The latest brilliant plan by the GamerGaters to bring gaming industry corruption publications that say mean things about them to their knees?
OPERATION KRAMPUS, which is literally a plan to RUIN CHRISTMAS by … boycotting every game maker that continues to send review copies of games to the ever-growing list of game-related publications that the GamerGaters have decided aren’t sufficiently adoring towards the GamerGate Revolution.
No, really:
![OPERATION KRAMPUS The Leader of Gamergate 10/13/14 (Mon) 16:56:46 ID: 15d7f7 No.104068[Last 50 Posts][Watch Thread] OPERATION KRAMPUS Winter is coming, and with it the holiday sales rush. We are two months into #GamerGate, advertisers continue to withdraw, but the gaming websites have issued no apology and continue to survive. It's time to escalate. People have said from the beginning that if this drags out until winter, it will affect games sales and force the hand of developers. It is time to assure that. The operation is twofold: 1) A complete boycott of games made by companies who send review codes/copies to anti-gamer publications. Gamers are under attack by the gaming websites. The developers cannot support both, and anything done by developers that allows these websites to thrive is a show of support. Contact the PR departments of the game companies. Let them know that we are angry and offended. Tell them that we will not support companies who work with the websites that have attacked us. 2) Spread the word to holiday shoppers. Flood #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday with pro-#GamerGate messages. Let holiday shoppers know which companies advertise on anti-consumer gaming websites and that they should not buy from those companies. Provide alternative places for holiday shoppers to make their purchases. Continue contacting advertisers with OPERATION DISRESPECTFUL NOD as before, but spread the word to other customers as well. The message needs to be crystal clear: Support people who attack your customers and your customers will no longer support you. First step is to collect information. Compile a list of companies who send review codes/copies to Kotaku, Polygon, and the like and how to contact their PR departments. Then let the emails fly. This will be our winter campaign.](https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/krampus.png)
Happily, I suspect that the GamerGaters’ master plan is simply too ridiculous to succeed. Because, seriously? The ever-expanding list of publications and websites they want to destroy consists of a rather large portion of all gaming media, not to mention pretty much every other non-gaming publication that’s written about GamerGate.
Here’s an incomplete list of the websites and publications that the GamerGaters are trying to boycott:
Kotaku; Polygon; Destructoid; Rock, Paper, Shotgun; The Escapist; Motherboard; IGN; GameSpot; Gamasutra; Gameranx; PCGamer.com; Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine; Total Xbox; Gameplanet; Gizmodo; TechCrunch; Ars Technica; VICE; The Daily Dot; Badass Digest; The Daily Beast; Raw Story; The Mary Sue; Salon; BuzzFeed; Uproxx; Paste Magazine; Wired; The New Yorker; Cracked; Mic; xoJane; The Verge; Gawker; Valleywag; Defamer; Lifehacker; Deadspin; Screamer; io9; Sploid; Jalopnik; Paging Dr. NerdLove; RationalWiki; TV Tropes.
Now, granted, Dr. NerdLove and The New Yorker don’t exactly publish a lot of video game reviews, but do GamerGaters really think they can stop game makers from sending review copies to IGN, Gamespot, PCGamer, the offical Xbox magazine, The Escapist, and Kotaku? That seems about as likely to happen as movie studion forbidding critics from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly and the AV Club from seeing their films.
I guess the open question isn’t so much whether OPERATION KRAMPUS will bring the eeeevill game sites and/or companies to their knees — seems a tad unlikely — but whether the GamerGaters’ collective tantrum will throw a wrench in game sales this holiday season and basically ruin Christmas for everyone in the games biz anyway.
But hey, there’s no reason any of this has to ruin Christmas for me. See, for some reason I’m not on this GamerGate list of baddies yet, as far as I know, so I would like to encourage all game makers out there to send me all their extra review copies and codes. I won’t review any of the games in question, because that’s not what I do, and also I suck at most games, but at least it won’t get the GamerGaters mad at you.
Merry Christmas!
H/T — @EffNOVideoGames
I had fun trying to explain to Mr C what fairy cakes were, and also millionaire’s shortbread.
I always had problems trying to explain tablet
“It’s like fudge, but hard. Not hard like toffee though, kind of crumbly inside. Oh, and sweet enough to cause instant tooth decay, but no, it’s really good, honest.”
Millionaire’s shortbread! *drool. Heh heh, it’s battenberg or pineapple upside-down cake that may need infographs and a laser pointer.
I have to admit that the first time I made tablet I looked at the bowl full of sugar and went Ouch!
