The great GamerGate discussion. (Stuff and things)

 
 
“Polio isn’t so bad once you get past the crippling paralysis.”
 
 
But anyway, anyone that’s seen my rants about the game industry or knows how I feel about SJWs can easily imagine all the colourful things I could say about this, so I’ll spare you. However I will express my utter non-surprise at anything other than that people are surprised that is a thing that happened.

@The Smiling Pony  

 
I bet would have had a lot of “FUCK”s wouldn’t it?

@The Smiling Pony  
 
My opinion of the game “journalism” and the SJWs.
 
Anyway,wanna get angry with something not involving SJW,the industry and the “journalism”?  
She sabotaged the Fine young capitalists,a game-jam with helping women to get in the industry.  
The hypocritical harlot tried to shut down to what pretty much is charity from women,to women.While claiming to be doing it for feminism.  
Happy hunting.
 
I believe this getting closer and closer to a real-life version of the “tale of the boy who cried wolf”.  
And it is glorious.

@Shaky  

This. This is what I find most disconcerting about the entire thing. Sure, corruption in the journalism-developer complex is really nothing new to anyone paying attention (Jessica Chobot in ME3, anyone?), but the fact that people whom should know better are attempting to engage in what is quite obviously a conspiracy of silence regarding the facts and the suppression of those whom try to bring them to light is especially disturbing to yours truly.

@Ebalosus
 
Jessica Chobot was big business, the very thing most of these websites raise hell about when it’s discovered that either money or favors were exchanged for good reviews/press etc etc
 
We the gamer community have been “rallied” right or wrong against EA, Activison etc etc multiple times to the point where even when AAA DOES good things they still receive a fair amount of vitriol and eye rolling.
 
Now we find out that indies have literately been fucking for favors and the same good press and the people and sites we go to for news of the gaming world have been buying into it wholesale or are so goddamn scared of being targets themselves of these hipster asshole indie devs or the slavering mutated hordes of SJW jerk offs they themselves have unleashed multiple times to even SAY anything about the situation.
 
This whole fiasco can only be described with one old military engineering term Fucked Up Beyond All Repair as we used to say on the USS Cleveland and, just like my DIVO and Division Chief, gaming press is handing us nothing or a bucket of fucking paint to deal with it.

God damn it; the news is already playing her as the victim.

@Kenrick_Drake
 
First: There is no gaming “community”
 
Second: There is no “We”
 
I’m a gamer. My sister and parents are gamers. The older people I fix computers for are gamers. But we are not part of some “gamer community”, because there is no gamer “community”! There are communities of gamers, but no all-encompassing community of people whom enjoy interactive electronic art.

@Ebalosus
 
Alright if that’s how you see it then I dig, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is the game they’ve played/attempted to play in these kinda situations.
 
The press as it were, I mean Greg Titto, give him the props for admitting that quite likely everyone did and that was not even bother to check even the basic facts before running a shitstorm article that Zoe was being attacked by viscous mobs of man childern for Wizardchan so go upvote her game on greenlight!
 
Did it not work? community or no did her game not shoot up the rankings and get green light and did not outpourings of sympathy from people the world round pour down on her like the sweet rain of blood these vampires are proven to require?
 
I understand if my language is both harsh and a bit hyperbolic but I’ve watched this thing blow up since the 19th and kept my silence everywhere but here of all places and again forgive me community or no I see myself as a gamer and I FEEL a bit betrayed that no one news side seems to have a ounce of honesty in their bodies and to see this women spouts lies and fake doxxing and hacking attacks on her constantly in attempts to garner more sympathy only fans the flames as men like Sessler who USED to stand for something rush to her aid despite everything, once again not even bothering to check ANY facts or information.

@uc9  
They always do.

@Kenrick_Drake
 
I’m sorry, it’s just that as-of-late, I’ve grown increasingly aggravated at the misuse of the words culture and community to describe disparate groups and groupings of people as part of some greater whole insofar as to criticise all of them for the faults of some of them.

Alright, I’ve been hearing more and more about this issue lately and it’s gotten to the point where I feel I can’t stick my head in the sand and ignore it any more, so I’m just going to throw in my two cents on this issue.
 
I think that, to put it mildly, that this whole thing is a massive overreaction on the part of gamers. Many of the allegations that have been thrown Zoe’s way have the trappings of a typical conspiracy theory, and even if they do have merit, the fact that there are so many people on Twitter repeatedly hounding her for it should raise a few red flags. While people might be quick to say “this shouldn’t be about the harassment,” the fact remains that harassment is happening, and even a cursory glance at her Twitter feed will confirm that. People have even gone out of their way to hijack the issue as one against feminism and social justice in games, which even the ex who wrote the blog post said is not a very good argument at all.
 
