Good points. As a former moderator on other sites I have witnessed the high-speed disintegration of threads when some found a place to shoehorn their favourite bete noire into. The etiology always presents the same symptoms (selective quoting, strawmen, ad hominem, etc.) before turning into a full-blown case of advanced rantitis. At that point only complete amputation of the thread can save the body.

I have to confess that the GOG forum is the only social site I spend significant time on. I am also very selective about the sites from which I get news and opinion. I'm afraid that I am highly allergic to internet drama, and dyspeptic in the face of conflict, so I scrupulously try to avoid places where I am likely to encounter one or both.

I hesitate to even post in the more contentious threads on GOG, because I prefer to be happy and spread happy. But sometimes I do chime in if I think I can offer a somewhat dispassionate perspective, as I tried to do here.

Actually it sort of did. While we can't say for 100% certainty that she did what Eron claims on his blog, there is an inductive argument to be made. She never sued Eron for slander and libel. Her powerful associates haven't either which is odd since this is hurting them. You'd think after a month of twitter trending and advertiser droppage, someone would call bs on Eron in an attempt to invalidate the movements. Funny it's not happening wouldn't you say?

I have this funny opinion they don't want to sue since it's true and then that would make the facebook posts "known facts" which can be used in courts for any corruption laws that exist. Now I won't say this is fact. But it does raise some red flags for a conflict of interest.

It's not just the conflicts of interest. When people got caught with conflicts of interest they tried to paint gamers as a specific stereotype and censor discussion on forums from Reddit to comments sections on smaller sites. Real gamers, women, minorities, and feminist had enough and made #GamerGate and #notyourshield.

Your posts are actually a good example of what some peoples reproach to the gaming "press/blog/whatever"; they are kind of condescending (even if it probably was not on purpose) opposing on one side the "good guys" fighting for a noble cause and on the other side the poor misguided souls who are at worst racist/sexists/whatever-ist or at best simply ignorants who would realize how wrong they are if only they could understand the noble cause the other side is fighting for. And of course if the "good guys" have sometime to resort to insults/bullying/censorship that's only as a response of the other side hateful actions.

I don't think that many, except extremists and/or immatures individuals, are actually against the idea that women (or men for that matter) shouldn't be insulted, harassed, threated, discriminated in gaming or anywhere else, and that's actually not the issue.

The issue is that a certain part of the gaming "press"/blogers has for a long time used that as an excuse to push their own agenda and quell any attempt at criticism or even dialog. They decided that they were the only ones holding the absolute and unique truth and that anybody disagreeing with them was a sexist/a racist/promoting status quo/having a regressive agenda/a man baby/misogynist/ etc...

You think it's silly to call a game "sexist" simply because a SWAT team rescue a female hostage instead of a male one... that's because you are a sexist crass nerd. You consider that a game is not necessarily racist just because a white female character happen to speak with a "black" accent (whatever that mean)... that's because you are a privileged white male, etc... It's no real surprise that all it took was a little spark/excuse for everything to explode.

And when it did instead of trying to understand what was the cause of this whole mess, instead of trying to see if in the middle of the usual dumb Internet rage (which is nothing new) there was actually some arguments to be heard, they decided to switch to full charge mode, equip their holy armor, and go on insulting/ridiculing anybody who happened to disagree with them, no matter if those peoples where acting like douche or like civilized peoples just trying to have a counter argument.

Oh, sure.

Of course, the truthfulness of an accusation has a major influence on US citizens and they would never sue the living hell out of people if they knew that the accusations raised against them are true.

Of course, Zoë Quinn has lots and lots of "powerful associates" who would gladly give her shitloads of money for such a lawsuit, only provided the accusations were untrue.

Of course, boiling up the whole thing fifty times over the course of years, whenever the court of law assembled, would be pretty much exactly what Zoë Quinn would want to do, only provided the accusations were untrue.

Of course, every US citizen has the money to start such a lawsuit, especially game designers who only just got one of their extremely low budget games on Steam.

There's nothing to gain from a lawsuit besides more unwanted coverage. And as I said before, if it's true 100%, the whole issue has nothing to do with journalism and is actually nothing for us to discuss. A completely private matter. Eron describes a girl who allegedly is out for closeness and sex - and explicitly doesn't expect any kind of professional favors. He is very actively arguing against his own desperate suggestion that there's somehow a connection to the gaming industry.

