Is #GamerGate misogyny posing as concern for ethics?

[SilverDragonRed]

There's foreshadowing for the mother's abduction? I'll have to do a third play through of DA2 when I get the next chance.

The rest of your post I can agree with. Tropes can certainly be used badly, but aren't inherently bad themselves.

[Block]

Oh yay ad hominem.

Do you even know what an ad hominem is, or did you just not read past the first sentence of my post?

The clip showed a guy saying basically take what you want because they're not people. Her attempt at a point is that stuff like that encourages repression of women, ignoring that this is the villain saying it, not the PC. The PC, male or female, actively fights against the guy shown in the clip, completely undermining the point she is attempting to make.

THAT WASN'T THE POINT SHE WAS ATTEMPTING TO MAKE. As has now been explained to you at least 3 times in this thread, including the post you just responded to. Yes, the PC, male or female, actively fights against the guy shown in the clip ... which is the entire fucking point, because we are talking about how female NPCs in video games are used to drive forward the plot by being "damsels in distress". Do you honestly think that Sarkeesian, or anybody else in this thread, thought that the guy in the clip was the hero of the game?

Also I notice that you completely ignored the part about how Sarkeesian didn't even choose that fucking clip in the first place. Or the part about how cherry-picking at individual video games isn't even the point of her argument, as she is more interested in the broader paradigm of gender portrayal in video games. Are you being deliberately dishonest or do you just honestly not understand what everyone is talking about, here?

I'm well aware of what ad hominem is, dismissing what i said because I'm a 'blithering idiot' qualifies. I skipped your next claim because you have no evidence, and are likely wrong since the guests almost always provide the clips to shows.
The rest is nonsense from you. Her greater point was poorly articulated at best and wrong, since person in distress is common for people of both genders. War games tend to have you rescue a trapped comrade, does that mean all men are weak and helpless? Or is it to show how special the character is compared to everyone else?

[Covenant]

The problem with damsels and so forth is that this relationship is normalized into the status quo. There's no problem rescuing women from a monster so long as they play as broad a set of roles as men and are not just relegated to quest objectives or rewards. This is also why allowing a female PC is nice but not really the "answer" to the "problem" because a single exception does not break the rule when the behavior is still absolutely normalized in the rest of the experience. Once it's normalized then every game that goes "well thats what X did" will just perpetuate the suck. That's why throwing in a combo breaker is helpful to the development community, honestly. People do not always realize what they're doing until they hear an outside voice. Once you get a nice break from the normal it starts getting people thinking. Defending the status quo is only defending laziness.

Players do not need to feel shame for playing a game where there are damsels unless that's why they want to play it. Player shame is a big motivating thing, since they are "tired of being told..." but Anita is really not telling anything to the player themselves, really. Very little of it is stuff the player does, just what the players choose to allow the players TO do or require the player to do.

People who get offended on behalf of developers are causing more problems than they think. I know there are some moral guardians out there trying to shut down this or that, but taken just as itself the stuff that Anita talked about was very pro-game and pro-story. Asking for better game stories is exactly what everyone else already does. It looks super weird to have players so riled up about this when you've meanwhile got the Borderlands devs making another ultra-shooty explosion-fest and slipping in the kind of pro-equality messages that are being talked about. If you can make an amped-up gun game without having to rely upon an icky foundation of bad tropes then... why not?

When you criticize a movie for having a bad story you are not simultaneously advocating for the death of movie-watchers and the end of the movie industry.

Basically the developers are fine, and the people who are White Knighting for them are doing so on behalf of a damsel who is neither in distress, in a tower, or under attack.

People on the pro-GG side should also spend less time focusing on everything Anita and Quinn do. There are other targets of their ire, including some dudes, but when you single out a specific individual you make it clear that there is something about them that is absolutely enraging you. But given how these individuals have basically nothing to do with the way games are made, how is this level of attention valuable or justifiable?

Like, this conversation here. Why is this such a big deal? If she's such a joke, why do you care? Why do you care what Colbert says? Or Stephenson or Phillip K Dick or such?

