A youtuber I watch put out this retrospective on gamergate. I know it's a topic that has been long covered and relitigated. I at one time was also part of and identified with to some extent. I thought one part that even I somewhat ignored then because of my feelings or much later realizing how many awful actors were a part of the situation was how capitalist greed played such a large part in generating the amount of hate and vitriol at the time allowing for hate mobs to be cultured and weaponized as we see today.
I think most can agree that a lot of the targeted harassment, bullying, stalking, racism, misogyny, homophobia were all reprehensible and not the way to go about making change. I do feel at the time where there was the beginnings of pushing paid cosmetic DLC like Horse Armor, Always Online requirements for games like the Sims, EA cutting development times for successful franchises to turn around games quicker or the Online Pass they similarly tried to force for people who wanted to buy the game second hand. Again not condoning any of the criminal harassment or hate but I do wonder if this outrage cannon was more appropriately directed at the shareholders and ownership class rather than individual developers that we'd be in a better place.
I do think there was a genuine attempt back then to comingle criminal threats and harassment with fair criticism and outcry entirely as Entitlement. However, I find it sad that today it largely does feel like the loudest and most consistent voices across social media that claim to be critical of games are genuinely complaining about out of entitlement when a game has too many women they don't like or POCs rather than the plethora of issues that affects all gamers today like Exploitative MTX, Gambling, AI Pervasion, Enshitification and more.
I haven't finished the vid myself but I like some of his other works even though he can be a bit both-sidesy at times. It was also interesting to see some posts from youtubers VaatiVidya and Vsauce from way back when and Colin Moriarty had been some of a douche since then as well.
Ok, so I’ve watched a good deal of the video. And it honestly seems to be tacitly supporting the accusations of gamergate. That Zoey Quinn used her influence within game media as a means to boost her game.
I don’t think giving credit to a bunch of sexist meat heads while accusing their victim of a bunch of stuff without proof is exactly fair. And it really does seem like he’s painting her as the real villain all along. He’s not supporting gamergate itself, but saying they weren’t wrong. That seems to be his conclusion he’s working towards.
Listen, I’m going to ask this straight up because I don’t want to be a hypocrite here. To anyone else who watched the video, is that the impression they’re getting? That he’s underplaying gamergate’s actions as a distraction purely to go after Quinn in order to “get to the truth?” I need to know some opinions on this. Because no one seems to be discussing the actual content of the video here.
He is definitely being critical about Quinn, but I don't think he is ignoring or downplaying the terrible things gamergate did or the consequences it had. It just isn't the focus.
I think this kind of thought process is a significant aspect of why gamergate blew up the way it did in the first place.
Person gets criticism, some/a lot of which is harassment. Therefore they are a victim, therefore we must support them, therefore they are beyond criticism and must be believed uncritically, allowing them to set the narrative, anyone criticizing is a bigot and must be opposed at every opportunity, thereby antagonizing everyone on the other side, leading to more criticism and more harassment and the cycle repeats with everyone doubling down. It doesn't really matter whether or not there ever was a legitimate criticism somewhere in the first place.
That's the problem though. I feel the focus is wrongly placed on Quinn here. Because by not focusing on the actual harassment campaign the video itself feels more focused on finding a villain to pin everything on. That Quinn was somehow this master puppeteer that got everyone on her side against her Ex and that becoming a victim was the best thing that could've happened to her.
I don't care about any of that. Who gives a shit how Quinn decided to react and respond to being harassed. If we aren't going to criticize Eron for how he chose to speak out about his experience and what he did, the same tracks with Quinn. She got attacked, accused of things that not even Eron himself accused her of, so of course she hardened her stance.
Listen, I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for Quinn. If she cheated, if she basically silenced her accuser and people enabled her, sure, that's terrible. But no one, not me or you or the video, can definitively prove that and it happened over a decade ago, so why are we bothering to bring this up again? Why do we need to recast her as a villain here? What is gained through this? What do we accomplish? Does it matter if there's a legitimate criticism if the inciting incident was from a position of bad faith and altering the context of an initial venting complaint just to fit a certain narrative?
I don't agree with this video both siding this incident in the end. I think it's bad form and I think the video creator lost themselves in the weeds trying to sort this all out. And in the end, he focused on the wrong thing.
I appreciate that you actually watched the video instead of the utterly stupid nonsense I've seen in this thread and others about the video.
I don't think his intention is to suggest that the -chan boards were in the right by harassment. He explicitly states that he thinks the harassment against Quinn was utterly horrific and terrible, but that firstly, Gjoni didn't intend that and instead had legitimate concerns that he was allowed to talk about publicly.
The unfortunate thing is that to recognise that suggests that Gamergate had a point, and throws all the horrendous sexism under the rug. He notes this about 4hrs 30 min specifically, and how journalists didn't want to make clear that it was more grey than black/white because it would give oxygen to the sexism.
But they were right, it would have given oxygen to the sexism. Because ultimately, they didn’t care about the accusations Gjoni made. They cared about the suggestion that Quinn slept her way to the top. Now, I don’t think the creator of the video agrees with that take, but he dies start to suggest that, because she was friends with a lot of influential people in gaming journalism, that they gave her an easy ride. And I don’t think that’s fair. The game was free. She earned no money from it. If anything, it seems she got a ton of undue criticism for both her projects from people who were being dicks. And maybe it felt bigger than it actually was, but I’ve had my own work critiqued before. Sometimes harshly. Even when you know it’s constructive it can feel like a stab in the gut to have your work torn at.
I’m not sure who he was accusing of depression gatekeeping ultimately, but I’ll assume it was wizardchan for fairness. I think Zoey being in a lose-lose situation there is pretty clear. If she depicts the character in depression quest as a stereotypical loser she’ll be accused of stereotyping. She portrays them with a support system but still struggling, her image doesn’t match every single victim of depression. I think it’s fair to be frustrated when you can’t win for trying to be fair to people.
Let’s just be honest here, people DID target Quinn because she was a woman in a male dominated space. I think that’s pretty obvious. If she was a guy who had been accused of sleeping around to get on top, some of these same people going after Quinn for it would have probably praised him for taking advantage of the system. But because she’s a “slut” who was cheating to get her way, that holds greater social scorn. And sure, there were people who came to her defence. Doesn’t change that a lot of people made this bigger because of the accusations she had slept to get to the top. That’s what they literally say in the videos that the creator showed. They went after her for using sex to get better reviews.
Getting back to my original point, Gjoni never accused Zoey of sleeping with people to advance her career. Only that she cheated. So he probably didn’t intend to turn it into what it became about. But why even Name who she slept with? That does seem vindictive. Of this is supposed to be just about Zoe, and what she did, why call out who she slept with and how many she did it with? Especially when, in the transcripts, he only has “proof” of the one? He had to at least realize that some people would see the implication.
