[King Lear]

Don't you have a thread specifically for complaining about women in videogames? Maybe you could go back to it.

[Aptorian]

See this is what happens when you discuss soy milk.

[Primateus]

Briar King, on 15 November 2018 - 05:04 PM, said:

Geesas H Fuck y'all making my head spin. I have no clue what Game Gate(skimmed some but not much of posts), 4chan, Doxxing, Giant Bomb mean.

I'm still on a hardcore burn out so I haven't clicked a link or watched news in over a week.

You're much better off not knowing what 4can is. I've never heard about Giant Bomb, so there's that.

Gamergate may, or may not have genuinely started out as about ethics in gaming journalism. But whether it did, or not, it devolved into a misogynistic cesspit of rape and deaththreats, harrassment and general denigration of women and those who supported them.

Doxxing is when you seek out details about online personalities and make them public. Such as if I put out your personal address, your place of employment, your phone number, perhaps even pictures of your house, your family, kids, etc.

It is generally considered a very shitty thing to do regardless of who is doing it.

[worry]

Lol. While it's broadly true that everything since gamergate IS gamergate, since we're all in Hell, I was more specifically talking about how Youtube's seemingly pro-fascist, pro-con artist, pro-MRA algorithm is worse than, and probably primes people for the cult-ish behavior everyone was talking about before more than, any of the other social media things, as high a bar as that seems to be.


Obviously all of them have the potential for people to put themselves in a 'bubble', and the people at the top of these companies are all amoral tech libertarian ghouls at best (just yesterday Facebook was outed for pushing, from the highest levels of the company, the Nazi anti-Soros conspiracies) -- but none of these other social media platforms have this black hole of angry-white-man-complaing-for-hours that it's nudging you towards day after day after day. What FOX News has done to old people's brains, Youtube is doing to everybody else's (or trying to).

tl;dr: An algorithm that is constantly steering hundreds of millions of people towards the ideas of the worst people on earth is probably a psychological health menace that needs public intervention.

[Primateus]

You're not wrong about youtube's algorithm. I don't know how many times I've declared non-interest in Jordan Piss-ant Peterson, and STILL he pops up from time to time.

[Vengeance]

worry, on 15 November 2018 - 08:09 PM, said:

Lol. While it's broadly true that everything since gamergate IS gamergate, since we're all in Hell, I was more specifically talking about how Youtube's seemingly pro-fascist, pro-con artist, pro-MRA algorithm is worse than, and probably primes people for the cult-ish behavior everyone was talking about before more than, any of the other social media things, as high a bar as that seems to be.


Obviously all of them have the potential for people to put themselves in a 'bubble', and the people at the top of these companies are all amoral tech libertarian ghouls at best (just yesterday Facebook was outed for pushing, from the highest levels of the company, the Nazi anti-Soros conspiracies) -- but none of these other social media platforms have this black hole of angry-white-man-complaing-for-hours that it's nudging you towards day after day after day. What FOX News has done to old people's brains, Youtube is doing to everybody else's (or trying to).

tl;dr: An algorithm that is constantly steering hundreds of millions of people towards the ideas of the worst people on earth is probably a psychological health menace that needs public intervention.

That is why I watch fly fishing videos. Makes me a more focused fly fisherman

[Vengeance]

worry, on 15 November 2018 - 08:09 PM, said:

Lol. While it's broadly true that everything since gamergate IS gamergate, since we're all in Hell, I was more specifically talking about how Youtube's seemingly pro-fascist, pro-con artist, pro-MRA algorithm is worse than, and probably primes people for the cult-ish behavior everyone was talking about before more than, any of the other social media things, as high a bar as that seems to be.


Obviously all of them have the potential for people to put themselves in a 'bubble', and the people at the top of these companies are all amoral tech libertarian ghouls at best (just yesterday Facebook was outed for pushing, from the highest levels of the company, the Nazi anti-Soros conspiracies) -- but none of these other social media platforms have this black hole of angry-white-man-complaing-for-hours that it's nudging you towards day after day after day. What FOX News has done to old people's brains, Youtube is doing to everybody else's (or trying to).

tl;dr: An algorithm that is constantly steering hundreds of millions of people towards the ideas of the worst people on earth is probably a psychological health menace that needs public intervention.

That is why I watch fly fishing videos. Makes me a more focused fly fisherman

[Khellendros]

Alternative Goose, on 15 November 2018 - 04:33 PM, said:

Yup. I keep bringing up Giant Bomb because I think a few of us follow them, and they're pretty great, but both their podcasts had nothing but criticism for Arena.net and little criticism of the crazy employee tanking the companies PR.

