It's kind of weird that both sides feel the need to become even more extreme, neglecting and forgetting an excluded (I'd also haphazard, majority) middle, till it's time to vote that is. Then "The Pandering" takes place...

Quote from: WongJKI've had to stop reading The Verge and Polygon because of this fiasco.

I've stopped reading all Gawker media (which the Nerdist and io9 are hard to pass up), but Cracked was the surprise loss for me.

Cracked let ZQ write her own article, on what GamerGate was about, and tried to write it off as neutral (while banning counter-arguments).

Bull...shit. I'm sure Nixon would have written a neutral article on WaterGate, a month after it happened, too. :rolleyes:

You know, I actually don't mind if your anti-GG; the Escapist is definitely anti-GG, but (and this is important), they allowed people to disagree on their forums. They didn't outright ban people for having the contrary view.

Even if I disagree with you, if you're willing to have the debate, that earns you a fair shake of respect in my eyes. It also makes me feel like you might actually believe in what you're saying, rather than saying something with an ulterior motive (be cool, feel morally superior, don't want to be called names, etc).

Yeah, I used to really like Cracked too, but then they followed up on GG with this article by Luke McKinney.  Needless to say, I think it's a pretty shitty one sided article that has some major problems

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;790898What do you all think?

I think Twitter Outrage Wars are nonsense, until we see activism from either side in real life actions. So far GG is 99% digital spank. Let's see what the landscape looks like in late 2015 and see if GG had any positive/negative effect.

My bet is that October 2015 will be too filled with its own new Twitter Outrage War for anyone to care about this one.

Quote from: Novastar;791109You know, I actually don't mind if your anti-GG; the Escapist is definitely anti-GG, but (and this is important), they allowed people to disagree on their forums. They didn't outright ban people for having the contrary view.

Correct. And the anti-GG crow knocked out The Escapist's forum with a DDOS attack for a while, shortly after TE refused to take it down.


Eric Kain from Forbes is doing some excellent, balanced coverage of the debacle. To quote:

Quote from: ForbesI don’t agree with everything I see associated with the tag, and there really are hateful people out there using it, too, but by and large what I see in #GamerGate are a lot of very disgruntled, jaded, and alienated gamers. They’re not alienated because they feel the world is evolving beyond their comfort zone, they feel alienated because the media is outright telling them they need to hurry up and die. This feels particularly disingenuous when this same media appears more interested in being chummy with developers and publishers or pushing a specific social agenda, and less concerned with games and the people who play them.

Well worth the read, if you have five minutes.

Quote from: Piestrio;791002I started getting put off a few years back when they started talking about freedom of speech as a purely legalistic concept and started mocking the very idea that it could be a value that a private citizen/organization could legitimately uphold.

That whole "freedom of speech only means the GOVERNMENT can't censor you, not that you can't be harassed, fired, blacklisted and banished from society forever, what are some kind of hate monger that actually thinks people shouldn't be punished for speaking their minds?"

And I'M ashamed to admit I bought into that at one point.

It's a surprisingly wide spread and (I hate to say it) toxic outlook in progressive circles. In part because so many that buy into the current trends are utterly convinced of there moral and ethical superiority they feel that can do no wrong.

Amusingly it strikes me as similar to the way the "heroes" in police procedural shows often run roughshod over civil rights and the bounds of legal authority because the "know" their target is guilty and we're supposed to root for them (and can because of our perspective we know they're right).

Quote from: Nexus;791254Amusingly it strikes me as similar to the way the "heroes" in police procedural shows often run roughshod over civil rights and the bounds of legal authority because the "know" their target is guilty and we're supposed to root for them (and can because of our perspective we know they're right).

It's a poetic twist of circumstances: Dirty Harry used to be a right-wing fantasy...

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;791259It's a poetic twist of circumstances: Dirty Harry used to be a right-wing fantasy...

Overtly left-Wing cop shows (which are common in the UK) IME tend to focus on rooting out internal corruption within the police 'service'. Shows like Between The Lines and especially Prime Suspect have the hero(ine) battling the sexist racist white male patriarchy.

US shows like 'Law & Order' are anti-WASP (the villains are WASP, the heroes are typically white non-WASP), but I wouldn't exactly call them left-wing; I expect they reflect the preferences of someone like Republican former New York Mayor Bloomberg pretty closely. Law & Order isn't really a Social Justice Warrior show in the manner of the BBC police procedurals.

Law and Order did a few shows showing black criminals and how far their lawyers would go to defend them.  There was a few times when the defense lawyers tried to guilt trip the protagonists.  Hell it showed some very guilty people getting off free.  This is not due to corruption in the system, but it did show that the system isn't completely perfect either.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;790898For the record, while I am and remain very socially liberal, I had been feeling increasing discomfort over the way SJW types were using women/minorities prior to #gamergate.