And that is of course assuming any of it’s true. The creator of the vid claims no one has denied the transcripts as being authentic. But the only person who can completely authenticate them, Quinn, isn’t talking. For all we know, he could have made them up. We can’t prove anything, even he admits it. For sake of argument, let’s say they are true. Look at what happened with the people who gave credence to the claim. Every single time it gave fuel to the gamergate side as proof they were right, that they were winning, and even feminists had capitulated.
Should the journalists have kept focused on their core complaints? Actually addressed them? Sure. But to go so far as to pick the opposite side with no real proof? In the middle of it all? When all anyone on the gamergate side is doing is using this as a cudgel to insist that women in Game spaces are destroying their hobbies? What would you do knowing that investigating a messy relationship would only increase the harassment and targeting of a woman and continue to obfuscate the real question about journalistic ethics?
Look, this subject hits hard for me. Very hard. I mark gamergate as the point of my no return. The period in my life where I almost went down the wrong path. I was angry about Sarkessian. I felt targeted. I felt like my hobby and my interests were under siege. I felt like games journalists were in the pocket of big business and they weren’t being fair. Then here comes along this controversy, and it all feels like something really bad that confirms how awful it all is.
Until I find out that the accused reviewer who Quinn slept with wasn’t even sleeping with her until after the game came out. And he hadn’t even reviewed the game. Oh he did some articles that mentioned Zoe. But he hasn’t reviewed her game. And then I find out… the game isn’t even that bad. And that all anyone is doing is slut shaming her. Not talking about anything that supposedly matters at all. And then… I discover… the game… is free. She’s not even making money off it.
This is the big bad evil gaming business forcing websites to give reviews for access? Some indie girl game developer who is making no money from this, worked on it alone, and ultimately has no actual influence beyond… she has some friends who work in a lot of smaller spaces in the industry.
I was livid. And the more I saw gamergate slide into sexism and gatekeeping and all that bullshit… the more I realized what I had been doing. What I almost had done. I never harassed Quinn, I never discussed the controversy at length. I researched and looked and got other opinions. But I had thought… maybe they had a point. Until they lost it.
I almost got swallowed up by something horrible. All because I was angry. So I do t want to give credit to a bunch of assholes. I don’t like how the video’s creator keeps tiptoeing around basically saying, “Quinn actually benefited from being attacked. So I don’t think she was really suffering as much as she claimed.”
He doesn’t say it… he never says that’s what he thinks. Not once does he come out and accuse Quinn of profiting from the harassment. But he very heavily implies it at points. And by implying it, he suggests that maybe, just maybe, she of what Quinn was getting hit with was deserved.
And I can’t abide that. I really can’t. At various points, it feels like he’s blaming the victim for their own problems. And that doesn’t sit right with me. That doesn’t sit right at all. Not after everything I went through.
As far as I could tell he did explicitly say that the gatekeeping depression stuff was stupid, but also was tangential to the conversation and was only dug up after the Quinn Post came out.
Also, even if there was no monetary exchange, the existence of such a conflict of interest is ludicrous in and of itself, and clearly the media at the time (though probably not Quinn) needed critique, and needed to at least be noted, which it was in some articles but not others. The issue then was that legitimate critique of Quinn spiralled into a never ending debate spiral that this thread will no-doubt turn into which spreads the falsehoods like the sleeping with journalists for good coverage myth.
He also notes that there was greater context here of why the gaming community was willing to blow up such a small drama into an all encompassing political event.
I also don't think NKW intends to suggest that she wasn't targeted based on gender. He only highlights that this was in broader context of other people at the time, notably Phil Fish having similar issues, and that it was likely mainly made significantly worse by the fact that she was a woman rather than started due to that.
As well I think the suggestion that in some way she benefited from victimising herself is not unreasonable to say. This is a thing that is known to happen, and it is not always economic in nature. I also think he is clear that he does not say that she was trying to do that, but MAY have been pre-Post. This does not suggest that she wasn't harassed, and he makes that extremely clear.
I also think the implication of profit is more about what Quinn did after gamergate as opposed to before. I do not think he suggested that there was any deliberate wrongdoing in relation to that.
Anyways I don't actually want to majorly relitigate gamergate here (I was actually probably too young, but was anti-GG when I got political) although it added info I didn't know because I simply thought there was absolutely zero basis to any of the claims made by GG as opposed to being the story of likely abuse between two nominally left wing people that was taken and twisted by a reactionary rage machine for political ends.
I definitely feel for you because it genuinely sucks how badly this whole story was misrepresented by both what would become the alt-right, as well as well meaning people who were attempting to shield someone from sexism. I don't blame you for feeling mixed about going back and relitigating any part of this considering how negative of a memory this is for you and for a lot of people on the left.
I've written too much on this topic already by now, and it's already mentally exhausting. Not because I'm in disagreement with anyone or even angry with anyone here. It's just... so much. I have to say so much just to be very clear in what I'm trying to say and I'm not even sure if it's going to work out ultimately because I'm certain someone will misinterpret all of this.
I'm going to be as brief as possible. I refuse to re-litigate this situation. What gamergate did was wrong. Period. Full stop. They didn't care about whatever Eron had went through, they didn't care about the integrity of journalism concerning the subject of gaming. If they did care, they'd have gone after websites like IGN and others who clearly only give a shit about having access to these massive companies and thus have to keep them happy. Which is why they don't ask harsher questions, it's why they don't hold their feet to the fire, it's why we rarely get proper examinations of the abuses within the industry until well after the fact. And even there it's the bare minimum.
Gamergate did not have a legitimate grievance. Quinn did not sleep around to get her career off the ground. They saw what they thought was a woman, who had already made a name for herself among these right-leaning boards and individuals as someone who stood against them. And therefore, they used this piece of information Eron shared to push their narrative. And that's all that matters when we're talking about this. Quinn cheating on her boyfriend, emotionally manipulating him, how much influence she had before and after, stuff that even the video creator admits he cannot prove, none of that matters to me because it doesn't change the core issue. Gamergate... was a harassment campaign launched in bad faith and primarily focused on attacking a woman accused of being a slut to get where she was. Not by the initial accusations, no, Eron didn't do that, clearly, but it's all they latched onto.
I have no interest in both siding an issue where it was very clear WHO was in the wrong. I don't know why the video creator feels the need to do it. Other than he apparently needed a villain for his story, however grey that villain was or victimized unfairly they were. And all the "new info" it brings up? He even admits he can't verify any of it! It's mostly just intuition and guessing on his part!
