Journalist Critical of GamerGate Posts Best Critique of GamerGate Directly in GamerGate Forum

This is probably the best critique of #GamerGate ever written by a mainstream journalist, and ironically enough, it's posted on /KotakuinAction, the central headquarters for the "movement" on Reddit. It's by Jesse Singal, Senior Editor at NYMag.com, who also writes a Sunday video games column for The Boston Globe. Singal published a Globe editorial last month aruging that GamerGate is really about opposition to women and feminism in games. Unsurprisingly, GamerGaters in Reddit complained that the editorial was biased and poorly researched... and so last weekend, Jess Singal went into the Reddit forum himself and explained in great detail his sources for reaching that conclusion. It is a thing of beauty you should read in full here, but here's just a sample:

[F]aced with this complete lack of clarity [of GamerGate's purpose], all I or other journalists can do, then, is journalism: We ask the people in the movement what they stand for and then try to tease out what is real and what is PR. And every every every substantive conversation/ forum/encounter I've had with folks from GamerGate has led me to believe that a large part of the reason for the group's existence is discomfort with what its members see as the creeping and increasing influence of what you call social-justice warriors in the gaming world.

"Basically," Singal tells me, "I stumbled upon a Reddit thread from awhile back in which GamerGate people were calling me a hack, and instead of doing the reasonable thing and going on with my life because who cares, I posted a little response saying Hey, happy to actually talk this over if you guys want to. Generally speaking, when people misunderstand how journalism works – which a lot of GamerGate folks are at the moment – I do think it’s useful for us to step in and provide an explanation (assuming the accusers are acting with a baseline level of decency and respect)." After devoting a lot of time engaging with GamerGate supporters on Twitter, "I wanted to get down in one place everything that bugged me about trying to debate this movement (or 'movement')... So why not post in KIA itself, I figured?"

Since he was directly addressing GamerGate supporters angry at his Globe column, you'd think he'd mostly get angry replies. But here's the surprising thing about the response:

"About to jinx myself, but: overwhelmingly positive," says Singal. "I’d say 75% pro-. E-mails, Tweets, Reddit messages thanking me for saying what was apparently on a lot of people’s minds. (Thanks, nice people who messaged me!) There are of course GamerGaters who are unhappy with the post, and their responses are ranging from reasonable rebuttals posted on the original Reddit thread (well, I don’t find the substance reasonable, but the tone is fine) to the usual easily-blocked jerkbags calling me names on Twitter. (GamerGaters should understand that as a journalist--albeit not a particularly high-profile one--who writes under my real name and is actually held accountable for the words that come out of my brain, nothing bothers me less than anonymous people bitching at ne on Twitter. It is literally the lowest form of complaint there is.)

"Obviously the GamerGaters are, if nothing else, good at coordinating online outrage, so for all I know a massive backlash is moments away, but yeah: I was surprised at how much the responses so far have skewed in a positive direction."

Of course, that may change at any time, but for now, it's a hopeful sign.

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[Pussycat Catnap]

My mother once told me that all men are disgustingly evil and abusive. I teased out in that conversation that it was 'only a matter of time' for my brothers to become evil as well, like their fathers...

I looked to her drunken, mentally unstable, abusive female partner at the time and learned a lesson... one tangentially related to 'selection bias'...

Its a lesson I have to reteach myself every few years as a minority who is also disposed by those same fathers to the same bias as her...

Every few years I have to remind myself that no, not all white people are evil, not even all white men. I have only to look at all of the ones in my life who have NOT done me any wrong... and who have no ill intent. To the many who are even friends and mentors. And learn to differentiate that from the larger impacts of 'white privilege' that they do not intend.

Every few years another set of bad experiences from a select few individuals will pile up, and I will have to re-examine the difference between those individuals and the larger population. Then remind myself that bias... can work both ways and isn't rational.

I think this journalist is likewise seeing some of that same lesson.

Put simply:

The negative burns itself into the mind much easier than the positive does. We need conscious effort to remind ourselves that the negative was actually the smaller group...

This of course also often gets hard because negative actors tend to be more vocal. They will stir up a fight - and "good men [and women]" will in fact often "do nothing."

And so...

We ALSO need to keep engaging so that the smaller negative set doesn't become our only experience of a group.

Maybe one good way to fight 'gamergate' might simple be to engage stories of gamers and developers who are not in this negative-set, who don't have these biases... so that the negative minded ones start being seen as the fringe rather than the trend.

As my brothers grew up, and my mother became a single-mother in the workforce; she was forced to re-examine her bias: enough counter-examples were put into her presence to make her realize she had previously selected bad apples.

