Posted July 21, 2015
low rated
227: I don't want to pile on, and I really have nothing against you as a person (I even enjoy many of your posts despite sometimes being the target), but where did you fall on shirtgate? I don't remember if you weighed in or not, and the forum search is less than ideal for finding things, but the greater point is that those who you've aligned with in previous posts engaged in exactly what you're decrying and it was hardly an isolated instance. Just see what Gawker did recently for a recent example.
It's great to see you against those things, though. Maybe there's hope of seeing eye-to-eye on this at least.
I've just asked gog to remove all my posts in this thread, but as any support request to GOG is by definition a howl in the dark, I can answer to this and check in a few more downvotes. Sorry for the copy/paste, but I've written up a lot of this before, and it's independent of "shirtgate", of which I've never heard before and only googled just now. It's great to see you against those things, though. Maybe there's hope of seeing eye-to-eye on this at least.
In short, I'm against it, which aligns me with no one.
In short, gawker published a vile callout piece that made itself the revenge instrument of the called out person's blackmailer. Brave new world and all that.
The only community I talked to about the gawker incident – in the context of gamergate – was very strongly against the publication. Not sure whom I supposedly have aligned with (no one, to my knowledge), but I found myself to be quite understood there. If Milo Yiannopoulos wants to spend his time barking at gawker, I have no problem with that, it keeps him from writing deeply harrassing three part callout/takedown pieces on private individuals.
But back to the whole issue that brought us there.
The internet has a massive problem with callout culture and harrassment. And it's particularly strong in geek culture, in franchises of comic, film, books, games. Why? Because the stories move us emotionally.
These are the things that we're facing and need to address generally, cross fandoms:
- Hyperbolic and highly emotional reaction to mere narrative
- Mere details are perceived as ‘ruining’ an entire work of art
- Criticism personally directed against creator/author (twitter etc.)
- Criticism centers on one central and possibly vulnerable person
- Insults and threats are common
- customers are asked to boycott companies/franchises
There are people who associate with feminism who do that, and people who associate with gamergate, and people who associate with neither and still do that. It has to stop, over and out.
Now, with this being the problem, I'd maybe call it social outrage culture. If people are outraged about the "censorship" and "freedom of speech" of any forum they'd like to force to host and therewith pay for their organized harrassment or if they're trying to terrorize websites into superficially reforming their ethics policies as a demonstration of power, then hello, gamergate is part of exactly that culture. The "feminists" who piled hate on Joss Whedon on twitter? Some of them were outspoken gamergate supporters as well. Yeah, ouch.
If you will, the gamergaters are their own SJW, there really is no difference here.
It doesn't stop there, unfortunately.
These are the things gamergate culture adds to the above problems
- narrow and distorting perspectives from the US political sphere applied to ancient literary motifs of cultural analogy, diversity and inclusion (also happens in sci-fi books right now)
- diversification of attacks not just on creators, but also on academia, journalists and other media critics
- conspiracy type theories as to an organized or planned shift in narrative ideology
- tendency to target women/ to dismiss and marginalize women’s interest and involvement in the media
- explicitly asking for a kind of objectivity in art and art critique that is entirely alien to it
- criticism of the medium is always seen as coming from outside forces ("fake gamer girl" etc.)
In short, with an academic background in literature, I have no side to chose. My convictions haven't changed, I have aligned with no one, I am a rock in the tide finding especially the stuff in the second enumeration very, very odd. My political convictions have changed a lot in the last 20 years; my convictions concerning narrative and video games, not at all.
Gamergate acts out all the problems of the internet culture across ideologies and fandoms AND THEN adds a pile of their own problematic ideologies. I roll my eyes over the shirtrage right now, and I certainly found the kaboom over the supposedly transphobic epitaph overblown.
In that context, I also don't think TotalBiscuit is transphobic. Unfortunately, he still is the serial harrasser he's been called, right from his first blog entry that expanded on the already baseless Zoe Quinn conspiracy theories. That blog entry sparked the organized harrassment that was deleted from reddit (according to e.g. knowyourmeme.com), and of course TotalBiscuit then condemned the censorship, resulting in more outrage and harrassment. I hold him responsible for that, of course I do. He embodies those problems, he embodies that culture.
Turning the neck 180° and looking in the other direction, I take a comparative look at e.g. Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women videos and find:
- Almost emotionless lecture, detached from subject, more or less style of literary criticism
- Names of individual creator(s) seldom mentioned, no ad hominem attacks
- Devoid of insults, threats, "behind the scenes" conspiracy theory, call to arms
- clear statement in each video that the investigated tropes do not "ruin" the possible enjoyment of the entire work of art
I'm also not fond of Sarkeesian's weighing in on violence in games. Not because it isn't a worthy subject (compared to movies and books, games are overwhelmingly violent, and I do wonder why), but because I spent the last year teaching people how to view violence and sexism as two (almost!) entirely different problematic aspects of game culture. I'd rather Sarkeesian remained the sexism-only critic, because the topics profit a whole lot from being kept separate as much as possible. Ah well. Let's see how that positive female characters series keeps shaping up, because those two videos were quite interesting.
Closing this ultra long post, I urge you to watch the six part "Why are you so angry" videos on youtube; although directed against gamergate certainly, they also have a way of making everyone on whatever side look in a mirror as to what they're possibly doing to others.
And now I'm off.
Post edited July 21, 2015 by Vainamoinen