Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

[psychowolf]

My god are you lot STILL going on about this shit?

Its all bullshit.

[Xelebes]

You can. It's just feedback, insofar as you don't rage about it.

And yet there was rage when Mass Effect 3 had a poor ending. What happened after those who raged expressed their rage?

[Xelebes]

And Newsweek steps in, for whatever its worth:

Is GamerGate About Media Ethics or Harassing Women? Harassment, the Data Shows

So, is GamerGate really about ethics in journalism? Newsweek asked BrandWatch, a social media analytics company, to dig through 25 percent of the more than 2 million tweets about GamerGate since September 1 to discover how often Twitter users tweeted at or about the major players in the debate, and whether those tweets were positive, negative or neutral.

In the following graphic, compare how often GamerGaters tweet at Zoe Quinn, a developer, and Nathan Grayson, a Kotaku games journalist. In August, GamerGaters accused Grayson of giving Quinn’s game Depression Quest favorable reviews because Grayson and Quinn had been in a relationship. The relationship was fact, those ‘favorable reviews’ were fiction. Grayson only wrote about Quinn once, for a story on a failed reality show, and that was before they were in a relationship, according to Stephen Totilo, the editor-in-chief of Kotaku and Grayson’s boss.

[graphic]

Twitter users have tweeted at Quinn using the #GamerGate hashtag 10,400 times since September 1. Grayson has received 732 tweets with the same hashtag during the same period. If GamerGate is about ethics among journalists, why is the female developer receiving 14 times as many outraged tweets as the male journalist?

Totilo has received 1,708 tweets since September 1—more than Grayson but fewer than Leigh Alexander. Alexander got 13,296 tweets, nearly eight times as many as Totilo. And Alexander’s only crime was writing an op-ed critical of so-called gaming culture—GamerGate hasn’t even accused her of any malfeasance.

The discrepancies there seem to suggest GamerGaters cares less about ethics and more about harassing women.

[Turbo]

A Statistical Analysis of #GamerGate Utilizing Newsweek Data

Newsweek asked BrandWatch, a social media analytics company, to dig through 25 percent of the more than 2 million tweets about GamerGate since September 1 to discover how often Twitter users tweeted at or about the major players in the debate, and whether those tweets were positive, negative or neutral.The first issue present here is that they asked the company to look at 25% of tweets. The standardization of aggregation is not identified. Which tweets were selected? Whose tweets were selected? In what frequency?

None of these questions are answered. This presents the first methodological problem. There is no way for anyone to replicate these findings. The reader is thus to trust that Newsweek and BrandWatch did a quality job in their analytics. So let’s address trust.

It would appear that Newsweek asked BrandWatch to only examine tweets at particular people utilizing the GamerGate tag at the same time. This can be seen in their bar graph image where only select people were examined (tweets in parentheses as detailed in the source): Anita Sarkeesian (35,188), Zoe Quinn (10,700), Brianna Wu (38,952), Kotaku (23,500), Leigh Alexander (13,296), Nathan Grayson (732), Stephen Totilo (1,708).

[...]

Readers are to believe that approximately 10% of negative tweets are more important than 90% of positive or neutral tweets. The data, however, show that all sources receive more positive or neutral tweets than negative. The most numerous of positive tweets are also to a woman — Brianna Wu. All of the women receive more absolute positive statements than any of the men.If that’s the case, how can one conclude that GamerGate is about harassment more than praise and exchange of ideas?

It is also worth noting that these measurements are all sentiment measurements. Sentiment is “opinion of.” It never measures intent or motivation. Statement that the group of people hate or dislike others through negative sentiment is completely unfounded as sentiment does not measure belief or attitude. It categorizes opinions about something based on the assumed linguistic motivation of terms.

[...]

Yes, Newsweek used a brand-maximization service to analyze the brand of Sarkessian, Wu, Kotaku, Alexander, Grayson, Totilo, and Quinn.

They did not use a system which can analyze the intention of the tweets. They did not use a system which can examine the motivation for the reason of tweets. They did not use a system which can examine the fundamental mindset of those who are engaging in the tweets.

They used a system which can examine how favorable or unfavorable a brand is. Not a person. A brand.

