GamerGate

[Art Vandelay]

There's a golden mean fallacy hidden in here that suggests that there are indeed two factions, as Cloud has pointed out you don't have to be a member of the black panthers to make a public statement against the KKK.

Also, for me this has never been about which people are the nastier. Yeah-I do have an opinion on that but it's not my core concern. My concern here is the way an anonymous group has been used as a cudgel against progressive voices and the outlets that give them space.

This isn't about which side has the bigger assholes, that's like saying an argument over McCarthyism is all about who's the bigger asshole, Joseph McCarthy or Joseph Stalin. It's nothing of the sort, my concern with gamergate is with the chilling effect the movement has on free speech and that's a considerably larger concern than which "side" has the most nice or nasty people!

I didn't say there's two official factions, I said that this thread is pretty much just one big pissing contest over whether the biggest assholes involved are "pro-gamergate" or "anti-gamergate". That's exactly what was happening before I posted. Well, not entirely, there's also a lot of folks insisting it's not one big wank but rather it's actually about free speech or journalistic ethics or whatever, though any actual discussion of those things is even rarer than a good Kotaku article.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

I didn't say there's two official factions, I said that this thread is pretty much just one big pissing contest over whether the biggest assholes involved are "pro-gamergate" or "anti-gamergate". That's exactly what was happening before I posted. Well, not entirely, there's also a lot of folks insisting it's not one big wank but rather it's actually about free speech or journalistic ethics or whatever, though any actual discussion of those things is even rarer than a good Kotaku article.

If the thread annoys you that much, don't look. No one is forcing you.

And the "whatever" is people being intimidated away from expressing themselves freely because of a hateful angry mob. I find that whatever kind of important because whether a government, a private business or an anonymous individual is doing it using fear to shut up speech you don't like is something I find to be a "bad thing". I guess you find that boring, and that's ok-but why do you feel the need to read it so you can tell everyone else how bored you are?

[Art Vandelay]

If the thread annoys you that much, don't look. No one is forcing you.

As others have said, it tends to spill over into the rest of the site. Not to mention, gamergate as a whole has kind of taken over the internet right now.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

If the thread annoys you that much, don't look. No one is forcing you.

As others have said, it tends to spill over into the rest of the site. Not to mention, gamergate as a whole has kind of taken over the internet right now.

Yeah-the issue exists. Some people like myself find it to be important, some don't. Topical issues tend to get discussed. You don't have to participate if you don't want to.

In any case the only spillage I've seen here recently is Ironbite and UP telling each other that they don't like each other. This is entirely subjective but, who gives a rats arse? Who's to say those guys would've been best buds anyway? There are plenty of other issues still being discussed healthily on this site and if the only fallout has been two people calling each other poopyheads then that's not such a big deal.

[Ultimate Paragon]

That Newsweek article is very easy to debunk:

(click to show/hide)

[Cloud3514]

That image accuses the article of being poorly researched and biased, but then only cites ONE source when "debunking" it. It also resorts to ad hominen (why does it matter that he "doesn't understand traffic laws") and feeds the idiocy that "anti-GamerGate" is some kind of counter movement.

To the whole "anti-GamerGate" thing, let me try to put in terms you're going to understand:

ANTI-GAMERGATE DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST! YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD THIS COUNTLESS TIMES! YOU STILL INSIST ON ACTING LIKE IT'S A THING! HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS BEFORE YOU GET IT THROUGH YOUR FUCKING SKULL?

Furthermore, the point of the article, had you actually read it instead of flocking to the good old fucking MSPaint "debunking" is that the people that GamerGate insists aren't involved and have named "Literally Who 1, 2 and 3" are getting multitudes more traffic at them than actual media outlets (which you have still yet to prove are unethical). Specifically, Quinn has received fourteen times more tweets than Greyson, but GamerGate insists that it's about journalism, despite the numbers showing a disproportionate amount of traffic being slung at their "Literally Whos."

Here's the thing about these kinds of studies: They don't have to look at every fucking Tweet. The purpose is to find trends. The reason they only looked at 25% is for the simple fact that it's MUCH faster to do so. This isn't hard facts, but it does show trends that are contradictory to GamerGate's claims. That was the point of the article and your "debunking" does not address it, but it does put forth some wonderful ad hominen.

[Ultimate Paragon]

GamerGate just dealt with another harasser:

(click to show/hide)

[Radiation]

Going off topic here for a bit, but I am trying to get some input for an article that I plan to write for an FA blog that I am on.

In order to not derail or clog the thread, please go to this link:

http://fqa.digibase.ca/index.php?topic=6135.0

[Cloud3514]

Gotta love how Paragon ignored every point I made.

