Here’s an interesting post by someone claiming to be a former GamerGater on Reddit explaining why they left the, er, movement and helpfully summing up a lot of what’s wrong with it. At least when it comes to GG’s rampant hypocrisy. Take it away, turbonerdsupreme!
It was a mixture of things really, but I think the starting point was Milo’s “You take your tits out for a living tweets” to Liana K. Basically what gradually convinced me GG wasnt about ethics (journalistic or otherwise) was the bayonetta affair, and their sheer hypocrisy.
They claim to be fighting for Journalistic ethics, while supporting and championing highly unethical journalists like Milo and Pinsof. It’s also important not to forget the Bayonetta affair where they tried to pressure a publisher into pulling a Gerstmann, and dropping advertisments on a site that gave their game a bad review. THEY LITERALLY TRIED TO BRING ABOUT THE SECOND COMING OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS EXAMPLE OF CORRUPT GAMES JOURNALISM IN HISTORY.
They denounce journalists like Leigh Alexander, being rude to people on twitter, while joining in with and celebrating the outright bullying, abuse and harassment of Milo “real professional journalist” Yiannopolous (i’d hyperlink an example but there’s way too many of them to pick just one, this guy is really scum, google it)
They attack Anita for not providing good value for her kickstarter money, while supporting, glorifying and No I’m Spartacusing, someone who scammed around $15k out of people using kickstarter as well as the obvious scam that is the Sarkeesian effect. [Although good news is Sarkessian effect stuff is starting to be voted down sometimes on KiA] They also welcomed the support of the Amazing Atheist a known scammer
They mock Cheong’s neo-nazi past, while having Davis “white nationalist on paper” Aurini, Milo “Iron Cross” Yianoppulous/Wagner (seriously what the fuck is wrong with this guy), the Holocaust denying King of /poll, and Stormfront among them. Not to mention their propagating of anti-Semitic /pol/ memes and frequent use of Jew as a slur.
They Call Chu a rape apologist (a completely bullshit accusation), all the while endorsing Roosh “No never means no” V, and Mike “Why Should I care when women are raped?” Cernovich. [Although to be fair support for Roosh has met some opposition]
They get super mad at Sarkeessian for supposedly not even liking video games, all the while championing Christina “Still hasnt actually played any video games to my knowledge” Sommers, and Milo “Are you noticing a reoccurring theme here yet?” Yianopoulos.
They claim they want politics and politically charged thinktank funded academics out of video games, while supporting Christina “works for a rightwing think tank” Sommers.
They claim Anita is the new Jack Thompson while supporting Jack “The Old Jack Thompson” Thompson.
They claim Milo Yianopoulos has redeeming qualities as a human being, while being frequently exposed to his tweets, articles, and videos. While admittedly this is not hypocrisy it does show extremely poor judgement.
In conclusion the majority of GGers show such a massive double standard in their treatment of progressives and social conservatives, that it is impossible to construe it as anything other than a thinly veiled right wing socially conservative movement, with no real care for journalistic ethics. That is why I left.
The links scattered around in there are pretty illuminating.
H/T — A Division by Zer0
When your big journalistic scandal boils down basically to the fact that bunch of people write about how much they like games like Gone Home, I honestly don’t believe anyone can get sucked in, even temporarily, without some screwed-up attitudes brewing.
Thank you.
Ted the Fed–Don’t forget, a female journalist reviewed a GTA and mentioned its misogyny and rated it 9/10. 9/10! It is a travesty.
I agree POM. Especially since many of us spent a lot of time providing evidence and explanations to so-called moderate gamergaters that the whole thing was rooted in misogyny and harassment to no avail.
“it is impossible to construe it as anything other than a thinly veiled right wing socially conservative movement, with no real care for journalistic ethics.”
Adam Baldwin, Breitbart et al, and JuiceBro Lawyer emphatically deny any connection to the right wing socially conservative movement and also shut up you filthy progressives.
Well, I wouldn’t really say “All the wrong reasons” – the hypocrisy and right-wingery are still good reasons, even if they’re not the ideal reason.
But yeah, it’s a start. This guy has the potential to learn and turn against the misogyny and abuse as well, which is far more than I can say for the rest of the #Gits, most of whom will probably be hateful Republican shitstains for life.
On the other hand:
https://twitter.com/b00nes/status/535269435490467842
“This guy was never a #Gater, he’s making it up to make us look bad! Just like Anita! I have the self-awareness and reasoning ability of a cane toad that’s been dead for six months!”
No true Scotsman ever leaves GG.
I used to be a gigantic conservative asshole myself- I know how it feels. You don’t even feel the cognitive dissonance. A major event was needed to do more than push the nagging questions to the back of my head and believe wholeheartedly in the stupid doctrine I was spoonfed. When I went through it logically, their arguments fell apart like damp one-ply toilet paper being fired in a blast furnace. I genuinely don’t know what’s needed to make them snap out of it, besides a self-driven epiphany as our little hopeful fellow had. If you try to present arguments and/or show that they’re being major douches, they mentally explain it away with “More evidence of oppression!” If you present arguments, they shift the goalposts and twist words, using ad homenims to attack rather than genuine arguments. And one thing that’s a favorite of theirs? The Motte and Bailey doctrine. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ explains it beautifully.
