What exactly is “harassment” anyway? 

Like, when I wrote that stuff yesterday, I was thinking of it as any kind of statements really intended to cause someone harm. The way Seebs was talking, though, it sounded like she was exclusively referring to aggression that is illegal. And then you have stuff like Anita Sarkeesian’s compilation of all the harassment she received in a single week, which includes every instance of “fuck you” and even a person saying “you’re not being harassed, people are disagreeing with you” - which is verifiably false, but only harassment insofar as it denies harassment is occurring. 

There are definitely multiple definitions at play here, both when people describe their own experiences and interpret the experiences of others. Qualitative descriptions are one thing, but since the trend seems to be dealing with these things quantitatively, some kind of operational definition is necessary, and I’m actually pretty curious what you guys think.

What is harassment? What “tiers” of it exist? And, of course, where is the cutoff point between it and criticism (which can, in the right context, cause someone harm)?

It’s been a while since I wrote about GamerGate. Every once in a while someone will still email me about it, sometimes in response to my plea for both “sides” to defend themselves, though I admit a certain disappointment in many of the replies. It’s not that they are poorly written, but as a general trend they have shifted toward a new claim, “GamerGate is damaging the gaming industry”, which never comes with as much defense as I would like. 

As forewarning, this post isn’t particularly thought-out or well-structured; it’s just me sharing some general thoughts.

I guess I should explain where I’m coming from here. Back when I was a teenager, I used to be one of those internet art critic people. Like, you know the type: assholes who went out of their way to provide honest (if often overly harsh) criticism of every art piece someone had the gall to request feedback on. We rebelled against this thing we called, at the time, the “DeviantArt mentality”, where artists would exclusively get their feedback from a small group of friends who would positively regard their work no matter what. Most of us on the more critical side of things knew, from personal experience, that this behavior hindered artistic development and sort of took it upon ourselves to stamp it out.

As I got older, of course, I grew out of it. I realized, as I think most people eventually do, that it’s perfectly okay for someone to do something in a way they personally enjoy. The real issue with what we called the “DeviantArt mentality” was that it was not economically viable. A person who has their work coddled and never learns to appeal to a diverse and discerning crowd will not be able to compete adequately in a professional setting, their audience limited to that small group of friends (who are often artists in the exact same situation). As a result, you have a professional art community of people who expect and value candid and varied feedback, and a “hobbyist” community of people who are primarily interested in working for themselves or a small group of friends. This, I feel, is a working model. 

If you read through my stuff, it’s pretty clear that I am very audience-focused. I talk about audience statistics a lot, as well as directly interact with fans at every possible opportunity. I don’t spend a lot of time around other artists, even going so far as to avoid seriously participating in any “artist circles”, since I’ve learned many audience members hate the schism this drives between creators and their fans. My policy regarding these things is a simple one: I work for the chaotic and diverse mass of fans that consume my material, and generally stand against anything that discourages them from sharing their thoughts or feelings (since, you know, that’s what my model pivots on catering to).

I never really joined GamerGate, which is why it’s sort of weird when people lump me in with them. What I did was pretty much the same thing I always do: value audience members the same as content creators. When a whole bunch of people are upset about something and a creator says “nah, it’s fine”, my first instinct is to hear both sides out, because as far as I’m concerned neither one has more credibility. As I’ve stressed before, the people who attack me for my thoughts on GamerGate never actually address anything I say as being misinformation, they just attack me for “listening to 4chan/8chan/gamers/whatever”, which is incredibly unsettling because it conveys this idea that I should value certain people higher than others - not because they support their ideas better, but because they are inherently better. 

Which I guess takes me back to this idea I mentioned at the beginning: GamerGate damaging the gaming industry. When people are defending this assertion, they point to the “angry mobs” with no coherent demands, the general level of vitriol flung at creators, and the privacy-crippling digging they do into their targets, etc. All through this, though, I’m just left thinking “Holy shit. This is my jam!”. This thing they’re complaining about is the exact environment I’m used to navigating - in fact, as far as I know, it’s the exact environment the gaming industry always had. When people point to all the horrible harassment developers “received from GamerGate”, it’s tamer than what I’ve gotten just by virtue of being a relatively popular creator. As someone who’s in this industry, the notion that GamerGate is ruining it makes no sense to me since nothing actually changed. 