[Radiation]

Also, to remind you, please don't turn this thread into a pissing contest again. I know it's hard but I am sure that there somehow can still be civil discussion.

Edit: NVM, My editor learned about GG and is scared to even have anything mentioning GG on the blog site as he is afraid of getting trolls and harassers. The site has been trolled recently (nothing to do with GG) and he doesn't want to take chances.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

That Newsweek article is very easy to debunk:

(click to show/hide)

Except there's precious little debunking going on here and a lot of character assassination and Murdoch-style "screamer" headlines, not the same thing. Interesting that to some pro Gamergate folks it is the same thing!

Lets have a look at the only relevant parts of this screed shall we?

Wait, so most tweets were neutral? Doesn't that go against Wofford's narative of Gamergate as a group that is primarily interested in harrasing women?

No-really it doesn't, and he explains why.

Brandwatch found most tweets were neutral in sentiment. And tweets directed at Grayson and Totilo were, on average, more negative than those directed at Quinn, Wu or Sarkeesian. But Quinn, Wu and Sarkeesian were on the receiving end of more negative tweets overall than Grayson, Totilo and Kotaku, which suggests that, contrary to its stated goal, GamerGate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists—a fact Intel, Mercedes, and Adobe should have researched before they pulled ads from news sites.

But, the anonymous author of this MS paint screed thinks he/she still has a "gotcha"

So assuming that there were no tweets that contained simultaneous mentions of both Sarkeesian
and WU, the highest possible number of tweets directed at these women is 74,140 , of which at most
only 8% were negative. This means that o f the 500,000 tweets analyzed, there were at best 5,931 negative tweets total. Time to do some "Math":

Except that this person has either missed the point or is deliberately ignoring it, what the graph shows is that people in favor of Gamergate spend more time bellyaching, positively, negatively or neutrally about She Who Must Not be Named (developer), Sarkeesian (essayist), Wu (developer) and Alexander (opinion writer) than they do about Grayson (journalist) and Totilo (Editor). They do spend a statistically high amount of time bellyaching about Kotaku but there is nothing in the data to suggest that this is journalism related-and not nearly as much time as they do talking about Sarkeesian who isn't a journalist at all. It's almost as if journalism wasn't their primary concern!

Only 1.19% o f all Gamergate tweets analyzed were attacks on the most statistically significant women alleged t o be targets of harassment.

Except that attack is not synonymous with negative tweet so this is Not Even Wrong! There isn't any point drawing a conclusion from your math if you deliberately or accidentally misinterpret the numbers in the first place.

The rest is just random tweets where the author they don't like allegedly said naughty things and completely irrelevant furphies like the author complaining about getting a traffic ticket. This isn't a debunking, it's a trainwreck-I've yet to determine whether those have a correlative or causative relationship with Gamergate conspiracies!   

Sidenote: If the UP really wants to imagine that Ironbite and Lt Fred are somehow co conspirators I'll allow him that rather amusing fantasy. Being opposed to something does not a faction make, otherwise we should all rest uneasy in our beds fretting about what the great People who Dislike Corduroy party is planning against the Folks Who Can't Stand Jeans brigade!

GamerGate just dealt with another harasser:

(click to show/hide)

Well done you, give yourselves a cookie. However you were challenged on a supposed "debunking" cobbled together by one of your Gamergater comrades in arms. It would actually be far more interesting to hear you respond to these criticisms. Care to entertain us with a response?

EDIT: Tell ya what UP, I'll throw you a bone. This is how you critique an articles use of statistical analysis. You query whether the conclusions drawn from the data can justifiably be made and you ask whether the data shows what it purports to show. What I just gave you is someone who's penned an article strongly critical of the newsweek article using statistics, not character assassination. Enjoy.

[Cloud3514]

Having actually looked at the image that Paragon posted, they actually managed to make reporting an asshole into a statement going "THEY'RE WRONG ABOUT US!!!" while also managing to shout no true Scotsman. That's fucking amazing. GamerGate's complete lack of self-awareness is unrivaled.

If they were dealing with the harassers for any reason other than to go "look how wrong THEY are," why do they feel the need to make MSPaint images like that? This is actually one of the consistent criticisms of GamerGate. The people dealing with harassment aren't doing it because harassment is shitty or to actually prove that GamerGate doesn't condone harassment, they're doing it to make "anti-GamerGate" look bad.