[Lord Revan]

There's foreshadowing for the mother's abduction? I'll have to do a third play through of DA2 when I get the next chance.

it's sudtle but it's there, starting from all way in act 1,though you'll have connect the dots yourself, it's not like "oh hi, btw your mom got kidnapped"

[Block]

The problem with damsels and so forth is that this relationship is normalized into the status quo. There's no problem rescuing women from a monster so long as they play as broad a set of roles as men and are not just relegated to quest objectives or rewards. This is also why allowing a female PC is nice but not really the "answer" to the "problem" because a single exception does not break the rule when the behavior is still absolutely normalized in the rest of the experience. Once it's normalized then every game that goes "well thats what X did" will just perpetuate the suck. That's why throwing in a combo breaker is helpful to the development community, honestly. People do not always realize what they're doing until they hear an outside voice. Once you get a nice break from the normal it starts getting people thinking. Defending the status quo is only defending laziness.

Players do not need to feel shame for playing a game where there are damsels unless that's why they want to play it. Player shame is a big motivating thing, since they are "tired of being told..." but Anita is really not telling anything to the player themselves, really. Very little of it is stuff the player does, just what the players choose to allow the players TO do or require the player to do.

People who get offended on behalf of developers are causing more problems than they think. I know there are some moral guardians out there trying to shut down this or that, but taken just as itself the stuff that Anita talked about was very pro-game and pro-story. Asking for better game stories is exactly what everyone else already does. It looks super weird to have players so riled up about this when you've meanwhile got the Borderlands devs making another ultra-shooty explosion-fest and slipping in the kind of pro-equality messages that are being talked about. If you can make an amped-up gun game without having to rely upon an icky foundation of bad tropes then... why not?

When you criticize a movie for having a bad story you are not simultaneously advocating for the death of movie-watchers and the end of the movie industry.

Basically the developers are fine, and the people who are White Knighting for them are doing so on behalf of a damsel who is neither in distress, in a tower, or under attack.

People on the pro-GG side should also spend less time focusing on everything Anita and Quinn do. There are other targets of their ire, including some dudes, but when you single out a specific individual you make it clear that there is something about them that is absolutely enraging you. But given how these individuals have basically nothing to do with the way games are made, how is this level of attention valuable or justifiable?

Like, this conversation here. Why is this such a big deal? If she's such a joke, why do you care? Why do you care what Colbert says? Or Stephenson or Phillip K Dick or such?

I agree with you. I think one of the problems is the way in which it's presented. The claimed purpose of GG is to improve gaming journalism so that they give fair reviews, I assume the goal there is to force better writing and higher quality from devs. Now Sarkeesian supposedly wants better writing too, no? In a specific direction, yes, but still better writing. The problem I see is that it gets presented like, "you're all a bunch of evil woman haters who want to oppress us" when it could be "you guys are right, here's another example of how, let's figure out how to fix it all."

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm well aware of what ad hominem is, dismissing what i said because I'm a 'blithering idiot' qualifies.

I didn't "dismiss what you said" you dishonest little shit. I wrote two full posts explaining exactly why you were wrong; you misinterpreted not only Sarkeesian's argument but the meaning behind the clip shown, as several people have pointed out. Your refusal to actually read my posts and respond to what I'm saying doesn't constitute an ad hominem. It is just further evidence that you are either a moron or a liar.

I skipped your next claim because you have no evidence, and are likely wrong since the guests almost always provide the clips to shows.

Watch the fucking interview. That's my evidence. The clip you doth protest so much about wasn't even shown as part of the interview! It was shown in a SEPARATE SEGMENT; during Colbert's monologue. While it is possible that Sarkeesian provided the clip, you are the one that has to show evidence that she did. Guests tend to provide promotional clips for their interviews, not material for the performer's monologue.

Show me the evidence that Sarkeesian deliberately chose that specific clip, and explain why that refutes her argument, as you previously claimed.

The rest is nonsense from you. Her greater point was poorly articulated at best and wrong, since person in distress is common for people of both genders.

The fact that every single other person in this thread has understood her point except you is probably indicative of the fact that you are a blithering idiot, not that her greater point was poorly articulated. In fact, you have not even shown you understand what the fuck her point is in the first place. You keep pulling stuff out of your ass and muttering about how the clip shown by Colbert was self-defeating, without actually bothering to explain WHY it was self-defeating.

Seriously, asshole, I'm sick of your dishonest bullshit in this thread. You have deliberately ignored not only the bulk of my posts, but you have also deliberately ignored Terraltha, Vendetta, and Imperial Overlord, who all responded directly to your arguments on the previous page. Either put up or shut up. Provide evidence that Sarkeesian's argument is wrong. Hell, provide evidence of this absurd statement you just made to Covenant:

The problem I see is that it gets presented like, "you're all a bunch of evil woman haters who want to oppress us" when it could be "you guys are right, here's another example of how, let's figure out how to fix it all."

