Last night was the grand premiere of The Sarkeesian Effect (Team Jordan Owen Edition), and the response from critics and audience members alike has been overwhelming!
That video of crickets has gotten more than 3,344,825 views on Youtube. That’s 371,647 times the number of people who apparently showed up at the Sarkeesian Effect premiere/#GamerGate Meetup at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema in Atlanta last night.
Yep. According to the organizer of the #GamerGate meetup, only nine people showed. Including the director.
@mundanematt @jordanowen42 But yeah, including me, Jordan, and my bf, only 9 people showed up.
— Artist Lisa M (@ArtistLisaM) August 1, 2015
Meanwhile, on Reddit’s Kotaku In Action subreddit, one of the main #GamerGate hubs, the excitement was palpable.
Even Jordan Owen — the director of this incarnation of the Sarkeesian Effect — was uncharacteristically quiet; his reports from the premiere consisted mainly of photos of the screen, evidently his attempt to prove to the critics that, yes, the film exists.
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627336679112736769
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627343425369702400
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627350752097341440
Those last two pics seem to suggest that the insidious “Sarkeesian Effect” that gave the film its title is Ms. Sarkeesian’s uncanny ability to cause her critics to wear plaid shirts vaguely similar to her own signature look.
Online, the only people excited about the event that I could find were an assortment of popcorn-munching critics of #GamerGate. And they were mostly excited about the discovery of the official Sarkeesian Effect website.
Sorry, I meant to say the discovery of ANOTHER official Sarkeesian Effect website.
You may vaguely remember the official website, unveiled several months back, an amateurish unfinished job, with crappy graphics; the links on the front page to the film’s trailer, press coverage, Sarkeesian Effect wallpapers (!), and a list of theaters showing the film (!!) all led to this page:
And they still do.
Owen says that this unfinished mess of a website is still the official Sarkeesian Effect website. But now it’s been joined by a second unfinished mess of a website that also seems to be staking a claim as the official Sarkeesian Effect website. It’s not clear if this new site is the handiwork of Davis Aurini, or if Owen hired someone to put it together and just forgot about it.
Weirdly, this last option seems the most probable. Given that the site was promoting the premiere last night — a premiere of Owen’s version of the film, which Aurini had disavowed in advance — it seems unlikely that Aurini had anything to do with it.
While a teensy bit slicker than the original, the new site isn’t quite ready for public consumption. Here, for example, are the bios of some of the famous NAMES interviewed in the film.
Yes, that’s right: Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s …
Also, Karen Straughan — the blabby FeMRA videoblogger and “Honey Badger” — is actually three women sitting next to each other.
Alas, the now-feuding “filmmakers” behind the “film” don’t fare any better themselves. In addition to giving both of them the Lorem treatment, whoever made the site also managed to misspell Aurini’s last name.
Clearly, from now on, Davis Aurini will be known as Davis-a-rooni.
Even the site’s Quick FAQs section has an impressive Lorem ratio.
And, yes, it is true that FILM starring NAME, NAME and NAME, has been featured on MEDIA.
This site, as, er, wildly optimistic about the commercial prospects of The Sarkeesian Effect as the old site, also includes a link to theaters showing the film. But instead of leading to a “Coming Soon” page, the new site links instead to … a blank page on Google Docs.
I can only hope that the film itself — presumably headed ultimately for a YouTube release — lives up to this amazing website.
Sorry. I mean BOTH films live up to BOTH websites.
H/T — @tortoiseontour, who alerted me to the website and pointed out the misspelling of Aurini’s name.
@newt
Because it came up twice, I’ll address the difference (because there is one in this case) of “playing devils advocate” and arguing in bad faith.
From Wikipedia: Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is double mindedness or double heartedness in duplicity, fraud, or deception.[1] It may involve intentional deceit of others, or self-deception.
Wikipedia: In common parlance, a devil’s advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position they do not necessarily agree with (or simply an alternative position from the accepted norm), for the sake of debate or to explore the thought further. In taking this position, the individual taking on and playing the devil’s advocate role seeks to engage others in an argumentative discussion process.
I was not (nor am I or will I), arguing in bad faith. I am not trying to deceive or defraud anyone. Everything I presented was simply for the sake of argument to present a logical, rational argument that the other side COULD have. To further show I was not arguing in bad faith, I specifically addressed any logical issues or problems that those arguments could have, because that’s called FAIRNESS AND OBJECTIVITY.
@Bernardo Soares
While I addressed the ‘bad faith’ accusal above, I’ll return to the Q4 thing. I personally explained that at great length in my post. I explicitly clarified the gigantic increase in next year’s budget as being “very likely” due to the fact that the vast majority of the funds were raised in Q4. Your entire last paragraph is literally a paraphrase of my post. If there is a misunderstanding here, I do not see it, so please indicate what led you to believe I was saying anything different than you did here, or that I was somehow being duplicitous or deceitful, because I absolutely am ready to clarify anything I said.