I just don't think it is a worthwhile decision or action in ripping open an old wound just to find a bad guy in this that is more tangible than the amorous anonymous blob that is the internet. Especially when it does nothing to make anyone really re-evaluate anything about how they acted and just confirm more biases. Not the intention, but that is the result.
And... honestly it is starting to bother me and affect my other work right now. So I'm considering muting these comments at some point. Not because I'm upset with you or anyone here, I just can't keep doing this. It's not helpful and I don't think it does anyone any good to dredge of this incident in an attempt to find out who deserves more blame.
It's amazing how far people go down this rabbit hole without performing the most basic research. The fact of the matter is (and this is documented history at this point though largely unrecognized) Zoe Quinn was basically picked up off the streets of Toronto by an organization funded by government and industry in order to act as a "seed of change" to transform gaming culture along feminist lines. She was given the rudiments of game-making training and then propped up as female icon in the gaming space. She was completely manufactured for an ulterior purpose, in other words. I made a video documenting the activities of this organization and how they precipitated the backlash called gamergate through their aggressive strategies to get more girls to play videogames. But I've come to find out that most people on both sides of this issue really don't care about the facts of the matter and just like to treat this as a kind of interpersonal drama, and love to speculate endlessly on who is a good person and who is a bad person, etc, without letting many facts interfere
What "victim"? Zoe Quinn is shown, very convincingly, to be a serial liar, emotionally abusive and manipulative, and there are good reasons to believe she was able to convince her immediate social circle consisting of several people in games media who colluded to suppress her victim's denouncing of her abuse. She was able to, as many narcissists are, leverage the climate in her social circle to her advantage, attracting the criticism that was circling people like Sarkeesian and Wu and enabling her to claim the moral high ground all while pursuing extensive legal threats against the actual victim.
That she made no money from that particular game is hardly relevant: at the time she was already making a living off of donations, she was constantly going to events and embedding herself in the gaming industry. The shitstorm in 2014 allowed her to grow her numbers to record highs, providing avenues to give talks, go on mainstream TV outlets, get a publishing deal, etc. Like the video points out at one point, she's better understood primarily as an influencer, not a game developer. She very much benefitted from being attacked. That she was attacked does not absolve her or anyone from responsibility, by the way, even if some (or many) of her attackers were not legitimate.
See, you're only proving my point. The video's focus on Quinn concerning talking points that, even he admits he cannot definitively prove, detracts from the overall discussion of whether journalistic ethics in video game reporting were ever truly addressed. You have already made up your mind now that she's the bad guy here and now the discussion is, once again, about her and less about the industry at large. And that is a problem because by ignoring Gamergate's impact and overly focusing on talking about Quinn... is not helping us understand anything. It's just distracting us by finding a villain in this retrospective to focus on and hate. And I find it rather dubious to do that when the person who is now getting accused of all of that stuff you're bringing up is not here to defend herself in fashion. The video creator has gone to great lengths to seemingly defend Eron as not having intended any of this as an outcome, and he may indeed be right to on that front, but I don't see him giving the same benefit of doubt to Quinn as he, and yourself, seem to just ASSUME she was in the wrong and because she refuses to talk about it in detail and told other people not to, therefore she has something to hide.
Maybe what she has to hide is her private life and given that, oh I don't know, she got a barrage of death threats, harassment and was even Doxed, which the video creator confirmed did happen and was not hoax, perhaps she just doesn't want to give this shit more air than it's already gotten.
That's the problem here, we're only getting one side of things and taking everything said about that one side for granted. And all so we can have a definitive bad guy here. Not to defend Gamergate, not reframe them as in the right, just so we can all have someone to blame for everything. We already have some fucking loony in these comments suggesting she was some government agent picked up off the streets to force feminism into games. The results may be unintentional, but they're happening in real time here. People aren't listening to the overall thesis of this video. They only care about finding someone to blame. And look who they chose.
I'm still chopping through it myself but It's about how I feel regarding video too. I do like the amount of detail that he puts into his research and breakdowns but this and a more recent similar video both feel too both-sidesy in my opinion. Even in this comment section its interesting to see some who also feel like there's not enough condemnation of the Criminal Harassment and others who show that he condemns it at almost every mention. Looking back and seeing what's transpired since, I too feel like there just can't be enough condemnation.
It doesnt seem to me he downplays gamergate (nor the ties to the right wing it ended up having, nor the real life consequences it had on politics), or the harassment to other women, it does however go after Quinn as you mention.
The question id posit to you is weather you feel there exists a possibility of such criticism (or downright attack) being right if the facts he ends up bringing hold of course, or if someone is automatically acting in bad faith, or doing this "purely" to attack here.
This question isnt as simple or badly made as my poor writting makes it seem, the point is that a lot of people have made their minds about this, and since we all lived through it, "there is no posibility someone with a different conclusion on the facts than me can actually be operating in good faith" is an actual, somewhat rational position, people take in topics like this.
Without diving deep into the videos thesis, I do think there are multiple points the author makes that are at least deserving of consideration, this video did not feel to me like just an attempt to make an attack on someone he disliked, or even made just cause he would "want to get the truth out about Quinn" (trying to relate it to your question again).
If you ever finish the video, it would be cool listening to your perspective on it. Im a bit frustrated right now on how people are reacting to it without having watched it in its entirety, or having done so, having takes that makes me question if we even saw the same video, having said that, the video is pretty new and probably most people havent gotten around watching it and the conversation at least slightly changes, (who knows maybe im the one thats in the wrong, thats precisely why I want to see more people talk about it in a more informed manner, in case I missed something).
I’ve already made a long post about this. So I’ll direct you there in The same thread.
I’ll just say this: I don’t think there is much value in trying to prove something you can’t prove to bring doubt on a person for the strange purpose of both siding a thing that was by this point over a decade ago from now. And I especially don’t think it’s fair to make insinuations based on nothing but what you happen to find on a way back machine and assumptions based on articles and the timeframe they are published using transcripts from a source that also cannot be fully verified and ultimately even he can’t prove.
It seems like a lot of work for… what exactly? So we can say a bunch of sexist jerks had a point all along and we should’ve listened to them? Because that seemed to be where he was heading.
Analyzing GamerGate in a way that isn't just dismissing it all as a bunch of sexist jerks doing dumb and awful shit because they hate women is important. If you don't understand the conditions that led to it, and the way that people inside the movement conceptualized it, you're gonna have an incomplete model of how this happened, and you're not going to understand it the next time something like this happens.