What seems more likely, to me, is that people stumbled outside their Artist Circles and hit a wild audience for the first time. They didn’t know how to handle a critical and diverse audience, they turned it antagonistic, and they don’t know how to deal with it. It would explain a lot of the behavior you see: demands to see some kind of GamerGate leader they can blame/complain to, assertions that abuse is okay when it’s against the “right” people, lamenting their own harassment when it’s pretty much the bog-standard someone gets from working with a mass audience, etc. From my perspective, it feels like these are fish-out-of-water, dealing directly with my industry for the first time.

I admit when I first started writing this, I considered whether I should be showing these people more sympathy. They are probably scared, I realized: flung headlong into a scary environment their more tightly-knit artist circle did not prepare them for. But, then I thought back to when I was a young artist, and the first time I encountered a harsh critic: I wasn’t a dick to him, I didn’t tell him his opinion was stupid, and I adapted to a critical environment pretty quickly. A lot of these people vehemently decrying GamerGate, however, are kind of accusatory dicks to these groups of individuals they label as “angry mobs”. I started to consider a different theory:

What if this is about privilege? 

What if this is some group of well-connected, well-to-do people who are stepping into a hostile and critical environment for the first time and are completely ass-blasted that they are not inherently valued above others? What if these people are realizing, with horror, that this is an industry where their word is just as valuable as that of some random non-creator on an internet forum, and they’re trying to “fix” it by reinstating a hierarchy with them on top? 

I mean, just speaking personally, there are a lot of things I like about GamerGate and its affect on the industry. I like that when a creator is accused of something, GG digs into it and tries to gather evidence. I like that they’re critical of reporting and have made their presence known as a massive, vaguely-united mob that will lash out and potentially gain dangerous credibility if faced with things that are verifiably false. They’ve been bringing a lot of ideologically diverse people together in an environment where they can typically discuss things without attempting to harm one another. They’ve been speaking out against the tendency to “speak for” minorities. Best of all, it makes it harder to prevail above your competitors with nothing but money and connections. These are all changes I wanted to see in the gaming industry. But, frankly, I can understand why a privileged dickwad would oppose every one of them.

This is just a theory, of course. I mean, all I know is that from my perspective, a bunch of kind of rude and dismissive people are coming in and attacking the group I consider to be my audience as being horrible monsters who don’t appreciate True Art or whatever. I’m not particularly worried, because as I’ve stated before this only facilitates the development of a niche, but I’m still kind of offended when people say GamerGate is damaging the industry or driving away minority developers. Like… I’m here; you can talk to me. I approve of the changes, and I just explained why. I know that some people will be driven away, but a lot of them are kind of assholes to their audience and I parse the hostility toward them the same way I’d parse a rude waiter getting fired by his boss. 

I don’t know. Like I said, I’m an audience person; my primary concern is with the tastes and desires of the people who play my games. I wish people who talk about GamerGate damaging the industry would talk about how it damages it for people like me, because it feels like the focus is purely on making the industry comfortable for the exact type of people I oppose. 

I’ve been too busy to post much lately, but someone named Silicon Fades (e: siliconfades@gmail.com, added at their request) sent me an email which brought up some interesting ideas. I’m reposting it with permission. Whether or not you agree with it, I think it’s worth a read.

Hi, you probably don’t remember but I sent you an email a while back about some gamergate stuff. I’ve read pretty much all of your blog and agree with a lot of what you write about manipulation on the internet. I was reading this (http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/jon-ronson-interviews-adam-curtis-393) today and the book about public shaming made me think about your writing so I thought I’d shoot you this email and make you aware about it in case you weren’t already.

Adam Curtis, the guy being interviewed has a few really interesting documentaries that touch on social control that you might be interested in as well, I think most of them are on youtube. A lot of his work centres on fear and how the concept of an “other” is used by politicians to create narratives that engender policy change. I don’t agree with everything he says but it’s interesting stuff nevertheless.