@Luzbelitx
Can you tell me what I haven’t grasped, rather than simply dismissing a post, into which I put over 30 minutes of writing and fact-checking, via a vague sentence, please?
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
By all means I will, now that I have my computer available and you can see My Unholy Face which you pretend to advocate for.
I love how your conclusion has nothing to do with the fact-checking you did.
People didn’t blindly support Anita because they hated the #GG crowd, not even in your own version of the story I just read upthread.
People supported Anita way before GG existed, and received extra support her not because they hated #GG, but because they valued her work and because they though harrassment is wrong.
FYI: you can think a group of people are behaving like a bunch of assholes without, in fact, hating them.
You can support a person who is being harmed because you think people are valuable, there’s no need to hate the one doing the harm.
This is pretty much Being a Decent Human Being 101, and if you fail at it, there’s no amount of time and fact-checking that’s going to help your argument.
One should always critically assess the whole situation instead, otherwise one gets caught into a never-ending “well they did this, so I did this back!” cycle, as is so often seen.
Again, you present yourself as a neutral observer who happens to share the same general worldview and mindstate as one of the “sides” you pretend to be objectively assessing.
When did Anita, or any of her supporters, do the “I did this back”!! thing?
It’s actually #GG you’re describing here, and their bad faith argument: “She committed fraud, so we harrassed her!! Justice!!! Ethics in trains mournalism!!”
What has Anita claim to “have done back” to harassers, other than denounce them and keep working?
Yo seem to share the harassers opinion that denouncing harassers is something “you do back” to them, instead something you do for your protection and for a society in which assholes don’t get their ways.
TL;DR: Your “facts” are wrong and if you can’t see that is because essentially you already agree with one side and are projecting it on us. Hard.
Blockquote Mammoth swallowed my html, this paragraph should be a quote:
Also, all this splainy sealioning and looking-up-definitions reminds me of someone… hmmm… I wonder…
@jpageusmc
Okay, listen, the thing is: what you wrote as “playing devils advocate” is a longstanding talking point of Gamergate, it’s not a hypothetical. What irked me about your comment was that you pointed out some facts, but didn’t really start to make the counterargument to your “devils advocate” argument. You didn’t write that the minor discrepancies are perfectly explainable in the framework of a transparently working, but overwhelmed non-profit. The only counter you gave to the insinuations that something is afoul was “more temperance”.
So what your comment looks like to me is: You make a strong insinuation that FF isn’t run properly, alleging that it’s not clear what was done with the money, and that their budget is vastly overblown. This you do under the umbrella of “just playing devils advocate here.” Then you offer a weak counterargument, saying that we should wait and see what FF is going to do, and alleging that supporters were “overeager”, i.e. gave money to an institution without rational deliberation (an allegation which others in the thread have countered). Your conclusion is not: “This is a potential argument of Gamergaters, and it’s wrong because…” Your conclusion is:
This doesn’t sound like playing devils advocate. This sounds like you agree with the hypothetical argument you laid out before, because why should I take away from your post that I have to critically assess even people I agree with, if FF has been transparent and there’s nothing fishy about their reports?
That’s why I accuse you of arguing in bad faith.
…aand basically ninja’d by Luzbelitx. But you adressed us both, so I think it’s legitimate for both of us to answer.
I think this perfectly describes my feelings on the whole thing.
I do think Jordan faced some abuse from his former associate, and I think it’s wrong and DO feel sorry for him about that.
But for his fiasco of a hate project blowing up in his face? Yes, it must be hard, but it’s also well deserved.
If he emerges from this hole with at least a bit more self-awareness and compassion, as in “I realized Anita must have put a lot more work that I thought at first”, he will prove he is worthy of some retroactive compassion from me.
If, on the other hand, he doubles down on the Cultural Feminist Marxism Conspiracy nonsense, I can’t feel sorry either for his past failure, or for any further failure this mindset leads him to.
@Bernardo
*hi-five*
I meant THIS:
http://media.giphy.com/media/pcWXeZS2DhhkY/giphy.gif
@Luzbelitx
http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv196/ronin_distance/high_five.jpg
@jpageusmc
Also from the “bad faith” page:
(emphasis mine)
If you are going to start off by defending a position with which you do not agree, what point is there in showing you that it’s wrong? You didn’t reach that conclusion through any rational process, and you won’t be convinced away from it either. Attempting to debate with you would be a waste of time.
Boy. That’s some next level mansplaining. A link to the Wikipedia post on devil’s advocate. Lol.
