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Sept. 27, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
03:12:41
DiGRA livesteam and Baitfest with Jenni Goodchild #GamerGate #NotYourShield
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Time Text
Hi everyone, sorry for the delay there.
Let me know if you can hear me alright.
and then i'll start i'll tell you what there's they have no idea what the problem is They have absolutely no idea what the problem is here.
Hi, everyone.
Excellent.
Right.
So, Torrell Mortensen is an ex-member of the Diagra Executive Board.
She was last in Diagra in 2010 to 2012.
And in her recent, in her blog, she linked to my video, Conspiracy and Gaming, where I went over the playfulest political, mockingly saying that, yeah, she was surrounded by Frankfurt school gamers or academics and that games were oppressing them and that they, you know, they're fighting oppressive systems and oh no, they're not really going to destroy your games,
even though that is actively what they're trying to fucking do.
But yeah, so obviously she's seen my latest video because she's replied to a letter someone's written.
It was anonymously sent her.
I know, sorry, by Smilomaniac.
I'll tweet the link so you can look at it for yourself.
And he addresses a few things.
He's a 30-year-old pansexual male Dane who's been trapped in a very masculine body with a mostly feminine identity.
He's been a gamer as long as he can remember and through the internet he discovered himself as he was freely able to engage and talk with others about sexuality without judgment.
That's wonderful.
The hobby connects Saul in a surprisingly open community and it's sacred to me and it goes beyond a mere pastime.
It's a lifestyle.
He addresses her issues with her comments about Anita Keason and Zoe Quinn and then it gets on to Diagra.
And I just want to read you out parts of her response because she writes quite a lengthy response and there are a bunch of things in there that kind of annoyed me.
Kind of annoyed me.
But not only that, they were just flat wrong.
So Torrell doesn't really understand Not Your Shield.
And she says, Not Your Shield is so odd to me because I haven't felt that aggression in the way you obviously have, even though I too play games.
And that's this thing.
There we go.
Fundamentally, she plays games.
She's not a gamer.
You know, my mum plays games on her phone.
You know, she's not a fucking gamer.
What I have done over and over again, year after year, is explain to journalists who are convinced games will turn us all into psychopaths that this is not true.
Torrell, do you want to explain that to feminists?
You know, fuck the journalists.
I've been, for almost 20 years, been doing game research to try and defend the players from the often outrageous claims made by the media, and I'm still doing it.
Okay, great.
Perhaps I was your shield then for years before I knew it.
Maybe.
Going through Brad research claiming games is behind youth crime, pointing out that the level of youth crime has decreased since games arrived on the arena.
It's been part of my work since I started looking at games.
That's good.
The behavior of the trolls that send hate messages to female game designers makes me feel ambivalent about my own protection of this group, though.
Right.
It's not a group.
It's at best a demographic.
There is no organized games.
There is no organization of gamers that speaks for all gamers.
It's not a group.
So when individuals in this demographic go and do things that everyone else disapproves of, all you can do is address the individual Torrel.
And I agree, there are plenty out there that are a bit of a problem.
You know, there really are.
But there's nothing we can do about that.
There's nothing.
We have no power over these other people.
What are we supposed to do?
Hang on, sorry, just two seconds.
I'm trying to get someone else in here to maintain the stream when my internet inevitably goes down.
sorry about this okay um
Yeah, the behavior of the trolls is sending hate messaging into my own blood, but all those years of saying publicly that gamers are nice people, and this is what happens when some of them disagree.
You know what, Torrell, I think the same about black people.
You know, I just spend all this time defending black people against the racists and then they do something like the Ferguson riots and start looting and pillaging and I'm just like, oh for fuck's sake black people, I've been defending you all these years.
Do you see why that sounds awful, Torrell?
Do you see?
Getting a lot of feedback on your mic there, mate.
Let me just try and sort this out.
Is that still bad?
It's just, can you maybe turn it down a little bit?
Yep.
Let me just try and find all the sound settings.
So anyway, Toro, who's just pissing me off just by reading this now.
Yeah, she says, was I wrong?
Yes.
Or are the people who send the death and rape threats something else?
Not gamers, but just hate mongers and trolls.
Well, they're not trolls.
The term troll does not mean someone who just sends threats.
And ultimately, I don't believe a single one of these fucking threats is credible.
Not one.
I think it's bullshit people are just sending off into the ether and then, you know, just to relieve some stress.
I'm not saying that's acceptable.
It's not.
And I wouldn't do it myself.
But I really think that you guys are magnifying this beyond all reason.
I don't know all the truth about Zoe Quinn.
Well, of course you don't.
What I do know is that she's entitled to an opinion like everyone else and she's entitled to it without being threatened or harassed.
Okay, that is true.
You know, she is entitled to her opinion and no one deserves to be harassed.
However, no one should be allowed to be corrupt and then have the industry that they're being corrupt in close ranks and protect them.
That is unacceptable.
The problem isn't disagreement.
Please argue all you like.
But the hatred she has been the target of, the same with Anita Sarkeesian.
Just like I've been actively working for the gamers' freedom to play, I am willing to argue for the feminist freedom to speak.
You can speak all you want, but if you sit there and pollute the game industry with feminism, then we have a problem.
This is why I'm an academic.
I believe we're all allowed to have a voice in any discussion, but I realize it's better to come prepared with facts.
I don't know, to be honest, it seemed better to come prepared with a fucking Kickstarter campaign and then stealing other people's Let's Play footage.
That, in fact, is easily the most profitable way of doing any of this.
Look out for my new Kickstarter.
Which leads us to Digra.
Digra is just another academic association, except it's almost entirely staffed by fucking feminists, right?
Franz Meyruck, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
I was absolutely giving him the benefit of the doubt because he didn't seem to have any feminist leanings.
Now I looked at his Twitter page.
Fuck me, he's against Gamergate.
What a surprise.
And in fact, that is a surprise, to be honest, because he seemed to be the sort of guy who was genuinely interested in games.
But he's obviously that sort.
But, right, so it's just another academic association.
And the main agenda is truly, truly, this is their agenda, to study games as a cultural, social, and economical object.
I mean, that's pretty much the basically what the Nazis were saying.
They just wanted to study the Jews.
Okay, that's not fair.
But that will must include feminist critique.
Well, okay, I'll stop you there.
Because that will and must include feminist critique is faulty for a few reasons.
One, I don't think it must include feminist critique at all.
I don't think anything must include a bigoted gendered ideological perspective.
I don't see how that's helpful, really, when we could just talk, you know, it is perfectly possible to analyse gender dynamics without being a feminist.
Absolutely.
And frankly, I would say it's fucking essential because if you're a feminist, if I were to call myself a fucking masculinist and go on about how everything has to be critiqued from a masculinist perspective, you would think I was probably leaving out half the story, wouldn't you?
But anyway.
I've just started to flip back to the comments.
Yeah, this game's Marxist, 11 out of 10.
Absolutely.
But yeah, so getting back to it, sorry.
And this is the problem.
They always write enormous blocks of fucking text.
But yeah, so it will and must include feminist critique.
Well, it doesn't just include feminist critique, does it?
The problem with Digra is it is nothing but feminist critique, which is when she says, just as it needs to include all other kinds of critique.
And I have to say, well, where is the other kind of critique?
The feminist agenda has just infected everything.
You cannot release a game without feminists getting up in arms about the lack of the unacceptable female representation in it.
And it's just like, listen, no one fucking cares.
You know, I've never heard a female gamer bitch about this.
I've never heard it.
They're like, so fucking what?
Most of the time, you're not even playing humans in the games I play.
You know what I mean?
So it's just not an issue for me personally, but it's an issue for feminists because they're gender ideologues.
They literally can't not be like that.
So If you're really worried about what we're trying to do, read the articles published by the members.
Educate yourself, obviously.
Take a degree.
Join the organization.
Join the discussion and bring an alternative voice to the table.
Brilliant.
I'll see you in about six years' time then, shall I, Torrell?
And I'll just pull that money out of my arsehole and abandon my life and any responsibilities I've got to go and educate myself in a fucking gender studies degree so I can win election to the board of DIGRA.
Honestly, that is just...
Do I expect that a feminist organisation is going to elect me, an obvious anti-feminist, to their board of...
Of course not.
Will I have influence and clout in the organization?
Of course not, no matter how much I work.
Honestly.
People cry for transparency and it's there.
Actually, no.
Most of it's behind a fucking paywall.
Luckily, there are concerned citizens who are behind that paywall who help me out.
The research is documented, the papers and the methods are published.
Nobody is saying gamers are awful.
Right, Torrell, couple of things.
One, in 2003, Adrian Shaw, one of the playfulest political roundtable people, did write an article decrying the term gamer.
And I think that is ultimately the fountain spring of where all of this has come from.
A year later, the gaming press is putting out articles 10, 12 on the same day saying gamers are dead.
How about Torrell?
You shut your fucking mouth if you don't know what you're talking about.
Because it is self-evident that you do not know what you're talking about.
I don't mean to be offensive.
If you hear this, and I suspect you might, but seriously, shut up.
Fuck me, it really pisses me off.
No one's saying gamers are awful.
That's all they're saying.
Jesus!
Calm.
Enhance my calm.
Sorry, I've lost my place.
I scrolled and it's just a massive block of text.
Right, yeah, quite the opposite, apparently.
What some people have obviously said is perhaps the term gamer may not properly describe the very diverse group that plays games.
Actually, Torrell, that's what we're saying.
They are saying that gamers are awful, literally.
And then we are saying, look, the term gamer does not apply to the people who are playing Farnville and Candy Crush, the people you are lumping into that vast group of statistics, and then saying 50% of gamers are female.
Therefore, you need more women in Assassin's Creek.
You know, I know you don't understand it.
I think that this is honestly flagrant intellectual dishonesty.
I think that Torrell, being some sort of PhD in gender studies, could still do the research into this and find out what exactly the problem is.
She could look at the statistics as well.
She could go deeper into the statistics because I'm sure as an academic she has access to these sort of things.
She probably knows people who do the ESA reports.
You know, and so it's bullshit.
I can't believe that she's being genuine.
It's really hard to believe she's being genuine with this.
So Digra wants to see more diversity and understanding of both what games are and what gamers are.
And so we can explore this from as many sides as possible.
You're only showing us one side.
You're only showing us the side of the gender ideologues and that everything anyone does isn't good enough because of your gendered ideology.
And then she goes on to talk about a film, which I'm going to skip over because it's not important.
The much cited discussion criticizing peer reviewing is just that.
Now she's talking about the playfulest political.
Another academic discussion where scholars try to see if there might be a better way to do things.
You know what?
That would be acceptable if it wasn't from people who have such obvious interests in abandoning the peer review system.
And if I hadn't read other blog posts and posts on forums, the Diagra Students Forum, the Digra Forums, for example, where they complain that they have to constantly justify what they're doing to their academic peers because they'll look at it and go, What are you doing?
That's bullshit.
The reason they're trying to get away from peer reviewing is because they know their research doesn't stand up to scrutiny, which is why they're trying to do damage control.
What was the name of the girl I was talking to on Twitter?
Oh, Pixie Jenny.
Yeah, yeah, the one you're a big fan of.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Is my mic coming through?
Okay, by the way.
Yeah, I can hear you fine.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, she's been in massive damage control mode all day, and that's the person you're thinking of.
Yeah.
Sorry, I completely phased out.
Yeah.
No, that's alright.
I completely forgot her name off the top of my head.
But yeah, so, I mean, you know, when the president of Diagra and all of her feminist cronies are saying how they want to subvert the peer review system, it's just a suggestion of see if there's a better way of doing things.
I want some actual scientists' opinions on that.
I really do.
Is there a conceivably better way of making sure science is honest than peer review?
I can't think of one.
I wasn't there for the 2014 Diagra conference, which is true.
So I don't know the real context on whether or not the transcript is correct.
Well, we know the transcript's correct because it's actually not just one transcript.
It's two transcripts taken by two different people.
There are slight anomalies in the wording, but the message is still the same.
But it's just a discussion, a part of the exploration to find a good way to increase the quality of our research by trying to subvert peer review.
It's weird, double think, isn't it?
Are you keeping track of the comments, by the way, mate?
Because I can't keep track of what people are saying.
I'm keeping track of the YouTube ones at the moment.
Yeah, if anyone says anything that I need to know about while I'm doing this, let me know.
Because I can't see the comments and read the text at the same time, guys.
Sorry.
But yeah, sorry.
No, I've lost my fucking place.
Why do I keep doing this?
Right, OK, yes.
Just discussion.
In that process, there will be trial and error.
Bad ideas mixed with good.
I'm all for bad ideas being mixed in with good.
But I'm not for people trying to subvert the system.
I mean, why would you see that in a discussion?
I mean, it wasn't even couched in a way that was, you know, is peer review really the best way to do this?
You know, can we think of better ways to do peer review?
It was things like peer review is slowing us down.
You know, peer review is a problem.
We got a scientist in the feed talking about peer review and the idea of disregarding it just went, oh, God, keeping up with these.
I thought it was going slow.
And then it went.
Who's the scientist?
Sorry.
Speak up, whoever the scientist was, because I just lost it.
Yeah, sorry, I do want to know because, I mean, I'm not a scientist.
I did A-level physics, but that was about as far as I went.
No, now we've just got the ghost of Adam Lanza shouting all the things out.
Of course, I don't, James Doje, I don't think that any system is flawless.
And obviously, I agree with you.
There are going to be things like publication bias.
But is there a conceivably better way of doing it?
I mean, I think, and Kur Samoa, peer review is essential.
Otherwise, we could just publish whatever we wanted, flaws and all.
Yeah, and they could call it science.
They could say, oh, you know, and then circular citations is another really real problem with their research.
I've got loads of it now.
And Shiraz Chess is always referencing Adrian Shaw and back and forth.
And it's just like these people are all talking shit.
But I'll carry on.
I'll carry on.
It's how research happens.
I can promise you one thing.
Digra is not seeing large government funds to support any secret agenda.
That's true.
They're seeing large government funds to support an agenda.
The word secret makes that statement true.
No, I don't know what their funding is like.
I'm going to be looking into that and seeing what I can find.
But I don't know.
Do you know anything about it, man?
What was that?
Sorry?
The funding of Digra.
Any idea?
I don't know about the UK one.
Obviously, everybody's trying to put those links between DARPA and the funding.
But I think that's something that we're going to have to look at because it hasn't jumped out.
nothing has actually jumped out in the research that we've been doing.
What I guess I think we were planning is to do, I think the way we're doing it is probably the best way to establish who is on the panel at Diagra, and the next one will be exploring what was going on at the Playful is Political, and why they were talking to each other about these subjects in these ways.
And who they were talking about.
I mean, the only finance that we actually did find, I mean, going back to that, was that a lot of it still lies in Northern Europe still with the original president and the treasurer.
And they're still getting the dues from paid up members.
And membership is still quite an expensive thing, especially corporate membership as well.
Yeah, but that's not enough to cover everything.
So, I mean, we've had the connection with Nokia, but nothing has been confirmed with that.
We found nothing there so far.
But that's because we haven't been looking.
The way I think that we're going to structure it, I mean, this might change, obviously.
This is just off the top of my head, which all of this is, a silver imponch.
But yeah, so we look at the sort of people who are actually running Digra now.
We look at the Playfulist Political and see who was there.
And several important members of Silverstring were there.
And then we look at who they influence and who they talk to in the media.
And the sort of people they message on Twitter, the sort of people, like the articles they tweet.
I've seen plenty of them that were at the thing where they were tweeting Leigh Alexander and all those sort of people.
And it's like, well, there we go.
You know, they know each other.
They're all mates.
They all hang out at the conferences and they all spread their ideology.
That's the truth.
I've just had one of the guys that helped us out just send us just a bit from some of the archives.
Digra UK has been set up to develop academic practices and research in the UK, emphasizing networking, cross-academic cultures and other aspects of gaming, which include the industry, other practitioners, and independent game developers.
Literally, their mission statement is now to disseminate feminism to game developers because that is precisely what this feminist group, Digra, is doing, talking to Silverstring, who are an openly feminist company on their website, and they are consultants to other developers.
The consultants to Silverstring include Anita Sarkisian and her boyfriend Jonathan McIntosh, who frankly I think is the wellspring of everything of this.
Have a look at his Twitter feed.
He's just constantly going on about patriarchal hegemonic masculinity.
And it's like, oh, Jonathan, you wouldn't know it if it bit you in the fucking face.
So just want to carry on with this.
Sorry, I'm such a dick.
So yeah, it's how good research happens.
I can promise you one thing.
It's not seeing large government funds.
It's an academic community kept running through volunteer work and the willingness of our institutions to support a new direction in research.
Look, saying an academic community kept running through volunteer work and willingness of our institutions to support a new direction in research isn't good.
It's not bad, but it doesn't automatically sound good.
I mean, it sounds very neutral and very positive.
But then you realize that Joseph Goebbels did the same fucking thing.
You know?
And all this eugenics bollocks.
They had fucking societies kept alive by the volunteer work and willingness of the Nazi institution and the German institutions to support a new direction in their research.
And where did it go?
Exactly.
It's just, you know, it's one of those non-phrases that you may as well have not said because it could apply to any academic institution.
The danger of feminism.
I understand why you feel troubled.
I have to admit, some of the more extreme rhetorics make me feel uncomfortable too.
Yes, and it's coming from you guys.
But the wage gap isn't a fallacy.
Okay.
Okay.
It is.
Frankly.
Any non-feminist research done on this, and I've got, I got, I asked people to send me loads of information about the wage gap a while ago.
I did a video on it ages ago because there was a US Department of Labor report that a CONSAD report that came out and said, right, okay, we're not really sure what we can do to fix the wage gap because there doesn't appear to exist, and it may be that there's nothing to fix at all, and this is the outcome of a free society.
But if Torrell doesn't agree with that, you'd think that she would academically approach them and say, actually, I've got these studies.
She'd do the same to Christina Summers.
