Eva"It's about stalking!" is the new "It's about ethics in game journalism."
Bakunin Boys@evacide What really sucks is that ethics in game journalism was a real problem which can't even be discussed now because of the craziness.
mizzkararose@evacide @bakuninboys It was, but not the way GamerGaters thought. The bigger issue is how publishers threaten to withhold review copies if they didn’t like reviews
Kathryn Brightbill 🖋️@mizzkararose @evacide @bakuninboys Right, and it's hard to talk about that anymore because of how GG poisoned the discourse. Funny how "ethics in gaming journalism" ended up benefitting the people with the least actual ethics, almost like that was part of the point to begin with.
@KEBrightbill @evacide @bakuninboys Pretty sure that’s by design. They were fine with inflated review scores for AAA titles. What they hated was women being in their space talking about weird esoteric indies. It’s the same idea with ‘groomer’ discourse. You paint a marginalized group you dislike as the villain while giving cover to abuses those already in power.
@mizzkararose @evacide @bakuninboys Bingo. It was never about anything but chasing out anyone who wouldn't cater specifically to them, while poisoning the well so it's hard to talk about the actual problems.
That set the template for every iteration of the culture wars since. Here we are a half dozen years later and mentioning a billionaire's jet is stalking, but targeting drag queens is totes fine.
@KEBrightbill I think attributing a motive to a nebulous "they" with a clear machiavellian goal is not helpful, bordering on conspiracy theory. The study of social media being toxic points to this being the reason. That said, you're likely right: a bunch of sexist idiots took a real concern and used it to amplify their own twisted message.
The community has taken some action on it, but it doesn't have a name or movement. Reviewers just declare "I never receive review copies" or "The game publisher did not receive a copy of this review before publication". It's not enough, because publishers will regularly DMCA strike whoever they don't agree with.
@bakuninboys The same major players from gamergate keep popping up as driving factors in every moral panic and culture war fight since then. Whether it was intentional at the time or not, gamergate turned out to be the test run for using trolling and online harassment to steer the discourse on the right. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's paying attention to what's actually happened over the last half dozen years.
@KEBrightbill I think Innuendo Studios did an "endnote" talk about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYWHpgIoIw and it's true that there are "influencers" who learned patterns of behaviour and applied it to "being Nazis" more broadly, and that's certainly a story you can pull out of this, but that involves thinking of these "influencers" as the active part of the discussion, and I just don't feel that's the case.
Everyone has their own brains. They can figure this out. In Australia at least, the spell is broken on the [alt] right. The vast majority of the gaming community were led by the nose on Gamergate, but that community is especially vulnerable, with actual children in the mix and a deep distrust of regulation.
