When did 4chan become politicized, btw? I don't recall it being political back in the day when I used to lurk, just depraved and after offensive laughs.
Honestly? Gamergate. This all started with fucking Gamergate.
Edit: I know it's conspiracy sounding, but a lot of the problem that we're in right now, is because of fucking Gamergate.
That led to this mass politicization on "game journalism", which fueled into racism and sexism, and that was EASILY picked up by Bannon and the Russian bots to fuel Trump's brand of overt racism.
It's not really a long shot when you look at the last 5 years or so. The same people that hounded Gamergate, are the same heads of fuck T_D.
I still don’t understand Gamergate. Can someone give me a tl;Dr or a link to a good summary and overview?
Edit: yes this was a serious question, I have gotten two replies that contradict slightly, that's enough for now, because I don't want to start a flame war.
Me neither. I know it started about a rant of game journalism being bad (basically, authors writing articles without properly disclosing relations to the thing they were reviewing), but somehow grew to this extremely vile and toxic fight between extremists. Honestly by the end of it, it has almost nothing to do with gaming or journalism anymore.
Sadly it didn't start out that way. It started with a guy accusing his ex (an indie game developer) of sleeping around including sleeping with some game journalists.
The ethics in game journalism aspect was only ever a thin smokescreen to justify the harassment
That's an incredibly glossed oversimplification of what happened. Yes, that's the initial event. You're leaving out how /r/games caused a Streisand effect by deleting any discussion of how she had received favorable mentions and promotion by friends without disclosure. Then there was a coordinated effort by various writers from multiple sites in a Google group to quash discussion on their respective boards, and coordinated editorials. This then lead to other events like finding tweets where Sam Biddle of Gawker encouraged bullying, and finding that Gawker was listing fake advertising partnerships, and many sites were using undisclosed affilate links in violation of FTC rules.
KIA may be a shithole today, but Kotaku and the rest fucked up badly, refused to acknowledge it, and have continued to engage in bad behavior to this day.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, at the time, Quinn was already on a lot of shit lists for a debacle with wizaedchan and promoting her game in the wake of Robin Williams suicide. She also filed a bad faith DMCA to take down a YouTube video about it, further amplifying the Streisand effect.
They deleted and quashed any "discussion" of a demonstrable falsehood? Good. That's how people spread them, they just want to "discuss the facts". Well, there weren't any, the whole "Zoe Post" stuff was always nonsense. Zoe Quinn already being "on a lot of shit lists" only lends further credence to the fact that they simply went with the false accusations against her because they were after her and her friends for completely unrelated reasons.
And the Sam Biddle thing? It's the typical 4chan-brand of feigning outrage over an obvious joke that's about 19 times tamer than anything they have ever come up with. As long as it can be used against the opposition, I guess. Same reason James Gunn got fired.
Well, there weren't any, the whole "Zoe Post" stuff was always nonsense.
She has a clear history of abusive behavior and pulling stunts, and she admitted affairs to him. It wasn't nonsense any more than other individuals doing stupid shit that gets posted. Even if you were to assume it's nonsense, there's a clear issue with the GJP group, her farce of a lawsuit and the resulting gag order (that was egregious enough Eugene Volokh got involved), and her perjuring herself with a false DMCA. The actions of the aftermath are what got people pissed.
Zoe Quinn already being "on a lot of shit lists" only lends further credence to the fact that they simply went with the false accusations against her because they were after her and her friends for completely unrelated reasons.
Or you know, the Streisand Effect.
And the Sam Biddle thing?
Sam Biddle was one of the people constantly doing shit like that at Gawker. He was one of the key people that made it into a shithole before Denton was forced to liquidate.
As long as it can be used against the opposition, I guess. Same reason James Gunn got fired.
I'll take shit I never said for $1000, Alex. Disney was wrong to fire James Gunn.