You'd think that she'd go to her and say, hey, you know, your research on this subject, total bollocks.
Here's my proof.
But she doesn't.
She just states it's a fallacy.
Sorry, it's not a fallacy.
But she does wish it was.
The violence against women, rape, abuse, and death threats.
I wish it was fancy, but it isn't.
Look, right?
Torrell, no one is suggesting that crimes don't happen.
You know, no one is suggesting that crimes don't happen to women.
But the thing is, you can only mitigate them so far before you start committing crimes of your own.
You know, when you start brainwashing kids to, say, white privilege and male privilege and all this sort of shit in school, I personally find that to be absolutely offensive.
And this is why I'm doing these sort of things.
It's sad and horrible statistics.
And men, mostly men, women know, rape, beat, and kill their partners.
Well, that is true, technically.
I mean, except for in situations of reciprocal violence, the woman is 70% more likely to.
I think 70% of them were initiated by women in this study.
So, you know, it's who knows?
It's up in the air.
But frankly, I think it's safe to say that neither gender is innocent in this issue.
You know, neither one.
And so there's no point making it a strictly gendered issue like they're doing.
Much better to look at individual cases.
But anyway, please don't take my word for it.
Look into the statistics yourself.
That is actually why I can't take your word for it, Toril.
Learn to now I like this.
Learn to read statistics critically and correctly and make up your own mind.
Yeah, Torrell, that's the problem everyone's having with what you're saying.
If you ever decide to be open about your preferences, many of the options you have are there because women have been taking the hit for you already.
What hit?
What have women been taking for me?
In support of the idea that your sexuality does not make you unfit for anything.
No one wants to talk about anyone's sexuality, Torrell.
No one, I have no idea what the sexuality of any of the protagonists in any of the games I've played is.
I have no idea how many of my Greek phalanx are gay when I'm playing Rome Total War.
I just don't give a fuck.
But these people do.
That's the problem.
That's all they think about.
Well, that's how it seems anyway.
The fact that you need to hide your real self probably makes your situation feel even more sensitive.
Please find someone who has been in a similar situation to talk to.
Someone who knows that it gets better.
All right.
There are several very good resources in Denmark where you can find others who understand you.
The rhetoric.
Okay, she's talking about his pansexuality, which I've got no interest in.
And that's the end of their comment.
And it's just.
There are so many little things wrong.
The whole just becomes just well.
I tell you what, guys, get yourselves on Patreon and I'll start giving you reparations.
Oh, God.
The gatriarchy.
Right, okay.
So there are a few other things that I didn't prepare at all for this, guys.
This is all very off the cuff.
Oh, yeah, right, okay.
Someone sent me an email, which was a very interesting email.
And I'm obviously going to keep his identity secret because he doesn't want to be released.
But he's got some interesting information.
He's currently at Brunel University, which Ashley Brown, previously Tanya Krowinska, both lectured at.
In my recent video, I declared these to be both part of the feminist agenda corrupting digra, which they are.
He's pro-Gamergate.
And he's all of us are in an agreed fear to express this opinion openly due to backlash other actual developers have received.
That said, when I was taught by Kruinska, there was no feminist agenda pushed in her lectures.
And she taught from a very neutral and objective standpoint.
Well, have a cookie.
You know, Kruinska.
I mean, I don't need to sound like a dick.
I do appreciate that he sent me this information because it's good to know.
And all that means is she's a feminist but not an ideologue, which is good.
She name-dropped Anita once, this was about two years ago, in passing.
He's only had a single lecture with Ashley Brown, so we can't judge her too strongly.
But for the most part, she seemed impartial.
The only red flag for me was when she derailed a student's point about gender identification and research.
See, I find this very interesting because obviously it wasn't a lecture about gender identity, so it wouldn't come up.
But when it does come up, she completely derails the point and takes control of the conversation without really accepting the student's point.
But he sent me a brief Facebook exchange, a screenshot of a Facebook exchange that he had.
Let me just grab that.
Right.
And this is what I mean.
They know, right?
Because this is Ashley Brown with a screenshot on Facebook from my video classifying her as a feminist.
And she says, I am a feminist.
At least Gamergate got that right.
See?
These guys aren't secretive about it.
I mean, the thing is, I think that having an obvious ideological bias at the start of Digra when Digra was founded was frowned upon.
Because in 2003, feminism was a lot less pervasive than it is now.
And now, 11 years later, people are just brazenly feminist.
They brazenly say, well, I have this ideological bias.
And I find that insane.
I mean, I wouldn't, if I was a communist, I wouldn't be a communist academic.
I would just be an academic who happened to also be a communist.
And I would be able to put that aside if I was then discussing, say, capitalism or any other subject.
I wouldn't say, oh, well, you know what, you know what this research needs?
Communism.
That's what this research needs.
But that's not what these people seem to want to do.
But as I said, I mean, you know, in other subjects where it wasn't talking about feminism, she apparently did have a fairly impartial view, so that's good.
But maybe gender just was literally something you could factor into the lecture.
I have no idea what the lecture was about.
I've just had some more bits from another source about, well, it turns out that this was it?
This was the first bits from their setup meeting, basically, their mission statement.
I don't know if it's the same.
It might echo what I said earlier, some of it.
But like its umbrella organization, Digra UK will act as an international advocate and networking platform aiming to set teaching standards and engage directly with the entertainment software industry.
It seeks to promote interdisciplinary inter God I hate that word networking between researchers, industry policymakers and educators, student support, mentoring through student prizes, output and conference advocacy and visibility, education standards.
So they want education standards while killing peer review.
I don't understand that.
How could that happen?
How could that happen?
But just to finish off, the comments on her feminist post on Facebook are very interesting.
I don't know whether I should read the names out, so I'm not going to.
But the first one is, are all the men labeled as academics and the women feminists?
Well, maybe on that screenshot, because it would have been factually accurate.
But no, there are a bunch of women and men in that video that were not feminists, and I didn't label them as such.
The next one is Ashley herself replying, it's almost as if they don't understand that feminism can be a critical philosophy within academia or that it has its own academic merit.
Ashley, I think if it had its own academic merit, you wouldn't be complaining about the peer review system.
And the next comment, sorry, I just want to go through this because these are funny, right?
Bah, can't you see the colour coding?
Academic and feminist are clearly mutually exclusive to one another.
I did actually say in the video that I was using this for a term of convenience just to make a point, right?
I did stay in the video that I'm well, you know, a lot of these people could well be feminists as well as academics, but it's just a way of distinguishing their research and outlook on the world, because I think it's very obvious.
But obviously, Bjorn probably didn't want.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say his name.
Obviously, this guy obviously didn't see the video.
But yeah, I actually did do that on purpose as well.
Suck it.
But I wish I had thought of it.
The chat has spawned a new meme.
Apparently, it's Hail Digra now instead of Hail Diggers.
They are a fan monster.
And you cut off one head and two grow back, guys.
Does that make you Captain America then?
No, that'd be Internet Aristocrat.
Okay.
Okay.
If we're going to come up with a proper cast, we've got to sort this out.
Surely I'm more like Nick Fury.
I mean, who does the research?
I assume it was Nick Fury.
Maybe you just.
He gets shot a lot.
Does he?
I'm not actually a big fan of the Avengers.
You'd actually have to be Scarlett Johansson, I think.
She does a lot of the slew thing.
Believe it or not, I've got cracking tits.
And my ass, you don't even want to see it.
That was a fantastic revelation, YouTube.
You heard it right here.
But so someone else, she carries on.
Yeah.
The YouTube video which one of her Facebook friends has circulated notes he did not make this video.
No, I did, actually.
I'm the one who made that video.
And then someone beneath goes, the Frank Furter School.
And I just want to say that I didn't coin that term.
I didn't.
Toril Mortensen used that term.
And then, what was his name?
William Robinson used, did he say Frank Furter or did he say Marxist?
I think he said Marxist.
He didn't actually use it.
Yeah, so that's not my term, Matey.
And then obviously, obviously, and this comment I think is my favourite, and I think you'll all really agree with this.
Jesus Christ, why are these people so afraid of women?
I don't know.
Guys, why are you all afraid of women?
Why won't you just become feminists?
Why won't you just become feminists?
Forget what Emma Watson said about someone not identifying as feminist feminists.
All women are feminists.
And anyone who's afraid of feminism is also obviously afraid of women.
That's obviously.
Well, apparently so.
But apparently they're asking for nudes to confirm your chesticles.
I'll tweak the chat.
The chat has just devolved into your Captain Brit Bong, according to some people.
And you are now being blackmailed for nudes.
Oh, check Twitter.
Fucking what?
Oh, yeah, there's hundreds of checked Twitters, but I didn't.
someone wanted to come in and What am I looking for, guys?
Oh, I know.
I'm sorry that I'm not a fan of the Avengers, guys, but it's just.
It got to the point with the Hulk smashing around Loki, and I was just like, right, I think, you know, this isn't for me.
You know, I want doesn't Loki fight Thor at the end of it or something?
And I was just like, why would Loki fight Thor?
You know, of all the ways to beat Thor, fighting him directly is obviously the worst.
But anyway, yeah, what am I looking for?
I don't know.
I can't remember what you were going for, actually.
Fuck it.
I'll just carry on with these Facebook comments because they're gorgeous.
They're amazing.
That was a Twitter.
Somebody wanted you to check Twitter.
I wasn't sure what I'm checking for.
Well, apparently, people have been directly messaging you with stuff, but seriously, as somebody's noted, the comments are going at.
Online alternative to publishing in journals, they're still peer-reviewed.
That's cool.
As long as it's double-blind peer-reviewed, I don't care, you know.
As long as it's just a paper that's attempting to be backed by facts and it can be confirmed to be backed by facts, and the conclusions are logical and reasonable and accurate, that's fine.
I don't really care if it's on academic journals.
Honestly, that's what YouTube is a lot of the time.
Just Justica, if you, you know, he'll take apart what you're saying if it's wrong, you know, either in comments or in videos.
It's not blind, obviously, but I wouldn't cite it necessarily as an academic source.
But yeah, I've just got a message from Jenny Goodchild.
I'd love to hear feminist papers that have passed the peer-review process elsewhere.
No merit.
No, I imagine they have merit, otherwise they wouldn't have passed the peer-reviewed process, would they, Jenny?
But that doesn't necessarily mean by extension that all feminist papers should or do pass the peer-reviewed process, or even if they do, that doesn't necessarily mean they have merit because they may have been peer-reviewed by a fucking feminist.
Really depends on the example.
But anyway, going back to this, right?
But the same person who thinks that I invented the term Frankfurt to school says that it's gratifying to hear paranoid, ignorant ranting at a level usually associated with the American Tea Party types being read out in a southern English accent.
I don't really know how to tell you that I personally consider my ranting to be anything but ignorant.
And the ten articles in one day decrying gamers and the literal conspiracy that was revealed from the game journal prose list makes it so I'm not paranoid, it's real.
You know, so it's just this everything you've said there, and I really am tempted to mention his name, but I don't feel like I should.
Everything this guy said is just not correct from an objective factual position.
But at least Ashley Brown likes my voice as well.
Ooh, ooh, oh, oh, oh, God.
It's incredibly cringeworthy to see him.
I mean, I'm sure he needs to hear him.
Mispronouncing all non-Anglo-Saxon names, though.
Is he doing that on purpose?
No, I'm not doing it on purpose.
If you've got a name that looks ridiculous and I can barely read, let alone say, I'm going to mispronounce it.
Believe it or not, dip shit.
I'm not from Finland.
You're supposed to be a man of the world.
You're supposed to be.
I am, and I speak with an English accent.
So everything that comes out of my mouth comes out in an English accent.
But that's the end of that.
Just thought you guys might be interested to know the sort of thing these guys say to each other.
Because this is what these people do.
They say, yeah, I'm feminist.
Yeah, but fuck everyone.
You hate women.
You're all afraid of women.
Have you got anything interesting you want to mention or go through?
Not particularly at this point in time because the chat has just enthralled me.
It's just fantastic.
There is more stuff that's going to be.
You might hear the word leudology a lot.
They call themselves the leudologists and all that sort of thing.
Ludology just means the study of games.
Again, you know, just one of those things.
I've just got a bit more from the Diagram mission statement in the UK as well that just came through.
We also wish to extend the understanding of game studies beyond video gaming practices.
In line with much current research into gaming, Diagree UK events might also address aspects contingent with digital games, such as pervasive gaming, mobile gaming, board gaming, tabletop games.
No, you stop there.
Oh, stop there.
Workshop.
I have never seen a female space marine.
Live-action roleplay.
My demon prince isn't a demon princess, is he?
Oh, wait, wait.
Slanesh do like their demonets.
That's true.
Let's be fair.
Look at a demonet.
She's got a tit out.
They're going to go mental if they find out what 40k is.
They're just going to flip.
Oh, God.
I can't believe them.
God, I hate these people.
Just leave my fucking hobbies alone, you twats.
I mean, and the skateboarding feminists, and you know, the kids are just like they're only mumming up the places.
And yet they are.
They don't want to be there.
They're not welcome there.
Why don't they just fuck off?
Yeah, so they want to also get involved in action role-playing, so that's LARP, which we've had previously mentioned by people.
Card games, Yu-Gi-Oh!
What?
I don't know.
Street!
No, that's.
I forgot, right?
I forgot about this.
About, I don't know, six months ago or something, I had to leave Magic the Gathering because I couldn't afford to carry on.
I was gutted.
No, but I left at exactly the right time.
Because just as I was leaving on Magic the Gathering websites, there started to be: I'm a girl Magic the Gathering player, and this is all full of men, and I don't like it.
And I ended up getting into some massive arguments in the comments sections, as you can imagine.
I was fucking furious.
I've been playing Magic the Gathering for years, absolutely years.
I've been to loads of pre-releases.
I've come second in a pre-release, which I was very pleased with.
No, no, sorry, I came third.
I came third in a pre-release, which I was in buff, which I was very pleased with.
For it wasn't shit.
I haven't played for six months, and I can't remember the names of the sets.
The one after the one with Frex and Obliterator in.
Don't ask me, man, because Magic the Gathering just looked too expensive.
Yeah, it's amazing.
I absolutely love it.
It's just such a great game.
And yeah, and they just start.
I mean, this is just pissing me off.
I've got some other things I'll pick up.
Just like little things that have crossed my path and I don't have any, I don't really have a video to put them in, you know.
I've basically got a folder called Gamergate Aftermath because...
And I created this folder about four weeks ago because I thought this was going to be a fairly short event, and I'm really, really glad it's not.
What are we?
Are we D-Day Plus?
What are we now?
This must be over a month.
Yeah, it's well over a month now.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's quite far on.
But someone had emailed Stack Social and Brandon Robbins says, thanks for reaching out.
We're hearing this troubling news.
These people advertise on, I think it's Kotaka, yeah, advertising on Kotaku.
We want to know that we're in no way affiliated and agree the remarks that we agree with the remarks that were made.
They don't agree with them, sorry.
We're working on taking action on this right away.
Thanks for your concern for accompanying our customers, it's greatly appreciated.
Yeah, and so basically, you know, they're aware, and as with, I don't have the other emails at the moment, but somewhere, you know, I'm sure you guys have seen them going around Twitter that there are companies who have been withdrawing their funding.
So you can be sure that this is having a real-world effect, as it should.
Especially when EA starts handing down dictates, you know, it's like just reading through.
Yeah, just a Reddit post from a game journalist who wanted to remain anonymous.
I'm sure you've all seen all these, but just in case you haven't, I just want to make sure everyone is aware of it.
He says, I work for a major site, not saying which one, since my silence on all of this is obvious, and some of these are a few weeks old as well.
So, you know, a lot of them might well be old news or have missed the point.
But I just want to go through everything.
So just to say that, you know, everything that I've seen I've put out.
To put it bluntly, you're winning.
Advertisers have contacted our site and I know they've contacted others and they're fucking pissed.
This shit has gone on longer than anyone expected it to.
And it's beginning to affect the brands of people associated with ours and other sites.
They want it to stop.
And the bosses of these sites are scared.
Adblock has already cut deep into the money our site makes and I know it's slicing hard into others.
This is translated in the minds of most of my associates in inverted commas as make them stop no matter what.
Hence all these fuck gamer articles.
They're trying to push as hard as they can in hopes that everyone backs down.
The most important thing to do now is not back down.
Again, this was about two weeks ago when this was all really going for it.
They're shooting themselves in the foot.
Save any screen caps of anything crazy anyone says, which basically guys go and screen cap Phil Fisher's Twitter and just repost it forever.
Spread it around.
Get it on social media.
Spread ad block.
Spread advertising contact.
The single most effective thing you can do is contact the advertisers.
Even 10 letters can get them to call us.
I sure as fuck don't care what happens to us.
I finished getting my second degree next year and I'm out anyway.
Let it burn.
Also, fuck the escapist.
Again, I can't account for the veracity of any of that, but it sounds like the guy knows what he's talking about.
Apparently, in the chat, Pixie Jen, or someone professing to be Pixie Jen, has appeared.
Oh, have they now?
That's very interesting.
Hello, Pixie Jen.
Just so you know, Gamergate, I'm just looking at the Twitter sort of stats, and it started on the 26th.
It started on the 25th, I think, and picked up Steam around the 30th of August.
So, yeah, we're coming up to the month mark now.
But it's been just over four weeks, and it's still going, obviously.
There's a lot of people in the chat that previously were talking about us actually talking about games or yourself talking about games because it isn't something that you've actually talked about.
I'm happy to talk about games if people want to talk about games.
I don't know.
What do you guys want to know?
I'm just well, it was just a flow of conversation.
Maybe for another time, I guess.
Who knows?
Yeah, yeah, do it another time.
So, has Pixie Jenny asked a question?
No, not yet.
She's apparently not hiding, though.
Apparently, don't worry, Pixie, I believe you.
I don't think she's coming to impersonate you.
Apparently, she's happy to prove it.
I don't know what she'd be here for.
Oh, Telly, True Lincoln.