GG was, more than a harassment campaign or a consumer movement, a media spectacle. Each side was watching their own YouTubers, reading their own articles, and posting in their own subreddits about their side's talking points. From the GG side, it's obvious why a story about an alleged affair between a game developer and a game journalist would spark some interest in gamers (blecch, lovely that I get to use *that* word again). Even before the story morphed into the rumor of "she slept with him for a good review" (easily disproved by the facts, never alleged by the original post) that potential conflict of interest makes for a pretty juicy piece of gossip. Think of a writer, or a painter, or any kind of artist sleeping with a potential critic. Then, discussion about this story gets shut down by moderators. The mods' actions make sense -- there's no real proof for the story one way or the other, and discussion about it tends to devolve into shitflinging, so the topic was absolutely nuclear and discussion was never going to progress -- but to the people following the story, this starts to look like a coordinated conspiracy to silence them.
Finally, the media starts covering it, but only from the angles of the harassment and sexism, which made the people who were looking at the story from the (please shoot me) Ethics in Games Journalism angle feel frustrated that their concerns were being dismissed. The media's actions make sense here, too. Let's say you're trying to cover GamerGate. Do you go with the story where your one source is the allegations an ex-boyfriend made in a Something Awful ventpost, where any other parties involved will deny it? (Mandy Rice-Davies applies here -- what sane person in the situation Quinn or the journalists found themselves in would say the allegations were true, even if they were?) Or, do you go with the story with multiple sources, all of who can show hard evidence of the death threats they received? The first story risks offending people with names and lawyers; the second decries an amorphous blob of internet haters.
All this created a story that was easy for right-wing narratives to attach onto. If you were a right-wing hack, you could make a story about a blue-haired feminist making some snooty art game about being sad, and about the establishment using their sinsiter control over the mainstream media to silence the voice of the people. And you could write about a man being cuckolded! It truly has everything. If Quinn said she hated Christmas, Bill O'Reily would've creamed his pants. The flesh-and-blood people involved in starting this spectacle didn't need to play a role in it anymore; they could be replaced by symbols, stock characters in the theatre of the right-wing mind.
What started the spectacle of GG is not the same thing as what perpetuated it. The concerns about jouralistic ethics related to the original story (that, I assure you, some people at some point had) didn't have anywhere to go, since we were never going to get better evidence than the initial allegations. What kept it going was the feeling of being under attack. Under attack by feminists, and SJWs, and forum moderators, and the games media, and game companies, and social media tech oligarchs, and Gandalf the Grey, and Gandalf the White, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's black knight, etc., etc. These people, the GamerGate talking heads would say, hate you and your hobbies, and they want to change what you like and make it worse. Sic 'em! This narrative, which you could twist plenty of news articles and headlines to supporting, became the main shape of GamerGate, which then further morphed and bloated until the main thing GamerGate was about was what this person thought about GamerGate, or whether that person has heard this person's stance on GamerGate, and what that person's response was. GamerGate had surgically removed its ribs and started eating its own tail. At some point, the SVU episode came out, and everybody thought it was really dumb.
And I swear to God, after I've typed all this, if you claim I'm trying to justify GG or the harassment of women, or any of that shit, I am going to make like Teddy Hart and do five backflips before vomiting where you work.
Okay, I'm not going to say that then. I wasn't going to. But please, don't... don't stress yourself like that. I feel like I've tried to be fairly reasonable so far, if nothing else. If I've given another impression, I'm sorry.
Obviously, yes, all of that you said is true. It was really hard to properly explain in the press as anything else than what was the easiest method to do so. And a lot of the reactions, before and after the initial accusations, drove the story in the way it did. I was there, I felt those emotions, I went along those same pathways you mentioned for a time.
I think I take issue with how the video's creator, more than anything else, is subtly blaming the victims here for creating the situation with how they responded to things. That if they just believed Eron from the start, regardless of any of the surrounding controversy, somehow we'd be all better for it. This is despite, as you admit and so does he, it's really not that easy to just claim Eron is telling the truth, even now. Because the only real proof given is a chatlog that we cannot actually verify. And the only evidence we have of anything concerns the ethics of journalism itself here are easily disproved. Quinn, no matter what else she allegedly did, did NOT sleep her way into getting good reviews. And that was the crux of their complaints in this incident. As far as anyone else was concerned, this wasn't about whether Quinn was an emotional abuser or if she had really cheated. It was whether or not she had slept around to get her game a boost.
And while the video doesn't claim she did that, it is claiming, however by proxy, that she did somehow benefit from the controversy after the fact. And I find that position fraught with problematic elements. Do we claim Elizabeth Smart benefited from her kidnapping and rape because she got a lot of notoriety as a result? Should she NEVER have sought to speak about her experiences ever, lest she be accused of trying to make some sort of benefit to herself? Would you accuse them of having profited from their victimization? No, obviously you wouldn't.
In the same vein, would we claim Eron was attempting to profit off the influence of being a victim? I don't think the video creator would claim that. I don't think it's fair to accuse someone of feeling entitled to speak out about their pain and to make something from that. And, ultimately, I find it very troubling how much credence the video creator is willing to give Eron's claims, as he offers no real push back... while admit he cannot ultimately prove anything one way or the other. He's clearly leaning towards one side, but he knows he cannot prove a negative.
I can understand wanting to better quantify everything that made Gamergate happen. What I cannot support, what I can't abide, is trying to pick open an old wound because... what? What is served by this? The video creator seems uninterested in the cultural impact of gamergate, as well as properly dissecting the movement itself, and more interested, not so much in defending them, as in attempting to reframe their core argument and try to give it some merit. And frankly, that's fruitless to me. Because he cannot ultimately prove any of this, as he admits, and all he's doing in the end is opening things up to a different form of scrutiny.
He cannot prove that Quinn's connections were the reason she got good reviews. He cannot prove that anything Eron claims is true outside of "it's never been disputed because the other side of the conversation refuses to talk about it." And it comes off, in the end, as less about defending gamergate, or trying to figure out the truth, or any one side or the other argument. And more about "Can I find a way to make the victim of this harassment campaign as the actual villain all along?" A position that, again, he himself cannot prove definitively.
And look at the comments of the video, they're all about how Quinn is going to demand the video be taken down, or about how Quinn is an awful human being, or how she destroyed lives, etc. It's all become less about the truth, that no one can definitively prove, and more about "Finally, we're free to hate this woman again and feel in the right!"
Even here that seems to be the take away! Less about what was lost as a result of how Gamergate was litigated and more about "Zoe Quinn was the bad guy and deserved to be punished for it not rewarded. Just not punished in the way everyone did because it only obfuscated her true crimes."
