckyo]

You missed my point. Current mass media narrative is that "gamergate is a harassment movement and social justice warrior types are their victims".

At the same time, reports from the actual people suggest that it's the exact opposite. But it's very hard to figure out what is what in there because this is internet, and most sources are difficult to double check.

FBI on the other hand will actually go for evidence. So it will be interesting where that investigation will lead - who is actually doing the harassing?

Re:Sounds good.

[Iamthecheese]

Holy shit, what is your problem? If you have actual evidence that I'm wrong about something, post it. Replying to every comment I make with disparaging yet empty rebuttals doesn't just make you look like a dick, it emphasizes the fact that you have nothing more substantial on your side.

Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, what's the problem here? I wish the submission contained a bit more background.. And why are women targeted?

Re:Ethics?

[Iamthecheese]

Stop lying that lie. For everyone else, please look at my post history for evidence refuting it.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

They weren't. A few women were criticized for their low quality argumentation and/or poor ethics and behavior, however.

There's a big difference to a general attack on women because of their sex and criticisms towards specific women for their actions, which the anti-gamergate side refuses to acknowledge. The former may or may not be misogyny (depends on the motive for the generalization), the latter certainly is not. The rest of it boils down to long term corruption in the media, from supposedly game focused, gawker-owned rags spending too much time on 'social justice' and attacking their readerbase, to the obvious bias in the mainstream media coverage (not that the mainstream media has ever really gotten gaming). Whenever a group becomes this large and amorphous, there are bound to be a few crackpots in the mix (and the feminists are quick to trot this excuse out when one of their group gets a little too blatantly misandric for the good of the their image) who say stupid shit. These comments really shouldn't be taken seriously, but today's media loves to drum up the fear angle by implying that those crackpots make up the majority position and people fall for it. Law enforcement loves it because it gives them justification to demand larger budgets and more unchecked power.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

Your argumentation would work better if it wasn't based on ad hominems.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

I can understand you want the conflict to just go away, but that doesn't mean both sides are without argument and are just assholes.

You forgot to add #ThinkOfTheWomen to your little hashtag list. At least then your posts wouldn't leak your obvious opinion on the issue you claim not to care about.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

..and yet here you are, posting anyway. Thing is, the tempest entered the teapot from outside. Games are just one of the newer fronts on a much larger, ongoing cultural conflict.

Re:Ethics?

[hairyfeet]

Its about corruption, about members of the gaming press having relations, both physical AND financial, with game developers they were promoting, and about a secret Google group where the supposedly "independent journalists" were given marching orders and told what to push, what to ignore, and whom to attack. When the news came out? THIRTEEN gaming sites issued THE EXACT SAME STORY about how they didn't need gamers and that gamers were "dead".

If you would like corroboration you can start with this video that provides multiple links to back what I've written up.

Its REALLY simple folks, some of the press is dirty, they are taking bribes, pushing political agendas, and while pretending to be independent they were actually running a little clic that went so far as to blacklist those that didn't "play ball" (which is illegal in several states) and when found out instead of doing what most corrupt groups do when caught, spinning and passing the buck, they went on the attack, while some of the "victims" who are accusing others of doxxing went out and shook down and doxxed fine young capitalists for money. This is ironic as many of these report to be "feminists" while fine young capitalists was an org trying to get female designed games made. instead after shutting them down one of those at the center of Gamergate pushed for a "game jam" for women with a Patreon account...that went directly into her personal checking account. They are also using the guise of "social justice" which in reality is self enrichment and hypocrisy but at the end of the day, when you strip away the "SJW" and "radical feminism" bullshit? Yep just about money, both the corruption in the press caused by and by certain women trying to use feminism the way Rev Al uses the black community. Sure you have a few in this that are so far left Karl Marx would go "Damn comrade, dial that shit back a bit" but as with so many scandals in the end? yep its about $$$

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you can't #thinkofthewomen, that is harassment and thought rape you fucking shitlord.

Re:Ethics?

[lgw]

As one of the few conservatives left on /., I can only agree fully with what the above smelly hippie has to say.

Back when Jack Thompson was the Anti-gaming Asshole in Chief, the Penny Arcade guys had a brilliant idea about that, and the Childs Play charity was born. We need a similar idea here. I had hoped that fine young capitalists might be that, but they really don't seem to have their act together, much as I like their intentions. Anyone else have a clever idea for a grand gesture?

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

..and yet here you are, posting anyway. Thing is, the tempest entered the teapot from outside. Games are just one of the newer fronts on a much larger, ongoing cultural conflict.

This. So much this.

I think the majority of gamers were content to ignore the SJW crowd and the current culture war being fought in the US. But the SJWs couldn't stand that. They had to open up yet another front in their mindless war for "social justice" (which appears to be code for white=bad, men=bad, white men=super bad). And now these SJWs are shocked - SHOCKED! - that gamers are fighting back against a war the SJWs started in the first place!

And make no mistake, this has become a war and the SJWs are inflicting actual monetary damage here. They're getting games pulled from sale for bogus made-up reasons (GTA V in Australia), they've gotten games pulled from Steam (Hatred) until gaben himself stepped in, they're abusing the "report account" features to try and ban anyone on Twitter who disagrees with them. They're causing real harm and they need to be stopped.

So, yes, this really should be a stupid little tempest in a teapot, but the SJWs have escalated it to the point where they're causing real financial damage. Only SJWs want this pointless culture war, but they've proven that ignoring them is not a solution. The only solution is to fight back.

Re: Ethics?

[maccodemonkey]

Dude, the entire industry is dirty. Here's a tip: if you're worried about ethics start boycotting every video game.

It's funny how when it comes out that a gaming company acted unethically Gamergaters suddenly lower their standards by a few notches rather than give up their favorite toys.

Re:Ethics?

[dave420]

Calling something "social justice" does not immediately relegate it to obscurity. "Social justice" is just a term to mean "admit less-than-stellar behavior towards minorities or the underrepresented, and earnestly try to improve it". Unless you'd call Rosa Parks a SJW you really should stop trying to use terms like that pejoratively - it makes you look like a tiny-minded, scared child, who is worried their favorite toys aren't as awesome as they always thought, and lashes out at anyone who might point that out to them.

Re:Ethics?

[gweihir]

Excellent summary. What it boils down to is that some people were criticized, and they defended themselves by claiming these were attacks on their gender. The reason is plain and simple: They could not credibly defend themselves against the criticism itself, so they used misdirection and made it a gender-issue. Predictably, a lot of people with no clue whatsoever about what was going on then jumped on those criticizing, as apparently criticizing a person of female gender is an attack on them all...

Re:Ethics?

[gweihir]

I disagree. Ignoring the SJW works pretty well. After a while even the dumbest person sees that they are a force of destruction and contribute nothing positive as all.

Re:Ethics?

[dave420]

epyT-R, I also seem to remember you making many utterly misogynistic posts in the past, such as "women shouldn't/can't be scientists" and so on, so it's not really surprising that you'd be complaining about people calling other people out for being narrow-minded and intellectually lazy. When you're being socially unjust, I guess people looking for social justice are your enemy, hence your tirades against them.

Re: Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you stop using childish names and actually address the issues one at a time?

Re:Ethics?

[fey000]

Excellent summary. What it boils down to is that some people were criticized, and they defended themselves by claiming these were attacks on their gender. The reason is plain and simple: They could not credibly defend themselves against the criticism itself, so they used misdirection and made it a gender-issue. Predictably, a lot of people with no clue whatsoever about what was going on then jumped on those criticizing, as apparently criticizing a person of female gender is an attack on them all...

I think this is the best summary ever of #GamerGate. There are several books worth of stuff happening as a result of this, but this is the point of origin.

Re:Ethics?

[reve_etrange]

a general attack on women because of their sex...may or may not be misogyny

Actually, that is pretty much the definition of misogyny.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling something "social justice" does not immediately relegate it to obscurity. "Social justice" is just a term to mean "admit less-than-stellar behavior towards minorities or the underrepresented, and earnestly try to improve it". Unless you'd call Rosa Parks a SJW you really should stop trying to use terms like that pejoratively - it makes you look like a tiny-minded, scared child, who is worried their favorite toys aren't as awesome as they always thought, and lashes out at anyone who might point that out to them.

Well, then, tell the fabulist, "narrative"-concocting SJWs to get over their affected continuous outrage.

Note well that UVa still has not reinstated the fraternities that were disciplined after Rolling Stone published Jackie Coakley's made-up rape story - where any half-assed journalist not hung up on SJW-concocted "rape culture narrative" would have found out that the texts in the "relationship" came from numbers that were from a catfish service.

And damn right I used her real name. May the UVa frats get LOTS of Jann Wenner's SJW money.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

The press doesn't need to take bribes. Walk down to the local newspaper. If you have a business (say a pizzeria) then the will (for a small fee) release a heath food article talking about the importance of fresh ingredients, quoting you (with full billing as to the details of your establishment) as a expert in the field.

When news can be bought over the counter, those who are bribing are just doing it wrong.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, He didn't mean sex as in gender, but sex as fucking a bunch of people.

Re:Ethics?

[silentcoder]

> and about a secret Google group where the supposedly "independent journalists" were given marching orders and told what to push, what to ignore, and whom to attack. When the news came out? THIRTEEN gaming sites issued THE EXACT SAME STORY about how they didn't need gamers and that gamers were "dead".

A discussion group for journalists in a particular field... shocking, oh wait, all journalists in all fields have had those for decades, long before the internet they had forums like that via other means.
Journalists have been building relationships across publications and collaborating in this manner for-ever, it actually makes journalism STRONGER.
The only plausible explanation for you thinking this one is a scandal is:
1) You're an idiot who didn't know that this has been standard practise since Ben Franklin published a newspaper
or
2) You know that but are hoping WE don't, and want to deceive us.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL OF THIS.

This is exactly why Gamergate exploded in numbers.

It all started out attacking some awful excuse for a game on Steam that attempted to be deep and meaningful, but ended up being awful.
Then, the developer cried "sexism!" and played the victim card SO HARD.
Then friendships were found between a few reviewers and her, which caused an even larger shitstorm.
Then the rest of the bullshit happened, fake relationships, fake harassment, fake death threats, fake screenshots attacking and threatening to attack her (like those faked images from uh, wizardchan or whatever it was, OBVIOUSLY forgetting archivers exist) and so on.
The claims that only white fat virgins were pro-gamergate, shot down, and then them saying images were faked, how people were PAID and so on. YES, SERIOUSLY. PAID. This is how far these morons will go in order to try squash any criticism against them.
OH, let's not forget where she publicly attacked a charity to get more female developers in to games dev, that bit ALWAYS ends up forgotten.
I sat and watched that crap as it was happening, her and her group of friends all gloating about their success on twitter during it all.

The ONLY people that have genuinely been harassed during this are all the people supporting gamergate, all by her and her group of "hacker" buddies doxxing everyone that even shows any negativity to her movement, or follows the people in question.
People have been fired. People have been accused of rape. People have had massive amounts of shit sent to their houses that they never wanted, I'm sure some people even got swatted.
People against GG that were in positions of power elsewhere, such as game jams, were threatening to give all games by male teams bad reviews, RIGHT ON TWITTER, then came that delusional terrible programmer that wrote the blocklist for twitter and got trolled by allowing a troll himself on the whitelist! And who did that block? Oh yes, literally anyone that followed anyone relating to GG, or mentioned GG, so, loads of people that had nothing to do with it, because "gotta silence everyone!", you know, because censoring things on your computer means NOBODY ELSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD CAN SEE IT. (this is the sort of people we are dealing with here)

I seriously do hope the FBI find those fake threats and the few possibly real threads that seem to be coming from a guy in Brazil. (probably a botnet node)
This shit really needs to be dealt with already since the only people suffering are gamers.
These people aren't gamers, Anita couldn't even mention a single game in an interview when she done an entire piece on game sexism. How pathetic. (not to mention every single one of her points were destroyed many times over)

But of course, let's not forget, this is just attacking females.
All those females that are actually guys employed at many news sites, or post on twitter. I can literally name 4 females in gamergate and the rest are guys that are hitting double digits now. Soggy knees indeed.

Re:Ethics?

[AmiMoJo]

I notice that all your links are to poorly made YouTube videos. Taking the first one, the links you claim back you up are actually just links to more YouTube videos, a document on Google Docs that is unverifiable, a seemingly unrelated WaPo editorial about a spat between journalists and bloggers, and a Gamasutra article that they clearly state was written by community member and not their own staff and which seems to be mostly irrelevant.

Your claims are built entirely on top of other unfounded claims and extremely weak evidence. That basically sums up the entire GamerGate movement, from the original lies about Zoe Quinn onwards. There are some genuine issues with games journalism, although why that surprises anyone I don't know because no aspect of entertainment journalism has much credibility, but those points are lost in a sea of bullshit now.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of a SJW as the rabid dogs of "Animal Farm", the "Thought police" from 1984, and the "Nazi youths" of the Nazi party. They are the brainwashed and brutish people in the payroll of the corrupted elite to coerce the opposition through force, as they know that they have already lost the battle of arguments. That's why the Media on their payroll systematically lies on this issue, because they can fight a strawman, but not the truth.

Also, they attach the word "social" to the word "justice" because it's not actually justice, they're just a lynching mob. Socialists are always coining positive terms for their despicable tactics. That's why in 1984 the place in which they purged the disidents was called "The love ministry". Socialists have been always lying and poisoning language, that's why you don't trust them when they tell you that feminism is about "equality". When they claim to represent the "people", you have to replace the word "people" by "the socialist party", socialism is therefore the dictatorship of the "socialist party".

Re:Ethics?

[drinkypoo]

Its about corruption, about members of the gaming press having relations, both physical AND financial, with game developers they were promoting,

We already found out that this was a non-story, so why are you repeating it? zzzzzzz

When the news came out? THIRTEEN gaming sites issued THE EXACT SAME STORY about how they didn't need gamers and that gamers were "dead".

So you're offering as evidence your lack of understanding of how "news" works today? I guess you haven't heard of a wire service, either. Hint: It's how news is made.

Its REALLY simple folks,

Some people are making mountains out of molehills.

Re:Ethics?

[AmiMoJo]

Post a link to the positive review she received due to her relationship with a journalist. I dare you. I double dare you.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with Journolist! Just look at how it became open and transparent once its existence was discovered.

Re:Ethics?

[birdboy2000]

Using the asperger's spectrum as an insult while accusing us of being intolerant? Wow you're an asshole and a hypocrite. You'd fit right in at Gawker Media - you know, that company whose editor-in-chief uses "neuroatypical" as an insult.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read that omgscandalous story about that list at Breitbart's and point out what's so bad about it.

They tried hard to make it sound ominous, but the actual screenshots don't really show what Breitbart's journosluts want to make you believe. Biggest accusation there basically goes:

Someone at Gamejournopros: "Quinn's getting harassed pretty bad, may be we should send her a letter or something to show support..."
Milo: "WOW LOOK HOW UNPROFESSIONAL THEY ARE WHAT WITH CARING FOR OTHER HUMAN BEINGS AND ALL! UNACCEPTABUUUL!"

But, hey, it's only dirty SJWs who unconditionally believe everything they heard about Gamergate, amirite?

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, semantics. You already know that it wasn't a scored review. It was a "preview" of Steam Greenlight games. So you can win on semantics ("see, not a review"), but we both know Zoe Quinn received media coverage for sex. It's a fact, no matter how you try and obfuscate it.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

One can only assume you have not read the contents of the group's posts, and how they were blacklisting people from getting coverage on their games over political differences. Yep, that does make them more powerful but it does nothing but bring same to journalism, if we really want to call it that.

Re:Ethics?

[hairyfeet]

This is an issue I truly believe socialists like myself and conservatives like yourself can come together on because NOBODY likes corruption, manipulation and hypocrisy and that IS ultimately what "Gamergate" is about.

Just don't label the SJWers as "radical left" okay? They have about as much to do with the left as Rev Al has in common with MLK, its about co-opting for the purpose of self enrichment, its about a handful of women who have figured out how to use the guise of feminism to put money in their bank accounts, see Zoe Quinn killing Fine Young Capitalists so she could push a "Women's GameJam" that went straight into her personal checking account, or how Anita Sarkeesian went from being a telemarketing shill to being the Andrea Dworkin of video games, at the end of the day its about stealing an idea, perverting it, and making bank off it.

But just as I wouldn't try to paint all conservatives with the same brush by saying all conservatives believe like Rand Paul that you should be able to discriminate against other races as long as its under the guise of private business, I would hope that you would afford those of us on the left that believe in safety nets for the poor and fairness in everything from taxes to political power and lump us in with those that say every ill of the world is because of white straight penis holders.

At the end of the day I think we can BOTH agree that political agendas don't belong in gaming, nor do we need a gaming media clic that is corrupt to the core and THAT is what BOTH sides need to be focusing on, the fact that you had 13 websites putting out the exact same story almost word for word within a few minutes of each other, that this very same media was covering up the fact they had both physical and financial interests in the games they were promoting, and that those with a political bent that both sides would rightly label extreme was using this podium to silence and blacklist those that did not support their agenda or at least pay lip service to their beliefs. This level of corruption simply cannot be tolerated and we in the gaming community and the Internet community in general should accept nothing less than the gamejournopro writers no longer being in gaming media and the websites they worked with going under because this level of collusion and corruption must NOT be allowed to spread, lest it taint and infect all those around it.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even look for a job today?

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone goes around insisting that social justice warriors are a bad thing does that make them social injustice warriors?

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'm starting to wrap my head this issue, which is entirely new to me.

So SJW means something like Social Justice Women? And are they basically some kind of empowered racist feminist? And is their issue the impact of gaming on society, or the depiction of women characters in games, or the position of women in the gaming industry? (or?)

I haven't played games in a while, especially after the appearance of real time wasters (ex. those on Facebook), so I'm a bit ignorant about this whole topic...

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, somebody's got Amerikan-grade testosterone poisoning. Don't forget to "stand your ground" because you felt someone's opinion about games was threatening to the little man-child that runs your life, i.e. - you. #ThinkOfTheManChildren

Re:Ethics?

[misexistentialist]

Little known fact is that while she was waiting at the bus stop Rosa received a death threat tweet on her iphone, which caused her to flee her normal seat and move to one where she couldn't be found. If she had called Uber instead history would have been different.

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

No thanks.

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

Actually, it's about adjusting your meds.

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

Produce a link to the 'review' of Zoe Quinn's game, or STFU.

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

If I have to choose between an SJW and the typical Barrens chat troll, I'll take the SJW every time.

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

And yet, strangely, he's correct!

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

Pretty much.

Re:Ethics?

[Theaetetus]

When the news came out? THIRTEEN gaming sites issued THE EXACT SAME STORY about how they didn't need gamers and that gamers were "dead".

Actually, one issued the story and then others responded to it, many of them jumping on the same bandwagon. It's like seeing something in the NYTimes, then subsequently the WaPo saying, "The NYTimes reported X. We believe X'."
I mean, hell, if you're going to call that a conspiracy, then you just issued a similar story, so mark it up to 14.

Re:Ethics?

[Theaetetus]

I notice that all your links are to poorly made YouTube videos. Taking the first one, the links you claim back you up are actually just links to more YouTube videos, a document on Google Docs that is unverifiable, a seemingly unrelated WaPo editorial about a spat between journalists and bloggers, and a Gamasutra article that they clearly state was written by community member and not their own staff and which seems to be mostly irrelevant.

Aside: what the hell is up with that? Linking to a 15 minute YouTube video that, by definition, takes 15 minutes to sit through, rather than a five page article that can be skimmed in two? And the videos don't even use the medium to show graphics or charts - they're generally just some talking head in front of their computer's webcam. Are the pundits of this new generation illiterate, and can't simply write down what they want to say? Or are they assuming that their audience is illiterate?

Re:Ethics?

[birdboy2000]

Wow, that's real inclusive of you.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, you're pretty much right. There's only one thing. I've been building a gamer rig in anticipation of Star Citizen coming out.

I was assigned the male gender at birth, but I only work as that gender because getting the plastic surgery to correct the gender on my birth certificate is prohibitively expensive, as much as I'd like to have it. Everybody who knows me personally refers to me as "she" outside of work. I even get gendered female while presenting as a man around people I don't work with, etc, etc.

I'm also aware that The Fine Young Capitalists were viciously attacked with accusations of "transphobia." That was a WTF moment for me, since as far as I can tell, they have one of the most refreshingly trans-accepting policies I've ever seen (despite claiming to be radical feminists). If there's anything you can present to substantiate how TFYC is transphobic, please do. I'm not beyond believing TFYC is a GG false flag operation, however, but I've seen no conjecture of that either.

If I can continue to ignore every "side" involved in GG, I will. I don't give a shit about sexist articles in publications I don't read, and "Cock of Duty" players (as my friends and I call it) can go shove it as well, since I don't play those kinds of games and nobody I care about does either.

However, if one day I fire up Civilization or Diablo and find that I'm required to attend some form of "sexual harassment" training before I'm allowed to play a round or two, and IF (big if) I learn that it's only because of my assigned gender at birth and those who have the legal status of female aren't required to take sexual harassment training, I see no reason why I shouldn't become an outright misogynist against cisgendered women. (If they want to require everybody, including cisgendered women to attend sexual harassment training, that would be fine.) Another trigger would be if I log on to Star Citizen (assuming they ever release the female avatar they promised) and I find that I am unable to select a female avatar and I am forced to use a male avatar because of my assigned gender at birth.

