I have no idea what #GamerGate is
Did I miss something?
I’ve seen people writing and tweeting about #GamerGate.
I have no idea what that is, still.
Looks like it has something to do with Gamers and Liberal Feminists (image below of Christina Hoff Sommers, who has confronted liberal feminists herself):
Why @CHSommers is #GamerGate's based mom. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/fX3ituRvLJ
— Mephistopheles (@myfist0) October 17, 2014
I received the email below, which intrigued me.
I’m too caught up in #Ebola to research #GamerGate, so I’m issuing a cry for help — What is #GamerGate?
This might look like another inconsequential Twitter war, but it intersects with issues you find relevant and is gaining traction.
Gamergate is a growing movement by (don’t laugh) video game enthusiasts who are fed up with:
1) favoritism within the $90 billion gaming industry, namely game journalists who have essentially become king-makers and who use their influence to benefit friends and patrons to the detriment of objectivity in reporting, the financial prospects of respected upstarts, and most of all community trust.
2) a sect of radical feminists who, through cherry-picked evidence and impossibly contrived in-game scenarios, have woven a narrative that casts games and gamers as sexist and misogynistic.
3) game media outlets that are openly hostile to their readers, using the research conducted by the above radical feminists as justification to stereotype and to demean.
Like all grassroots movements, #gamergate has no locked doors — all are welcome to join and to use the hashtag in the online debate taking place largely on Twitter. The unfortunate consequence is that, much like what befell Occupy Wall Street, opportunists, shills, trolls, and other maliciously inclined individuals have been able to align themselves for their own agenda and amusement.
This is when the main stream media picked up the story.
Unlike their treatment of Occupy, however, the left-leaning media has joined in the effort to shut down this movement, abusing the fallacy of association to stereotype and pigeonhole. It remains to be seen whether this is out of ignorance, malice, self-preservation in light of the push for journalistic ethics, or fear of reprisal from radical ideologues.
My personal belief is simply that “feminist”, much like “patriot”, has insidiously made itself unassailable. In the hard-Left mind, no one can criticize the opinions or deeds of a “feminist” without springing the misogyny trap, much in the same way it has been in the hard-Right mind where no one could criticize the opinions and deeds of a “patriot” without springing the anti-American trap. In this, the media-left has revealed a gaping blindness and a deep hypocrisy.
A community curated history and FAQ for further information on Gamergate: http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/wiki/index
I promise you, with a little digging you will find a compelling story.
[Featured Image Source: GamerGate Patriotic Meme]
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Comments
Thank you! I don’t either and it’s nice to know I’m not alone!
I’ve been only on the periphery of this (I blog about tabletop games, not video games), the quoted email you have is largely accurate in terms of how it started, but from what I understand there has been some really awful behavior (threats of physical harm, police needing to be called, etc.) by a handful of the anti-feminists, which they in turn are trying to use to paint all of their critics. It’s basically a big mess and neither side has clean hands, from what I can tell.
What is your website’s name? I would like to see the board games you blog about.
You mean the feminists are Bullying????????
Very interesting comments from JWB, Joel, and ReallyVeryObnoxious downstream in this thread.
“JWB: Yep, they had a Journolist.”
“Joel: In it’s most simplest terms, it is “Payola” combined with “Jornolist”… The “Payola” part is a woman slept with a reviewer to get a better review of her crappy game….
The “Jornolist” part is a group of game reviewers regularly get together to praise or trash any particular game.
The GamerGate hashtag came about when a group of gamers realized they had been HAD and started to gather information and crowd sourced all the less than stellar examples of journalism, reviews and personal behavior of the review section of the gaming industry. …
“ReallyVeryObnoxious:
It seems to be a media scandal where the colluding journalists managed to offend too much of their audience for the thing to be swept under the carpet and ignored.
Coverage by game media can have an enormous financial impact on game developers and publishers.
The initial incident involved allegations that a developer was trading favors for coverage.
Many of the gaming news publishers printed an apparently COORDINATED series of items denouncing the possibility of there being any truth to their being corrupt, or to their critics being motivated by anything other than malice. Documents have been found from an email list used to organize this. This list may have also been used to coordinate coverage for payment.