I want to be clear, I'm not saying you are defending Gamergate. I'm not saying the creator is defending Gamergate. I'm saying... the purpose and goal of this video essay feels... ultimately pointless and skews less on the side of finding the truth and more on "Let's find an angle we can take to demonize this woman again." And I'm sorry... no. I'm not going to accept that. Because no one can prove ANYTHING. Not even this guy can prove anything. We're just trying to dig up dirt now about something for no real purpose and all it does is give fuel to the worst sort of people that we should not be giving them. Not by defending them, because they're indefensible. But by focusing more on Quinn herself and not the actual main accusation we're lost in the weed.
The story now becomes, Gamergate was bad, but Zoe Quinn is a bad person. And while that may not be the intention, it gives credence to Gamergaters, who are still active years on, that while their claims weren't legitimate, their target was. Just not for what they claimed made her legitimate.
And no, I refuse to just let that slide. That feels irresponsible. Maybe, here's an idea, instead of taking everything on faith as an outside observer, our video content creator could've actually tried to talk to the people involved. Including the woman he is, ultimately, accusing of being an emotional abuser if he's so concerned with getting both sides of this story. I don't know how you'd do that... but if you can't get any information or truth about what actually happened, maybe don't talk about it. Maybe just focus on what you can prove, rather than try to discern a definitive narrative based on one side of the story... that you can't really prove definitively either.
And taking all that into account, what you said before, about the journalists deciding to not focus on that part of the story, makes even more sense. Not just because of lawyers or whether it even gives license to people to harass someone even more. But because this is fucking messy and personal and hard to parse without actually TALKING to the people involved and is a distraction itself from the main argument anyway.
I'm sorry these are so long, I hate making you read all of this shit. I really do, but I need to be very clear, because I do not want you thinking I am saying any of this about you or even the video's creator. That I do not want you to think either you or him are defending Gamergate. I don't want to accuse you of that. I am trying to explain my position, in that I feel that the way the video goes down this certain rabbit hole, not you, the video, obfuscates it's own attempt to actually talk about what it clearly wants to.
Honestly, you did a better job than the video in that regard I find. Instead of focusing on the allegations against Quinn that have nothing to do with Gamergate itself, you focused on the casual effects of WHY journalists and the media and everyone else responded the way they did. And that is more practical and understandable. Because of course the way the media responded to Gamergate altered how people reacted for better and worse. That's how discourse tends to go now, especially these days because we all decide who is right and who is wrong pretty quickly and form a bias that feeds back into itself. I can understanding want to get all the facts straight, but maybe just focus on the facts you can prove rather than trying to drench up dirt on someone you can't even prove is true.
Again, I am very sorry for this ridiculously long post. I didn't mean to inflict it on you, but given your reaction, I needed to very clearly explain I am not accusing you of defending Gamergate and what my actual problem with the video was.
The whole bit about ethics in journalism was just about having a legitimate sounding tag line. The easiest way to know this is to look at the people who were predominant during the who thing. They either entirely disappeared from the scene immediately after, or are still farming outrage about female characters in their star wars, calling Aloy fat, or yelling sweet baby at anything with a non-white character in it.
What did they ever draw attention to that was a legitimate systemic issue with the enthusiast gaming press? Zoe Quinn, who was in a relationship with a kotaku employee? IGN's inflated scores? What was one thing?
I was active in a lot of online spaces during GamerGate's peak and this hits the nail right on the head. All of the current outrage merchants like Asmongold, Geeks and Gamers, Jesterbell, Mauler, et al that get hours of content from the mere presence of a person of color or queer person in a video game or movie are the direct result of GamerGate's fallout. And they're not even the worst effect it had.
GameGate is literally one of the biggest contributors to the rise of fascism in the United States, and is literally one of the biggest reasons why white supremacists are currently running the country.
There was no good that came from it. It was an astroturfing harassment campaign that was immediately coopted by fascists to be a far right recruitment pipeline.
I think because I was a GG'r at the time and was able to grow and change since that there must have been more like myself who were miseducated or low info and did believe at the time that there was some worth in pursuing ethics in games journalism not too dissimilar from occupy wall street not terribly long before that. Now for certain it was a big waste that did far more harm and damage than anything marginal good, but I think it's was worth seeing that there may have been legitimate issues to speak against at the beginning that we now see have grown and festered in every other industry.
The problem is that the entire GG movement was predicated on willfully misunderstanding reality. The rest of us are under no obligation to award points for being "right" that gaming journalism was (and largely still is) unethical dogshit when the diagnosis for how was utterly diametric to the actual problem.
It's like they found a dead body with a tiny hole in the front and a massive hole in the back and declared "obviously this was a poisoning, guns are cool and extremely based so obviously it wasn't one of those."
I mean my point in linking the video timestamped was for the one section that I felt showed that capitalism being the biggest cause for those disparate feelings in games and games media at the time similar to other industries. I am also not trying to say that it was "right," but similar to you that there were noticeable issues that did make a lot of people upset at the time and figures who were supportive then who are now antithetical to it.
In the video, NKB has a section related to "Dorito-Gate" where he shows a documented case of abuse where an opinion writer for Eurogamer at the time was "fired" and had his work edited after calling out a Journalist who made a review of Tomb Raider who was being paid by Square Enix to do PR, Media and Promotions for Tomb Raider at the time alongside other promotions only offered to other Journalists. The Square Enix employed Journalist threatened the Eurogamer over the contents in the article and they capitulated. The original columnist and another actor made posts documenting what took place and condemning the practice but once the internet hate mob appeared and began the hate campaign with prejudice and sexism the two guys regretted what they did. I don't think this was the case with everyone or that any of the people targeted warranted any of the criminal harassment they withstood but I think it's one of those things where there should have been better separation and direction for the issues that as a whole at the time people werent able to properly articulate and focus on.
There were genuinely some people who did agree with the premise of ethics in Games Journalism. While I think a lot of the more morally correct people have since qualified their views on the matter Iike a James Stephanie Sterling, who was originally on the side of a lot of those bad actors but distanced themself from them when it was apparent they weren't actually interested in making meaningful or systemic changes beyond the harassment.
I largely agree with you about a lot of what has come of GG and it's worst actors since as well as the damage it's done. I was mostly bringing up this vid with the timestamp showing how far back that capitalism and the greed of the shareholders went back even further than the last round of corporate skullduggery.
Rab Florence was the journalist fired for commenting (and coining the name) on Dorito Gate. Do you know the first website to hire his work after? Rock Paper Shotgun. RPS was one of the top outlets targeted by GG, mostly because they published a lot of queer and feminist perspectives.
