GamerGate? Da fuq is a GamerGate?

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by Arhra

I think everyone here agrees that is bad. The problem is how do we stop it?

Every 'official' thing I've seen that's organising stuff for GamerGate has emphasised that harassment is bad, don't do it.

One of the first things channers did, when the movement got its name and started taking off under the disguise of a 'legit' movement, was establish a 'Deny abuse, call false flag on things, redirect, distract, and say we don't condone the bad stuff' plan, that also involved continuing to harass freely, just making sure not to link overt harassment to the hashtags for plausible deniability. It had one of their stupid operation names attached to it.

It was around that same time that they also came up with Not Your Shield, first feeding sockpuppet accounts into it to draw some attention and traction, and letting it grow from there, attack other minorities that were outspoken against GamerGate and literally using NotYourShield as a shield from criticism.

And, Amake is right. You might try and distance yourself from the rotten core of the movement, but they'll gladly put an arm around you and say you're just like them, all day long to further their goals. It is rotten at the very core of it, tainted by its nasty start and misinformation, and grown even worse with time and more muddling of the facts and timeline of things. Even if you recover it, they burned dozens of bridges with devs and journos and websites in the process, they won't trust Gamergate, ever.

[Arhra]

But then how are they organising the harrassment?

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by Arhra

But then how are they organising the harrassment?

They've been using a different imageboard site since being kicked out of 4chan, and ircs/chats. How else would they be doing it?

[Arhra]

Here's the thing though. Image boards are publicly available, and for 4chan at least the entire board content is archived by third party sites.

If there is evidence to be found there, why has nothing come up except that IRC planning log which, well, wasn't incriminating at all?

[Marc v4.0]

I am unaware of these third party sites, but there have been tons of images, chat logs, you name it that have come out and gone since this all started. They get swallowed up in claims of being photoshopped, made up, SJW shill distractions, shouted at and down until no one wants to talk about it anymore. People believe the claims, and the people that bring these things to light go private, or lock up under a sea of harassment. It's been ongoing, day after day after day. It's all my twitter feed ever talks about anymore.

I'm unsure what chat logs you've seen, but I haven't seen one yet that hasn't been both horrifically vile and full of talks about who to target next and how.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Arhra

I think everyone here agrees that is bad. The problem is how do we stop it?

Every 'official' thing I've seen that's organising stuff for GamerGate has emphasised that harassment is bad, don't do it.

well i mean when someone outside gamergate uses the gamergate hashtag to say "hey this person in your movement is harassing me can you help report them" and only gets ten responses, and only five of those actually help, then i think its pretty clear that the majority aren't really doing anything to prevent harassment beyond saying "harassment is bad"

and when a woman is getting doxx'd and someone is threatening to murder her and her husband and she has to call the police and leave her home it is not exactly helpful toward preventing harassment to spend more time accusing her of lying or claiming that the account is a "false flag" than you spend reporting the account or showing sympathy and concern

so if all gamergate is willing to do is say "don't harass" but is largely unwilling to do anything beyond that i think it's pretty clear that the only thing them saying "don't harass" accomplishes is letting those who do nothing about the harassment pretend they aren't responsible or contributing

which is pretty fucking cowardly

[Arhra]

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

I am unaware of these third party sites, but there have been tons of images, chat logs, you name it that have come out and gone since this all started. They get swallowed up in claims of being photoshopped, made up, SJW shill distractions, shouted at and down until no one wants to talk about it anymore. People believe the claims, and the people that bring these things to light go private, or lock up under a sea of harassment. It's been ongoing, day after day after day. It's all my twitter feed ever talks about anymore.

I'm unsure what chat logs you've seen, but I haven't seen one yet that hasn't been both horrifically vile and full of talks about who to target next and how.

The only one that's made the news.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...-Quinn-Respond

Went with that link because it has the original story, responses and the link to the released full logs.

Originally Posted by Kim

well i mean when someone outside gamergate uses the gamergate hashtag to say "hey this person in your movement is harassing me can you help report them" and only gets ten responses, and only five of those actually help, then i think its pretty clear that the majority aren't really doing anything to prevent harassment beyond saying "harassment is bad"

I'm sorry, I don't have a twitter. What is a normal number of responses?

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Arhra

Here's the thing though. Image boards are publicly available, and for 4chan at least the entire board content is archived by third party sites.

If there is evidence to be found there, why has nothing come up except that IRC planning log which, well, wasn't incriminating at all?

Potentially a dangerous link, I guess, per Marc, belowhttps://8chan.co/gg/ Is, I believe, where they went. I'm not reading that shit, though. Fuck that.

Also: The issue with game journalism is it never had separation of church and state. It's been issue since the start. But this is unlikely to end regardless of how much hate mail anyone sends anywhere, because even real respectable journalism is dropping it.

GamerGate, is, regardless of anything else, at its core, completely detrimental to any attempts at fixing this issue, as well, because of how it started. It doesn't matter if everyone in it is sending abuse or not (other than it's more evil that way) or how unimportant those nazis are, or how many people tell you they're shitty and how offended you get by it, or how much they do or don't do to stop the harassment.

What matters is it happened. Any attempt to use GG to discuss games journalism is going to come with all that weight. All that weight that they put on themselves.

If you want to discuss the editorial department being completely over run by marketing in game journalism, or, better yet, journalism as a whole, and how this makes objective journalism impossible, and their sites entirely worthless: Get a new moniker. A new group.

Because, right now, GG is to games journalism as PETA is to animal rights, except a hundred times worse. There might be a good message hidden in there, but it's really fucking hard to take it seriously when there's dumpsters full of dead puppies outside their head quarters, or people showing up at the homes of their opponents.

Also: Because some people probably don't know it; separation of church and state in journalism means that the editorial and the commercial sections of media are completely divided. Advertisers and the people who court them have absolutely 0 input in what gets printed. The breakdown of it in 'real' journalism has caused exactly what we've seen in gaming for awhile--sponsored articles. Articles that are nothing more than advertisements for a product, cleverly disguised as 'news'. Which is exactly why it was created in the first place, and given such a lofty moniker.

It's also what any movement for integrity in any kind of journalism should start with. Not journalists being friends/fuck-buddies with people they write stories about. Not that the latter isn't also corruption, but it's incredibly small scale and not worth anyone's time to worry about except their editors (who should pull such stories and/or fire such journalists if there's any clear bias).

[Marc v4.0]

I would advise no one to go to that website at all, it's a haven for consumers of illegal sexual activities, and likely to get you placed on an FBI watchlist.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Arhra

I'm sorry, I don't have a twitter. What is a normal number of responses?

Well, I mean, I get a hell of a lot more than ten respondents when they're mad at me, that's for damn sure.