The first 20 years of my life was an exercise in being retaliated against for the actions of others. I see no reason to let loose with some hatred if I am retaliated against again. Find some of the shit I've posted here and on the red site and hold me accountable for that. Don't dare hold me accountable for the actions of some teenage boys on the internet who think making credible death threats is acceptable.

I don't know what difference it would make other than perhaps consulting with a lawyer and demanding a refund, but I do have a large chip on my shoulder against cisgendered women already after all the date rape and sexual harassment classes I've been required to attend and all the times I've been held accountable to my face for the actions of people who aren't even the same gender as me simply because I was assigned the male gender at birth. After years of therapy, I can contain it, most days. Feminism was clever to sew the seeds of misogyny early by instituting group punishment policies in my elementary school (if one boy was acting up, all boys were punished). I don't think I will be able to hold it back if there are personal consequences for me as a result of GG.

Maybe that just makes me an awful person who should kill herself already. I definitely have grievances against specific institutions and individuals that will never be addressed. I might get around to killing myself if I continue to be held accountable for the actions of people who aren't even the same gender as me that were merely born with the same body parts I was, excepts what's between the ears. But who cares... look at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, the attacks on TFYC, the continued transphobia of feminism. Maybe if SJWs and other sexists won't recognize the gender of the thing between my ears, I might as well just blow it out. Cue response cheering my suicide on.

tl;dr I don't give a shit

Re:Ethics?

[Holi]

So all the threats were fake? No one threatened to shoot up a school (you know, the very reason the FBI is involved).

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that SJWs by going over the top with their rhetoric have sullied the name. Same thing with feminism. Feminism would be accepted pretty much universally like climate change, but you have feminist theorists going full retard with their ideology. What you see with gamergate and MRAs is the overshoot of SJWs and feminists.

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

Who said I was trying to be inclusive?

Re:Ethics?

[birdboy2000]

Oh, so you're just a dick.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

He may well have, but it would still be misogyny.

Re:Ethics?

[DrGamez]

Other than the mountain of IRC logs and screencaps proving that this was, from the start, a way to hide attacks on women behind something lofty as "ethics in game journalism", what is the point of gamergate?

Literal proof we've had since the first weeks that this was ALL to hide a campaign of harassment, and your proof of a few MSPaint conspiracy images now disproves them all?

It's depressing to see people like this, those that fall hook line and sinker that they're fighting for something important, when really they are just fueling a campaign of harassment.

Even on Slashdot, that's full of a fair amount of kids who think like you, has modded you a Troll. How strong is your cognitive dissonance here?

Re:Ethics?

[DrGamez]

At the end of the day I think we can BOTH agree that political agendas don't belong in gaming

You honestly have no concept of what this means do you?

Having Bufffist Manstrong, white straight male as the default protagonist IS a political statement.

Having a game where america's army goes around saving the world IS a political statement.

Having a game of Civilizations where the best way to achieve victory is through scientific exploration IS a political statement.

You've become so saturated in what you believe is the "absence of politics" you've never stopped to realize that you might be advocating for the existence of your brand of politics in video gaming.

Re:Ethics?

[DrGamez]

You've gone from maybe having a shred of an argument to now just parroting what someone has called you out on instead of debating the point.

Run along now and try to find some kids stupid enough to believe your lies. Perhaps try arming yourself with some MSPaint images!!

Re:Ethics?

[DrGamez]

There is a reason you posted this Anonymously.

Re:Ethics?

[Coren22]

I don't disagree with what you say, just one piece.

It is the Autism Spectrum, of which Asperger's Syndrome is one condition. The current DSM no longer has any of the sub catagories of Autism, it is now all just called Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Yes, I have Asperger's Syndrome (as diagnosed many years ago), but I don't use it as a crutch or excuse.

Re:Ethics?

[DrGamez]

There is a reason you are posting this Anonymously.

Re:Ethics?

[Coren22]

SJW = Social Justice Warrior.

They are people who see Racism and Sexism in everything except themselves.

Re:Ethics?

[Mashiki]

So all the threats were fake? No one threatened to shoot up a school (you know, the very reason the FBI is involved).

You mean the threat that was classified as non-credible?

Re:Ethics?

[AmiMoJo]

It's a terrible summary. Here's what happened:

Zoe Quinn's jilted ex boyfriend made a blog post accusing her of stuff. There was a vague accusation that she slept with a journalist in return for good coverage of her game, but it turned out to be untrue. That didn't stop GamerGate repeating the lie over and over and over again though, and using it to justify their "corruption in gaming journalism" angle.

Anita Sarkeesian made some videos about how women are often portrayed poorly in games. GamerGate went ape shit over this and accused her of all kinds of things, most notably defrauding her Kickstarter backers (note that she delivered the promised videos) and of organizing a vast false-flag operation against herself. There has been a little bit of thoughtful criticism of her work, but most of it is just ranting. She largely ignores the rants, except for documenting them to use in her talks.

So basically GamerGate is based on a lie that is still being perpetuated long after it was debunked (see the other comments), and rage against women pointing out that games could do a little better when it comes to female characters. When asked about the corruption angle most GGers steer away from Quinn now, but point to articles about how gamer culture has become toxic because apparently disagreeing with them = corruption.

Re:Ethics?

[birdboy2000]

I know that. I even meant that. This is what I get for not proofreading. Sorry.

Re:Ethics?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

this post proves that gamergate is ultimately about the gamer community's inability to cope with new ideas, history and understand things written by human beings.

For a group of people concerned with ethics and integrity, rewriting history is sure first nature to you guys. Zoe Quinn never killed TFYC to advance Rebel Jam. She made a couple of standalone tweets and engaged in some conversations on twitter about how shitty TFYC's plan was and how awful the profit sharing is. Also, TFYC was always about profit, so I don't know why people think they're some kind of charity. They're not. It's a whole duplicitous mess.

In terms of being incapable of basic comprehension, when the articles were going out saying, "Gamers are dead." they meant, "The idea of 'gamers' being the core audience for games is coming to a close and people making games should be more broad minded."

What this was interpreted as was, "Gamers are scumbags and we should shut them down."

When Anita Sarkeesian posted videos about how sexist tropes are being used in video games to reenforce sexist ideas in our culture became, "Video games make you sexist and you should avoid them at all costs."

Political agendas ARE in gaming. Gender politics IS here to stay and was here from the very beginning. I mean, I can point to an incident during Street Fighter v Tekken's hype phase where Sanford Kelly verbally abused a woman who was a competitor using awful gendered language. If you don't think that's not gender politics at play, then you're an idiot.

What it comes down to is, gamers don't want to have to feel uncomfortable about anything and will use anything they can to justify their selfish outrage. Somehow Anita and Zoe and Brianna criticizing games and the games industry as being sexist is restricting freedom of expression but Mass Effect 3 having a less than satisfying ending is enough to get gamers riled up and demand Bioware they change it.

It's a mess.

Give up. Learn to read a book. get a liberal arts degree. get the stick out of your asses and understand that there is more to life than your own narrow understanding of it.

Re:Ethics?

[Coren22]

So cutting out the important part of the sentence to make your point is a valid arguing method now?

Criticizing someone who happens to be female for things that have nothing to do with her being a female could be misogyny, but is not guaranteed to be misogyny.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an outsider who is in here browsing just trying to figure out what GG is about, I now see the reasons why no one outside of narcissist gamer/publisher nut swingers with access to a blog and a desire to show other bloggers how important they are to the blog don't know or care about it. The other 99.99999999% percent of the population goes about their business oblivious to your perceived issue.

I'm sure there is a neighbor down the road from you that might have slept with someone and someone else has an opinion on why. GG is about as equally important. People are assumed to accept favors and gifts for a favor all the time. I thought everyone in the world knew that. Search Google for "lobbyist" if you want some ideas. I don't know if you date or not but if ever took someone to dinner and paid, you were doing the same thing. A gesture to get approval from the other person.

Re:Ethics?

[Chas]

Sorry, but your right to harass and harangue me ends when I tell you it does.

If you insist on carrying it further, be prepared for the repercussions.

You still have the right to free speech. You simply don't have the right to force people to listen to your drivel.

And yes, I'm one of those people who, when they say "Leave me the fuck alone or I'll blow your head off." MEANS "Leave me the fuck alone or I'll blow your head off."

Re:Ethics?

[reve_etrange]

Parent wrote:

There's a big difference to a general attack on women because of their sex and criticisms towards specific women for their actions, which the anti-gamergate side refuses to acknowledge. The former may or may not be misogyny (depends on the motive for the generalization)

The "former" applies directly to the phrase "a general attack on women because of their sex" (emphasis mine). The elided part of the sentence has no bearing on this fact.

Criticizing someone who happens to be female for things that have nothing to do with her being a female could be misogyny, but is not guaranteed to be misogyny.

The parent specifically refers to a "attack on women because of their sex," which explicitly has to do with their being female. The parent doesn't say "criticizing...for things that have nothing to do with being female," it says "attacks...because of their [female] sex." Hope that clears things up for you.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is happening with Gamergate is a battle for liberty and freedom of speech by people who don't remember what Soviet-style Communism was like and think its all cool to espouse Marxist beliefs.

Way to make a leap into crazy town. What part of Gamergate is battling against changing the entire economic structure of the country? It's over the top bullshit like this that fails to get much sympathy to your "movement".

Re:Ethics?

[hairyfeet]

Social Justice Warriors, deciding who counts based on progressive stack, Social Justice Warriors, if you don't think like us we are on the attack!

We are narcissists and Captain Planeteers, with our heads firmly up our rears, we think the world is black and white, and if you have a vag then you'e always right!

/sung to the tune of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", be sure to post your own version when a SJWer tries to ruin a thread near you!/

What SJWers prove is that they FEAR a free market because they know the mainstream isn't gonna buy shit non-games like Depression Quest so the ONLY thing you can do is try to attack and legislate and ban that which you cannot hope to compete against. Why are you so afraid of competition? Is it you are sure your ideas are that intolerable?

We have the emails showing collusion, we have the evidence of their blacklisting those that don't tow the party line (illegal in several states, where is the investigation into this?) and we have plenty of evidence of self enrichment such as Zoe Quinn and the Gamejam that went straight to her personal checking.

They tried to compete in a free market, they failed, now they try to build rep by playing the victim card, they are the Rev Al of feminism, and you can kiss their ass all you want but in the end if you are a cishet you simply don't rank in the progressive stack, you are the enemy. But luckily for the rest of us its still a capitalist country and the free market WILL win. Kotaku is bleeding money, the viewership plummets, many of those on gamejournopro shall likely lose their jobs, it will NOT save those sites, and those that try to Rev Al feminism like AS and ZQ will have their support and opportunities dry up, see how quick EA put out a press release saying they would NOT be having anything to do with AS who had been insinuating she would consult with them.

If you are not afraid then let the market decide, we will see if your ideas are acceptable or foul. Considering both the left and right wings can agree that SJWers are narcissist whiners nobody wants anything to do with? I have a feeling we both know what the outcome of your toxic beliefs are, hence the calls for banning and attempts to silence those who don't support you.

Re:Ethics?

[lgw]

Your focused on a very narrow kind of gaming, and frankly nobody gives a fuck about that sort of political statement except SJWs. Ultimately I think that's the root of the gamergame fight:

SJW: Politics! Identity! Identity politics!
GG: Fuck off, we don't care about that stuff
SJW: See! Oppression! Misogyny! Identity politics!
GG: No, seriously, fuck off! We just play games for the game mechanics, the presentation doesn't really matter.*
SJW: Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

*There are actual academic studies to back this up. E.g., gamers pick an avatar/character based on in-game performance, not on any sense of identification with the character.

Heck, I remember the days of Quake 2, back when that was gaming, when everyone used the female character because her hit box was a bit smaller than the male. 0 fucks were given about gender identity in that choice.

Re:Ethics?

[CronoCloud]

Aside: what the hell is up with that?

There's this subcommunity of " 15 - 25 year old male gamers" that gets their game info from youtubers. Gamergate "personalities" tend to be the sort of guys who do those let's plays and youtube game reviews who go by "nicks" not their real names. So it's "totalbiscuit" says this, or "poopoodie" says that.

Re:Ethics?

[CronoCloud]

THIRTEEN gaming sites issued THE EXACT SAME STORY about how they didn't need gamers and that gamers were "dead".

Define "gamers".

I read some of those articles (which weren't exactly the same) and some of what they were basically saying was:

Those young male gamers that think of themselves as the "real gamers", are actually only a small part of gaming as a whole. They think they own the term, but they're wrong.

That's what they were saying.

Re:Ethics?

[gweihir]

The funny thing is that you are way off. Statistics about gamers show that they have significant disposable income, often families and the "basement dweller" type basically does not exists. I think people with your broken "understanding" of things have become entirely obsolete.

Re:Ethics?

[CronoCloud]

And yes, I'm one of those people who, when they say "Leave me the fuck alone or I'll blow your head off." MEANS "Leave me the fuck alone or I'll blow your head off."

And when you blow someones head off for "not leaving you alone", you get sent to prison for 1st degree murder. Because shooting someone you disagree with who is not physically threating you with bodily harm is a crime.

Re:Ethics?

[gweihir]

There is people that understand what is going on, and then there is people like you. Pathetic. But keep pushing your lies, you are just getting more and more obvious every time.

Re:Ethics?

[CronoCloud]

However, if one day I fire up Civilization or Diablo and find that I'm required to attend some form of "sexual harassment" training before I'm allowed to play a round or two, and IF (big if) I learn that it's only because of my assigned gender at birth and those who have the legal status of female aren't required to take sexual harassment training,

Come on, you know that's not going to happen.

Another trigger would be if I log on to Star Citizen (assuming they ever release the female avatar they promised) and I find that I am unable to select a female avatar and I am forced to use a male avatar because of my assigned gender at birth.

That's not going to happen either.

But who cares... look at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, the attacks on TFYC, the continued transphobia of feminism.

The 70's rad/separatist feminists, are not all feminists. There's plenty of trans friendly feminists, I know, I'm transgendered myself.

Re:Ethics?

[Coren22]

I missread his comment. My bad.

I thought it said the latter, and missed totally the latter part of the statement.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said shit about tolerance? I accused you shirtbirds of engaging in harassment, literal shutting down real world events harassment.

If it makes you feel any better, I tend to roll my eyes at the claims of being aspies when they're written by GG'ers because not only are GG shitbirds proven liars, but they're also the exact people who tend to self-diagnose. A self diagnosis of autism is invalid, period end of discussion.

So that means they're not aspergers in the clinical sense; only in the 4chan "you have autism" sense.

It's just another excuse for them to hide behind and try to justify their harassment
and nothing else.

Re:Ethics?

[david_thornley]

It's a bit difficult to refute a threat of murder or rape, and complaining about them seems to me entirely justified. The FBI will probably figure out where some of them came from, and some people are likely to be in serious trouble.

Re:Ethics?

[birdboy2000]

Insofar as they apply to gamergate as a whole and not some assholes we ban on sight, your harassment claims are false, but if they were true that still wouldn't make your spreading hate speech about autistic people okay. That said, your behavior is echoed by the outlets Gamergate is boycotting, which is the main reason I've gotten involved in the advertiser writing campaign to begin with.

Why is Gawker Media describing Gamergate as composed of "angry Sonic the Hedgehog fans"? (We didn't organize on a sonic forum, it's not a best-selling game or franchise this decade, it hasn't been involved in a censorship controversy - but there is a stereotype that Sonic fans are autistic!) Why is "neckbeard" used to mean misogynist in anti-gamergate circles? Why were the gamers are dead articles filled with stereotypes of nerds that just so happen to describe people with aspergers'? Why are 4chan terms okay when applied to people on the autism spectrum but not to women or people of color?

Autistic people are not your shield.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think it's a bit low to post allegations like that without linking to evidence? I mean, anyone can say "I seem to remember" bad things about someone and I know the psychologically it does work on people, but it's not exactly honest. Would you like it if people posted claiming "I seem to remember" that you did horrible things?

It's also quite ironic to make a post in that in a thread called "ethics."

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

So according to you, they weren't even autistic and that makes you using "sperglord" better? As a /.er with asperger's, wow, lovely. Since anything goes when criticizing Gamergate, are you going to next talk about how Milo Yiannopoulos is a faggot? Or maybe you can use the N-word to describe Polar Roller?

Whatever gamergate did or didn't do doesn't make your hate speech okay.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't even post a link to this "good" review? Your whole entire story falls apart from there. There is the real truth and there is a "truth" as only you see it based on a choosing to only listen to things that agree with your preconceived point. Doing what you are doing is WELL documented in physcology. Read about it, if your argument is valid, avoiding these pitfalls will help you with getting your point across.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Not the same AC as above.)

Depression Quest has gotten a ton of attention and received many reviews, some of which have been positive. Since you ask for specifics, here's a particularly gushing one. Given the timing and the fact that that reviewer does hardly any video game reviews, it's safe to say the this is a result of her relationship with a journalist and the ensuing fallout from that.

I'm betting that's not what you meant though. You probably meant that the only real corruption is quid pro quo corruption, and that if a review wasn't written by the same journalist who slept with her then obviously it doesn't count. The supreme court certainly seems to agree with you, but many of the rest of us feel that a cozy relationship of that nature is one that comes with intangible perks. There's no reason why, for example, her boyfriend at Kotaku couldn't raise his hand at a meeting and say, "Hey, how about this game Depression Quest that my girlfriend made? I think someone should review that. Not me of course, because I am filled with integrity, but one of you should give her some free press."

   

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

Using the 'your intolerance of my intolerance is intolerable' card is what's dickish.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

we both know Zoe Quinn received media coverage for sex

FFS, everyone knows that this is not what happened. She did not have sex with anyone who gave her media coverage, and the sex that she did have with someone who worked for the same outlet happened some time afterwards. There is no evidence of a quid pro quo, nor is there any logical train of reasoning which would even suggest one.

Re:Ethics?

[birdboy2000]

I'm not talking about "my intolerance" I'm talking about using terms like "sperglord" and "asperger's patient" as insults you ableist piece of shit.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Got it, thanks. And I agree with the concept of the term..

Re:Ethics?

[lgw]

You make and play the kind of game you like, and we'll make an play the kind of games we like, OK? There's room on Steam for lots of games.

get a liberal arts degree

I'd prefer a job instead, but hey: to each his own!

Re:Ethics?

[Chas]

You apparently didn't read what I said. I wouldn't be shooting you for disagreeing with me. I'd be shooting you for assaulting me.

As for "physically threatening". I've alive, you're dead. Whose testimony on the subject is going to be believed?

Think of it as "The Golden Rule, with a lead binder"

Re:Ethics?

[reve_etrange]

No worries, I had to read it a few times too - the claim is so outlandish.

Re:Ethics?

[drinkypoo]

There's no reason why, for example, her boyfriend at Kotaku couldn't raise his hand at a meeting and say, "Hey, how about this game Depression Quest that my girlfriend made? I think someone should review that. Not me of course, because I am filled with integrity, but one of you should give her some free press."

What you're not getting is that this would be an example of relatively high integrity in the entertainment media. Most of it is much sleazier. A favor for a friend is the cornerstone of successful business. The benefits are intangible in this case, because you [allegedly] can't simply buy that kind of press from that particular outlet. But most "news" is simply something some corporation wanted published, and it often gets reprinted without meaningful comment, let alone changes. The parallel to law is, pretty frankly, disgusting.

The flip side to your argument is that nobody should ever say anything nice about someone they're screwing if they are a media personality, right? But since the internets have made sure that everyone knows who you were inside last night if you are even remotely worth trolling, we all have plenty of disclosure anyway.

That this moment is the "gate" of gaming journalism is deeply embarrassing, and what's more, it has guaranteed that gaming journalism is going to go through another era of embarrassing corruption — not the kind where someone helps a friend, but the kind where review scores are just made-up bullshit. This is what tells us that Gamergate is in fact simple petulance. There has never been integrity in gaming journalism, and you guys (yeah, you've found a handful of women to ally themselves with your "cause", congrats) are upset now because some sex was involved. Usually, it's just the typical ho-hum giving games a free pass in the form of undeservedly high review scores so that more free review copies will show up, which has led directly to the generally pathetic state of new game releases where they don't work for large numbers of subscribers until a patch cycle has passed and so on. The reviewers give a free pass to poor quality and we all "suffer", at the first world level anyway in this case. That's not to say that nobody should be incensed about the lack of ethics in gaming journalism, only that even if all the gamergater claims were true this would still not be the most egregious example of its lack going on right now. You would still have, for example, the entire mainstream gaming press. And by the way, the reason they're not sounding off on this whole rant? They're happy that you guys are distracting the people's gaze away from them, and clouding the whole issue of journalistic integrity with this nonsense non-story. Indeed, if the mass media et al have noticed this flap at all, they must be breathing a sigh of relief that calls for journalistic integrity at the grassroots level are currently being linked with sexism — due to some sexism.

Re:Ethics?

[drinkypoo]

Having a game of Civilizations where the best way to achieve victory is through scientific exploration IS a political statement.

The best way to achieve victory in Civ is to crush your nearest neighbors early in the game, and expand into their territory. That's true whether you're pursuing the scientific game (either for eventual economic or space victory) or the military conquest victory.

Re:Ethics?