They then looked at the information presented and concluded that GamerGate is about harassment. BrandWatch does not measure harassment. It does not state it does. This measure should have never been used to conclude harassment.

Especially when the conclusion is made without inferential analysis.

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

Meanwhile, at the University of San Francisco...

What point are you trying to make by posting this?

[Nabeel Ansari]

No. If you think a game has an absolute disappointment of an ending, do you tell the developers that the game has a great disappointment of an ending?

First of all, your analogy fails insofar that poorly executed media (bad ending, plotholes, meaningless story mechanics) is not the same as media which has upsetting material (racist portrayals, misogynistic portrayals, careless or non-empathetic violence [see the game where you murder innocents as the premise]) in it.

Secondly, as awful as the analogy is, it still favors my point. Yes, you can dislike the ending, but no one really gives a fuck if you want developers to change it. It's their game, not yours.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Neblix

[Cecilff2]

And Newsweek steps in, for whatever its worth:

Is GamerGate About Media Ethics or Harassing Women? Harassment, the Data Shows

A bit of a stats nerd here and the results got me curious.

That's some pretty bad data interpretation. You're definitely going to skew the numbers when all the articles are about the women and don't mention the journalists. I would imagine a timeline would show a spike in traffic whenever each of them got mentioned in an article. For example

http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=%23gamergate%20%40femfreq&q2=%23gamergate%20%40Spacekatgal&q3=%23gamergate%20%40thequinnspiracy&via=Topsy

For comparison, here's the whole of #gamergate with the top two in that result

http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=%23gamergate&q2=%23gamergate%20%40femfreq&q3=%23gamergate%20%40Spacekatgal&via=Topsy

Looks like there was nearly no mentions to any of them until the news articles started coming up, and they've all but vanished again.

Not to mention that according to brandwatch nearly 95% of the tweets were neutral or positive, with the journalists having a higher ratio of negative to positive than the others.

I'd be curious to see the actual study by brandwatch to see if the numbers are spiking after articles about them or not. As well as their methodology.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Cecilff2

[Brandon Strader]

Yeah it's not even remotely accurate. I don't have either of those 3.

What point are you trying to make by posting this?

[timaeus222]

And yet there was rage when Mass Effect 3 had a poor ending. What happened after those who raged expressed their rage?

Exactly. They became 'blameworthy' and viewed viciously by the impetuous, insensitive gamers. (Hence the 'insofar as...')

Edited October 27, 2014 by timaeus222

[zircon]

I'll give you that the wording was flimsy with that scandal (even the gg wiki describes them as allegations,) however the point is that the relationships was not disclosed, despite that it wasn't a dedicated review, this article pretty much put Depression Quest in the spotlight, given the image spot, with glowing alt-text and first mention, when given 49 alternative choices: https://archive.today/iS4Ru

Then there's this that's come to light:

http://theralphretort.com/zoe-quinn-couldnt-have-made-depression-quest-without-grayson/

Oh no, she thanked someone in a list of dozens of other people. What corruption. I'm not going to argue that the relationship should NOT have been disclosed in that article with 49 other games listed, but in the grand scheme of "corruption" and ethics, it's an incredibly small and insignificant infraction. Compare that to the blatant conflict-of-interest of, say, Game Informer being owned by Gamestop, which no one in GamerGate seems to give a shit about, or YouTubers accepting money to promote games, and then recommending/reviewing those games on Steam as curators for example. There are so many other worse violations that HAVE happened, and that ARE happening.

The overblown reaction to this relationship, scraping the bottom of the barrel to prove any link or collusion, is extremely petty and is one of the reasons why people view GamerGate so negatively. The thing is that nobody is "against" ethics in game journalism. Everyone was united in outrage when the Kane & Lynch / Jeff Gerstmann firing happened, because that was an example of extremely gross ethics violations. But nobody got doxxed or harassed over that despite involving far bigger players, whereas there seems to be significantly more obsession over Zoe because... well, you tell me.

http://www.depressionquest.com/ itself shows an indiecade award, referring to Night Games 2013, where it was pit against Papers, Please and lesser known indie titles, some of which that make interesting innovations. Do you believe Depression Quest is that groundbreaking of a game, where a curator and judge of the event is one of those in the scandal?

