Katherine Cross: D For Disingenuous
This is a brief take down of some of the most absurd points of the following article:
They declaimed unethical games journalism with the aid of an unethical journalist
Gee, I wonder why people were grateful to Milo for his help. It’s almost like we were ignored and insulted by the vast majority of journalists in the gaming media who SHOULD have been investigating unethical behaviour and corruption. Also, his prior behaviour has no bearing on the information he provided, and if a so-called unethical journalist can deliver this sort of investigation, what does it say of the sad hacks in gaming journalism that call themselves ethical?
they claimed women and minorities were #notyourshield while using them as a shield against criticism of GamerGate
#NotYourShield was and is essential when people erase minorities supporting #GamerGate and make unfounded claims (blah blah, sexist movement, blah blah harassment). Having no truck with your brand of feminism does not a sexist make; ignore that point to your own detriment.
they excoriated “blacklists” while creating aggressively enforced boycott lists of websites and authors who disagreed with them
We are not industry professionals, we’re consumers. This is comparing apples to oranges and if you’re not being disingenuous, you’re certainly being stupid.
they averred their movement had nothing to do with Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn even as they remained unable to stoptalking about them
Here is a graph showing the lack of crossover between certain individuals with questionable behaviour. Stop misrepresenting the facts.
GamerGate, for all its loathing of anything that is vaguely redolent of leftism, has spectacularly failed to learn one of the hardest lessons that leftist activists have painfully struggled with for more than two hundred years: no imagined future paradise is worth terror in the here and now.
This is either hilariously ignorant or you’re in more denial than 9–11 truthers. Here is a project that collected the political leanings of #GamerGate. You can search the tag to see the general range of opinions, too. We’re extremely left learning and socially progressive as a group. That doesn’t mean we have to accept your unevidenced dogma without question. And rejecting it doesn’t make us conservatives or right-wing. Is that fact sinking in yet?
Ethical and “agenda-free” journalism and criticism,achieved by scouring games journalism of any and all dissent from GamerGate’s views — i.e. the hated “SJWs.”
Actually, plenty of us are happy to have social justice criticism. The problem is, for years when we’ve expressed issues over certain points we’ve been labelled bigots etc. because we don’t toe the line to the social justice cult. Intolerance is a problem, but I’ve mostly seen it from your side.
It was, itself, corrupted from the start by the idea that all means were justified or excusable if it meant “saving” video gaming.
Conjecture & bollocks. Which people said or supported this idea I’ve never seen expressed, even after following the tag every day?
GamerGaters are told by some among their number to avoid harassment at all costs, but beyond an appeal to utilitarian self-interest (‘do not harass because it makes us look bad’) they are not really told why.
And look, more conjecture! Any decent person knows not to harass because they were brought up properly. Do you really think saying ‘hey, don’t harass people!’ is useful? But, I also wonder how you define harassment. Tweets critical of something you’ve done or said? If so, please stop demeaning actual victims of harassment.
Their ideology — the conviction that any and all feminism, and anything that can be deemed “SJW” is inherently corrupt — makes harassment and the targeting of outspoken figures, especially women, inevitable
That is not our ideology. I’m a feminist (or egalitarian), please read this and stop erasing me and others.
they have rules with no moral framework, they call for ethics without finding ways of instilling a sense of ethics in their followers.
Yawn. Again, we’re asking for ethics in professionals. Policing followers is an utterly separate issue from wanting people to do their paid job ethically and professionally.
If you sincerely believe that the cyber mob is the ideal jury to fight corruption, and you marshal a perilous stack of indictments against dozens of writers, organisations, websites, and developers that charges them all with a conspiracy to destroy gaming, then harassment-as-praxis is inevitable.
No. No, it doesn’t. And where is this conspiracy to destroy gaming rubbish? Which #GamerGate supporters are saying this?
excuse the terror GamerGate wrought on everyone they targeted.
More conjecture and hyperbole in an attempt to appeal to emotion. Why haven’t you acknowledged the abuse & threats pro #GamerGate supporters have had thrown at them?
The terror of GamerGate had many insidious dimensions, but surely one of the most chilling was the manner in which it all but criminalised what had hitherto been normal relationships, personal and professional.
More emotive language with no basis. All we want is disclosure when there is a potential conflict of interest. It’s not difficult, and please see websites like the Escapist for how very easy it is to implement.
None were spared, and GamerGate began to see lying hypocrites masked by every screen-name and avatar. We were all asked questions with no exonerating answers: why did we write? Were we really gamers? Who did we associate with? Why did we not “disclose” our feminism? Why were we lying about GamerGate?
This is not what the vast majority of #GamerGate was doing; you’re again being disingenuous. Most people on the tag have no idea who you are.
In a stunning recent move, some of GamerGate’s radical elements turned on video game journalist Liana Kerzner
If you’re going to bring up Liana Kerzner, then bring up the entire situation like her appearance on the #GamerGate streams instead of cherry-picking one tiny part of the issue because it fits your narrative.
They are now all but criminalising the very notion that writers should be paid for their work, suggesting this is a conflict of interest in its own right.
That’s because it IS a conflict of interest when someone is financially supporting someone that they’re reporting on. Do you only have gaming journalists as a measuring stick for ethical and professional behaviour? Look at other areas that have standards.
GamerGate sought to enforce its vision brutally, and demand the conversion or expulsion of those who dissented, even among their own ranks.
It’s cute how you’re referring to #GamerGate in past tense, but you’re in for a shock if you think it’s over. And if you want to talk about dissent, please look at modern feminism’s awful track record for treating opposing viewpoints and you might have some idea of why women are increasingly preferring to disassociate from the term feminist.
I am happy to have social justice criticism in gaming, but only if we’re allowed critique and question it in turn instead of taking it as gospel. If that sets off warning bells in your head that I’m perhaps some kind of sexist, maybe #GamerGate isn’t the group who has a problem with dissent.