[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

worry, on 18 November 2015 - 02:49 AM, said:

A little inter-topic action: http://www.vice.com/...nder-jubbal-503

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, the majority of the world recoiled in horror. But individuals active within Gamergate – either a movement dedicated to harassing women and what the group calls Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) in the games industry and/or campaigning for better transparency and ethical standards within the media, depending on who you ask – had a different reaction. They used this tragedy to present a Gamergate critic, Canadian journalist Veerender Jubbal, as one of the Paris terrorists.

Oh, but Gamergate is all about ethics!!

Honestly, how this group can still be defended by anyone I just don't know.

Mr Jubbal's statement for those who would like to read it - http://sikhcoalition...l_Statement.pdf

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 18 November 2015 - 08:12 AM

[Andorion]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 18 November 2015 - 06:58 AM, said:

worry, on 18 November 2015 - 02:49 AM, said:

A little inter-topic action: http://www.vice.com/...nder-jubbal-503

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, the majority of the world recoiled in horror. But individuals active within Gamergate – either a movement dedicated to harassing women and what the group calls Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) in the games industry and/or campaigning for better transparency and ethical standards within the media, depending on who you ask – had a different reaction. They used this tragedy to present a Gamergate critic, Canadian journalist Veerender Jubbal, as one of the Paris terrorists.

Oh, but Gamergate is all about ethics!!

Honestly, how this group can still be defended by anyone I just don't know.

Mr Jubbal's statement for those who would like to read it - http://sikhcoalition...l_Statement.pdf

The Sikh community always catches some of the worst backlash after terrorist attacks, mainly due to cultural ignorance. But this act, done on purpose to ruin someone's life - this is evil

[Aptorian]

Sarkissian did a post-mortem sort of wrap up on the Tropes in video games series Feminist Frequency has been doing:

https://feministfreq...-end-of-tropes/

As we've discussed at length, I don't share her POV but still I guess it's worth celebrating that she began a discussion that the games industry probably needed in some way or another, for good or ill.

[worry]

As someone who agrees with her on most of her broadest points and only disagrees in some of the finer ones (a few of her critiques can come off sex-negative imo), I think she kinda nailed the gaming industry as a microcosm of broader societal problems. I think it's pretty clear now, if it wasn't always, that the "anti-PC" crowd are the misogynists, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, all kindsa phobes, etc. they pretended not to be during the height of Gamergate, and then largely stopped pretending not to be once they got a few champions to rally around.

It's still a mixed bag in terms of results though. The rise and fall of Milo was kinda beautiful. On the other hand, Mike Cernovich is headed to the White House with a press pass. Who knows if GG urging all these disparate despicable people to link up made a difference, or if it just upturned the rock they were already gathering under anyway? The other side didn't come out unscathed either: Arthur Chu went from Jeopardy champ to feminist ally to crazy person with marriage-dissolving levels of egomania in record time.

Still, overall I think it was a good and even quite valuable project. In all of the GG fiasco, Feminist Frequency in particular remained focused, academically inclined, and uncowed -- and that clearly drove a lot of addle-brained men crazy. I mean how many thousands of hours of impotent rage-fueled ranting about Anita are there on Youtube? (which reminds me, the falling apart of the anti-Anita documentary by those two doofuses was also beautiful, as was GG's embrasure of Jack Thompson). A lot of the good stuff that came out of it was clearly an unintended byproduct, where the focus was really treating games as any other work of art is treated, and this accidental riling and exposure of the Adult-(mostly) Male-Crybaby contingent really reverberated throughout the discourse. And I'm personally grateful, since I really was under the impression that geek culture -- geeks often getting the short end of the stick socially -- had bred a better more egalitarian enclave for themselves. I'm glad I no longer have that false impression, even though it cost me a bit in terms of hope.

[worry]

Not-so-neat reminder that the harassment hasn't stopped at all, even if some of the bigger barnacles that attached themselves to GamerGate moved on to other alt-right avenues of attention.
https://feministfreq...garbage-humans/
https://twitter.com/...468931047727104

[Aptorian]

I went and looked up this Carl guy. His youtube moniker appears to be Sargon of Akkad. He's one of those youtubers who spend all day commenting on what ever drama is going on in the world. Not sure if he is deliberately trolling or he just really hates feminists.