Oooo, I’ve had Bakewell tart and really liked it, and not known what it was.
What I really like is the perfect buttery shortbread, and also fly cemeteries. Cinnamon FTW!
Mary, (Mary, quite contrary): your timeline is internally inconsistent. But as to your question… if you’ve got one, lay it on me (generally when someone asks a question, barring evidence to the contrary, it is considered polite to take them at face value).
But if you want to go “into detail”, I’m glad to oblige. Let’s look at the record:
You’d made five posts before I replied. In one of them you said your son has been, “tightly restricted for the past several years”.
We know he’s 17. We can infer he is not, terribly close to 18, as this is the beginning of the school year. Several means more than two, generally less than five. So three or four, i.e. from the time he was 13-14.
You have, in your infinite wisdom, decided that “[no one] in my house needs to spend any time doing that (i.e. electronic gaming).
Why? Because the “entire game culture/industry” is too toxic.
At this point the only justification given is “the culture”. Then we get a wistful retrospective of when your other sons were teenagers, those halcyon days when gaming was lighthearted and fun, killing monsters and Nazis (which you can’t do now?).
This also paints a picture, one which says you were playing those games with your other sons before you had a stepson (and the frame of reference implies this was some time ago, as the most recently released game in that string is CoD, which came out 11 years ago).
You have, however, come to hate the mysogyny in some games so much that you refuse to support even those games which aren’t.
That’s the first post.
Sheesh @ everybody who thinks it’s ridiculous to not have electronic gaming in my home…
It wasn’t, and you know it. The very next sentence you wrote gives the lie to that.
It’s about the points to be made and conversations that stem from it. It’s also the right and responsibility of the adults to set the tone of the household
The first sentence is somewhat of a non-sequitur, and could use some tightening up: What points, what conversations? The ones which would come of talking about games, and the messages they send? Or the one’s you presume to say can only happen if there are no games, and so no examples you can analyze, only assertions to be made about things one has heard/read.
But the second one (I think) is the real reason you are upset. We have challenged your “auThori-Tay!. And you go off with three, longish, grafs about how important it is to be the boss, and that imposing what sounds like a monastic existence on a person in the period where they first start to gain autonomy (he has been living in a home in which any inclination to over-indulge in that activity has not been indulged), and showing him that he’s not actually allowed to have any say in the decisions, since the conclusion to be drawn from this sentence, “So is having conversations about why there’s never going to be a GTA in this house, and now why we’re shutting down the games completely. is that it’s not really going to be a conversation: it’s going to be a diktat and any objections (no matter how reasoned, or reasonable) he makes will be ignored.
Which means I question the idea that, seriously thinking about the nature and implications of gaming culture has been strongly encouraged which leads me to think that it won’t be the case that he’s going to be able to, “ independently question and critique gaming content very well.
On to number 3:
@ puddle, the stepson definitely has gamergate on his radar screen, and it’s been in his consciousness for longer that it’s been in ours.
This is the one that jumps out as inconsistent with the rest. If he’s not playing games, and he’s happy not playing them (one less source of constant conflict. No temper tantrums, just lots of dinner table conversations and reading.) why does he care? Gaming, to hear you tell it, isn’t on his radar as a thing; and he’s been reared to look at it critically. So the nonsense that is gamergate (at either level, the attacks on women, or the vapidity of the charges they make about the game-maker/game-writing collusions) shouldn’t be more than, “damn there are some stupid people in the world”.
And you admit that pulling the plug on the XBox (which is a confusing statement, since you said you don’t have a console on which to pull the plug), isn’t required, but you chose to go that route, rather than take the more nuanced one of engaging with him on the subject: nope, just remove all temptation, rather than teach moderation.
So, to number 4: (and the crux of the ongoing debate)
not “weird” at all. It’s perfectly reasonable parental discretion.”
We don’t think it’s reasonable (and all the passive aggressive, . I’m sure we can all agree that’s a good thing and let individual households decide how they want to go about instigating such conversations. won’t change the fact that while we agree we can’t stop people from being fools, we don’t have to like it, nor are we obliged to refrain from telling them so.
Because contra your This [decision] provides balance and perspective I say it doesn’t. It has no balance, no perspective. It’s a prohibition, which is antithetical to balance, or perspective. You can’t point to one game and say it’s good. You have tarred them all with the same brush. Even the “good one’s” are too bad to allow in the house.
Which is why we told you it’s a terrible form of parenting.
Part 5 (where you attempt snark).
You admit to being a controlling, micromanaging; stifling, parent.