Certain news items suggest that if there is an active conspiracy behind this, that it may extend to news organizations as mainstream and legitimate as The Guardian and MSNBC.”
GamerGate is a very strange thing. I’ve done a lot of research into it, and I think I can explain it now.
1) A man posted a blog about how a (female) game developer cheated on him with several game reviewers.
2) As a direct result of this post, it was also exposed that several of the sites that reviewed her games (indie games, which are generally on the same level as indie movies) had, in fact, contributed money to their development and generally had an interest in their promotion. Naturally, such self-dealing was not limited to the single case but this put it into the public consciousness.
3) In response, almost every major game review outlet, displaying an unprecedented and stunning level of co-ordination, declared the gamer identity dead and a largely just an excuse for misogyny, and just generally expressed enormous contempt for their readership.
4) Naturally, the feminists were successfully baited, and they moved in and started shrieking about it, but it was never really about misogyny in gaming, that was a distraction.
5) Gamergate has boiled down to two sides – A) The games industry is too friendly and interconnected to be taken seriously. And B) Games (and gamers) are misogynistic.
A large part of this comes from the fact that much of the gaming sites/media/developers are all far to the left of their audience. Shock surprise.
Hopefully this helps.
JWB
jasonboisvert.blogspot.com
Hopefully this website will help: http://www.historyofgamergate.com/
I’ll give it a shot:
Context: 1. Gaming community has a longstanding grievance against gaming media because its reviewers are too close to producers, leading to fluff reviews (a problem in nearly any other community that has “stuff” to buy).
2. Gaming community has a longstanding grievance against gaming media because they have been co-opted by the forces of political correctness in a top-down effort to “reform” the gaming culture to suit the sensibilities of the radical left, dissension from which is not tolerated.
3. Radical-left feminists have a longstanding grievance with the gaming community for alleged lack of inclusiveness, sexism, etc.
Scandal: After a nasty breakup, politically correct game developer Zoe Quinn was “outed” as having been in a sexual relationship with a gaming journalist. This was a tipping point, as it fed into the existing narrative that gaming sites were giving fluff reviews and favoring the radical left. Much like the shooting of Michael Brown led to the Ferguson riots, some unsavory characters lashed out in destructive ways, including making threatening posts and publishing personal information of Quinn and others on “her side.” And just as it will likely turn out that the shooting of Michael Brown was justified once the facts are known, at this point it appears that Quinn’s relationship with the journalist occurred after any review, so the event that touched off the incident perhaps should not have done so.
Today, both sides of the scandal are receiving death threats, hack attack etc., and to a large degree the “trolls” doing this have become the story. But to its own proponents, the #gamergate hashtag, represents a revolt against the grievances I’ve listed above as 1 and 2. The radical left instead insists that the #gamergaters are just misogynists that feel threatened by inclusiveness and dismiss their claims without directly addressing them. The gaming press parrots the same line as the radical left and fixates on the trolls harrassing the leftists (while not reporting on the threats directed at #gamergate proponents). But it should not be a surprise that the gaming media has taken sides because it was their ethics that are the substantive allegations of the scandal. The mainstream media has recently picked up on the scandal and is essentially repeating the lines of the gaming media.
Just started flipping through stuff again. Yep, they had a Journolist.
Well Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
They’re been aided and guided with the help of an OBama Media Zombie Journalister!
RE: “JWB | October 17, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Just started flipping through stuff again. Yep, they had a Journolist.”
Stacy McCain had a good summary of it a couple of days ago – theothermccain.com
“I have no idea what #GamerGate is. Did I miss something?”
No.
I don’t have link handy but at hotair ed morrissey wrote up a decent wrap up with supporting links to help.
but to sum it up…wahhhh we want to push our view on people.
Big Media Bullies!
I’m pretty sure I’ve read multiple articles on this and still just sounds like a bunch of infighting I don’t care about. I have not yet seen any particular reason I should care, but then the only ‘gaming’ I’ve done is playing wii with children.
voxday.blogspot.com has good coverage of it. He’s part of it.
Does this mean I need to get ready for #moviegate #politicalgate #armygate etc. etc. Are the feminists taking over? According to the media, there is already an all out war on women by the GOP.
