Caltrops - Rants





	[quote name="Lizard_King"]Gameghazi is the gamer's manifestation of the <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/05/11/perversely-stupid-contd/">phenomenon described here</a>, once you discount the people who actually, literally consider harassment, stalking, doxxing, and threats of rape and violence entertainment or hobbies. The key part is here: [quote]The point here is that we have a significant segment of the population that is no longer able to answer the question "What do you think/believe/feel/judge?" by saying what it is they really actually think or believe or feel or judge. Their response to any question is to calculate what that question means in terms of the zero-sum game and then to offer the answer they think will be strategically best for scoring points in that game. This is a fundamentally disingenuous way of talking, voting and living and it's not possible to approach all those things disingenuously without that dishonesty and duplicity coming to shape, stunt and distort one's own thinking. Constantly arguing in bad faith leads to thinking in bad faith and to living in bad faith, until bad faith is all you've got left. Calculation becomes habit, that habit supplants thought and one winds up in the perverse circumstance of earnestly arguing for the goodness of oil spills.[/quote] Just sub in "hmm, yes, threatening someone with rape is indeed a reasonable way to kick off a conversation about journalistic ethics, and why not root my totally coincidental interest in The Objectively Provable [lack of] Quality of Depression Quest in an ex-boyfriend siccing 4 chan on the woman who made him sad." Or "People who understand chilling effects on discourse in terms of gender, race, and other variables are really just condescending to women and minorities; it's my moral obligation to use those slurs and trot out rape jokes in order to defend their right to be treated equitably." And so on. There is no threat to gaming presented by indie games being shitty, whether or not they actually are, even if someone somewhere says something you disagree with on a blog. There is no threat to gaming presented by a criticism of sexist tropes in gaming. There is no threat to gaming presented by women participating in and talking about games without having torrents of harassment poured on them, which is really the only "special" standard being asked for by people who are critical of gamerghazi. If you are concerned about money and inappropriate influence in gaming journalism, more power to you. But it has nothing to do with why gamerghazi exists, and you don't want to pretend you have a symbiotic relationship with these people when you have evidence all around you from your own interactions with them that they are manipulating the standards of good faith conversation towards unethical and potentially dangerous ends. That's not my summary, that's literally how these operations are planned from the get go, whether it's using "bullying" as leverage with Adobe or pretending than the scale of abuse dropped on Quinn or Sarkeesian are for anything other than being women. All you have to do to stop saying oil spills are good is stop saying oil spills are good. [/quote]