I love the Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Honestly, it's just ten times better than Wikipedia.
Every article is just so beautiful to read.
Okay, Pixie Jenny, have you got any questions?
I'm more than happy to answer.
Silence.
Give it time.
Yeah, there's a bit of a delay, and she'd ask the times.
Do you want to tell people who Pixie Jenny is?
In sort of what capacity?
I mean.
All the information you know about, just so people can get an accurate, as accurate a representation of who she is and what she does as possible.
Pixie Jenny is a philosophy student, apparently from Oxford, well, studied in Oxford, currently residing in Bristol at the moment, and is the academic coordinator, or well, books academics for some sort of geek convention that's taking place.
She's asexual.
Yes, she is indeed the one that was asexual and appeared on the BBC in a documentary, I believe, and on the website as well.
And there's been a few articles.
She was the leading asexual in Oxford at some point, according to one article, I believe.
So, yeah, so make it that what you will.
And she's typing, apparently.
The chat is still rolling on.
There's something about someone keeps on popping up about Anita Sarkeesi and Bay seems to be completely irrelevant, and it seems to go past too fast.
Pixie Jenny, if you have a question, I'd like to hear it.
Sorry, was there.
There is.
If people could just hold it, I think I might have missed the beginning of it.
One second.
Okay.
It's been spammed out.
I can't.
Okay.
Someone said they tweeted me some Digra information, but you didn't tell me what the username on Twitter is.
So I'm getting quite a few notifications, so it's hard to check Twitter.
I mean, she's in the chat and she's typing, but it just seems to go past my screen, like, before I even get to the start.
Apparently, she wants to know why her asexuality is relevant.
I was just pointing what you are.
Yeah.
What benefit do I think would be had if Anit Sarkeesian was exposed to all to have a legitimate anti-gamer agenda?
I'm not sure there is such a thing as a legitimate anti-gamer agenda.
What would that look like?
I don't know, what would that be?
Just keeping up with the chat.
Anyway, apparently Pixie Journey said, anyway, when it comes to DIGRA, what do you actually think they do, how their research works?
Right.
What I think they do is what their mission statement is, to disseminate their ideas to the world.
And what their ideas are are staunchly feminist.
And They write papers titled stuff like the hegemony of play and stuff like that.
And it's just like, what do you mean the hegemony of play?
Yes, there is absolutely a hegemony of playing gaming, and that's how it should be because it's called gaming.
If you don't want play to be important, why don't you go and watch a film?
Thanks for the chat for helping us keep up with the question.
Yeah, thanks.
People have reposted it.
Jenny has just tweeted me, so I'll reply to that.
Yeah, so how their research works?
Well, I think that they're trapped within the confines of peer review, Jenny, which is what they seem to be trying to subvert and complain about because it is, quote, slowing them down.
Now, I think that if you're just doing normal research and progressing through your career as an academic, you probably don't complain about peer review slowing you down.
You probably make sure you probably think it's an essential part of your job to make sure that you don't talk shit.
And if you are talking shit, you would think that you'd want people to tell you.
I mean, going back to one of the articles that we actually tried to read tonight, it just had obviously it wasn't the author's original language, it wasn't English, but there was no vetting on this document that was supposed to be basically used for classroom activities.
Yeah, it wasn't.
It wasn't it up for for uh sourcing to be used as a source?
Uh, it was.
It was submitted for uh 2014 in in the Diagra Library.
That's all it bait that it came across.
It was.
It was the Angry Birds One right okay um, that Angry Birds One was brilliant.
They were talking about how, what was it?
The, the physical products of Angry Birds are as important as the game Angry Birds itself, like the, the stuffed toys and shit like that, as I don't even know what to say.
Of course they're not.
How can the stuffed toys of Angry Birds be as important, unless you're looking at it from a purely financial perspective?
You know, and I think that was what they were doing.
But Jenny's got another question, how much of their research library have you looked through, and how many of them were about feminism?
I've looked through a lot Jenny, and a lot of it was about feminism.
But the thing is you have to understand that this question is actually a bit.
It's kind of a loaded question in a way, because the problem isn't that the research library is overwhelmingly not feminist or gendered, but if you look at the time scale, that research was done a decade ago.
If you look at the sort of thing that Adrian Shaw and Mia Consalvo and Shira Chess and who else was on the list?
Just so many of them.
It's it's incredibly gendered.
So much of it is all feminism based and based in this kind of it's.
Just it drives me crazy.
The, the way they, the way they do everything.
Oh, someone's just tweeted me your BBC article.
Jenny, your boyfriend Tim, has got the patience of a saint.
Sorry I, I shouldn't, I shouldn't make personal comments because I don't.
I really don't care whether you don't care about sex or not.
I really don't.
So do I think those few members are representative?
Or Digra Jenny, I don't give a fuck.
They are the president and vice president of Digra.
They're the secretary of Diagram.
They are the executive board of Digra.
They are the most important members of Digra.
apparently jenny is one of the few writers who will give us the time of day no point attacking her um I wouldn't say that people have been attacking her and No, but we should be more we should be more nice, to be fair.
To be fair, I am being an asshole.
She has conducted herself nicely.
Oh, yeah, out of all of them, she has conducted herself the most respect.
So see, the problem, Jenny, is that so many people who are saying the same things as you don't conduct themselves nicely.
And that makes us just as bad as you guys saying all gamers are twats.
I appreciate that.
And I am sorry.
and I will try to be less of a dick.
I'm not going to read any of the comments at the moment.
Guys, we shouldn't be dicks to people who are going to come and talk to us.
I would just like to know ultimately what his Jenny's modus operandi in all of this exactly, though.
I'm trying to just answer another one of her questions because it's quite interesting.
Am I aware that Diagra has multiple chapters in various places throughout the world?
So they're not the most important.
Jenny, the executive board of Diagra is the most important.
I don't think you understand how hierarchies work.
All of these people in the other chapters take their marching orders from the Diagra Executive Board.
And that's just how any hierarchy works.
They are not going to be flying in the face of their president, are they?
And yeah, I have actually listened to I think it was about a half an hour long, 45-minute long, audio recording of the Australian Diagra chapter.
And I don't know if I saved the link.
I fucking should have done.
I'm sure I have somewhere.
I'll have to dig it out.
Of the Australian Diagra chapter having a round table, very much like the Playfulest Political.
The problem is that they're all kids.
This new Digra chapter in Australia is full of kids who are just easily influenced by professor this, professor that, and they don't know any better.
It's how you guys are brainwashing people.
You don't think you are, I'm sure, but you absolutely are.
They're all using the same language and the same terminology, and they were all acting in the same way for the same goal.
And none of it was laudable.
None of it was laudable.
Or very little of it was.
And the whole establishing chapters, that's why would you do that?
What would you be trying to do?
What you're saying to me is that a feminist organization is having so much influence that they're establishing chapters, like cells of feminists in other countries that you're now claiming might well be independent from the main body.
And I'm sure they are.
I'm sure they are.
But the thing is, I've seen what Mia Consalvo and the rest say at their sort of roundtables where they sit there and saying that peer review is bullshit and vastly overrated by the industry, which I think is a real problem.
Yeah, but it doesn't...
She says, have you not encountered academic groups where people frequently disagree with the hierarchy?
They're pretty common.
They are.
And yet the people at the top still are the ones who make the decisions.
You know, that's why they're there.
So even if people are disagreeing, and I'm sure that in an almost exclusively feminist executive board, there was plenty of disagreement to go around.
And again, just read the transcript of the Playfulest Political, Jenny.
There isn't disagreement on whether what they're doing is right or wrong.
There's disagreement in how to achieve the shared objective.
This is the problem.
This is the problem.
There are no people who are saying that your shared objective is wrong because you have excluded them.
And that's the thing.
The executive board of Diagra is by vote.
So you fuckers have voted them out.
This is the problem with ideologies that I have fundamentally.
When you want to call yourself an iss or an ism, just no.
Just stop it there because you've dedicated yourself to something that you are going to vote in your own in bias.
You don't know whether this person's better for the job, but they are more in agreement with you, and so that's where you think they are best for the job.
And this seems to be a really common strain of opinion.
And I find that really offensive because I would vote for someone I didn't like if I thought they were capable of doing the job.
You know, in any walk of life, any kind of vote I had.
Or at least I would try to.
I would try to at least justify the person I liked.
I mean, to be honest with you, I'd probably like them because they were the best person for the job.
Yeah, it'd be a begrudging form of overriding your own biases, basically.
You know begrudgingly that that person would be the best and suitable candidate regardless.
I've got another.
She says, they don't make decisions about what people research in their own universities, which is how it works.
No, they don't, but they don't need to.
All of the people there go back to the universities and they are still feminist ideologues, Jenny.
This is the problem.
And then, and it's not like they aren't directly affecting the gaming media and developers.
They have no right to be doing this.
They have no legitimacy to be doing this.
By your own admission, this isn't science.
This is just humanities.
And if it's just humanities, you're making it sound like it's just your goddamn opinion.
And if it's just your goddamn opinion, pike it.
I don't care whether you guys are like...
See, play skip toy, bitches.
But seriously, you know, this sort of, well, I mean, take, was it Shira Chess's explanation of the idea of camera controls earlier?
I mean, this is a paper that is cited by Adrian Shaw and all the rest that are at this fucking thing with Silverstring Media trying to developers, and she's saying shit like, the camera controls allow you to be at once the delinquent and the authority figure as if it was some sort of voyeuristic exercise and not about being able to see around you in the goddamn game.
I mean, these people, they clearly think completely differently while playing video games.
They're on a completely different level.
They're not gamers.
They don't play video games.
They observe people playing video games.
It's like Leigh Alexander's description of video game culture as being everything that isn't video game culture.
Very small peripheral parts of video game culture, like queuing to get something signed or something like that, a convention or a conference or whatever, a con.
And it's just like, no, that's not video game culture, Leigh.
But she's got another question.
Okay, so why the issue with Diagra and not the individual universities that are choosing to hire these people then?
Okay.
So if I was concerned about Germany in the 30s, would I go to the individual places that the people who made up the Nazi party worked at, or would I go for the Nazi Party?
You know, I could say, oh, Bob, no, I was going to say Bob Chipman.
Bob Chipman's a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.
So I'm going to go to the escapist and complain that he's a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party rather than to the Nazi Party and disbanding that and attacking that as an entity because that is doing the damage, Jenny.
You know, when these people go back to their individual universities, they can't conspire to subvert peer review because they don't have a little cabal of feminists who are all on the same page.
I can link you to plenty of feminist articles in academic journals.
I'm sure you can because I'm sure there are some feminist articles that are absolutely legitimate and past peer review.
Can I just ask the question though?
What is Jenny's ultimate end goal by the various articles that she's put out about Gamergate?
What are you trying to sort of understand exactly about us?
What do you want to see happen at the end of all of this?
Yeah, I am curious about that as well.
Maybe I should invite her into the stream.
Yep.
Right, okay.
Pixie, are you following me on Twitter?
And now everyone's got to wait for me to get a response to that.
Yeah, well, well, we could start.
We need musical interludes, Spanish Flea or something.
We do.
We could go back to the chat.
The chat is just vicious as I have.
Any questions or anything funny to say?
There was something about Bob being a Nazi.
We've effectively called Bob a Nazi now, so we're probably up to date.
Bob, I'm sorry that you're a card-carrying member of the Nazi party.
Honestly, and the thing is, I'm being a dick, but I'm really not a dick.
Well, I am, but I'm not a dick when I'm talking to someone personally.
And I asked him to come on and just, I just wanted to ask him questions.
I wasn't going to attack him.
I wasn't going to, you know, I was just going to let him air his views.
And then if I had something to tell him about something he said that's factually inaccurate, I could present it and just see how he responds.
But yeah, Jenny, send me a direct message.
I'll get you on the stream.
Apparently she wants us to listen and believe.
What?
Is what the chat's saying?
Yeah, from the conference at the XOXO thing, listen and believe.
Listen and believe.
I think most people are still of the opinion that she is a shill, that she has manipulated the conversations that have happened on Gamergate.
To what end?
I've no idea.
I mean, I've always looked at it as sort of kind of muddying the water a bit and kind of diluting the sort of conversation.
But we'll see.
I'm interested to see what she says.
What is her end game?
Well, no, no, she just said, I want to see clear goals and a clear target and less attacks of liberal.
I assume she means on liberal academia without much background.
Jenny, the problem is liberal academia.
This is the problem.
The problem is that these people are able to get around in organizations like Diagra and have unwarranted influence where they don't belong.
So, you know, there isn't.
I personally am not going to stop presenting information about Diagra because the problem is that when everyone hears the stupid shit Diagra is saying in their research, there is no defending it.
Like the camera control thing is just a perfect example of the complete failure to understand why you have varying camera controls.
And these people are then talking to substring media, talking to game developers, talking to the press, talking to people they shouldn't be talking to, and persuading them round to their point of view.
Which I can hardly believe they can manage to do that, but goddamn, they must be persuasive in conversation.
Well, one of the guys from the chat has said, why don't we just set up a news agency of our own for games, and I'm just like...
Well, I'm developing a game, so I can't do that.
And to be honest, I think the market is thoroughly saturated, regardless of those that are on the ban list or otherwise.
Yeah, there are plenty of Game Against sites out.
Internet aristocrats tweeted a bunch of them.
And guys, go to them.
Just spread them.
Make sure everyone's aware of them.
Find the ones that write good reviews and have got good people who do good work.
And just make sure you stay away from the taint of social justice.
If they've got a tag on their site called Feminism, like Kotaki does, avoid.
But seriously, Jenny, get messaging me.
I want to get you on the stream, so I'm going to send you a link.
Feminists are winning, apparently, according to Adam Lanza.
I swear he's dead.
Isn't he dead?
He is dead.
Yeah, he's dead.
But there are conspiracy theories about that.
So, you know, there's conspiracy.
I love conspiracy.
They're funny as hell.
But the thing is, a lot of them have got quite convincing things.
So you think, wow, that might be true.
There's one that he's never existed because there's only like two or three photos of him.
And so what they think is that they've got photos of his brother or something and then kind of modified them or something like that.
I mean, I don't know the truth of any of this.
But it cracks me up watching it.
It's just the most exciting sort of things I can imagine.
Oh my god, this is brilliant.
But yeah, Jenny, send me a message.
I'm following you, aren't I?
I think I'm following you.
I'm not sure I'm following you.
Yeah, I'm following you.
So, yeah, I can't send you a message because you're not following me for some reason.
Why would you be following me, Jani?
While I'm waiting, I'll just see if I've got any other interesting Gamergate stuff.
My favourite, Le Alexander tweeted, silly kids, I am game journalism.
And I love that.
That is just the Louis XIV moment.
You know, just a decade or so before, well, if you decide, I can't remember exactly when he lived.
But before the French Revolution, obviously.
And then they all lost their heads.
It's just like, wow, it's amazing how history repeats itself.
In microcosm, in this case.
But the principles are always the same.
Don't mess with Leia Alexander.
She's the biggest Metal Gear Solid fan in the world, apparently.
I'll take Le Alexander out.
Leia Alexander, I challenge you to a trial by combat.
Let's do this.
Failing that, I challenge her to Metal Gear Online if it was still active.
I think the audience now is going to imagine that you just got like an armory.
I was going to go for a tip fight.
I'm just beating it up in my gigantic breasts.
Both a shield and a weapon.
You can't...
You can't...
You can't knock this.
Tell you what, this is doing nothing to persuade any of them that I'm not a disgusting misogynist.
If they can't, they can't take the joke.
I've got no idea.
None of them seem to have a sense of humor between them.
And I don't understand that.
Even if it's something I really care about, I still try to, you know, I can still take a joke.
It's quite funny over on the Gamergate side.
I've read quite a lot of amusing things and met quite a lot of interesting people with, you know, different dynamics.
And they're all quite, you know, really good at putting the humour across, even though it's a dire situation, basically.
Barry Halzer just sent me something.
Academia without peer review is not academia.
That's true.
Someone has said that Leigh Alexander, well, they're making a comparison between Leigh Alexander and Judge Dredd.
She is the lore.
Apparently.
Does she have the chin for it, though?
That's the question.
I've seen a picture of her.
She doesn't have the chin.
I don't know.
Are we going for the sliced alone or the more recent one?
Oh, Stallone, obviously.
God, that was awful.
Well, actually, I haven't actually seen it.
It's been on the list.
But a friend of mine watched it, and he was like, you know, I quite enjoyed it.
It was Carl Urban or something.
Oh, the more recent one is really good.
Yeah, it's good, is it?
Yeah, I'd watch it.
It's due for a sequel, but it binned out basically at the cinemas due to sort of poor advertising.
But the DVD and Blu-ray sales made sure that we're going to get a sequel, basically.
And there was a comic book follow-up as well.
Apparently, she's the megaphone of the lore.
Oh, God, yeah.
God, there we go.
But seriously, she's got a lovely voice.
So, you know, Leigh, call me.
I'm going to shag the anti-Gamergate crew.
I like to think.
I just make it clear that this is all said in jest.
I wouldn't touch any of them with a barge bolt.
I'll get some other Gaming Gate things.
Does anyone know much about the Polytron indie indie fund indie game fund question?
Because I've got an infographic that I was sent, and it just seems to be the most suspicious thing in the world.
I can't believe there aren't people doing more about the background and who's contributed and how they probably shouldn't have done.
I mean, I'm hoping that's actually Internet Aristocrats video that he's going to bring out.
Because I really, really want someone to take the time to go into it because I don't have the time.
I would like to know.
There's a guy that keeps on posting an article, and I keep on trying to grab it, but he keeps on going past.
It's apparently just before the Gamergate thing started.
It's a Digra article.
If you could just post it, and people just calm your shit down a second so I can copy it and we can have a look.
Right, Digra and critical distance from irrelevant megaphone.
I'm interested in hearing about this.
Right, because critical distance is, I think, I can't remember whether it was critical proximity or critical distance that Alex Lifshitz was talking at, and I was just, like, baffled by the shit he was saying.