There are computers (time on which is pretty restricted) and smart phones (he doesn’t have one) and iPods engineered for maximum funness (his is only engineered for the lower quadrant of funness)… And yes, cassandra, if we’re forking out thousands of dollars on tuition, and he looks like he’s opting for the eight year undergraduate plan with academic warnings and bouts of academic suspension because he spends more time playing on his XBox than going to and studying for his classes, we won’t pay for it.
So… his every aspect of access to the net, his various modes of entertainment (apart from books, and those lovely conversations you are so fond of) are all denied at home if he is to game it’s going to be the same way kids in the days before the net would sneak around to look at nudie mags, furtively, on the sly, and at the home of other kids.
Then you are going to release him to the wild, and if he stumbles, in his attempts to manage his time (and all the things he is, for the first time required to balance) you will pull the rug out from under him.
And you wonder how anyone could think that makes you a less than wonderful parent. Why they might, in fact, think you are a terrible parent. Strip the child of practice in exercising agency, and then, if they fail at living up to your standards, remind them they still don’t have any agency; and toss them to the world with less than a full set of the tools/credentials the world demands.
So what I recommend (for your stepson’s sake) is you take advantage of knowing about computers, and iPods, and smartphones, and get around to actually using them to do some serious research on the problems your, incredibly, restrictive approach to child-rearing causes.
It may not be too late to fix them.
And now I have to head to work.
I went back to look at Mary’s first comment, out of curiosity at what might have possibly drawn her here, to this post, and motivated her to drop her self-satisfied little turd. Now that I’ve done that, I’m struck by the contrast between, “I’ve decided that making my home a total online game/XBox-free-zone is the only logical course of action,” and “It’s about the points to be made and conversations that stem from it,” which make it sound like this is a new decision that she has just made (apparently unilaterally? What role did the kid’s father play when YOU decided on this ban?), versus:
That makes it sound like this is a decision that was made some time in the past. Long enough ago that the stepson has either gotten over, or at least learn to hide, any resentment at the ban, and noticeable changes in the quantity of dinner conversations and the quantity of conflict have taken place.
I have to go with cassandra’s assessment: this is a troll that can’t keep its story straight.
However, in the off-chance that this is a real person, I would also like to mention that at no point has Mary mentioned the stepson’s father. It’s like he doesn’t exist or something. She mentions her “own sons,” indicating that she doesn’t think of the stepson as her own son, and waxes nostalgic at having fun with those boys in a manner that she clearly doesn’t feel like doing with this other boy. And then she talks about decisions that she has made, to restrict her stepson’s access to the games that she herself enjoyed with her “own” sons.
Gee, I wonder why this child has problems in school, displays inappropriate behavior, and has mood swings. Could it possibly be that he’s noticed that his step-mother treats him differently from how she treated her “real” sons? Could it possibly be that his step-mother’s reaction to these problems – to crack down on him – is not actually a very useful reaction to a child who is acting out, for reasons that she assumes she knows but probably factually does not?
Yes, let’s all give Mary the shower of cookies she wants so badly.
@ Policy of Madness: Every little detail out has to be spelled out in full? I was already accused of not editing enough, but apparently, if I leave something unwritten, it’s going to be interpreted in the wonkiest way possible.
1) Note the use here and there of “we” and “our” in my posts. The father (my husband) is in on it, too. So is the mother.
2) My motivation to comment had to do with my disgust with GamerGate. It’s as mysterious or as clear and simple as that.
3) I’m the only member of the household writing here, but that only means that I’m the only member of the household writing here.
4) I think his mother might object to my claiming her son as my own, as opposed calling him my stepson. He’s her son; he’s my stepson. Those are things, accepted family role categories.
5) Our restrictions of the gaming and computer time (his mother’s partner at the time originally suggested it in that house, so that makes four adults in the mix) coincided with his improved grades, behavior and attitude, so you did a bit of a misread there.
Shut up, Mary.
So you read a pot about: “OPERATION KRAMPUS, which is literally a plan to RUIN CHRISTMAS by … boycotting every game maker that continues to send review copies of games to the ever-growing list of game-related publications that the GamerGaters have decided aren’t sufficiently adoring towards the GamerGate Revolution.”
And decided we needed to know that you had out grinched the grinches? Srsly?
Post post post, not pot. Criminy! I am going to bed.
1) Note the use here and there of “we” and “our” in my posts. The father (my husband) is in on it, too. So is the mother.
We did. There was a surprising lack of it. Really. The existence of your husband is only apparent in the use of the word, “stepson”
2) My motivation to comment had to do with my disgust with GamerGate. It’s as mysterious or as clear and simple as that.