If Quinn wants to sue Gjoni, why go with defamation of character anyway? In my opinion, there's grounds for an incitement/attempted murder charge for keeping that blog online even after the continued reaction has become utterly clear to the guy.

No, not at all. One doesn't have to sue immediately. In California, for example, one has a year to sue.

If she plans to sue, she has likely been advised to:
1) Never comment about it one way or another.
2) Wait so they can see the full extent of the damage done.

True but hasn't enough damage been done already? What if the damage is ongoing? I guess we will see in a year
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on the point of nothing to gain from a lawsuit. It would end the hashtag movements, end most of her "harassment", gain her some money (maybe not a lot) and get her personal connections less heat (such as Polygon and Kotaku).

I hesitate to bring either up, but I think the reason that so much of this feels like it becomes about Zoe or Anita, is the state of things. We're past the current initial barrage of letters and articles that directly attacked gamers, and we've sorta moved onto more of the long game, letters to sponsors expressing concern, trying to find reasonable people to let this turn into a civil debate. Some places are just keeping a lid on things and hoping that they can outlast it all, that something shiny catches the eyes of the gamergate side and they lose interest. Sort of a protracted siege, both hoping that the other side loses interest eventually.

As for the two 'Stars' of our show? They're distractions, brought out in hopes that they can be used as part of the narrative that the journalists desperately want. Do I blame them? To be frank, no, they have a lot of decent perks, and any meaningful ethics changes would require either, losing those perks, or some pretty creative thinking in how they can keep the perks without us finding out. As for the women? I don't think either woman is stupid. Zoe's going to milk her 15 minutes of fame for all it's worth, and I can't bring myself to blame her in this matter. She knows she's irrelevant to the conversation, she's trying to make this about her for as long as she can. Even another Social Advocate has called her on being in this more to abuse the system then to make changes

(http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s6j3sh Link for those who are interested, quickpost doesn't have the nice buttons for this.)

As for Anita, I don't know. I have criticisms of how she does things, but I'm not going to rant about them here. I don't know how to think here, I do firmly believe that she's being used as a shield in this regard though. All and all, not my problem since I don't care about her.

My big complaint? I came into all of this because gaming sites basically came up with this huge narrative that gamers were dead. That we didn't have to be the audience for games makers because we would hold back the medium. That we were misogynistic, hate filled, racist, neckbearded manchildren, terrorists worse then ISIS and probably more that I don't care to remember. This is something that's become a thread through the most recent years. Articles where the writer has made themselves a character in the narrative for the sake of telling us that the games industry is rife with sexism, character design can be called out as misogynistic and childish without the full understanding of the game.

Now, I can't help but interject myself here, but I'm not a journalist, and this isn't one of my fantasy stories where I'm not a character. I do take offense to the very core of their argument, as I'm sure friends would argue that I'm a tie die shirt, beads, long hair and drugs away from being a hippy myself. In fact at least one person has actually considered that I AM on drugs for being easy going. I'd like to think I treat everyone as equally as I can in regards to race, gender and whatnot. I care more about content of character then I do color of skin or type of sex organs you possess.

But another because I'm never not going to identify myself as a gamer. It's saved my life and my sanity in a way that I don't think I can properly describe and express my gratitude. It's allowed me to come out of my shell and become more comfortable with people, to the point where I can reach out to others and that makes me happy.

But why suddenly was games journalists attacking? Yeah, they've been caught with their hands in the cookie jar a few times and we seemed to have laughed it off. We've taken note of their agendas through their reviews, what's so different now? Fuck I'm still asking that question, Zoe Quinn wasn't notable, just another mark on the giant tally of 'Stupid shit that Games Journalists have done' for most of us. But it was quick, it was decisive, and it felt coordinated when you look at all of the articles posted on almost the same day.

It became telling that they started talking about how they couldn't have objectivity, that they called games out for not being 'inclusive' enough, hell they even called out Mario Kart for it. They started admitting that they donate to Patreons, which is a huge journalistic nono (Hell, Kotaku even lets their people expense it).

