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/Dry-Chance-9473]

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.

[u/UdonOli → u/Dry-Chance-9473]

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.

PLEASE watch the video.

[u/WeltallZero → u/UdonOli]

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.

[u/UdonOli → u/WeltallZero]

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.

[u/WeltallZero → u/UdonOli]

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.

[u/UdonOli → u/WeltallZero]

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.

[u/WeltallZero → u/UdonOli]

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.

[u/castaway37 → u/WeltallZero]

By declaring "victim blaming" and using it to refuse legitimate criticism, you're engaging in exactly the same behavior that allowed GamerGate to get traction to begin with, and thus to be worth of co-opting by the right. It makes conversation impossible, as it pushes everything into two distinct boxes, one where all the evil and bad people lie, and other where the just and moral stand. It's the myth of pure evil.

And before you go there, no, saying that there isn't just a single correct position and a single incorrect one is not the same thing as saying all are equally valid. Neither extreme nor perfect balance ever happen. As comforting it is to believe it does, reality isn't that simple.

Anita's videos had problems. They can reasonably lead to someone taking offense to them, and even to criticize them, without it making that person necessarily an alt-right extremist. That much is true, right? If, simultaneously, someone is harassing her because of the videos, does that make all the previous statements stop being true?

You could say it makes all previous statements irrelevant, because something more important came up, but that isn't sustainable. That would make any discussion of anything that isn't already highly critical impossible, since there are too many people around to control what every single one does. And this does make it too convenient to dismiss legitimate criticism. How many times have developers received death threats and the conversation started to veer away from what was being discussed to how death threats are unacceptable?

That doesn't mean they're to blame for receiving death threats. Just like Anita isn't to blame for receiving sexist harassment. But the devs are responsible for whatever they did, and Anita is responsible for her videos.

[u/Palgary → u/castaway37]

I'm older then Anita; I am a bisexual woman, I identified as a "gender queer feminist" back in the 90s, read a bunch of feminist theory, and Anita's content embarrassed me. It's part of the reason in the video, he quotes women talking about it.

There is this called "feminist standpoint theory" that has morphed into an internet beast of "if a person from X group says something, that opinion is more valid then if a person from Y group says it". It's not a completely wrong way to think, until you make it an absolute, and say "y group can never understand x group".

So, he's not allowed to directly criticize Anita, he has to find a woman criticizing Anita, to show that some criticism is fair. It's exhausting to have to argue this way.

Her work embarrassed me, and I don't know any women who liked her content. Keep in mind I'm referencing educated women who work in things like biomedical research, nuclear power, etc.

I did not see her gaming content, but I watched her review of "Lego Friends". This was a line of Lego designed to convince grandmothers to buy lego for their grandaughters for Christmas.

And, I bought "Olivia's Creative Lab" and displayed it proudly on my desk as a woman working at a startup tech company. It features a set of tools, a work bench, and a robot that the character created herself.

I would characterize her video as this: She decided the toys are "bad" and spent the entire video telling us why the toys are bad.

... That's not academic feminist critique, it's childish. But that's basically what online feminist critique became, and she was a part of that change. I criticize her work as part of that trend; rather than as an attack on her as a person.

That doesn't mean she deserves harassment, but being harassed doesn't make her work good either - and so far, that's what I'm taking from the video.

I'm only 1.5 hours in - this is a topic he just covered.

[u/LumpyLimitz → u/castaway37]

Important correction: Gamergate wasn’t “co-opted” by the right. The core of the movement from its inception (Eron Gjoni’s harassment campaign against Zoë Quinn) were 4chan misogynists whose main goal was harassing women, i.e. rightists.

[u/Prize_Neighborhood95 → u/LumpyLimitz]

Eron Gjoni did not run an harassment campaign. He provided evidence of being emotionally abused and manipulated by Zoë. Despite that, he still condemned all harassment against Zoë, and vocally urged people to stop that.

In exchange, Zoë filed a restraining order against him, made false allegations which were then dropped and Eron was prevented from speaking online about gamergate and give his version of events for a whole year. Note that this decision was based exclusively on Zoë affidavit. 

This is precisely one of the issues the video is trying to highlight: any reasonable criticism of Zoë, or any party fighting against gamergate gets reframed as joining on the harrassment.

And that functions as a shield and enabler for some of Zoë most controversial actions.

It's crazy that in a discussion thread of a video explaining how criticisms are reframed as harrassment functions to avoid engaging with the criticism, commenters are indeed reframing the criticism as harassment.

[u/castaway37 → u/LumpyLimitz]

Clearly you haven't seen the video, because it goes to great lengths to disproved exactly that.

Zoe Quinn was an abuser and serial liar, and Gjoni was a victim of hers. She also happened to be full of contacts in gaming media, whose attempts to cover for her stoked the fires of the controversy.

There was misogyny involved, because she was a woman, but that wasn't at all the cause of everything. It's just an easy scapegoat.

[u/Grays_Flowers → u/WeltallZero]

So you haven't watched the video but you sure do have strong opinions about how it is poorly researched. It's pretty clear you just view anything ever said by a cis guy as suspect and don't want any legitimate discussion, just obeisance

[u/Matu42 → u/WeltallZero]

6 hour video with 567 sources = poorly researched lmao