Give us a quote from Sarkeesian saying anything even remotely resembling "you're all a bunch of evil woman haters."
Show evidence that her argument about video game gender politics is fundamentally incorrect, as you have insinuated.
And stop fucking ignoring people's arguments just because you are too stupid to come up with a rebuttal.

[TheFeniX]

People who get offended on behalf of developers are causing more problems than they think. I know there are some moral guardians out there trying to shut down this or that, but taken just as itself the stuff that Anita talked about was very pro-game and pro-story. Asking for better game stories is exactly what everyone else already does. It looks super weird to have players so riled up about this when you've meanwhile got the Borderlands devs making another ultra-shooty explosion-fest and slipping in the kind of pro-equality messages that are being talked about. If you can make an amped-up gun game without having to rely upon an icky foundation of bad tropes then... why not?

I... uh.. what? Borderlands pounds that shit, having not 1, but 2 damsels in distress in BLands 2. One of them being a main character from the first game. Really, the only thing I can think of that's "pro-equality" would be Hammerlock as he's gay, but it's not a plot-point: he just mentions it in passing.

I think Hammerlock was handled pretty damn well, but Borderlands is a trash-heap of played-out... everything else. Jesus, we're talking about a game that thinks you're so fucking stupid after Jack has been trying to kill you and everyone else all game and is just now trying to cut a deal with you, Angel is like "no, don't believes him, he is teh evils." Because, oh yea, I'm totally going to drop everything and buddy up with a mass-murdering psychopath because he has issues with his daughter. The whole game is a failure at any kind of real tension because it makes no sense in context of the game.

[Covenant]

I... uh.. what? Borderlands pounds that shit, having not 1, but 2 damsels in distress in BLands 2.

Lemme link you to an interview they gave recently so you have more context, but WRT BL1 and BL2 you're right. I'm talking about developers working on their own process rather than just a good result. It's also that I chose Borderlands because it's a game that treated women like more of a punchline earlier in the series and the developers (after becoming more aware of issues) are changing some of their approach. IE, I'm not holding up Borderlands as an ideal to be strived towards, but of a series that was made kinda tone-deaf before but can show a strain of moderation across the development history.

It is an instructive example in great part because it is not a message game nor a politically correct game, but the developers are still improving their story work. It is a success story, from the perspective of people who want games to stay games but improve on the accidentally messaging they send to players.

Here is the article I mentioned linking you to.

Basically the take-away is that they had some shitty ideas before, they started to recognize them, and adjusted, then had some more, and kept adjusting. I'll give them a golf clap because that process is exactly what we should want people to do. The #GG people are terrified that evil feminists want to come and take their games. The Anti#GG people say that's ridiculous and all they want to do is eliminate (or at least reduce) the blatant sexism (or the status-quo endorsement of sexist tropes) in the game industry as a whole so they can play too and not have to ignore shitty things the whole time. Ergo, I would call the Borderlands developers taking these issues on and becoming aware of them a victory and an example of a good process of growth.

I will also accept that "authorial intent" means little compared to the final product, but we're talking about a worst possible genre/style for this discussion. I think there are basically no games less equipped to deal with issues of inclusivity (in terms of audience and content) than an ammunition-and-adrenaline fueled fightfest. Maybe a "gritty stealth" game would be worse because those seem to want to deal with scum (and thus enjoy showing a lot of scummy activities) but I think that debate is complicated by a lot of other factors.

Anyway, I'm totally down with your rejection of what I said, but I think the interview they gave where they identify the shitty things they did and talk about their plan for the future shows the kind of thought process and design process that we want when we talk about increasing inclusivity in gaming.

An ideal case would be one where they were already doing all this, sure. But that requires educated developers, and the problem we're facing is that developers are not educated. Seeing them educate and modify their stuff is, therefore, a notable success and thus why I gave that example.

[Purple]

What was wrong with borderlands 1? I mean, I have not plaid anything but the original game, no DLC, no expansions and no anything else. But from my remembering there was nothing negative in regard to women in the whole thing.

[TheFeniX]

What was wrong with borderlands 1? I mean, I have not plaid anything but the original game, no DLC, no expansions and no anything else. But from my remembering there was nothing negative in regard to women in the whole thing.

Borderlands is a classic case of the co-op effect: the most boring and trite shit can be fun when you have the right people to play it with. I actually enjoyed the game and some of it's character quite a lot. But it's is excruciating when played alone and they ditched a lot of the content to turn it into a loot simulator.

