GamerGate: A More To-The-Point Summary

I actually started out against GamerGate, I can't speak to the intentions of those few people that were active within the hashtag from the actual outset of the tag itself.

And that's really the first point I want to start with. Twitter hashtags are just a searching facility, activity using that search facility doesn't have any endorsement from anybody else. It is irrational to condemn 'GamerGate' because it is not an organisation. 'Members' have no innate internal recourse to police other 'members' and so it would be madness to argue that they should have done so. As for external recourse; the link provided (below), among the blocks and blocks of text it explains that the majority of the community grouped together to identify and bring to justice some of the worst harassers.

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The second point I'll go into is that the vast majority of people who have come to the GamerGate community have done so well after the whole thing with Zoe Quin was just history. 'We', if I can dare to represent, are not involved with that event. More to the point, the actual momentum that turned GamerGate from merely a Twitter search tool feature into a movement and an identity was actually the reaction to criticism by the press: Censorship of genuinely unoffensive comments that happened to bring to light other matters of corruption, brought forward by people who thought these were also relevant. 

The most striking early scandal that I recall was I think called 'GameJournoPros' or something like that, a mailing list full of journalists who were colluding to an incredible extent. There was also, related (I think) the phenomenon (I forget when exactly) several news outlets released articles headlined something to the effect of "Gamers are dead!". These articles advocated that games publishers didn't need to listen to their customers, because the benevolent philosophers of the internet could approve their games for them (I'm being a dick for comic effect). 

The conclusion to this second point is that the 'rallying-cry' event had nothing to do with Zoe Quin, and the vast vast VAST majority of GamerGate do not give a flying pigeon about her work...


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As for the backlash, based on the public perception of GamerGate, here is an excerpt from this link:
http://deepfreeze.it/article.php?a=monster

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GamerGate Summary

By request – A summary of GamerGate aimed at facilitating the remainder of the thread to be an informed discussion.

Please actually read and watch everything here if you are going to be nasty or holier-than-thou.

I can't possibly cover everything, please look here for much reading:

http://deepfreeze.it/article.php?a=monster

- The Beginning - 

I advise you to read this (very early) analysis of GamerGate by Liana Kerzner:

http://metaleater.com/video-games/feature/gamers-live-an-in-depth-analysis-of-gamergate

               

Liana Kerzner – is a journalist, gamer, cosplayer, and feminist. Of those voices I am aware of, hers is perhaps the most balanced. She tries to be neutral, however the anti-GG faction are so vitriolic and puritanical that it is apparently very difficult. She writes for The Escapist Magazine, an online gaming news outlet that is a key player in what happened with the GamerGate controversy.

I asked Liana if I could direct people to her for further questions about GamerGate, she welcomes polite discussion and said that I should link to her original article from the outset (above).

As shown here: https://twitter.com/Aerthryn/status/669552380250296321

- The Middle i.e. one year in -

Next I will ask you to look at these videos by YouTuber ‘LeoPirate’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62euQFWuQGc SPJ Airplay event, abridged (including bomb threat)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZvaYbnB2Bc achievements by GamerGate

PNG: http://s13.postimg.org/6k3gbqeiv/1437280972897.png

- Today...ish -

Video by prominent GamerGate figure Carl Benjamin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzZeNLmf4

This man can be reached on Twitter as @Sargon_of_Akkad who I also approached, though he hasn't given me the same carte blanc to direct you to him I know that he already makes a point of talking to anybody, but keep in mind he has a huge amount to scroll through and may not respond at all.

The Holocaust Card

Here is a video that is rather compelling.

Before you watch it, please understand that my own position on Israel is of sympathy to a country hated by those around them, trying to make their borders secure. However, their scorched earth tactics are ineffective and unforgivable. Please understand I do not condemn the country as it is not a moral actor, it is a collection of individuals and not every individual there is complicit.

Specifically regarding this video: The use of the holocaust to justify another one with better PR is ridiculous to my mind. Please observe the young woman who asks the question, she is clearly too young for her apparent emotional crisis to be valid. As if this man was committing a war crime in front of her, when he is in fact denouncing a current atrocity that needs to be stopped.

Crocodile Tears of Zionist lobby

Jewish, Zionist girl tries to criticise Dr Norman Gary Finkelstein at University of Waterloo

Posted by Jihadi John's Day Off on Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Teach Yourself: Democracy

I got home from college to find this lurking on my facebook feed. A man being ejected from a town council meeting for asking a question. I was rather disgusted and outraged to say the least, so I cracked open a can of cider and got down to some serious philosophising on the matter:

This video shows a man being forcibly ejected from a Penzance Town Council meeting. It's claimed he'd entered late and did not hear the Mayor explain that members of the public would not be permitted to ask questions unless they'd been submitted in advance. Security guards were asked to remove him from the room after he asked, if he could ask a question. We'll be hearing from people who were at the meeting on Lunchtime with Laurence from midday.
Posted by BBC Radio Cornwall on Tuesday, 3 November 2015

Should I be angry? I want to say yes and leave it at that, but that's not good enough. Maybe the man shown had been genuinely out of order?

It doesn't seem so, apparently the problem was that questions from the public were to be submitted in writing, but he missed the start of the meeting where this was stated.

Really I say "so what?" to this. It's not a question of whether any protocol was breached or the meeting disrupted. It aught simply to be a matter of explaining the protocol.

Oh but what if that is indeed what happened? Well that's something I'll have to concede here: I don't know what happened prior to that video being recorded. Maybe the gentleman was told of the written submissions and still requested to ask a question?

For the sake of argument let's pretend that not only did this happen, but that he insisted on asking (which seems unlikely, given that he doesn't mention the question he wanted to ask in that video, so I presume he had yet to ask it):

Is it really too much to ask? Even to merely ask to ask?

In the video it can be heard someone saying that if every person there asked a question they'd be there a long time. A ridiculous rationale to my mind, it is quite clear that the other people in the room were not sitting on their hands in desperate self-discipline.

Allowing everybody to ask questions doesn't mean that every single person there will ask one. Sure, I might be taking this a bit too literally but clearly whoever said that rubbish believes in absolutes too:

Are we to assume it is beyond the wit of civil discussion to decide on a one-to-one basis whether there is time to ask a question and have it answered? Is there no chair to this meeting?

I suppose, again, I will have to stow my moral outrage a moment to concede that I don't actually know whether this happened. Perhaps there wasn't time and this was clearly and reasonably explained.

Even if we give all possible benefit-of-doubt to the Penzance Town Council, does that justify the disgraceful use of force?

Oh it would be inconvenient to answer this question, let's just have him removed instead! Guards!