Monday, June 12, 2017

A Reflection on my Past Views on #GamerGate and Other "Sins"

A mildly political post.  If you're sick to death of these things (and I have mostly been avoiding posting them), feel free to backclick away and come back for the next H-space Monster Girl Bestiary story this weekend.

E3 was last weekend.  One of the games that generated some initial buzz was an indie title called The Last Night.  Here is its youtube trailer:



It looks very stylish and Blade Runner-esque.  There was a lot of buzz about the visual aesthetic.

Then somebody did some digging and discovered that the game dev, Tim Soret, had said some vaguely supportive things about #GamerGate back in 2014.  Cue shit show...



This made me think about some of the things I'd written in the past about #GamerGate, #SadPuppies and similar nontroversies.  Would I in future also be dragged up to the drum and forced to account for my past comments?  Not just comments - I'd even penned a short story depicting a #GamerGate protagonist in a vaguely sympathetic light.  The heresy!

Surely, given that #GamerGate was a vicious misogynist campaign to drive women out of gaming (the media says so, so it must be true), I must be ashamed of my past self.  That if it ever came to light, I'd have to disavow those past comments.

Okay, so I should address that now for my new readers.

Here it comes.

..

..

My views haven't changed at all.



Written games journalism is still infested with shitty horrible people more interested in student-level politics and stirring up shit rather than writing about computer games.  If you want proper games coverage and reviews nowadays you're better off following the twitch streams/youtube channels of people like TotalBiscuit.

SJWs - with their hypocrisy, faulty logic, doxxing, harassment of creators, and other general toxicity - would occupy the position of biggest shitstains on social media if that spot wasn't already taken by ISIS.

My own personal opinion is I don't care what your sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc is.  Everyone is equally deserving of respect as a human being.

That said, if you go around harassing people, or try to dictate what creators/artists can or can't create, I'm going to think you're a cunt, dick, ass, knob, penis, duodenum, [insert part of the human anatomy you wish to use as a slur] regardless of your sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc.

Hope that makes things clear.

(and no, I don't want to drive women out of computer gaming)

13 comments:

  1. Honestly, for a long time there I purposely made every effort I could to *avoid* figuring out what 'Gamer's Gate' was about. The explanation I eventually did end up morbidly trying to dig up (damn my curiosity, ) still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

    Apparently a female Game Creator's ex-boyfriend got pissed at said ex-girlfriend and a game reporter or some such he thought she was in affair (what business of his it would have been at that point, I dunno, ) with and and made accusations designed to destroy her, even trying to lead some pseudo rebellion at a n awards ceremony. (The accuracy of this summary of events is probably only just above zero. )

    Yeah. Great. What does any of that have to do with anything, and why did anyone aside from the people *directly* involved think it mattered at all? I'm a 31 year old man (or boy in a man's body, as I doubt I grew up mentally sometimes, ) and I don't think of myself as a sexist or racist any other -ist, but this whole mess seems massively overblown, and I pretty don't want to know any more. Ugh. Seems like most people on both sides of the 'issue' (what was said 'issue,' again? I don't think anybody involved could say what it is at this point, ) are just *wrong* to some degree.

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    1. David Auerbach wrote some very good articles at the time that saw it correctly as old media (text websites) raging at losing ground to new (twitch/youtube) and essentially rage-quitting their own audience.

      It is overblown... unless you happen to be a creator caught in the firing line. In which case it has real consequences as you have to survive a social media horde pulling every dirty trick they can to put you out of business.

      One positive stemming from GamerGate is this horde strategy is less effective now, as whenever one of the SJW agitators tries to start a witch hunt, there are usually enough accounts rising to oppose them that it's not as easy to snowball a proper hate campaign on twitter/tumblr/etc to properly obliterate the target.

      The downside is this manifests as an ugly slapfight over nothing to anyone looking in that doesn't understand what's going on.

      Delete
  2. My views probably align with Jim Sterling on this one.

    Gamergate was a shitshow. By the end, neither side could claim the moral high ground

    I don't think 'hypocrisy, faulty logic, doxxing, harassment of creators, and other general toxicity' is a crime of SJWs. the people who identify as 'anti-SJWs' are just as guilty of this in many instances.

    Yes, people like Anita Sarkeesian are extremely annoying and toxic, and too quick to perceive everything through the lens of feminism. However, the correct response is to ignore them, not dedicate your life to harassing them as so many 'anti SJWs' have done.