Basically the take-away is that they had some shitty ideas before, they started to recognize them, and adjusted, then had some more, and kept adjusting. I'll give them a golf clap because that process is exactly what we should want people to do. The #GG people are terrified that evil feminists want to come and take their games. The Anti#GG people say that's ridiculous and all they want to do is eliminate (or at least reduce) the blatant sexism (or the status-quo endorsement of sexist tropes) in the game industry as a whole so they can play too and not have to ignore shitty things the whole time. Ergo, I would call the Borderlands developers taking these issues on and becoming aware of them a victory and an example of a good process of growth.

By making jokes about friendzoning and taking shots at people who get hung up on it in a game where death means absolutely nothing... unless you're in a cutscene and the writers need to create some sort of tension because the player hasn't been paying attention?

Either way, I won't bother to argue it with you because I don't buy from Gearbox anyone for reasons unrelated to this topic so I won't get a chance to be bored by Blands 3.

[Purple]

Borderlands is a classic case of the co-op effect: the most boring and trite shit can be fun when you have the right people to play it with. I actually enjoyed the game and some of it's character quite a lot. But it's is excruciating when played alone and they ditched a lot of the content to turn it into a loot simulator.

Were we playing the same game?
I only ever tried it in single player, completely alone and found the game to be engaging and with a deep and interesting world as well as an ultimately satisfying plot.

[Gaidin]

I... uh.. what? Borderlands pounds that shit, having not 1, but 2 damsels in distress in BLands 2. One of them being a main character from the first game. Really, the only thing I can think of that's "pro-equality" would be Hammerlock as he's gay, but it's not a plot-point: he just mentions it in passing.

Were we playing the same game? One of those was spending 80% of the game throwing a wrench in the Big Bad's plan because she could and then she died because she told you to kill her. Well, mostly she told you to break the machine that the Big Bad's plan depended on. Some Damsel in Distress. The second, well, caught with her pants down in the same fight and captured by the Big Bad and didn't know the system. Forget the rest of the story she's involved in. Calling either a Damsel in Distress is a helluva stretch. Are we using the same term for Angel or Lilith or, again, are we playing the same game?

[Covenant]

By making jokes about friendzoning and taking shots at people who get hung up on it in a game where death means absolutely nothing... unless you're in a cutscene and the writers need to create some sort of tension because the player hasn't been paying attention?

No, by actively recognizing they had a disparity in male/female representation as well as gender spectrum representation on top of whatever jokes they were making, and then choosing to correct it while also planning on deliberately designing around that in the future. Making yourself aware of issues, recognizing you were part of a problem, and then making steps to fix it is hard work, so I won't stunt further efforts by holding out some mild applause. If everyone made even those small steps then we'd have a very different world.

Either way, I won't bother to argue it with you because I don't buy from Gearbox anyone for reasons unrelated to this topic so I won't get a chance to be bored by Blands 3.

Well, you don't have to own the games. I actually don't own any of the borderlands games. I did think their attitude was commendable anyway.

This whole thread is pretty fucking disgusting.

Who the hell are you?

The first push-back? This has been a shoving contest between groups as far back as I can remember. Gaming has never been about the dominion of a club--it has always sought to spread to other groups and cross-pollinate across demographics. I attended a halloween party the other day where the attendees were basically all nerdy things that have been subsumed into the normal culture: we had two video game characters, two cartoon characters, two fantasy characters and basically nobody who did not know who anyone was. We have gone from treating the typical Nerd Trifecta of Cartoons, Video Games and Speculative Fiction as the basement-dweller's companion to treating them as mainstream cultural foundations. I realize how infuriating it must be for a serious #GG person to keep distancing themselves from crap like this. God dammit man, I make games for a living and even I think you're taking this gaming thing way too seriously. Colonizing? It's not a damned continent full of a native population. Demonize? They say there may be some sexist elements in nerd culture and people respond with sexist attacks, hate, and smear campaigns. Even before anyone had heard of Anita whatsoever there were idiotic "fake nerd girl" fights and other identity garbage.

Culture Police that go after Identity Crime and Thought Crime brought this shitstorm upon themselves. They act outrageously defensive of this nonsensical identity. It's insane. If you want to know where these female gamers learned to be so relentlessly aggressive in the face of criticism, it is from the people who are relentlessly aggressive in the face of any criticism of nerd culture.