I see a lot of this in “SJW” culture, and other internet sub cultures in general. I think that the majority of activity that comes under the “Social Justice” banner in fact has little to do with actual activism and is really to do with facilitating and protecting a type of tribal identity. Once you’re “in the gang” the primary objective is protection of those who are also in the gang. In this case however, before one can even get to attacking the others who aren’t in the gang, one has to expound a huge amount of energy existentially justifying the gang in the first place. The necessity of the Crips to it’s members is self-evident, it’s an entity based on practical security and financial gain. The existence of the Social Justice Gang is markedly less evident, especially to it’s members, and so a large part of the workings of the gang are creating, exploiting and uncovering events and people that can be pointed to as reasons for the existence of the gang. At it’s most fundamental, the gang really exists to help facilitate an easy to understand identity for the people in it.

This ties in a lot to some stuff written by Alvin Toffler who you’ve probably already heard of. I’ve only read Future Shock by him but it’s fascinating stuff. He misses the mark at a few points but overall it’s a remarkably prescient look at contemporary society written in the late sixties. One bit that really stuck out to me was how he basically manages to predict the existence of “Anonymous” as a culture:

“Leisure-time pursuits will become an increasingly important basis for differences between people, as the society itself shifts from a work orientation toward greater involvement in leisure. In the United States, since the turn of the century alone, the society’s measurable commitment to work has plummeted by nearly a third. This is a massive redeployment of the society’s time and energy. As this commitment declines further, we shall advance into an era of breathtaking fun specialism – much of it based on sophisticated technology.

We can anticipate the formation of subcults built around space activity, holography, mind-control, deep-sea diving, submarining, computer gaming and the like. We can even see on the horizon the creation of certain anti-social leisure cults – tightly organized groups of people who will disrupt the workings of society not for material gain, but for the sheer sport of "beating the system” – a development foreshadowed in such films as Duffy and The Thomas Crown Affair. Such groups may attempt to tamper with governmental or corporate computer programs, re-route mail, intercept and alter radio and television broadcasts, perform elaborately theatrical hoaxes, tinker with the stock market, corrupt the random samples upon which political or other polls are based, and even, perhaps, commit complexly plotted robberies and assassinations. Novelist Thomas Pynchon in The Crying of Lot 49 describes a fictional underground group who have organized their own private postal system and maintained it for generations. Science fiction writer Robert Sheckley has gone so far as to propose, in a terrifying short story called The Seventh Victim, the possibility that society might legalize murder among certain specified “players” who hunt one another and are, in turn, hunted. This ultimate game would permit those who are dangerously violent to work off their aggressions within a managed framework.

Bizarre as some of this may sound, it would be well not to rule out the seemingly improbable, for the realm of leisure, unlike that of work, is little constrained by practical considerations. Here imagination has free play, and the mind of man can conjure up incredible varieties of “fun.” Given enough time, money and, for some of these, technical skill, the men of tomorrow will be capable of playing in ways never dreamed of before. They will play strange sexual games. They will play games with the mind. They will play games with society And in so doing, by choosing among the unimaginably broad options, they will form subcults and further set themselves off from one another.“

Anyway he postulates that a large reason for the existence of subcultures is that it provides a ready made template for a person to use as an example of how they want to live their life, and helps reduce the number of decisions they have to make in a world that’s saturated with decisions. Over abundance of choice is one of the core tenets of future shock. This is useful in understanding some of the actions we see in something like gamergate. If one thinks of oneself as an affiliate of the social justice gang, then when confronted with any actions or ideas that can be seen as signifiers of the enemy gang (fat neckbearded fedoras) then the reaction that you have to be seen to be having is already decided. You don’t have to waste any of your precious thinking time with analysing a new situation, because the gang and your premade identity have already figured out how you’re supposed to react. Hence the large numbers of people deriding the gamergate movement without any attempt being made to inquire what was really happening. “I’m a social justice advocate (however casually), this movement has been defined to be counter to ours, therefore it can safely be ridiculed.”