[drinkypoo]

Don't try to blow this off as some kind of SJWer bullshit. I believe those people actually exist, but I don't believe as many of the people you think are that are in fact that. I think gamergate is bullshit, and I have had passionate argument about how the name "feminist" is sexist and had to personally field the arguments about how it's not sexism if you're on the more oppressed side. Well, I could see how that could seem true if one doesn't own a dictionary... but let's face it, 1) the core claims of Gamergate have now been shown to be overblown at best, 2) there is no public evidence that any of the claims of harassment or threat at question were fabricated, only speculation, and 3) gaming journalism has long been corrupt, and even if all the initial claims were true, this would have been a minor example. So, being prepared to have a massive fight about it (even putting the discussion of threats and harassment aside for the moment) is fairly pathetic.

Do you really find it hard to believe that these death threats are genuine? I don't mean to imply that they are genuine in the sense that they will be acted upon, but that's not actually necessary for them to be an attack, is it? In fact, depending on where you live, it often is not. It's not okay to tell people that you're going to kill them if you could carry out the threat, because of the real psychological impact that has. We don't want a society of fight or flight. Being able to relax once in a while is, in fact, one of the primary goals of civilization.

Re:Ethics?

[russotto]

1) the core claims of Gamergate have now been shown to be overblown at best

The initial claim turned out not to be a simple quid pro quo. The person who gave the favorable mention of Depression Quest turned out to have been mentioned in the credits for the game, however. He gave a mention to a game he was involved in the development of. This is certainly less headline-grabbing than sex-for-coverage, but I don't think it's any better. Either way it's a tempest-in-a-teapot at that point... but the more people started looking, the more rot they found.

It's clear at this point that there's a group of "gaming journalists" who give favorable reviews to their friends and political allies while giving unfavorable reviews to others on the same bases. And who are contemptuous of gamers, though that's not in itself unethical.

there is no public evidence that any of the claims of harassment or threat at question were fabricated, only speculation

There's little public evidence on either side about threats and harassment. The most well-investigated threat (to Anita Sarkeesian) seems to have been from someone in Brazil who she already knew about and has been threatening her since long before GamerGate got going.

A lot of the so-called harassment is just people responding publicly to statements made publicly. That's not harassment. Dot-mentioning someone on twitter is not "harassment". Making a response video to someone else's video is not "harassment".

Do you really find it hard to believe that these death threats are genuine?

As with harassment, a lot of these so-called death threats don't even fit the form. They count things like "I hope you die" or "Go kill yourself" as death threats, when they're clearly not. Some of these death threats were actually threats and actually happened, but "someone sent me a death threat therefore my opponents are wrong and evil" still doesn't hold together.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting definition, I would go more with these as the first things google brings back.

social justice
noun
justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.
"individuality gives way to the struggle for social justice"

Fairness is the quality of making judgments that are free from discrimination. Judges, umpires, and teachers should all strive to practice fairness. Fairness comes from the Old English fæger, meaning "pleasing, attractive." This makes sense given that the word is also used to describe physical beauty.

Now if you cant figure out which people line up behind which word I would suggest some serious introspection.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's because I'm fully aware that if I don't, you SJW terrorists will email my employer and try and get me fired. If you don't mail me dead animals or poisoned needles. (All of this has happened.)

Re:Ethics?

[x0ra]

Corruption is just fine, it is human nature...

Re:Ethics?

[rochrist]

You haven't got the slightest idea whether I'm ableist or not, but feel free to fly your intolerance flag high!

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

You defended the use of the term "sperglord" and describing Gamergate as "white male autism patients". Do you... know what ableism is?

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

Ignoring them only works until they get the attention of someone bigger than you, like your boss or the government. Then the crocodile tears become toxic.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

Except that it's come to mean "If you don't agree with my self-established victimhood you're a hater." You're welcome to change out 'hater' for the equivalent ad hominem for the attribute of the group or individual under 'attack.'

Regardless of which group they are claiming victimhood for, SJWs largely operate with the same strategy: drum up some controversy with fallacious appeals to gain notoriety and then label any criticism they get as bigotry (you just hate women/gays/whatever). I'm pointing out the hypocrisy that results from this behavior. All you're doing is calling me names because you don't have an argument. Equating rosa parks, who was resisting bonafide caste restrictions, with the bs of sarkeesian/wu/zoe quinn and friends about video games is crazy.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

I don't think you get what 'misogynist' actually means. Criticizing specific women for their stupid statements is not misogyny. If they were all replaced by men making the same stupid comments, I'd make the same criticisms. What I don't get is why there are so many men like you who will white knight for them no matter what, often without even having complete understanding of the situation.

Re:Ethics?

[epyT-R]

Correct. Welcome to orwellian newspeak. The terms end up meaning the opposite of their true meaning.

Re:Ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is usually frightened little manchildren like yourself with an arsenal of replacement penises that feel most threatened by words. Hopefully, you haven't locked up any breeding females in your mom's basement / survival bunker.

harassment attribution

[brennz]

is technically challenging to do as the internet can be anonymous.

In many cases it is irresponsible journalism to assume it is "gamergate" launching the harassment campaigns since we know the SA/4chan professional trolls are antagonizing both sides to incite drama.

Re:harassment attribution

[tsotha]

We already know several of the serious ones were false flag fakes.

Re:harassment attribution

[gweihir]

Well, hopefully these end up in convictions. Faking crimes in order to influence a debate is completely unacceptable and done only by people without any personal honor whatsoever.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't know politicians were into #gamergate...

Re:harassment attribution

[drinkypoo]

We already know several of the serious ones were false flag fakes.

Where's the evidence? We've all seen the evidence that the original basis for this whole flap was a bullshit lie, so we know that gamergate is founded on bullshit. But we haven't seen any evidence that any of the threats were false flag fakes. If you have any, provide it. If not, stop lying like the liar you are.

Re:harassment attribution

[AmiMoJo]

No you don't.

Seriously, just saying it over and over and over again and posting a few screenshots of Twitter doesn't make it true.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Anita faked her death threats.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

What evidence was this? I must have missed it.
Unless you're talking about the lie of wizard chan harassing Zoe Quinn.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's called "evidence" and can/does show proof. Or did your school not teach you anything before letting you go out into the big, wide world?

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Citation please.

Re:harassment attribution

[squiggleslash]

What's happening here is the standard (especially in GG) circle-j where GamerGaters theorize that something is a "false flag", then someone digs out some minor coincidence, KIA has a field day and declares that the case has been proven, and nobody there revisits the issue, usually genuinely shocked that anyone would disagree.

I'm _still_ arguing with people who think (or claim to think) that Nathan Grayson wrote anything at all as a result of his fling with "LW1" [the GamerGate term for their primary target, who isn't a journalist FWIW. The women herself has suffered enough harassment, so I'll subvert this term to actually avoid mentioning her by name respecting her wish she be kept out of it.] They read Grayson did, they've only listened to people who said he did, as far as they're concerned it's true, and no amount of "OK, point me at the articles he supposedly wrote" will change that. Given this is the original attempt to redefine GamerGate as an "ethics" campaign, something even this story has fallen for, that's a pretty bad thing.

Another example:

1. Eron Gjoni initially tried to post his revenge-ex "tell all" about "LW1", to the forums of Something Awful. SA deleted it immediately and banned Gjoni.
2. Gjoni shops around, finally finding 4chan tolerates it long enough to stir up support from various anti-women trolls (well, it's 4chan, of course they're trolls.) Yadayadayada Adam Baldwin yadayadayadayada front page of New York Times, article about GamerGate's harassment and death threat campaign.
3. Goons (SA's term for forum members) discussing the trainwreck on Something Awful's forums notice the New York Times is covering a controversy that started at... Something Awful and post words to the effect of "What started here ended up on the NYT!"

So what happened then? Well, GamerGate developed a consensus, immediately, without any evidence whatsoever beyond forgetting, somehow, that SA was where Gjoni started trying to destroy "LW1", that Something Awful was behind all the death threats and was making them to make GamerGate look bad.

Because that totally makes sense. One, out of context, forum comment, with no actual quotes from SA members organizing this shadow campaign.

I mention this because it's one case where you specifically see the mindset. Something is "proven" because it gets repeated within KIA enough that it becomes an unquestioned fact. This is how GG holds on to its useful idiots long enough for them to make idiots of themselves.

Re:harassment attribution

[squiggleslash]

You've just proven it's easy to convince yourself of something that's obviously not true simply by creating a narrative and tying some minor details into it.

Sarkeesian needs to screenshot a Twitter user who over the last few minutes is sending her death threats. She's getting notifications every few seconds from Twitter on her mobile device, presumably her phone. She knows how to make a screenshot on a computer, and it'll capture more tweets than the four or five you can typically see on a mobile phone, so she fires up a web browser, goes to the Twitter URL of the harasser who's still in the process of sending her death threats, hits Ctrl-PtSc, and then sends the screenshot somewhere.

Completely normal. Exactly what you'd expect someone to do (I know it's technically possible to take a screenshot on your phone, but (1) you won't get many tweets and (2) personally I don't actually know how to do it, if I were in the same situation I'd have to Google for the information.)

Your idiot evidence tries to make every element of this suspicious. They... *gasp* went to a PC they weren't logged into to make the screenshot. They *horror* didn't wait until the death threat stream had finished before making the screenshot, meaning some were coming in seconds before she took it! Because you've decided she must be making this up, you've had to invent a ridiculous narrative involving tablets and logging out of PCs that has Sarkeesian apparently unaware she can have two browsers on the PC that has a keyboard.

What's even more bizarre is you make these allegations while GamerGate simultaneously acknowledges that Sarkeesian does, actually, get death threats all the time. The GG "Anti-Harassment Patrol" even trumpeted it's "success" at finding a certain Brazillian journalist who is one source of anti-Sarkeesian death threats, and got terribly upset when Sarkeesian said "Yes, I know, I've already reported him" and spun it as "Sarkeesian refuses to report harasser we found!!!1!!"

GamerGate is about harassment. Stop trying to cover it up.

Re:harassment attribution

[rochrist]

I'm sure he has a link to a youtube video.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

you conveniently skipped nuking 20k+ thread in r/gaming about TotalBiscuit's totally reasonable comment on the whole fiasco (tldr: if allegations of professional misconduct is true, that says a lot about journos and ZQ, don't abuse DMCA to take down things you don't like, it's for copyright violations), where bot was set to 'autoban on post'. I bet 90% of r/KIA members didn't know anything about some irrelevant chick before the hardcore censorship and doubling down on the oppression narrative. A classic example of the Streisand effect. It became apparent that screaming hurr durr misogyny is the 3rd magical spell that makes all criticism go away (think of the children, terrorists, misogyny) and that you can cut deals with SJW buddies in mod positions to control the narrative.
And then the gamers are dead followed.

Pretty much nobody cares about how much of a bitch ZQ was to her exbf, and i bet more than 90% jumped on board after the rampant censorship all over the net and peddling the shallow, simplistic "gamers are sad, exclusionary, misogynist, neckbeard losers oppressing womyn" propaganda.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm _still_ arguing with people who think (or claim to think) that Nathan Grayson wrote anything at all as a result of his fling with "LW1"

Then they are misinformed.
The point isn't that he wrote anything about her or her game. It's that, as an employee for a business that writes game reviews, he Might be responsible for such a review, OR his relationship with her might influence his coworkers ('Hey, this game is by my co-worker's girlfriend. I don't wanna piss him off, so I'll give it a good review', etc).

Anything beyond that is either 14-year olds making anonymous threats for the lulz, or butt-hurt women over-reacting to 14-year olds making anonymous threats for the lulz. /captcha: nonsense

Re:harassment attribution

[Holi]

I'd like to know what your proof is.

Re:harassment attribution

[Holi]

Extremely circumstantial evidence, hardly proof in any way.

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, Sarkeesian faked it and you can't deal with it. Get over it.

Re:harassment attribution

[DrGamez]

NOT GOOD ENOUGH PROOF!!!

Literally everyone must be lying!!

At a certain point you have to become aware of your own cognitive dissonance, no?

Re:harassment attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that totally makes sense. One, out of context, forum comment, with no actual quotes from SA members organizing this shadow campaign.

There were quotes. Remember earlier where you mentioned them deleting Gjoni's post and banning him?

Well, guess what. They deleted all the posts where they were plotting to smear GamerGate. But the thread was there and they did do it.

Re:harassment attribution

[davydagger]

is technically challenging to do as the internet can be anonymous.

not to people who are wiretapping the entire internet. :) All traffic everyone has sent for the last 10 years, is in one giant class cube in utah. If that is not good enough they can show up and demand data from ISPs, and put tapes on lines in datacenters, or install monitoring agent on the server of whatever computer whatever side is hosting #GG content.

unless its all on TOR or I2P, its being tracked.

Even if it wasn't, they can do word analysis to match potential authors, then look for details about a person's life and try and match that to the fairly accurate profiles they have on just about anyone, they've gotten from buying/stealing advertising data using shell companies.

Even if it wasn't, these people are no experts, and is still subject to traditional intellegence gathering/undercover police work.

Even if they can't, if they want to arrest people, they just need to find out who is part of gamergate, they can get from IP addresses of any servers hosting GG content, and then subopeneaning the ISP(which you will find out from a simple whois on the IP), into giving out subscriber information. Once they have names, they can find something to arrest them, and comb through everything until they can find charges that stick.

Re:harassment attribution

[davydagger]

I think its more "actual terrorism" is more important issue than your silly little #gamergate debate.

There is nothing in #gamergate nearly as serious as an actual act of terrorism and death threats that are very specific, including very specific refrences to real weapons.

Thats actual terrorism. Whatever debate you were having on ethics is not nearly as important as terrorism.

Re:harassment attribution

[tsotha]

Bullshit. I wish people would stop trying to sell that nonsense. Gamergate is about 1) corruption in the gaming media, where a chick can sleep her way into good reviews for a horrid game and 2) a gaming press that insults the people who pay the bills and then pretends it's all about sexism when they get called on it (you fell for that part. What a sap.) and 3) journolist-style story coordination by people who are supposed to be independent.

Attention whores like Sarkeesian only showed up later when there were enough people interested they could provoke a response on 4chan.

Re:harassment attribution

[tsotha]

I don't know why, but women never seem to get charged for this kind of stuff. Remember Crystal Mangam, who made up a gang rape by Duke Lacrosse players out of whole cloth? Never charged. Well, until she started knifing her boyfriends. They charged her for that.

Someday the legal system will treat women as harshly as men, but that ain't today.

Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew we'd get this story, because it casts GamerGate as misogynists, and not the story about Brianna Wu being caught lying about the death threats.

Despite the former story being voted down and the latter being voted up. Because we can't have an unbiased discussion about GamerGate on SJWDot!

Excellent!

[RubberDogBone]

The FBI will quickly sort out what is actually going on. If GG is really making threats, they're going to need some anal lube for their new roommates Bubba and Junebug.

And if it's made up, they'll find that out, too.

Imma make some popcorn. And buy stock in whoever makes lube.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI will quickly sort out what is actually going on.

"Quickly" might be inaccurate. They've been working on this since at least a month before the zoe post.

Read that last sentence again and think about it.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

they're going to need some anal lube for their new roommates Bubba and Junebug... Imma make some popcorn. And buy stock in whoever makes lube.

Rape is not something to joke about or wish on others.

Re: Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Relax will you.

Re:Excellent!

[epyT-R]

Large amorphous groups like gamergate (and yes, feminist groups and organizations as well) all have a few crackpots making threats. I am sure a few will be found, but that does not alter the legitimacy of the arguments made. I wouldn't be so quick to believe what three letter agencies put out either, especially since they are beholden to political bodies with interests in specific outcomes for the sake of image.

Re:Excellent!

[epyT-R]

Who are you to say what others can joke about?

Re: Excellent!

[Opportunist]

Hope so, it's allegedly less painful when you relax.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

The last sentence that points to a property with Ezra Klein as EIC? The person that has been at the center of two corruption in journalism scandals? And you want to be taken seriously?

Re:Excellent!

[Luckyo]

How internet fighting works:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/ind...

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

they're going to need some anal lube for their new roommates Bubba and Junebug... Imma make some popcorn. And buy stock in whoever makes lube.

Rape is not something to joke about or wish on others.

Unless you're falsely accusing made-up UVa frat boys.

Then the joke get published on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

Re:Excellent!

[sinij]

Exactly, I really hope they find people who were engaging in criminal behavior so both sides can move on and continue engaging in the debate if gaming is an appropriate platform for broadcasting feminist agenda.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well we know what side your on.

Re:Excellent!

[sinij]

I'm firmly on the side of "let me enjoy my games".

Imagine, if every time you sat down for dinner some obnoxious person started to yell at you about starving Nigerian children. Annoying? Well, this is how gamers see SJW.

Re:Excellent!

[DrGamez]

"Femenist agenda?"

Are you dense or do you not understand gaming isn't a zero-sum game? You can have a billion more ladies making games and that doesn't mean games like Hatred or Call of Duty are going anywhere.

Re:Excellent!

[sinij]

I disagree. Not all women are feminists, and getting more ladies into game development is not even one of the goals of these feminists. Their goal is to turn all gamers into feminists, and impede any gaming that isn't conforming to the dogma By force, if necessary.

Re:Excellent!

[CronoCloud]

we live in a society with "rules and social niceties".

Some people might be aspiea or sociopaths or psychopaths or just be self-absorbed selfish jerks. They might feel those rules are wrong or don't apply to them

But they still do, and people will expect them to follow them.

You can make jokes.... but that doesn't mean there won't be social consequences. You tell racist jokes, you might find people not wanting to hang around with you. You tell a rape joke and people who have been raped or who know those who have. (I know people who have been raped)....will show their displeasure.

Simply put, control your jerkass behavior.

Re:Excellent!

[CronoCloud]

No ones stopping you from enjoying your games. Why do you think you are being stopped?

Re:Excellent!

[CronoCloud]

Their goal is to turn all gamers into feminists, and impede any gaming that isn't conforming to the dogma By force, if necessary.

Whose goal? And where did you get such an idea? No one is saying that they should stop making CoD or LoL or whatever it is you play.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think he said anything about being stopped?

Re:Excellent!

[russotto]

"Femenist agenda?"

Are you dense or do you not understand gaming isn't a zero-sum game? You can have a billion more ladies making games and that doesn't mean games like Hatred or Call of Duty are going anywhere.

No one objects to women making games. But who was it who ran a successful campaign to get GTA V pulled from Target Australia because, specifically, of misogyny?

Re:Excellent!

[x0ra]

They are, not through direct regulation (though, this is coming in countries like Sweden), but by social shame. Feminist pseudo activist are seen as messiah spreading the gospel, demonizing every one opposing them.

Re:Excellent!

[x0ra]

See above. Campaign in Australia which lead Target to stop sell of GTA. If I want to run a prostitute network in a game, why shouldn't I be able to ? I've already killed thousands in FPS, became a tyran and commited genocide in classical RPG...

Credibility of Communications "Sent to Brianna Wu"

[Kunedog]

You should watch the last five minutes of this (supposedly a Gamergate letter sent to Brianna Wu). It's absolutely priceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

cowardice

[Iamthecheese]

This isn't even the use of weasel words. The FBI is investigating *opponents* of GamerGate for lying about threats and third party trolls for making other threats while the summery claims the investigation is about threats made by proponents. I really, really hope whoever made the threats and whoever lied about them is caught. I hope this because I know damn well GamerGate did not make these threats.

The entire case against GamerGate is built of press pushing talking points off of empty claims made by professional victims. That's the start and end of the "threats and harassment" side of the story. Meanwhile a consumer movement against, ironically, corruption in the press is being libeled to suit political agendas.

Re:cowardice

[Khyber]

"even as some members have harassed and sent death threats to female gaming developers and critics."

And OF COURSE Slashdot will conveniently leave out the fact the FBI is getting involved because it's the people against the Gamer Gate people that have been FAKING death threats.

Go fucking figure Slashdot's poor editing (or more likely intentional FUD) would give THE WRONG IMPRESSION.

GamerGaters can prove the threats against them were external. Anti-GG have been faking threats to themselves.

Slashdot is devolving into a geek version of Fox News. Instantly spotted as soon as DICE started taking over.

Re:cowardice

[Microlith]

So in other words, IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

I hope this because I know damn well GamerGate did not make these threats.

Given that there's nothing resembling membership rolls or a roster for gamergate, much like occupy and anonymous, anyone can claim they're part of gamergate and say whatever they want. And given that the birth cries of gamergate were basically textbook misogyny and harassment, it's pretty much impossible to separate the two.

The entire case against GamerGate is built of press pushing talking points off of empty claims made by professional victims.

Has it? So what's more believable:

It's a giant conspiracy by media types to set up false harassment fronts against professional victims to make gamergate look bad.

or

Gamergate was full of assholes who continue to act like assholes and don't like it when their targets push back rather than simply accept being harassed into silence.

By far one is much simpler, and hews much closer to the truth despite gamergate apologists denying and deflecting.

Re:cowardice

[Microlith]

Slashdot is devolving into a geek version of Fox News.

Irony, given how many gamergate apologists sound like right wingers after viewing Fox News for extended periods.

Re:cowardice

[sd4f]

There was a bit of a conspiracy, because, while there's no concrete evidence, it appeared that a few of the 'victims' were working really hard through the use of sockpuppets, to try to build the foundations for a larger harassment campaign.

