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Feb. 9, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
54:52
Angry Joe, TotalBiscuit and #GamerGate
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Okay, so I'm going to go over Angry Joe's video, the top 10 gaming controversies, section on Gamergates, because a lot of people have asked me to, so I thought I would.
And I will also address Total Biscuit's latest advice to Gamergate that he posted or had posted for him on Kotaka in Action.
Gamergate.
Yep, you fucking knew it.
You called it.
How could Gamergate not be the biggest controversy of 2014?
It became what was the most divisive, absolutely most divisive event in gaming I've seen in a long fucking time.
You just barely mentioned Gamergate and you got a flood of tweets from both sides.
Pro-GGers and anti-GGers engaged in mortal combat over their right to exist.
Anti-GGers claim that Gamergate is a harassment movement and anti-feminist, anti-social justice warriors, which they actually kind of are, those last two things for the most part.
But they're making concertive efforts to attack women and harass people.
And on the other side, the Gamergaters are saying, hell no, we don't give a fuck about those women.
We don't give a fuck about feminism.
We don't give a fuck about social justice warriors.
The only thing that we care about is gaming ethics and nothing else.
That is fucking bullshit.
And over here, that is fucking bullshit.
I think this is really fucking fair.
I know that a lot of people probably don't want to hear it, but I don't think Angry Joe has mischaracterized things at all here.
The anti-Gamergate people are social justice warriors.
We'll get to this, I suppose, but there's no question of it.
They're pro-bias.
They don't think what they're doing is corrupt.
And they are quite willing to slander and defame anyone who opposes them using the most harsh language.
Is it any wonder that there are large segments of GameGate and just the general groundswell that really brought everyone together was definitely catalyzed by corruption and journalism, which, of course, is a massive issue.
But anti-social justice warriors was definitely, definitely a thing.
I mean, I personally would completely subscribe to it tomorrow if we could find a no-social justice warrior hashtag.
But GameGate isn't it.
GameGate genuinely is a hashtag for ethics and journalism.
There are people who are there with the motives of fighting social justice warriors.
And god damn it, half of my motivation is to give these fuckers a bloody nose as well.
Because they fucking deserve it.
They are bad people.
That's the problem.
They're bad fucking people.
Look at how they act.
Look at what they do.
You wouldn't say to someone else that that is laudable.
Therefore, that when they do it, it's not laudable either.
But on the other side of the coin, I give a fuck about how I'm being advised to spend my money.
I am a gamer.
I spend a lot of money on games.
I expect some fucking ethical reporting.
But neither of these subjects, no matter where you fall on the spectrum, are about harassing women.
That is a nonsense smokescreen that the social justice warriors throw up because it is a powerful defense and they know how to use it.
They have been trained how to use it.
Total Biscuit goes on to say that social justice warriors aren't a thing, but I'm afraid he's wrong.
And they are a thing.
But we don't have to address them in Gamergate.
Really, we really don't.
And if you would care to look through my videos, you'll see that my videos have been very, very focused on ethics and game journalism.
Because this is a very, very concrete thing that we have.
They are absolutely corrupt.
We have documented proof of it.
We don't need to fight them on their ground, on the ground of labels and slander.
We don't need to do that.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm all for calling out hypocrisy where we see it.
I absolutely think that their instances of hypocrisy should be documented and broadcast to the world because god damn it, they shouldn't be allowed to get away with that.
But it's not necessarily a game against issue.
Both sides are wrong.
Absolutely wrong.
And both sides have truth to it.
I'm actually happy to concede this.
This, I think, is quite fair.
Both sides have been wronged and both sides have a kernel of truth.
I think that Gamergate has more truth than the anti-Gamergate position, but that's because I'm pro-Gamergate, probably.
Personally, I would actually really like to see some fucking action on the threats that have apparently been sent to the literally who's.
I would desperately like to see the individuals who have sent these threats be brought to some form of justice.
The thing is that you cannot control a Twitter hashtag movement.
It's fucking impossible to control the types of people within it.
There's no membership fees.
You're not paying fees to be a part of this.
You're not rallying in the streets for the civil right movement and identifying yourself.
A lot of it is anonymous.
And sometimes there are subversive elements, the underbelly of the internet that attach to a movement like this.
This is really fair.
I completely agree.
There is no way it can be reasonably expected that it could be controlled given that it isn't something that can be controlled.
And it's good that Joe's seen this.