I kind of...
I kind of don't know, are they all part of some kind of umbrella thing?
Critical, critical, or are they just yeah, I'm really not sure.
It's the it I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna look into it because I'm gonna be doing a video on that as well.
Because just the state of mind and the things that they were saying, just stuff like, oh, you can't control how you feel, so you don't have to do anything.
And it's like, yeah, but isn't isn't controlling how you feel just being an adult?
You know, isn't that just being a grown-up?
Where you have a feeling that, okay, well, that doesn't feel good, so I'm just going to have a bit of mental discipline and carry on with my life as if I'm not a giant fucking child.
Is that just me?
Maybe I'm the last one who does this.
I don't know.
And everyone's like, oh, but you're emotional.
And it's just like, no, yeah, I am, but it's controlled.
I'm happy to be annoyed as fuck.
You know, I don't go around and let it ruin my day, though.
You know, I don't need fucking trigger warnings.
Although maybe feminists do need trigger warnings.
Trigger warning.
This is a feminist publication.
Since this whole thing has started, that is the one that has grated on me.
Trigger warning, triggers.
My triggers.
I can't.
Seriously.
It made you pissed off.
That was it.
I don't know.
Can't join us because he's finishing his video.
Oh, yeah, that's supposed to be out.
Sweden is the mecca of feminism, if you can believe in BS.
Jenny's just I've just sent her a link to join the call but it's apparently not authorised to start this call.
Diger article to those that people have sent it out.
It's doesn't either I've got the link wrong or it doesn't seem to be working.
I think my internet's about to die.
No, they can't find the article.
It doesn't seem to show up on the Diagro website.
Articles, that's right.
Oh, it's something about National Women's Studies or something.
I'm just going to go back to the chat to see if anybody's got a better link for it.
Just have a quick chat to people, because I need to talk to Jenny to try and...
Yeah, it's fine.
Let's have some.
Let's have some more stuff on the window.
Although I could really do with a cigarette right now, but we shall wait.
I'll hold the line.
Such a marker isn't.
Well, we can't all smoke indoors like some people.
I shouldn't be smoking at all.
But see, this shit drives me to distraction.
Well, that's the link.
Yes, that's the same link I've pasted, but it doesn't seem to be working.
And Jesus Christ, this chat is going so fast, it ends up.
Right, okay, grabbed it.
Let's go.
The person I'm with is my primary research assistant.
I feel bad calling you a research assistant because you do such amazing work, man.
Honestly.
I couldn't have got half as far without you, but it seems like the most appropriate thing to tell people because then they instantly know what our relationship is.
But I feel like I'm a value contribution in some way.
That's fine.
To the guys, look, that link really isn't working that you're sending.
It is coming up as a 404.
Okay, they've sent you the link on Twitter.
And people are saying, some people are saying it's dumped.
Some people saying that it's gone and it's not on the Wayback When machine.
Okay, yeah, it's the same link that's there.
Someone's asked, what do you personally want out of Gamergate, Sargon?
I think you've covered that before, though.
Yeah, well, I just want them to stop talking about genitals.
I just don't care about genitals.
I don't care about sexual orientation.
I don't care about inclusivity.
I don't care about any of that.
And the thing is, I don't want to make it sound like I don't want women in games.
I don't give a fuck if there are women in games.
I just don't care.
I just care about whether the games are good.
I mean, this is a series, obviously, but I'm sure everyone's familiar with the Avatar cartoon.
And my favourite character from that is Azula, because she is such a raging fucking badass.
You can't stop her.
She's just a tank.
And she's a 14-year-old girl.
And she's amazing.
And she's literally, I'm going to do a video on it at some point because just to show why this is such a great character or something.
I don't know.
But I'm such a fanboy for Azula.
And this is the point.
And the thing is, I want games like Gone Home and Depression Quest to exist.
I'm not going to play them, but I want them to exist because it's a free market.
That's the thing.
It's a free market.
And all of these people are trying to stop it from being a free market by trying to demonize and absolutely go off the rails with things like Bob Chipman's passive or pathological hatred of first-person shooters.
And he tries to pass up and say, I don't hate first-person shooters.
I just hate everything that you would classify as a first-person shooter.
And it's just like, right, okay, Bob, that's great.
Then don't play them.
Don't review them.
Fuck off.
Review the new Mario or Sonic releases, whatever.
I don't care.
Just give the other games to someone who isn't so obviously biased against them.
Someone who appreciates the merits of a first-person shooter.
I'm thinking about organising some sort of Quake 3 arena battle at some point because that's the saying that Soldier of Fortune 2 is something I played a lot as well.
But I'm a PC gamer, so I kind of missed out on the old Call of Duties.
Sorry, Gone.
No, sorry.
As I said, I think Gamergate should be settled as a 5v5, Counter-Strike, all-star lineup, Zoe Quinn.
She can be there.
Phil Fish.
Get them all there.
Orps.
Orps.
If you want AWPs, we'll just have wall banging, flashbangs, and survival of the fittest.
Counter-Strike always solves all the world's problems.
Again, I would personally opt for a Quake 3 Arena, but that's because I'm good at rocket jumping.
Oh, okay.
All right, okay.
Well, no, but Counter-Strike's got that level.
Well, we can have some training.
You can try and blow yourself up, you know, if you want.
Yeah, Counter-Strike, again, I'd be more than happy to play it if that were the case.
I mean, you know, most first-person shooters, if you know one, you know them all, don't.
It's like riding a bike.
All you have to do is learn it.
I mean, maybe I'm being unfair, but that's not necessarily true.
But most of them, it's the same principle.
You point and click.
They die.
Yeah, Counter Strike, the point-and-click adventure.
But I played it for five years, and it kind of, yeah, it shits all over Depression Quest for point-and-clicking.
There's a lot more sort of action.
That's true.
Clicks per second.
Depression Quest has got nothing on so many of these games.
It fails on almost every metric.
I did prefer the parody game that came out because it was very limiting in its options because you ended up just basically realising you were a horrible individual halfway through.
Trying to choose the good decision, trying to recuse yourself from those situations.
But no, the game reminded you you were an awful individual and you must carry on down the path of destruction.
Basically.
The thing is, right?
The mechanic in Depression Quest, where you could see the right answer, but it was crossed out.
I actually thought that was quite good.
I really did think that was actually quite a good.
I found it frustrating, and I assume that that's what they were trying to put across.
The frustration with knowing what you're supposed to do, but for whatever reason, you can't do it.
But the problem was it was whatever reason.
Yeah, apparently, Quake Arena is too oppressive and too fast.
And it triggered someone.
I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Would you like a hug?
Isn't there a browser-based Quake 3 Arena these days?
I have no idea.
I remember the last.
I played.
The last Quake I played was Quake 4, I think.
QuakeLive.com, yeah.
Man, shit, I'm getting on this.
Your connection's terrible, though.
So if you try to do that while streaming at the same time, I think the internet would implode.
Well, mine would, yeah.
And I'd probably get into.
Oh, you've got a register.
Fuck's sake.
We are now at 1,68 viewers, apparently.
Either.
And there's a lot of people, apparently.
Yeah.
Guys, one day we'll get on this Quake thing and I'll nail you all.
I'm triggered.
That's right, I said it.
Oh, hello, Pixie.
Hi.
Is this working?
How are you?
It's very well.
Yeah, you're coming through very clearly.
Okay, cool.
Hello.
Would you like to tell people about yourself?
Yeah, I think you kind of covered it earlier.
I basically have a vague interest in nerd culture because I help run a convention and I run the academic section of it.
What are you interested in?
I'm a theology student currently.
I did philosophy.
And my area is actually science fiction.
It's not video games.
Although I write about them occasionally when I get bored.
Right, okay.
Theology, did you say?
Yeah, religious studies.
No, no, I know what it is.
What are you studying at the moment?
What religion?
Mostly the early church and Christianity and also some medieval alchemy, which is a thing you can study, apparently.
No, no, it's absolutely.
It's the precursor to chemistry.
That's very interesting.
Okay, is there anything you'd like to say or address?
Mostly I'm interested just to see how you kind of think that just attacking Diggra would get rid of the academics talking to each other because for you to say that, oh, you know, we can't go to the universities, how else would they have conferences?
They can organise their own conferences at those universities if they're supported by those universities pretty easily.
Of course they can.
And I don't want to get anyone fired.
That's the point.
I'm not trying to make them lose their jobs.
I'm trying to make it so that they have no influence in gaming culture.
Okay, so in which case do you think Diggra has a very strong influence on like I'm meaning less on indies and PR firms, but say on companies like Bioware, EA, all of those kind of ones.
We already know it does.
I mean, well, the thing is, the problem is that what Diggra says, Diggra flaps its wings and there's a hurricane in the gaming press.
Okay?
This is why I specifically said games companies, not the gaming press.
I was wondering whether you had any kind of evidence for developers.
The thing is, the gaming press really does affect companies.
I mean, look at Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed with four male protagonists.
That whole drama was absolutely whipped up by the gaming press to the point where Ubisoft were like, well, you know, it was just effectively an economic consideration, although there were story reasons to not as well.
And yet, they were gone after rapidly.
If it had such an effect, though, surely Ubisoft would now have added a female character.
At that level of development, where they were, they'd have to be.
So clearly they were confident in their decision that people would buy anyway.
I think they were based on the brand, based on what has gone before.
In which case, the gaming press obviously don't have the influence that you're kind of assuming they did in that situation.
It's just one example, though.
Oh, yeah.
But I'd like an example of Diggra actually influencing a game's development if you're claiming that's what they're doing.
Right.
I don't necessarily have the meetings and notes between all the various connections I would need, at least not at this time.
So I can't give you that.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's self-evident that it exists.
It's not self-evident if you don't currently have evidence.
That's not how evidence works from what I've been told repeatedly when I've tried to make points on Twitter.
You guys seem to really like having actual, you know, decent amounts of substantial proof before you'll accept anything.
But this is the first time that you've actually broached this side of the conversation, basically, with regards, well, from what I've seen of the Twitter feed recently.
They have had influence, obviously, with indie developers, as we've seen with the Silverstring fiasco.
So it's not to say, and we've also had, just before carry on, they've also had links in, well, their mission statement is entirely to forge those links with other companies, basically.
And so that was just the UK one, and that's obviously a recent creation.
But how far do we want to go back?
We don't know.
We don't know if it at this point in time, because that hasn't been something that we have entirely researched, as Sargon has said.
That's fair enough.
I know that you're not aware of that.
Let me know that point, because this is very relevant, and I want you to understand what I'm saying, right?
Even if I can't give you one direct example, that doesn't mean that influence doesn't exist.
And the problem is that Ubisoft had to defend their choice to not include any female protagonists.
That's the problem.
And we know that Digra deals with developers and press.
And we know the press are all talking to each other and are all very much in the feminist camp.
Okay, can I ask questions?
No, no, let me say it is it is absolutely safe to infer that there is some connection and we have evidence of connections and we're going to be looking into it more.
So, you know, stay tuned, I guess.
But sorry, what was your question?
I was going to ask, so you had a problem with the fact that they, you know, had to justify this particular creative decision that they've made.
Am I right?
Where they should have just been allowed the creative freedom?
I'm just yeah, so how does this mesh then with concentrated efforts where gamers expect a developer to justify a creative decision, such as the thing we saw with Mass Effect 3's ending?
Do you mean their customers?
Do you mean the people who paid for that?
So do you think it's a difference then about who's paying for it on who can make a demand and demand a justification?
Is that where you would draw the line?
Yes, categorically.
The people paying for the products get to tell the company what they should or shouldn't do.
Okay, so if I bought a game and then I say I would like you to justify this decision, you wouldn't have a problem with that even if it was saying why didn't you include a female protagonist?
Not at all.
And it wouldn't even be a problem if Bioware didn't give you a response either because you're just an individual.
But the problem is when you've got the gaming press, the press, going after a company because they have made the executive decision, financial and story reasons, to not include a female character and then for them to demonize them.
Read the Kotako article.
They're just like bullshit.
Bullshit.
That's bullshit.
Effectively.
Okay, here's a question.
Jenny.
Jenny, just one thing before we go on.
The chat has actually reminded me of a couple of examples, basically, of Anita Sarkeesian, her work with BioWare, her work with Mass Effect 2, and apparently Bungie as well, which I wasn't aware of the Bungie connection, but definitely with regards to the Mirror's Edge 2, there is a little bit of influence there.
She has presented conferences to, yeah, the Bungie conference, she did actually present a workshop basically to them.
there is that opportunity for her and is Anita Sarkeesian a Diggra member?
No, but she's part.
She's an advisor to Silverstring, who had the conference with Diggra.
One of my issues with this whole Digger thing that keeps coming up is that there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the fact that, especially in academia, people talk.
Like you cannot, I've been to many things that I've, I've met people that I don't agree with their views but I've had to go and engage with them because that's kind of what you do.
So kind of these nebulous links between, oh, this person met this person, it's not quite the collusion that you might see and say, well, you want to say the game's Journal Pros list.
That's different.
But with academia, it's very much, you know, people talk.
That's just kind of how you have to do it as a career.
No, I absolutely agree with you.
I completely agree.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with academia talking.
The problem is when you have an ideological think tank talking, and then they push their ideas further down the line until you get 10 articles in a day decrying the term gamer.
Are you aware that that's been building for a while?
Like that that term that has existed for about at least a year now.
Yes, because Adrian Shaw wrote a goddamn paper saying as much.
You can tell exactly where the wellspring of this idea is, and it's fucking unacceptable.
Okay, what would you class as an ideological think tank?
I'm mostly asking because I've seen a lot of people ignore the fact that C.H. Summers, and I'm not going to comment on the content of her video, mostly just the capacity she did it in, the AEI are a think tank.
That's how they describe themselves.
Do you have an issue with that?
They absolutely are.
They absolutely are.
And they could be goddamn Nazis for all I care, but all they talk about are the facts.
Okay, so your final think tanks is actually the ideas they're saying, not the facts.
Christina Summers, I don't watch the other videos from AIG.
Sargon, just King of Pole has appeared up in the house, and I don't know if you want to shout him out into the discussion.
We can do it in a bit.
I just want to ask some...
That's fine.
Just making you aware.
Yeah.
Okay, so yeah, the problem with an ideological think tank, with an ideology that I strongly oppose, that is just insanely biased, having these effects and forcing companies whom they shouldn't have any influence over.
Again, you've not yet proved the influence on companies, so I think that's not the best point of channel.
I can explain it again, though, if you want me to, right?
I understand that.
I'm just meaning if you want to stick to facts.
No, no, I'm not saying it's direct power over these companies.
I'm saying that they have direct influence over the independent developers and the media.
And this creates, there is a culture of fear.
Loads of developers have come out anonymously and said, look, there is a culture of fear in game development because of what the media is like.
And they will go straight to the heart of the big game studios if they don't have enough female representation and whatnot.
I mean, look at the, what was the Tropico thing with the gay blonde guy as the villain?
And they lost their shit.
And I'm thinking, wow, that guy's an awesome villain.
I don't even think he actually makes me want to play the game.
And this is my point.
They don't have to have direct power to have this kind of level of influence, which is absolutely unwarranted.
Okay, just because I'm watching the chat as well as you, I was about to ask, people keep saying I should stop asking you the questions and you should start asking me some tough ones.
So I'm happy for you to do that if you'd like.
I haven't really got any questions off the top of my head.
Have a think.
Just so people in the chat know, I'm happy to answer things as well.
No, no, I'm sure you are, but I'd rather you ask me more questions because your responses to my questions give me my questions.
It brings them to the fore.
So yeah, what else would you like to know?
Let me have a think.
I was about to say, you keep, I've seen the peer review thing come up a lot.
And a lot of people, not necessarily you, are acting as though it's unusual that Diggra or certain members of Diggra don't like peer review.
And I think maybe people are kind of unaware that there are quite a lot of academics who have criticised peer review for various reasons.
Some because it's not tough enough, some because it doesn't apply in a digital age.
There's a bunch of stuff out there.
Sorry, okay.
I just want to just, I need to know more about that.
Why would some think it doesn't apply in an age of the digital media?
Mostly because it's so easy for you to disseminate your ideas and there's a lot of concerns about the accessibility of academia and kind of walling it off in an ivory tower in comparison to making it a thing that people can read.
Right, okay.
But th that seems to have missed the purpose of peer review.
The purpose of peer review isn't to disseminate your ideas, surely.
Sorry, just for sorry guys, I forgot it was Far Cry 4.
I've got a lot in my mind at the moment.
Come on.
Some slack.
I play Scattered.
But yeah, sorry.
How is it that anyone would care that they think that the purpose of peer review is obsolete because it's easy to disseminate ideas anymore?
That is not the same thing.
What's the difference between thinking it's obsolete and thinking that it's flawed?
Certainly.
I mean, there's a whole bunch of parts of academia that don't involve peer review in the sense that you're meaning it.
Conference papers aren't peer-reviewed before the conference.
And you wouldn't doubt their academic merit, I would assume.
Well, it depends on the individual conference paper, doesn't it?
Oh, yeah, but, I mean, you wouldn't say, oh, you know, this hasn't gone through peer review, therefore it's awful, because that's not how that works in that area.
Yeah, but that's not, I mean, do they use them as resources?
Do they cite them?
You can cite conference papers.
Usually, though, if you have.
Like, that's kind of a thing that you can do.
The whole idea is that at a conference, the act of being at the conference is the peer review because people would hear you and talk to you.
Okay, well, that's fine.
That's exactly the point.
There is a peer review mechanism built in.
But they can talk about the conference paper and publish it without that stage, as in the conference paper is spoken before that point.
So peer review isn't an inherent part of all aspects of the academic system.
No, no, I'm not saying that it is.
And I'm not saying it even needs to be.
I'm just saying I think it's a very important part of the academic system.
And it's what gives academia legitimacy.
I agree with that.
You could get anyone getting together in a group and then starting to pump out whatever bullshit they want and proclaim it as truth.
I'd agree with that.