The 'positive' has got to be out there, probably not hard to find - and its time to accentuate it a bit.

(this is NOT me saying that gamergate is mostly positive. I think 'gamergate' has proven it is a cesspool of misogyny. But maybe gamergate is "notallgamers"...)

[Facepalm]

How is it a cesspool of misogyny?

[Facepalm]

"Every few years I have to remind myself that no, not all white people are evil, not even all white men"

And clearly such is your neurotic state of mind that you do not even realise the full extent of just how loaded that is with racism and misandry. Congratulations for being so balanced Pussycat.

Let us all remember, with the sheer miracle of willpower, that some white people, dare I say it even some white men! are alright. Not the vast vast vast majority though, oh no, evil is a wholly apt word.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Well, another thing about that smaller negative subset... they pop up with excruciatingly bad timing.

Good post, Pussycat.

[shirc desantis]

So thats reddit when its being a 'thing of beauty' is it? I will remember it when I feel the need to wonder what throwing PCP laced chum to a tank of deranged starved pre-ado sharklettes would look like.

This whole -thing- has at least nullified any lingering curiosity I may have had about all this game stuff anyway so well done there 'gaters (or is that gators?). Saves me a bit of cash too (and sorry to all the indies etc out there but thems the breaks - I've avoided chunks of industries for a lot less than this sort of *crap* (original words toned down substantially) even if generated by a 'smaller negative subset', cheers to AC for the phrase there)

So time to pack my rusty dev stuff back in its crate, although SimRabidSharkFeed would have been a fun project complete with such an obvious built in demographic to pander to.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Facepalm: Clearly you failed to read my full post, as your response... is even in my post.

[Facepalm]

@Pussycat

I understood your post, it's not complex it's stating the obvious that most people these days agree on, and I was taking issue with your tone that just smacked of half assed excuse making. Not only should it not be fine to generalise a group of people for a small minority's negative actions, but those inclined to hold that unfair view so should take full responsibility for that. I'm not surprised you missed your own double standards though when you are throwing 'privilege' into this debate.

You should take issue with your mother's vile extreme views on men, not normalise it where you have to make the effort just to remember that men are as a whole good people, or whites for that matter.

The reporter you were talking about should have used that very advice when considering the GG movement, not make out it is the hateful minority amongst an otherwise fair minded community of gamers (though even if you said that it would be a vast improvement over what NWN opinion and the rest of the mainstream gaming press).

[Adeon Writer]

Tagging posts with "GamerGate" is just a dinner bell for trolls.

[Pussycat Catnap]

You've just shown you missed my point.

Your second paragraph states the exact OPPOSITE of what I stated.

The difference here - is I know everyone has bias. Those who claim not to, are lying to themselves and/or others.

I recognize mine, and work to overcome it - which was what I stated. If you have a problem with people recognizing their own biases - then you're just asking those biases to go on being acted upon by feigning ignorance to them, and therefore not checking them when they surface, and not opening oneself up to the flaws in them.

It is only by knowing that my upbringing tries to give me bias, that I am first able to see that it is bias... and then recognize that the larger sample of people I encounter are not like those actors that cause me to 'animal like retreat' back to bias.

All the time you will hear public speakers make comments about "why are "they" like that, what is wrong with their community?" For example - a common reaction to protests in minority communities.
- This is the public speaker failing to recognize their own bias... and as such judging a whole community by a standard based on some prior few bad actors.

If I have a negative encounter with a white person, it will remind me of the husband of my mother that spent my first 15 years trying to beat me and her to a pulp... and that sets in a very strong gut reaction... that I need to remind myself is just that... and NOT let that cloud my judgement of other people from that ethnicity that I encounter... nor even that negative encounter...

Bias like that is an animal instinct... A mouse's 'run from anything that resembles the predator that ate the other mice' instinct...
- Most people never wake up and realize the bias is that flawed...
They assume they're not judging on such instincts... and so let their biases run free by lying to themselves that such biases are there.

And my whole point... was to point that the reporter had his own biased "checked" when he made his post.
- and that this is a lesson to carry through before people set in a bias against 'gamers' based on the actions of 'gamergate'. Gamergate is a movement - it has an agenda. But that agenda does not speak for gamers in general, no more than the 'Klan' speaks for whites, or the 'Panthers' for blacks, or 'AIM' for Native Americans, or 'Communist Party' for Chinese... etc...

[Pussycat Catnap]

You also fail to understand 'privilege'.

Privilege is about larger inequalities in a society based on historic factors or society-wide biases.

Privilege is something those with it cannot escape. Its a harm they do to others even when they try not to.
- Statistical truths, that act to benefit some, even some who wish to avoid being benefited by them.

