It wasn’t that long ago that being a gamer meant you were a regressive asshole. Here’s the segment of hbomberguy’s long twitch stream in which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shows up to talk about the importance of trans rights while the gamer bounces a gorilla around the screen. I know, that part seems weird, but hey, AOC is taking this opportunity to make a clear statement, so you can’t complain.
I have no idea what’s going on on the screen, but the words make sense.
Sadly, literally the same guys are still around, and have now pivoted to “Comicsgate”.
Oh, I can explain what’s going on on the screen! You see, a big crocodile wants to Make Crocodile Isle Great Again, and he plans to do that by destroying the rainforest with a giant laser and probably replacing it with a golf course. However, because the other side doesn’t want that the big crocodile shut down everything, so now Donkey Kong has to gather bananas to help feed the people who have to keep working without pay during the shutdown.
Wait, #gamergate us still a thing. I thought that collection of assholes dispersed after finding new misogyny to throw a tantrum over. (e.g. Star Wars heroines, sexual assault accusations against beer-loving SCOTUS nominees, razor commercials, etc.)
Comicsgate?
Meh. #GamerGate is only “dead” in the sense of that particular hashtag being rarely used.
The organized harassment campaigns against “SJWs” are alive and well. It’s a big part of the “alt-right”. Stuff like ComicsGate and SadPuppies and howls about various pop culture things not catering to regressive cis het white guys.
I wonder what the $209,000 is all about.
@6 Marcus
The stream was raising money for UK trans children’s support charity Mermaids, partly in response to the efforts of Mumsnet and Graham Linehan to strip it of a grant. That’s a donations ticker.
It was epically successful, I think it topped US$400,000 when the weekend closed.
@6 Marcus
See Pharyngula thread here: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/01/21/i-dont-understand-2019-and-thats-ok/
abbeycadabra@#7:
Ah, thanks! Good to see. I was afraid that was money being raised for some shit-lord.
Gamergate was predominantly left/liberal in terms of politics.
Gamergate always supported its trans members.
Gamergate also hated Graham Linehan, in part because of his 2nd wave feminist transphobia.
You’re spoiling what could have, and should have, been a moment of detente by – yet again – mischaracterising GG.
Here, ‘educate yourself, shitlord’ as they liked to say.
And CG isn’t really the same people, there is a more conservative/right-wing slant to the creative side of that which wasn’t present in GG.
@Grim Jim
Bwahahahahahsha. Try harder.
Grim Jim @10:
A big part of GamerGate was also saying that people were misrepresenting GamerGate. Fortunately, a real accounting of what happened isn’t hard. When in doubt, remember where the purple and green colour scheme on Vivian James’ clothes came from.
You’re right, it isn’t hard to find. I gave you the link. You might learn something.
Grim Jim @ 10:
This is a barefaced lie: Gamergate’s involvement with right-wing shitmongers like Vox Day, Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich (Gamergate’s so-called “based lawyer”) is well documented and has been present since day one. Gamergate was even named by Adam Baldwin, an actor who is very open about his right-wing politics. I suppose you’re going to claim that you poor wickle ‘gaters were only concerned about (adopts that voice Jim Sterling uses when he says “Triple A game”) “ethics in game journalism” and were totally, totally lead astray by these wicked frauds and shysters! Spare us. You gonna try and sell us a bridge next?
@Hj Hornbeck
Wow, that timeline was very useful. I didn’t follow all the gamergate stuff back in the day because it game me fucking headaches but it’s good to catch up with the summary now. It is also amazing how many garbage people have been involved with the other side, Paul Elam, Milo, Vox Day, etc.
What “Grim Jim” doesn’t mention is that that YouTube video he links to is actually a reading of an audiobook about Gamergate… written by one James “Grim” Desborough. Were you googling for “gamergate” and decided to do a bit of guerrilla PR, Jim? He also has a Wikipedia page:
So, a Gamergate apologist with possible links to the manosphere… why amn’t I surprised? 😂
A better video on GamerGate is Dan Olson’s old video on it. Every primary target of GamerGate’s ire were women, and few were actually journalists (I think only one of the many s worked for a game publication).
Incidentally, he was one of the people working to coordinate the stream after it grew a little too big to handle in an ad hoc manner. Good guy, despite being an Albertan. ;-)
Grim Jim @ 10:
Nice attempt to gaslight. There is no doubt GG was reactionary, misogynistic and right wing… Milo? Vox Day? Adam Baldwin? Mike “Juice Boy” Chenowhatevervich? Every second tier right wing grafter jumped on the band wagon.
