It's not alt-right, and I know they had to stick up for their friend but their big mistake was not condemning his actions. It made them just as complicit in the movement spreading the way it did.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Why is Gamergate support still so prevalent in gaming communities?
- Thread starter Cranster
- Start date
It's not alt-right, and I know they had to stick up for their friend but their big mistake was not condemning his actions. It made them just as complicit in the movement spreading the way it did.
It was just a hashtag they used to try and spread their message, there's no specific body or leader or set of goals. They claimed themselves as a campaign for ethics in journalism but were actually using that as a front to attack and pressure those who favoured inclusion in gaming.
Yup, yup. It took till October for most big sites to say anything, in one burst, and even then a lot of it pulled some "both sides", "you deserve each other", "we thought it would end on its own", etc. trash.
And meanwhile companies couldn't spend 5 seconds Googling what was going on so there were "topical" jokes that seemed supportive of it because they had no idea what they were talking about, and every time a company actually came out against harassment they tended to only vaguely say that much, and you'd see "guys, guys, they mean the horrible people who are against ethics and call us a hate movement! they're with us" over and over.
There was a time it could have been majorly shut down and that time was wasted.
Reread. They didn't call it an alt-right podcast. They said he used it as a platform for such people; having GG and/or alt-right guests on counts as that.
(Also, uh, yes I absolutely 100% think an alt-right podcast could have a rainbow flag in their Twitter profile, either as a shield or because they might just be self-hating. Milo exists.)
Meanwhile, I haven't seen that Forbes article so I'm going to read it now, but tentatively- anyone who legitimately objects to him being called what he is can fuck off. He did what he did and had his time to atone.
The only thing that dude who came in here to suddenly whine about people calling out TB, and people like them, was mistakenly right about was that big sites shouldn't have waited to report on it when he was dead. But that's only because they should have also done it when he was alive and actively hurting people instead of palling around with him, not because his death means we should only say positive things; just like GG itself, anything's now feels too little too late.. (The same criticism of not saying it when he was alive can't extend to most of the less popular people who criticized him, because they absolutely did do that publicly for years, or else were scared out of it given what we're discussing.)
There were definitely useful idiots at one point who came up with the idea that Gamergate was about their favourite games not getting the scores they wanted, except it's really only the useful idiots who were about that, if you went into 8chan or wherever there was no escaping anti-Semitic stuff or racist and misogynistic rhetoric.
Basically, either you were insisting that Gamergate was about something else without having actually talked to any other Gamergate people or knowing what Gamergate was about, or you hung around with the Gamergate crowd for the hatred.
Like minds migrate together and form communities.
We are no different in that regards then GG'ers.
Only reason they are still around.
We are no different in that regards then GG'ers.
Only reason they are still around.
From one of my favorite pieces of games writing ever, "The King and His Objects":
Magical Wasteland said:
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Buckley was dumb enough to not see the hypocrisy in that last panel.
"Video games do NOT make us violent, we're NOT violent people. Also, DON'T FUCK WITH US OR WE'LL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP. But again, we're not violent so stop saying we are."
Gamergate was a harbinger of the 2016 election in so many ways. The media was absolutely unprepared to deal with a large "political movement" willing to lie through their teeth about literally every aspect of their identity, ideology, motivations, and tactics. They used the anonymity of the internet to hide their identities; pretended to be women or people of color (#NotYourShield); used botnets to amplify their numbers and send large-scale harassment to journalists, developers, and others; and developed a useful idiot cover story ("ethics in journalism") that the media bought into because the alternative required them to come to the sobering realization that thousands of people were lying to their face about their political goals, and they couldn't believe that to be true.
Unfortunately, two years later Trump did the same damn thing.
It's a movement/hashtag/mob that they self-identify as. There is no set list of objectives because that's how they had plausible deniability and could say "well, that wasn't us". Their unifying theory is "ethics in games journalism" but that really just means attacking anyone who dares care about social issues in relation to games or is friends with another journalist, etc. The rationalwiki page linked in this thread probably explains it well enough.
What you are describing is the massive misunderstanding of "GamesJournosPros" that GG tried to push. It was just a Google group for journalists to discuss things, arrange doing multiplayer for embargoed games, etc.
GG of course learned about this very early and thought they'd discovered the illuminati pulling the industry's strings they were seeking. But this was still weeks after it started by attacking Zoe Quinn, and then branding as GG and attacking other women.
First few links on Googling it are all GG resources but this explanation by its creator seems ok enough.
I just want to point out that Raiden for instance in Metal Gear Solid 2 was designed via a poll of highschool aged girls. Of course Raiden was subject to a huge backlash, and MGS2 marketing didn't feature him. But MGS2 did sell millions of copies, and generally reviewed quite well.