Privilege is not at all about bias in individuals.
- So I see no double standard in mentioning it.

I also see no point in going down a laundry list of examples, when a person who is not being willfully ignorant can easily find ,research, statistics, and articles on the difference between privilege and bias.

[Facepalm]

Everyone has bias, everything is a matter of perspective, big deal. Not all perspectives are equal, what matters is people roughing it out to see who has more truth and sense on their side to make action on it. I suppose there is merit in people reminding others of the simple fact of bias, and to remind everyone to be open minded, but people need to do more than that. They need to get stuck into the issues and take some kind of stand.

The Huffington Post recently interviewed 3 female members of GG, I believe one was actually a feminist. The ladies had to forcefully take over the conversation just to say make the simple point that the movement has nothing to do with misogyny, and yet still you get articles like the above cropping up. People attack the likes of Anita Sarkesian so much because it is one of the strongest examples of inherent bias of the media to silence all criticisms of her work, and to slander every gamer as mysognistic, 'gamers are over', blah blah. This has nothing to do with being anti feminist, even people who agreed with the main body of Sarkesian's work can still take ethical issue with the way the press presented it in such a biased and hateful manner.

As for privilege, I wasn't talking about your statements about human bias being a double standard, I was saying the idea of privilege itself is full of one sided viewpoints, double standards on race. 'White privilege' revolves around the idea that generally the superior position of white people as a group is predominately because they oppressed other races, that in no way did they get their by the merits of their ancestors working collectively for the betterment of the future (or that many white people face just as many hardships as anyone else).

'Its a harm they do to others even when they try not to.'

A harm they do to others just for being White? Or an excuse for affirmative action, or to show white history as inherently worse than any other race's. It's not a 'privaledge' to not have someone elses suffering, and those slapped with the label of having 'privilege' are not responsible for other peoples hardships. It completely puts emphasis in the wrong place, it's like saying someone who is healthy is 'privileged' because they don't have cancer or something. The average white person can do no more against racism than what they already have done (which is rather alot if you look at history, and I'm sure plenty are working hard to change policy regardless). Making white people feel shame is never going to result in anything productive. Mostly that term just drives a massive wall of resentment between the races because it's based on half assed history, and half assed marxist efforts to solve the problems.

Which is essentially what I took offence to, you could have demonstrated any kind of bias you had, but instead you chose to focus on the highly popular liberal anti-white male meme that is so rampant these days generally, but also in the very debate around GG. All the while pretending you are wholly aware of your own bias.

If you didn't mean white privilege I'm just as happy to debunk any other.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Circular reasoning: why reading conservative rhetoric is oddly like watching a hamster wheel.

[Facepalm]

And why the vast majority of an Arcadia Codesmith comment reads like 'I disagree, but instead of adding anything I'll make some cowardly slander of them with an over the top neurotic generalisation that really only shows my own spiteful bias in hopes it will silence debate'.

[Facepalm]

I know based on previous posts that I am not the only commenter on NWN who doesn't entirely buy into the whole mainstream media's distraction tactic of slandering GG as a misogynistic boogie man, and find it suspiciously resembling a childish ploy to get away from the real issues. Most of the gaming press has been trying to present GG as a temporary temper tantrum that will soon go away, . Unfortunately for them they underestimate the issues at hand, the rigour and commitment of so many in the movement, and that it's not going anywhere.

Far from it's starting to have a real impact already. How's this for a 'thing of beauty':

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/21/Incr1edibly-GamerGate-is-winning-but-you-won-t-read-that-anywhere-in-the-terrified-liberal-media

A snippet:

'Gawker and Vox writers can play at smear campaigns all they like--and it's all they have left to do, because they cannot argue the case on merit--but their own advertisers are seeing through the sneering and starting to ask whether they want to be associated at all with such wildly unpleasant attitudes. 

How do I know? Because I've spent the last fortnight quietly soliciting the opinions not only of senior executives at AAA video game publishers, but also at some of the companies linked to GamerGate's boycotts and activism, such as Intel, Mercedes and BMW.'

[Cube Republic]

It's weird NWN were writing copy of how cool it is to make your avatar commit suicide in a video game. Then in the next article they're supporting a movement that among other things claims that video game content can have a negative effect on the player.

[FredTheGamer]

I do not support Anita S "feminist crusade againt the evil gaming industry", I do think she is clever though creating a job for herself that did not exist before. I spent a good portion of the evening reading about GG and #notyourshield etc and is interested in the counter reaction. Can we get an article about that? Or is it as I suspect that people who do not agree just shake their head and move on?