DQ didn't win an indiecade award. It was simply a game featured there. It wasn't a nominee...

http://www.indiecade.com/2013/nominees/

Or a digital select...

http://www.indiecade.com/2013/digital_selects/

Nor did it win any awards.

http://www.indiecade.com/2013/award_winners/

[DusK]

So, I have to ask: Is GamerGate rooted heavily in slander and Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theories, or is Turbo simply not an accurate representation of GamerGate?

[Brandon Strader]

So, I have to ask: Is GamerGate rooted heavily in slander and Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theories, or is Turbo simply not an accurate representation of GamerGate?

Is anti-gamergate rooted in accusations and comparisons to offensive figures like Alex Jones? Not having all the facts is a little more forgivable than being mean IMO, he can at least read up on stuff and get the rest of the story whereas being mean or snarky is less easy to correct

[DusK]

Is anti-gamergate rooted in accusations and comparisons to offensive figures like Alex Jones? Not having all the facts is a little more forgivable than being mean IMO, he can at least read up on stuff and get the rest of the story whereas being mean or snarky is less easy to correct

Yeah, where was that scolding shit when he posted his own snark a page ago?

Bias and double standards. Bias and double standards everywhere.

Edited October 27, 2014 by DusK

[timaeus222]

Ran into my first pro-GG'er today. He's been busy trolling all over my recent YouTube video just because I retweeted some anti-GG tweets.

Ya know, because the whole movement is about ethics in journalism.

I mean, if you're going to characterize "the WHOLE movement" based on the actions of a troll, you should know that a hasty generalization fallacy is supposed to involve a bad sample size, not a non-existent one.

Or...

http://www.clickhole.com/article/summary-gamergate-movement-we-will-immediately-cha-1241

Gamergate is a movement of video game fans who are fighting to achieve something involving ethics in gaming journalism using reasonable, measured debate.

Seems just insulting to tell someone how to properly do something wrong.

Seems just insulting to tell someone how to properly do something wrong.

http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/GamerGate

Minor thing, but you missed my point. I was questioning why you would say "no, this is not how you perform this fallacy. This is how you do it" (which is not that much of an extrapolation), not how you wanted to try correcting DusK about his definition of GamerGate, because the intent, again, feels sardonic. My post had nothing to do with whether or not I understood what GG was.

In a few lines, I actually said "try looking at this definition to see where DusK could have gotten his, instead of claiming DusK didn't know what he was talking about and sardonically (from my perspective) telling him he improperly performed the fallacy of hasty generalizations, because if it was easy enough to look up this definition, why couldn't he have done it earlier, right?"

Sure, I might have been oversimplifying my point, so there you go, a clarification. But I'm not going to dwell on that. So [/OT]

Edited October 27, 2014 by timaeus222

[Xelebes]

First of all, your analogy fails insofar that poorly executed media (bad ending, plotholes, meaningless story mechanics) is not the same as media which has upsetting material (racist portrayals, misogynistic portrayals, careless or non-empathetic violence [see the game where you murder innocents as the premise]) in it.

I will let you dwell on that thought for a moment.

Secondly, as awful as the analogy is, it still favors my point. Yes, you can dislike the ending, but no one really gives a fuck if you want developers to change it. It's their game, not yours.

Yup.

So what is the issue here?

[Turbo]

In a few lines, I actually said "try looking at this definition to see where DusK could have gotten his

I was addressing the sarcastic overtone that definition was in context of, that appears to be invisible to you, despite how well you can see sarcasm that comes from me, bafflingly. To spell it out, it was a variation of the whitewashing parroting catch phrase of "They're about harassment- if they say otherwise, it's BS."

It's kind of weird you would dedicate this wordy post to ensure clarification on this non-issue but can't be bothered to fill in the two words of another post to be clear about what - I assume - your intended meaning was :

viewed viciously by the impetuous, insensitive [subset of] gamers.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only gamer that spotted the allegory in that ending scenario and didn't consider it to be poor execution.

[timaeus222]

It's kind of weird you would dedicate this wordy post to ensure clarification on this non-issue but can't be bothered to fill in the two words of another post to be clear about what - I assume - your intended meaning was :

viewed viciously by the impetuous, insensitive [subset of] gamers.