There's this tendency for video game media, ever since Gamer gate, to instinctually rally around what ever identity politic nonsense is going on and avoid raising questions. Sad. Make video games great again. MVGGA!

'Woman loses temper after umpteenth person explains aspect of her own job to her' = crazy feminist troublemaker?

[Studlock]

Did she speak rudely to an heavenly male subject who so graciously gifted her his words of great wisdom on a subject she so clearly knew nothing about despite it literally being her career? Crazy feminist troublemaker. Always.

[Aptorian]

At this point any mod is welcome to move this to the feminist frequency thread or a new thread if they feel it's warrented.

Here's a Variety and Eurogamer article detailing the Twitter exchanges that led to the Arena.net debacle. Click on the embedded tweets to see follow up conversations.

https://variety.com/...ers-1202866649/


https://www.eurogame...e-with-youtuber

Just for the heck of it I looked up Polygon as well and they have a pretty good follow up on the event with comments from the employee and employer. Just remember Polygon is the Fox News of identity politics.

https://www.polygon....-2-writer-fired

Just to spice things up here's a re Reddit compilation thread with links if you want some dirt and uncorroborated accusations.

https://www.reddit.c...anet_developer/

My look on that mess was that firing her was a bit harsh if it's true that this was a first time offense with no prior issues internally. It however is justified if you believe the owners account. Any work place can fire an employee for a bad "customer experience", which I'd definitely describe this as. Private Twitter account be damned.

To me this looks like a feminist with a chip on her shoulder who sees adversity as an attack and any bad behavior on her part is justified because "THE PATRIARCHY".

Everything isn't about gender or creed. Sometimes people just disagree with you.

On a side note, if you want to believe rumors and innuendo she was apparently a horrible person to work with and this was just the justification for getting her out of there.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Okay. At a glance, that seems like possibly a little bit of an overreaction on her part (although see below), and agreed firing for a first offence seems a bit harsh too.

I will just add some food for thought though - I volunteer in what is a *very* male dominated arena (the falconry world is only just coming to grips with the fact it's not the Middle Ages). I am fortunate in the bunch of people I volunteer with, but there are a couple of men (arguably their attitude is age-appropriate.... though that doesn't buy you much) who very much do the "Oh, little woman" thing to me and the other female volunteers. There have definitely been times when they've probably made a perfectly innocent comment and I have lit up/been rather sharp in response because I am used to their general attitude toward women and I am therefore primed to expect gender related nonsense.

I'm not saying it necessarily excuses me (or Price in that scenario) - what I'm only offering is that when it's something you encounter all the time, which Price seems to be suggesting she does.... once it's the umpteenth occasion, you'd have to be a saint to not bite. I'm not sure it merits "feminist troublemaker" so much as "rightly pissed off human being".

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 16 November 2018 - 10:53 AM

[Aptorian]

That's a fair assessment. We're seeing her at her worst, after the internet hate machine has already been at her to boot, but the way she posts and the way she addresses the situation in the Polygon article to me suggests this is just who she is. A person so deeply up her own ass she smells shit where ever she goes.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 16 November 2018 - 11:05 AM

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Just read it now - that "he had the power to command a woman to stand there" part in particular really does her no favours.

[Obdigore]

worry, on 15 November 2018 - 08:09 PM, said:

Lol. While it's broadly true that everything since gamergate IS gamergate, since we're all in Hell, I was more specifically talking about how Youtube's seemingly pro-fascist, pro-con artist, pro-MRA algorithm is worse than, and probably primes people for the cult-ish behavior everyone was talking about before more than, any of the other social media things, as high a bar as that seems to be.


Obviously all of them have the potential for people to put themselves in a 'bubble', and the people at the top of these companies are all amoral tech libertarian ghouls at best (just yesterday Facebook was outed for pushing, from the highest levels of the company, the Nazi anti-Soros conspiracies) -- but none of these other social media platforms have this black hole of angry-white-man-complaing-for-hours that it's nudging you towards day after day after day. What FOX News has done to old people's brains, Youtube is doing to everybody else's (or trying to).

tl;dr: An algorithm that is constantly steering hundreds of millions of people towards the ideas of the worst people on earth is probably a psychological health menace that needs public intervention.

It is. It does. I've never watched a youtube video from these people, but even when I watch Sam Bee segments about Nazis, suddenly I'm being recommended 'Red Pill Today' and 'How I own the Libz' videos. I see the tricks these people use, I don't have any need to watch it, or learn about how mean women are because these poor Incel boys aren't legally allowed to rape them when they want to.

Youtube has a huge problem with this sort of thing, but then their machine learning in 2015 was showing prestigious position openings for male job seekers and not female ones. Amazon has a similar issue. When machine learning just replicates what humans have done in the past, and we feed it shitty data, it returns shitty results. It's why these big tech companies could help the problem, but they are too male dominated and too insular to bring about real solutions to these kinds of problems. Instead we get Google Glasses and Amazon jobs that don't allow bathroom breaks in 15 hour shifts.