Notice also how many of the rhetorical devices used by both sides of the gamergate divide are essentially the same. Take something like this page (http://ggobservations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-five-people-you-will-meet-in.html) linked on the siderbar of /r/gamerghazi. It seems sensible enough at first, but with a quick find and replace you can make it sound horrible. Replace “Gamergate” with “A Liberal University”, “The Common Troll” with “Cultural Marxists” and “Conservative Bloggers” with “The Jews” and you get some pretty typical Stormfront esque propaganda. Interestingly enough, the way that page treats minorities as agency-less hordes to be utilised by Machiavellian masters means that you can just leave that section as it is. The oft-seen argument that “Gamergate has some good ideas but the name has become tainted, the people who want real good change to happen should move on and leave that name behind” sounds an awful lot like “I’m not a feminist, I’m an egalitarian. Feminisim as a label is associated with crazy feminnazis.”.

In the end it all comes back to identity. It’s comforting to know that you’re the group that’s “in the right”, and it’s useful to paint your enemy is both a caricature to be ridiculed and a genuine threat to the safety of those you share your identity.

Obviously this is just my way of looking at things. I think it’s useful but I’d be wary of applying it in too many places. I think that’s one of the pitfalls of sociology in general that lead to internet social justice being what it is today. Someone comes along with a perfectly good metaphorical device (in this case the concept of “privilege”) that describes a particular situation, interaction or system in a way that makes that sense and illustrates the situation. For example - “I have privilege that you do not have and thus my view of this matter is different than yours, and I should try and understand it from your un-privilged point of view in an effort to reach a more just situation” is a perfectly reasonable and useful way of thinking about things that happen in society. The problem arises when, after this tool is applied in a few different scenarios and it is shown it work, people latch on to it and think of it as some kind of grand unified theory of sociology through which all of human interaction can be predicted and we end up with where we are right now.

In this case I think the best way to move forward for everyone is to consider anybody who you interact with online as a real human, and not as a representative of any movement or generalised identity. It’s only if we take individuals on their own terms and try and do something about their concerns in a compassionate way that we can move beyond looking at each other as two-dimensional boogeymen.

It should be pretty apparent by this point in the rambling that I’ve got absolutely zero formal sociolgical education, but it makes sense to me.

Anyway I thought you might like the book.

Peace

After I asked permission to repost his message, they sent me an addendum. I’m assuming the reposting permission applies to it as well:

One other small point. I think a lot of the frustration that people like you and I (apologies if none of this jives with you, but it seems to be in line with your observations and analysis) have with regards to "anti gamergate” and established Internet social justice cliques is a result of the dissonance between their stated goals and their unconscious goals. What we see as tactically unsound and exasperating only looks that way to us because we’re considering those actions in the context of of the surface objective, eg “stop gamergate” . In reality, the actions might be perfectly serviceable at achieving other aims that are beneficial to the clique, eg protect and define our identity, or the personal advancement of individuals through accumulation of social and economic capital.

Social identities are probably memetic in nature and as such operate on a survival of the fittest basis. The meme of the social justice warrior identity (as you’ve stated before, not necessarily someone who advocates social justice, but someone who takes it to unnecessary and detrimental extremes) has survived through a relative amount of turmoil in its life. The fact that it’s survived thus far is an indication that it’s fit for some purpose, whatever that purpose may be.  Though it might seem to us to be inefficient in achieving what we see to be its goals, that’s a failing of understanding on our part. Essentially, the fact that the identity prevails is an indication of its usefulness to the people who choose to adopt it, and the onus is on us to determine what needs it fulfils for those people, and how to manipulate it to achieve our goals. 

Actually, I’ve been think about a counter point to that last email that ties into some of what Toffler posits in future shock. 

Everything I just said relies on the capabilites of memetic selection. However, if memes are anything like their genetic counterparts, then it could be said that there’s a natural (one must avoid automatically assuming that natural = perfect but I think it holds true here) ratio of mutations per generation that allows natural selection to filter out the beneficial traits from the detriment ones. Too many (and too drastic) mutations per generation and the chances are the species suffers. On the other hand, too few mutations and the species stagnates, unable to cope with its changing environment. We can imagine a similar scenario with the development of ideas, and a large part of what Toffler says in the book hinges on the fact that we’re developing and sharing new ideas at an ever accelerating rate. If we don’t have sufficient time to test these ideas, then it might be that what at first seems beneficial comes to be disastrous at worst, or a waste of time at best. 