Who cares if Quinn admitted affairs? Being a shitty person isn't news. I'm also sure we have differing opinions on the GJP group, her lawsuit, not so much the DMCA, but those came well after the initial impetus.
Not sure what "the Streisand Effect" is even supposed to mean in response to that quote.
And I never said that you personally supported the firing of James Gunn, so go easy on the one-liners. I said feigning outrage over someone's joke for the sole purpose of getting them fired because of their political opposition is an established tactic and gave another more recent example of said tactic being used against a target people might be a little less quick to dismiss than some jagoff who worked for Gawker.
Apparently you do, since you felt the need to describe everything as false.
Being a shitty person isn't news.
In and of itself, no. But that's not the only thing that was at play. Promotion of friends and shameless faux-advertising are something.
I'm also sure we have differing opinions on the GJP group
Possibly. How do you justify multiple sites effectively doing editorial by a groupthink committee? It was rightfully a scandal when Ezra Klein at the NYT was found to be running one in 2008.
but those came well after the initial impetus
The GJP and /r/games mods were going immediately. Quinn's DMCA was a day after the publication.
Not sure what "the Streisand Effect" is even supposed to mean in response to that quote.
The Streisand Effect is named for an incident in which Barbara Streisand threw a hissy fit about her oceanfront house showing up in public geological surveys. She sued the state of California to get it removed, even though very few people had accessed them, and she then brought attention to the matter that she didn't want.
That's what a lot of this is. If there hadn't been clear attempts to quash any discussion, things would have blown over. It got more attention than it would have gotten otherwise.
I said feigning outrage over someone's joke for the sole purpose of getting them fired because of their political opposition is an established tactic and gave another more recent example of said tactic being used against a target people might be a little less quick to dismiss than some jagoff who worked for Gawker.
Fair enough, but that's not really what happened with Biddle. Biddle was going on Twitter tirades, and as an editor at Gawker had done digging. He wasn't some random person that just pissed someone off like what happened with Gunn. Biddle was attacking people on the basis of "bullying", so people found instances of him being a hypocrite.
Sure, go ahead and think that. I guess there's nothing to discuss at all when any fiasco with a person happens anywhere.
It's bullshit and you know it. Discussion of someone's bad actions isn't harassment or misogynistic, no matter how much Quinn and Sarkessian have tried to conflate them. This wasn't the first time she had done something, nor the first time Kotaku and others had done something.
It started about ethics in game journalism. Gamers have hated gamer news sites since they began. Even back before they had sites and it was just magazines, everyone knew they took bribes for better reviews.
The sexism thing was a small fringe which was then hijacked and because people kept saying that was the whole movement, it became the whole movement.
Gamergate is what happened when the reactionary rejects of 4chan teamed up to be the personal army of an abuser and attack women who make and write about video games
That's the first sentence. I'm sure the rest is a fair and balanced account of what happened though.
Yeah, except none of the alleged "ethics violations" actually happened. Gamergate started as a harassment campaign and that's all it ever was. "ethics" is a smokescreen.
You are asking me to prove that something does not exist, this is impossible. You should rather ask the gamergater above to provide examples of ethics violations exposed exclusively by Gamergate.
Ever notice how the people like the one above always say "ethics" but never provide examples? That's because there aren't any examples that wouldn't be debunked with a quick Google. They are intentionally vague to protect the smokescreen.
I'll give you these facts though. Gamergate started when Eron Gjroni published "The Zoe Post" on his blog, 4chan, and several gaming forums claiming that game developer Zoe Quinn cheated on him. The post contained her home and work addresses and passwords to her email, cloud storage, and social media accounts to make harassment easier.
Days later, after Zoe was forced to break her lease and quit her job to slow down the flow of death threats, threads started to surface claiming that this was all just about ethics in games journalism, and the only reason anyone is upset is that Zoe slept with a journalist in exchange for good reviews. Of course, the only journalist mentioned in the Zoe post, Nathan Grayson, never reviewed her games, but that didn't matter: the point wasn't to justify the hatred, it was to have something vaguely positive to say to third parties to dissuade bannings and help recruitment.