This is his own respons to the event:

[Primateus]

It's a common bullying technique. You "follow" someone around, make sure you're in the open and seen, that your target is aware of your constant pressure. But you don't actually do anything. That way, when your target reacts, preferably in a harsh manner (really, violent reaction is what is hoped for, the more violent the better!), you can say; "I didn't do anything, I was just standing/sitting there, I'm the victim here!" Even though, you knew exactly what you were doing and your purpose was to provoke a reaction.

[Silencer]

Seduce Goose, on 27 June 2017 - 04:46 AM, said:

I went and looked up this Carl guy. His youtube moniker appears to be Sargon of Akkad. He's one of those youtubers who spend all day commenting on what ever drama is going on in the world. Not sure if he is deliberately trolling or he just really hates feminists.

This is his own respons to the event:

I've listened to a bit of Sargon of Akkad's stuff - a lot of it appears to be that special kind of faux rational arguments known as sophistry. There are a lot of things he says that *sound* reasonable and common-sense, but it's all to service an ultimate point of "see, feminists (or, rather, women) are terrible!" - and once you figure out what he's doing it becomes pretty apparent that there is no link, or the seemingly innocuous original statements are actually not all that watertight themselves. He also (or at least used to, when I watched a video or two ages ago) likes to make the titles of his videos sound like they will be unbiased. At best he achieves the same kind of false balance we see in anti-vaxxer or climate change denial (or any science denial, really) debates on the likes of Fox News. Mostly he gives up the pretense and starts acting like the big words and long sentences he is using make him correct.

[Aptorian]

Yeah that was the same impression I got. Like, from an outside perspective, the way he presents his side of the affair seems pretty reasonable. He's trying to engage in dialogue and Sarkeesian insults him but there's just this slight tinge of self-centred smugness about his commentary that makes you weary.

On a side note, when you start looking through related videos there sure are a lot of people shit posting in video form on youtube.

[Silencer]

Seduce Goose, on 27 June 2017 - 06:53 AM, said:

Yeah that was the same impression I got. Like, from an outside perspective, the way he presents his side of the affair seems pretty reasonable. He's trying to engage in dialogue and Sarkeesian insults him but there's just this slight tinge of self-centred smugness about his commentary that makes you weary.

On a side note, when you start looking through related videos there sure are a lot of people shit posting in video form on youtube.

Good to know it isn't just me who picked up on that. XD

And yes, YouTube is full of that kind of crap these days. The problem I have with it actually comes down to the way YouTube presents videos, though. Like, say I watch a couple of videos from the likes of Sargon of Akkad. At the very least, in the name of not isolating myself to an echo-chamber, it makes sense to listen to other opinions and perspectives, right?
Here's the problem: once you watch about 5 videos from the likes of Sargon and more open MRA types...my "recommended" videos page suddenly looks like that of an angry neo-Nazi. The algorithm they are using is apparently so aggressive, that once you get into the ecosystem of those kinds of videos, you can't get out. I can actually see how effective this must be in shaping some people's opinions - after all, if you find ten million videos of people agreeing with each other, and can't really find any dissenting voices, it can be pretty persuasive. Ironically, this does not appear to happen quite so aggressively if you, say, watch Sarkeesian or other folk on that side of the issue.

Now, I understand from a business perspective that YouTube probably does, in fact, want people to be in an echo-chamber. It helps keep people on your platform. But for me, it just makes me wary of clicking on too many videos, no matter how interesting the title sounds, in case the algorithms decide I must be into that side of the debate and floods me with endless recommendations for similar rubbish (especially if the video itself is actually not well argued, this gets even more annoying). So my YouTube is more or less a voluntary echo-chamber of non-seriousness. Except for LastWeekTonight, because I will watch the hell out of that. (Though again, interesting to note that watching a LOT of LastWeekTonight doesn't spam up my recommended videos with "left wing" propaganda - whereas throw on some innocently titled video like "GamerGate: A debate" and next thing I know I'm drowning in alt-right nonsense...)

Makes it very hard to be balanced in one's YouTube content diet, is all I'm saying.