Ab56 v2 aka Ash
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Posts posted by Ab56 v2 aka Ash
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So I don't really know who runs MAGfest, but one thing that could've been done better for many of the panels I saw was how they take questions. The Team Four Star panel did it the best: they had a designated volunteer who took a mic with her and walked around the room, choosing who gets to ask a question. It was fair, efficient, and most importantly, got the mic around so every person's question could be heard throughout the entire room. I couldn't hear the questions at all in some of the panels, so it was tough figuring out what the panelists were responding to. Alternatively, panelists could repeat the questions so the audience hears.
It's a little thing, but it tends to be the little things that make a convention or conference go from decent to professional.
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What the heck! Don't go to Magfest and not say hi to anyone!
Also Magfest has historically been Thursday through Sunday.
Haha well I wasn't sure I was going until a couple nights before, and I forgot to contact anyone on OCR beforehand. It was tough getting a hold of anyone on IRC during the event (duh, everyone's out having fun). I wasn't too sure how to get in touch. My bad! But who knows, maybe if there's a Bay Area meet-up in the near future, I'll swing by.
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I'm home from Magfest.
I had a great time, as always, although I can't say I'm a huge fan of the Friday-through-Monday thing they did this year. Felt weird.
Is it normally shorter? I went to MAGfest this weekend for the first time. My friend and I bailed early to go explore the area though; we didn't go Monday.
After participating on the forum and IRC for close to a decade, I sort of regret not saying hello to anyone in person. But it was nice attaching names to faces at the OCR panel, and I finally bought an OCR shirt. Cheers to 15 more years.
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Don't know if anyone I know will be there, but I might actually go to MAGfest next month too.
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I'm not really sure what you mean by "elaborate" on this. There's a group of people who have extremely close financial, personal, and professional ties including a leaked mailing list which documents their behavior ranging from collusion to blacklisting. This group, and the individuals they have direct financial or personal ties to, have basically been the driving force behind the entire controversy.
Plenty of ways to elaborate. What group? Can you describe these financial, personal, and professional ties? Can you describe this specific group's involvement in the controversy? Why should the "anti-GamerGate" label apply only to this narrow group rather than all the people out there on gaming sites, Twitter, Tumblr, and elsewhere that oppose whatever it is that GamerGate is about?
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I'm actually in the business of lawyering, which people have analogized this request to. I might be kind of peeved if someone was coming to me personally and directly for free services after all the hard work I put in to get here. But if it were an open call for any interested persons to come help--like this thread is--I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'd just ignore it if I wasn't interested.
Respectfully, I think if you're not interested, you could just not respond. There's no need to discourage people who are interested in helping by mucking up this thread with a big derail.
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Firstly "Anti-GG" is very much a defined clique of individuals with extremely close financial, professional, and often personal ties. Virtually all of them were participants in the GJP list itself or have direct ties to one another. It's patently unreasonable to claim they aren't a defined and narrow group.
Could you elaborate on this and why I should believe that term should be limited to the clique you mentioned?
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Don't labels like "SJW" just contribute to the identity war that you've decried several times in this thread? It's not so different from calling someone a racist or sexist, which I think you've also said was too vague earlier on. So other than for convenience--i.e. laziness--why would you ever use a vague label when you can attack specific ideas?
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Lazy potshots aside, I thought this was an interesting interview by TotalBiscuit of Rhianna Pratchett, a video game writer.
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This is a stupid thing to say. A really, really stupid thing to say. "It doesn't solve anything now" doesn't make it any less relevant to the conversation. You might as well be saying "you're right but who cares?"
Your entire platform throughout this thread has pretty much been "yeah she's been at the center of all these things and yeah maybe she did a bad job with her videos and yeah maybe she's fanning the flames of outrage on both sides of this debate but why are you trying to blame her for it? It's not fair, maybe there are details that you don't know about."
People who can't own up to their shit aren't good people, or the type of people you want to champion a cause around. You probably shouldn't defend them either.