I'm not going to purposefully ignore the fact that there certainly are subgroups within the whole that each make up a very diverse group. Basics of cultural relativism. So, I'm aware, though you did understand me correctly as to what I meant. The descriptors I gave already specified the 'subset' of gamers that you are emphasizing. i.e.:

When I said, "viewed viciously by the impetuous, insensitive gamers.", it also meant "viewed viciously by those gamers who are impetuous and insensitive.", not "viewed viciously by gamers, who are impetuous and insensitive." O! the subtlety of English grammar.

I could have said, "viewed viciously by the impetuous, insensitive gamers (but presumably not those remaining who are otherwise)." and that would also be fine (except it's a bit wordy).

Edited October 28, 2014 by timaeus222

[Nabeel Ansari]

Yup.

So what is the issue here?

The point is that it is as I originally said before you chimed in. Telling the developers to change their output is not an effective way to enact societal change. Not sure what you planned to get out of proving my point in some needlessly antagonistic manner.

I will let you dwell on that thought for a moment.

Not sure why, I'm not really insecure on my opinions about media and I'm not going to give it more thought unless you have something substantial to counter with. Try human conversation, please.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Neblix

[Turbo]

What point are you trying to make by posting this?

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.

[Turbo]

There are so many other worse violations that HAVE happened, and that ARE happening.

Do you know of Katamari Damacy? The idea of having to start small is really pronounced in that game. Recall the first link I presented in the topic, about when people tried directly going after big dog Fox News? How did that turn out?

Or, are you suggesting that people shouldn't even bother trying while we paradoxically (or sadistically?) continue to teach generations that vox populi runs democratic society, opposed to being puppets of social engineering?

DQ didn't win an indiecade award. It was simply a game featured there. It wasn't a nominee...

Or a digital select...

Nor did it win any awards.

Well damn, the text on those icons are unnoticeably small, I thought it was a decoration.

Yeah, there does appear to be misinformation floating about on the matter. It's said she was awarded for the Night Games of the festival, which doesn't actually have awards it seems.

I'm not clear, however, on how DQ is at all fitting for an event described as

With live musical performances from Austin Wintory and Chipzel and a rotation of almost 30 new games, IndieCade’s Night Games is a carnival of avant-garde game play compressed into a celebratory diamond of flashing lights, loud music, and gameplay.

Anyhow, this controversy was not what prompted the appearance of gamergate, the concerted censorship of discussion and speculation about these minor infractions followed by outright flaunting of journalists having ties with each other to coordinate manipulation of public opinion with deceptive articles that attack their own audience is what did it. It's not like GGers sit around obsessing over this red herring that I shouldn't have acknowledged in the first place. I don't know who the person DusK ran into is, but it doesn't look at all like anything I've seen from 8c or KiA. It's described as if it was spoken by a stereotypical radical SJW, really.

[Mirby]

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.

As I figured, you're stereotyping me based purely on my location without any thought that maybe I'm not actually part of the stereotype or anything in an attempt to discredit myself and my opinion. In addition, I wasn't sharing that to prove any points of mine or anything (which, as you've no doubt noticed, if I have any I haven't shared them here really so you're trying to discredit something that hasn't even been said, and I'm not entirely sure how that works), merely because it is relevant to the topic at hand.

[DusK]

Guys, don't judge an entire movement based on a single person's opinions or actions. Only pro-GG people are allowed to do that, apparently.

[Meteo Xavier]

It took DJP and Larry more than a week to bring the level of this discussion on par with sophistication, and you guys only a couple days to bring it right back down to middle school.

Way to go. :S

[Turbo]

It took DJP and Larry more than a week to bring the level of this discussion on par with sophistication, and you guys only a couple days to bring it right back down to middle school.

Way to go. :S

Are there literally middle schoolers here? That might explain why "stereotype" is a difficult word to grasp for some, with them interpreting "someone mimicing the deceptive style associated with the prominent widespread image of SJWs continuously perpetuated by many self-identified SJWs" to somehow mean "judgement of SJWs based off one person"

[DusK]

Guys, don't criticize an entire movement based off of its prominent widespread image perpetuated by many self-identified supporters of that movement. Only pro-GGers are allowed to do that.