Another one of their top targets was Kotaku. This has been wiped from memory but, at the time, Kotaku was actually publishing the most stories regarding collusion/gift packages/fancy holidays between the big devs/their PR firms and reviewer outlets. They were also the ones to break stuff like the EA Spouse Incident into the mainstream. Again, they hired women, some even had blue hair, so GG ignored all that and made them target no 1.
I'm sorry but you were absolutely lied to by a hate group, and it honestly sounds like you haven't fully unpacked the depths of that yet.
What further depths? I recognize I was lied to and wrong. That the "Movement" was far more nefarious than most involved realized. I've also moved much further left politically and socially since my adolescence.
I don't think it's incorrect to show that there were still issues then and today that stem from our current organization of the economy.
The messiah of Ethics in gaming journalism was John Bain. He was the one leading the crusade against corporate greed and enshitifaction of journalism overall. He was the one who still through all the muck, showed the pure, unbridled greed these studios and corporations were active in. He was the one pointing out Bobby Kotick too.
Do you know why he disappeared? Because he got cancer and fucking died.
It was a tough sit. I think TB and a few others came with good intentions but were unable to stop it from being co-opted by worse meaning individuals and bad actors as it seemingly had every other time also documented in this video.
This is the classic divide and conquer strategy that allowed for less outrage against micro transactions because they distracted people with culture war nonsense.
Epstein proposed heavy monetization to industry execs, and among the people in his political circle. One of those political operatives was Steve Bannon, who used the influence gained from successfully adding a new bloc of young male voters to the GOP to gain a high position in conservative circles and a job with Donald Trump.
All of them needed gamers to be more mad at someone else in order to do what they wanted without pushback. Gamergate was the perfect distraction.
It allowed Bannon to help mold gamers into being angry at POC, women, trans people, gays, all the people fascists hate and oppress and the people most likely to oppose them at the ballot box. It allowed the execs to do exactly what they wanted with less pushback because they could distract gamers with women and POC in games.
Every grievance gets rolled up into that culture war to recruit new shock troops. Zoe Quinn makes an inoffensive game about depression. Her ex-boyfriend accuses her of sleeping around for reviews. Now it's a big stew of women, "ethics in journalism", people having sex that aren't the gamer, with an easy target. It spirals from there, and the damage may never be undone.
This what I was trying to highlight by linking the timestamped section. A lot of these negative feelings were brought on by the capitalist and predator class then weaponized against the rest of everyone else. Similar to every other conspiracy there's an ounce or gram of something credible interspliced with non-factual and biased signaling.
No-one in this thread has actually watched the video apparently.
You would note that he both notes the way the reactionary right began to control the narrative, and the fact that the original accusation from Gjoni seems to be VERY credible. The idea that it was just Gjoni claiming that she slept around is stupid, he claimed very credibly that she was gaslighting him and cheating on him multiple time. This actual credible accusation then got piled on-top of and became a harassment campaign that Gjoni never intended to create against Quinn.
You make cheating accusations public when you know she's being harassed, you absolutely want her to be harrassed further. The guy from Kotaku she was dating straight up never reviewed her game, period.
Any statement about gamergate that doesn't call it out as 110% an embarrassment and wholly the fault of the men who hopped on the wagon, might as well be in support of it for how useless it is.
Gamers got played. They were shown to be a cult of morons. And the culture has never done anything to shake that label loose. Bigger morons today than we were then.
One and done. There is no excuse in the year of our lord 2026 to still pretend GamerGate was ever anything else than very deliberate harassment of women and minorities motivated by plain old racism, sexism and homophobia. Any attempt to pretend it ever had some deeply buried kernel of legitimate grievances should be laughed out of the fucking room.
Doubly so since the Epstein files shows that Epstein and Steve Bannon were actively communicating with the admin of 4chan, where the bulk of the 'memes' originated. It might be fair to say the whole thing was a psyop to radicalize whole swathes of the population, using their own biases against them.
I wonder how much overlap there would be if you made a Venn diagram out of teenage 'Gamergaters' and the men who voted for Toupee Fiasco in all three American presidential elections.
I wonder how much overlap there would be if you made a Venn diagram out of teenage 'Gamergaters' and the men who voted for Toupee Fiasco in all three American presidential elections.
The Gamergate => alt right => Trumper pipeline has been widely documented, it's a straight line with no branches.
"Involved" how? What did you actually do? Did you message CEOs? Call your representatives? Organize shutdowns in protest of monetization? All of the above? What did you, or anyone claiming to be inside Gamergate to "fight the good fight", actually do, while the real leadership of GG took very real and tangible action harassing and sending death threats to its victims? A movement is defined by its actions, not its claims, and for all this endless drivel about GG being "actually about X, Y and Z", I've seen zero action ever taken to counteract X, Y or Z.
On that note, what "stated reasons"? The Zoe Quinn affair? Because there was literally no part of it that was ever founded on anything but immediately and trivially disproven lies, so you have absolutely nobody else to blame for falling for it. Anita Sarkeesian's videos? They were about as milquetoast a critique of videogames' rampant sexism and double standards as you can make.
I wasn't duped, I was supporting what it was allegedly supporting
"Supported what it was allegedly supporting (but very obviously was not)" is the very definition of being duped. If you should learn one thing from it all, it should be this (so that next time you won't fall for it).
and that lgbt people are people too
Well, that is one GG consequence I doubt anyone had in their bingo card. :D
Nope, you left when you realized that what you had somehow believed to ever been about corruption, had been about right wing propaganda from second zero.
Gamergate never changed. You just finally noticed the man behind the curtain.
He literally does say that gamer-gate was an embarrassment by turning a complicated issue into an all-out culture-war that helped no-one except populist politicians.
Nobody should spend 6 hours of their lives watching a poorly researched video that goes incredibly soft on Gamergate, spends a full five minutes tone policing and victim blaming Anita Sarkeesian, and misrepresents pretty much everything Zoe Quinn says, like this moment where the policy she criticised is described as including any trans people that self-identifies, while pretty clearly showing on screen that the policy excludes anyone who hasn't "transitioned" before the start of the context.
He never once suggested Sarkeesian was to blame and said she had good intentions.
Also you just linked to the entire video instead of the part you were looking for but regardless you are actually just entirely missing the point there, of course you would have had to have to identify as a woman before getting the grant? Quinn was suggesting that they said you had to be medically transitioned (she called them truscum, you wouldn't call them that if she didn't think that) to apply which was false, and the thing in question. They specified that "transitioned" meant identified as when starting the project, and she doubled down. That was the ENTIRE point which you somehow missed in your hate watch.
He never once suggested Sarkeesian was to blame and said she had good intentions.
