Quote:
Originally Posted by Kalyx triaD
I wanna ask; what would the line be in your mind where something goes from pretending to being?
GG funded a feminist game jam. GG raised money for anti-bullying awareness. GG put women forward when anti-GG kept telling them to stand down and be quiet (fancy that). GG showcased the true diversity of the gaming community when anti-GG kept pushing their 'gamers are all white sexist' narrative. Every journalist who has had equal communication with both sides almost always notes how GG treated them great while anti-GG were shockingly harsh (the latest case being YTer David Packman).
At what point, to you, does this illusion of being a good cause become a good cause? Is there any action GG can take, for you, that would finally separate it from it's complicated origins (it was not about harassing a women, as somebody who seen this unfold live, but I'm done arguing this info)? Why can't you measure the good over the bad? Is it that you don't care about the lives that were improved because of us? Cancer research, female developers, people of color speaking out; are these not things you find impressive?
|
I acknowledge those actions coming out of GG, and I'm not trying to discredit them, but they came at a time when GG had expanded so much that practically everyone was involved one way or another. I've taken flak for my views before but I've said that charity is often used as a modern day version of buying indulgences from the church. I won't discredit it though, just say as I did before that by this point it's really hard to define what GG even is any more.
My original GG quarrel on rajah started because I was drawn into it with the first post. It started with him posting the 'Five Guys' video, ranting about how sick he was that this whore was getting away with it and that somebody should do something. I don't particularly want to brand him with the big misogynist iron, but throughout the following weeks, when he wasn't just reposting labyrinthian composite images of twitter, he would let some really weird things about women slip out. Nobody's simple.
So I already came into this thread with my dukes up. What really posted me over the top was the link to your twitter, seeing you directly message femfreq with a pompous challenge of telling her that her suffering was relativistic and you should see how [my ebonies] have it. Whatever you think of Anita, you know how many message a second she already gets, and I felt as bad for her as I did for you getting swept up in that sort of thing. I don't think everyone sits around plotting evil, I think we get swept up in things. I don't post on twitter any more because I think it's inherently a horrible medium, and it touched me somewhat. Bloody hell, I felt uncomfortable when DTTS posted a weird article about me in the music forum, so I can only imagine what it feels like for Anita. This is the way of the world, it's fine and it's not that bad, but you did this and you labelled it #gamergate, you refer to them as 'we' and I think you should unplug from that collective. I've always felt that way, it gives people false confidence. I've apologised for throwing a few closed fists your way - at the end of the day I figure that TPWW is a closed environment so to a degree roughhousing is within context. We don't have the whole world piling on
About actual gamergate now...
I think it's too big and doesn't make sense any more. The actions of bombarding advertisers to get them to pull from gamasutra/gawker is fine in isolation, but ultimately silly too. In a way it's a sort of endorsement of advertising funded coverage by trying to police that field into something that suits your goals. However advertising funded press is the number 1 thing that's holding coverage back from being what it could be.
It reminds me of the '"'lefts'"' No To Page 3 campaign in a way. They think they're dealing a blow to feminism by taking the topless women out of newspapers, instead I think it's just a tokenistic strike agains the working class, and ultimately it says "We'll accept this paper when that's taken out!" It's a fucking Murdoch rag! The topless women are the only honest thing in the paper, they're very strict about their implant rules. Everything else in it is dodgy mass media spin, and by asking them to remove Page 3 they're endorsing them as an otherwise legitimate medium.
What was the point of that? It's hard to have a movement (especially after that pizza) that knows what it wants. Like I said, taking all negative aspects out of gamergate, if I was going to be an activist about the industry you'd more likely see me writing to publishers, not crying for coverage. We don't need to change the press at all, we don't even need to destroy them because we can ignore them.
That's without talking about how absolutely boring the constant stream of porny women in games are.