Hmph. The Mammoth now has a taste for emphasis.
@ Newt
Ha, as a barrister the one question you get all the time is “How can you defend someone when you know they’re guilty?”.
A friend once responded with “It’s OK; but not as much fun as prosecuting someone when you know they’re innocent”.
That shut the questioner up.
Alos, Alan, aren’t “legal positions” unable to be either true or false on themselves?
As in, you can support your argument in outdated or iffy laws/principles, but you can’t actually pull off a “hey, this law totally means something different than commonly accepted” if you don’t have sustainable arguments based on at least some other law.
(I know I’m probably messing up all the vocabulary, I just want to know if I more or less got the dynamics right)
Looks like we’ve got yet another one who failed the Don’t Use Your Off-Site Username, Dumbass test. This time, Google turned up his Disqus account. Most of it seems surprisingly intelligent, a lot of stuff against police brutality, the Confederate flag and Randian hyper-capitalism… Aaand then it descends into pretentious anti-feminism. Whoops.
TL;DR: WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ???
It’s sad, really. Reading his posts about the Confederate flag, I honestly thought that we might’ve misjudged this one. Nope.
@SFHC
Thank you for the background checking. I should start doing the same to avoid accidentally jumping on non-trolls (by probably giving some trolls more credit than they deserve but hey, I can’t always win)
Oh, a brogressive. The internet is filled with them. Racism, classism, and homophobia are a thing, but misogyny magically isn’t and when the hear the F word, they sound indistinguishable from Rush Limbaugh making feminazi jokes.
The worst part about brogressives is that they fancy themselves to be women’s allies.
@ Lux
Ah, I don’t want to scare everyone off by turning this into a jurisprudence lecture but you raise some really interesting points.
“Truth and the Law”
I’ll start you off with a real exchange:
Judge: “Am I not entitled to hear the truth?”
Advocate: “No my Lord, you are entitled to hear the evidence”
That give you an insight into one aspect. People think trials are a search for the truth. They’re not. To give one example, unlawfully obtained confessions are not admissible “notwithstanding the fact they they may be true”. There are of course reasons for the rules of evidence and whilst an individual application of rule may seem a strange result, overall the rules may make sense.
There’s also the legal aspect as you point out. A principle of law is that the rules should be certain. The reason for that is so people can know what the law is. Ambiguity is very much frowned upon in legal circles. So generally the relevant appellate court will decide on one particular interpretation of a law and that’s what we all go with, even if other interpretations are equally valid.
If you want to argue that a law should be applied differently in a particular case then you seek to *distinguish*. That word has a particular meaning in law; but essentially it’s trying to show that there’s something special about your particular circumstances which fall outside the areas considered before and therefore a new interpretation is valid.
Hmm, sorry, that’s a bit garbled but I hope you get the idea. Really though we could spend months looking at this subject (I know; I’ve had to do it 🙂 )
http://media.giphy.com/media/vjGyYSsF765wc/giphy.gif
….. aaaaaaaactually all that makes sense.
I don’t know a lot about how laws work, but I do have a very good friend who is a lawyer (mostly work & union stuff) and he has been helping me avoid the most common misconceptions about it.
And now I realize most of what I learnt from him can be summed up with this:
In an ideal world, maybe that could be an interesting question. Meanwhile, in the real world, said “critics” have been outright accusing her of fraud with no evidence besides “well, she isn’t releasing videos fast enough for MY liking” and “She got a lot of money, and that’s no good because reasons”.
@ Lux
Yeah, there’s also a corollary to that. It’s summed up in the phrase:
“Hard cases make bad laws”
That’s where a situation arises that so provokes and angers people that there is a rush to either introduce a new law or abolish an old one; but without thinking of the wider consequences.
We’ve got something like that going on over here with our Human Rights Act.
It’s true that people can point to a handful of examples where for instance a rapist has been able to challenge deportation under the HRA and seek to have it repealed. Overall though the HRA probably does a lot more good than harm.
We have an idiom over here ‘Throwing the baby out with the bathwater’; do you get what I mean by that?
@Alan
Yes, we did have some cases of laws reformed in the heat of the moment because of a misguided but well-intentioned popular demand over here, and we have wxperienced the consequences.
In fact, our Commercial and Civil Code has been pretty much re-written -through extensive democratic debate- in the past few years.
The original code, from 1871, had been written by one single person, and then it was modified over and over and over, so it looked like the legal equivalent of an ancient book filled with post-its correcting its content.
The new Code has just become active, and the main idea of it was that the system of rules made sense, unlike the previous one which was no longer a meaningful system, but more like a collection of different ideas from different moments in history.
I think I get the baby-bathtub metaphor, I’m hoping it means something we don’t want to happen, right?