@ Luke Maciak:

For context, it might be worth noting that Will Shetterly was part of a kerfuffle still known in SF fandom as “Racefail ’09.” It wasn’t as bad as GamerGate in terms of sheer criminality, but did involve a fair number of “names” (both pro and fan) not acquitting themselves particularly well.

IMO Shetterly’s a very good writer and well-meaning man whose particular personality & perspective (class-consciousness rather than feminist & other identity politics) made him incapable of accepting that he might be in the wrong. I gave up on closely following SF fandom in part because of RaceFail and other infighting; it’s genuinely sad to me that those divisions have only sharpened over the years.

@ Robert:

Yeah. I think it has a lot to do with the “greater internet fuckward” theorem – the perceived anonymity of the web makes people about 10 times more terrible than they would dare to be in real life. That and we have this weird distinction between “real life” and “the internet” which makes it seem like threats and hate campaigns less severe to the perpetrators (but not less frightening and unpleasant to their victims). And yeah, there are terrible people in just about every community.

But, I really think this can be mitigated by properly managing your community and setting the right tone. Places like 4chan and reddit worship “freedom of speech” above all else and actively encourage trolling. As a result they enable harassment and attract the sort of shitty people who doxx and send death threats and this is where they go to recruit people for their “operations” and what not.

If your message boards or discussion lists are moderated, there are clear codes of conduct and offenders are permanently banned and expelled then it is harder for the shitty people use your community as a platform for hateful stuff. Scale and the growth speed of the community will of course affect the ability to moderate things efficiently, but there are ways to deal with this too.

I do have an issue with the blog guy’s rhetoric though. If I got his point right, he was essentially claiming that if you’re white and you call out another white person for doing something racist, you are literally usurping the right of POC to speak on this subject. That we should not be speaking on their behalf. But that’s insidious because it creates a toxic environment where racists get to control the discussion. White folks are told to be quiet because it does not involve them. Any POC who take offense and speak out make themselves targets for the racists and will likely be subject to tone policing, concern trolling and all the usual bullshit.

I feel that it is partly my responsibility to ensure the communities where I am part of the majority demographic and where my voice counts, are open, friendly and welcoming for everyone. It’s like cleaning out our little frat house so that we can invite some guests without being ashamed at how filthy it has become due to people not paying attention to what they do or say.

@ Luke Maciak:

I’m personally acquainted with one of the principals in one of the cases he talks about, and his overview is pretty accurate.

But yeah, my point is mainly just that death threats and destroying someone’s life should still be socially unacceptable even if the person is a jerk. But it’s becoming uncomfortably acceptable.

@ Robert:

While I do not condone doxing, stalking or other forms of vigilante internet justice, that blog does not seem like a reliable resource. It’s basically “concern trolling, the book”. He is co-opting the vocabulary and concepts used by social movements in an attempt to discredit some imaginary, generalized social justice strawman that he made up in his mind. Plus I scrolled through some of his older posts, and ugh. :(

But yeah – I get what you’re saying. This is a problem that is not unique to gaming community and I agree that bigots and hateful people also don’t deserve to receive death threats.

@ TinyI:

Internet lynch mobs are not, unfortunately, exclusive to gaming culture. They’re a big deal, and they cut both ways.

http://sjwar.blogspot.com/2014/02/3-outing-of-zathlazip-and-hounding-o f.html

[…] Let’s have a serious talk about Gamer culture […]

Luke Maciak wrote:

@ TinyI:

Zoe’s thing is still going, BTW. They never stopped harassing her, even after they started doing the whole gamer gate, journalism integrity thing, the harassment was still in full force. It turns out that Zoe has been hanging out in 4chan’s irc raid channel for weeks now logging their conversations. She started tweeting snippets of her logs over the weekend. She has evidence of people discussing how they hacked her servers, and how they d0xxed her, along with their IP addressees which she turned over to the police. So hopefully justice will be served. :)

And yeah, it’s funny how whenever anyone speaks up about this they just deny them their voice. When women complain about representation, they are “evil misandrist feminazis” and “not real gamers”. When people of color complain about it, they are “playing the race card” and being overly sensitive or “reverse racist”. When white men complain about it they are “white knights” and “social justice warriors” who use the plight of the minorities to increase their social status somehow. Which is ironic considering how the gamer gate crown only ever seems to care about marginalized groups when they can usurp their voice and use it to discredit white, male critics.

o? It was in the news more often then – thought it had curbed… shows how much I know unfortunately! It’s kind of really crappy how it’s still happening – I read more into the links that you provided and even the person who supposedly started the whole thing (Eron or something?) actually said it wasn’t true. Great.

Hopefully justice gets served. But that still doesn’t deal with the people who jumped on the “hate Zoe” bandwagon en masse. Those bandwagon jumpers seem to be what fuels the extremes to do what they do – if they didn’t have their cheerleaders, they wouldn’t play the game I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Ontop of that, this whole “gamer gate” seems to be a whole bunch of crap to silence people too according to the irc logs Zoe got. How messed up this whole thing is when you actually think about it kinda hurts… It’s like they want to find people to single out and victimise, one by one. Kinda like that film “The Purge” – where the gang of “elite education” kids wanted to beat and kill that homeless dude who turned out to be a war vet.

@ Etienne:

Oh, no – I was not implying you were making light of it. I was just making an observation. :)

@ TinyI:

Zoe’s thing is still going, BTW. They never stopped harassing her, even after they started doing the whole gamer gate, journalism integrity thing, the harassment was still in full force. It turns out that Zoe has been hanging out in 4chan’s irc raid channel for weeks now logging their conversations. She started tweeting snippets of her logs over the weekend. She has evidence of people discussing how they hacked her servers, and how they d0xxed her, along with their IP addressees which she turned over to the police. So hopefully justice will be served. :)

And yeah, it’s funny how whenever anyone speaks up about this they just deny them their voice. When women complain about representation, they are “evil misandrist feminazis” and “not real gamers”. When people of color complain about it, they are “playing the race card” and being overly sensitive or “reverse racist”. When white men complain about it they are “white knights” and “social justice warriors” who use the plight of the minorities to increase their social status somehow. Which is ironic considering how the gamer gate crown only ever seems to care about marginalized groups when they can usurp their voice and use it to discredit white, male critics.

I was actually having a fb conversation about this a few weeks back when the whole Zoe Quinn thing was going crazy (what with all the hate sent towards her).

The thing that really annoyed the hell out of me was when somebody commented with (and I quote verbatim) “The females in games thing comes straight from the consumers arguing about the stereotype of male gamers. It’s been going on since the 70’s because most games were war games and heavily attributed to men. There is no rape like culture lol.”

That kind of just made me realise how closed-minded, drone-like this community is – much like any that developed on the internet (IWC for example – Internet Wrestling Community) really. And then it finally hit me as to why. Consequences barely exist for these people playing the hate game. They don’t get banned, they don’t get called out, they don’t get thrown out of the community as such – people let it happen or they cheer it on. Because there’s no real concept of consequence on the internet, people just don’t care what they say and do or who they hurt in the process.

@Luke
It was not my intention to come off as someone not taking it seriously or that I don’t appreciate the hurt that it is causing. I am continuously dumbfounded by the level of hostility and bile against women enacted by these people.
And yes, a case study on this should probably first be done in a few years, when this has calmed down and has hopefully changed for the better.