Which is why you went on a tangent about the evils of games? And why you compared the good old fashioned shoot-em ups to some nebulous present in which the games aren’t wholesome like Castle Wolfenstein.
Which is why you made a long tangent about how playing games was ruining your stepsons life by making him suck in school?
And now… swanning in out of nowhere, we have two and half people (the actual implication of parental participation on the part of the boy’s father is still pretty vague: his non-resident stepfather gets more ink), who support you like blazes = we did a misread of text never supplied (as noted in the long comment I made explicating the close reading of your words: the which you ignored as if it hadn’t happened).
Shut up Mary.
Oh yeah… the “I hate GamerGate” was nowhere to be seen in your comment. Your comment was a self-valorising explanation of why you were going to parallel “Operation Krampus” because of the pernicious effects of games.
Not a condemnation of the cretins attacking women, but rather an attack on games, in toto (the good, the bad, the ugly, the baby and the bathwater).
So, because you have decided “modern” games suck, you are going to brag about how you’ve not been buying games for years (which is at odds with, “will be a dent in my households game buying this year: more of that textual inconsistency previously noted).
The trick to this sort of thing (since you’ve managed to convince me that you aren’t being honest: stepson or not, your motives are not what you have stated them to be, and if there is an actual family here, I don’t think you are being honest with them ether), is to make a script.
Put in the backstory, see what details need to be established early, so that introducing them later doesn’t seem like a flailing attempt to stave off both moral, and intellectual defeat.
Do some dry runs… find the weaknesses. See about getting a beta reader. Have some self-respect, and make the effort to put some craft into your work, rather than serving up a batch of half baked crap.
I just think it’s hilarious that anyone would respond to a story about a plan to ruin Christmas with “Hah! Already way ahead of you there – I’ve been working on Operation Ruin Christmas (for my stepson) for months!”
Takes all sorts, I guess.
Bless your Grinchy little heart though, Mary. Your fail trolling did give me a few chuckles.
@pecunium: Oh boy. That’s amazing. You interpreted my question as to whether or not you wanted historical detail, to mean that I wanted you pulling an analysis of our household’s story out of your backside.
No one has time to address all the stuff in your tome, but there are a few things that could use it, I suppose.
1) Your black-or-white logic; not having daily, unlimited access to an Xbox or other game enabling devices leads to a “monastic” existence? Do you really believe that there are no other activities in between sitting in front of a game console or computer, and kneeling on a stone floor keeping the canonical hours?
2) Inconsistencies? He does have access to games, I said, but not here. That said, GamerGate has been on NPR and in Time Magazine and Rolling Stone, for crying out loud. It’s out there. Why do he and his friends — gamers and non-gamers alike — care? It might have something to do with it being something that everybody around them spends a lot of time talking about, and it’s raised a lot of questions related to ongoing misogyny in our society, beyond just the world of gaming.
3) He should think gg is stupid: He does, although some of the gendered stuff has been a little more confusing for him. He’s been less likely to look with a critical eye at the discourse about what is ‘natural’ for women or men to enjoy playing and the criticism hurled at feminist critiques of games.
4) Confusion about pulling plugs (this is boring, but it seemed to be a real sticking point for you): He did have an Xbox here, which had been traded off with his mother’s house every other month up until last month (his time between us is 50/50 switching off every week, but the households agreed to taking monthly turns with the XBox). Both houses limited his time on it (and the computer) at the initial suggestion of his mother’s partner. His mother keeps it at her house now, but still limits his hours and days on it. She even shuts down her wifi every night to take the nightly negotiations (or arguments, depending on how one looks at it) off the table completely.
5) I can’t point to one good game: I have strong reservations about a life (or a large chunk of it) spent online and in world, whether or not any one of those worlds is inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I’m not alone in having such reservations, and they aren’t just for uptight, dictatorial, old luddites, either. Sherry Turkle, for example, has been researching the relationships people have with computer-based technologies and computer mediated sociality for 30 years, and used to be unequivocally optimistic about them. She’s less so now, and has very salient reasons for her current more skeptical analysis. The worst you can accuse me of on this specific point is conflating GG with a broader world of issues, but to me it’s closer to a straw that broke the camel’s back. Some of those reservations have directly to do with online disinhibition leading to nastiness, and unfiltered b.s. presented, and taken without critical examination, as “fact.” That’s GG all over, but there are other things to have reservations about.