Once again you've completely misrepresented my position which I've made pretty clear. I'm starting to doubt you're actually reading my posts. I agreed with djp when he said the following:
Is that an interesting question, the answer to which - if conclusively obtainable - will provide actionable insight of any kind?- I believe she has polarized gamers, that this was entirely avoidable in conveying most of her message, and that stripping away the dated/fringe ideology and armchair psychology would ALSO have made her points more persuasive.
- I believe that there's a demographic discrepancy between game journalists and gamers at large, and that most game journos lean left to varying degrees, whereas gamers at large are more ideologically diverse.
- I believe it was probably inevitable, to some extent, that this discrepancy would result in a schism/conflict of some ilk.
- I believe that Anita probably played some role in expediting that schism.
Whether she's "responsible" or not doesn't interest me, personally. I can believe all of the above while not seeking to assign the brunt of responsibility or blame to any one person or thing.
Basically, I think it's plausible that Anita Sarkeesian played some role in expediting the schism, as he put it. I would hold her "responsible" for that. Would I blame the entire resulting fiasco on her? Not really. All the vitriol is not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of her actions. Like I said earlier, to put all the blame on her would mean that nobody else is responsible for their own actions. Why should Anita get 100% of the blame when there are probably thousands of people participating in this #Gamergate discussion? It makes no sense.
But again, I want to reiterate that this is really not a productive discussion because it has absolutely no benefit.
"It doesn't solve anything now" doesn't make it any less relevant to the conversation. You might as well be saying "you're right but who cares?"The topic being relevant doesn't make it a productive one. And you're almost right: you're right to an extent about this blame business, but no one should care. What do you hope to actually achieve by allocating all the blame on one person here? As far as I'm concerned, you're just contributing to everything that makes the #Gamergate discussion so off-putting. It suggests to me that attacking some person is more important to you than improving the medium in any way.
- I believe she has polarized gamers, that this was entirely avoidable in conveying most of her message, and that stripping away the dated/fringe ideology and armchair psychology would ALSO have made her points more persuasive.
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Pray tell, what would be a productive alternative to this question?
Some productive alternatives would be to talk about what kinds of depictions in gaming are lacking, how to promote those ideas to developers, or how to market the concepts to audiences, to name a few.
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No, see, it is a productive question. If Anita Sarkeesian were to have not done the things she did, would there be a major culture war going on throughout gaming? Would there be the war of ideologies that you yourself said was unnecessary? The short answer is no. The longer answer is no, and she and the majority of her constituents and strongest supporters have prolonged it with inflammatory, dismissive and frankly hateful propoganda that isn't much better than the people they claim to be oppressed by. Everyone and their mom knows the best way to make a troll go away is to ignore it. To the contrary, they have poured fuel on the flames throughout.
It's not a productive question because the answer doesn't lead to anything productive. And all you did in this post was make angry unsubstantiated claims.
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I agree that you've made the argument, and you should expand on it and dress it up. There will always be some oddballs who would tell you to "check your privilege." On the other hand, there may be others who could see a reasoned argument and learn from it. If it convinces someone who could go on to influence any aspect of gaming by adding their voice in a constructive way, that's a net positive. It's more likely to do some good than not trying.
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It's an assumption, agreed, but it's not unfounded. If you're looking around and seeing an atmosphere receptive to discussion, that hasn't been further polarized beyond what I would (again) assume was an initial starting position, I'm not sure what you've been looking at... my assumption is founded on personal observation, the observations and statements of others, and the vox.com article I linked.
If that's all you've got, I think it's unclear whether a coherent argument can be made and received and it's not worth arguing one way or the other. I'd rather people just make the argument.
Is that an interesting question, the answer to which - if conclusively obtainable - will provide actionable insight of any kind?- I believe she has polarized gamers, that this was entirely avoidable in conveying most of her message, and that stripping away the dated/fringe ideology and armchair psychology would ALSO have made her points more persuasive.
- I believe that there's a demographic discrepancy between game journalists and gamers at large, and that most game journos lean left to varying degrees, whereas gamers at large are more ideologically diverse.
- I believe it was probably inevitable, to some extent, that this discrepancy would result in a schism/conflict of some ilk.
- I believe that Anita probably played some role in expediting that schism.
Whether she's "responsible" or not doesn't interest me, personally. I can believe all of the above while not seeking to assign the brunt of responsibility or blame to any one person or thing.
