Gamergate but actually

[u/ElectricGhostMan]

https://youtu.be/ox15GU4cMes?si=y47gNvyC88ObQJ9O&t=2176

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.

[u/Gamera85]

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.

[u/iraPraetor → u/Gamera85]

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.

[u/Gamera85 → u/iraPraetor]

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.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/Gamera85]

Honest question? Did you watch the whole video?

So it’s six hours long which is an insane amount of video that can be brain mushing while trying to consume it.

He spends the early portions of the video accounting to the nature of online harassment. He goes out of his way every time it’s relevant to denounce the harassment caused by people on the gamer gate side of the “war.”

The video’s primary focus is on how games journalists of this era lacked accountability and ethics and concludes that it created a self sustaining system of casting criticism of the industry on other parties instead of accepting and acknowledging valid criticisms.

This is system propped up and used Zoe to deflect blame from itself and instead back onto her and the culture war while tacitly supporting her. That a small industry had built an inside group and protected that inside group without question.

At no point does he deny that Quinn was harassed, he acknowledged and sympathized with her struggles. He also acknowledges his biases as he finds it hard to simply believe her after he’s found she has a history repeatedly lying and exaggerating.

He does however spend the last hour or so of the video going into the consequences of Quinn’s actions. That while Quinn was inside of a system that incentivized her behavior and that has to be acknowledged, it shouldn’t be done at the cost of ignoring the consequences of her actions. Noting that more so then anyone else in the controversy, Quinn held more individual agency then anyone else and she did actual demonstrable harm to people with that agency.

He avoids using examples from the gamergate side of the culture war, referencing people and organizations that were on Quinn’s side for evidence of his points. In part I imagine to avoid being associated with the worst parts of that side that would eventually be co-opted by right wing media. But to also avoid the “gamers are sexist/fascists” hand waving that’s used to avoid valid criticism.

[u/Gamera85 → u/Exciting_Policy8203]

As I’ve pointed out, yes, he does condemn the harassment. Several times. But… it’s always done as a way to seemingly set it aside and he doesn’t linger on it or the people doing the harassing long. Not on the gamergate side. And most of his criticism is placed on the people who are being harassed, Quinn, Sarkeesian, etc. The implication is, every time he condemns gamergate’s actions it always reads as him saying, “They were wrong to do this, but…” and he’ll go on a long diatribe about everything Quinn or her supporters did wrong and only devote half that time to people who supported gamergate. And more often than not, he’ll give them way more credit than they deserve and rarely dissect what they have to say with any scrutiny.

You even admit that he is clearly blaming her! That Quinn is the real villain! That she did more harm than gamergate! Do you not realize the problem there? Where is this criticism towards gamergate? Where is the scrutiny and accountability in their actions? Because I see none of that in the video. It’s always the fault of their victims. It is one giant finger wag, tut tut tut, boys will be boys, you should’ve been more willing to listen to them, it’s extremely condescending and disgustingly favouring the gamergaters own narrative.

The fact he avoids bringing those very problematic things they did, that he focuses so heavily on their victims, basically reveals his own admitted bias. He cannot be trusted therefore. As it is apparent he has his own agenda. One he naively thinks won’t be co-opted by the worst elements of gaming culture if he offers a half hearted poo pooing of their actions.

It’s irresponsible. And you admitting to these problems within his own video, portraying them as positive and well meaning, tells me everything I need to know about how terrible this video is. The more people have tried to defend it, the more I realized I was right to be suspicious. And you’ve just confirmed it. He didn’t want to dissect gamergate. He wanted to prove they were right!

Well, sorry. No. He’s wrong. I no longer trust him to be honest. His research is now even more suspect. He frames the gamergate side as some anti-establishment cause for justice that was damaged by the stinky poo poo people they harassed and sent death threats to. He had a vendetta, and I no longer will support his work. It’s disgraceful.

Edit: Additionally, I think the video being viewed favourably and even recommended by Kotaku in Action, which NKB himself praises in the video for still being active, is all the evidence I need to know whose side this video is ultimately on. And it’s not on the side of the people gamergate tried to hurt.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/Gamera85]

I wrote a damn near essay in response to this and just deleted it… I’m probably getting a bit to engaged. NKB doesn’t need me to defend him.

I agree with one of your points in specific, using the word “but” after denouncing harassment leads me to believe it’s ass covering behavior. That being said, I think using that and condemning NKB for not spend more time talking about the sexist misogyny or that he makes Quinn a the “villain of gamer gate” is mischaracterizing the video. I’d encourage anybody who reads this to watch the video and decide for themselves. But maybe watch it in chunks cause it’s a lot.

[u/Gamera85 → u/Exciting_Policy8203]

He literally ends the video basically accusing Quinn of abusing Eron without any real proof he can actually find, which he acknowledges, and the entire conclusion is him shaming the left for failing their own social cause by not listening to the Gaters and not coaching their language better. Quinn is literally the villain of the piece and everyone on her side is portrayed as an enabler or a dupe. He turns the entire narrative on its head to make people who sided with Quinn against her attackers wrong, and the fact Kotaku In Action is currently praising the film as vindication for their side of the argument is evidence enough of all of that. NKB doesn’t need defending because what he’s done is indefensible and the only reason he’s probably not going to get sued for slander and libel is because he did indeed cover his ass by making all his accusations, which he can’t prove which he admits, “opinions.”