And I'm actually genuinely quite impressed.
I do think it's completely unreasonable for people who oppose Gamergate to expect Gamergate to be able to control who uses a hashtag.
That is obviously beyond the control of anyone in it.
But by the same token, we using Gamergate have to remember that.
And I do genuinely believe that it is incumbent upon us to make sure that if at any point we see any harassment taking place, and I personally don't.
I personally have never seen any harassment take place using the Gamergate hashtag.
But I can't say that it never has.
I mean, I just have never seen any proof of it.
But again, it's incumbent on us to make sure that if we do, we round on it as quickly as possible.
But when I say this, I don't think I'm telling anyone anything they don't already know or do.
Hell, some Gamergaters were even knocked off 4chan.
4chan!
Because they were doxing, putting personal information, doing all this stuff against their rules.
To my knowledge, this is factually inaccurate.
They were knocked off 4chan because 4chan banned any discussion of Gamergate.
It was a free speech issue that they had an exodus to 8-chan.
Nothing to do with doxing or anything like that.
In fact, I've seen threads from 8chan where someone anonymously, of course, we don't know who the person who has done this is, has posted a dox and people have gone fucking ape shit and had it removed forthwith.
Because again, it violates the rules.
So you can't simply say, oh, well, people from 4chan did this and they were driven off 4chan for doxing because that's just not true.
I'm not angry.
I think this is down to misinformation and perhaps maybe poor research on Joe's part.
Again, I'm not angry at him, but it's simply factually incorrect.
And I've asked Gamergators several times to show me a list of their achievements.
Their list of achievements, well, I will include it in the description, but their list of achievements is relatively small.
a few ethics change rules at a few websites that they hated anyway that they don't frequent.
I'm not going to go into a list of achievements here.
But it's not about whether we like it or not, Joe.
It is about trying to introduce ethical standards to the industry.
An industry that is in dire need of them and has been for many, many years.
But yes, many websites have created or updated ethics policies.
Given that this is the stated goal of Gamergates, these are massive wins.
They did do a few charities, there's no doubting that.
Suicide prevention, hunger, you know, lots of charities in that sense.
And that's all good stuff.
And those people deserve to be commended who contributed to those charities if that money actually gets used where it's supposed to be.
As someone who has contributed to several Gamergate charity drives, thank you.
But Gamergate, the reality is, and I'm just going to give it to you, Brutal, because I'm going to piss off both sides.
I've already pissed off both sides.
They wanted me to come over.
Anti-GG wanted me to come over and destroy, put the final nail in the coffin of Gamergate, which I don't even have the fucking power to do.
And GG has wanted me to come out and be like, ah, pro-GG!
GG is the best, so that their movement can continue and be, you know, relevant.
No!
Okay?
You can be for gaming ethics.
I have been for gaming ethics.
Totem Biscuit has been for gaming ethics before the creation of the Gamergate hashtag.
And we will be after.
You can be for gaming ethics without self-identifying with a stupid hashtag on Twitter.
It's insulting to think that there are people out there who would call you not a real gamer if you don't identify with GG or that you're not for gaming ethics and you're a shady motherfucker and the only thing you care about is money.
I think this is a really fair point as well.
I think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with being pro-ethical standards and not wanting to take part in the Gamergate hashtag.
It's completely up to individuals what they do and I don't think that people should be pressured to join Gamergate if they want to remain neutral on the issue.
I really think that inappropriately pressuring people is what anti-Gamergate does.
They are the absolutists.
They are the all or nothing people.
I think that if people want to remain neutral then fucking let them.
That is great for us.
That is seriously, that is great for us.
Because that isn't another person who thinks that we're out to hate women.
And women have warped your mind and influenced you and that's why you're an anti-GGer.
It's all fucking bullshit.
That bit was bullshit.
It's nothing to do with, and I've never heard anyone say this, women warping your mind.
I'm neutral.
The large majority of us gamers, millions of gamers are fucking neutral.
And I personally have absolutely no problem with that in any way.
Stay neutral.
That's fine.
After all of the drama over these months have calmed down, you see that the GG movement is relatively small but vocal group on Twitter.
Not all of them are bad guys.
Anti-GG, you've got to stop bullying them.
You've got to stop doxing them.
You've got to stop harassing them, saying that their movement is all garbage.
I think this in itself is a very nice sentiment.
I don't actually think it's anti-GG that has been doxing.
I think it's third-party trolls.