So why would people complain that academia is slowing them down?
Why is their agenda in such a hurry?
Because if that's their goal, it's you know, they're not saying if I publish this online, it will look like an academic peer-reviewed journal.
They're aware that by avoiding peer review, it doesn't look like that.
But that doesn't make it intrinsically somehow awful and wrong to not want to publish something like peer review.
One commenter pointed out quite well.
Conference papers don't generate grants, published papers, do?
Yeah, they generate grants, but they're not paid for.
So it's complicated there.
And conference papers will get you networking, which can lead to that as well.
Right.
But this is an interesting one.
Somebody who thinks that peer review should be mandatory.
I'd love to hear what they think peer review should be mandatory for whoever said that.
For papers that are used to get funding, I imagine.
Oh, I can see that.
It's just they didn't add the second part, which is what I'm curious about.
That just seems to be self-evident.
Yeah, but the point, right, is that if you've got a structure that gives your organization legitimacy, to say is there anything we can do instead of peer review because it's slowing us down is highly, highly nefarious.
If it's so bad, though, and if peer review is the standard of academia, the point at which they reach where they start doing that, because they would have they will state that for a start, they have stated that, Then people can judge it on its merits as a non-peer-reviewed paper.
I think the other bit that people are ignoring is, again, like I said, about these people being hired by their universities, is that they do often publish peer-reviewed work at their universities.
And that's what gives them legitimacy as an academic.
The additional stuff that they may publish elsewhere isn't.
So if you want to attack them somewhere in that angle, this is why you go for the university.
I'm actually not interested in getting them fired.
This is what I'm trying to say.
I don't care whether they carry on with their jobs or not.
I really don't.
And I'm happy for them to carry on in blissful ignorance of me, and I'll be in blissful ignorance of them.
Okay, and if they're carrying on with a job, it involves them writing papers along the lines of this sort of thing.
They can write that all they want until they're blue in the face, until they're happy as anything.
But I don't.
What's your goal with going after Diggra then?
Just to explain to people what they do.
Okay.
Because as soon as people find out the sort of things they say and what they do, people are disgusted by it.
Okay, and what effect is that going to have?
What would you hope would come of that?
It's going to help, I think, make sure that people understand that when people are giving developers shit about not having enough diversity or inclusivity in their games, that is something that is ideologically driven and can be instantly discarded as criticism because it is not valid criticism of the game.
Okay, do you so just slightly off the topic of Diggra, but what aspects of sort of cultural criticism do you think are valid to bring up and when?
I've seen a bunch of responses to this.
That's why I'm genuinely can you say that again, please?
My cover.
So what kind of things do you think should be being criticized in a game review and what shouldn't be?
Well it really rather depends on the game.
Okay.
Let's say Skyrim.
Depression Quest would be you would criticise Depression Quest for different things than you criticize Rome Total War for.
So let's go with Skyrim.
Mostly because on the survey thing I've been running, I had some interesting responses where people thought in a review of Skyrim, you shouldn't discuss racism because it's not relevant, which I would criticise because, well, it's kind of a plot point in Skyrim.
What would be your view on that?
Sorry, I hate to say this, but I keep getting distracted by the chat, so I'm covering it up now, so I can't actually see basically.
I've had a lot of Game Gate people have reckoned that say covering the racism in Skyrim shouldn't be in a review, which I disagree with because it's a plot point in Skyrim.
And I'm just curious as to whether you think that's appropriate cultural criticism.
Right.
I don't see why Skyrim having racism in it would be a bad thing if you mean criticism.
I mean, I assume criticism.
I'm meaning discussing the fact it had racism in it, not like saying, oh, it shouldn't discuss this.
Well, I've got absolutely no problem with people discussing the racist Themes in Skyrim.
Okay, so it's not.
It's only when you feel like it's not a part of the game that you don't want cultural context to be discussed, rather than at all.
It's really when you how to put it?
Okay, help me out here.
Tell me what sort of criticism Skyrim received for having a racial theme in the story.
I won't be able to link you anything off the top of my head, but I know there was a lot of discussion, and this has happened over fantasy in general, not just in games, over whether trying to use a fictional race like elves to represent racism works or whether it actually makes the problem seem less real because it's kind of making it more of a, oh, but there are different species kind of thing.
So there was discussion of whether it's a well-dealt with method.
As in sort of about whether the writing is good and whether it's appropriately written and whether it does the job it's aiming to do.
Well, the difference here that somebody has noted basically is that you know Skyrim's plot, you know, has racism, but a lot of these articles that come out try and say would say that Skyrim then causes gamers to be racist in return, basically because they're exposed to it.
That that could you link me some of those articles, mostly because I haven't seen that argument.
I'm literally pulling this off off a chat, basically that I haven't.
If anyone wants to tweet me that link, that would be amazing in chat for the for the purposes of this conversation, let's just assume that people are accurate with their information and it you know, and if it turns out to be wrong, then it turns out to be wrong.
You know no one's going to get hanged over this, I hope.
Okay, so sorry like, can you rephrase the convers?
The question again, because I've forgotten exactly how you said.
I was just curious about where your level between sort of having social context and commentary in a review lay.
To be honest right, I think that social commentary would, in games, make is is a question of artistic expression.
So I, I mean you can say I didn't appreciate the way that this was done.
I didn't enjoy it, I found it offensive, I found it bigoted, I found it inaccurate to the real world.
But they would just be opinions yeah, and so no one really has to give a damn.
Okay, do you think that game reviews aren't just opinion?
Then I think that good game reviews aren't just opinion.
No, most game reviews, I would think, would focus on the merits of the game.
Okay, so if a game review, for instance, says I think this game has very good graphics, do you think that's a factual statement or do you think it's based on the reviewers' opinions?
Well, they have to qualify.
A bad reviewer would make they would.
They would say something like comparatively, this game, this game's graphics are very appealing or, as you're saying, they would qualify what defines appealing as a category?
There are plenty of definitions for the term appealing.
There are, but what I'm meaning is I find ridiculously adorable things with pugs in appealing.
Pretty sure, not everybody does say, if you are really into ridiculously adorable pugs, this has loads of them and they look like really adorable pugs.
If you're talking about sort of call of duty, they would say yeah, these graphics are.
They tell you the the texture resolutions and they'd say, you can see by the screenshots that it looks great.
You know it's subjective, but it's not that subjective.
Okay, I'm just going to.
It's not.
This isn't my thing, so I'm not plugging it.
You should check out the website Objective GAME Reviews because I think you'd actually quite enjoy it.
It's a nice it's quite a fun one.
Okay.
Did that answer your question?
Yeah.
I that's the thing I've been getting mixed views from different people I've spoken to about it so I was just curious.
Because the thing is games not being inclusive isn't really a very important issue for a lot of people.
It's very important to a very small minority of people.
Because the problem I think that people seem to be missing is that men and women like different kind of games overall.
You know, I mean there are always going to be exceptions.
So I'm not saying every single man and every single woman.
But if you just look at the breakdown of who's playing what games, it doesn't really matter what the avatars running around are.
It's the gameplay and mechanics that really seem to decide what kind of people are going to play it.
See, I would take issue with that because I haven't seen much proof of it.
I think...
Okay, I can send you a video.
I've got it after this, obviously.
But like, I think one thing a lot of people ignore is that, say, a lot of women might not play, say, Halo on the Xbox.
That's not necessarily because it's an FPS.
That may well be the voice community on there.
There's kind of more than just the mechanics that needs.
I really like the option.
You have the option.
Did you say the voice community as in the gamers that actually talk during online?
Oh, I know you can turn it off.
Yeah, exactly.
Why would you go for that game when you could play something that you can play without having to do?
Like, I like League of Legends, but the community is frustrating as hell.
Well, you play it for the game.
I don't play it.
You don't always play for the community.
No, but it is a reason people turn off that isn't just the mechanical aspect.
It might well be, but the answer to that is tough, frankly.
Just because I would never presume to think I have the right to go to a game community where a bunch of people are independently.
They've paid for a product and they're having fun with it in the way that they want to have fun with it.
And believe it or not, a lot of guys do enjoy the combative nature of this sort of voice chat.
Trash talking is one of the most important things.
I agree with the limits.
There are certainly ridiculous presence.
They go there for that.
And they all participate to the level that they want to participate in.
Don't be wrong.
I'm not saying that racist speech and all this sort of thing.
Obviously, that sort of thing.
But that's obviously wrong.
But the thing is, I would never presume to go to a community and say, I'd never join Farmville and be like, fucking hell, where's my army?
What am I building this farm for?
Farmville, you're going to have to change all this.
I don't like this.
I would just say this is not for me.
And I'd go and find something else that is for me.
And because we operate under a relatively free market, I could either, if I couldn't find a game like that, I'd be like, oh, Christ, that's a hole in the market that's not being filled.
I'll make that game.
Okay.
I was more making that point just to show that it's not just mechanics that turn different genders off.
But yeah.
I think it is majority, majorly mechanics, because Cerberus says, you can just turn off.
You can play single player.
You can enjoy the game without playing online.
And you can probably find other games that are similar that have less aggressive communities.
But these people don't.
And I genuinely believe it's because of mechanics.
And I think Anita Sakizi and Said It Best, which said, I don't want to rip people's heads off.
That's gross.
That applies to a lot of women.
It applies to a lot of them.
That's why they play Candy Crush and Farmville.
We all know it.
Even if I can't sit here and give you the stats off the top of my head, everyone knows it.
They don't want to go around playing hyper-competitive games.
It's a very shallow analysis, though.
Just to say that the fact is that, oh, it just is this way.
That's, I mean, for somebody who's talking about wanting detailed research and analysis in games.
I did say that this was just a casual statement.
But it is true.
If you look at just the numbers, I'll send you the video so you can see the breakdown.
As I said, I agree that that's the current state.
I think just stating, oh, it just is this way does a disservice when you could be looking at why.
But yeah, I agree.
I don't think women are ever going to be big first-person shooter players.
Interestingly, that's been said about a lot of things.
And I gave an example a while ago.
A female astronaut was saying that the fact is, if you just say that and you don't look at why, you often might allow it to happen.
So about 30, 40 years ago, for instance, there were barely any female law students.
And if we'd have just said, oh, that's because women aren't interested in law, we still wouldn't have 10 years down the line.
Anita still won't want to rip the heads off of people.
Yeah, but other women may well do.
I know I.
But that's fine.
That's up to them.
But she is trying to create a market where there won't be that many opportunities anymore.
I would argue that she's not.
And also, a lot, I'll just point this out.
A lot of feminist academic types that I know who write about games really don't like a lot of Anita's videos because they're very shallow and they don't go into very much depth.
So there's a lot of more in-depth criticism out there.
It's just a shame that, unfortunately, she's one of the few ones that people listen to.
And I think it's because it's new to the genre.
Well, I'll be honest, it's only people on the anti-gamergate side that listen to her, so I'm not really that bothered about that.
This is the thing I don't quite get with the free market arguments, in that surely, much as the press might be able to have sway, if people don't care that games are sexist, let's say, why would they listen to reviewers saying, oh, it's sexist, don't buy it?
Because that's what they're saying, and they're expecting journalism.
That's the whole reason everyone's so pissed off.
Yeah, but for all this, oh, it's going to change the games industry and they're going to stop these games selling.
If you don't think their criticism has any value whatsoever, however, their idea is to try and manipulate the market.
That is the idea.
If you're buying those games regardless of the criticisms, surely your money should talk more than their games.
Yeah, but they're trying to replace the consumer base so that that is the case.
Okay.
If more consumers with different opinions came in, surely that would be the free market inaction.
Oh, well, it's not going to.
But if it did.
Do you think that the gone home crowd is ever going to number anything like the Call of Duty crime?
No, which is why I find it very weird that people suspect Gone Home will take over the industry.
No, that's not what we said.
Nobody, it is only your side that says that.
I've seen a lot of people say, I'm worried that SJWs are going to get rid of these games that I've got.
That's why I'm participating in this.
Do you think that's a genuine risk?
I personally don't because I know how free markets work.
Okay.
But I'm sure there are a lot of people who do worry about that.
But my problem is more the self-appointed moral busybodies who repeatedly demonstrate that they have no idea that the ends don't justify the means.
I mean, attacking a game just because it doesn't have a female protagonist in it and denouncing it roundly in the press, and we know now they probably did it through the Game Journo's mailing list.
That's utterly, utterly unacceptable.
Okay.
In which case, but I should say, like, I don't have an issue with the idea of boycotting sites.
I've sti I don't know how much people know what I've been chatting about on Twitter.
Um, or even, like, going to reviewers that don't talk about those things.
I think that's great.
Like, I think that's the whole point of having multiple critics available.
I would agree with you.
But now I ask, why is there an industry why is there a state of fear in the industry if your side hadn't taken over and installed it?
Okay, how do you think the taking over and installation process happened here?
Because it's not really that easy to infiltrate industries.
And I'm amazed that they managed it so completely.
Okay, so how do you think they did this?
It doesn't matter how I think they did it.
The point is now...
If you're going to claim that's what they did, you need to be able to say how they did it.
You know that's what they did.
You know the result is them printing 10 because they printed 10 articles saying gamers are over in the same day, Jenny.
I know they did.
They're going after major developers now.
Maybe a couple of hundred.
I don't have to know how they did it to see the results.
I don't expect that level of proof if you are expecting me to believe it, I'm afraid.
I don't care whether you believe it.
That's what Gamergate's about.
Your side has no idea what they're doing.
I'm not on that side.
If you've actually read any of the stuff I'm doing, I'm very critical of also a lot of the HJ creators.
It's really hard to figure out where you actually lie, basically.
I have a lot of problems with SJ cliques.
And also, I'm aware that certain people that Gamergate has been condemning as SJWs have been criticizing some of the people you have issues with for quite a long time.
For instance, I know a lot of people recently do not like Ben Couchera.
I've seen a lot about that.
A lot of people that you would consider SJs and a lot of people who I've seen getting a lot of shit on Twitter have been criticising him for at least a year or more because they've been aware of these things.
So like it's not aside that SJWs all like this guy or all collude with him.
There's a lot of people who don't as well over here.
And I feel like that's something GameGate is really ignoring and doing itself a disservice by doing.
No, I think that you're missing the point here because I don't care about Ben Couchera.
I don't care.
And I'm sure a lot of people don't care about Ben Couchera.
The problem is the culture, the whole culture that's being disseminated.
But you're assuming that people all have the same opinion when I've just stated to you they actually disagree and frequently call each other out, which is a problem with how you're viewing it.
No, listen, they're not.
Otherwise, Zoe Quinn would be but a funny memory.
So if I were to link to examples of people that have been decried calling out these people, what would you say?
Okay, no, no, go on.
Okay, who?
Who?
What?
When?
Samus Clone on Twitter has repeatedly called out Ben over the years, as has Sam Allen, both of whom have been chased away.
Well, not so much famous, but Sam Allen was chased away about six months ago by gamers who didn't.
What?
Who are they and what are their positions?
Samantha Allen wrote about games and she spoke a lot about the giant bomb hiring that happened this year and she had a lot of shit come from the gaming community to her.
Oh, I saw that.
Yeah, despite her actually talking about nepotism in the industry and critiquing it.
This is the problem.
Like, there are people on the side that Gamergate seem to have an issue with who have been calling this shit out for a long time.
And you just...
I haven't seen this brought up by Gamergate at all.
Well, why weren't they made why aren't they getting a louder voice?
I mean, how many people know about Samantha Allen?
I've never heard of that.
Given the harassment she'd got, I would say.
Can I just field this one?
Yeah, go for it.
I have heard of that.
I have seen it, basically.
And it was given some credence, basically.
But there are so many levels here, basically, and so many people that are covering different aspects of this.
And I don't think that your sort of analysis that you're doing, it doesn't always come up.
Literally, one day you're for us, one day you're against us.
I've not been for or against at all.
I've been basically critical of you guys from the start, and that was my stance.
Right.
Okay, well then, I've seen tweets where you've promoted the good aspects of GamerGate.
So you can't always be against us or critical.
Yes.
No, but some of the language that you use to our followers suggests against rather than critical, especially when you start branding people and lumping them into the same sort of catalogues that people on the other side have done.
Like what, just as an example, sorry?
Pardon?
The broad sweeping generalizations that I've been called a misogynist, a bigger.
I've not referred to Gamergate as a group of misogynists ever because I don't believe that.
No, but you've called us some things.
You have called us today, for instance, the radical elements.
I haven't got the tweets up in front of me.
But it doesn't bode well when you're kind of poking each side, basically.
It feels like you're in the middle of a ball fight, basically.
But there's two balls and you just want them to crash into the middle of each other and then want to pick up the pick.
I don't actually know what your agenda is.
I don't know what you're trying to do.
The fact is, I think there are genuine issues within games, journalism, and development, and with SJ models as they currently are.
However, I think that Gamergate is completely ignoring a lot of the criticism that's previously been done of that by people they say they're against.
And how exactly is criticism relevant?
If it wasn't listened to and it's taken Gamergate to occur to make it relevant, what difference does it make?
Because people who were involved in Gamergate weren't listening to people like this because they've written them off as SJWs quite frequently.
Yeah, okay, and with good reason because most of SJWs are all on the same team.
Except I've just literally given you examples of people who are calling out the people you're calling out.
Doesn't mean that most of them didn't close ranks around Zoe Quinn and the rest of us.
Most of them.
Most of them is the problem.
What I'm enjoying about this fact is that you seem to assume that I know you've mentioned the games, Journo Pros, that there's some kind of HQ.
Despite the fact that many of the people who wrote the game, the Death of Games articles, aren't on that list.
So weren't organized on there.
You seem to very much have this idea that there's this kind of secret HQ of SJWs and they're all linked in with Silverstring and Vigra.
And that's simply not the case.
No, that's your impression.
That's the impression unfortunately Gamergate gives out to somebody who's not aware of it.
That's fine.
You guys can keep that impression.
I would like you to continue on with that impression.
You have to understand.