    It's sad because I don't disagree with all of the points of SJWs: I think it would be nice if games made more of an effort to cater to the female audience. It's horrible that screeching SJWs are the people to communicate that message though.

    It inevitably caused a backlash. Many people (*cough Sargon of Akkad *cough Thunderfoot) base their entire identity around being anti SJW. I find that equally stupid. Just because X is bad doesn't mean minus X is good.



    TL;DR
    being an asshole isn't an SJW thing, it's an asshole thing. both SJWs and anti SJWs are guilty of it.
    The true tragedy is the death of reasonable debate, but a shitshow is inevitably what happens when you split a bunch of people into camps like SJW and anti SJW. They dehumanize each other and amplify their own worst tendencies

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    1. Yup, one of the more annoying things about it all is that the twerps on the other side saw how effective the SJW tactics were and started to copy them.

      The main difference I've observed between the SJW and anti-SJW camps is anti-SJW is more willing to respect neutrality while SJW takes a much more hardline "you're with us or you're our enemy" attitude. There are exceptions and assholes are always assholes regardless of side of course.

      Delete
    2. It's funny. When you are a moderate you end up hating the extremists on your own side just as much, if not more than the extremists on the other side.

      Delete
    3. Moderates hate the extremists on their own side because they make their side look bad.

      Extremists hate moderates more than the extremists on the other side because the moderates are much better at picking their weak arguments apart and making them look stupid.

      Delete
  3. I have found the best thing you can do is not to just ignore it. That just makes you a victim the next time someone gets in your face with hypocritical talking points. You are better off arming yourself with counter arguments to whatever the current narrative is, so you can put these people in their place. You don't need the moral high ground, you just need to stand up to them.

    I armed myself politically with arguments from some big names like Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, Steven Crowder, there are plenty of them out there, just look on youtube.

    It isn't hard to counter their arguments, they are not based on fact, just feelings and virtue signalling. It is easy to spot the signs after you listen to the counter arguments.

    SJW are bullies. Plain and simple. Bullies won't leave you alone until you stand up to them. That's my 2 cents.

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    1. Sadly this is true.

      I'm hearing now there's some kind of social media campaign to blacklist Tim Soret and people that hold similar "incorrect" views.

      There have been rumours of similar kinds of nonsense happening behind the scenes in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy writing community for years.

      I would like nothing more than to ignore these SJW idiots, but creators just don't have that luxury unfortunately.

      Delete
    2. 'arguments from Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, Steven Crowder'

      Ugh. I can understand there is a need to protect yourself from the SJW crowd, but I'd rather not fight cancer by becoming another strain of cancer.

      When I start parroting the opinions of people like that fucking alt-righter Milo Yiannopoulos to win arguments, I consider that a Pyrrhic victory.
      It's best to formulate and use your own arguments, based on your own reasons for liking/disliking a thing. But that requires a degree of self-criticism and an open mind in order to test the validity of your beliefs and acknowledge your shortcomings. I think someone who does this quite well is Destiny (Steven Bonnell). You might know him from his recent debate with Jontron

      I hate the youtube 'skeptic' community. Every singly one of them, IMO, is guilty of confirmation bias and a closed mind. Some of them, like Sargon of Akkad, are just plain stupid in addition to all this.

      Delete
    3. People can disagree with Milo, I typically don't use his arguments as I find better ones from some of the others. But there is one key piece of advice Milo has given, and he follows it himself. I've seen it in practice, and the advice works.

      Simply put, Stand your ground and don't apologize for your opinion because a certain crowd doesn't like your wrong think.

      I've seen Milo and many other successful wrong thinkers follow that, and thrive. By contrast, the crowd that apologizes, ends up with their career trashed. You need look no further than the left devouring their own with Cathy Griffin as the latest example.

      Back on topic of Tim Soret, he needs to hold his ground also. There is a large group of people that can see bullies for what they are, but they don't respect people who capitulate to them. They respect strength regardless of what the SJW crowd may say.

      Delete
  4. Wow. And I actually really enjoyed your short stories. So glad I found this. Smh

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    1. You can still enjoy them. The stories haven't changed. Neither have I.

      If what you've read in the media has lessened your enjoyment of certain creators, I ask only that you look at what the creator themselves says, writes or how they act to others. It's not always the same as whatever stereotype is being pushed to stir up outrage. ;)

      Delete
  5. This talk of winning arguments is an absurdity. What is your prize for winning an argument on twitter or in YouTube comments? A minute spent trying to convince strangers that your memorized arguments are better than theirs is a minute wasted. None of have much time on this world. Please make better use of what you have.

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