The only doxing I've seen taking place has been from people that I wouldn't think appropriate to assign to either camp.
Because this shit is not productive.
It's not productive for anyone.
It just gives the other side ammunition.
You may as well just be loading their fucking guns, drawing their swords for them.
It is no help at all.
It doesn't really do anything either.
You know, it really doesn't do much.
I am aware of one person who has left all of this because of doxing.
One person.
and all of the people have been doxxed, one person has left.
It seems irrelevant.
It's just, it's just bullshit, you know.
And I think it's just third-party trolls who are getting their fucking kicks out of just, hey, isn't this fun?
Isn't this funny?
Look at these two dipshits on either side going at each other.
We can really, really wind the crank and piss them off even more.
Look at them go even harder at each other when all the time it was us.
You don't understand that people find identity within these movements.
I understand what it's like to create a community.
I run the AJSA.
A lot of the people within GG found GG at a rough time in their lives.
They made new friends.
They play video games.
They have a common goal.
And they're going to defend their right to exist as GG to the death.
And GGers, you need to realize that some of these people who are social justice warriors who just want people to be more civil and point out inconsistencies and the hardcore radical feminists who like to critique video games in their own way, even if you don't agree with them, they're not shitty people.
They're not fake gamers.
They're real gamers.
We're all fucking gamers here.
They have a right to their opinion.
Okay, I agree that I'm sure there are good people amongst these social justice warriors.
My problem is the hypocrisy and the corruption and the fact that they actually aren't gamers.
I think that if you went and asked them, are you gamers, Joe?
In fact, I'm not even going to tell you what their answer is.
Why don't you go and ask them?
Why don't you ask, say, Lea Alexander, if she's a gamer, why don't you go and ask, well, any of them?
Just ask any of them if they are gamers and see what they say to you.
And then cross-reference that with their previous work.
You might want to look at August the 28th in particular.
Okay?
Because you can sit there and go, we're all gamers, but you are wrong there when you say that, Joe.
I'm happy to concede that they're not all bad people.
I'm sure they're not all corrupt.
I'm sure there are members of the social justice crew who oppose Gamergate, who are not corrupt, and do know what ethical standards are and whatnot.
But they will certainly not tell you that they are gamers.
Now, Gamergate claims all they care about is gaming, journalism, and ethics in journalism.
But there is no fucking denying where the roots of Gamergate started.
Gamergate started with the Quinspacy, which is a whole separate other thing and turned into five guys, okay?
Zoe Quinn, a female developer, her angry, jealous boyfriend fucking put all their dirty laundry on the internet.
Just completely fucking doxxed all of her information and accused her of sleeping and cheating with numerous guys and she confirmed it as well, sleeping with a few other people.
Who gives a fucking shit?
Nobody.
Nobody gives a shit what Zoe Quinn does with her vagina.
However, what people care about is the Nathan Grayson issue, where Grayson fucked Quinn and promoted her game.
This, Joe, and I don't know how else to explain this, is a violation of journalistic ethics.
This is the core principle.
Why are you promoting someone without disclosing your relationship to them?
Why are you promoting?
Why is a journalist writing anything about someone that they have a personal relationship with?
They should not be doing this.
This is a betrayal of the audience.
That was fucking internet drama.
Of course I stayed away from all that fucking bullshit.
But of course, everybody read it because it's internet drama.
So you have those people and you've got and then opportunists on YouTube.
Whoo boy, they got on that shit quick and started posting their fucking videos and conspiracy theories because that shit is fun.
Drama is fun to talk about.
Oh hey, I think you're talking about me.
No, not really.
This isn't really that much fun.
It's actually really pissing me off now, Joe.
I am not happy that academic feminists lead an attack on gamers via the gaming press.
Do you know who Silverstring Media are, Joe?
Do you know what their connections to academic feminism are, Joe?
Do you know why they are linked in the gamers are over articles that you clearly haven't fucking read, Joe?
This is my problem.
You are willfully misinformed, it seems.
You are not thinking about what has actually happened here.
And don't get me wrong, I understand why you wouldn't want to be.
It's pretty fucking uncomfortable.
It's pretty fucking uncomfortable.
I don't like it anymore than anyone else.
But I'm not going to shy away from it and pretend it's not happening.
Pretend it didn't happen.
Pretend it doesn't exist.
Because I'm not looking to deny or distort reality as it is.
I mean, you haven't even mentioned the Game Journal pros list.