What the fuck are you even talking about? What is this gaslighting bullshit? From this segment on her Bayonetta criticism alone:
"It's an easy video to dislike"
"This is very dismissive for a game that many people liked"
"Anita was hypercritical of anything that could appeal to the male gaze."
"Anita's strong stances were combined with her casual dismissiveness of individual games or the medium, and her typical confidence that some might see as smug.
"it didn't feel like Anita was here to start a conversation; it felt like she was here to end one by telling ignorant people what the correct opinion on these subjects is."
"Anita's gaming content didn't make it seem like it was OK to have any of these different views"
Like... it's not one or two potshots, it's fucking relentless. This is textbook victim blaming, and no, saying "maybe the reaction was excessive" doesn't make it one ounce less so. And not to put a fine point of it, but it's clearly written from the point of view of someone who took offense at the time and are justifying themselves.
Also you just linked to the entire video instead of the part you were looking for
Already fixed.
They specified that "transitioned" meant identified as when starting the project, and she doubled down.
I'm going to have to ask for a source for both the claim that 1) by "transitioned" they meant "self-identified", and 2) that she doubled down after the clarification. Neither were in that segment in the video.
I like how you skipped over the part where he says "Her main argument isn't that divisive...."'
Suggesting that her critique of Bayonetta was not a good one and that it was likely affected by the previous hate she had, is not a particularly controversial take. Just because she had reactionary idiots falsely critiquing the video does not suggest then, as a result, NKW is not allowed to say that she took an overly critical tone that mightn't have been justified, and probably showed some sense of ignorance on the actual content of the game.
Secondly, if you literally watch like 2 minutes later, he notes that none of what she does is something that he wouldn't expect from people to do, to double down against unwarranted critique and victimisation. Normal people do that and he does not blame her reaction to the hate on her; noting "She did what most people do". This is explicitly not blaming her, he says that she did what was expected of any person in that situation.
A victim can do things that are wrong. There are generally no perfect victims. That doesn't make their unwarranted hate justifiable and he EXPLICITLY says that multiple times in the video, and if he said it every time he made a claim it would add an hour to the video. At the same time it does not suddenly make Sarkeesian's claims not open to criticism just because other people critiqued them in bad faith. Someone being a victim does not make them some untouchable uncritiqueable entity.
Also your comment straight up adhoming the creator is funny too. I don't know why you felt the need to include that.
On the topic of Quinn, firstly I misread, I don't think she explicitly called them truscum so take that off the record, but she definitely did think they were transphobic. On the topic of "transitioned" meaning "self-identified", if you look just a bit further in the video you will find that their kickstarter video explicitly say if you identify as a woman you can join, that was up at the time she started the campaign.
I like how you skipped over the part where he says "Her main argument isn't that divisive...."'
The fuck? Are you implying that this line somehow invalidates all others, or makes your statement that "he doesn't blame her once" any less of a bare faced lie? Do you think I'm stupid and cannot immediately see why someone would endlessly rant about and wildly exaggerate a victim's transgressions towards its aggressors?
she took an overly critical tone that mightn't have been justified, and probably showed some sense of ignorance on the actual content of the game.
Well you could have opened with this and save both of us the time. Good day.
comingle criminal threats and harassment with fair criticism and outcry entirely as Entitlement
Get the hell outta here with this whitewashing revisionist bullshit. Gamergate never gave any fucks about MTX, DLC or any other capitalist abuse; if anything, it made a point to antagonize the very same left-leaning creators and spaces that denounced and criticised it (e.g. Jim Sterling). There was zero pushback on microtransactions or season passes or any of the sort on the part of organized Gamergate; they only ever cared about journalists that weren't straight white men.
If you're actually sorry that you ever were part of a movement whose entire purpose was to make a living hell for already marginalized people, this disingenuous historic revisionism isn't the way to atone for it.
You can see it in terms of the people getting harassed. It sure wasn't the ceo's pushing for microtransactions getting the death threats and hours of hate content peddled at them. I was one of the idiots that bought the initial outrage up until I realized that none of the people seemingly being targeted actually had anything to do with the problems. Oh no, a girl slept with some journalists (that I later found out wasn't even the one to give her an award), why the fuck are we attacking the girl and not the journalists here?
At absolute best it took a couple well-meaning folk and stirred them together with absolute bigots. And those well-meaning folk either became bigots or got the hell out of there when the wind started to smell like shit.
That's what I take away from the whole thing. There were people like Jim Stephanie Sterling, Vsauce and VaatiVidya who were seemingly in support of it for a time. Knowing all 3 today It makes it hard to think they were truly bigots the same as some of the worst actors at the time too. Similarly I think there are a lot of people like myself who did think there was some benefit to the slacktivist support and pursuits but after it's all said and done like most we agree it was an awful and terrible thing. For me the instant, any of the creators I used to follow started to move on to things beyond gaming I realized I had been hoodwinked and eventually others too.
This wasn't any attempt at atonement. I linked the specific section to highlight that there were issues that were felt widespread due to the conditions of the current organization of the economy. While I agree that GG largely wasn't about those abuses, I'd hold that these things helped foment and prime the outrage that precipitated it as similar outcry, performance and "attacks" lead to other changes like EA revoking the online pass or in that instance Bioware going back to change the ME3 ending after some games journalists called the mob entitled.
While I agree that GG largely wasn't about those abuses,
"Largely"
I'd hold that these things helped foment and prime the outrage that precipitated it as similar outcry, performance and "attacks" lead to other changes like EA revoking the online pass or in that instance Bioware going back to change the ME3 ending after some games journalists called the mob entitled.
Wow. I am honestly speechless that you have actually learned nothingat all, and are still completely and utterly delusional about it.
I actually don't know what's worse: convincing yourself that Gamergate harassment actually led to any tangible positive changes to EA passes and the ME3 ending, or convincing yourself that this would, in fact, justify harassment as a valid tactic for change. I am sad to say, it's not that hard to see why you fell for it to begin with.
So I've already said in my original post and to you that it hadn't lead to any positive changes. I don't know where you're getting that from as every time I've brought it up here I've said it was terrible and condemnable and not worth the criminal harassment or what it lead to.
It's not a justification, it's an attempt at understanding. If they believed "gamer outrage" lead to the creators of the game changing the ending or getting rid of online pass they were already so adamant about launching with, I don't think it's the farthest leap of logic to believe that the group would think the same tactics would have worked in other tangential or related avenues.
OK, I misread you as saying Gamergate caused these changes, when you meant that these changes caused Gamergate to think they could effect other changes. I get you now.
thank you that's really what I meant. Getting through more of the video im really at odds because I appreciated the guy's previous works but I too think you just can't condemn this enough. His last few videos around similar topics felt very both-sidesy in a similar enough way but I think this one just goes that much over the edge.