It doesn't matter if the individuals who wrote the articles they wrote weren't on that list.
The editors and the owners of those sites were on those lists.
Were on that list.
They're the ones who are having these meetings.
They're the ones who are having these discussions.
And again, this is just how hierarchy works.
They just tell whoever's below them to do what they're supposed to do.
They set the agenda.
Okay, so do you think the follow-up articles, like the one on Time, were they also on this mysterious list?
Can someone just remind me what the one on time was?
Lee Alexander posted one in Time at one.
Hi.
That article got posted on Time if you think it's the collusion.
Yeah, in what capacity did it get posted on Time?
Oh, Jen Frank and The Guardian.
That's another one that I've seen.
The Guardian is wildly feminist.
Okay.
You'll be telling me they're posting articles on the Huffington Post next.
Okay, so you don't just have an issue with the fact it was a collusion because obviously you just think that the Guardian just got on board it because it was feminism, not because of some conspiracy?
Absolutely.
This is the problem with ideologies.
People who are ideologues and strongly into an ideology fall into a sort of lockstep where they're all in the same, they're all in agreement.
This is actually going to be the focus because, well, there have been conspiracies behind the events that have led to GameGate.
We know that from Game Jeno Pros.
We know it.
But conspiracies, people seem to forget that conspiracies are always small scale.
And they've always got a definitive goal.
They're not the entire organization.
The problem is the entire culture.
There doesn't need to be a conspiracy because you're all on the same goddamn, well, not you, but they are all on the same goddamn page.
So it doesn't matter.
I'm going to ask about this.
Just because I'm interested to see your view on this, if you think a point of view is becoming common, why do you think that is?
Do you feel like it's intimidation, agreement?
Sorry, a point of view.
So you're saying that, oh, there's this whole feminist culture that everyone agrees and everyone does this.
And I'm just wondering, how come you think it's got to the point where it's so popular?
Do you think people are intimidating people into it?
Do you think people just agree with the views?
How do you think?
Oh, I've definitely been intimidated into trying.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry, yeah.
Well, I think popular is exactly the wrong word to use.
Otherwise, Emma, what's the problem?
Why do you think it's so frequent for the US?
Sorry?
If you don't think it's popular, then why are you saying it's everywhere and you're seeing it frequently?
Because it is everywhere and everyone's seeing it frequently.
But it's not popular.
That doesn't make it popular.
That just makes it present.
Popular is people's opinions of it.
So why do you think it's getting published?
I agree that there has been an absolute culture of intimidation.
Ideological intimidation.
No one wants to be slandered.
No one wants to be branded with incredibly negative labels.
And feminists go out of their way to find the worst label they can think of and then apply it as liberally as possible to bully people emotionally into doing their bidding.
And then they couch, it's the carrot and stick.
Then they couch what they're asking for.
And it's good.
You should do these things because it's good.
And there's no real reason.
People who are being bullied by them are just weak-willed or easily persuaded.
No, you've got one here.
You've got one here who's been bullied.
Well, not.
I would say I have nearly lost friends over this, basically.
And is that feminism?
Is that what it wants to do, basically?
To alienate and isolate people over ideology?
I'd like to clarify here that when I've said repeatedly that I have an issue with certain SJ cliques, I have left feminist groups myself over disagreeing with their methods.
This isn't groups.
But I haven't left feminism as a whole.
These are my friends.
These aren't.
Mine were.
They were a group I did theatre with.
But that's what I mean.
I've left particular groups of people, or but that doesn't mean I've left the ideology as a whole, let's say.
The problem with ideologies is that you either are or you aren't, and the people who aren't are the enemies of the people who are.
All ideologies are like this.
Okay, in which case, and depending on how strongly you believe the ideology is how much you can be sure that, like in Cerberus' case, your friends are probably going to not be your friends if you're not following the ideology.
I've got plenty of friends who do follow ideologies, but they're not ideologues.
And so, you know, I can just disagree with their views on whatever their ideology is, and it doesn't affect our friendship.
Okay.
Do you see?
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm just trying to get so you don't have an issue with people being feminists, you have an issue with people being feminist and pushing it to extreme points.
Is that what your argument is?
Almost.
Feminism has taken on some very religious dimensions in the last five years, right?
Popular feminism.
I really think it's absolutely undeniable if you just look at the way feminists talk to each other about feminism.
They draw solace and comfort from feminism, right?
That's the province of religion.
That's not the province of academia.
That's not the province of any kind of public discourse in a secular society.
And so when you're talking about.
And do you find this kind of amusing because I keep seeing a Moses picture of Vivian James, but carry on.
Right, I mean, look at Emorson.
The first thing she was like, feminists believe that.
And I'm like, right, you've lost me.
I don't give a fuck what feminists believe.
You know, it doesn't matter because that's a belief.
It's not.
It doesn't matter.
It's a belief.
That's the point.
They always couch it in religious language.
That's not religious language, for instance.
Like, that's pretty common.
I could say English literature students believe that this person meant this thing, and that's not religious language.
Jenny, sorry to interrupt.
Sorry to interrupt, Jenny.
The chat is asking for King of Poles to make an appearance.
I don't know if you want to extend that invitation, Sargon.
In a bit, in a bit.
There are still more questions that I want to ask, basically, or just more things I want to talk about.
Because I mean, don't you see the problems with feminism?
I've already said I have a certain set of problems within it, yes, but not with it as a whole.
Right, so you don't think that feminism as a whole.
I mean, I think it's best to differentiate as well, because, I mean, realistically, if you look at society and you look at what everyone thinks, most people are egalitarians, and there's not much difference between egalitarianism and second-wave feminism, as far as I know.
I don't want to talk about the feminists who because one thing I'm sick of seeing in The Guardian and things like that is, oh, you know, these people are against feminism, so they don't want women to vote.
And that's just nonsense.
Everyone knows that's nonsense.
And that's the kind of nonsense that's being propagated.
So the problem is that modern feminism is really off the rails.
I feel like a problem that you're kind of doing here, and I've seen this a lot, is that people are assuming there is a monolith of modern feminism.
And actually the problem is there isn't.
That is the problem.
Seriously, feminism needs a pope or a caliph to establish.
Would you agree Gaborgate needs one?
No, because it's not an organization.
Feminism isn't an organisation.
That's true.
It's an ideology.
It's a belief, if you ask feminism.
It's not a belief.
It's a set of theories and beliefs that has a multitude of stuff within it.
You can be different types of feminists.
You can apply feminism without being a feminist.
Great.
And if feminism is so innocuous and, frankly, you know, not really important, let's take it out of government.
Let's take it out of gaming.
You know, if it's just, if it's just, you know, shoulder shrugging, that's just feminism, then no one has to care about anything you people say.
Oh, I didn't phrase it that way.
I said it's varied, not innocuous.
For instance, I have a huge issue with trans-exclusive feminism, and I wouldn't associate myself with that kind of thing.
Would you like to just tell us what trans-exclusive feminism is?
Basically, it's feminism or certain feminists that don't believe that trans women are actually women.
I personally disagree with that, so I would not associate with that kind of feminism.
But that doesn't mean I hate feminism as a whole.
It means that type, I have issues with its premises.
Okay, I don't think that anyone actually hates feminism.
I mean, there probably are people who hate feminism, but that's really not the major issue.
You know, the major issue is that feminism needs to be treated like a religion.
It needs to be the sort of thing you don't discuss in polite circles.
Because it really be a religion.
It's a set of, it's like a theoretical framework, if anything.
And that's nice, but it's very much like a religion.
People treat it like a religion.
Okay, just because some people treat something like a religion doesn't make it one.
I mean, some people treat football as a religion.
Well, actually, it don't.
Would you say football is a religion from the way some people talk about that?
To a lot of people it is, but football is based on quantifiable things.
Okay, what about the way people talk about conservative politics?
Is that a religion and shouldn't be talked about?
Do you have some specific examples?
There's a lot of the kind of I've seen the light rhetoric comes around, especially when you get people.
So I'm in the UK, so I have far less conservative stuff over here.
But there's a lot of religious links with conservatism, and there's a lot of I've seen the light.
We're all UK here.
I don't particularly want to talk about American politics here.
Oh, yeah, but this is what I mean.
Would you agree that that has a, you know, is the same as feminism, let's say, for the sake of what you're saying with religion?
I imagine that if I lived in America, I'd be a lot more loud about being an atheist.
Fair enough.
But the thing is, like, some people, just because some people view feminism as a religion doesn't make the whole theoretical framework invalid.
Some people view, this isn't going to be impopular, so just let me explain it.
Some people view science as a religion in the sense that, and not scientists, there is a trend of people who haven't studied science to presume, for instance, that it's all perfect and it's all great and not acknowledge some of its issues.
And that's treating it as a religion in the same way that some people treat feminism as a religion.
But that doesn't mean that you should write off the scientific method.
That just means that you should tell those people that maybe that's actually not the best way of doing it.
Okay, I'm happy to not write off the scientific method.
In fact, I'm all for that.
Now, my problem with feminism is the way that it actively subverts the scientific method by frankly fictionalizing its statistics.
See, this is interesting.
You say it, when you're actually referring to some feminists, there are others that don't do that.
I don't know.
Well, yeah, they are.
I mean, there are scientists who hate that.
The one feminist who doesn't do that is Christina Summers.
The rest of them all will say something like, one in four women has been raped.
That's a false statistic.
That's not true quantifiably from government statistics.
And they're the people who collect these statistics.
And there are feminists in government.
So if it was the case, you'd think.
Do you think it's a big feminist conspiracy by the government to fit?
No, I don't think it's a conspiracy.
I think you're just all idiots.
That's the problem.
There we go.
There we go, it was rape.
Yeah, but you, if this is not a true statistic and some feminist somewhere spouts it, and then every feminist doesn't fact check it and just goes, one in four women have been raped.
Jesus Christ, thank God I'm not one of those one in four.
You mean like the lack of fact-checking that I've seen going on in Gamergate half the time?
That's not my problem.
We're talking about fact.
My point is you can't criticise all feminism by a lack of fact checks by some.
I absolutely can when all feminists will repeat the same one in four statistics and it's still.
I'm one.
I haven't.
Oh, well then, why don't you do a research paper on how that's bullshit?
Mostly because it's not my subject.
Oh, well, that's convenient.
You offend all feminists.
But if I was to say to you, all GG people, this, all GG people, that, would you have an issue with me?
Not really, no.
You've just said earlier you had an issue with me stating generalizations about Gamergate in this very conversation.
I know.
I'm actually joking.
No, you're right.
It would be factually inaccurate to make such blanket statements.
So there you go.
Most feminine.
Most overwhelming majority.
One in four.
You have proof of that for all this talk of statistics.
Do you have proof of how many feminists have that view?
Yeah, the fact that I've only one feminist.
Do I need to?
Yes.
Is there anyone in any doubt that one in four women being raped is not the most commonly spouted feminist talking point?
That is.
It's almost the very crux of the female.
Show me this.
I'm going to question when you're talking about falsifying statistics without showing me any.
Well, okay, I'll find a link if you want.
Sure.
That would be great.
No.
Okay, if someone could just grab me a link where they're saying one in four women have been raped, or one in five, whatever they call it.
That's not what I asked for.
What I said was I would like to see how many feminists hold that belief.
Which is what you're arguing that it's most.
Right.
And if it's somehow that all of the feminists in the media and all of the articles that cite this statistic, that's all I can go on.
Okay.
I obviously have not got the means to interview every single feminist.
But if you look at the comments sectional.
Making assumptions about what all feminists believe is just demonstrably false and inaccurate.
Which is one of the things you're complaining about them doing.
Sorry, you've kind of faded out all.
Can you say that again, please?
Okay, if you're trying to say all feminists believe this, but I can't prove it because I can't interview them.
I'm not saying all feminists believe it.
I'm not saying all feminists believe it.
I'm saying the majority believe them.
Yeah, but if you can't prove that, then you should not be claiming it as a statistic if you disagree with the opinion.
I'm claiming it as a blanket statement from my impression of dealing with feminists.
So I think that most Gamergate people are misogynists.
Are you okay with that?
Find it in my opinion.
You can hold that opinion.
Okay, but you're...
You got it.
And this is what I'm saying.
This is my opinion.
I'm not saying that this is subjective.
I'm not saying that the majority of feminists have that.
You're not saying it's fact.
Okay.
Sorry?
So you're not stating it as a fact.
You're stating it as your opinion.
Okay.
But that doesn't make it factually inaccurate, though.
Do you understand that?
But it also doesn't make it factually accurate, if you understand that.
No, it doesn't necessarily make it factually accurate, but it doesn't mean it's inaccurate.
It could well be a factually accurate statement.
And I would expect the burden of proof to be on you here.
Okay, and my burden of proof is all of the articles and all of the citations of this ridiculous stat.
There are loads.
You're right.
I don't have the numbers right in front of me.
I haven't looked into exactly how many there are.
But they're so overwhelming, it seems pointless to do so because I can't find a feminist source other than Christina Hoff Summers who doesn't say that.
Okay, you're really not looking hard enough if that's the case, and I will try and send you some tomorrow.
It's like midnight here.
Yeah, but you'll be pointing out four articles out of thousands.
And you're pointing out that about other things.
Like, the fact is, if you're going to claim...
No, no, no, let's not go on to other things.
If you're...
If you give me a handful of articles out of thousands of articles that use faulty statistics and then a few don't use faulty statistics, that still makes my statement true.
If being the important word here.
But you're not going to give me thousands of articles where they sign up.
So you're not going to give me thousands back, I'm sure.
I don't need to.
You can Google any.
You can look at Google.
And you can Google as well.
This seems to be going nowhere if that's your stance, I'm afraid.
Anyway, we have a lot of let's not talk about feminists because Gigi isn't about feminism, so we should probably remove it.
Actually, no, it is.
It is entirely about feminism.
Oh, it is now.
Okay.
Why?
Okay, sorry, it's caused by feminism.
Ah, okay, because in what sense?
Are you honestly telling me you can't see feminism's influence over?
No, but what I'm seeing is the amount of people in the chat saying Gamergate isn't about feminism, and you're now saying it is, so I would just like to see some.
I'm not saying it's about feminism.
I'm saying it's caused by feminism.
Okay, which makes it somewhat about...
Feminists are the only people on Earth...
Feminists are the only people on Earth who give a damn about people's genitals.
I'm not entirely convinced by that, but sure.
Let's go with it for now.
Well, that's all I need to say.
If you stop talking about goddamn genitals, then we could...
Okay, have I spoken about genitals at all on this podcast?
No.
No, not you personally.
You representing feminists in this conversation.
Me representing the gamergates.
I'm not a criticism that I can guarantee won't be popular with you guys, but the fact is, talking about gender does not inherently mean you're talking about genitals.
Okay, it doesn't matter, right?
And that's really misrepresenting the issue.
The issue is that feminist ideologues are influencing the gaming industry.
They have no right or place.
You've got to actually demonstrate this to me in this conversation.
And you've also yet to see why it's about feminism.
I've absolutely done that, Jenny.
Okay.
I've absolutely done that.
If you think I haven't, ask people.
Ask people if they think that I demonstrated.
I mean, I don't know.
I didn't give you a question.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, you're saying Gamergate is not about feminism, but you're also saying what I have done in this conversation is demonstrate to you how these problems are caused by feminism.
How do you hold those two views at the same time?
I don't think you understand what you've just said.
Okay.
Gamergate is not about, it's not about feminism.
But that doesn't mean it can't be caused ultimately at the root source.
So if you're dealing with the cause, you are dealing with feminism.
Yes, I think so.
So Gamergate is dealing with feminism.
No.
Gamergate is dealing with journalistic corruption caused ultimately.
The cause of journalist corruption.
If the cause of journalist corruption is feminism, Gamergate is dealing with feminism.
No, Gamergate is not dealing with the cause of gamer.
Okay, so is it dealing with the symptoms then?
Yes.
It's dealing with the symptoms.
So how do you think that's going to work?
Do you think getting rid of the symptoms is going to fix the problem?
Sorry?
Do you think just removing the symptoms is going to fix the problem?
Or do you think that's the problem?
Feminism is going to fix the problem.
What did you say, sorry?
I think removing feminism is going to remember.
Okay, so that is your goal, then.
For all you want to say, it's not your goal about feminism.
Your goal is to remove feminism.
Have I been somehow reticent in that point?
Yes.
I think that feminism has absolutely no problem.
I'm saying it's not about feminism, so forgive me for being confused.
No, I'm not.
No, you're misrepresenting.
You keep doing this, right?
Okay, stay.
Gamergate.
Gamergate, the hashtag Gamergate, the people who wait on hashtag Gamergate.
Their purpose is really again, just it's not, they're not after feminists.
Okay.
They're after the journals.
They're after the influence, the unwarranted influence of all of this, right?
It's not even one specific fucking goal either, right?
But I personally am most concerned with removing feminism's influence over any of this.
Because feminism, I think, is the root and spring of this problem.
Okay, that's fair enough.
If you're stating it as your view, not Gamergates, I can totally see that distinction there.
Absolutely.
But the thing is, I think there are probably quite a few people in GameGate who understand that feminism has indirectly caused all of this.
And that's what I'm showing in my videos.
Okay.
I've always been an outspoken critic against feminism because it's insane.
Cool.
Do you want to get King of Poland or go back to Deborah?
Debra, even?
I can speak.
We can do whichever you like.
I'll ask him if he wants to join.
Can I just field a couple of questions, Jenny?
Yeah.
Sorry, Graham.
Why not identify as an egalitarian then?
It's a really trite metaphor, but I'm going to give it e because I think it's easier.
Personally, the issues that I have with lacking inequality come down to the way.
I'm not going to say women, I'm going to say the way feminine things, which is a distinction that's important in a minute.
I think society is negative about feminine things, and I think therefore a movement about feminism is necessary.
When I say feminine things, I don't just mean women.
I mean, for instance, the fact that childcare is seen as undervalued.
This harms men who want to be fathers as well as women who want to be mothers because it's seen as feminine.