Re:cowardice

[Microlith]

There was a bit of a conspiracy, because, while there's no concrete evidence

So your claims are baseless and hollow.

it appeared that a few of the 'victims' were working really hard through the use of sockpuppets

IT'S A CONSPIRACY (even though we haven't a shred of evidence to prove it)! A giant conspiracy that suddenly sprung up, not a bunch of people deciding that they'd somehow been wronged by an indie developer because her boyfriend made some (apparently incorrect) claims and some blog author and deciding to go nuclear.

You'll have to forgive me if I'm massively skeptical about apologetics for gamergate.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering when the useless SJW trolls were going to show up.

We know that the "victims" are lying. It's been proven. All the "victims" are well known professional victims whose careers are built on their supposed victimhood. (Anyone ever heard of Zoe Quinn or Brianna Wu until they received "death threats"? No? Gee, I wonder why.)

So, yes, it is a conspiracy. In the sense that the "victims" are playing up their "victimhood" for publicity. Because it's working. They're receiving undeserved press and support for "death threats" that in several cases we know NEVER HAPPENED. Like you said, anyone can claim to be "GamerGate": including the "victims" when sending themselves "death threats".

And the press (the press that GamerGate is calling out for ethical faults) is of course pushing that angle, because otherwise they might have to change something. But, no, instead it's all about "misogyny" and how "gamers are dying".

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually thats how zoe's game got greenlighted on steam.

No one gave a shit about depression quest and it failed getting greenlighted a couple times until she threw wizardchan to the flames.

Re:cowardice

[epyT-R]

Fox News with a left friendly bias = MSNBC, NYT et al. Welcome to koolaid flavored 'news.'

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

Irony, given how many feminist apologists sound like left wingers after viewing MSNBC for extended periods.

Re:cowardice

[Vintermann]

So in other words, IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

The person Gamergate started with is an admitted pathological liar.

The rest can be put down to the journalist class' tribalism, and the need to distance oneself from low-status people close to you in social space.

Re:cowardice

[epyT-R]

1. argument from authority. It's actually part of a long time conspiracy among so-called 'journalists' to promote victimhood among women (and other groups) in order to justify authoritarian ideology. They call it 'making a difference' in 'journalism' university programs.

2. It's the anti-gamergate crowd that can't handle criticism of their fallacious accusations, which they label as 'misogyny'. It's these accusations that ignited the long brewing issue in the first place.

Re:cowardice

[aevan]

But I thought the mantra was supposed to be 'listen and believe'?

Re:cowardice

[epyT-R]

Just as gamergate is skeptical of conspiracies like 'patriarchy theory'.

Re:cowardice

[serviscope_minor]

Just as gamergate is skeptical of conspiracies like 'patriarchy theory'.

I like how instead of responding to the GP and addressing his points, you jump on to a complete non-sequiteur and start beating that to death.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble is "gamergate" isn't a group with a secret underwater lair, a head of being evil over there and a set of minions for being evil everywhere else . It's just a bunch of people who're fed up with games journalists treating them like shit.

It doesn't matter what your hashtag is, some psycho will always troll it to the max regardless of affiliation.

Re:cowardice

[ctid]

If you want to believe that the FBI is investigating "fake threats", feel free to go on doing so. However, it's pointless trying to convince other people of this, as it's clearly preposterous and it makes you look like an imbecile.

Re:cowardice

[RogueyWon]

There is no GamerGate. Not really. There are several amorphous bunches of people who hang around on some forums. There's a similarly amorphous bunch of people who use a twitter tag, often for wildly differing reasons. There are a handful of internet petitions. There's a fictitious mass-movement that some juvenile "supporters" have imagined up because it makes them feel good. And there's a fictitious shadowy, sinister organisation that a bunch of equally juvenile opponents have imagined up because it gives them a convenient straw man to attack. Really, nobody comes out of this well.

During my postgrad years (so going back to the start of the last decade now), I had two online roles back to back which gave me a fair amount of visibility to a lot of angry people online. First, I was the head admin of a major European Counter-Strike league. Then I was an oper (and one of the public-facing ones rather than the backroom code-tweakers) on a very large European-based IRC network. Both of those roles involved telling angry people things they didn't want to hear. Things like "somebody in your clan was caught cheating, you are now banned" or "no, I will not gline somebody just so you can have your usual nick back".

And so, on a pretty much daily basis, people threatened to kill me. They were going to find out where I lived and kill me, or maybe track down my parents and kill them or maybe rape my grandmother or my sister (I don't have a sister, but hey), or whatever, or something, or they just hoped I got CANCER or AIDS and would go away and DIE. To be honest, I suspect anybody who's done a similar role (or worked in customer service in certain types of company) also gets similar on a daily basis.

Were the people making those threats good people? Hell no. Even the fact that they were angry doesn't excuse behaviour like that. But what did I do about it? In the Counter-Strike role, if they clan wasn't already banned from the league, then it sure was the moment they made death threats. In the IRC role, it takes only a few seconds to apply a gline and suspend accounts with network services, but the warm fuzzy feeling that follows can last an hour or more. Did I ever actually feel in danger? Did I ever feel I needed to call the police? Hell no. Talking shit online is, unfortunately, pretty much as old as the internet itself and I had no particular political axe to grind.

So yeah, immature idiots on one side and professional grievance-mongers trying to inflate trash talk out of all proportion on the other. Nobody comes well out of this, for the most part.

Actually, the one thing that did strike me about this was how much the whole thing was a product of the indie gaming community. Almost every AAA publisher or developer out there either stayed silent or distanced from it as quickly as possible (which was the only sensible course of action). 2014 is really feeling like the year AAA gaming got smart and indie gaming got dumb.

Re:cowardice

[jellomizer]

There is fake threats and there are the trolls. But some of them have crossed the line, tracking their opponents, sending pictures of them where they are located and posting threats.
To make the point I don't like you but I am sticking you.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this because I know damn well GamerGate did not make these threats.

You know that damn well; the FBI prefers to rely on facts, which they're going after now.

Re:cowardice

[sd4f]

Brianna Wu was caught subsequently did admit to using at least one sockpuppet (twitter handle was BROLOLZ). Other ones, the evidence doesn't definitively prove anything, but are highly suspicious. Hopefully the FBI is taking it seriously.

Re:cowardice

[silentcoder]

Aaww you actually think calling somebody an SJW is an insult.

Being an SJW is pretty much the plot of every good action movie or series ever made. The A-Team were SJW's, MacGuyver was an SJW... dude, being an SJW is the ultimate real-man thing to do !

Re:cowardice

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is GamerGate started with the attacks on Zoe Quinn, which turned out to be complete fabrications. The alleged positive review of her game doesn't exist, there was no conspiracy. It was all just some jilted lover's blog post and all the asshats who jumped on to the bandwagon by spreading lies and rumours about her.

When it became apparent that the whole thing was bullshit, GamerGate moved on to other targets. By that point it was too late though. The "Gamer" tag was poisoned beyond recovery, and the alleged journalistic impropriety was all just innuendo and thinly veiled outrage that women were demanding respect and fair treatment as gamers.

Look at the nonsense GamerGate spouted about Anita Sarkeesian, for example. You may not agree with her points, but that doesn't excuse endless fake accounts, fake posts about her using the Kickstarter money to buy expensive shoes, weaponized pornography etc. You could argue that it was only a few on the fringes doing all that, but that's just a No True Scotsman argument.

Re:cowardice

[AmiMoJo]

Seems like a very risky game to play, faking death threats against yourself and then asking the police and FBI to investigate. The chance of them finding out that you faked it and wasted their time is pretty high, and if the claim that it was all for financial gain via Kickstarter and free publicity is true it would be a pretty serious crime.

If you have evidence of this you should firstly pass it on to the FBI, and secondly post it here. By the way, just in case you didn't realize, a marked up screenshot of a Twitter feed is not "evidence" and won't stand up in a court of law, but you said GG had proof so I imagine it's not that.

Re:cowardice

[AmiMoJo]

The foundation of GamerGate is unfounded allegations and innuendo. If you have evidence you should post it, and pass it on to the FBI. If not, don't keep adding to the fake narrative.

Re:cowardice

[kjell79]

Caught? She announced she was creating the sock-puppet account before she did so to mock the sock-puppet accounts from gamergaters. What she didn't use the sock-puppet account for is to threaten or dox the people who disagreed with her. How many pro-gamergaters announced they were creating sock-puppet accounts and what they were?

Re:cowardice

[DiamondGeezer]

You must be tone-deaf. Any criticism of a liberal must be "extreme right-wing" just as even criticism of a conservative must be "extreme left, socialist or Marxist"

Re:cowardice

[GrumpySteen]

The FBI is investigating *opponents* of GamerGate for lying about threats and third party trolls for making other threats while the summery claims the investigation is about threats made by proponents.

That's an interesting fantasy? From TFA:
"Who or what is being investigated remains an open question."

The FBI hasn't said who they're investigating and they did not release documents relating to the investigation, so there's absolutely no basis for your claims.

Re:cowardice

[BitZtream]

I hope this because I know damn well GamerGate did not make these threats.

Really? I'm not sure you know what 'GamerGate' actually is.

Hint: Its not a person. its not a group of people. Its not an organization. Its a name applied to a general topic/series of events and the fallout.

The entire case against GamerGate

Case against GamerGate? WTF are you talking about? There is no 'case against GamerGate' Its not something that can have a case against it since the term encompasses ALL parties in relation to this particular series of events.

You're trying really hard to use the term to mean something specific that it is not.

Oh, and stop quoting Wikipedia word for word, you're a douche for trying to pawn that crap off as your own.

Re:cowardice

[LordLimecat]

To this day I dont really know which side is the anti-GG and which is the pro-gg side. I know there was some female reporter who turned out to apparently have no ethics whatsoever, a sizeable chunk of drama, and a huge dose of irony; the people worried about the low ethics in gaming journalism ended up creating so much drama that theres no chance anyone will mistake gaming journalism as anything serious, ethics issues or not.

Re:cowardice

[Theaetetus]

Brianna Wu was caught subsequently did admit to using at least one sockpuppet (twitter handle was BROLOLZ). Other ones, the evidence doesn't definitively prove anything, but are highly suspicious. Hopefully the FBI is taking it seriously.

Gosh, you're right, these sure are harassing tweets:

Drake Harper @BROLOLZ Oct 20
Deeply concerned about how Dragon's Crown perpetuates rape culture, bro.

Drake Harper @BROLOLZ Oct 20
Contemplating my white male privilege while playing Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

I'm sure the FBI will be cracking down on Wu any day now.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to believe that the FBI is investigating [...] you look like an imbecile.

Actual Source:

the bureau stated that, while they have responsive documents related to the loose coalition, those files are part of an ongoing investigation, and release "would interfere with law enforcement proceedings." Who or what is being investigated remains an open question.

Re:cowardice

[cHALiTO]

All this is utterly insane. It makes me think about those posts in 9gag against feminism which seem to be made by 10-year-olds who have no clue what feminism means, but react violently to anything "girly". I can't believe these things still happen in 2014.

Re:cowardice

[Whorhay]

Risky or not people of all walks of life can be idiots and it wouldn't surprise me if some, none, or all of the threats were faked. I'm not really sure that the odds of being caught making a false threat against yourself are all that high given a modicum of intelligence and technical know how, especially for an anonymous threat. It would get really tricky though if you actually try to frame a specific person or group though.

If you are talking about the same twitter screen shots I'm thinking of, then weren't they already debunked as fakes? Something about the number of characters per tweet exceeding the limit that Twitter actually gives you.

Re:cowardice

[rochrist]

Wait, they have a youtube video for that!

Re:cowardice

[rochrist]

It's been 'proven' that you're an idiot.

Re:cowardice

[rochrist]

I love the misogyny in scare quotes as if there were no such thing. Have another cheeto, bro.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

The "journalistic impropriety" isn't isolated to Quinn. A long time back, journalists had the gaming companies at gun point. There were few magazines, and the reviews could make or break the devs. Now it's the other way around. Gaming websites are a dime a dozen. The (big) studios buy reviews, either outright, through "gifts" or by blocking anyone who gives them a bad review.
When money is involved it's really difficult to get everyone involved to be unbiased, so please don't pretend there isn't a problem.

The Anita "fakes", which have little to do with GamerGate, are jokes. Funny or not, it's part of 4chan's humor.

Re:cowardice

[Whorhay]

"complete fabrications" is a bit of a stretch. The game didn't get an individual review of it's own. It did however get at least one very positive mention that I remember reading personally. And that kind of off hand remark is often worth a lot more in terms of advertising than a whole article. Whether or not that was a result of the two having a sexual relationship is anyones guess.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is GamerGate started with ....

Gamergate started when Eron Gjoni posted a long, rambling post about how his ex-girlfriend was abusive. And it would have ended there too if not for one tiny detail in the huge post which only gamers could spot and see the significance of:

Friggen Nathan Stupid-Red-Pants-Wearing Kotaku-Writing Grayson.

Gjoni's post revealed the truth. One of the foremost proponents of "Gamers == Sexists", writing for one of the largest proponents of "Gamers ==Misogynerds" had -- all the while he was denouncing the gaming community -- felt free to have affairs with indie developers even as he promoted their games. The Game Journalist Emperors had no clothes. Grayson was the journalist who intimidated Blizzard dev Dustin Browder into an apology last year over trumped up charges of sexism, yet this same journalist felt all too at ease having affairs and friendships with young women working in the industry. Hell, his editor at Kotaku, Stephen Totilo, outright stated that there was "no reason to believe any further action need be taken.".

Jesus. There might be mixed opinions on Zoe Quinn, but I pity the actual hard working women trying to make video games in the indie scene. If the FBI aren't investigating the press and indie outlets for gross sexual misconduct now, I guarantee they will be in 20 years time if this is the editorial attitude of the people in charge of these places.

But let's not talk about that. Look, these poor women are being harassed! Bad gamers, bad! Quick, tell them they're "Dead"! Give more terrible games 9/10! Rile 'em up. Call in the mainstream media. Keep souring the bad blood behind all of this to drive up clicks. After 3 months of this, video game retail sales were down 11% in Novemeber, and I know where the blame lies -- sensationalist journalists more willing to attack consumers for profit that care about the industry and community they're supposed to be covering.

If you want to understand why gamers are pissed off, just take a look at the Gamergate Timeline. The journalists who have spent the last two years hazing gamers for being sexists were finally caught with their pants down, and their reaction was to silence, haze, censor, and smear. That the internet was so vulnerable to this is another matter, but the root of the issue is that game journalists have become antagonistic towards gamers and hold all the cards.

Only industry intervention can break this deadlock. Publishers need to step in.

Re:cowardice

[Iamthecheese]

stop quoting Wikipedia word for word, you're a douche for trying to pawn that crap off as your own.

On the off chance that you're not trolling me: I've never done that so any precise coincidence between my words and Wikipedia is a case of the information going the other direction. I'm not going to search for every phrase I've uttered recently but luckily I don't have to as you seem to be aware of the article in question. May I ask what article it is?

Re:cowardice

[Khyber]

"Seems like a very risky game to play, faking death threats against yourself and then asking the police and FBI to investigate."

Ahem. Remember the girl that carved /d/ in her face trying to say that 4chan's /b/ assaulted her?

Yea. It's not going to stop idiots from pulling the exact same shit.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

in 2014 misogyny also means 'criticized a woman' or 'made a woman upset'. If it can mean anything that any woman, anywhere finds troubling, it means nothing and becomes an empty word.
Isn't misogyny supposed to be a prejudice against all women? So why scream misogyny when someone says something bad about exaclty 1 woman, eg ZQ? How does hating all women follow from that?

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

textbook misogyny

Do you get your textbooks from the Texas Board of Education? It's plain to me that "misogynist" is being used in the same fashion as "racist": a word people use to be insulting and emotionally evocative when they don't have a coherent rebuttal (or even if they do, it strengthens their argument by portraying people with an opposing view as 'bad'). The misapplication of these words needs to stop. It is NOT misogyny when a person, who happens to be a man, criticizes a person, who happens to be a women. It is NOT racist when a person, who happens to be a white, criticizes a person, who happens to be a black.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's conveniently ignore that fact that Anita's biggest harasser, a brazilian journalist by the name of Celebrinando (or something like that) was tracked down by GG, and has been reported to the FBI by them.
But to do anything about it, the FBI needs Anita to file the report and so far she has refused to engage or respond to ANYONE who tried to bring this to her attention.

There is also nothing "alleged" about the zoepost; the brunt of the contents are screenshots of facebook chatlogs where zoe explicitly admits to the infidelity; there's even a video Eron recorded of himself accessing these chatlogs.
And anyone who has ever been an abuse victim or ever interacted with one can easily tell that zoe was the real abuser in that relationship.
I'd strongly advise you to give this video a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_UKErD0uGQ

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

> The problem is GamerGate started with the attacks on Zoe Quinn, which turned out to be complete fabrications.

So how about the people under fire show some proof instead of resorting to widespread censorship (including issuing illegitimate DMCA takedown requests which is something that ZQ did), and painting people as vile monsters with coordinated propaganda, which can only radicalize them further? Yup, silencing people AND calling them names is going to work wonders... not.
Also the questionable legitimacy of the spark itself doesn't make other claims automatically false.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

"gamergate" isn't a group with a secret underwater lair

The 'GG Underground Lair' is in the basement of the 'Patriarch Volcano Complex', where we have our annual meeting to decide how we're going to oppress women this year.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

And she's now getting investigated by the FBI for faking death threats to herself. Go figure.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's more believable:

It's a giant conspiracy by media types to set up false harassment fronts against professional victims to make gamergate look bad.

or

Gamergate was full of assholes who continue to act like assholes and don't like it when their targets push back rather than simply accept being harassed into silence.

Or... some immature 13-year old gamers (in body and/or spirit) latched onto the controversy and spewed a bunch of BS threats, and the women they were aimed at over reacted.

By far one is much simpler

Indeed.

Re:cowardice

[meta-monkey]

But the threats are anonymous. There isn't evidence the threats are coming from GG either, so it's incendiary to attribute them as such. They should say they're investigating death threats (which is good! They should!) and not "death threats from GG supporters."

The whole thing is troll heaven.

1) Send threat to SJW
2) SJW overreacts and blogs and tweets about her awful victimization at the hands of vile neckbeards so everyone will see how "brave" she is.
3) Neckbeards retaliate against slanderous/libelous accusations
4) Popcorn while SJWs and neckbeards internet fight. And all it took was 140 characters and 7 proxies!
5) Go to step 1.

Re:cowardice

[meta-monkey]

Or it's just trolls who don't give a shit about games or games journalism or anything and just want to watch SJWs and neckbeards fight. All it takes is 140 characters and 7 proxies and you've got weeks of entertainment.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

The alleged positive review of her game doesn't exist,

No one says there was one, only that a ...close relationship...between a game designer and a game reviewer is an ethical issue.

Re:cowardice

[Mashiki]

Funny how many people in gamergate are libertarian-left. I guess when something doesn't fit your narrative, it's always right wingers...except when you're wrong.

Re:cowardice

[Daetrin]

That's incorrect. The A-Team were Social Justice Warriors. MacGuyver was a Social Justice Engineer.

Re:cowardice

[AndrewStephens]

The problem is GamerGate started with the attacks on Zoe Quinn, which turned out to be complete fabrications.

The real problem is that even if GamerGates's allegations about Quinn were 100% true, nobody cares if person A slept with person B for an obscure review of a game on some website. It is literally the least possible social sin; people who go through the express lane at the supermarkets with more than 6 items deserve more scorn.

The big publishers spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising with the same websites and the self proclaimed guardians of journalistic ethics seem OK with it. This, along with the fact that the whole thing with Quinn was totally made up, seem to point to GG being a bunch of arseholes. I really want to believe that most of them are just morons who don't understand the game industry, journalism, or humanity in general, and are just misguided because I don't like to think there are that many arseholes around. But they just won't shut up.

Re:cowardice

[DrGamez]

GamerGate is not a real movement, it has refused all attempts to become a real movement, because of this ANYONE who claims they are GamerGate, are GamerGate.

Your refusal (or naivete) to accept this fact is pretty telling in all your arguments. You think just because you aren't personally harassing anyone, then GamerGate is just a big'ol happy consumer movement, that can do no harm.

Cognitive dissonance is strong here.

Re:cowardice

[DrGamez]

There isn't evidence the threats are coming from GG either

The fact that you believe this speaks to the power of MSPaint conspiracy images, and the general lack of critical thinking required to go along with a hate movement such as GamerGate.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

Man check out the cognitive dissonance in moderation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080189/Young-Republican-claimed-Obama-supporter-carved-letter-B-face-robbery-story-police-say.html

Wake the fuck up. Three seconds in Google.

Re:cowardice

[Khyber]

"Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the 'B' was backward, Bryant said.

'We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that,' Bryant said. 'They just take the money and run.'"

Thank you, AC. I forgot this little statement existed.

I'd mod up if possible.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

rightist = leftist = centrist = totalitarian

Re:cowardice

[jmcvetta]

One amusing difference: The A-Team were fugitives from "justice". Whereas many self-described "social justice warriors" are apologists for the police state.

Re:cowardice

[david_thornley]

You mention people threatening to track you down and kill you. Some of the death and rape threats had already done the tracking down and were threatening murder or rape. There's a difference there.