Just as many believe (erroneously, in my opinion) that natural selection in humans has stagnated due to modern medicine and needs eugenics to prune our gene pool, one can easily imagine a corresponding inverse, where, faced with the ever accelerating onslaught of information technology, an elite few need to be responsible for a sort of eugenics of ideas (eumemics?) to keep our collective consciousness fit. This terrifying and fascinating concept is basically the plot of metal fear solid 2 (it really is about ethics in video-game plot contrivances). Toffler proposes the much less fascist idea of separate communities designed to accelerate at different rates, with people who struggle to cope with the transient nature of modern life living in much more traditional lifestyles (which also serve as handy living museums), those who are able to cope with a rapid rate of development living in ways that push technological and social boundaries, and with most of the population living somewhere in the middle, with the developments from the accelerated communities gradually filtering through once they have been shown to be sound. Free movement from one group to the other is encouraged as each individuals capacity for transience can vary throughout ones life. 

That diverted pretty weirdly, but the takeaway of all this is that some of the things I said in my last email are reliant on the stress-tolerances of memetic evolution as a self-regulating mechanism. Personally, I think that although there’s a possibility that things like social justice cliques could simply be a manifestation of social development moving too fast, I’m still liable to believe that they do serve a valid purpose for the people who engage in them, even if I can’t figure it out yet. 

lapisamethyst:

Mild Frustration

kazerad:

…

The article you’re referring to with “Useful Idiots” is this Slate one right? http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.html

I remember reading it and making a comment on it that “Calling people Useful Idiots isn’t going to win anyone over…And yet based on the latter half of this article I’d actually consider it in support of Gamergate.” Because after the Useful Idiots insult, it basically advocates to make an honest effort to communicate with moderates, clean up the obvious corruption that does exist in the industry, and stop with the Boogeyman level insults.

D= You’re not the first person to assume I was talking about that article. Which is weird to me since that article only says “useful idiots” in quotes, says who it’s quoting, and even links to the article of the person who actually made the accusation.

Aurbach’s article says a lot of the same things I say, though he’s a bit more biting about it. Like, he actually asserts that Gawker is so toxic and associated with harassment that any journalists who want to be taken seriously should dissociate from the company and renounce it. 

I have gotten some decent responses since I put out that request, though as I go deeper into the whole thing it only gets more baffling from a meta perspective. I didn’t mean this to be an opinion survey, but after almost everyone messaged me with “I support GamerGate, buuuut…” it kind of turned into that.

Like, let’s take a step back and look at this. I don’t think anyone who associates with GamerGate unconditionally likes GamerGate. They’re an inefficient maelstrom operating under the tumultuous and self-critical ideals of Anon Culture, only retaining support by the fact that they are 1.) actually doing things, and 2.) sometimes they are good things. Most people who identify as a part of it are there for reasons that seem more archetypal of Tumblr’s Social Justice community, taking a stand against behavior they perceive as majority-favoring or unethical even if doing so gets them labeled as a disorganized mob of whiny children. As is typical of these groups, bigotry in their opposition only strengthens their resolve - see Lewis’ Law. 

On the other side of this, you have a group that purports to not be a side at all, but unrelated individuals who share a critical opinion of GamerGate. Which isn’t a bad thing, but strictly speaking it also mirrors the feelings held by most of the people who actually associate with GamerGate. It creates a weird situation where everyone more or less wants the same thing, descended into two rough factions where one sloppily fights for a good cause and the other believes the sloppiness causes more harm than good.

But… it keeps coming back to this idea that if anyone actually wanted to get rid of GamerGate, all they would really have to do is outperform it. If the people who oppose it with hacking, bigotry and slander put that effort into negating the concerns that lock a lot of moderates into GamerGate, it would take the wind out of its sails and probably taper it off. Yet even to professional writers who speak out against GamerGate, it feels like this idea is completely foreign to them. I still remember the guy who described the majority of moderates who identify as a part of GamerGate as “useful idiots” tricked into supporting a bad cause. Like, oh my fucking god, you don’t get the moderates on your side by calling them idiots for disagreeing with you, you listen to their concerns! It should not be this complicated.