@Grim Jim: lmao
A lot of us paid attention at the time. We know what the hell GG was and how many of them now have Pepe avatars.
If you want to understand Gamergate Innuendo studios videos are a great. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ)
I’m ecstatic that reasonable people are pushing back against the reactionary fuckwits who hijacked gaming. Because, of course, that’s what #GG was. These were either non-gamers (Baldwin, Yiannopoulos) or gamers who decided to become reactionaries instead (Sargon who quit developing a video game while criticizing Anita for not making her hypothetical game, Thunderf00t) who lead many angry dudes into being outright fascists. Several of my friends got contaminated to various degrees by the nonsense. As I pointed out as I became aware of #GG, the people screaming about ethics in reporting never once cared about the commentary of folks like Jim Sterling or Shamus Young or anyone else who were actually discussing it. But, of course, the progressives are the people who are actually sticking it out in gaming culture. Sterling continues to exist, MovieBob is back on the Escapist, Harris and Foldy and Shaun continue to discuss gaming critically, and plenty of other left-tube folks engage with videogames from a fan perspective as well as a critical one. See, we actually loved games and didn’t just use it as a cynical platform to promote ideas unrelated to it, unlike the right which made that accusation in sheer projection.
The other voice in the video is Dan Olson of Folding Ideas. I hope PZ checks him out if he hasn’t already: he does a variety of brilliant stuff, including using academic communications theory in a way that makes it concrete and useful.
I’ve got to say that this is one of the reasons so many people are excited about AOC. She didn’t have to show up on this stream. I’m sure she had other things to do that most people would’ve agreed are more important and wouldn’t have suffered any blowback if she had declined. She wont have made any new friends in her own party (or the Republican party) by doing this. The complaints against her and other new Democrats by centrist Democrats that they need to stop acting like young people will only be reinforced by this. She’s not going to find a big new source for fund raising from this. It’s a UK charity and isn’t likely to spur a ton of new donations to her reelection funds.
By all conventional reasoning, it was the wrong choice. Yet, I’m willing to bet that this short appearance probably did more to help more people than any of the she was supposed to make. This world could use hundreds of more people like her in positions of power and influence.
Gomergate was literally a revenge plot by a loser asshole who stirred up a bunch his gamer buddies to attack and dox his ex-girlfriend and try to destroy her life. That’s what started it. A large group of gamers who hate women and brown people and anyone who isn’t a white straight gamer dude attacked a woman who had done nothing to them. They invented the “ethics in gaming journalism” cover story when people outside their circle started to notice their massive campaign of harassment against a single woman, lying about her trading sex for reviews of her game (which never happened).
Then having gotten a taste for swarming in a festering pile of hatred with zero consequences, they started targeting other women, POC, and eventually anyone who pointed out they were assholes.
That is the sum and total of the entire “movement.” I know because I WAS FUCKING THERE. This isn’t the distant unknowable past. Trying to claim otherwise is no different that white supremacists insisting that video from this weekend doesn’t show what it clearly shows. “The party told you to ignore the evidence of your own eyes and ears.” Fuck that.
It turns out all gamers aren’t assholes. It was mentioned in the other thread, but there’s a big speedrunning charity marathon twice a year that is broadcast live (Awesome Games Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick) that frequently has gay and trans people on camera either playing the game or giving commentary. They typically generate several millions of dollars a year for charities like Doctors Without Borders and cancer research and prevention charities.
Like Mr. Rogers said, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping”.
Gamergate is whatever it needs to be to avoid a specific charge being launched against it at a specific time. Magical.
The G in “GG” stands for “Gaslighting”. It always has.
…Was this an attempt at humour?
@microraptor #4
ComicsGate is basically a similar harassment campaign, this time targetting women, POC and other minorities in the comics industry. Their primary claim is that “SJWs” are ruining comics and bald-facedly assert (contrary to what any person who knows the first thing about the history of comics, including me who don’t, could tell you) things like “comics never used to be political” or “why can’t comics just be like in the good old days”, “we don’t have patriotic heroes any more” or “I don’t want socialism in my comics” in response to stories about anyone not a cishet white male.
The harassment is targetted mostly at women comic artists and writers. One favourite thing is mansplaining comics from the past to their women authors, but also email campaigns trying to get people fired and funding their own utterly terrible fascist-worshipping comic.
=8)-DX