Anyway, as to the woman who was fired from Anet - She over-reacted, I agree. However, she was also attacked by this person (and a couple others) from the announcement that she was being hired. 'Radical SJW' and shit were hurled at her weekly by these people, and they kept asking the same stupid ass questions. She had already answered the 'why aren't you doing branching story paths' questions hundreds of times, and a couple times that day. He asked again, then was bitching about it, ignoring her replies (and all her previous replies) that the branching story arcs didn't work for people and didn't work in the tech they had, so the company had moved away from them, even before she was hired.

The best part is, the stuff she was lead writer for is embraced as the best storytelling to come out of Anet for years.

Remember that Peter Fries, who said 'everyone calm down, she got sick of people attacking her on twitter, everythings going to be fine' also got fired.

Remember that Anet, in GW2, has a huuuuuge NAZI problem. I've stopped playing WvW because all I see in the chat is nazi shit. They gloat about being tempbanned when they say things that should cause them to be permabanned by Anet's CoC. It's not an occasional troll either. It's pretty much non-stop. These are the same people bitching on Reddit about these horrible SJWs doing all the writing.

The entire 'reddit furor' here was a under a hundred very angry people spinning this to try and get this person fired, which had been their goal since she was hired. The fucking Daily Stormer (read: Literally a White Power Website) posting a quick op-ed about how great it was that Anet was 'striking back' against 'SJWs'. That should tell you about all you need to know.

These are the same people that infest Gamergate. I agree that reviewers should indicate if they have ever received money/gifts from a company they are reviewing. That isn't what gamegate has become, and while thats where they claim it started, it looks to me like it was started by some angry dudes who got mad at a woman who said 'why can't we have more, and more believable, female leads'.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Disclosure of bias: my horrid ex is an Anet partner through his Youtube channel (or I'm assuming he still is, he certainly was). He had some horrific opinions about Gamergate and the like, and really got incredibly uppity any time anything gender-related was raised, especially if it touched GW2. This is the person who's reaction to Emma Watson's HeforShe speech was "Women need to stop telling me what I should care about."

I say this only to illustrate that I am not at my most reasonable when confronted with this topic. I wasn't aware of all that stuff to do with WvW though. Sounds a charming place!

[Mentalist]

I have no connection to Anet (or any online gaming community, because I have no interest in any online/multiplayer games).

The only reason I ever looked at this was because there was a ridiculous upsurge from gaming media I frequent in defending behavior that'd be inappropriate in any typical employee/customer interaction- which is (I'd presume) the way most laypeople would view this.

Peter Fries, the guy who also got fired for defending Price stated that she's allowed to post anything, because it's her personal Twitter. But I can totally see Anet's point- if Price is public about her job and connection to Anet, she carries responsibility to uphold the Anet "brand" , so everything she does on her Twitter is expected to be professional.

THIS was the angle ALL games media basically refused to talk about (rather obstinate, imho), which is the only reason I paid any attention to this in the first place- because it shows (to me, at least), a fundamental disconnect between the media and its audience.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 16 November 2018 - 06:52 PM

[Khellendros]

Mentalist, on 16 November 2018 - 06:51 PM, said:

I have no connection to Anet (or any online gaming community, because I have no interest in any online/multiplayer games).

The only reason I ever looked at this was because there was a ridiculous upsurge from gaming media I frequent in defending behavior that'd be inappropriate in any typical employee/customer interaction- which is (I'd presume) the way most laypeople would view this.

Peter Fries, the guy who also got fired for defending Price stated that she's allowed to post anything, because it's her personal Twitter. But I can totally see Anet's point- if Price is public about her job and connection to Anet, she carries responsibility to uphold the Anet "brand" , so everything she does on her Twitter is expected to be professional.

THIS was the angle ALL games media basically refused to talk about (rather obstinate, imho), which is the only reason I paid any attention to this in the first place- because it shows (to me, at least), a fundamental disconnect between the media and its audience.

And that automatically makes the 'audience' correct? Justified in mass calling for someone's firing because they can't take someone answering back for once in much the same language they use every day? That justifies Fries' firing too?

It's amazing how people can call out others for not acting 'professionally' in one breath and bemoan 'political correctness gone mad' in the very next.

[Obdigore]

Mentalist, on 16 November 2018 - 06:51 PM, said:

I have no connection to Anet (or any online gaming community, because I have no interest in any online/multiplayer games).