So I think the industry has a history of attempting to cater to diverse audiences, but journalists and publishers actually exploited attitudes that said gaming is only one particular thing. I mean there was a time were JRPGs were the darling of the industry. Then there was a time where writers openly said they are bad because the male characters are "feminine." So it isn't just the audience that became sexist. It was the culture from the top down incubating these toxic, problematic attitudes, specifically in the past 15 years.
First of all, Dodger is not gay. Second, she's among the most progressive voices in the gaming personality scene. Guilt by association shouldn't undermine that.
...so I'm really not sure how you managed to read "an alt-right podcast" and think it meant the exact same podcast I literally said was not being called "an alt-right podcast" in the same post, but to be clear, I was speaking about alt-right podcasts in general.
EDIT:
And, honestly, I find it pretty laughable that someone so close with a person who was a GG figurehead is somehow one of the "most progressive voices" when it comes to popular gaming personalities but then again, I guess the bar is sorta low once you get that high of a following.
The industry needs to do more to ostracize alt-reich activity like hatergate. However, I think they're reluctant because they want to keep their player base.
If they had more guts, the ideal solution would be to suspend or ban the perpetrators' accounts on all platforms and report them to the police.
If they had more guts, the ideal solution would be to suspend or ban the perpetrators' accounts on all platforms and report them to the police.
Sorry, I misunderstood the post. Thought you were attacking Dodger and other Co-op podcast regulars like Jesse Cox for something that isn't even close to true.
Really? GameCheat (shame I missed him, have fun with your ban if you see this fuckwipe~) wasn't an uncommon sight in the OTs in The Old Place, first when he was modding H5 and later when he joined the El Dewrito team, which he subsequently fucked up by showing off their efforts to get the campaign running.
You can read my edit for my thoughts, because the rest of that post did address them. The reason I separated that bit and put it in parentheses was because it was an aside, which could have been clearer.
"Guilt by association" is when who you're following on Twitter is questionable. When you're on a podcast with someone leading harassment every week, and you see nothing wrong with that, that's just guilt.
Just take away their internet forever.
Wish it were possible :/
There a lot of people with shitty bigoted views that are in those communities. Just look at Era vs the hundreds of other sites. This is going to go on for a long time.
Hm. It's a response to someone who just started a podcast (gaming podcast, nonetheless) with Colin fucking Moriarty. Quelle surprise he attracts fuckwits like this.
I just don't understand what this whole GamerGate thing is. I'm not going to look into it at all and will just assume that "both sides" are somehow at fault.
please tell me you don't need an /s tag, GamerGaters are fucking trash
Nah, it's still guilt by association. People aren't perfect and that fact will extend to who they associate with. Could there be some cognitive dissonance involved when they end up being progressive voices while associating with non-progressives? Yeah maybe, but that's just part of being human. People aren't obligated to speak up about every injustice that goes on in their circle even when they're very much on "the right side of history" in every other way.
And that goes double when you're a personality and HAVE to interact with some number of problematic people. It's unavoidable. Every single youtuber that often gets posted on this side of the site with even some community threads dedicated to them applies here.
This whole line of discussion just makes me think of the uncomfortable narrative surrounding the Chloe Bennet controversy and her dating choices.
Nothing of any serious consequence was ever actually done about Gamergate. The gaming industry for the most part ignored the elephant in the room.
Man, I've seen this post a few too many times without being /s for it to not need the /s.
Didn't GamgerGate get an industry-wide condemnation? At least by the big companies like Activision-Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft, Intel etc.
...Which is funny, because all the good devs are anti-GG, you think these so called *ethical* snowflakes would take a hint and make the connection.
For what its worth I think GamerGate itself is a failed movement, what remains is the undertones, beliefs and toxicity that incited the incident in the first place. But there's no "central" movement or anything like that anymore (if one even existed beyond a twitter hashtag).
No, the ESA put out a spineless statement on it around a year or two later talking about not supporting harassment, but gamergate has never been unequivocally condemned. They're afraid
Of course we can, he's the President.
sadly there's a couple of reasons why.
1: The gaming industry (as well as all other tech sectors) are full to the brim with techno objectivist scumbags. Who either sympathise ( or flat out agree) them.
2: Nazis buy games too.
FTFY. Unfortunately. *sigh* :(
I am absolutely going to judge anyone like this for the "cognitive dissonance" of their friend/family member/loved one being shitty and them not only doing nothing to stop it, but acting like nothing is wrong. Just because something happens a lot does not make it "part of being human" or inherently excusable and acceptable behavior.
And thinking of, say, the harassment your friend is doing right in front of your face as something you're "not obligated to speak up about" is beyond ridiculous.
No, it didn't. A few publishers said "harassment is bad, we all agree on that", but were too cowardly to actually call out GamerGate. Most likely because they were afraid of losing customers or getting harassed directly by the movement.
The only major publishers/devs that actually called out GamerGate specifically were DICE, Avalanche Studios and a few other Nordic companies.
The problem is that, as I've mentioned before in this thread: the companies seriously didn't ever make it clear enough that GGers had to make connection, particularly as they love to draw illogical connections instead when they can.