6) Snark and micromanaging: My “snark” was in response to the smug snarkiness embedded in the suggestion that I’m a dumb old parent/technological ignoramus. That’s just a stupid thing to assume about someone anymore. If anyone is ever inclined to be smug and snarky at ‘old people’ – or people who don’t keep an XBox in their home or people who have chosen not to pay for a smartphone – about how technologically ignorant they must be, hold it in.
7) Stripping him of his agency: That would be impossible.
8) Pulling the rug out: All he needs to do to keep getting college tuition from us is maintain a 2.0. Most universities require that to keep from being put on academic probation and eventual suspension, and scholarship programs require much better than that. For financial reasons, among others, it’s also important that he get through school in a timely manner. We do not have infinite resources.
9) No tools for survival: Some – Turkle, for instance – would argue that not making technology-free spaces and times for kids is what deprives them of the tools and credentials the world demands. I agree with those people.
10) Your recommendations: Do I really need to address that for you now? See points 5, 6 and 9 in particular.
Seriously @wilderbeast, you got upset about me saying, ‘well hell, this whole thing is messed up… nix the XBox completely’? Why?
Oh never mind.
Did anyone else hear that? Sounded like the droning of a sanctimonious bore, or a gnat, I’m not sure.
There never was a Mrs Grinch, right? Shame Mary is already married.
No Mrs. Grinch, just Max the dog.
Mary: @pecunium: Oh boy. That’s amazing. You interpreted my question as to whether or not you wanted historical detail, to mean that I wanted you pulling an analysis of our household’s story out of your backside.
Bless your heart, but you missed the point.
I took your comment about wanting details as the insult you intended it to be, which made me go back and take a closer look at your writing, which led to response.
No one has time to address all the stuff in your tome,
Bullshit. Someone as practised conversation as you have become in the years you’ve spent not letting your stepson play videogames ought to be able to do it, after all it’s just conversation in a more deliberate form. It’s the style in which all manner of debate used to be attended. Why so recently as my time in university people used to have lengthy correspondence by means of the postal service, Pages and pages, often with replies sent out the very next day. In this age of modern marvels we don’t have to suffer the delays, and can make merry as quickly as our eyes can see to read, and our fingers to type.
1) Your black-or-white logic; not having daily, unlimited access to an Xbox or other game enabling devices leads to a “monastic” existence?
Nope. Trust me deary, I don’t think lack of video games leads to a monastic existence. (the amount of time I spend on video games is, all in all trivial). That was your coment that he was being… what was the phrase…? Oh, right! “he has been living in a home in which any inclination to over-indulge in that activity has not been indulged” and hoping (though, as expected, in vain) that you would know enough to know that monk’s lives were governed by sets of regulation known as Rules (e.g. The Rule of St. Benedict, from which the Benedictines get their name).
Because none of the things I said were about video-games. They are the focus, but not the subject. The subject was (and remains) your attitudes toward rearing your stepson.
2) Inconsistencies? He does have access to games, I said, but not here. That said, GamerGate has been on NPR and in Time Magazine and Rolling Stone, for crying out loud. It’s out there.
But… you said it was something he was quite aware of before you were. Since it wasn’t in the mainstream until fairly recently, and you claim to control his access to the net (no smartphone, limited online access, etc.) how did he get it so soon?
Again, a script helps with this sort of thing.
5) I can’t point to one good game:
So you think MYST was a bad game? (I confess, I was no good at it, and found it dull, but you said you enjoyed playing it). Moreover you were waxing nostalgic about the games of yore… but now they were all bad?
Which is it?
6) Snark and micromanaging: My “snark” was in response to the smug snarkiness embedded in the suggestion that I’m a dumb old parent/technological ignoramus.
Who said that? You are projecting. I don’t think you are a dumb old parent/ignoramous for your smug, holier than thou, stance on games.
I think you are a terrible parent because you are proud of being a controlling asshole.
7) Stripping him of his agency: That would be impossible.
Yeah… who gets to decide if he gets to play games? Who decides what he does with his money? Who decides if he gets a smartphone? Who controls his access to computer time?
If it’s not him… then you are (at the very least) reducing his agency).
As to my recomendations… they still stand. Your parenting techniques (as described by you) are, so far as I can tell, crap. You would do well to avail yourself of all this expertise you claim, to improve them.
Carp… borked the link. Ah well… it’s not as if anyone can keep up: too much work to respond to everything I say, I mean look at the hours I spent writing it.
Or well, no, it was really only about 15 minutes (in part because finding a decent link was a pain).
Shut up Mary.
Also too and besides I can’t be insulted, distressed, upset, or even concerned by your pretending to be too addled to get my name right. Very poor trolling indeed.