The only reason I ever looked at this was because there was a ridiculous upsurge from gaming media I frequent in defending behavior that'd be inappropriate in any typical employee/customer interaction- which is (I'd presume) the way most laypeople would view this.

Peter Fries, the guy who also got fired for defending Price stated that she's allowed to post anything, because it's her personal Twitter. But I can totally see Anet's point- if Price is public about her job and connection to Anet, she carries responsibility to uphold the Anet "brand" , so everything she does on her Twitter is expected to be professional.

THIS was the angle ALL games media basically refused to talk about (rather obstinate, imho), which is the only reason I paid any attention to this in the first place- because it shows (to me, at least), a fundamental disconnect between the media and its audience.

I mean, does she though? She's also required to uphold the 'Price' brand, because her experiences affect who she is. Reading the Polygon interview, it was pretty clear that Anet held workshops and spoke to their employees and encouraged them to be themselves on social media, and if they need to, to talk about social issues if they want to.

And then they fired this woman who told some dude to fuck off with same dumbshit question thats been answered many times before, and shes sick of his shit.

I'm not sure how that hurts Anet's brand? I certainly applauded her for it. The only reason she got canned is because this guy and his 'League of Misogyny' started a pretty fake 'uproar' on reddit during a time when no content was being released, which let them dominate the subreddit for a bit. Meanwhile they posted only her responses. Were they talking about the year plus they tore into her every week about how weak and womanly her writing was and all that shit? (for those playing along at home, the answer is no)

The reaction from Anet is one of two things - the most benign is a complete knee-jerk reaction that shows they dont understand their audience, and the second is that this woman was hired by someone else from the guy who fired her, and he was waiting for an excuse to get rid of her.

There literally isn't another option here, especially when things like Wendys and Burger King official Twitters are out here ripping people to shreds and trading barbs and memes.

[Mentalist]

Khellendros, on 16 November 2018 - 07:18 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 16 November 2018 - 06:51 PM, said:

I have no connection to Anet (or any online gaming community, because I have no interest in any online/multiplayer games).

The only reason I ever looked at this was because there was a ridiculous upsurge from gaming media I frequent in defending behavior that'd be inappropriate in any typical employee/customer interaction- which is (I'd presume) the way most laypeople would view this.

Peter Fries, the guy who also got fired for defending Price stated that she's allowed to post anything, because it's her personal Twitter. But I can totally see Anet's point- if Price is public about her job and connection to Anet, she carries responsibility to uphold the Anet "brand" , so everything she does on her Twitter is expected to be professional.

THIS was the angle ALL games media basically refused to talk about (rather obstinate, imho), which is the only reason I paid any attention to this in the first place- because it shows (to me, at least), a fundamental disconnect between the media and its audience.

And that automatically makes the 'audience' correct? Justified in mass calling for someone's firing because they can't take someone answering back for once in much the same language they use every day? That justifies Fries' firing too?

It's amazing how people can call out others for not acting 'professionally' in one breath and bemoan 'political correctness gone mad' in the very next.

I'm not trying to justify emotional internet reaction. 95% of Internet reactions are dumb hyperbole that should be ignored.

But I'd have preferred a more nuanced coverage of a story rather than "blameless dev hounded for doing nothing wrong"

My understanding was (once again, from the Twitter threads provided at the time- I don't use Twitter myself, so don't expect me to dig up stuff now) that the convo went as follows

1) the initial poster (Anet's YouTube partner who had an NPC named after him) posts a video praising Price's work on new season of GW2
2) Price posts a bunch of tweets about her narrative process
3) same guy responds saying he disagrees with some of her thoughts, invites discussion
4) Price posts a snarky sarcastic response that includes a "here's me being told to how to do my job cause I'm a woman" part
5) initial poster says "ok, sorry if that came out wrong. I'm out"
6) various other people chime in, ranging from "wow, that was harsh" to "insert hyperbolic misogyny here"
7) Price proceeds to tell off everyone
8) things go to reddit. Shitstorm begins.
9) fries jumps into said shitstorm makes the "you don't own us on our private twitters. We don't owe you anything" comment
10) more internet shitstorm. Since it's the long weekend, Anet takes a while to respond
11) Anet fires both Price and Fries.


Edit: maybe I'm old fashioned. I don't use any social media other than FB, and I stopped watching TV 10 years ago. It's entirely possible public expectations of professionalism are different from what I continue to consider socially acceptable. If that's the case, than everything I wrote today is baseless. In which case, sorry for adding to the derail.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 16 November 2018 - 08:26 PM

[Aptorian]

I'm going to interrupt this discussion to mention that Acosta got his White House press pass back.

https://www.cnn.com/...ring/index.html

They'll just not take his questions but still I'm looking forward to some even more awkward press conferences.

Can't wait to see these rules on decorum.