[Ultimate Paragon]

Brandwatch found most tweets were neutral in sentiment. And tweets directed at Grayson and Totilo were, on average, more negative than those directed at Quinn, Wu or Sarkeesian. But Quinn, Wu and Sarkeesian were on the receiving end of more negative tweets overall than Grayson, Totilo and Kotaku, which suggests that, contrary to its stated goal, GamerGate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists—a fact Intel, Mercedes, and Adobe should have researched before they pulled ads from news sites.

But, the anonymous author of this MS paint screed thinks he/she still has a "gotcha"

There's a major problem with that: He'd already picked his side, so I have every reason he deliberately chose tweets that furthered his agenda.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe he's less biased in his reporting than I thought.  But if that's the case, there's one thing he overlooked: Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu have been in the media spotlight far more than, say, Nathan Grayson or Ben Kuchera.  It seems likely that many of those tweets came from somebody who stumbled on the controversy by reading about it in the New York Times or watching CNN.

So assuming that there were no tweets that contained simultaneous mentions of both Sarkeesian
and WU, the highest possible number of tweets directed at these women is 74,140 , of which at most
only 8% were negative. This means that o f the 500,000 tweets analyzed, there were at best 5,931 negative tweets total. Time to do some "Math":

Except that this person has either missed the point or is deliberately ignoring it, what the graph shows is that people in favor of Gamergate spend more time bellyaching, positively, negatively or neutrally about She Who Must Not be Named (developer), Sarkeesian (essayist), Wu (developer) and Alexander (opinion writer) than they do about Grayson (journalist) and Totilo (Editor). They do spend a statistically high amount of time bellyaching about Kotaku but there is nothing in the data to suggest that this is journalism related-and not nearly as much time as they do talking about Sarkeesian who isn't a journalist at all. It's almost as if journalism wasn't their primary concern!

See above.  And as for Leigh Alexander, I think the publicity about the Intel boycott might have something to do with it.

Only 1.19% o f all Gamergate tweets analyzed were attacks on the most statistically significant women alleged t o be targets of harassment.

Except that attack is not synonymous with negative tweet so this is Not Even Wrong! There isn't any point drawing a conclusion from your math if you deliberately or accidentally misinterpret the numbers in the first place.

The rest is just random tweets where the author they don't like allegedly said naughty things and completely irrelevant furphies like the author complaining about getting a traffic ticket. This isn't a debunking, it's a trainwreck-I've yet to determine whether those have a correlative or causative relationship with Gamergate conspiracies!.

So, you can distinguish between criticism and harassment.

And those tweets aren't irrelevant, they were brought up to demonstrate that the author had already chosen his side.

Sidenote: If the UP really wants to imagine that Ironbite and Lt Fred are somehow co conspirators I'll allow him that rather amusing fantasy. Being opposed to something does not a faction make, otherwise we should all rest uneasy in our beds fretting about what the great People who Dislike Corduroy party is planning against the Folks Who Can't Stand Jeans brigade!

I have no reason to believe they're co-conspirators, they're just on the same wavelength.  And don't worry, I'll try to stop implying that everybody against GamerGate is in one group.

Having actually looked at the image that Paragon posted, they actually managed to make reporting an asshole into a statement going "THEY'RE WRONG ABOUT US!!!" while also managing to shout no true Scotsman. That's fucking amazing. GamerGate's complete lack of self-awareness is unrivaled.

If they were dealing with the harassers for any reason other than to go "look how wrong THEY are," why do they feel the need to make MSPaint images like that? This is actually one of the consistent criticisms of GamerGate. The people dealing with harassment aren't doing it because harassment is shitty or to actually prove that GamerGate doesn't condone harassment, they're doing it to make "anti-GamerGate" look bad.

I never saw any denial that the asshole was involved in GamerGate.  GamerGate as a whole condemns harassment and threats.

And you can speculate about their motives all you like, but the fact remains that a potentially dangerous individual was dealt with.  France didn't care about the ideals of the American Revolution, they just wanted to hurt Britain.  And yet none of the Founding Fathers complained about their motives.

[Sigmaleph]

Brandwatch found most tweets were neutral in sentiment. And tweets directed at Grayson and Totilo were, on average, more negative than those directed at Quinn, Wu or Sarkeesian. But Quinn, Wu and Sarkeesian were on the receiving end of more negative tweets overall than Grayson, Totilo and Kotaku, which suggests that, contrary to its stated goal, GamerGate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists—a fact Intel, Mercedes, and Adobe should have researched before they pulled ads from news sites.

But, the anonymous author of this MS paint screed thinks he/she still has a "gotcha"

There's a major problem with that: He'd already picked his side, so I have every reason he deliberately chose tweets that furthered his agenda.

The analysis was done by Brandwatch, not Wofford. There's no indication he chose the tweets himself, let alone that he had enough selection power to bias the analysis in any direction.