Okay, I've got a question.
Sorry, what do you mean by undervalued?
Who sees it as undervalued?
Generally, society, because if they didn't, there wouldn't be a lot of, you get a lot of the rhetoric about lazy single mothers and all of this.
You get the fact that people who want paternity or maternity leave are seen as somewhat entitled and they shouldn't be having it.
You get people when men choose to be stay-at-home fathers saying, oh, but that's a woman's job.
Why are you doing that?
That's what I mean.
Okay, can I explain to you that there are very real-world reasons for all of those things?
Go on then.
I would love to hear them.
Especially the last one, actually.
Oh, well, being a stay-at-home father is unmanly.
Yeah.
Brilliant, yeah, great.
It was probably about a year and a half ago now that I was reading an article on the, I don't know, whatever, some website, The Guardian, probably, about a woman who explained how she really didn't like that her husband had become a stay-at-home father.
She found him less sexually attractive.
And she found herself resenting him because she'd come home from work every day, frazzled as anything, and he'd be fresh-faced and he'd be like, Yeah, I've had a great day playing with the kids or something.
The reason that it's unmanly to be a stay-at-home father is because women don't really like it.
One woman from one article didn't really like it, but this is the thing I should add.
I think that it does represent probably quite a large.
That's where I would add this.
When I talk about things like this, I'm not just saying that it's men that are doing this.
Women can hold views that are negative about femininity too, and I would also argue with them about that.
No, that's not a negative view about femininity.
That's a negative view.
It's associating childcare with being feminine and therefore not suited for men.
Yeah.
They don't find that attractive.
They don't.
That's not manly.
I mean, this might be.
The problem is that you might be sexual and you don't understand this.
But some women find men sexually attractive when they do certain things.
And it's a little bit different.
Yeah, and some find them when they do other things.
It's great.
Yeah, but the percentage of people who are End Father's Day wasn't started by actual feminists.
Anyway, carry on.
That was something.
What percentage of people of women, sorry, do you think?
I mean, and I'm happy to take your estimate as just an estimate.
What percentage of women do you think find men who do childcare attractive compared to those who find it unattractive?
This is something I've not read enough on to be able to give you an accurate thing, but personally, from my own experience, I have met so I volunteer with children, and whenever you get a dad come in with her children, the women swoon.
I am not joking.
Like, there are a lot of women who find men who are good with children incredibly attractive.
Not all, but there are a decent proportion.
So, yeah, but that's not the same thing, really, is it?
They're not the ones finding husbands attractive.
So, on masculinity, just something I was chatting about this earlier, and I'd find it interesting to see.
I had somebody suggest that part of masculinity was being stoic, and that's something I personally am not a fan of that assumption because it's kind of the whole you know, emotions are feminine, no emotions, masculine.
Don't agree with that.
I'm just curious if you're like talking about it.
It's not about no emotions, it's about the control over your emotions.
It's not about no emotions, yeah.
Sorry, or not showing them in public, let's say, which was the context of this.
Would you agree that that's masculine?
I would definitely say it's not feminine because the thing that I imagine is about what is masculine, what is feminine, ignore, is that it's cultural and it changes over time, and different societies have different views of it.
So, to say this is not a masculine thing, or this is not a feminine thing, is just too much of a blanket statement.
That's too much of a blanket statement.
There has never been a time when losing your shit and getting too emotional has been a masculine thing.
Or do you mean all the multiple medieval poems about men crying and wailing, or the ancient men crying and wailing over other men?
That's not inappropriate.
Crying and wailing is not inappropriate, and it's not unmanly.
It's about the time and place, you know?
It's about when it's appropriate.
And having to say I need trigger warnings on things means that you can't control your emotions to an appropriate time and place.
Okay, if you want to bring up trigger warnings, I'm happy to discuss those, by the way.
Not really, they're silly.
Okay, I disagree, but let's leave it at that.
I know you do.
I know.
Okay, I'm going to get King of Pollen.
Hang on.
Cool.
I think he has some questions.
I need it to figure out.
Sorry about the downtime, guys.
The chat's just raging at the moment.
Yeah, I can't keep up with it.
I haven't been looking at Twitter either.
Sorry for everyone for going off topic.
I think that it's relevant, though.
And I hope that I didn't derail it too much from her misrepresenting my point.
I think I made sure that everyone that I was on point there.
But I mean, I might not have been.
I think people in the chat should realize that it's quite difficult to debate at the same time as trying to watch a chat stream that's just full of absolute crap in some cases and full of really poignant bits in the other.
And it goes stupidly fast as well.
does, but we've got over 1,400 people watching at the moment, so...
And they still can't find my cigarettes, so If anybody in the chat wants to email me some cigarettes, I wish you can email cigarettes.
Oh, me too.
I'm good.
I'm good.
I've been listening for about an hour, 30 minutes, pulling my hair out at all the baiting and loaded fucking questions coming out from the other offices.
I'm probably going to find it very entertaining.
Because I've said it to try and make a point rather than to establish that it's really true.
No, it's okay.
We'll wait for you, man.
It's all good.
No, no, no.
You guys got my hear you.
Okay.
Well, how are you guys doing in here?
I'm not sure who the other person is.
Kerbera?
I can't even say your name.
I'm sorry.
I'm bad with names.
It's alright.
Cerberus.
Cerberus.
Okay.
I was going to say Kerber K.
Yeah, that's why.
And Pixie, is it just Pixie, or do I, what do I call you?
Pixie?
Oh, you can go with Jenny.
That's fine.
Okay, now, Jenny, I just want to know what do you do exactly?
Because I came in probably a little bit, like 30, 40 minutes after.
So I have no idea who you are or what you do.
Cool.
I'm a freelance writer, not about games.
And I am a student.
I do religious studies and I did philosophy.
And the reason I'm interested in the Diggra stuff is because I organize the academic part of a geek convention.
So sort of academia is sort of my thing.
Let me ask you this.
You talk about your interest in the Diggra stuff, and you want to know the connection between Diggra Feminist Movement or the Gamergate stuff, correct?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Did you take the time to look at Sargon's video?
Did you look at any like take the time just to research some of the stuff, find some of the videos out there, any chapters?
The fishbowl meeting notes and the video that discusses them and that sort of stuff.
Did you see the Australian chapter video where they were talking about simulation and very interesting things that had nothing to do really with what Digger would do?
I haven't had one yet.
Oh, you haven't?
Okay, I'll give you a little rundown if you ever get a chance.
Somebody find that link for her, if you can right now, because I don't have the time.
Basically, you would assume that Diggra would be what, studying gaming, I guess, gaming industry, right?
You know, just what happens on the internet, sort of.
And they're just a group.
It's with the Australian people, and there's another one with a you stream that we found.
They had a lot of things they had to say that didn't really make any sense, talking about agendas, using the term agenda, bringing indoctrinations, using words indoctrinations, and things like that.
It really would stick out from what you're doing.
Now, I've been listening for about an hour and 30 minutes, aside from the Diggra stuff, and from the loaded questions and the massive baiting that you've been throwing here on both sides.
I'm on these poor guys here.
I'm trying to figure out what is the objectivity that you're trying to get out of both of these guys.
Or more importantly, what's the answers you're looking for?
Because I can't figure it out because every time they would ask you a question, you shift the goalpost and turn it around and bring up something that had nothing to do with Gamergate or the Diggra stuff and turn it into a feminist ideology.
I don't understand that.
I don't think I was the one who got angry about feminism being the cause of GameGate, but Paul.
Sounded pretty emotional, but okay.
Right.
I kind of came into this chat sort of out of interest, and then lots of people said, ah, Jenny, you should come on, so I should clarify it was a little bit haphazard.
Basically, I want to see clear evidence of Diggra influencing games development.
Take your time and look up Jonathan McIntosh and then you'll get your evidence.
How's that sound?
The thing is, I also wanted to know whether people actually understood how Diggra works.
And I still don't feel like I've been shown that because all the people are under the assumption that Diggra actually massively organizes all these things and organizes all this research.
And the thing is, it doesn't.
It's a collective of scholars.
It puts on confidence in the world.
So, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Time out.
I want to just sit there, Jenny.
You're talking about collective of scholars.
Now, I can pull up the list of the people who are on the list now, and then I'll pull up articles they written from 2006, 7, and 12, preferably Maya and the president of that right now, and the majority of the board being open-border modern feminists who associate themselves with Anita Sarkeesian, John McIntosh, and people from Silverstream Media.
Now, we know about this.
We know about this from the Wayback Machine because they obviously closed all this out way back then.
Now, I know, I understand.
No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Don't interrupt me.
Now, I understand that you might not understand that.
And I get that if you haven't done the research and you don't understand that.
Well, you just told me that you didn't because if you did, if you did, it doesn't matter.
You would have known about what I just said.
I mean, if you watch Sargon's video, he went over right in the beginning in the first 10 to 15 minutes over every single person who's on the academia list.
And then he showed you the difference between the academia and the feminists.
And now, I know you want to sit here and throw out fallacies or maybe shift the goalposts like you've been doing, but I'm going to tell you right now: if you took the time to really look into who they're connected to and the fact that the people like Silverstream Media have been covering this stuff up, and we know about it from the Wayback Machine, from the iCarves, our archives, then you would understand what we're talking about.
So, to sit here and try to turn this on about their feminism or modern feminism, one in four women being raped.
By the way, I gave 2020.
Oh, no, no, no, I'm not done yet.
I'm not done yet.
We can go right back to that when I'm done.
But to turn this on to these guys and talk about one in four women being raped, kind of stuff, and trigger warnings and shit like that that have nothing to do with anything about Diggra or anything like that.
But to switch it to these, shift these goalposts and stuff like that in the beginning.
They may take the bait, but I'm going to tell you right now, we're going to stay right where we're at.
And you need to understand that Diggra, yes, there is proof out there that is doing this.
And people are still coming up with proof.
There's reasons why people from Breitbart are looking into it.
There's a reason why other people and other real journalists, not freelance journalists, but writers, real journalists, are looking into this and they're taking the information and putting it out there.
Why do you think that there is collusion going on in the Game Journal Pros?
Why do you think that people like EA are doing different things?
Let's talk about EA.
You're going off from Diggra and you're going into the Game General Pros thing.
Well, that's the point, isn't it?
Is that what we're talking about?
You wanted to know about Diggra and the involvement with GamingGate.
And now I'm starting.
I started with Diggra and now we're moving on to Gamergate.
Back onto topic.
We're not switching this.
Don't do that.
We just switched it from discussing Diggra to something else.
But let's dig it.
That was what you were asking.
So you want to see the link, and he's showing you the link.
I want to see the link between them and games developers.
I didn't say that.
I just told you.
I just told you.
Look at John McIntosh and Anita Sarkeesi.
Look at the ExoXOFest and people meeting up with Gawker Media and Vox Media.
Okay.
These people are there.
They're not.
Aspects of some people, not games development.
Vox Media and Gawker Media are the people who run Kutaku, Polygon.
Why not?
Rock Paper Shotgun.
Are you sure about that?
You want to talk about Vera?
What is it?
R's Ver?
I can't even see the name.
You know what I'm talking about, Sargon?
Is it?
Who's the one that the parent comes?
The point is, it doesn't matter.
We're not going to jump off of just one fucking thing.
The point is, is that the majority of game media is a part of this.
And that there's some parts of these people who are involved in that.
We see it in their articles.
For God's sake, I don't know if you're going to be able to do this.
I want to know.
Okay, here's what I'm asking.
I want to know why is it that you think it's okay to bring up these different types of things and say this isn't happening, but I've done the study when I'm sitting here and telling you that obviously you haven't.
Well, I'm correcting you at every single turn.
The same thing with Sargon.
And we're not going to shift the goalposts here, so don't do that.
No one's going to go.
No, no baiting.
No baits.
Please.
No, no, no bait.
I'm going to ask you is, do you think that Diggra itself, as an organization, is doing research and disseminating it?
As an organization?
I'm going to feel that.
We're not answering.
Answer his question.
He just asked me to do the thing.
Can you clarify again, sorry?
I didn't ask you one thing.
I said, I want to know, right, what answers are you looking for?
Because I sat here and gave you everything.
Sargon did a 30-minute video on it if you took the time to watch it.
And there's evidence out there that you can look into it.
I'm looking for an understanding of how research organizations in academia work, and I'm not seeing it.
How?
I just told you.
They're meeting with Anita Sarkeesian and Gawker Media and Vox Media.
These are people who are infecting the stuff that's in Gamergate.
We're seeing Google groups coming out, 150 journals talking about what agendas they're going to push and talking about feminist ideologies.
Are the Diggra members in that Google group?
Sorry?
Are there Diggra members that you want to discuss?
That doesn't need to be.
Well, then how are they linked?
Look up John McIntosh.
Okay, guys, guys, guys, guys.
No, no, we're finished now, Pixie.
You're not listening.
No, I am.
No, you're not.
No, look, I'm telling you, you're not.
You're not listening.
You keep asking the same question.
You get the answer to the question and you don't answer it.
Ask me a question, and I will answer that question.
I've asked you plenty, and I've had enough now.
What do I want?
And I said I want to see.
Pixie, if you listen on the side, no, Pixie, because I'm not emotional about this at all.
If you get the time, just look up John John McChanny.
It does not sound emotional.
Because you're not listening.
I'm not emotional at all.
You're the one that's cutting in and getting mad about what I have to say.
But you need to understand that you need to look into Anita Sarkeesian and the connection between John McIntosh.
Just stop, stop, stop.
Stop interrupting.
For God's sakes, calm down.
Just look into John McIntosh in the connection with Diggra and Silverstream Media, and then you'll have your answers.
It's right in front of you.
Take the time to research these kind of things.
We're not sitting here.
No, you haven't.
You haven't.
I'm sorry, Han.
You haven't.
I brought up simple things like chapters and stuff like that, and you had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.
No, I'm not sure.
I'm looking into research groups.
Let me reply, please.
Okay, go ahead.
And for all you're wanting to be unemotional, shouting doesn't help you with that impression.
It's because you keep interrupting.
Yeah, it's really hard.
You've been interrupting.
Halfway to a point.
Jonathan McIntosh and his links to Anita are the links between her and Diggra, yes?
No, that is one link out of many.
Okay.
So you think, I'm just getting this straight, that Diggra are influencing Anita and Anita is influencing Gorka?
No, no, no, that's incredibly simplistic and doesn't cover the...
I know.
I'm just trying to get it down to a simple point where I can easily address one of the things.
It's not a simple point.
If you want a simple point, it's that Diggra is effectively.
Okay, King of Pole, question to you.
What do you think, addressing Diggra?
What do you hope to get via talking about Diggra?
What's your goal?
I'm hoping to get awareness and people look into more of these things and maybe if DARPA can get an understanding and stop funding these kind of people who push the ideology of modern federalism and the things that don't need to be in there, like, I don't know, gaming and entertainment.
Look at back in the day of the Hollywood blackout.
How did that help anybody?
Was that a good idea?
It's the DARPA thing for a second.
Yeah, sure.
There's a lot of DARPA funding Diggra, but I feel like what a lot of you may be slightly misunderstanding is that though they fund Diggra, they do not fund the individual scholars.
That's the scholars universities.
The fact is, if you want this research to stop being done, DARPA and Diggra are not the people paying for it.
Are you implying that DARPA doesn't fund Diggra, or are you just saying they just fund different people in Dirgra?
No, I'm saying they fund the organization and that the members that are doing it.
So they fund Diggra.
So what are you trying to ask me?
I don't understand.
Instead of limited questions, why don't we go back onto the question and give me my answer?
Research.
Diggra has done occasional parts of research.
Diggra hosts conferences and occasionally organizes sessions.
The scholars who work for Diggra do research at their own universities, which is paid for at their universities.
Okay, and now what does that have to do with DARPA funding Digra?
Because first you said they funded it.
But you just said it yourself.
I said, are you implying that DARPA is not funding Digra?
And you said, no, they are funding the organization.
Listen to me closely.
If DARPA funded Diggra, what Diggra does is it hosts conferences and it hosts mailing lists and occasionally offers up a space like it's digital.
And they also write articles.
The president has many articles out there written about friends being friendly with Tunisarkeesian.
Look, I don't understand what you're trying to tell me.
What if DARPA is funding?
I get it.
I get it.
The papers are not funded by DARPA.
That is my point.
Right, the papers aren't funded by DIIPR, but the people involved in DARA and Digra are being funded by DARPA.
We know this.
Hang on, hang on.
I know exactly the problem here, right?
What she's saying is that Digra is not the people, right?
The people come from the organizations and they get paid by the organizations.
And she's suggesting that we should go there to try and get them fired, get them defunded, get them together.
Well, whatever.
Just, you know, attack them where they work, which is not what I want to do.
But your description of Digra is if you were looking at this from like if you were comparing this to sort of like a war, right?
And you were looking at a tactical map, right?
Digra would be the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal.
You know, you would, you don't try and get the tentacles of the thing.
You go to the heart of the thing.
And Digra is where all of this is able to converge.
Can I just ask you a question on that?
And be no, you can shut up until I'm finished, all right?
I'm sick of you interrupting me when I'm making a point.
This is where it converges and diminishes and becomes an echo chamber and then disseminates out into the wider world using the Digra name as an authoritative source.
That is what I'm trying to stop.
I don't care if these people go on with their careers outside of that because it won't affect what I'm doing.
So you would argue that if you went away, nobody would listen to any of the scholars.
Is that your suggestion there?
Or that they wouldn't have as much of an impact?
They would have dramatically less of an impact.
So you don't think, say, Anita would continue talking to them if Diggra failed?
Talking to Diggra or the scholars.
As in the scholars, the people that view she's been listening to at Diggra, you don't think she'd keep talking to them even if Diggra went away?
It wouldn't matter if she did.
It wouldn't matter if she did.
Why not?
What would the difference be in this case if Anita?
The difference is that Digra was originally founded with the idea of being a games research platform, like organization.
And it was literally, it was genuinely about games research.