So self-awareness IS possible
wordsp1nner, love the fierce kitty vid. Mum said that when the kitty was playing with the robot dog, the adult cat was saying “I was never like that.”
Viceroy’s link does do a good job of explaining the concept, but considering that the author compares feminism to creationism/fundamentalism and affirmative consent to “BURN IN HELL HEATHENS,” with a clear air of “And anybody who disagrees is not as enlightened (darkly enlightened, perhaps) as I am” snobbery to boot, anybody who wants to read it might want to DoNotLink it.
PoM, I agree with you, however to be fair to turbonerdsupreme, the misogyny and rape threats probably aren’t why he joined GG. It’s possible to convince oneself that all that crap is fringe, and it really is about journalistic ethics.
(Consider the fact that the US tortures people, and this hasn’t caused mass emigration. The American Dream(tm) is still compelling even if it’s not realistic, apparently.)
So I totally get why he said that. He probably did join GG because of games journalism. The final paragraph seems to indicate that. His point, and it’s good, is that GG doesn’t even have that going for it. His reason for joining doesn’t exist.
His piece gives off the strong impression that he feels personally betrayed. It’s understandable that this emotion would dominate.
@M. the Social Justice Ranger
But hee doesn’t use MRAs as an example, probably because they don’t even have a motte – it’s all bailey as far as the eye can see.
Yeeeeeah, I was just going to say that. It’s not a bad theory, but clearly he’s just using it as a stick to beat anyone he doesn’t like. (“Literal interpretations of the Bible” Christians and “God is a metaphor” Christians, for instance, are completely disjoint sets who wouldn’t touch each others’ doctrine with a ten-foot pole.)
Katz, you pegged exactly what I could not. The peeps who say this are not the same peeps who say that. Thanks.
Or else moving is a big hassle.
@katz Or other countries are bad in different ways. My point is that Americans still feel that they can call themselves Americans because what it means to be American isn’t that (whatever that is).
This doesn’t sound like someone who is just a little misogynist coming to terms with the way-too-misogynist crowds around him to me. It sounds like someone who wasn’t terribly sexist to begin with realizing that It’s not actually about Ethics in Games Journalism. The hypocrisy of ones own ‘side’ in an argument is, after all, the best antidote to cognitive dissonance I know of. I was fairly right-wing as a teenager, not because I was racist or sexist but because I had not yet grasped the ways in which right-wing ideology is used to prop-up racism and sexism.
I’d say GamerGate is particularly egregious because there is no logic to it AT ALL without the base assumptions of ‘women are outsiders trying to take over the industry and kick us out’… But then I suppose a lot of people would have said the same thing to me ten years ago.
Er…what it means to be an American is I was born in America and thus have US citizenship? It’s a statement of fact, not necessarily an ideological position.
Also, if you’re American and decide to denounce your American-ness without having alternate citizenship lined up doesn’t that render you stateless? I kind of get where dude is going, but otoh grandstanding of the “I cannot call myself an American because…” variety just lends support to the idea that what it means to be an American (or a citizen of any country) is some assortment of ideological blather rather than simply being a citizen of the nation in question, and the ideological blather may not always be of the kind of which you would approve.
What it takes to stop being American: at minimum, uprooting your whole life, leaving behind almost all your friends and family, and starting over in a new place with its own culture. You may have to maintain employment to be permitted to stay; you may have to marry a citizen. You may have to learn a whole new language. It will certainly cost you money to do it.
What it takes to stop being a Gamergater: Saying “I am no longer a Gamergater” or words to that effect.
These things are really not equivalent. You can’t be born into the gamergating ideology. You don’t have to move thousands of miles from everyone you know to stop participating in it. It’s easy. Convincing yourself that the gamergaters ever had a real point is a voluntary act and you should feel bad for doing it; the absence of reasoning beyond harrassing women was obvious to everyone else. It’s not like being an American. It’s like being wilfully obnoxious.
@wordsp1nner
That little Nikita has a big meow for such a tiny baby! I was expecting a squeaky noise!
While reading the post, I felt happy that this person posted that. Who knows? Maybe hearing it from someone on their side will convince others to abandon the ship as well.
But, while reading the comments, now I’m conflicted.
I’m happy because this person understands their ex-movement is toxic as hell, and that he did address the rape threats and smear campaigns and hypocrisy for what it was.
However, I’m still considering it baby steps and I can only hope that this person will grow from this and maybe look into the arguments anti-Gators make, as well as the people behind the attacks. Who knows? Maybe some good ideologies will rub off on him.
And thanks to all the people chiming in about their own experiences with their life events like this. It really helps bring it into perspective for someone who hasn’t experienced it (like me. : P)!
P.S. Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer gets so many cookies for that amazing username reference. (It’s Homestuck, in case anyone was wondering).
PoM wrote: “Then why wasn’t this posted to Reddit a week ago when Roosh started up his GG website?”
Probably because this person was responding on a thread someone else started yesterday. This person doesn’t actually say Jack Thompson was the final straw, or that they only recently left GG. They may have included Thompson as just the latest example of GG hypocrisy.