[Cloud3514]

I never saw any denial that the asshole was involved in GamerGate.  GamerGate as a whole condemns harassment and threats.

And you can speculate about their motives all you like, but the fact remains that a potentially dangerous individual was dealt with.  France didn't care about the ideals of the American Revolution, they just wanted to hurt Britain.  And yet none of the Founding Fathers complained about their motives.

Let's look at the words again:

#GamerGate beat Brianna Wu to reporting Penis Affiliate and they are removed, but we are totally the ones seding (sic) death/rape threats. Totally.

Emphasis mine. Reading comprehension seems to be a weak point of yours. There are two reasons why that bolded part is there:

1: To point fingers at "anti-GamerGate" to show "wrong" they are. They're going "see? We DO deal with harassment! Suck it, anti-GamerGate!" as if that was point of criticizing the lack of damage control.

2: To imply that harassers aren't real GamerGaters. The wording suggests that they reject Penis Affiliation's claims to being a part of GamerGate. The purpose is to try to claim that "real" GamerGaters don't harass people, despite the fact that, due to affiliation requiring a grand total of 10 keystrokes, every GamerGater is a real GamerGater.

It's kinda humorous how they manage to fit two of GamerGate's biggest PR failings into one sentence. Every PR effort GamerGate has collectively made has been for the purposes of one of these statements or to say that GamerGate doesn't actually harass people (which is where the constant no true Scotsman claims come from). But this is about that particular image.

If the purpose of dealing with Penis Affiliation was because he was an asshole and needed to be dealt with, they wouldn't have felt the need to go "they're wrong about us." The people in GamerGate that are trying to deal with harassment are only doing so for the sake of appearances. They would be perfectly OK with harassment happening to people they don't like if it weren't for their horrible image. The constant cries of "false flag" is proof enough of that.

GamerGate's reactions to harassment are either "we don't condone harassment, but it never actually happened" or "we don't condone harassment, you're wrong about us." The problem with the first is that it's denying that harassment is happening in their name. Pretending something isn't happening doesn't keep it from happening and is only telling the assholes that they have a shield.

The problem with the second is that it shows that GamerGate's only motivation in dealing with harassment is their PR. It's belittling to their critics because if they really don't condone harassment, then the critics being wrong would be obvious.

Then there's the fact that GamerGate continues to focus on their criticism instead of the issues. If they were to actually focus on the issues while dealing with their PR issues as opposed to ignoring the issues to (extremely poorly) deal with their PR issues, then their PR issues would be much easier to deal with because they wouldn't be seen as only being on the defensive.

Instead of shouting "we don't condone harassment" ad nauseum, GamerGate should be saying "we don't condone harassment and we'll deal with it as it comes, so let's talk about the issues because that's the important part." If the issues are the important part, they need to actually put the issues first.

Of course, even if they were focusing on the issues, the issues that they perceive are not even real issues. Let's actually look at those issues for a moment:

* Ethical reporting in game journalism: The proof that GamerGate has put forth that game journalism has issues with ethics is so flimsy it may as well not exist. The next issues will cover why.

* Collusion among journalists to attack GamerGate: This doesn't happen. The only "evidence" put forth that it does is GameJournoPros, which is pretty much just a social club for game journalists. These kinds of social clubs for professionals in any field have existed for literally centuries and ones that involve journalists are particularly popular because, even when they work for competing publications, journalists still communicate for the sake of making sure their coverage is top notch.

* The "gamers are dead" articles: Related to my last point. While I see why GamerGate finds the timing of these articles suspicious, the fact of the matter is that they were published so closely together because they were in response to the fledgeling GamerGate. Timeliness was the entire reason for them being published on the same day. Furthermore, despite GamerGaters taking them as personal attacks, these articles, while some are bitter in tone (imagine that, people get bitter and angry when they're told that they suck at their job with no evidence to support such claims), are opinion pieces about the lunatic fringe in the gaming community that thinks harassment is OK being pushed away by other gamers.

Here's the thing about opinion pieces: They only reflect the views of the person who wrote them. They are not editorials. There's a difference. Editorials are the agreed opinions of a group, usually the editorial board, but sometimes the publication's whole staff, while opinion pieces are an individual opinion. While it's possible that most or even all of a publication's staff agrees with the piece, it's still only the writer's opinion and no one else's. Respect the by-line. There are writers on publications I read that I tend to ignore because I don't like the writer. For example, I can't take Kotaku's Richard Eisenbess seriously after he called Sword Art Online the "smartest anime [he's] seen in years."

Am I missing any issues that are actually related to the alleged goal of reforming game journalism?