No, it's not an interesting or productive question. But it's the question that keeps on popping up in this thread because of people who are hellbent on blaming Anita for the whole mess. I would be glad to ignore the question if people would drop it. I think that lends to your point about a war of ideologies. It's unnecessary.
- I believe she has polarized gamers, that this was entirely avoidable in conveying most of her message, and that stripping away the dated/fringe ideology and armchair psychology would ALSO have made her points more persuasive.
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Okay, let's just say that's true... doesn't that mean we should START by improving on what she's saying, pointing out the fallacies, and recrafting a more modern, coherent message?
Ask yourself... is this the climate where that can happen? The situation on the ground now seems to me to more closely resemble polarized cults of groupthink, where questioning Anita is synonymous with supporting death threats and hating women.
Sure that's how it starts. And we can say we don't have the climate where that can happen, but I think that's just an unfounded assumption. I haven't seen anyone try something at the scale of the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series that offers that more coherent message. I don't even know of anecdotal evidence of something like that being attempted and failing.
What could have been a conversation about improving the medium has become a war of identity; if you think that's a good thing, I question your sanity.I don't think anyone here disagrees with this point. The discussion has been more about whether Anita Sarkeesian should bear the brunt of the responsibility for all the nonsense that followed after she started her video campaign and the rest of #Gamergate.
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You see, I actually gave suggestions about how you can try to improve your community and it's values. You take action, you get involved with people face-to-face, you build friendships and camaradie and respect, and perhaps overtime your community will share some of the positive values you harbor, and they will reflect those values in the purchases they make, such as what types of video games they buy or what types of movies they watch. And if enough people want more non-violent games, the developers will have to start making more non-violent games in order to stay competitive
I can't believe they never realized it was all so simple! How many inner-city communities have you turned around with this truly novel line of thinking?
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She's doing bad things and inciting riot but she shouldn't be held responsible for that is pretty much what you're saying
This is not the first time you've mischaracterized my point. You are wrong. I said this a couple pages ago:
The phrase "systematically helped" implies that she either (1) knowingly used flawed methods with intent to "start a war," or (2) knowingly used flawed methods for which "starting a war" would be a foreseeable result. I doubt you could prove option one, so I'll [ask] what your evidence for option two is. How is the "war" here a foreseeable consequence of what she's done? Why should she be held accountable for "systematically helping" to bring this "war" about?My question was a rhetorical one: I don't think "war" or "riot" are foreseeable consequences of Ms. Sarkeesian's efforts. I don't think it is at all reasonable to hold her responsible for "inciting riot" or "starting a war." Moreover, it's insane to say her actions amount to provocation that warrants the kind of response they got. It's likewise insane to say that what she has been doing caused all the stuff associated with #Gamergate. The only thing I believe she has provoked is a critique of what she has put forth; nothing beyond that. People who did anything more than that should be held responsible for their own actions rather than lobbing the blame on Anita Sarkeesian.
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This post is probably too long, rambling, and incoherent, but whatever.
I guess I just shrug off all these arguments about how we need to wait for culture to change before the media can change because analogously, throughout American history, changes in law and public perception have gone hand-in-hand. All Supreme Court decisions were made by a very small number of people even though their interpretations could have gone a couple different ways. But because of their foresight, the U.S. saw a lot of social progress that wasn't immediately popular with the majority yet. Based on that, I'd argue it's very plausible those changes in law contributed to public perceptions of issues. And I think they were correct decisions in the long run.
For an example of legal changes that were unpopular with the majority speeding up change, I don't think we have to look further than same-sex marriage. Over the years, same-sex rights issues had been getting a lot of exposure in our culture even though same-sex marriage was illegal in most states. A lot of groups had to apply a lot of pressure to see any progress, and even then it was still illegal in the majority of states. Then one swift act by the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor opened the floodgates to marriage getting legalized everywhere. I think it's unprecedented how fast one SCOTUS decision led to people everywhere pushing for rights. Even major gay rights groups actually thought the case went to SCOTUS too early because they thought they would lose. But look at the results. Same-sex rights has been the topic for the last year and has been progressing amazingly fast. It's become unprofitable or otherwise bad for business for a lot of companies to express homophobic views (Firefox, Chic fil, Boy Scouts, etc.).