Re:cowardice

[meta-monkey]

Why should I believe anything with no evidence? I don't have a dog in this fight, but is it beyond the realm of possibility that 4chaners want to stir up hate and discontent for a show? I'd say it's rather likely.

Re:cowardice

[epyT-R]

Actually I didn't respond because it's his post that's loaded with fallacy.

Re:cowardice

[davydagger]

as a libertarian socialist, I am not happy with liberals using socialist talking points to defend capitalism.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to think of it more like calling a riot a "peaceful protest" because obviously not everyone is actually rioting at any given moment.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't a jilted lover, said ex-lover did not really care about gaming or gamers, but they had dealt with emotional abuse at the hands of Zoe Quinn in the form of "gaslighting".

https://medium.com/@srachel_m/gamergate-launched-in-my-apartment-and-internet-im-sorry-not-that-sorry-13e5650fd172

Excerpt:

" ... And he’s talking about this one week when Zoe had been in town and he’d been so excited to spend time with her, but she had gotten really weird and told him there were a bunch of people crashing at her place out of the blue so she couldn’t hang out with him.

When he asked her if he could visit – you know, so she didn’t have to give up being a good hostess – she said no way, she was working way too hard. When he asked if there was something wrong, if there was a reason she didn’t want to see him, she told him he was crazy for thinking that that might be the case. God. Honestly. She just had a lot of work, and she didn’t need some clingy programmer getting on her case when she had guests. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t be so possessive.

The bunch of people crashing at her place that week, by the way, were actually just one person, who she was sleeping with. She made up the other two. Total fabrication.

She’d already snapped at Eron for asking about anything to do with her personal life, because any questions meant he was suspicious, and she had to be one hundred percent certain that the person she loved trusted her completely.

“And she kept doing that, like whenever I asked if there was a problem she’d act like I was crazy for assuming there was one, and if I said I wasn’t suspicious she’d insist I was wrong, and it was like, if I can’t trust my own reason what am I supposed to trust, and she’s telling me to trust her but all the evidence I have says I can’t, and then she tells me I’m becoming neurotic, and then trying to figure out if I’m becoming neurotic I basically became neurotic about the possibility of being neurotic, like, I barely ate for like a week – ”

“You know,” I said, kicking gravel, “there’s some people, I mean, abuse survivors, I mean, we call that ‘gaslighting.’”

Ping, as gravel bounced off a municipal trashcan and the penny clinked to the floor of my rather scattered brain. We, survivors, know the word for this. Emotional abuse is what you call it when someone manipulates another person into stuff that isn’t in their best interest, like staying in a relationship with someone who’s endangered your health and called you names and implied you’re going crazy for questioning them. This woman had been emotionally abusing my friend."

_______________________

So Zoe Quinn is a terrible human being, dunno about whether she got a good review for her game "Depression Quest" due to a relationship with a reviewer or not. So let's not think Ms. Quinn is that great of a person, just DISREGARD HER COMPLETELY AS FAR AS GAMERGATE IS CONCERNED!

Also, stop giving radical misandrists (they're not feminists, feminists want men and woman to be at the same level of parity) the time of day, they're no better than religious zealots, or zealots of any ideology.

Nor should you pay attention to any actual misogynists (though most of the time misogyny is claimed it's usually sexism rather than pure hatred of women..), nor should you heed anyone that finds sexism to be A-OK. These ideologues are not worth a second of your life to talk to, listen to, or even think about.

Re:cowardice

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

In light of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights efforts to cook statistics in order grow a bureaucracy to deny men accused of rape access to due process, that doesn't seem to be much of a stretch. The resulting political climate certainly compromised Rolling Stone's editorial process. The one-sided narrative to the GG reporting just seems to be part of the same trend.

did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Prominent female whore developer makes a hoot about sexism in the gaming world years ago, then is caught giving sex and blowjobs for positive reviews and preferential treatment for her games? That shit is the same as prostitution, exchanging sex for money and personal gain. It is also straight up hypocracy and a waste of everyone's money.

If I am not mistake, this is what started gamergate.

myronmays.com

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with prostitution?

Re:did you see that piece

[Znork]

Giving sex or blow jobs for preferential treatment is not a problem. However, a journalist not disclosing that he was receiving a blow job from the subject of his review while writing it could be considered an ethical breach.

Of course, the same goes for any other more common methods of obtaining promotional preferential treatment, such as donating copies of games, travel or hardware. The producer of the product has rarely made any commitment to limit how they encourage promotion of their products, but the journalist does implicitly make a commitment towards their readers to perform their job with a certain level of professionalism and adherence to good journalistic practices, which is where the ethical problem appears.

Whether anyones genitals are involved in any step in those chains is frankly irrelevant.

Re:did you see that piece

[aevan]

Pretty much this. To be honest, even if someone were was living with and screw and getting supported by the person being reviewed, I wouldn't give a damn as long as was a fair review and it was disclosed. Like that Christian reviewer thing "A 8 for controls, a 7 for graphics, 8 for plot for a technical 8... and a -5 for sacrificing babies to Satan, for a weight score of 5.5"

Amusing how the journo sites suddenly were mostly 'all from promotion team' adverts when forced to disclose.

Re:did you see that piece

[Iamthecheese]

However GamerGate started it's continuation is fueled entirely by real proven instances of corruption and collaboration in the press. By pointing out over and over "the review never happened" opponents avoid the many, many legitimate complaints GamerGate has. After all that has happened it's almost disingenuous to point out that the review never happened, like a "white nationalist" pointing out minor arguments over how many thousands of Jews died in a particular camp.

It's true that review never happened but a good deal of favoritism did. More to the point GamerGate is about lies, blackballing of journalists, hiding of poor behavior, lack of enforced ethics policies, and other malfeasance. Wu and company are only relevant to the extent they are focused on to the exclusion of more important topics.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Except none of that ever happened at all. Quinn was never involved with anyone who went anywhere near any review of her game. Also, can we just remember that this game was a free-of-charge micro-budget choose your own adventure style game to highlight the problem of living with depression. I'm sure having her personal life dragged through the mud and being threatened 24/7 by psychotic strangers really helped her with that. Show some f-ing humanity.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

What started gamergate was a hateful ex-boyfriend making up the above lie and promoting it on 4chan.

What started gamergate was an ex-boyfriend warning others about an abusive girlfriend, posting it nowhere near 4chan, and others taking notice of the fact that many of the people she was cheating on him with were journalists giving her mediocre game far more positive coverage than it by all rights should have deserved.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

What lie did he make up?
That she slept with a bunch of people?
She admitted to that. That she exchanged sex for reviews? That isn't anywhere in his post.
So what lie are you talking about?
Also, what is this? http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/08/admission-quest-valve-greenlights-50-more-games/#more-183169
Also, if by before you means 2 days before, then yes, it might have been before.
Then again, if I say I didn't sleep with my student until two days after giving her an A I doubt people will be so forgiving.

Re:did you see that piece

[AmiMoJo]

Fortunately, no-one ever game sex or blow jobs for preferential treatment. I guess GamerGate is over now, right?

Re:did you see that piece

[drinkypoo]

the journalist does implicitly make a commitment towards their readers to perform their job with a certain level of professionalism and adherence to good journalistic practices

And that level is very, very low. Pretty much all sites inflate scores so that they will continue to receive review copies. As you say, whether genitals are involved is totally irrelevant. It's beyond hypocrisy to make this moment the stand against the lack of integrity in games journalism when there has never been any to begin with. Games journalism was born at a time when journalism in general had already become grossly commercial, and it set out to emulate it as closely as possible. The games magazines followed the format of the sports magazines, which were already about selling you shit. It would be shocking if it had not come out to be horribly corrupt.

The fact that sex was the tipping point proves just how pathetic the gamergaters are. If they could get laid, they'd be less jealous. They should spend less time hating, and more time hustling.

Re:did you see that piece

[drinkypoo]

After all that has happened it's almost disingenuous to point out that the review never happened, like a "white nationalist" pointing out minor arguments over how many thousands of Jews died in a particular camp.

Hmm, evasion, godwin... BINGO! Man, this thread has been pay dirt.

It's true that review never happened but a good deal of favoritism did.

Welcome to commercial journalism! Boy, have you ever picked the wrong place to make your stand.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

You are purposefully ignoring the elephant in the room. In which world do you find even remotely NORMAL that a joke of a game such as "depression quest" gets reviewed on multiple serious gaming sites and gets greenlighted on Steam?

Re:did you see that piece

[birdboy2000]

While the male developer's company is facing a massive boycott and advertiser writing campaign for closing ranks around him among other things. The death threats to Quinn predated the Gamergate hashtag, and if you go to any Gamergate site they'll talk about how they're trying to sink Kotaku.

Re:did you see that piece

[birdboy2000]

and fuck, I meant male journalist's company. Don't see an edit button.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

So now you've retreated into A must've happened because B happened. You don't like the game because it's not a dudebro shooter (or your vision of a 'worthy' game) and therefore there's no way it should be on Steam and the only way it could be is because of bribery (but because she's a woman, the bribery must've been sexual). Correlation does not imply causation.

Re:did you see that piece

[BarbaraHudson]

You are purposefully ignoring the elephant in the room. In which world do you find even remotely NORMAL that a joke of a game such as "depression quest" gets reviewed on multiple serious gaming sites and gets greenlighted on Steam?

Simple - they played the "game", found out how much it absolutely sux, and thought, "That's it??? Well, that was depressing. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"

So here's the evidence of gender bias - if a man had released this pitiful turd, he would have been roundly criticized, and that would have been the end of the story. Because it's a woman who committed this piece of drek, critics of the game are labeled misogynists. Everyone piles on, utter confusion results, and people try to profit from this to get their 15 minutes of fame. After all, the bigger the "war", the more "war profits", so it's to their advantage to stir the pot.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

There's corrupt and then there's running a casting couch. Sex sells. That said, given Gamergate's praise of the Escapist for revising its ethics policy, or the efforts to contact the FTC about undisclosed affiliate links, it seems to me they're tackling a lot more than just said casting couch.

Re:did you see that piece

[rochrist]

Yes, you are mistake.

Re:did you see that piece

[rochrist]

There was NO fucking review nitwit..

Re:did you see that piece

[rochrist]

Riiiggghhhhhtttt

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, no-one ever ga[v]e sex or blow jobs for preferential treatment.

I'm confident that most of the sex that takes place on Earth falls under this description. Are you stupefyingly naive or did you forget the sarcasm tag?

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, called a woman who has had sex a 'whore' kinda proves that your a misogynistic piece of scum.

It proves no such thing. Whore: a woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse, usually for money. Calling a woman, with many sexual partners, a whore is not misogyny, it is accurate. That you think calling a whore a whore is misogyny, kinda proves you are a koolaid-drinking fool. Yes, it would be misogynist to say that every woman is a whore (like, you know, some constructive criticism for you).

Re:did you see that piece

[DrGamez]

There is a reason you're posting this Anonymously, and that reason is because this is a lie, provable since the first week of GamerGate.

You are mistaken.

Re:did you see that piece

[DrGamez]

(there was no review kid)

(thanks for playing)

(go find someone as naive as you to peddle your lies to next time)

Re:did you see that piece

[DrGamez]

Holy shit is this how you defend your argument?

Ignoring the fact, invoking Godwin, trying to change the subject.

Wowowow. And people eat this stuff up don't they?

Re:did you see that piece

[Zontar The Mindless]

I've played the game. As games go, it's not that great, in part because (SPOILER ALERT) it appears to be set up so that you can't win.

OTOH, it's a pretty realistic depiction of what it sometimes can be like to live with depression.

Re:did you see that piece

[Zontar The Mindless]

What started gamergate was an ex-boyfriend with the maturity level of a 12-year-old who couldn't deal with the fact he'd picked the wrong woman to have a committed relationship with, and who thereupon decided he needed to whine to the whole world about it in mind-numbing detail, seeking to ruin her name in public and naming every other name he possibly could. Including names of other lovers who'd not done him any wrong and maybe didn't even know he existed. That fact he claimed that he was doing it to "protect others" just served to add a veneer of disingenuity (if he didn't really believe his own claim to this effect) or attention-seeking (if he did).

Sexual matters between consenting adults are and should remain private. Adults do not air such matters in public.

I tend to think if it'd been the other way round, and she'd named a slew of his other and/or former lovers, she'd have been dismissed as a jilted ex-girlfriend who couldn't keep such matters private as they should have been kept, and that would have been the end of it.

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I saw screenshots on KPchan proving that the SJWs went back in time to create the Godwin's law meme to persecute poodrinker!

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

But it never happened, so why do you keep bringing it up? Do you really think that repeating a lie enough many times will make it true?!?

Re:did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

> Giving sex or blow jobs for preferential treatment is not a problem.

I cannot agree to that. I would consider any such person dirty rotten scum if they were unashamed of that sort of behavior, regardless of gender.

Re:did you see that piece

[Znork]

It's beyond hypocrisy to make this moment the stand against the lack of integrity in games journalism when there has never been any to begin with. Games journalism was born at a time when journalism in general had already become grossly commercial, and it set out to emulate it as closely as possible. The games magazines followed the format of the sports magazines, which were already about selling you shit. It would be shocking if it had not come out to be horribly corrupt.

I would agree, and frankly I don't think it's the pay-per-review that's driving the gamergaters, as that issue is hardly new. I think they're getting triggered by these largely corrupt journalists attacking games, content and gamers, and the well known corruption is simply an easy and legitimate target in a two-sided shit flinging contest.

The fact that sex was the tipping point proves just how pathetic the gamergaters are.

I don't think the allegations of sex really were that important, the only extent to which they seem to have mattered at all was through the Streisand effect. Getting a private matter like that shut down is probably entirely possible if there aren't a host of high-profile and relevant tangential matters that will quickly start surfacing, and once you try shutting those down there's not going to be any tacit 'private matter, take it elsewhere' support from 99% of somewhat decent people.

Oh, and careful with the hustling suggestions, that's gonna get the SJW's on your ass for being a redpiller.

Old news

[buckfeta2014]

Anyone whose been following gamergate would know this by now. This is late October news. The FBI has also stated that some people named as hacking victims had in-fact hacked themselves. Didn't name names, but three names that come to mind are Phil Fish, Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu.

Re:Old news

[tsotha]

I really wish these people would be punished somehow. The FBI doesn't have unlimited resources, and chasing around fake death threats isn't something the agency needs to be doing.

Re:Old news

[buckfeta2014]

I hate replying to myself, but I also wanted to mention, it's been suggested that Brianna Wu didn't even leave her house the night of her supposed doxxing... Which makes her look like even more of a hypocrite.

Re:Old news

[drinkypoo]

The FBI has also stated that some people named as hacking victims had in-fact hacked themselves. Didn't name names, but three names that come to mind are Phil Fish, Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu.

They didn't name names, but you're completely willing to do so even though you don't know who did it, and it could have been someone on the other side completely. You are precisely the kind of person that you claim to be railing against.

Re:Old news

[buckfeta2014]

They didn't name names, but you're completely willing to do so even though you don't know who did it, and it could have been someone on the other side completely. You are precisely the kind of person that you claim to be railing against.

Oh please. It's not as if I'm the one doxxing or harassing people on twitter. If anything, my comment was speculation at best. Most people who have been following gamergate since September can put two-and-two together and come to the same conclusion. If I'm wrong, so be it, but the chances of that aren't very likely.

Re:Old news

[drinkypoo]

If I'm wrong, so be it, but the chances of that aren't very likely.

We know that the gamergater position is based on lies, so it's most reasonable to assume that the lies are coming from that side; they've proven their willingness to lie, the whole thing is based on lies, it's lies all the way down.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

What lies exactly? Some exaggerations maybe, but I haven't seen any lies yet.

Re:Old news

[rochrist]

Link to the latter or STFU.

Re:Old news

[thejynxed]

One of her neighbors allegedly videotaped the entire affair from the time the police showed up until well after they left, and said Wu apparently never once left the premises, and then went on to do that television interview directly from her house.

Has anyone asked the underwear gnomes?

[Anonymous Coward]

They would know.

stage 1) collect sexist remarks
stege 2) ???
stage 3) profit

Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Kunedog]

Slashdot's coverage of Gamergate has been abysmal. Every other summary has followed the template "harassment, misogyny, threats, harassment, misogyny, threats . . . oh btw Gamergate."

Sad as it is, this shitty summary is still the most "unbiased" simply because it straightforwardly mentions the movement as the topic of the discussion. The attempt to imply that the FBI said they were investigating pro-Gamergate people has already been destroyed in the comments (thank fuck users are still in control of the discussion here).

Four months later, there still hasn't been a single /. thread about the Gamergate scandal itself: the journalistic lapses, the universal news media blackout and user forum/comment censorship (including reddit and 4chan of all places), and the still-ongoing coordinated smear campaign that was launched on August 28 with the "Gamers are Dead" shotgun blast of hit pieces. All of those milestones should have gotten at least one article here each.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[phantomfive]

All of those milestones should have gotten at least one article here each.

Please no.

What we really need is an opinion piece by Bennett. Then the circle will be complete.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Noah Haders]

Then the circle will be completely jerked. Ftfy.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Kunedog]

What we really need is an opinion piece by Bennett. Then the circle will be complete.

Funny you mention that.

A miracle occured in that thread. Both pro-GG and anti-GG Slashdotters refused to take the bait, laid down their arms, and stood together long enough to tell Bennett to go fuck himself and leave /. alone.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a lesson in this story, which people may want to apply more generally

If you have a valid point, then stick to that point and avoid going over the top with outrageous behavior

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Microlith]

The attempt to imply that the FBI said they were investigating pro-Gamergate people has already been destroyed in the comments (thank fuck users are still in control of the discussion here).

Destroyed in the comments? Mealy-mouthed arguments and claims of "false flag" (what the fuck is this, Infowars?) don't make a convincing argument.

there still hasn't been a single /. thread about the Gamergate scandal itself

Sure there has. Oh you mean the journalism aspect, which was never a relevant part and the actions of the gamergate horde ensured that out of the gate.

Never mind that the journalism angle that sparked the whole thing was shown to be a bullshit basis to start.

the universal news media blackout and user forum/comment censorship

Universal? Not really. It's been observed for the horrible harassment campaign it's shown itself to be (omg false flag, false flag!) And people have been basically scrubbing forums of this stuff because it tends to be a drag and largely unproductive.

the still-ongoing coordinated smear campaign that was launched on August 28 with the "Gamers are Dead" shotgun blast of hit pieces.

Yeah, yeah, giant conspiracy. Not a reaction to the torrent of abusive behavior that erupted from the gaming world once they realized there was a much wider, and diverse audience for games than their narrow worldview let them conceive of.

But please, keep banking on the misbegotten persecution complex.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[DogDude]

That's because none of that little shit matters. Nobody really cares about a bunch of guys who live in their parents' basements arguing about video games. People do care when a bunch of people threaten other people with bodily harm.

Get some perspective, moron.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Brulath]

Why do you feel like "Gamergate" is worthy of additional mainstream news coverage? Mainstream news is an entertainment product more than anything else, and few people who watch / read it religiously are likely to be both heavily involved in gaming and passionate about the range of issues Gamergate purports to cover. It makes sense that it's more of a footnote or focuses more on the side that's likely to be of interest to a wider audience.

Discussions of the Gamergate issue haven't proven productive in any venue thus far, as they're often dominated by mistruths, irrelevant information, lies, and harassment. I usually avoid voluntarily exposing myself to it because I have no way of determining who is being truthful without significant investigation, and I frankly don't care enough to spend the time looking into the various claims; I suspect that's true of many people.

Let's be a bit more frank here, the movement has something in common with religion: its goals are so vague that the people who are trying to do 'good' and improve things are sheltering those who want to cause destruction. There is a significant vocal minority who are using the shield of the many moderates to justify their extremist tactics, which seem to revolve around harassment campaigns. When this happens to your movement you can either try to correct it or disassociate yourself from it and re-form in a more focused group. I suggest the latter is more likely to work at this point, it seems like it would be quite hard to drown out the vitriol I've seen without even trying to look for it.

You should really look into dropping Gamergate entirely, to divest yourself of its now relatively toxic branding, and creating several focused movements to replace it.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

People do care when a bunch of people threaten other people with bodily harm.

Or said people threaten themselves for publicity. Plenty of reason to think that things aren't what they seem when AS tells everybody who cares to listen about all the threats she gets but categorically refuses to talk to the police. Even when police contacted her because some fan of hers had gone to the police. And then there's the infamous twitter screenshot with her sock puppet harrassing herself and the "massacre threat" seems quite fishy too:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sd28rl

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious?

We have logs proving collusion, we saw sites getting censored the day Total Biscuit brought this to light,we have over a dozen websites publishing attack articles on the same day.

I do not give two shits about ethics in journalism, it's a pointless battle. But what I do care about is people denying the fucking obvious because it conflicts with their personal politics. Game journalism is corrupt as shit and used SJW bullshit to defend themselves - whether you think that's justified, whether you think the gamergate response of harassment and threats is the bigger story, fine I have no opinion. But denying the objective fucking truth is horseshit, and I can't believe /. stands for it.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

And people have been basically scrubbing forums of this stuff because it tends to be a drag and largely unproductive.

I thought the entire point of places like 4chan was to be a drag and largely unproductive.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[serviscope_minor]

You should really look into dropping Gamergate entirely, to divest yourself of its now relatively toxic branding, and creating several focused movements to replace it.