At this point, I feel convinced that there is no “anti-GamerGate”. There is a bunch of utterly incompetent and violent people who disapprove of GamerGate but have absolutely no idea how to make it go away. I could organize a better anti-GamerGate than these people. And fuck it, maybe I should.

agoutirex:

kazerad:

[snip]

This sounds like an attention-getting ploy to trick people into going through your Tumblr to read all your wordy piffle. I am truly shocked and surprised.

However, having done that now, I realize that the game really is rigged a lot more than I thought.  It’s kind of disingenuous to claim to be a neutral party when you’re already pro-gamergate to begin with, but I’m guessing this whole game was really just an attention grab with the whole LOOK AT ME, I’M A GAME DESIGNER AND I WENT TO SMARTY PANTS SCHOOL LOOK AT THESE BIG ACADEMIC WORDS I USE COME, PLEBIANS, DANCE FOR YOUR KING because you’ve got that overly formal writing style favored by self-important Internet people who’re used to receiving slavish praise.You can write another essay in response, but, if not, I’m sure one of your lickspittles will be more than happy to do it for you.

No, it’s… it’s actually a pretty honest request. And I’m not sure Bachelor of the Arts degrees or my vocabulary are really things worth bragging about, anyway.

Like I said, my concern is purely that there is one side of this that is trying to defend themselves as being in the moral right, whereas the people who oppose them aren’t really making an effort to win over the middle. I think concerns about speech disincentives and minority erasure are warranted given events that have transpired, and it would be really easy for people opposing GamerGate to draw attention to constructs that would prevent these problems from exacerbating in GG’s absence. They could really easily invalidate all the arguments in GamerGate’s favor and leave it perceived as nothing but an inferior or more dangerous alternative.

The way I see it, there are people who really do want GamerGate to go away, and the fact that none of them are utilizing this extremely simple tactic can really only parse as two things: endorsement of problematic behavior, or outright incompetence. Like, maybe they want to maintain status quo when it comes to things like discrimination, and that is why nobody is really stepping up to win over those who only support GamerGate for that reason. Or, maybe these people just honestly don’t know how to quell an audience like this. I don’t know. My hope is that neither of these things are true, though at this point I think the hope has mostly evaporated.

If there is a better tactic by which to quell my concerns with GG’s opposition, then please explain it. Like, asking the people you’re actually implicating in wrongdoing to defend themselves seems like it’s about the most fair way to go about it. If there is a better way to get this information, I promise you I am willing to listen.

After requesting people sell their GamerGate opinions to me, the vast majority of stuff sent to me has been from GamerGate. Which, you know, isn’t special; it’s not really arguable that they are the ones with the more dedicated outreach. However, I have had two people so far make a concerted effort to defend the opposing position. I admit I don’t find the arguments particularly persuasive myself; one seems easy to empirically counter while the other clashes with me ideologically a bit when it talks about social disincentives in the positive, but they both have some solid parts and consistent logic within. They both also gave permission to repost as long as it was kept anonymous, so I do want to share them here. I’m curious what people think.

First response:

“Playing Devils Advocate” has become a dangerous term here on tumblr, one that often is taken as “accepting that your argument is wrong, and making it anyway”. This is not the original purpose of this phrase. It originally was meant to give someone the leeway to take a side that they do not support, for the purpose of making a better argument. I am going to play devils advocate here and now, and try my best to give a good argument for the anti-gamer-gate side.

Argument one: Anti-GG has the same issues that the GG side has, but does not believe that they can silence them without giving more fuel to their opponents. They are, after all, facing claims that they are selectively silencing groups to provide a message that supports them, and makes their opponents look like villains. They face a catch-22 here, because if they DO shut down people who are hurting their cause from their side, then that person not only INSTANTLY joins the other side, but they have evidence to support that other sides arguments. But if they do not silence them, then their side looks worse for having them. They made a choice, and hoped it was the correct one.

Argument two: Gamer-Gate has already preformed its purpose, and is now just an excuse for people to cause trouble. Anyone who will listen now knows what sources are not credible as a result of this event. Those who won’t will not be swayed by this movement at any point. As such, Gamer-Gate has already been a success. Continuing the movement will only continue to have people causing trouble for those who do not deserve it, bystanders or mild commentators being doxxed on both sides. it is irresponsible to keep this madness going, when your goal is already as close to being achieved as is reasonably possible.