People have repeatedly accuse Zoe of “sleeping around for positive reviews”, but to the best of my knowledge there have only ever been two mentions of her by any of the people she’s purportedly slept with, here and here. Zoe and her game are only tangentially related to any of them. While there is definitely a conflict of interest here since she and her game were definitely involved, the accusation that she deliberately traded sex for positive coverage has little grounding. Sex isn’t always currency, and it is, in fact, likely that the people involved just wanted to have sex because it felt good.
 
Now, about the DMCA takedowns and the supposed censorship I can certainly agree that this was in many regards a dumb move. The Streisand Effect is in full force here, and the censoring of things that cover the issue have certainly done a lot more to bring the issue into the public eye than to calm it down. AS much as I dislike him, the fact that MundaneMatt’s video was taken down on a false claim is cause enough for reasonable suspicion.
 
That being said, with the prevalence of witch hunts surrounding this issue right now, I do think that there’s a very good reason for website moderators to want to exercise caution. The fact that this issue is so messily entangled in Zoe’s personal sex life is reason enough for gaming news sites to want to avoid covering it. Even the Amazing Atheist of all people seems to think this whole debacle is too personal. (And the fact that he said something reasonable about this whole thing leads me to believe Hell has finally frozen over.)
 
I think that the issue of nepotism in games journalism is one that is definitely worth having, but I feel that this particular instance is one where a lot of the people concerned about it have gone overboard.

@Ebalosus
 
I take no offense, I’m an old man at this point, been web surfing since Reboot was a thing and gamed since the days of the NES, so all these new ideas and talk is above me sometimes ha, it just always felt like a large community to me as we all liked games right? we all liked ponies too which is why we are here. But if folks want to distance themselves from it due to the actions of others I understand that and don’t blame others for wanting to do their own things.
 
And I’m sorry if I came across as harsh, grown ass women or men hypocrites yelling and shrieking that they’ve done nothing wrong and nuh huh you can’t prove it despite being COVERED in it so to speak like some 4 year old just gets my goat up, more so when you have so many rushing to join in the stamping and shrieking. Yeah i’m sure not everything that’s been brought to light against Zoe Quinn is 100% accurate but people have been hung for less if you catch my drift and it just seems all so unfair.
 
Life’s unfair enough, you’d think at lest in our make believe worlds like gaming or ponies there could be SOME justice.

@Zennistrad  
It’s not about her sex life; it’s about journalistic integrity and illegal suppression of information. It doesn’t matter that she had sex with the guys; rather it matters in that she and her friends are illegally suppression information to censor things that they don’t like.

Alright, I definitely no longer trust TGWTG (Except for the Walker Bros maybe) for the whole stance on social justice. What is with these people and the whole grr nerds are angry cos privilege and muhsogyny? and not something like “The credibility of gaming journalism is threatened because of the people who work there.”

@Kenrick_Drake
 
Don’t worry, I understand where you are coming from. Like I said, my main issue with this ‘Quinnspiracy’ is the conspiracy of silence building around the DMCA censorship of the details. Yes, I agree that people’s sex lives are their own business, but if there is a degree of favouring (be it monetary or sexual or whatever) between developers and what should be nominally impartial journalists, then fuck “it’s their private life” bullshit, because such favouring poisons the trust between journalists and consumers.

@Ebalosus  

 
Agreed and QFT, the only thing the sleeping around for comes into play in my mind is questioning her character in relation to statements that she makes, I find it hard to simply trust the word of someone who would do that to their partner not just once but no less then 5 (allegedly 7 at this point but the investigation is ongoing)taking her for her word that shes done absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever is foolish and should be thoroughly investigated as to the TRUTH.
 
The problem as you so put it is that NO ONE outside of the general denizens of the internet ARE investigating and in situations before as the EDITOR IN CHIEF of The Escapist has freely admitted, they at least, did NO investigating what so ever. This is a clear double standard not to mention a violation of journalistic and MORAL integrity and yet the defenders of quinn and this whole shebang are quite happy to skip along singing this very tune.
 
People are asking people to do their freaking jobs or at least ADMIT they haven’t been and it’s been nothing but the same song and dance, accuse the askers of being trolls, MRA’s, Women Haters, rape apologists, man childern etc etc and this my dear Zennistrad is why this is blowing up EVEN more, the foot soldiers of yesterday are being painted the enemy of the hour and in their confusion they ARE going to act like they did before and try to destroy both quinn and anyone who agrees with her in a blind rage.
 
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, but do it to often and beat the dogs a few too many times and it WILL turn on you and bite you in the ass, that’s a good analogy for this whole mess right there.

@NotYourAverageLurker  
Welcome to the outsider perspective,where idiots STILL do not do their (10 minute at most)research and stereotypes are upheld and are considered a reliable source of information on rather compliacated issues.