When I see an example like that, I just can't understand why rabble-rousers like Anita Sarkeesian need to be stopped. Could her points be more nuanced? Yes. Is there a risk that people will suppress certain depictions because they're afraid of appearing bigoted? Sure, maybe in the short run. Could someone do this better? Absolutely. But the conversation has to start somewhere, and she contributed to starting it. It's up to everyone else to move the conversation to more productive ground.
At some point, you have to consider that all the blind rage directed toward Anita Sarkeesian and other women in the gaming arena are for reasons beyond their poor arguments. If that's all it was, there would be much smarter people doing what Anita is trying to do, and more effectively too. I think all the hate toward her needs to take a back seat because "it is what it is" sums it up. She probably won't change what she's doing and people are going to keep talking about potential problems with minorities in games.
Frankly, I think the gaming industry and community need to try to outgrow her. The best way to move forward is to develop more ways of constructively critiquing the medium and talk about what we want to see more of.
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Except gamer gate has really nothing to do with Anita, she's the one making it about her and appearing on behalf of GG on TV shows.
Has she appeared on TV about #gamergate on something other than Colbert?
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Because she's using such an extreme and flawed method to get her views out, she has systematically helped start a war that didn't need to be fought just to provide some education and progress to an issue.
Emphasis added. I take issue with this portion. The phrase "systematically helped" implies that she either (1) knowingly used flawed methods with intent to "start a war," or (2) knowingly used flawed methods for which "starting a war" would be a foreseeable result. I doubt you could prove option one, so I'll what your evidence for option two is. How is the "war" here a foreseeable consequence of what she's done? Why should she be held accountable for "systematically helping" to bring this "war" about?
If it's reasonable to think people should make money off their views, it's reasonable to expect self-styled icons of crusaders in their field to be using a good section of that money for additional charity.She is not obligated to do this and I'm not sure why we should be expecting a critic to donate money she receives for producing her criticism--especially if she never promised to make such donations. All the money she received was given freely and voluntarily.
Then there's this: http://cowkitty.net/post/78808973663/you-stole-my-artwork-an-open-letter-to-anitaNow it doesn't really matter it was fan art to begin with, that's not the point. The point is that Anita is someone who thinks with her heart, not with her head.
I don't support stealing intellectual property, but I don't think anyone knows enough about this situation enough to comment on it. It is entirely possible her attorney told her not to issue public comments about this matter while a civil case is pending.
I think my bottom-line response is that although I don't agree with or condone Anita Sarkeesian's style of argumentation, I also don't think it's reasonable in this situation to hold her responsible for how badly other people are reacting toward what she's said.
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Ends do not justify means. That's what Anita supporters are forgetting here. At best, she's ruining a good and proper movement with shady, bullshit tactics and destroying the good fabric of gender equality issues that need to be addressed. At worst, she's just profiting off a hot button issue with no real emotional investment to it. She's Ken fucking Ham.
These are some pretty broad claims. Do ends never justify means? If you mean ends don't justify the means in this particular situation, why? How is Anita destroying the "good fabric of gender equality issues that need to be addressed," whatever that means? How do you know she has "no real emotional investment" in the issue?
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Haven't had time to watch this yet, but Anita Sarkeesian spoke about #Gamergate on The Colbert Report yesterday: http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/full-episodes/ft09kr/october-29--2014---jill-lepore?xrs=synd_facebook_103014_cn_5
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You know how religions and political ideologies tend to have "geographical borders?" Like when the "Bible belt" is referred to. It's not perfect homogeneity but indicates a concentration of something. San Francisco is basically home base for third wave "feminism," so someone with SF as location presenting a link to a ridiculously cherry-picked smearing opinion piece as some kind of neutral party is just embarrassingly stereotypical.
This is a long way of saying you're stereotyping San Franciscans as overly aggressive feminists.
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What point are you trying to make by posting this?
MAGFest 13 - Post-MAG Depression rears its ugly head
in General Discussion
Posted
I regret not meeting up with you guys! But if you're ever in the Bay Area, let me know.