"relatively" toxic branding. I like precision. I can indeed think of things with more toxic branding, but not all that many mind you.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Four months later, there still hasn't been a single /. thread about the Gamergate scandal itself: the journalistic lapses

That's pretty much because we all know what happened:

(1) Zoe Quinn is a game developer
(2) Zoe Quinn was dating an idiot
(3) Zoe Quinn broke up with the idiot
(4) Zoe Quinn's game got a positive review in a magazine
(5) Months later, Zoe Quinn started dating one of the people who worked for the magazine that wrote the positive review
(6) The new person Zoe Quinn started dating had absolutely nothing to do with writing the review
(7) Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend became a massively jealous psycho stalker-type
(8) Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend started this huge campaign trying to link the review with the new boyfriend
(9) All of Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend's friends piled on, because, hey, trolling is fun!
(10) Other people piled on the other side defending Zoe Quinn
(11) A lot of Zoe Quinn's former boyfriends supporters are basically 4Chan trolls
(12) Many 4Chan trolls are adolescents with no sense of boundaries, and no life outside the Internet
(13) The trolls went overboard, as adolescents commonly do, when they have no sense of boundaries
(14) Some of these overboard actions included, but were not limited to, death threats, rape threats, verbal abuse, terrorism threats
(15) Now everyone is pissed off
(16) Someone needs to spank the adolescents for their antisocial behaviour
(17) The FBI is looking into it
(...) STORY TO BE CONTINUED

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[gsslay]

But, but, but you don't understand! Gamers are having games that are no good forced on them through an evil conspiracy by game companies with journalists! They are having to spend hours trudging through dull games that are not fun! They are being blackmailed into spending thousands on in-game purchases, otherwise they won't reach level 100 and their lives will be worthless!

The number of basic human rights that are being violated here are beyond count! Why does no-one care??!!

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah, giant conspiracy.

Actually, yes.
This shit was all organized in a private google group behind everyones backs.
Come back when you actually know a damn thing about anything relating to the event in question.

The threats in gamergate have been made from a single trolling group and one guy in Brazil who absolutely despises females for whatever reason.
One of them even trolled that blocklist maker to add him in to the trusted group.

I'd hardly be surprised if the only crap you know about this is through some or all of those said websites that are in collusion with each other.

Re: Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, think of the children!

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[silentcoder]

>. I can indeed think of things with more toxic branding, but not all that many mind you.

The tobacco industry, big pharma... okay, I'm out.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares about the Gamergate jailbait.

Slashdot is full of Linux Zealots and Basement nerds who are the very same people that make up Gamergate that can't see the big picture. There's been more media coverage the Sony Hacking than there has been of Gamergate. You know what that is? Because the media rightfully can't find any reason to believe that Gamergate is anything but a mob mentality.

And just to keep things equatable. Some of the people who are responsible for keeping the gamergate tag on twitter showing up during that time period were people retweeting all the horrible trash that gamergaters were sending to everyone. Who really knows which were trolls, and which weren't, but it's not a joke if you're being terrorized. Trolling is just the sociopath's way of getting off. The Media's not biting.

Even the so called harassment of advertisers has had very little effect (I could care less about Gawker in general, as they're as bad as News Corp when it comes to having no sense of restraint on doing illegal things.) If anything positive has come out of this whole thing, it's that it pushed Anita Sarkeesian further into the spotlight. As much as I think she's the wrong person to be there. No Gamergators want to take responsibility for the shit they are pulling, so of course the targets of GG are the ones talking to the media.

Thanks a lot.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Guy From V]

Ya, what this guy says.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

It should matter to you, because it would make you realize that the people that a few years ago bought gaming and technologies sites like slashdot are brainwashing you every day with lies to turn you into an idiot so that you take really bad decisions. And that's because they are economists and know that in game theory you maximize your own profit when you play against a player that takes bad decisions, so their best strategy is to turn you into a poor player.

An idiot and his money soon take apart. That's why the scammer of FeministFrequency was able to get 150.000$ for 4 poorly-done youtube videos, because the media had already worked hard into conditioning people to throw money at SJW causes without any judgement whatsoever. If people make threats to her is because they have found out that the corrupted media has rigged the facts to turn an obvious scammer into a hero and the future judge of what games can or cannot be published, and when there's no justice people look for it themselves.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[tehcyder]

the universal news media blackout

There has certainly been an absence of stories in the news media that support the people making threats of death and rape, if that's what you mean.

All part of the feminist conspiracy no doubt.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Zontar The Mindless]

</thread>

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind that the journalism angle that sparked the whole thing was shown to be a bullshit basis to start.

Do you have a link to back that up? I admit I haven't really cared about the conflict enough to really get invested, but I haven't been able to pull up anything like that yet this morning. Hell I can barely find anything about the original corruption claims at all, it's all "SJW this" and "Misogyny that" and people surprised that 4chan is offending someone.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

18) Zoe Quinn is an emotional abuser who gaslighted her ex-boyfriend 19) And a feminist game jam she got in a fight with just so happened to get their indiegogo hacked and get zero press coverage, leading to allegations of a news blackout 20) and while making games about "depression" she accused a forum of depressed suicidal (and yes misogynistic) men of sending her death threats, despite it consisting of two anonymous posts and the rest of the board telling them to fuck off. (Trolls from the CWCwiki forums openly admitted to starting it elsewhere, but Kotaku continues to run attack pieces on said forum WHICH HAS A FUCKING SUICIDE HOTLINE STICKIED WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT) 21) The boyfriend did give Zoe Quinn, a no-name until this happened, a ton of positive coverage, just not an outright review 22) And multiple writers for the boyfriend's site, which again is the only reason why anyone ever heard of Zoe Quinn before this happened, were found to be paying her bills on patreon 23) And numerous other scandals within game journalism have been revealed in the four months since, to the point where few people on Gamergate websites are even talking about Zoe Quinn anymore

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not been discussed much here or in the mainstream media because NO ONE CARES. GG only affects people that choose to get involved in GG. It's like a local soccer club board members scandal or a family feud. The FBI is only involved because there are actual threats reported, their involvement is not a backing or a validation of the majority of GG issues.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[sinij]

I personally believe that this issue is worthwhile of further attention. Why? Because as a gamer that does not associate with GG, I still don't care to have gaming turned into radfem 'mandatory inclusion' platform.

If you thought Jack Thompson was bad, read up on what radfem thinks about boys and gun play. If they have their way with gaming, next BG of CoD will have pink waffle bats and dolls instead of guns.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[LordLimecat]

If you're getting up in a tizzy about some dumb comment made by some angsty teenager on some forum, you should probably just sign off the internet now. Didnt Jon Gabriel have a pretty concise theory explaining this behavior somewhere?

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the entire point of places like 4chan was to be a drag and largely unproductive.

That and a hub for KP.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[rochrist]

Why not? You could hardly make CoD /worse/ after all.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[rochrist]

This is basically right, except that the review wasn't a review, it was merely a mention in an article that mentioned something like 40 or 50 other games as well.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[jedidiah]

If you troll all of your customers, don't be surprised if you end up with a few wing nuts going off the deep end.

The "journalism" response to this entire affair has been shameless pandering to some notion of political correctness and shameless exploitation of the situation. That's been true pretty much across the entire media spectrum starting with the very first set of trolling click-bait articles generated by the gaming and tech press.

Anyone that disagrees is branded as some sort of anti-feminist misogynistic scum who's opinions don't matter.

It's a perfect example of the "liberal media" that tea baggers like to whine about. The dogma behind the narrative is more important than anything else.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

This matters to those of us that are game developers. A certain demographic is trying to censor and push out women and minorities so that they can flood the market with their own games. And it is not #Gamergate supporters.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Deriding people as "a bunch of guys who live in their parents' basements arguing over video games" now gets modded to +5 insightful on slashdot. We're now news for self-hating nerds, I guess.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

"A certain demographic is trying to censor and push out women and minorities so that they can flood the market with their own games."

This makes absolutely no sense.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[serviscope_minor]

The tobacco industry, big pharma... okay, I'm out.

Well, I was thinking of Hitler and the Nazis. They're always a good standby for extremism :)

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

GamerGate got more coverage than it deserved, considering that it was the shitty blog Zoe Quinn's limp-dicked ex wrote that brought the whole misbegotten thing to a head. You want to talk about the whole Faustian 69 deal game reviewers have with publishers? Fine. Call it GamerGate, however, and most people who would otherwise grant you a fair hearing will tune you right the fuck out. The brand is irredeemably tainted, and has been from its inception.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[DrGamez]

Why do you believe the gaming industry will be turned into a "radfem mandatory inclusion" platform?

This is completely ludicrous. This is not a zero-sum game. We can have games that don't treat women like pieces of meat AND you can still have your Call of Duty games.

When I see comments like yours proclaiming some end-days of "traditional gaming" I wonder what MSPaint conspiracy image you pulled that line from.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[DrGamez]

There is a reason you posted this anonymously AND couldn't figure out how to use line breaks.

I'll let you figure it out.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[AmiMoJo]

There is no need for "mandatory inclusion", half of gamers are already women. There isn't any "radfem" here either, just people complaining about abuse.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah, giant conspiracy. Not a reaction to the torrent of abusive behavior that erupted from the gaming world once they realized there was a much wider, and diverse audience for games than their narrow worldview let them conceive of.

You're misrepresenting the issue. They didn't "realize" anything. A bunch of feminists and the gaming media all got together and started trying to force "diversity" down everyone's throats, talked about how everyone was misogynistic and racist and blah blah blah. So of course people are going to be upset. If the pro-diversity types would just shut up and work towards making the gaming industry more diverse without angrily waving the finger at 90% of gamers then people wouldn't give a damn.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

This about sums it all up. Dipshit addicts are getting shovel fed poor quality product that doesn't really get them that same "high" they got from old games. They put up with the crappy zero day bugs, terrible stories, uninspired game play, draconian DRM, etc. just because they need a game to play or else they might have to *GASP* go outside. They don't know how to respond to game studios to get games they want. They think conspiracy theories and trolling will work for them when they could actually stop buying bad games and do the ole voting with their wallets trick.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[sinij]

>>>Why do you believe the gaming industry will be turned into a "radfem mandatory inclusion" platform?

I believe this based on precedence in other similar industries, like graphic novel industry. The crux of the issue is that there is no concise set of demands that could be accommodated. Once you achieve a set of their goals/objectives, next one comes along and pressure re-doubles along with the effort to vilify you for not bending over backwards to satisfy it. It is just like blackmail, once you pay, you will keep paying forever.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, along with an absence of stories in the news supporting the story of those who do not agree with Anna Sarkeesian and have been hounded out, threatened and mailed toxic materials by those who CLAIM they have been given threats of death and rape, which is what the OP meant.

If you were in any sense caring about it.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

(5) Months later, Zoe Quinn started dating one of the people who worked for the magazine that wrote the positive review

Correction: Zoe Quinn started cheating on her boyfriend with one of the people who worked for the magazine that wrote the positive review.

(8) Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend started this huge campaign trying to link the review with the new boyfriend

Correction: Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend started this huge campaign trying to point out that a game developer sleeping with a game reviewer is an ethical issue. And this is perfectly true- even if the reviewer wasn't the one to write her review, he might write the next one, or one of his co-workers might (and might be influenced by the relationship).

(9) All of Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend's friends piled on, because, hey, trolling is fun!

All of Zoe Quinn's former boyfriend's friends piled on, because, hey, she's a bitch to cheat on him!

(10) Other people piled on the other side defending Zoe Quinn

Yup, defending the cheater!

(11) A lot of Zoe Quinn's former boyfriends supporters are basically 4Chan trolls

Less 'his supporters' and more 'people who don't like her'. She wrote a stupid game called 'Depression Quest' that no one really liked.

(12) Many 4Chan trolls are adolescents with no sense of boundaries, and no life outside the Internet
(13) The trolls went overboard, as adolescents commonly do, when they have no sense of boundaries
(14) Some of these overboard actions included, but were not limited to, death threats, rape threats, verbal abuse, terrorism threats ...yup. Just like 13-year olds playing Halo or CounterStrike or COD or whatever. They're kids, doing it for the lulz. It's not serious. It's not meant to be taken seriously. ... but she took it seriously. And so did the SJWs.

(15) Now everyone is pissed off

Yup.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

You should really look into dropping Gamergate entirely, to divest yourself of its now relatively toxic branding, and creating several focused movements to replace it.

You should really look into dropping Feminism entirely, to divest yourself of its now relatively toxic branding, and creating several focused movements to replace it.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you achieve a set of their goals/objectives, next one comes along and pressure re-doubles along with the effort to vilify you for not bending over backwards to satisfy it. It is just like blackmail, once you pay, you will keep paying forever.

Yup. Implied moral: Never negotiate with terrorists.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[CronoCloud]

I believe this based on precedence in other similar industries, like graphic novel industry.

What the hell are you talking about?

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Spiderfag.

Re: Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

But how then will I drum up a media frenzy and cause the public to riot for my values being denied?

Not that those are anyone's true goals...

Re: Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Those negatives you mentioned existed before and still exist today even without 4chan.
They are responsible for almost all memes though. From cats that can't spell to advice dog.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[david_thornley]

Journalistic lapses? Are you trying to tell us that a game review magazine published an honest review by accident?

Re: Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the hardcore gamer crowd gave a shit about anything the journalist did Until they all posted their attack articles.

As a former "gamer" I couldn't give a flying fuck over some indie dev or the horible Games/Visual Novels they produced.
Calling me a misogynist for not supporting them also doesn't produce any fucks from me either.

I can however see why some gamers were angered by this though. If I say feminists are dead, would you get mad? How is that any different than what they said?

Also do you really need to pick on gamers? I mean did the homeless and/or handicapped have a schedule conflict?

Re: Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Finger waving is their job, they get money and power from it. Why would they want to fix that? For the betterment of all other women, ha?!

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you playing the GG drinking game, "radfem mandatory inclusion" is worth two. Three if Andrea Dworkin is mentioned.

Re:Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[davydagger]

Why do you feel like "Gamergate" is worthy of additional mainstream news coverage?

because the FBI just got involved, being that the little lit mach in the corner harmlessly burning on concrete now has gasoline poured on it. We can be honest here, and this isn't really about sexism, or ethics in gaming journalism, its now about the system taking its fustration out on the people it sees as the biggest threat to its existance. This is going to be a gross over-reaction by the FBI, and its going to hit a dumb bunch of spoiled white kids who still think the FBI is there to protect them, and will exonerate them once they obviously see they are the upstanding half seriously concerned about ethics, and not the migogynistic terrorists.

The fuze on the drama-bomb is lit, and its going to go nuclear.

Re: Most Unbiased Slashdot Gamergate Article

[Anonymous Coward]

How? It's your statement that makes no sense. I cannot se anything that would make that paragraph nonsensical. And you of course do not help by throwing a statement which you fail to properly motivate.

it wasnt exactly unexpected.

[nimbius]

wanton threats of rape and violence en masse are commonly concluded with investigation by law enforcement in the United States. a 'gate' assignment has been made to ensure commercial viability of the brand. no further concern for gender or sex should be considered applicant to this scandal as its now tabloid fodder to be adhered to with the most cursory of interest. please continue consuming slashdot beta and the slashdot store.

"gate"

[skam240]

Can we please stop adding gate to the end of any controversial subject? It was barely clever the first time it was done and it's gotten to be pretty much the polar opposite at this point.

Re:"gate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Watergate had NOTHING to do with water.

Re:"gate"

[Crashmarik]

LOL the first time it was done it was the name of the place where it happened.

Re:"gate"

[GauteL]

I'm pretty sure that's not what the original poster meant. He was referring to the first use of "gate" as a suffix for a scandal alluding to the original incident at the Watergate complex.

Re:"gate"

[Opportunist]

I hope not, it's been a pretty good label to identify the importance of a "crisis". As soon as -gate is added, you know you can skip the story without missing anything worth your time.

Re: "gate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem....

"The complex is located directly adjacent to the zero milepost of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which operated from 1831 to 1924 and is now a National Historical Park â" where the canal's large wooden water gate sits directly opposite its namesake on the Potomac."

Re:"gate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the only sensible thing to do is to retrofit "Watergate" to "WatergateGate". Totally with you on this one.

Re:"gate"

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time? Are you talking about Watergategate?

Re:"gate"

[gsslay]

Watergategategate - conspiracy theory regarding why this retrofitting has not yet been done.

Re:"gate"

[GrumpySteen]

Everyone is doing it, which makes it a conspiracy. It's GATERGATE!

Re:"gate"

[BitZtream]

Except it occurred at the Watergate Office Complex ...

Re:"gate"

[argStyopa]

I see, so there's some controversy about the naming convention?
I propose "Namingconventiongate" or maybe "Slashdotpostgate".

Re:"gate"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can we please stop adding gate to the end of any controversial subject? It was barely clever the first time it was done and it's gotten to be pretty much the polar opposite at this point."

No we will not! If asked I'll cite you as the genesis of #gategate, but I'll be forced to quickly followup with my own attack on your movement #gategategate. So beware...

Re:"gate"

[sinij]

This is nothing short of Opportunist-gate.

Re:"gate"

[rijrunner]

No one tacked '-gate" onto the name of the complex, which is the previous poster's point. Now, everything get's "-gate" added to the end.

Re:"gate"

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB9JgxhXW5w

gg

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I've struggled to give even the modest semblance of a fuck about Gamergate, but every time I try to get a grasp on the story it zips away from my interest like a bar of soap covered in Astroglide.

Is it just that the name "Gamergate" sounds like it might be something fun, like a new console or VR headset? Then you look at it more closely and it just turns into the cognitive equivalent of white noise? What I've seen on it as it's filtered (unwelcome) through unrelated subreddits and other forums has been like catching chunks of a running drunken argument, and apparently it's one of the worst things ever to happen in the history of the human race or something? Seems like my games still work though.

Re:gg

[aevan]

Well if your kink is ants, gamergate could be something fun for you...

Re:gg

[Anonymous Coward]

http://press.gamergate.me/doss... https://gitgud.net/gamergate/g... tl;dr game journalism is ridiculously corrupt and calling "misogyny" on anyone who criticizes it.

Re:gg

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a website called gamergate dot me, what a great place to get objective and impartial information on gamergate. I'm sure they'll be ethical journalists.

Re:gg

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should listen and believe gamergate in their own words instead of people with a vested interest in lying about them.

Re:gg

[DrGamez]

Thanks for the impartial news Anonymous Coward. I really believe everything I read from literally anonymous sources!!

Could you summarize this in a MSPaint image instead?

Re:gg

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the articles linked lists 121 references and is as full of citations as the average wikipedia article and the other doesn't describe a single event without a link to the relevant source. If there are things you find contentious and uncited or weakly cited, by all means point them out, but dismissing the whole thing as "literally anonymous sources" is highly disingenuous.

Great summary

[rebelwarlock]

Yes, even though some people were threatened, there's an investigation. Looks like the author wanted the issue to be ignored because some people are assholes. That would be like if you got your car stolen, and because your racist neighbor said, "I hope you catch that nigger so I can lynch him!", the investigation was dropped. Bribery is still illegal, even if other things are happening.

Re:Credibility of Communications "Sent to Brianna

[Luckyo]

That was quite possibly one of the worst anonymisations of writer of all times.

Media blackout

[ArchieBunker]

There is no media blackout because the media does not care. How could you even condense this whole shit show down into a one minute news story? Outside of the gaming community nobody really cares.

Re:Media blackout

[Kunedog]

I was referring to the initial week-long news blackout on gaming and tech sites (including Slashdot), most of which were specialized enough (and/or small enough) to care. But you couldn't find a single article about the corruption anywhere, until the pressure of the customer revolt built and the blackout ended in the Aug 28 gaming press tantrum. If the Streisand Effect had a Richter scale, the Gamergate scandal was at least a 9.5.

Re:Media blackout

[dave420]

The initial corruption turned out to not exist, so it's no wonder it wasn't reported on. After that the hate-train was already at top speed and it was too late to stop it.

Re:Media blackout

[silentcoder]

That is because the "corruption" never happened, there is no evidence that it ever happened - on the other hand, the death threats and harassment was very, very real.

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

The "corruption" never happened if you only read the corrupted media, and a site like slashdot that soon after being purchased shifted its subject from technology to feminism and climate "science" is part of the corrupted media. In fact, most technology sites got recently bought by the corrupt left because they noticed that the nerds weren't being properly brainwashed by TV.

It's laughable that so many people want a corrupt site like this one to offer unbiased news about gamergate and the corruption in the media. They won't, that's why they bought them in the first place. They even BOUGHT 4CHAN to hide this issue, for Christ's sakes! Open your eyes, puppets, and you'll see the strings that these people place on you.

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

As the president said, there is not a smidgen of evidence of corruption to be found. (Maybe because there was enough time for the cleaners to scrub everything.) As the president's advisors have said, trying to find out what did or didn't happen is so two years ago. Why haven't you moveon'ed to the latest outrage? Somewhere there's a rape hoax that needs ardent listening and belief!

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Please take off the tinfoil, see a licensed therapist, and get medicated. Oh, and shut the fuck up, you idiot. There is not a single shred of evidence to this 'corruption' you blather on about.

Re:Media blackout

[Mashiki]

The initial corruption turned out to not exist, so it's no wonder it wasn't reported on. After that the hate-train was already at top speed and it was too late to stop it.