@uc9
 
You can keep saying that all you want, but the fact remains that it is not possible to talk about the initial cheating incident without getting into her personal sex life. It is also not possible to deny the fact that right now there is an internet lynch mob that seems to be out for her head for this. (Again, just take a look at the replies to her Twitter feed. Harassment is happening, there is absolutely no way to deny that.)
 
A lot of the accusations that have been thrown at her are tenuous at best. The only thing we can really know for certain is that she cheated on someone with five different people. There was a very plausible conflict of interest, but people are assuming right off the bat that this was done in a deliberate attempt to find publicity, when we have little to suggest that this was the case. It’s equally likely that she was simply already acquainted with these games journalists due to the earlier Wizardchan scandal and ended up in a romantic relationship with them. As far as I’m concerned, this issue should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
 
If there’s one problem I do think is an entirely valid one, it’s the DMCA takedowns, if for no other reason than it is a stupid, stupid move. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to talk about all of the other bullshit that’s been happening in a more general sense.

@Zennistrad  
Let’s look at the facts though; she cheated on her boyfriend and the individuals that she cheated on her boyfriend with are the same people who promoted her game, falsely claimed she was doxxed, falsely claimed that 4chan attacked her, falsely claimed that wizardchan(a website about a disney movie) attacked her, falsely claimed that a Hawaii car shop phone number was harassing her, falsely claimed her twitter was hacked, attacked the charity that helped her get her video game created in the first place and illegally took down several websites and filed illegal DMCA against several youtubers(yes filing a false DMCA is a crime). These are not “accusations”; these are facts. Even if you were to throw out anything that wasn’t definitive the backtracing these so called “attacks” on her has proven that no she was not doxxed, she did not get her twitter hacked, 4chan didn’t attack her nor did wizardchan, the phone number that was so called “harassing her” had never called her beforehand and that she attacked the charity that helped promote her game in the first place. These are not “accusations” these are definitive facts in that her internet and phone history have been looked into to verify her claims and turns out they were invalid. The facts remain in that these so called attacks on her never happened and that the so called dox against her on 4chan was backtraced to her IP address and so forth.
 
She is not the victim; she is attacking other websites and individuals while claiming to be the victim.
 
This is not about “war on women” or “those evil trolls”; this is about felony law breaking by Quinn and those involved to which one of the people involved may very well go to prison for.
 

 
You can derail it all you want into “well it’s a attack on her personal life” the fact remains is that she broke the law and I would not doubt this becomes a criminal investigation eventually. This is not about her personal life, nor is this about her sex life, this is about felony law breaking.
 
The people that are defending her are ridiculous in that when you break it down saying that she shouldn’t be investigated is the equivalent of saying “women shouldn’t be investigated for whenever they break the law because that’s oppressing women”
 
Tl:dr; she broke the LAWWWWWWWW-  

@uc9
 
To fix a few things, Wizardchan isn’t about a Disney movie, it’s about a bunch of sad sack guys who are quite depressed with a fucking suicide hotline phone number up on the front page.
 
And it’s not just the fact she claimed that Wizardchan attacked her but the mainstream gaming media immediately and without any investigation into the allegations she made ran articles and urged people to support her with out question, SOMETHING we and the people of Wizardchan still have yet to get ANY apology or open admittance of outside of Editor in Chief Gregg Titto of the Escapist (who refused to apologize saying he would do it again if he felt like it) that has also got a lot of people up in arms.
 
The gaming media has lied for her and distorted the facts in her favor before PROVEN BEYOND DOUBT and yet she is still being held up the victim by them, that along with the false takedown is what even those who have no interest in her sex life are holding up as a reason to riot.

@Zennistrad  

 
Problem #1:When she slept with people that can boost her success,give her power and when it’s impossible to talk about it without cheating on her BF,that means that “personal life lol,iz unimportant and out of subject”.  
Her personal life is INDIRECTLY connected(or one part) to evidence and subject,the moment she slept with them,she put her own privacy on the line.
 
Problem #2:Check the wizardchan incident(I mean what REALLY happened,not an article at Escapist and what-not),is she trustworthy when she obviously faked harassement,used her power to shut down a game jam,open her own game-jam after that,start a patreon and then have her “five guys” rigorously protect her/provide support for above said actions?
 
They have a ,recently uncovered, shady history,so are their claims…true?  
That “the leader of /V/ and anonymous” hacked Phil Fish and polytron?  
That those comments of the wizardchan thread represent the whole community,or that /v/ also hacked her?  
That Zoe’s Twitter got hacked/doxxed?
 
This piles up wonderfully doesn’t it?

@The Smiling Pony  
It was a joke

@uc9
 
And do you think that any of these things make it okay for people to harass her on Twitter?

@Grumpykins  
It’s funny, because last I checked there was a little saying among people like her in regards to politics, “the personal is political.”

@Zennistrad  
Clearly only way to get anything done. No civil option remain since they lie and suppress