Okay, maybe that's not true, but it's ridiculous to say this fight started with an alien force invading the idyllic land of games. That's the kind of whackjob thinking that leads nowhere but down. People WITHIN gaming had been talking, long before this, about the struggles that female developers face, and the difficulty in publishing games with non-objectified female leads, and of the sexism in games. Steam kinda blew the doors off of this because it let people publish through alternate media outlets, and there was also a bloom of alternate media sites with an interest in editorializing the discussions and cultural critiques that gaming gets. That's normal when you've become a massive industry bigger than the film industry. Gamers are no longer an oppressed minority, and yes, even candy crush gamers are gamers. Trying to say that puzzle games aren't games is going to make Grandpa Tetris give you the stinkeye.

The outrageous backlash here far exceeds any attack levied against the gaming industry, and the fact is a lot of the people making these claims at first were (in earnest) the gaming industry itself: publishers and developers.

[Joun_Lord]

Does anyone else find it odd that Andrew can't be bothered to read the thread, but singles out a female poster who made very few contributions for individual criticism?

Doesn't sound odd, sounds quite a bit like how this Gamergate stuff has been going with most of the focus on females who got into it rather then the males doing the same thing if not to a greater degree.


More on-topic, while this Gamergate crap does seem highly sexist I do wonder if that is the whole truth.

I look back at things like the Tea Party and OWS and how they were reported on. Stuff like MSNBC reporting armed people with possibly racist overtones at a anti-Obamacare rally who was actually black or their editing of the George Zimmerman 911 tapes. Or the reporting by Fox News and other right wing sources on the Occupy Wall Street people, only interviewing the kooks, trying to paint them as all entitled, rapey, 20 somethings with no message beyond how the rich suck.

Any news source will report on something filtered through their own biases. The main reporting on GG is by gaming journalism which is the "target" of GG. Thus they are going to be going out of their way to make them look as bad as possible, only reporting on the outliers and kooks, anything that reinforces their narrative that GG is a bunch of He-Man Woman Hater basement dweller perma-virgins.

Maybe that narrative is close to the reality, I dunno, but maybe its as close to the reality as the narrative that all the OWS protestors were raping, thieving, college students wallowing in their own excrement. I was lurking here back when that stuff was going down and remember some people here were either in one of the Occupy protests or knew people in them. So people here should that anti-OWS narrative was probably bull.

All that said while I don't really have a dog in this fight either way, I actually think its a good thing more people are playing vidya and don't play online games so don't have a cow about them there cooty having vagina havers assaulting my ears with their talks about feelings and junk when I'm trying to teabag someone or whatever reason people get angry about women playing games, but was a wee bit upset about gaming journalism banding together to declare gamers dead and trying to paint everyone who plays games as misogynists.

[Lord Revan]

More on-topic, while this Gamergate crap does seem highly sexist I do wonder if that is the whole truth.

Of course it's not the whole thruth but then again it doesn't matter as it's not about the thruth as much as it's about the image you're repesenting

the sexist scum whose main purpose for gamergate is to give them an excuse to harass women could easily be a minority but the thing is they're a vocal minority (assuming they're minority to begin with), so they drown out the voices with actual reasonble arguments in the public eye, not helped by the obvious biases involved as you pointed out.

It doesn't help how good and/or your arguments are if you're linking them to movement whose main message in the eye of the public at large seems to be "them evil viminz have come to take away my gamez cause they got cooties and things!!" and has an image of being composed of 40 year old perma-virgins who could never grow up and are still stuck in gradeschool mentally

as you can probably agree that's not a movement that most rational people think is something worth their time, even if that image is false or at least not accurate.

[Covenant]

Haha. That's an enjoyable post, despite how short it is.

There actually are some real "its about ethics" people in there. The problem is that when you have a leaderless "revolt" it is very easy for the intended "message" to be co-opted by others who want to:

a) Add a little chaos without respect to the meaning of the moment.
b) Bring out the axe to grind they've been harboring for a long time.
c) Steer the revolt in the direction of their own political goals.

So when you look at the people leaping to the defense of GamerGate it is a lot of people on the right. This does not mean it was a politically right thing to begin with, but it has become politicized through its desire for allies: you have Breitbart, Fox news, and via Christina Sommers you have the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think-tank funded in part by the Koch brothers and blah blah blah. She's made her career talking about both Feminism and Ethics so she's a shoe-in for this argument. Her politics (she is a conservative aligned with the Libertarians, but remains a registered democrat for whatever reason) are the politics of the traditional enemies of games, and her long-standing "boys and girls are different" view does not mean she's a monster. She's not a monster. She's just a conservative.