Really? Gamejournopros emails didn't exist, well damn. I guess that corruption didn't exist, all we have is your word on it after all. I guess that's why gamergate got the FTC to update their affiliate policies and link disclosure. You notice all these sites suddenly updating their privacy policies, and disclamers showing up with "ad affiliate links" among other things? You're welcome to thank gamergate now. Oh and the media guys reporting on things that are made by their friends, without disclosing that they've done so? I guess that corruption doesn't exist either.

Re:Media blackout

[LordLimecat]

I would argue this point but then I realized that-- just as OP says-- noone including myself cares. I dont even really know what half of the people here are talking about with "pro-gamergate" and "anti-gamergate" because I stopped caring about halfway into the second article on the issue. Fact is that theres a lot of sleazy people and Im not really clear why an article on it is news, or why Yet Another Sexism Accusation against gamers is news either.

Noone cares because both sides are being dumb and generating drama for drama's sake. Everyone needs to get over themselves, neither side is being persecuted-- theyre just playing the victim card.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Please relax

Re:Media blackout

[silentcoder]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Looks like pretty clear-cut persecution to me...

Re:Media blackout

[misexistentialist]

Does that make death threats that involve planning to be very, very, very, real threats, and deaths threats that result in injuries to be very, very, very, very real threats, and threats that produce a corpse to be very, very, very, very, very real threats? Cause in that case very, very real threats are child's play.

Re:Media blackout

[jedidiah]

The "corruption" angle of this is far more pervasive than just games or game reviews. It was an interesting coincidence that a Jewish reporter in Israel was complaining about media corruption from a different angle when this story was being broken.

Her perspective was that inconvenient facts and stories are not published. Things that don't support the dogma that your editors want to push are suppressed. Reality doesn't matter. The media wants to push it's view of things and "the news" is really just a work of fiction. Anything that doesn't support the narrative they want to present is ignored.

I'm not sure if it's shared ideology driven by the state of journalism academia or if it's mainly more crass corporate considerations but there's a definite group think at work.

Professional journalism at this point can be at best described as a form of political propaganda.

Re:Media blackout

[jedidiah]

No. It looks like a coward backed down as soon as things got interesting. She fancies herself as some sort of activist but as soon as things "got real", she ran away like a frightened child.

She's just like the trolls that everyone is supposed to be so afraid of.

Re:Media blackout

[Coren22]

I understand the whole outrage, and agree that gaming journalism sucks, but I have to comment on this piece:

and disclamers showing up with "ad affiliate links" among other things?

So you are surprised that games manufacturers advertise on gaming journalism websites?

Re:Media blackout

[Daetrin]

Uh, backing down when threatened with violence does not make one like a troll. It might be cowardly or it might be sensible, but it certainly isn't troll-like. It's the people who _threaten_ violence who are usually the trolls, since they don't have valid arguments to back up their stance.

Someone threatening violence if a debate takes place isn't "things getting interesting", it's someone trying to shut down a debate they can't win within the context of the debate.

Re:Media blackout

[Coren22]

I think much of the pro side's issues are along the lines of this:

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

Ubisoft forced all the game journalists to not release their reviews of the game until 24 hours after the release of the game, and the game was horribly broken on launch. Holding back the reviews that say essentially "don't buy, horribly broken" is perversion of the review system for pure greed. This is one of the many examples that the people in GG are claiming, but as I know very little of the scandal, I don't know of any others.

There was also apparently harassment on both sides of the issue, from people claiming sexism in games (well yeah, games geared towards boys will likely have a damsel in distress of some kind), to people being harassed and called misogynistic because they happen to enjoy games.

There were also death/rape threats and a school shooting threat, which could be from GG people, but may have just been random trolls that have nothing to do with the conversation but love to stir the controversy.

Re: Media blackout

[ravenshrike]

AFAIK not one of the five named as sleeping with Quinn ever denied it. One had even admitted it. As the last time I payed attention there was legal action ongoing the lack of denial has interesting implications. In any case, Quinngate never would have turned into Gamergate had the gaming press not turned their Cursed Shotgun of Moral Outrage+1(Wielders must act like the dumbest Paladin trope on crusade with no regard to the injury afflicted on party members) on the entire gaming population in a piss poor attempt at social engineering.

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

It has to say that it's an ad and that there are financial ties. FTC rules. I don't know why this is a surprise to you when TV figured this out decades before.

Re:Media blackout

[DrGamez]

There is a reason you're posting anonymously, and that's because you know you're fabricating lies.

That and you're honestly calling people "puppets" and telling them to "open your eyes", it's as if you're auditioning for a dramatic reading or something.

Re:Media blackout

[DrGamez]

This malaise is the problem.

One side is saying "women get treated like shit in video games, this has to stop".

The other side is sending death threats and harassing the family members of these women.

The reason you don't care (and the reason you still felt you needed to comment TELLING us you don't care) is because you're lucky enough to have the luxury and privilege to ignore these stories. For the women and people of color who are being constantly assaulted because they had the nerve to say "hey this culture sucks for us," do not have this luxury.

Re:Media blackout

[Mashiki]

So you are surprised that games manufacturers advertise on gaming journalism websites?

No, that's not what it's about.

You're welcome. Funny how my original comment is "off topic" in demanding proof. I guess the SJW's are out in force, since they can't dispute my statements.

Re:Media blackout

[LordLimecat]

You missed the part where its apparently completely true that she has had a closer relationship with reviewers of her game than would be considered professional, and apparently has the empathy of a shark.

Not that thats really newsworthy or anyones business but hers-- but lets not paint her as a saint here.

Re:Media blackout

[LordLimecat]

The reason you don't care (and the reason you still felt you needed to comment TELLING us you don't care) is because you're lucky enough to have the luxury and privilege to ignore these stories.

No, the real problem is that I actually read the story way back when, understood the issues apparently better than you did, but because Im not agreeing with you you're painting me with a broad "privileged white male" brush and dismissing my viewpoint.

The issue I had if you must know is that 95% of the criticism leveled at Sarkesian-- such as her generally unprofessional (ie intimate) relationships with reviewers of her games, her apparent pathological lying, and the fact that she makes unremarkable games and somehow gets airtime because shes a woman (and possibly because of the first issue)-- were accurate. But because they were leveled at a woman, people decide to pull the sexism card and label all men as trash; you may not have done this, but its the vibe that oozes out of every one of these topics.

The whole political correctness BS is absurd. If Sarkesian wants to make a game and wants to be in the industry thats her business, and I'll expect her games and her opinions to stand or fall on their on merits-- not on some misguided attempt to "normalize" the gender ratio by pandering to feminist BS.

The reason I dont care? Fundamentally this entire thing is people trying to play the victim card and claim that the world is ending because other people said mean things about them. I deal with far more substantial issues in the tiny kingdom that is my office every day. This stuff isnt newsworthy, its drama worthy of a GameFaqs messageboard or perhaps 4chan.

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

The other side is ALSO sending deaththreats and harrassment to the family friends and employers of the gamergate side. Whether those are men or women.

Half a truth is worse than a complete lie.

Re:Media blackout

[LordLimecat]

My gosh people said that? On the internet? What a shocker that that would happen in the gaming community!

Anyone-- regardless of gender-- who has been in online games for any length of time has heard this crap so many times you would expect them to dismiss it out of hand.

Not only that, but its pretty weak to try to justify the position that sexism is endemic in the gaming community by pulling up a single, generic, non-gender-based threat aimed at a controversial figure. I suppose we must have a problem with racism towards old white guys because of the number of threats George W Bush got, right? Maybe instead we should recognize that vocal minorities-- like people issuing abusrd threats about assault rifles and pipe bombs which would make 4chan proud-- are not typically a good representation of anything. If someone wants to make the case that we have an actual issue here, maybe we can get some actual statistics or empirical evidence-- something which I recall being absent from all of these discussions.

But of course these discussions were never about a level-headed approach to identifying a problem, they were about pushing political correctness to new extremes.

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

The initial corruption turned out to not exist,

A major games journalist was having an affair with a game developer, and this was confirmed.

How is this not a scandal? Have people suddenly forgotten about Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris? You give influential people access to young women who need their promotion, you add in an enviornment of "free love", you end up with exploitation.

Why is this happening in video games? Why is everyone suddenly OK with this?

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it uncomfortable, having your head that far up your ass?

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is true, and GamerGate is a giant horde of people making threats and harassing others, why is there not a single GamerGater in legal trouble over this? With all the mountains of harassment, surely there would be documented proof of it and, at least once, one would goof up and forget his seventh proxy. Right?

Re:Media blackout

[jmcvetta]

The reason you don't care (and the reason you still felt you needed to comment TELLING us you don't care) is because you're lucky enough to have the luxury and privilege to ignore these stories.

Your privilege is not my privilege, you filthy capitalist bigot.

Re:Media blackout

[CronoCloud]

The issue I had if you must know is that 95% of the criticism leveled at Sarkesian-- such as her generally unprofessional (ie intimate) relationships with reviewers of her games, her apparent pathological lying, and the fact that she makes unremarkable games

People like you complaining about "political correctness" and "feminists playing the victims" are idiots, you know why? They get their women confused and can't even spell their names correctly:

It's "Anita Sarkeesian", she doesn't make games. She does videos about tropes in gaming.

The person gamergaters complain about that did make a game was: Zoe Quinn.

Their names are nothing alike.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the FYC group.
Oh wait, when women act like bullies it's OK right?

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

That's complete fucking bullshit. How the fuck is this totally incorrect statement informative? You are either a liar or willfully ignorant.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Because now you can sleep around and if you get called a whore you can cry about "muh feminism" and the SJW league will come to your defense like rabid dogs.

And before someone gets uppity about the use of the word whore - is that not an apt description for someone who trades sexual favors for goods or services rendered?

Re:Media blackout

[Pseudonym]

A major games journalist was having an affair with a game developer, and this was confirmed.

First off, thank you for conceding that is the entire extent of the initial story: two people working in the same industry had sex.

What didn't happen, and this was also confirmed (both by timelines and testimony) was trading of "sexual favors for goods or services rendered", as the other AC claimed.

"Zoe Quinn is a bad girlfriend" is not a story that Slashdot would take any interest in.

Have people suddenly forgotten about Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris?

No, nobody has forgotten that Saville and Harris sexually abused children in their care. What are you accusing games journalists of now?

Re:Media blackout

[Antique Geekmeister]

> most of which were specialized enough (and/or small enough) to care.

Or simply accustomed to ignoring ranting trolls. Remember, these are gamers and people who deal with them professionally. The threshold of abusive behavior to be considered unusual is quite high.

Re:Media blackout

[davydagger]

This stuff isnt newsworthy, its drama worthy of a GameFaqs messageboard or perhaps 4chan.

It wasn't until the FBI got involved. I didn't care about #gg until it got big enough that I had to take notice. Being old enough to remember the "goth panic" that resulted after the columbine shootings, I know that law enforcement, especially not the FBI isn't going to do any real investigations, and doesn't give two fucking shits about who's just a complainer, and who's a terrorist. We've recently proved that still matters with recent drone strikes. Their mentality is "let god sort 'em out", and if someone doesn't have the social capital for society to give them the benefit of the doubt instead of the FBI(which is mostly everyone, and people especially think of gamers as loosers), the FBI will just go hog wild and fuck their shit up. Like always this is going to turn into a witch-hunt.

This is really newsworthy, because if you're withing 2 or 3 degrees of seperation from gamergame, and you fit the horrid stereotype, or you're enough of a loner that don't have high status people to vouch for you, the FBI sees you as a victim to haul out in front of court to show the nation that "they got the bad guys". They seriously don't give a fuck about who did what, just as long as they have bodies, they can make up a narrative to satisfy the bloodlust. In their minds "you did someting anyway probably", and our justice system is horridly broken, and in federal cases the deck is horribly stacked against you, even more so.

Whats worse, is if you don't have groups like the EFF, or the ACLU do legal work to reveal the FBI's case, a lot of innocent people are going to get thrown in the mix, and what exactly happened won't even come out, until years later, if at all.

While I agree the people who made the death threats should be, and crossed a very real line between Free speech, and assault, put on trial; What your not going to see from this investigation is anything more than a witch-hunt.

Re: Media blackout

[davydagger]

What action has been taken against the reporters for accepting bribes, which seems a more damning charge?

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Were she a real leader she wouldn't have backed down. Rosa Parks didn't back down.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

He already said he didn't give a shit, I'll just go ahead and point out the person calling others "idiots" completely lacks reading comprehension. And I'll add dumbshit sockpuppet to your title too because it fits.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

They are immune to any blame for their wrong doings, they have the SJW and Femi-Nazi armies supporting them.

Re: Media blackout

[CronoCloud]

Obviously he gave some shit, or he wouldn't have responded. Obviously he gave some shit or he wouldn't have even came close with "Sarkesian".

And I'll add dumbshit sockpuppet to your title too because it fits.

Of whom?

Re: Media blackout

[uninformedLuddite]

Out of the entire #gg fiasco that is the one point that stuck out. There are people prepared to admit that they slept with Zoe Quinn.

Re:Media blackout

[LordLimecat]

You're right that I did get them confused. I honestly have no idea who Sarkesian is, other than (apparently) an activist feminist who is for some reason involved in gaming.

Im (also) still not clear where the relevance to the real world is here.

Re:Media blackout

[tbannist]

The "corruption" angle of this is far more pervasive than just games or game reviews.

As far as I can tell, GamerGate claims to be about gaming journalism ethics and not any media that matters in any significant way.

It was an interesting coincidence that a Jewish reporter in Israel was complaining about media corruption from a different angle when this story was being broken.

No, it really isn't.

Her perspective was that inconvenient facts and stories are not published. Things that don't support the dogma that your editors want to push are suppressed.

You must be either be clueless or a teenager, if you didn't already know that. It's the most prevalent side effect of the commercialization of the news media. I think Slashdot even covered at least one such scandal in the mainstream media and that was many years ago. In that case, a Fox channel in Florida fired two reporters who refused to edit out parts of their news story that were critical of an advertiser (Monsanto). They sued Fox for wrongful dismissal, but lost the case because the courts ruled that Fox had no duty to tell it's audience the truth.

I'm not sure if it's shared ideology driven by the state of journalism academia or if it's mainly more crass corporate considerations but there's a definite group think at work.

I don't think it journalism academia, they despair for the state of the news media. I think it's simply the corruption of mixing profit-seeking in with the activities that are supposed to create the informed electorate. When the news is bought and paid for by the very same people the news is supposed to investigate, is it any wonder that there is corruption? In America, the government can manipulate the media by simply threatening to take actions that will reduce the profits of the news organization unless they carry the news the government wants them to carry. Because the news is a profit center, it's rasy for the government to manipulate these corporations by such simple means as denying access to media scrums or government officials. Things that won't get the average citizen riled up, but could cost the news organization ratings and thus money. Additionally, it's easy for the news corporation to be manipulated by their sponsors because all the sponsor has to do is threaten to move their advertising to a competitor to lobby for certain stories to be softballed. Even worse as time goes by and these tactics are more common, the news organizations learn to take these actions without even be prompted.

Professional journalism at this point can be at best described as a form of political propaganda.

In many ways the words "at this point" make that sentence less true. The term yellow journalism was coined in the 1890s, after all. The corruption of the news media waxes and wanes with the regulation imposed on it. That regulation is pretty loose right now in the name of free speech, which necessarily leaves a lot of room for corruption. There are worse things, for instance, most of the Russian media is pretty much owned by the Russian government so they repeat uncritically everything they are told to repeat which leads to worse media and worse governance.

Unfortunately, I really have no idea how you would go about making the news media less corrupt, other than maybe banning anything that claims to be news from accepting any sponsorship. If they aren't beholden to make a certain amount of profit for the sponsoring organization it becomes much more difficult to manipulate the editors, and through them the reporters.

Re: Media blackout

[Pseudonym]

To this day, neither Rosa Parks nor Anita Sarkeesian has been silenced.

Re:Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

That you don't know and don't care is perfectly understandable to me and, I suspect, most people. What puzzles me is why, given that, you would think your opinion on the matter is of interest to anyone.

I think this should be called the Richard Dawkins Response. I don't know anything about this topic, and have no interest in finding out, but since I'm an intelligent person, here's my opinion.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, yes there are. Take you your tinfoil hat of so you can review the facts.

The conspiracy are that less than ten people operate an entity that are collectively called Wall Street. This entity owns and controls almost everything in the world United States.

As I live in the EU I actually gets to read about all of this in the much more independent European press. Of course there are a lot of corruption here to but by different entities.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Says another anonymous person.

Re: Media blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They have a small group of self-entitled feminists with them. There are no major feminist groups with them and most feminist activists I have talked to are pro-GG. Because who the f**k do they think they are when they take upon themselves to speak for all feminists.

YOU'RE ALL LOSERS!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything regarding this story points to the fact that everyone involved at any level with "GamerGate", from the shills, the journalists, the trolls, and the gamers, is just a STUPID LOSER!!!

Wow, HOLY FUCK!!

Re:YOU'RE ALL LOSERS!!!!

[aevan]

Even anon posters on slashdot! *nods*

Political Correctness on massive steroids

[Taco Cowboy]

First the whacked the game scene and now they wanna whack the metal scene

http://www.metaltalk.net/colum...

Re:Political Correctness on massive steroids

[DrLang21]

Oh man that link has me clutching my sides in laughter. Thank you. The idea that anyone would be concerned about metal getting "sanitized" when it's already such a fringe industry is hilarious. The labels are small and don't care. The musicians don't care. Most of it is sold outside of major chain stores anyways, and most of them probably do not care.

Re: Political Correctness on massive steroids

[LoRdTAW]

I like how he name drops Anal Cunt as if the industry is full of AxCx like bands. The first AxCx show I saw had 9 people in attendance. The second was a bit over 20, maybe 30. There are and were plenty of fucked to bands, one of the most offensivly hilarious: The Mentors (the old shit with el duce). They coined genre term "rape rock" Then you had Anal Blast who are no longer due to sick as fuck Don Decker dropping dead from alcohol abuse. He would have strippers or prostitutes come on stage and he would demean them. Then he would shit all over the place. That guy had some serious issues of you look up interviews after he died. There are a ton others out there. I'm sure good ol GG would get some bleeding hearts foaming at the mouth.

Search for porn/gore grind on YouTube and have fun. Some are so bad it's hilarious. And that is the point. Be as bad, offensive or as fucked up as possible.

And the black dude in the Burzum shirt has to be a staged gag or shopped. That or he is going for the biggest ironic hipster award, trying to best the Jewish, Hitler art admirer.

Re:Credibility of Communications "Sent to Brianna

[Moridineas]

Haha, thanks for posting. That was just pathetic!!!

Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[91degrees]

Gamergate is a conspiracy theory (although to be fair ethics in game journalism are non-existent). Anti-gamergate is made up mainly of those rich middle class women who think that nerds who have been picked on their entire lives for being nerds are somehow opressing them. The media sides with the media of course.

Gamergate is made up mostly of kids who fling slurs that would make a sailor bluch around on XBox live, and anti-GG seem surprised when their slurs and insults that usually shut down their opponents bounce off. Gamergate, on the other hand feels that they are each owed a personal explanation for each and every point made by any of the main anti-GG side.

I'm leaving out a lot of the more unpleasant aspects from both sides.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamergate is a conspiracy theory (although to be fair ethics in game journalism are non-existent).

So close. Just think about what you just said. Meditate on it for a while.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a tiny bit more complex than that.
At least the board that started it all, the /v/ is formed by people that HATE the "games" as they are today, with all the handholding, gameplay replaced by a shallow "script you must follow" etc.
If you go on that board and declare yourself a "call of duty fan", or talk well about Watch dogs or titanfall, they will spit fire like dragons on PMS.
And well, several of those same users believed that the indie games would save gaming, would make gameplay go back to the focus, would make the gritty annoying realism be replaced by fun etc...
And then Depression quest comes and says basically "nope! indie games are now HTML files because i have relationships with kotaku", and well, this as they say "rustled their jimmies".
If Depression quest was actually a good game, like something with an awesome gameplay etc, the whole gamergate movement would be completely different, with Mr.Quinn being portraited as some sort of "martyr that have to suck dicks to get a good game reviewed by the horrible corrupt media".

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[91degrees]

There are a lot of genuine serious issues. Not that I'm all that into the culture, but I can see the lack of games that appeal to a certain serious hardcore has parallels with other media. Literature fans want deep challenging philosophical concepts, but find the shelves filled with airport thrillers.

Depression Quest is terrible. Wordy and highly preachy with a tedious storyline. Even for a morality semi-interactive story, there are better examples of the genre which have things like plot, and snappy dialogue. No idea why it got the publicity. I think GG may be seeing this as a reward for sex, but it's really just that the journalists and piblishers go to the same parties and the publishers have the ear of the journalists. It's pretty clear that a lot of publishers are very willing to do a lot of hobnobbing with the journalists, and giving some quite expensive gifts. Hell, Ubisoft was giving out Nexus tablets. They exactly weren't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts.

A good chunk of gamergate is made up of teenage kids though, and adults that behave like teenage kids, who really aren't very good at people skills. It's a large part of the gamer demographic. The fixation on certain people within anti-GG really causes the movement problems. Anti-GG is made up largely of very self-righteous professional victims who believe they are always in the right, and know how to spin chlidish abuse to their own ends and manipulate the media into thinking that the same people haven't been turning a blind eye towards doxxing and threats themselves for years.