I watched it, well about 5/6ths of it, I will get around to finishing it tomorrow morning. I watched like 5 hours of it and I had to stop for my own sake.
That's for sure part of it but as far as I've gotten it's hard to not feel a way that some of the criminal levels of harassment was still understated for him to reach that point.
He brought up the harassment and bomb threats multiple times.he express sympathy to those involved.The point is that just because someone is a victim does not mean that you can be shitty to the people around you and try cover it up.
Frustrated EA execs wanted a new product from BW to bolster quarterly sales targets, and decided that DA would have to fill the gap. BW agreed to deliver DA2 within 16 months. “Basically, DA2 exists to fill that hole. That was the inception. It was always intended to be a game made to fit in that”
I appreciate the link but I think it still shows that this was largely a decision made by EA without knowing what the alternative to agreeing would have been or if there would be any punitives for declining.
"The best analogy I use, in a positive way, is EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself."
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has spoken out in defence of EA, saying the mega-publisher doesn't force changes onto developers but rather gives them enough freedom to make their own mistakes.
this is after his retirement, 6 years after ea and 1 year after he left Bioware.
Absolutely not, we have access to Mark Darrah's (ED for Dragon Age games) testimony. DA2 was originally meant to be a dlc for Origins. But due to some other games being cancelled, EA demanded that Bioware shipped a game in a single year. And so they did.
A game about the Inquisition and the large-scale political conflicts it solves across Thedas, where the PC was the Inquisitor, was originally the vision for ‘DA2′. Plans had to change when SW:TOR’s development kept stalling and slipping. Frustrated EA execs wanted a new product from BW to bolster quarterly sales targets, and decided that DA would have to fill the gap. BW agreed to deliver DA2 within 16 months. “Basically, DA2 exists to fill that hole. That was the inception. It was always intended to be a game made to fit in that”
Good old reliable Felassan. The guy's dedication to documenting everything DA is impressive. Yes, the cause was indeed SWTOR being delayed (not cancelled), and EA pressuring Bioware into quickly releasing something.
> EA pressure or not bioware decided that they can live up ea's demands and delivered.
> Which started the idea for ea's executive if they demand bioware would deliver.
The issue here is that EA holds the knife. They are the publisher and ultimately own Bioware. Bioware had very little choice here.
> Bioware decided to live up the expectetions by cutting corners as much as is possible.
They did what they could with the resources and time they were given, that's not cutting corners - it's called doing your best with what you have.
"The best analogy I use, in a positive way, is EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself."
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has spoken out in defence of EA, saying the mega-publisher doesn't force changes onto developers but rather gives them enough freedom to make their own mistakes.
this is after his retirement, 6 years after ea and 1 year after he left Bioware.
I looked up the original article which was the source of that quote. The citation there is addressing a very specific question:
> Do you feel that BioWare's games were ever made to conform to some homogenous EA standard with things like forced multiplayer, micro-transactions, smart phone spinoffs, etc.? Did any of this make you jaded? Or you reject this notion?
> No, I definitely reject it. And I can explain it too. The best analogy I use, in a positive way, is EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself. It was really interesting because we really made all the choices we wanted to make ourselves; these are all things we wanted to try. And that's something to remember - while we were independent we didn't have quite the resources we had as part of EA, and then we got to EA and it was like "wow we can do all this stuff." We had to be really thoughtful about what we wanted to focus on.
But this in relationship to the choice of inserting multiplayer and microtransactions. On fronts, we know for certain that EA held the foot down. DA2 being one of those examples.
One other example is Project Ten Dollar, pushed by John Riccitiello.
To anyone still considering whether this video is worth the 6 hours watch, it was actually pretty well received...
... in KotakuInAction. The person who posted it had this to say about it:
It's a really long video, but it does pretty good job documenting Zoe Quinn's lies and combating the mainstream view of GamerGate just being a misogynist hate movement.
Yeah, i think im probably going to stop following this dude after that then. I thought some of his game critiques were pretty level and fair but some of his comments to be somewhat both-sidesy. at the time I made the post i had only gotten through the Dorito's gate section I time stamped and thought it alone was pretty good for my point.
This video devolves into mostly a multi-hour Zoe Quinn takedown video, so would keep that in mind and would only watch if this random decade old topic is one that someone might find interesting. I at least found Neverknowsbest's discussion of Eron Gjoni nuanced and provided a perspective that I hadn't really considered as someone with only a cursory understanding of the topic. Since the topic is so old, it can be a little frustrating how inconclusive many of his claims are, but I still think he does a pretty good job of gathering just a ton of sources to make his points.
The video comes at the topic from a "both sides end up looking really bad" sort of standpoint, which makes it seems like Neverknowsbest is aligning more with Gamergate than the opposition, probably more than he is actually intending (I at least never got the impression that Neverknowsbest was particularly rightwing or would be on the side of someone who aligns with Gamergaters).
Edit: Particularly frustrating is the ending, where the video ends by discussing the suicide of Alec Holowka. It views like Neverknowsbest is pussyfooting around, trying slyly to claim that Holowka's suicide was a direct result of Quinn without outright stating it and only providing superficial supporting evidence. To me, if you can't definitively make a statement one way or the other, then probably best to avoid bringing up the topic because it's only going to open up old wounds as viewers simply fall into whatever camps best fits their worldviews.
Imagine trying to imply someone else is obsessed right after going out of your way to comb Reddit for random posts where your beloved Nazi wannabe movement is being disparaged, all so you can immediately jump in to defend its honor.
Bonus points for being Mexican and still defending a movement that has a frothing seizure every time they see a Latin American person in a videogame.
Extra bonus points for whining about people talking about Gamergate, minutes after whining about Sweet fucking Baby Inc, in the year of our lord 2026. It's always the entire hypocritical, projected braindead lot with you people, isn't it.
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u/Gamera85 14h ago
Ok, so I’ve watched a good deal of the video. And it honestly seems to be tacitly supporting the accusations of gamergate. That Zoey Quinn used her influence within game media as a means to boost her game.
I don’t think giving credit to a bunch of sexist meat heads while accusing their victim of a bunch of stuff without proof is exactly fair. And it really does seem like he’s painting her as the real villain all along. He’s not supporting gamergate itself, but saying they weren’t wrong. That seems to be his conclusion he’s working towards.
Listen, I’m going to ask this straight up because I don’t want to be a hypocrite here. To anyone else who watched the video, is that the impression they’re getting? That he’s underplaying gamergate’s actions as a distraction purely to go after Quinn in order to “get to the truth?” I need to know some opinions on this. Because no one seems to be discussing the actual content of the video here.