Argument three: Gamer-Gate was never worth it. Ultimately, it revealed that some people in gaming journalism help their friends instead of hitting them while they are down. It is a clear human response to something happening. They made a mistake, perhaps, but they did it for a cause most people involved in this argument on both sides would support, if they were friends with the people in question, too. The wake of this whole affair, from an objective standpoint, is far more damaging than allowing this kind of action to continue. Who is harmed by what was being done? Perhaps a dozen people a year. Who was harmed by the events of Gamer-Gate? Hundreds of people, in much worse ways, in only a few months time. And it won’t stop these things from happening. It may slow them, for a short time, but no lasting change has been managed, and none WILL be managed by these methods. Only more harm will come of it.

That’s all I can think of, at this time. If you choose to respond to this on your blog, please scrub my name off of it. I’d rather not be dragged into a public argument about this right now.

Second response:

While I sympathize with supporters, I also think that it is important to understand the other side. You have also said that supporters have answered your initiative. So, I wish to answer your initiative from the anti side.

The first positive thing that anti-gamergate has done is that it has brought public attention to systemic problems with gender relations in the gaming community. While attempts to do this before have happened, this is by far the most successful. I’d call this positive for several reasons. First, by bringing it to public attention, the opponents of gamergate have assured that discussion can’t simply be ignored or pushed under the rug, as seems to have happened many times before. As I consider discussion of systemic issues to always be a good thing, I consider this a plus. Second, by bringing it to public attention, the opponents of gamergate make sure that people on the receiving end of the gender issues - whether as large and rare as out-and-out harassment or small and common as sexist remarks - know that there are others to whom they can turn, and others that sympathize. Third, by bringing it to public attention, the opponents of gamergate have assured that these issues will be considered in the future by developers and game companies. While some companies have made small moves in this direction, such public attention will guarantee that all companies will at least take this into account. 

The second positive thing that anti-gamergate has done is that it has demonstrated that there are social discouragements for publicly sexist comments, even in areas commonly thought to be dominated by one gender. This is positive because sexist comments do harm to people affected by sexism; discouraging them will at least cause fewer to be posted and therefore bring less harm to those people. 

The third positive thing that anti-gamergate has done is that it has introduced many people to the concepts of social justice. 

The fourth positive thing that anti-gamergate has done is that it has introduced services to some sites in order to curb harassment. This includes the twitter harassment tool created by WAM (Women Action Media)

Now, these all are vague; I don’t know of much positive that opponents have done specifically. That doesn’t mean there aren’t specific things; I just have not heard of them personally. I’d also say that most of them have obvious rebuttals; only the first point seems to really stand as a positive to me. 

Finally, in case you do want to post this publicly, please feel free (but please black out the email); in fact, I’d prefer a response on tumblr to a response to this email. And if you do, to the opponents of gamergate out there: I think I have been fair, but it’s almost certain that I have missed several things opponents have done. So if you think I have misrepresented you, please correct me.

On a side note: this is a disposable email; I made it to send this to you because you don’t have anon ask on your tumblr and I prefer to remain anonymous. Is there any chance that you’d turn on anon ask?

If Tumblr makes a way to non-publicly respond to anonymous asks, I’ll turn it on, anon #2. I don’t want my hideous essay pile to be mixed with a bunch of shy people asking questions, though, and I like to try to remind people that they can talk to me non-anonymously. I won’t bite their face off or anything.

agoutirex:

This topic must be very important to you since you can’t be bothered to actually research it yourself but instead base your opinion on which side more effectively knob gobbles for your favor.

Clearly, you should have done your research on whether or not I did my research!

But seriously though, the whole idea of “do your own research!” always bothers me. It works off the assumption that one conclusion is so well-supported that anyone who looks for evidence will believe it, ignoring the fact that for a conflict to even exist, there has to be something drawing people to the counter position. Even with something like the anti-vaccine movement, there is (falsified) evidence in support of their claims, and a certain number of people seeking answers on their own will encounter this, and believe it.

To insist people do their own research does nothing other than void the activist of any responsibility they have for the health of their social causes. If someone does their own research and comes to a conclusion you disagree with, it’s suddenly their fault for not having the experiences, time, or ability that let you come to your superior and informed position, rather than your fault for doing nothing to help your cause. It is the epitome of the attitude held by people who want to be special, not make a difference. 