The other part of it is that the internet itself can be vile! Factions form, and the dogpiling starts. Nobody is actually in control of the online mob and the worst perpetrators of both sides and up being seen as representative as of the whole.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[drinkypoo]

Anti-gamergate is made up mainly of those rich middle class women who think that nerds who have been picked on their entire lives for being nerds are somehow opressing them.

[citation needed]

Gamergate is made up mostly of kids who fling slurs that would make a sailor bluch around on XBox live

They wouldn't blush or bluch, whatever that is, they would just shake their heads and wonder how those children became orphans, because surely children with parents would never behave like them.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[juanfgs]

And then Depression quest comes and says basically "nope! indie games are now HTML files because i have relationships with kotaku",

How is that so? there are a lot of good videogames still being developed. This reminds me of people who were born in "le wrong generation" because they found out that listening to Led Zeppelin is cooler and edgier than Miley Cyrus, and they can be smug about it saying that no one makes good music nowadays which is wrong because if you don't live with your head up your ass you'll find that there are a lot of good music being made by a lot of lesser known artists

Videogames are in the same status, there is a lot of mainstream shit but it's easy to find good games focused on gameplay, and honestly I don't see how they are threatened, since following the devblogs of many cool games they don't really seem affected. And we are talking of not so indie developer studios such as Paradox Interactive, CD Projekt and Amplitude studios come just to name a few.

I don't really identify myself as a gamer, but really dude, no one is taking away the fun for you.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[91degrees]

[citation needed]

I'm not trying to convince you. Believe what you want. This is just the impression I get. Most of the people I've seen speaking out against GG seem to be the politcally correct thought police, and the journalist who are accused of being corrupt.

They wouldn't blush or bluch, whatever that is, they would just shake their heads and wonder how those children became orphans, because surely children with parents would never behave like them.

Even met a teenager? A lot of them are brats. They use the language they do because they want to offend. The fact that the offence of our childhood no longer works means they need to up the ante.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[squiggleslash]

Most of the people I've seen speaking out against GG seem to be the politcally correct thought police

Or... the loudest voices against GG have been those targetted by GG, who by and large are people seen by GG to be Feminists and widely misrepresented as a thought police rather than people sharing concerns they have about sexism.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[91degrees]

I've no idea if other people are representing them as that. This is my impression of these people. Not so much over GG, but over a bunch of other issues that many of the same people champion, where anyone who has the audacity to disagree with them is denounced as a hateful racist sexist who just wants to keep women out.

Perhaps there are some moderate voices inthe anti-GG camp. If so they're getting drowned out by loons, and I'm curious what they object to in gamergate that doesn't apply to the anti-GG crowd. Certainly both sides are guilty of threats, doxxing, and muck-flinging. GG seems to be trying to stamp it out and Anti-GG seems to be pretending it doesn't even exist.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[rochrist]

Didn't you know that every time Zoe Quinn makes a videogame, a thousand manly indie developers die?

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

seen by rational observers to be Feminists and widely understood as a militant totalitarian thought police rather than people sharing concerns they have about sexism.

FTFY

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah there son. You can take whatever side you like on Gamergate, but pretending that the video game industry is not in trouble isn't a viable option anymore.

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/video-game-industry-struggles-to-grow-a-year-after-new-console-launches/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/11/22/assassins-creed-unity-makes-the-case-for-video-game-recalls/
http://www.voxeljuice.com/critic/why-remakes-are-going-to-destroy-next-gen-gaming/
http://egmr.net/2014/01/slowly-heading-towards-another-video-game-crash/

While I don't think a full on game crash is on the table, the industry is in serious trouble, and for all the e-drama in gamergate, the underlying disgruntlement which caused this was the industry releasing increasingly sour urine and paying game sites to tell people it was pure spring water. You can only keep this up for so long before people stop trusting you with their disposable income, and console gaming at least appears to have reached this point.

Re:Wow. This whole sorry clusterfuck sucks

[jmcvetta]

made up mainly of those rich middle class women who think that nerds who have been picked on their entire lives for being nerds are somehow opressing them.

Oppressors complaining the oppressed are oppressing them. Fun fun fun!

did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

"That shit" is a lie. It didn't happen. There was no review, positive or otherwise, and the only thing the journalist in question ever wrote about her was BEFORE any relationship (and also wasn't a review).

What started gamergate was a hateful ex-boyfriend making up the above lie and promoting it on 4chan.

FBI is bored, needs more business...

[bradley13]

...because it's hard to see any other reason for an official investigation of a bunch of twits throwing virtual cow patties at each other.

Re:FBI is bored, needs more business...

[ctid]

At least one person was doxxed and threatened. She reported this to the SF police and they passed it on to the FBI. I don't know whether this is the FBI's open case, but it's not a "bunch of twits throwing virtual cow patties at each other".

Re:FBI is bored, needs more business...

[DrGamez]

I assume the 13 in your username is either the year you graduated highschool, or your current age; because the inability to see that this is an issue larger than some kids fighting in comment sections speaks volumes of your knowledge on the subject.

Thank you for sharing your empty comment, do you have a blog I can subscribe to in case I want to hear how little you care on other subjects? Perhaps a twitter account?

Re:FBI is bored, needs more business...

[Coren22]

I would also point out the school shooting threat against the Utah university.

Who wins with threats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see who has something to win with threats and who doesn't.

1. Gamergate. What exactly do they win? To get more bad press?
2. Anita Sarekeesian and similar figures. That woman already got 160k$ last time she used threats to advertise her kickstarter, and she still asks for "donations" from time to time in her twiter. Other figures are associated with certain media which also have something to win, which leads to point 3.
3. The clickbait media. They win money of every controversial article they can write, every drama they can fabricate.
4. Trolls. They gain "fun". In their particular twisted version of life, they think these kind of things are "fun".

Now, if I were a policeman, I would investigate all of them, because that would be my job. But I would do it in the reverse order of my list, as that's what common sense dictates me.

Re:Who wins with threats?

[birdboy2000]

The status quo in game journalism is laughably corrupt writers taking money for reviews and writing puff pieces on their buddies, and Gamergate are the only people I see making any effort to change that. Know of any other groups doing that? I'd be glad to join them, although I'm sure the gaming media will tar them with the same guilt-by-association and misogyny allegations that worked so well on gamergate.

Re:Who wins with threats?

[Holi]

Yep, I'm not sure how you can "restore ethics in video games journalism" when it has never existed in the first place.

Re:Who wins with threats?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no... it's not the status quo in game journalism the #Gamergate people want to defend, it's the status quo in the games themselves. They get to decide what a game is, what groups of people should be represented in games, what groups of people are the victims, what groups of people are the aggressors. They get to decide whether a game has any jingoistic, misogynistic, racist, or otherwise negative attributes. Hallowed are the Gamergaters. For it is they alone that shoulder the burden of protecting the faith of the One True Gamer Culture.

Re:Who wins with threats?

[birdboy2000]

That's not the status quo. Right now it's the Game Journo Pros clique "deciding" all that and then getting oh so angry that gamers don't take kindly to being called "dead".

Re:Who wins with threats?

[Anonymous Coward]

They write opinion. That's what game journalists do. If you don't like it, don't start a shitstorm that just gets all the nuts on every side riled up, because it is anti-productive.

The "gamers are dead" article was shit. But if you actually read it article, "gamers" as defined in that article are "dead." Why would you want to cater to (paraphrasing here) Cheetos-huffing, Asperger's syndrome, basement-dwelling troubled children, since that isn't what "gamers" are anymore, if they ever were? "Gamers" are every person that (shock) enjoys playing games. No, you don't get to threaten people because you don't think the same, but you can have a different opinion.

Inside MY Gaming community...

[Grog6]

No one cares either.

Some Media Whores got some attention. BFD.

The game we play didn't come out this year, in some cases, this millennium.

I guess someone, somewhere, cares about these "Journalists" enough to send death threats; I can't possibly see why.

New games are horribly crippled compared to the past; It would be nice to see a new shooter without micropayments, and including a level editor.

Re:Inside MY Gaming community...

[PhxBlue]

Some Media Whores got some attention. BFD.

This is the sort of shit that gets up-moderated on Slashdot nowadays? Really?

Re:Inside MY Gaming community...

[DrGamez]

Your comment:

1. Has nothing to do with the article.
2. Goes completely off topic about the quality of first person shooters?
3. Is being upvoted because Slashdot's average user is as bad as the beta looks.

(and if you don't care I will ask why you felt the need to inform us exactly of how much you don't care)

Re: Inside MY Gaming community...

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth hurts don't it?
Lolz @dumbass sockpuppet.

Why what police force get involved when...

[tlambert]

Well, that was mostly the cynic in me writing, but on the other hand, isn't a threat made against a single individual typically handled by the police? Why would FBI feel the need to get involved? Or is this on of the "because it happened on the Internet it's different" kind of situations?
Government agencies overstepping their boundaries and getting involved in things that aren't their business is certainly a reason for concern.

Why what police force get involved when...

This is a basic, 50,000 foot view; it's not intended to cover all the details, and corrections gratefully accepted, but I believe this covers the gist of it...

It's pretty clear that the threats, particularly against the appearance of Anita Sarkeesian at Utah State University were, at a minimum, interstate.

When the threats cross a state line, the move from local police jurisdiction to federal police (FBI) jurisdiction, since police forces may only operate within their own jurisdictions. If the crime spans larger jurisdictions, such as adjacent cities within a county, or adjacent counties within a state, then it may be handled by an inter-agency task force. If it gets bigger than that, then the next larger jurisdiction encapsulating the jurisdictions involved takes ownership. The jurisdictions and agencies, are as follows:

Within a city: The city police force
Within a county: The county sheriff
Within a state: The CBI (California Bureau of Investigation - agency name varies by state)
Interstate: The FBI
International: Interpol

Within these classifications, inferior jurisdictions are often acted to cooperate/participate in the investigatory legwork, arrest operations, searches, evidence gathering, forensic work (autopsy, crime scene investigation, and so on).

Exceptions:

When a crime occurs on a federal lands or reservations, the FBI always has jurisdiction. For "indian reservations", investigator power lies in both the FBI and in the tribal police force (depending on the nature of the crime).

When a crime occurs on a military base, the investigatory power lies within the branch of the military; for most crimes, this is the MPs or Military Police. For more serious crime, or crimes involving military personnel not on base, or non-military and military personnel both, it goes by branch of service:

Navy, Marine, Coast Guard: NCIS - Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Army: USACIDC or CID - Criminal Investigation Division of the Army Provost's office
Air Force: AFOSI or OSI - Office of Special Investigations

Generally, anything involving a civilian, or occurring off base, ands up being a joint investigation with local authorities, which can include authorities in other countries (e.g. naval bases in Japan, air force bases in Germany, etc.).

For terrorist threats, USDHS - DHS - the Department of Homeland Security - gets involved. They are probably already involved in the Utah State University threat. At that pint, they can call on the capabilities and services of agencies such as the DOJ (Federal Marshals office), the NSA (which is allowed to operate domestically), the CIA (which is allowed to operate extranationally), the DIA (which is allowed to operate with regard to foreign military), and so on.

All in all, the more something escalates in terms of geographic reach, or in terms of threat level, the higher up the food chain you go, further and further into territories where you do not want to be. At some point in the escalation process, you get to the stratospheric regions where people simply "disappear" (otherwise known as "extraordinary rendition").

Does that answer your question?

Re:Why what police force get involved when...

[Vitriol Angst]

Wow, "on the internet" means the FBI is always involved because -- hey, it crosses state lines!

So now some media side show and innuendo flame war has caught the attention of three letter agencies. Good, they need another excuse not to go after bankers and people with power doing lot's of crimes and bust some more hippies saving trees.

Re:Why what police force get involved when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely correct - the FBI are completely incapable of looking at more than one crime at a time, and death threats are not serious enough to waste the fed's time until someone is actually murdered.

(The above is sarcasm in case someone tries to duck and let it go over their heads "accidentally")

Re:Why what police force get involved when...

[Anonymous Coward]

the FBI are completely incapable of looking at more than one crime at a time

Of course not.
  But any given agent can only handle so many cases. So wasting time on one case takes time and energy and resources that could be applied to other cases.

It's probably...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of that guy who tried to dox a Gamegate supporter who had DoD security clearance.

did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Prominent female whore developer makes a hoot about sexism in the gaming world years ago, then is caught giving sex and blowjobs for positive reviews and preferential treatment for her games? That shit is the same as prostitution, exchanging sex for money and personal gain. It is also straight up hypocracy and a waste of everyone's money.

If I am not mistake, this is what started gamergate.

myronmays.com [myronmays.com]

Which is what so ridiculous about it.

Game developers don't have a professional code of ethics, but journalists do. It's the male journalists who behaved unethically (accepting bribes) not the female game developer, yet she's the one getting the death threats.

There's stuff to investigate on both sides

[birdboy2000]

So why is the OP assuming it was the alleged death threats against Gamergate critics being investigated and not the ones against supporters (i.e. Mike Cernovich being allegedly SWATted) or the alleged blacklisting of certain journalists coordinated through GameJournoPros or similar threats by IGDA about developers who speak out in favor of Gamergate?

Opinions...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...even as some members have harassed and sent death threats to female gaming developers and critics."

Citation needed.

Great summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Bribery is still illegal, even if other things are happening.

No it isn't.
At least not in the general sense. It's illegal for some people to accept bribes because of their position (most government employees). It's not illegal to offer bribes, and it's not illegal for journalists to accept bribes.

FOIA results

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI confirmed somewhere else that at least 2 of the feminists in distress have sent death threats to themselves and then pretended it's gamers doing it. Hey, I can threated myself too but because I don't have a vag nobody will give me attention for it.

Re:FOIA results

[sinij]

>>>FBI confirmed somewhere else that at least 2 of the feminists in distress have sent death threats to themselves and then pretended it's gamers doing it.

If this is true, that would very very damning. Who was involved? Do you have any proof of this, like links to FBI reports?

Re:FOIA results

[rochrist]

He has a link to a youtube video!!

did you see that piece

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, called a woman who has had sex a 'whore' kinda proves that your a misogynistic piece of scum. Just FYI, y'know, constructive criticism and all that.

Echo chamber within a hate group

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm saddened to see all the comments in SUPPORT of GamerGate here.

I fully believe there are MANY people who associate with that name and truly are interested in ethics.

EVERYONE outside your echo chamber ONLY sees harassment and hate coming from people using that name. The name "GamerGate" is synonymous with a hate movement.

And your only response is "Yes, well, but not ME." This makes your claim to support ethics amazingly hollow.

No, see, you can STOP F*#^%& USING THE NAME "GamerGate". It is poison. It kills your point. The name was coined as part of the initial hate attacks on Zoe Quinn. It is intimately tied with the sh&@5storm that started this mess. But you insist on defending it. "Oh, it's just a few people.... making CONSTANT and DETAILED threats against every woman they can find in the industry. It's not a hate group!"

So what if it's an "external group" inciting these incidents. They're using a name that you continue to freely associate with. It's not like it's a religion (is it?) or a nationality that you can't change. Start calling your cause EthicsWatch or something.

And what if, as will happen, the agitators ALSO start using the name? ACTIVELY go after them, or your new name will just be another new front for the same hate group. DON'T say "Not All X"... DON'T deflect blame.... ACTIVELY shout down the idiots. Otherwise you're protecting them.

Your precious cause is doing more harm than good because way too many people only see the hate from people who "aren't" you, so we have zero reason to take YOU seriously.

Re:Echo chamber within a hate group

[Anonymous Coward]

The name was not "coined as part of the initial hate attacks on Zoe Quinn". The hashtags used at the time of said attacks were #quinnspiracy and #burgersandfries. It was coined as a response to games media deciding to use the attacks on Zoe Quinn to declare gamers dead and mass censorship of the scandal on a variety of websites. With regard to "perception" what the fuck do you think's going to happen when people take on the media? #gamergate's been actively shouting down the idiots from the start, as any number of 8chan and KotakuinAction threads indicate (I recall a stickied post with personal information blacked out and a call to attack someone answered with a public ban and people condemning them) but you won't read that on Kotaku or Polygon.

Re:Echo chamber within a hate group

[DrGamez]

And your only response is "Yes, well, but not ME." This makes your claim to support ethics amazingly hollow.

I wish I had mod points or you posted with a real account because this post is a pretty good summary of the all the terrible people supporting GamerGate and their reasoning.

Re:Echo chamber within a hate group

[russotto]

EVERYONE outside your echo chamber ONLY sees harassment and hate coming from people using that name. The name "GamerGate" is synonymous with a hate movement.

GamerGate isn't an echo chamber. GamerGaters do in fact question each others positions and claims. And sometimes find them wanting, as in the case of a pro-GG person who claimed he was physically assaulted and forced out of the apartment he shared with his girlfriend because of his pro-GG stance.

It's not surprising GG has a bad reputation; when you fight the press you can't expect anything but bad press.

No, see, you can STOP F*#^%& USING THE NAME "GamerGate". It is poison. It kills your point. The name was coined as part of the initial hate attacks on Zoe Quinn.

Except that it wasn't coined as part of that particular bit of chan drama. It came up a month later -- coincidentally, just as the "gamers are dead" articles came out.

Investigation is a good thing

[Andurian]

I'm glad the FBI is investigating. They don't know whether alleged threats and harassment are *real* threats and harassment without investigating. Since there have been allegations on both sides, hopefully they investigate both sides. And hopefully those who made false accusations will be prosecuted along with those who made real threats. We shouldn't put up with threats, harassment, or dishonest allegations of crimes. And I trust the FBI won't just be reading message boards and MSNBC articles in their investigation.

I expect, however, that when prosecutions start one or both sides will start whining.

Re:Investigation is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the threats are real, threats on the internet are dime a dozen, any investigation is going to turn up the fact that someone actually did, in fact, say something bad and people who have been acting shocked about internet threats will crow over it. The trouble is that the legal bar to prosecution is something called a "true threat" - one which actually has the intent of harm behind it. Showing a true threat in a courtroom is a substantial bar to cross, there are some significant first amendment protections there. The FBI is not going to successfully prosecute any true threats over this nonsense, no one has even been in any actually danger here, but that won't matter.

You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

The organized men using non-stop death and rape threats of women who occasionally mumble some crap about "gaming journalism"? Like it's a real thing!

Political Correctness on massive steroids

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling they won't get very far down that avenue.

Long-term Problems Shared with Cops

[Cinnamon Beige]

[..]. instead after shutting them down one of those at the center of Gamergate pushed for a "game jam" for women with a Patreon account...that went directly into her personal checking account. They are also using the guise of "social justice" which in reality is self enrichment and hypocrisy but at the end of the day, when you strip away the "SJW" and "radical feminism" bullshit? Yep just about money, both the corruption in the press caused by and by certain women trying to use feminism the way Rev Al uses the black community. Sure you have a few in this that are so far left Karl Marx would go "Damn comrade, dial that shit back a bit" but as with so many scandals in the end? yep its about $$$

This kinda is why I just flat-out automatically drift to the other side when 'social justice' and 'radical feminism' start being bandied by one side--I don't disapprove of the goal or anything, it's the failure to self-police and deal with internal corruption that ultimately drove me away. I've been told repeatedly that oh they totally do it, but had to point out that it's absolutely necessary to do it where people can see. If you fail to make sure people know it's done?

Public callouts are essential to protecting against the same sort of thought that produces the 'thin blue line,' where you defend any and all members of your group against what you know are corrupt and may even privately disapprove of entirely.

But this is a problem even with the honest ones: nobody dares tell them what you suggest Karl Marx might do, nobody quite seems to even dare suggest that actually it's getting hard to support either side as they're both coming off as equally bigoted really, and they keep drifting more radical (and less logical) without any apparent awareness that they're in an echo chamber nor that they're basically behaving like a fundamentalist religion that merely happens to be secular--dogma sans theology, with no tolerance whatsoever for even innocent questioning of the dogma.

Some members of WHAT?

[Anonymous Coward]

"even as some members have harassed and sent death threats to female gaming developers and critics."

Some members of what??? the FBI?

You wouldn't mind posting your actual name then

[publiclurker]

would you? somehow, I doubt it, since you obviously don't believe your own BS.

Re: You wouldn't mind posting your actual name the

[Anonymous Coward]

A few vocal trolls are not the majority. No matter how many point to them and cry.

However, I'm not willing to paint a target on my back just to prove a point. Especially to you, since you'd likely stalk, kill, and eat me to prove your own point you jackass.

social justice warriors

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time in Boston there existed a meetup group dedicated to "social justice" who called themselves Socializing for Justice or SoJust (their usage not mine). As in, "oh wow, look at us, we are SO fuckin' just!"

In a moment of existentially-despairing boredom, I attended one of their meetups. It consisted of a bunch of private college kids standing around on the Common, dressed in expensively-grungy hippie gear, congratulating each other on being special magical unicorns. The atmosphere of self-satisfaction was palpable, the absence of working class people striking and complete.

No doubt these "social justice warriors" were not true Scotsmen. Nevertheless they continue to strike me as epitomic of the larger "social justice" movement.

Posting AC because I write under my real name and fear reprisal.

how convenient

[Jazoray]

The authorities have long had an interest in shutting down video gaming. Naturally they welcome Gamergate.