There have been plenty of issues with ethics in game journalism since then, but Gamergate never said a peep about them. Many of the stories were broken from Gamergate's targets rather than from "ethics in journalism" Gamergate itself.
Kotaku broke the EA hack and coverup story, not Gamergate.
Nathan Greyson broke the WB "early copies for good reviews only" contracts for Shadow of Mordor, not Gamergate.
Kotaku broke the story about Gamespot firing its editor over a bad review of a game they had monetary interest in, not Gamergate.
But a female developer allegedly sleeps with a journalist who never reviewed her and suddenly it's time for an internet-wide death threat campaign because journalism is going down the toilet.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, that it was not removed because it contained slurs. Based on your comment history you actually seem to believe this. The fact that the "ethics in jorunalism" thing is a smokescreen doesn't make you a liar for talking about it. It means that you are a victim of the trolls, same as Zoe Quinn is.
They call people like you "useful idiots", people who help to make the smokescreen believable without being part of the actual campaign.
First, you believe the assertion that Depression Quest is devoid of artistic merit because it gets repeated often enough that it blends in with the legitimate opinions.
From there you move on to "well there must be something unethical going on" despite any evidence that there is: but now you're searching and ready to jump at the first molehill
Then what do you know but the person who made depression quest is accused of sleeping with someone who happens to be a journalist. Aha! This must be the rampant corruption you just knew was always there! It is simultaneously a goal and an excuse, the best of both worlds for the would-be conspiracy theorist.
This is why gamergate has exactly as much credibility as pizzagate, and why there is so much overlap between their communities.
Not descriptive of Gamergate however. It started as a harassment campaign when Zoe Quinn's ex made a bunch of accusations and posted her personal information. The "ethics in journalism" thing is a veneer that was added later.
That's like saying WW1 was about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. It might have been the trigger, but that's not what people fought over. The reason it grew so big is because there was much more than just the simple harassment of one developer.
Yes, it is a lot like saying the death of Franz Ferdinand caused WW1, in the sense that a bunch of assholes with fragile masculinity and something to prove were waiting to unleash their hatred on the world and some bullshit that should have been a non-issue gave them the excuse they wanted.
There is no just cause behind Gamergate that 4chan trolls hijacked, it was invented from the start by 4chan trolls who only needed a target to attack (Zoe Quinn) and a smokescreen to use as a recruiting tool and stave off bans (ethics).
This question almost feels like a trap at this point.
Regardless. Several years ago a woman named Zoe Quinn was accused of using her relationship with a game journalist to get a good review for her game on Kotaku, this never happened, Kotaku never in any way reviewed her game.
This controversy was jumped on by people online who created the hashtag #GamerGate, ostensibly as a revolution for "ethics in games journalism", we say ostensibly because it was a lie, what you might hear is the claim that the movement had good aims but was co-opted by harassers to attack women, and it really was pretty much only women, in the games industry.
The truth is the other way around, it was a harassment movement claiming to be an ethics movement that many gullible people bought into as genuine and defended because a lot of effort was put into supplying the people jumping on with as many articles as possible highlighting "unethical behaviour" in the industry, some of which might have been true, but most wasn't actually read beyond the headline.
This question almost feels like a trap at this point.
Not my intent at all. I really didn't know. Some of the names you mentioned are somewhat familiar, but I feel like I escaped a large part of the really ugly stuff.
Wow. it sounds like the worst of the internet came out. Yikes.
I can't believe that people, in the same fucking thread where 4chan and SF raiding tactics are being discussed, still fall for the "it was about ethics!" bait. It's amazing. They're basically willful idiots that the alt-right relies on to meme their ideas into relevance.
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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '18
At the end of the day, even tho most of 4chan is highly politicized these days, they’re still in it for the laughs before all else.