As Labor said, the ESA put something out; looks like that was mid-October 2014, almost 2 months after it started. They, like other companies at various times since, just worded this in terms of harassment being bad, which was so nebulous that it let GGers 1. act like that means they're fine, it's only someone else that's bad, because GG totally didn't harass anyone in their eyes, and 2. act like it was actually the people they were attacking who got angry at them that were the harassers being described. And sometimes companies would, at events, sorta joke about it in even more unclear ways (that indicated they didn't actually know what it was) and that was also read about support by GGers.
There was never an unequivocal condemnation. A number of sites, also in mid-October, spoke more directly at times but couched it in "both sides" and were vaguely apathetic, and were too little too late besides. And of course it's inherent not like GG was going to listen to journalists anyway.
And, well, KiA and such still exist, there's still places for there to be more organization to it than you'd think, even if it's died down.
I never said it was acceptable behavior. The fact of the matter is people have to compartmentalize a ton of crappy stuff if they want to have any kind of meaningful relationship and live in society, and that includes picking their battles when it comes to loved ones and others in their personal lives. Getting value out of a relationship with a problematic person to the point of not wanting to cut that person out of their lives doesn't make them a monster.
And to clarify, I agree with you that toxic behavior should be called out by those same loved ones, but I'm not going to suddenly start labeling them as toxic for not wanting to rock the boat when I know zero about their relationships beyond what is being broadcast to me.
Not to mention they are whining about people dragging TB's reputation when...you know
He did more damage to his own reputation than anyone could ever hope to do by enabling a hate group. That's his legacy.
Huh, I never knew Nintendo called Gamergate a hate movement. I am (pleasantly) surprised.
Decided recently to uBlock the PCGamer.com comment section because how gamergaters are so common there.
That place is just filled with alt-righters and gamergaters which is a damn shame cause I still get quite good news articles from the site, their moderation team however is complete shit that rather delete posts that contains the word "fuck" than people who are openly harassing their writers (check any article written by Andy Chalk) or who are attacking other users with "cuck", "SJW" and all that usual alt-right garbage etc. because it doesn't completely fall in the line of "bad language". Plus there is just a fuckton of open racism and sexism going on, the only times the moderation team steps in is when people are literally defending Nazis (Wolfenstein 2 articles).
That place is just filled with alt-righters and gamergaters which is a damn shame cause I still get quite good news articles from the site, their moderation team however is complete shit that rather delete posts that contains the word "fuck" than people who are openly harassing their writers (check any article written by Andy Chalk) or who are attacking other users with "cuck", "SJW" and all that usual alt-right garbage etc. because it doesn't completely fall in the line of "bad language". Plus there is just a fuckton of open racism and sexism going on, the only times the moderation team steps in is when people are literally defending Nazis (Wolfenstein 2 articles).
Same problem with racism, hate isn't to be tolerated but corporations are too scared to speak up because hateful people are customers too. People don't speak up for many reasons, fear of losing "friends", it could be family as well, also they're not educated on how something like that is wrong because they may be too young , naïveté.
I really don't think Gamergate is particularly prevalent anymore in the gaming community. I usually only see it mentioned when press link it to whatever new harassment is happening online that isn't using the rag, or bring it up as a comparison.
Without the press, I rarely ever see it. I suppose if you go on r/Kotakuinaction you can find it fairly easy though, but the hashtag has gone into irrelevance.
Without the press, I rarely ever see it. I suppose if you go on r/Kotakuinaction you can find it fairly easy though, but the hashtag has gone into irrelevance.
Boy, this is a real "ban bait thread", innit?
To answer the question, you would first have to answer the question of why the nerd community at large is so curiously full of bigoted theorists. Video games, anime, sci-fi, even fuckin' furries have that shit going on.
Given what "red pill" philosophy peddles, it's actually kind of fascinating. Or maybe it's not - the world has always been more full of people who love to talk than people who love to walk.
You have no idea.
To answer the question, you would first have to answer the question of why the nerd community at large is so curiously full of bigoted theorists. Video games, anime, sci-fi, even fuckin' furries have that shit going on.
Given what "red pill" philosophy peddles, it's actually kind of fascinating. Or maybe it's not - the world has always been more full of people who love to talk than people who love to walk.
You have no idea.
They've just stopped using the hashtag as much. The people and sentiment are still there
It's part of his legacy, but not all he'll be remembered for. The guy did alot for indie games, and enough people will remember that too along with the bad.
There are certain threads where no one has actually baited the hook, but people are eager to jump on anyway.
That's fine and all, but it's ridiculous that people think it is "proper etiquette" to expect that people not speak of the bad parts of his legacy.
If TotalBiscuit was so worried about his legacy, he could have not supported a hate group. If the people close to him actually cared about his legacy after he passed, they'd have fought to get him to not cause shit in life.
If it wasn't for the spelling mistake, I wouldn't know what side they're on. lol