But the conservatives really want this movement acting for themselves. They have been unable to successfully demonize games out of existence in the past, so it is not surprising a Libertarian or Neo-Con looking to make inroads would happily leap into the fray in their defense. These people have the same integrity (to the cause) as the trolls who just want to stir up trouble, but they've got an agenda which is much more dangerous.

So in the absence of a message, because there is no leader, it is easy for people to come in and start adding messages and creating an enemies list that aligns with their political ideology. This may be something that is hard to see from within, but they really are being "steered" as a mob against the progressive leading-edge. It's just another scuffle in the culture war, and it is embarrassing to see the people who have for so long been picked on and villified by the right suddenly lock-step with them in order to score a few pointless moral victories against some mean ol' feminists on the internet.

There's a groupthink aspect to it too. The 8chan home of GG is filled with jargon like "shill" which is used as an identifier to anyone who they believe is not a real GG supporter. It helps perpetuate this insane labyrinthine conspiracy theory by pointing out all the "shills" in the comments and all around them. The "no true scotsman" aspect to this is crazy, but because the "Anti-SJW" element is strong there is a lot of shill-slinging at people who fall on the left side of GG, and it generally is a useless activity because you cannot identify or remove an individual from an anonymous message board. But you make this pressure cooker effect which helps to direct their outward anger. The amount of tone policing and identity verification should not surprise anyone who has been critical of identity politics already, but the similarities between GG and the SJW forces they oppose are striking.

[Elfdart]

The final nail in the coffin for #GamerGate's claim that this had anything to do with ethics in journalism was when their most prominent spokesmen joined forces with Breitbart. That's the equivalent of claiming to be an advocate for the welfare of children and allying yourself with NAMBLA.

[Elfdart]

Andrew Breitbart was a deranged liar, forger, racist and all-around asshole whose main achievement in life was ginning up a Two Minutes Hate campaign against Shirley Sherrod, using a doctored video tape to make her look like a racist who was using her position in the Department of Agriculture to discriminate against white farmers. This smear job got Sherrod fired, harassed, threatened with death and so on. Except that the smear job was so vile, so dishonest and so fucking inept that even Ann "thrax" Coulter went on Fox News to say it was garbage and Sherrod had been slimed. Sherrod filed a defamation suit against Breitbart, who then made the sterling career move of dropping dead. Anyway, his numerous toadies are still at work doing his depraved mischief.

NAMBLA is an infamous group advocating for the "right" of creepy old men to screw underage boys.

But then, I'm sure you knew all this already.

[Purple]

But then, I'm sure you knew all this already.

Actually I didn't. Especially not the NAMBLA thing... That's just creepy.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Wait, NAMBLA is real? *checks Wikipedia* Holy shit! I always thought it was something Matt Stone and Trey Parker invented to make us laugh.

[Spyder]

Wait, NAMBLA is real? *checks Wikipedia* Holy shit! I always thought it was something Matt Stone and Trey Parker invented to make us laugh.

They're masters of the "Hahaha. Wait a minute, this shit's real?" type of humour.

[Gaidin]

But then, I'm sure you knew all this already.

Actually I didn't. Especially not the NAMBLA thing... That's just creepy.

Sometimes the people follow the rule of journalism, and think you shouldn't ask a question unless you know the answer you're going to get already apparently.

[Vendetta]

But remember, it's about ethics in videogame journalism.

Ethics in videogame journalism.

Why won't people just believe that?

[Ziggy Stardust]

The final nail in the coffin for #GamerGate's claim that this had anything to do with ethics in journalism was when their most prominent spokesmen joined forces with Breitbart.

I'm a bit confused as to what you are talking about. Who is the "most prominent spokesmen" for GamerGate, and how did they join forces with someone who's been dead for 2 years?

[DaveJB]

But remember, it's about ethics in videogame journalism.

Ethics in videogame journalism.

Why won't people just believe that?

I don't doubt that there are a lot of GamerGate supporters who genuinely do want videogame journalists to be a little less corrupt. They're just, at the very least, incredibly naive to think that there's nothing wrong with supporting a movement whose roots were as a hate campaign against a small group of women, two of whom didn't even have any direct connection to the "scandal" that started this thing in the first place.

In fact, I just did a Google search about the two involved in the supposed scandal, and a search for Zoe Quinn and GamerGate returns a little over 200,000 results, while searching for GamerGate-related articles that mention the guy she supposedly slept with (who I'm not actually going to name, just to see how many people actually do know who he is) returned just 26,000 results.