Now, it's about feminist research.
Feminist propagating feminist ideology to feminist game journalists who then pressure companies when they don't have enough female representation in the games.
I get that.
But if Digra went away and Anita still listened to those scholars and it went on as before, what difference would you have made?
Hold on, time out.
Sorry, Darga.
Time out.
Time out.
Listen, you keep, every time we ask you something and we want to answer from you, you ask us a question.
You don't answer it.
I asked you, I've been asking you questions.
You have yet to answer almost any of them except maybe one or two.
Okay, now let's try it.
Okay, so Sargon, ask her the original question you wanted and do not respond with a question of a question so we can get the answers first and then move on to the next question.
It's a little ridiculous now.
Right.
Well, I don't even know if I've got a question.
It's more that, look, right, Anita Sarkeesian isn't important.
Okay?
She disappeared tomorrow, it would make no difference because the process would continue on without her.
This is what I mean.
This is why people are like, oh, well, we need to get so-and-so from whatever website five.
And I'm like, that's not going to make any difference because another one will take his place.
The problem is the whole chain of organizations.
So this is what needs to be stopped.
Okay.
I mean, do you understand what I'm saying?
No, I don't know that.
I just don't.
Okay, well, I wasn't really.
I was trying to answer your question, but you weren't really.
You know, you were asking for evidence of Diggra being a part of this whole Silverstring and talking to Nita.
Well, luckily for us, you know, the chat is so wonderful that they gave us a whole bunch of articles.
Here we go.
A to Zia, Diggra Letters Series Part 4.
The continuing letters series of the 2004 Digital Game Research Association conference with Zoya 3.
The newest Silverstring advisor in Silverstring PR responding to Andrew's deference.
I've not denied the Silverstring no-Digger people.
Right.
Well, what I'm saying is it's there.
And I ask you, this is going back to the beginning of what we've been going off in a tangent on over and over again with the question over question.
The point is, I don't understand what answers you want.
And when we ask you a question, you don't answer it.
But more importantly, you stay there and say you don't see the connection between Diggra and Gamergate.
And yet, I have an article in front of me.
And now you're saying, well, I don't deny that.
And now we're talking, and this article's talking about the Indigo Go-Go campaign and Kickstarter and stuff like that in this article.
And I'll give it to you if you like, and I don't care.
And it ends up talking about World of Warcraft at the bottom.
I haven't read the whole thing.
I just got it.
But the point is that there's articles out there that show this kind of stuff.
And we see this happening all the time.
And it's not something that needed to be done.
And you wanted to know what we wanted from this.
Personally, I would want Diggra to do what they're supposed to do and step away from this and let companies do what they need to do.
It's a free market.
Stop trying to control the market and using political ideologies.
There's a reason why politicians and right-wing and right-wing conservatives and left-wing liberals or socialists have come in and said, yes, we don't want any of this.
And this has been going on in academia with Common Core.
And this has been going on in politics for years and years and years.
And this has got to stop.
That's the point.
No one wants co-option.
Do you understand that?
Yep.
And that's what we want.
We don't want people attacked or fired.
We're not using those terms.
Sargon hasn't used that term.
Cerberus has not used the term.
I have not used the term.
We want things to change for the better so everybody is a win-win.
You win, I win, Sargon wins, everyone wins.
So you basically want Diggra to stop talking to people in the games industry.
No, we want them to stop being in, to just stop interacting with these people.
They need to do what they do.
They're supposed to sit back and analyze things and let it go from there.
They're not supposed to be involved or pushing things onto people.
It doesn't work that way.
Unfortunately, that's not true.
Many academic research groups do try and influence things.
That's just kind of.
Right.
So we don't want that.
Okay, so it's not true.
It doesn't mean that's not what we want.
This is what we want.
That's what I'm telling you.
I know it's not true.
Isn't just with Diggra, your issue should be with how academic research organizations interact with society.
No, that's excessively simplistic.
Most academic research organizations, yes, it is, goddammit, because Diggra's pushing an ideology.
Yes, and so are most academic think tanks.
No, they're not.
What ideologies are they pushing?
Well, let's see.
The AER are pushing conservatism and they're using the free market.
That's a good laugh top of my head.
So Jenny, you want us to look at academia, right?
That's it.
No, I basically want you to understand where it stands within the city.
I think after this whole two-hour session, what is it, three hours now, I think we understand very well the side that you're pushing.
And I hate to tell you this, but it's obvious that you haven't done your research or you would have known half the stuff we told you about.
And it's awkward.
It's awkward.
I definitely understand how academia works very well.
We're dealing with it every day over here.
You're not, but we are.
Oh, I'm not dealing with academia.
Okay, cool, great.
Well, not in America.
Are you in America?
I'm not in America, no.
Neither of these guys, apparently.
Yeah, no, they're not, but they took the time to research this stuff.
They're not sitting here being closed-minded.
A question then: is it just a question?
No, no, no questions for me.
I think I've gotten an understanding.
I think I understand where you're coming from.
You come out with loaded questions and baiting these people and getting them upset and riled up, and you just try to catch them when they're off their guard.
And when anytime we ask you to look into stuff, and I provide sitting here reading articles to you, stuff like that, then it's like you step back and go, oh, yeah, this, that, but and then you go right back into another question.
You don't answer the question, you just avoid it and deflect.
And I think I understand where you're coming from.
And from that aspect, I'm going to step away.
Ask me a question.
I think you have me on, Sargon.
I'm not demanding an answer.
I've gotten my answer.
You're asking me to give you an answer, but you're not giving me a question right now.
I thank you, Sargon, for having me on.
Thank you, Jenny, for your inputs on things.
I think everybody understands where you're coming from.
Actually, if you would like to confirm that I'm calling it, I really don't.
I got what my answers were.
I understand where you're coming from.
You're not going to answer the questions that we need to ask.
And then you're just going to give us more loaded questions.
I'd like you to ask me.
I'm not going to be paragraphs of rants, but paragraphs of runts.
Just take your time and look, you know, John McIntosh next time, and then come back when you're more prepared.
No, no, no.
This is the thing.
I've talked about John McIntosh just now.
I said his link between Diggra and that.
You seem to be thinking about that John McIntosh will exist without Diggra.
He will still have an influence without Diggra.
No, he's the catalyst to the whole Diggra thing.
But you just don't have an influence without them.
That's one of many.
Yeah, I get that.
But it's a culture thing.
It's a lot of people.
How would they have as much umph without government funding as we've seen with DARPA behind HAPA?
Just start another organization if you close down one, right?
Or they can have confidence themselves.
None of this.
It's actually stopped them practicing what they do.
It's a hydra, but you can make people aware, basically.
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm coming with you saying that.
I would love people to go through and read the archives on Digger and see all the changes and do that.
That would be great.
I would really like that.
Sargon told you this in the beginning of the stream.
It's a culture thing.
It has nothing to do.
Once again, this goes back to you wanting us to talk about removing heads and attacking people.
It's a culture thing.
Look, I don't understand what you're really going at.
Like I said, I'm not sure what you mean.
I have to go to work and get ready.
I'm sure you don't.
And I understand that.
So you haven't said anything beyond culture.
I haven't needed to.
Everybody has said it, and you just ignore it.
I've given you articles.
You bring up stupid shit like one out of four women at rape, and I give out 24 articles saying that you're wrong.
I haven't been given articles by you as we've not previously.
Okay, I gave them all to Sargon.
Sargon is more than welcome to hand all fucking 30 articles that I handle.
Great, and I will read out of the water on that.
Okay, well, take it easy.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sargon.
I hope you guys enjoy this.
God, right, okay.
So the problem that I think we've come to is that you haven't accepted anyone's points.
I have, but I haven't accepted.
No, no, okay.
What points have you accepted?
What points have you accepted?
Okay, do you mean in this discussion or gaming in general?
Sorry?
In this discussion.
Okay, I've accepted that you seem to think there are feminist skulls in Diggra.
There are feminist skulls in Diggra.
I don't seem to think it.
They are there.
No, no, no.
As I said, I don't doubt that.
There are feminist skulls in Diggra.
I've read them.
Cool.
Almost all of them.
However, not all of Diggra is feminist scholars, and I would disagree with anybody who says that.
I'm not saying you've said that.
I'm just being very clear here.
I'm not going to get into the feminism thing unless you ask.
I've said elsewhere, I do think there is an issue with SJ cliques and how they approach these things.
However, I disagree with your stance that Diggra is somehow the key link to a bunch of this.
Since you seem to think that it's Diggra itself that will be the problem rather than the scholars.
And the fact that the funding goes to Diggra doesn't mean that funding is going on the research side.
I've never mentioned funding to Diggra.
I don't care about the funding to Digra.
Sorry, that may have come up with King of Pole.
That came up with King of Pole.
I'm going to explain to you why Diggra is so important, right?
Sure.
It's the precedent.
Yep.
What do you think I mean when I say that?
As in, you know, what allowing Diggra will cause to happen subsequently.
Yes.
And so when people see how these institutions work, no matter what ideology they're trying to push onto games, people will be able to say, oh, this is another Diggra.
And that will instantly discredit whatever academic organization is trying to put whatever balmy, batshit, goddamn ideology they've corked up this time, people will be like, no, this is just another Diggra.
Look at what they're doing.
No, we're not having that.
Okay.
I'm not quite sure then what your goal is.
If your goal is to show people the research they've done and get them to assess it on their own terms, I'm totally cool with that.
I think one of the confusing factors here is that you're confusing Sargon with the entire GG movement.
Sargon has different parameters, different operating, and we're doing this by the numbers.
We're doing the research at different stages.
And we're presenting evidence for people to make their own conclusions, basically.
And we don't.
I personally don't like the way that DIGRA has been quite shady in some of its operating practices.
I've been an academic.
I've seen what nepotism and cronyism and all that has happened.
I don't like that.
I don't like the current state of academia in this country.
I definitely don't like Digra.
And Sargon's got his own perspective as well, but we are not GG.
We are not the leaders of GG.
We have a separate agenda.
Sorry, Sargon.
Cool.
No, no, that's fine.
Just to understand that.
You said that you don't understand my purpose.
How did I not articulate it clearly?
Sorry, I'm slightly lost.
My purpose is to show Digra as a precedent.
Okay, yeah, but I'm.
Sorry, I'm.
What I was saying was you saying, have you, you know, said anything that I've agreed with?
I'm personally totally behind the idea of sharing Diggra's research and what they do and showing their papers and their work and saying, hey, make up your mind as to the validity of this.
And if that's all you're doing, I honestly don't have an issue with that.
The part which I take issue with is, and I know you're not the one who's done this, but I've seen a lot of people linking the Digra into the whole DARPA conspiracy, and that is where it gets a little silly to me.
I don't know if that's a conspiracy.
I think they do actually fund Digra.
No, no, no, but people assume, therefore, that DARPA funding Digger means that people work for them are getting that funding for their mess understanding of how funding works.
But no, I'm totally cool with the idea of people showing off their papers and leaving people to read them themselves.
Because the thing is, for all you may not like some of their current views, there's a lot of good research that's gone on and is still going on, and viewing them just as a feminist ideological think tank is highly inaccurate.
I mean, if you look through their current calls for papers, they're not like feminist calls for papers.
There's stuff like a workshop on researching cognitive behaviour-based approaches to intelligent interactive game design or alternate reality games in the cusp of digital gameplay, games in natural languaging processing.
None of this is feminist ideology.
So to write them off as in a feminist ideological think tank is basically inaccurate.
It's controlled by feminists.
But it's not a feminist ideological think tank.
But it is controlled by feminists.
And they are.
But if it's not a feminist ideological think tank, where's your issue with the people in charge being feminists?
Because they are actively attempting to subvert the peer review process and disseminate their feminist ideology into gaming.
A couple of them want to publish in locations that don't require peer-reviewed peer-reviewed.
That's not subversive.
The president of Diagra was complaining about the peer review process.
My tutors have done that.
Like, it's a thing academics do.
Peer review can be really irritating.
Of course it can.
So that hardly proves some great subversive conspiracy to remove it from academic journals.
It just means they might publish somewhere that's not peer-reviewed, in which case, if they do, you can look at it and go, you know what, I'm going to count this as bullshit because it's not peer-reviewed.
And you can do that.
And that's great.
I can do that.
You're correct.
But I don't think Benka Chera can do that.
Do you understand?
Great.
Then tell me why you have it.
Whether or not, in theory, that is the case, de facto, that is not the case.
And they're using the Digra name to push their agenda.
Yeah, they're saying I'm a member of Diggra, and here is a piece that I have written, and it is published here.
And it is being taken as gospel.
And then it's not by you.
Not by me.
And that's fine.
There are people who.
But the problem isn't with Digra.
The problem then is with people viewing it and not understanding how that works.
Do you see what I mean?
Like, Ben Kachera is a lot more likely to be able to do it.
It's a much better job to go for Diggra and prevent ideological infiltration of gaming through any ideology than it is to go after each goddamn individual!
Oh wait, so you're going to...
Right, so Diggra isn't all about feminist ideology.
Yes?
It doesn't have to be.
Okay, so you're going to criticize Diggra and hope people don't listen to them, despite them not entirely being about feminist ideology?
They don't have to be entirely about feminist ideology when something like 75% of the board are feminists and a good number of those are fucking ideologues.
Okay, what I'm finding interesting about this, do you therefore think that somebody who says I am a feminist at some point just shouldn't be in charge of something like this?
No.
And if you'd watched my video, you'd know that.
Okay, so if I say, hey, I'm a feminist and then I write about some religious studies thing, do you think that invalidates what I'm writing about?
I think what invalidates what you're writing about, and it doesn't even invalidate what you're writing about, to be honest.
But I think the problem is when you've got feminist ideologues who almost exclusively write about feminism and then have meetings, let me finish, and then have meetings with various chains of people that end up with feminist ideologies corrupting the gaming industry.
Okay.
That's the problem.
Any ideology, it doesn't have to be feminism.
It could be any ideology.
Can I just ask something on how the chain thing works?
So the thing I can't quite get here is if people look at this stuff and agree with it and then talk about it, is that inherently a terrible thing?
Like, you know, if I'm not saying like, if they say, oh, no, this is great, it's proper research, it was peer-reviewed and it's not, that's a lie and that's bad.
But if somebody reads a paper and thinks, hey, you know what, I actually agree with this, and then they talk about that, is that what you have an issue with if it's about feminism?
No, but that's not what's happening.
Okay, what's happening?
I've explained it multiple times in the last time.
Yeah, yeah, no, but what you're saying to me is that these people have...
I'm not going over it again.
If you want to keep misrepresenting one place...
And what I've just said is, so these people talk to these people and they agree.
That's the same thing.
No, it's not.
But I know you think about it.
Having a meeting and talking to people, not talking to people.
I'm not going to let you continue misrepresenting.
I think we'll call now to the conversation next.
It's gone on for long enough, I reckon.
Yeah, cool.
I should probably go to sleep, actually.
Yeah, but seriously, think, just, I mean, you won't, but think about what's been said.
Okay.
I'll just conclude with what I genuinely would love to see happen with this.
Yeah?
I really hope that people go and actually read through the archives of what Digra write.
I hope they go and look through the colour papers that they're currently doing and the conferences they're currently organizing and see whether they think all of it is coming from this feminist ideological think tank or maybe there's a few members as there are in any university department or any research org with some ideologies you may not agree with.
I would just hope that people would go and actually do that research alongside watching videos and actually read the papers.
And that's basically my final stance on it.
Yeah.
Well, that's all we've ever encouraged is for people to actually do that.
I'd just like to clarify as well.
Nobody is saying that all of Digra are actually brainwashed minions.
Okay?
No one is saying that.
The problem is that it's majority, the majority of the executive board and therefore the people with the most influence in Digra and with all the connections we do have and the end result, it's too much.
It's far, far too much.
So you can say, well, if you think all of them are like that, then you're wrong.
Then you'd be correct because we don't think they're.
Okay.
Do you understand?
Yes.
I totally get that.
I just don't really see how you've made it into this huge, terrible, scary thing.
And it's just like, look, my university department has a bunch of feminists in there.
Sometimes some of them talk to people about religious political matters.
This shouldn't be a thing that if I look at it and go, oh, this department head is a feminist, and this person who works in the department talked to a government thing about how they deal with this religious issue.
Therefore, it's some feminist ideology.
That's the level I have the issue with, if that makes sense.
Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to continue taking issue with that, I think.
Cool.
Anyway, thank you for having me on.
If anybody wants to tweet at me or send me any links, I will try and read them, but not tomorrow because I'm not available tomorrow.
I'm at PixieJenny on Twitter.
Twitter, do you just send me whatever?
Like, I will try and read all of it with my limited time, but I will.
Cool.
Thanks for having me on then.
Well, actually, thanks for coming on.
I do actually appreciate it.
I know it's got quite heated, but I do appreciate having you on to present the opposite.
To be fair, I know a lot of people don't like me and disagree with me, but if there's one thing I don't like that I've been seeing from some anti-Game Gate people, it's like I genuinely don't believe you can criticise something that you don't at least attempt to engage with, or you don't at least attempt to talk to, which is part of why I've been doing the survey thing.
Because if I'm going to say I disagree with your opinions, I kind of need to know what they are.
So, you know, like, if people do want to talk to me, please do.
Okay, well, I don't necessarily agree with your position there, but thanks for coming on.
Cool, no problem.
sorry I've got to be heated guys I I I honestly thought that it would probably remain more civil than that.
I mean, I don't think I screamed any insults at it, did I?
No, I don't think I was too bad.
But yeah, it's amazing how she didn't listen to what happened.
I've never had a conversation or a debate with someone where they will just so flagrantly ignore the points that are made.
I find that incredible.
I've never seen someone barrage somebody with so many questions and asking questions sorry, answering questions with questions that were designed to trip people up.
I think she's a good debater, but it wasn't she wasn't debating an issue.
She was just it was just the yeah, it was just the art of uh provoc provocation, basically.
But um yeah.
Very interesting.
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