The only thing I know about #gamergate is that there was a fake mass shooting threat to the “leader” of this super feminist group which caused her to cancel a speaking engagement at Utah State University.
This woman seemed to be anti-video games, anti-men, and anti-fun (lol, ok, maybe it just seems that way).
Personally, I love video games, and I’ve never once thought that there should be more women in them. Then again, I’m a first person shooter type of guy. You don’t see yourself anyway. Maybe they would complain that you are shooting women in games if other people can change their character to be female. Who knows? Isn’t there always something to complain about? The PC police are getting stronger and stronger.
The problem is none of them will ever leave the house to vote.
Check out assasin’s creed if you want to see PC in video games.
Milo Yiannopoulos from Breitbart has an excelent set of radio presentations on the subject.
https://soundcloud.com/radio_nero/radioneroep1_1
Essentially it comes down to games journalists lacking ethics, sites censoring information, games journalists openly pushing SJW causes, and the gaming public taking a stand against it all.
Yes, the SJWs are trying to take over gaming, the last bastion of maleness in the universe!
Game Gate is like Net Neutrality. I definitely agree with one side of the issue but get confused about which one that is.
I have no idea what it is, and hopefully most self-respecting adults wouldn’t either. At least if you’re over the age of 25.
I’m a lot older than 25, Tex, and have been on 4Chan since the days of 56K dial-up. 😆
It seems to be a media scandal where the colluding journalists managed to offend too much of their audience for the thing to be swept under the carpet and ignored.
Coverage by game media can have an enormous financial impact on game developers and publishers.
The initial incident involved allegations that a developer was trading favors for coverage.
The cover up is where things get interesting.
http://daddywarpig.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/gamergate-achievement-unlocked-epic-shitstorm/
Many of the gaming news publishers printed an apparently coordinated series of items denouncing the possibility of there being any truth to their being corrupt, or to their critics being motivated by anything other than malice. Documents have been found from an email list used to organize this. This list may have also been used to coordinate coverage for payment.
Why could this matter to anyone who doesn’t care about videogames?
Certain news items suggest that if there is an active conspiracy behind this, that it may extend to news organizations as mainstream and legitimate as The Guardian and MSNBC.
No. She’s a game reviewer and “developer” of very limited ability, but in the world where many of the technically savvy have never seen a real live woman, she’s working her feminine mystique, as it exists, like she’s the Mata Freakin’ Hari and they’re the French High Command.
It’s destroyed the /v/ board on 4Chan.org and is threatening the /pol/ board, too. In fact, it may finally force Moot’s hand and result in his pulling the plug on 4Chan. If you have no clue what I mean, it’s probably a good thing and puts GameGate in its true scheme of importance in the universe.
4Chan.org = NSFW or anything else, for that matter. 😆
It’s a group of individuals rebelling against corruption in the industry that affects them economically by distorting ratings, and against leftist and feminist politicization of games and gaming media.
The whole thing erupted when a woman developer was outed by her ex as banging her way around the reviewers, the insinuation being she expected better reviews for her favors. But the rest had been building for some time.
You need not be a gamer to support that. But neither is it so easy to get worked up over it.
In it’s most simplest terms, it is “Payola” combined with “Jornolist” and “misandry” elements. In a multi-billion dollar industry this is BAD.
The “Payola” part is a woman slept with a reviewer to get a better review of her crappy game.
The “misandry” part is, since most of the games are played by males and most of the games cater to that demographic, it has been determined by Feminist Peer Review to be misogynistic. So it is time, in the Feminist Universe, to bring it down. I.E. Make it more female-centric.
The “Jornolist” part is a group of game reviewers regularly get together to praise or trash any particular game.
The GamerGate hashtag came about when a group of gamers realized they had been had and started to gather information and crowd sourced all the less than stellar examples of journalism, reviews and personal behavior of the review section of the gaming industry.
As usual, in almost any endeavour, there are fringe elements at large and they have resorted to death threats, trolling and the like. False flags have been used as well. I.E. Fake death threats in order to puff up ones stature.
I hope this helps.
I played Pong once, but don’t remember it being something that would upset feminists.
…then you don’t know any typical SJW feminists!
The very fact that your carbon-based life-form houses a Y-chromosome indicts you both individually and collectively for every evil from Adam to the Present! 😆