What I’m looking for in an activism group, movement, or revolt is the presence (or, ideally, prevalence) of mindsets other than that. I want a strong contingent people who take control of problems and responsibility for their failings in adequately addressing them, not elitists who act as though others have a moral responsibility to agree with them. 

The ideals I support are not in question here; both sides are claiming to serve my interests. What I want is evidence as to which is doing more, and which is simply upset.

the-real-seebs:

kazerad:

[snip]

What about other positions, such as “they both suck”, or “anti-anti-gamergate”?

See, I’m looking at this through the scope of activism. For better or for worse, GamerGate and its opponents have together drawn a lot of issues I care about into a public spotlight. There are significantly large groups of people who are finally talking about these things. Given how many problems existed with them beforehand, a little turmoil around these topics isn’t unwelcome. I know a lot of people are like “god I can’t wait until this all blows over”, but these are topics that affect me personally and I’m pretty glad conflict is arising over them. That is far, far more than was happening before.

What I see here is two groups both claiming that they are making a positive difference with regard to topics I care about. Both groups are pretty fucked up, but most large groups are - after all, even the most important social movements will occasionally have someone who tries to assassinate Andy Warhol. My interest pretty much lies in which one is going to cause the right kind of problems. Even if the parties involved have their flaws and I disagree with them on some things, there are some status quos I want to see upset and I can work with someone who adequately upsets them.

As a (hopeflly noticed) reply to Alexseanchai, this is also why I want to focus on what the groups are actually doing. Stuff like harassment existed before this, and will continue to exist after it, and rather than idolizing the people who simply point to it I want to lend support to whoever will make it exist less. As I’ve written in the past, the people who are actually trying to do things will always make more mistakes than the people who do nothing, so I want to try to move away from this continual focus on the negatives and instead focus on the accomplishments these groups are actually proud of - what they feel defines them at their best, and what they will try to imitate again.

This doesn’t mean the stuff their opponent did can’t be brought up, of course. But if their opponent was bullying people, for example, how did they combat it and work to ensure it would not happen again? That’s the part I care about, and which provides equal opportunities for both the offensive side and the defensive side to justify their effectiveness. 

In fact let’s just make this a game. I call it

I am going to officially declare myself completely neutral on GamerGate stuff, and each side has to try to convince me that they are not evil, and in fact have a positive impact on the gaming industry. The challenge, however, is you have to appeal to someone from my background, which I will outline below:

• I am a game designer! I mostly make (or at least prototype) little one-shot experimental games and interactive fiction. My work has been positively regarded on both Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun, though the bulk of my audience comes from word-of-mouth.
• I like diversity! My work tends to feature more female/minority characters than not, especially in playable positions. However, I think diversity in the creator sphere and marketplace is more important than diveristy in media itself.
• I hold a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a second major in Economics! It’s nothing special, but it means am relatively well-versed in both behavior control mechanics and recognizing misleading statistics. I dislike when when these things are ignored as much as I dislike them being assumed present with no explanation given.
• I am opposed to censorship/disincentives on speech! I believe that if everyone can speak safely, the best ideas will gain traction and prevalence on their own. Silencing and shaming people is only worthwhile if your ideas cannot withstand competition.
• I am disappointed with the depth of feminist video game criticism! I see most of it as patronizingly shallow, and only controversial because it’s designed to incite argument rather than sway beliefs.
• I think classism is under-represented in progressive dialogue! Its is way too common for someone’s lack of resources or inability to access education to be used as “proof” they are a bad person.  

So, go on. I want to see your very best. Your job - both sides - is to convince me your side is the good guys. That doesn’t mean talk about all the bad things your opponent did, because it’s possible for you to both be bad - rather, you have to actually convince me you are doing something positive. If your opponent did something bad, it only matters insofar as you can show what you did in response.

Since I know a lot of my followers are GamerGate people, please take the opportunity to share this with some of your friends who oppose it - the game won’t be any fun if nobody plays. The winner - the side that isn’t evil, even if it’s both of them - will get my support. Spread the word! It’ll be fun, and fair.