I can sympathize and for more reason than the gamergate debacle. I consider myself to be fairly liberal but the modern day progressive movement has become something I can't really back anymore. The behavior is so smug, self righteous and holier than thou and employs many of the same tactics its followers found objectionable in the "enemy" with demands that are increasingly OTT and even somewhat authoritarian to the point of being repressive like they're going to cram their particuar view of "Right Thinking" down everyone's throat.

Now it's gotten to the point of "If you're not with us, you're against us" or "you HAVE to publicly choose a side or we'll assume that you're against us".

This:

http://inurashii.tumblr.com/post/99751399160/gamergate-and-the-golden-mean-fallacy

And with that goes all of my urge to be interested in internet conversations or debates regarding social justice.

Quote from: Necrozius;791609And with that goes all of my urge to be interested in internet conversations or debates regarding social justice.

Mine died years ago.  To think if liberals had done the wise thing and snip out the cancer this shit would had never been a damn issue.  Seriously social justice warriors are the crazies of the left as the tea party is the crazies of the right.

Quote from: Necrozius;791609Now it's gotten to the point of "If you're not with us, you're against us" or "you HAVE to publicly choose a side or we'll assume that you're against us".

This:

http://inurashii.tumblr.com/post/99751399160/gamergate-and-the-golden-mean-fallacy

And with that goes all of my urge to be interested in internet conversations or debates regarding social justice.

Blind irony piled on top of blind irony. The author of that piece cites Bush as a villain in a piece that advocates Bush tactics.

I was talking about this with a friend two days ago. His tactic for dealing with people like this on any end of any spectrum when they shove themselves into your space? Just say "sorry" as sincerely as you can, with no disclaimers / qualifiers / elaborations, but as soon as they aren't paying attention anymore go on with your life as if nothing happened. Words speak louder than actions for these types, and they don't have as much sway as they think they do. Your customers will still be your customers as long as you don't say anything that can be used against you.

At least, that's how he sees it.

Quote from: Necrozius;791609Now it's gotten to the point of "If you're not with us, you're against us" or "you HAVE to publicly choose a side or we'll assume that you're against us".

This:

http://inurashii.tumblr.com/post/99751399160/gamergate-and-the-golden-mean-fallacy

And with that goes all of my urge to be interested in internet conversations or debates regarding social justice.

The bit that undermines the whole argument:

QuoteGamerGate is not an official entity, but it IS an existing collective. There are no membership lists, no appointed leaders, and no expulsion process. Anyone can set goals, anyone can promote materials. This gives GG a tremendous amount of flexibility and has allowed it to bring together a lot of people quickly and dodge a lot of potential liability issues. But to any rational person, that should be a double-edged sword: it means that the group cannot disavow membership of harassers.

Either GamerGate can be a collectivist "people's movement" that shields harassers, or it can be an organization with clear goals, bylines, leadership, and the ability to tell someone to get the hell out.

In contrast, "anti-GamerGate" is not a movement. It's a stance. Someone who literally hates video games can be anti-GG (and probably is, unless it's Milo). Anti-GG doesn't have manifestos or operations or chatrooms, it's a just a description applied to anyone who says "Hey, this is fucked up." If you live somewhere that's Crip or Blood territory, you don't say that there's a third "no-colors" gang. That's just people who aren't in a gang.

(Bold is from the post). The post is saying there is no middle ground. The bold is saying anti-gamergate is the people who aren't in a gang; the unfortunates caught in the crossfire who just want to be left alone to live their lives.

So just who is the gang the GG crew is fighting with? It's not themselves, could it be some anti-GG crew? If so, who would the people not in a gang be?

I think some prescriptions for Sombunall are in order.

Quote from: Necrozius;791609Now it's gotten to the point of "If you're not with us, you're against us" or "you HAVE to publicly choose a side or we'll assume that you're against us".

This:

http://inurashii.tumblr.com/post/99751399160/gamergate-and-the-golden-mean-fallacy

And with that goes all of my urge to be interested in internet conversations or debates regarding social justice.

Only a SJW would conflate outrage at journalistic corruption combined with first world elitist snobbery with Apartheid.  What's next, the Martin Niemoller quote?

Quote from: Necrozius;791609Now it's gotten to the point of "If you're not with us, you're against us" or "you HAVE to publicly choose a side or we'll assume that you're against us".

This:

http://inurashii.tumblr.com/post/99751399160/gamergate-and-the-golden-mean-fallacy

And with that goes all of my urge to be interested in internet conversations or debates regarding social justice.

Shit, man, what else do you expect from a Tumblrina.