An interesting listen overall about journalism, and it's aimed at some of the issues of gamergate in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-7RLxrsJ04. There's also an article by Roger Ebert about being an effective critic: http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/rogers-little-rule-book

The symptoms of this have been there for a while, but this has been an sudden onset of the problems that have been ailing us for quite some time. And it's not going to get better overnight. It's going to get worse. The two women? In the long run, they don't matter to the movement, they're sideshows, and when the main show gets quiet, people tend to put a lot more focus on the side show then needs to be, but that too will blow over.

This is what seems to get lost. We are so used to being the society of the spectacle that we lose such boundaries. Particularly those boundaries between the public and the private, unless we're talking about our own privacy, which is of course sacrosanct.

If people could envision what it's like to be on the receiving end of this, then it would occur far less often. And the usual excuse of "I wouldn't be on the other end, because I'd never do X" doesn't wash, because you can be accused of anything. Any of us could be made a pariah with just the right twist of events, and any of us could be sullied in the eyes of strangers based on what another chooses to say.

Libel and defamation suits are impossible to win. Sure, you might get an award, but you wind up with all sorts of dirty secrets being aired and the press doesn't take down articles that covered the proceedings if you do win.

That being said, the fact that they went on the offensive with emotional pleas and accusations that gamers are no longer relevant is far more damning than the lack of a civil suit.
At this point even if she did win a lawsuit she'd only be entitled to her legal fees. She had a legal obligation to keep the damages to a minimum. Which when the issue of damages comes up and there's a shitload of evidence of her fanning the flames, as well as the extra income she's received during the time period where she was allegedly being damaged by defamation, would further erode any possibility of being paid.

That being said, IANAL and juries can be incredibly unpredictable.

This reminds me of a scene from Transmetropolitan, about the meaning of democracy. You vote for a relaxing evening behind a telly as a way to spend some free time, and everyone else votes for anally raping you with a rusty bayonet.

Carefull with that. The shadowban of poster above J.A. was related to upvoting 'gamergate' content AFAI(Understood), not for asking an 'unpleasant' question. At least that's what I found while following this issue.

But shadowban is still an evil thing.

Gjoni is a piss poor nobody. He and Quinn would end up giving lots of cash to their lawyers, but those lawyers can't change that naked men don't have deep pockets. The "hashtag movements" unfortunately spread through the entirety of the internet, and no US court of law has significant power over that vast country. I rest my case: a lawsuit would just stir things up, a Streisand effect par excellence. I don't know whether Quinn will do it or not, but I'm saying it could be a REALLY bad move.

She might. Her actions suggest that she's likely a psychopath and I'm sure she'll wind up with a book deal when this is all over.

I'm quite sure that she still doesn't understand how treating men the way that she has is the main reason why she's embroiled in this to begin with.

The problem I'm having right now is that I agree pretty much 100% with the sentiments of gamergate, but I don't know how I feel about any of the ACTIONS of gamergate--either the proposed goals or the literal steps it's taken.

I mean, I'm very fed up with radical feminism and "reverse bigotry," I'd really like to see more transparency from games media (and suspect there's a lot of problems with current journalism), and I'm really unhappy with the way news sites have responded to the outcry. But do I want to see people fired and SJWs run out of the industry? Do I want to actively kill the websites that have offended me? I guess one part of me says "yes, yes, a thousand times yes!" But the rest of me doesn't really feel comfortable with that, and I feel like a lot of gamergate supporters have inadvertently been treating them the same way they've treated us: blacklisting, painting with a broad brush, censoring, etc.

It's a little strange, since I'm very much on gamergate's side, but have this feeling that getting involved annd supporting them wholeheartedly isn't really the moral thing to do either.

Regardless of that, the post of the guy below Assange (doodep) was also deleted. Of course, I have no idea who deleted that one, might have been doodep himself.

And besides, the fact remains that apparently even Assange thinks reddit's actions (banning gamergate-related discussions, shadowbanning users) are deplorable. And I don't buy into Vainamoinen's argument either. Look at this forum. People were free to discuss any Quinspiracy/Gamergate-stuff as they saw fit. By his logic, the GOG forum would be a cesspool of bile and hatred by now, when it is in fact the exact opposite. Sure, there's the occasional shitpost, but those are either largely ignored or get called out by the other users. The discussions remain extremely polite and civil, even among people who disagree with each other. I find it very curious that the forum of a digital distributor (that is obviously closely tied to the industry) takes free speech more seriously and offers a less oppressive space for lively debate than those sites whose main purpose is discussion among users.