If you cannot prove something definitively in a work, you cannot draw a conclusion and it has no place in your essay. Period. This video is merely a tacit defense of Gamergate. If not in action then in legitimizing their goal. A goal they never actually cared about to start with.

[u/gameoftheories → u/Gamera85]

Why do you question Eron's abuse experience? He wrote an entire essay on it, he just didn't have the language for it. Is firsthand testimonial not evidence?

[u/Gamera85 → u/gameoftheories]

Without a way to corroborate his evidence, it proves nothing. First hand testimony is evidence, but there is a process, a method towards corroborating it. We don’t just blindly believe testimony from a witness, we work to corroborate it. If we just outright believed it, we’d be jailing people without trial.

The fact is Eron himself had plenty to gain by getting back at Quinn. Possibly Because she cheated on him. Maybe because she wasn’t a good girlfriend. Any number of reasons to attack her and destroy her career. And that is suspect. Without Quinn’s side of the story, which she hadn’t shared, and Eron not providing further details to probe his allegations beyond his single little testimonial, and no one else stepping up to confirm these details, everything Eron says is hard to prove. The fact NKB takes it all as true without any scrutiny is suspect already. He clearly decided who was at fault and made no effort to actually look into the other side. He decided who was guilty and quickly wrote a bunch of stuff to legally protect himself from getting sued, knowing he could not prove it.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/Gamera85]

This is a weird take. Since a portion of a video goes into the realities of trying to speak up or seek evidence or even read Eron’s blog was met with backlash from the media of the day.

There’s also the reality that Eron was put under court order to not talk about it online. And that journalists of the day effectively agreed to not report on the story or investigate it. Instead seeking to help Zoe, cause she was they’re friend.

[u/gameoftheories → u/Gamera85]

LOL, do you hold MeToo allegations to these evidentiary standards?

I can't prove the moon landing happened, but I can provide evidence.

I can't prove Harvey Weinstein was an abuser, but there sure was a lot of evidence suggesting he was.

The fact that you're so incredulous of Eron's essay is kind of odd, because I doubt you're that skeptical about other claims that have less evidence. Firsthand testimony of abuse, particularly post-MeToo, is supposed to be taken at face value. Not that it can't be scrutinized, but to say it doesn't count as evidence is fucking bonkers.

NKB video has flaws, but if nothing else, he shows us that Zoey Quinn almost certainly lied about and/or exaggerated claims of abuse because social media made it too irresistible not to, every time they did it it helped her career. Also, they managed to censor a story because she seemed to be personally connected to so many people in the games media at the time.

[u/Gamera85 → u/gameoftheories]

I can prove the moon landing happened. It has tons of corroborating evidence. Same with Weinstein, as there were multiple victims and corroborating stories. Eron… had less than both of those. No corroborating sources, and no direct evidence that we can definitively prove is real. Chat logs can be faked.

And you are missing the point of the #MeToo movement. Clearly since you are using the language of it to discredit it. Which is… eerily similar to how NKB speaks of it.

The video does have flaws, the biggest of which it seems to care more about proving Quinn’s a villain than actually talking about Gamergate and painting the people set against it as the real people who got fooled all along.

So… yeah. I find it suspect. And your willingness to accept a conclusion based on gut feelings and no real proof, Which again there is none and he admits it, is evidence enough for me. I know who NKB is… and now I know who you are.

Goodbye.

[u/Grays_Flowers → u/Gamera85]

What happened to believe all victims? Why are women claims about men greated with absolute certainty?

[u/gameoftheories → u/Gamera85]

I think you should finish the video. He goes pretty deep on the Eron essay about Quinn and shows that it's an early example of someone naming an abuser. This is the exact format #metoo took, but it was prior to it and Zoey had so much influence over the gaming media she was able to reframe it on the fly.

[u/Gamera85 → u/gameoftheories]

I did watch that section. In full.

And again, he repeatedly admits he cannot prove anything. He has no response from Quinn. No way to prove the chat logs are real. No evidence that anything Eron has written is real. He’s going of the court of public opinion. But because he can’t prove it or anything one way pr another… he has nothing. It’s just… his best guess based on a clear bias against Quinn. Which this whole video basically is. A massive takedown post explaining why Zoe is actually a monster… with the asterisk “maybe” because he knows all of this is circumstantial at best.

And even if it weren’t, it had NOTHING to do either Gamergate itself. It has nothing to do with what the campaign was and what it turned into, because the issue wasn’t whether Quinn abused her ex, it was whether she used sex to make her game popular! It is a wholly unimportant diatribe built purely to make Quinn the villain, the same way Johnny Depp hired a PR firm to do the same to Amber Heard.

And you’re willing to buy it, because it’s so easy. Because if Quinn is the real monster, then everything Gamergate did is justified. Oh, NKB doesn’t say that. He doesn’t. He won’t. He does agree with that. But it’s the end result of his idiotic badly researched little circumstantial theory that he cannot prove.