The one where all of these fucking journalists are on a private secret mailing list pressuring each other to conform to the prevailing groupthink.
Why haven't you mentioned that, Joe?
Doesn't that seem like an important issue when you're talking about journalistic ethics?
And it gets views quick.
And so it turned into, and then they would research, oh, Nathan Grayson possibly has links to Zoe, and Nathan Grayson writes occasionally for Kotaku and we fucking hate Kotaku.
And apparently Nathan Grayson was giving positive coverage to Zoe Quinn's depression quest because she was fucking him or had a relationship or whatever.
Which all is un, which is all is unsubstantiated, would never hold up in a court of law.
Bollocks, Joe.
That's total fucking bollocks.
And you know it.
Grayson is in the credits for depression quest.
Grayson has been shown to have given positive coverage to depression quest.
For fuck's sake man, it's cut and fucking dried.
You, I don't know what you're fucking talking about.
You are literally saying that there is a complete conflict of interest here and apparently it's just not an issue.
Apparently it's just not something to worry about.
I have no idea why he's saying this.
Come on man, I don't want to be angry at you, Joe.
I really I really fucking don't, but this isn't some sort of fucking thing you can just dismiss and cover up.
Grayson is a full-time writer for Kotaku.
Kotaku, refuse to implement an ethics policy.
They apparently refuse to disclose conflicts of interest because to them conflicts of interest aren't a problem.
But to the audience that you are meant to be sticking up for, conflicts of interest are a problem.
This is why you have been getting so much shit over Gamergate.
Alright?
There are people who watch you, who are a fan of you, who give a damn about these things.
That's it.
But and and the act and Nathan Grayson never even did a fucking review.
It's just like one mention in a little fucking indie article.
But that's where the movement was born from.
And where it turned into Gamergate is when these publications or these gaming media outlets banded together and decided that the term gamer was dead.
And that's where they fucked up.
Okay, maybe you did read them.
I don't know.
Maybe you're aware of them.
That's great.
Do you not think there's a bit of an issue there?
I mean, again, you haven't mentioned the Game Jeno pros list, which I really think is a much bigger issue than anyone is giving it credit for.
But seriously, is that not a disturbing and just alarming group thing when the press gets together and decides, you know what, gamers are dead.
I mean, have you even looked at why this occurred?
At whose apparent academic backing this received?
Gamergate wouldn't exist if Kotaku and a bunch of all these other outlets didn't band together and declare gamers dead.
Now I understand post situation, what they were trying to really say, if you read their articles, not just the title of their articles.
Believe me, Joe, I read every single fucking one of those articles.
And then I read Dan Golding's Tumblr post that was linked in all those articles.
And then I read the I paid for the academic research that Dan Golding linked in his fucking article.
I read that too.
Then I read everything else Adrian Shaw had fucking written.
So don't sit there and lecture to me going, if you'd actually read them, I fucking read everything.
And I'm telling you now, Joe, you are misinformed.
They were trying to say that the gamer culture has gotten toxic and they focus on anti-women sentiments, anti-feminist ideas, all of these different things.
That's just not true, Joe.
That's just not true.
That is exactly not what they were talking about, in fact.
The issue is that for some reason, the industry has, well, not for some reason, it's fairly obvious why the industry has a stereotype of a straight white man, a straight white young man, who is the archetypal gamer.
And they've had this stereotype because initially, in the early stages of gaming, this is what the case was.
It was primarily straight white young men, at least in the West.
Obviously in Japan, they were probably straight Japanese men.
But the studies have shown that people don't actually identify with their characters.
They identify as their characters.
And so the composition of the character is largely irrelevant.
I mean, I can think of dozens of games where I'm not even playing a human.
So it's not that I need the character to look like me.
And no one else seems to either.
It really doesn't matter.
He could be a bunny rabbit for all I care.
To quote Adrian Shaw.
Now, this is why the character has never really changed.
It's always just been the same kind of character because it's never needed to change.
You'll notice it's nothing to do with feminism.
It's nothing to do with anti-woman or anything like that.
Even Adrian Schul's research shows that gamers themselves don't care about that sort of thing.
They care about how much people play the game.
How much you play games is whether someone identifies as a gamer or not, judging by their research.
Now, for them, they're looking at this thinking, well, anyone could therefore be a gamer.
Therefore, our stereotype of what a gamer is is obsolete.
Therefore, the industry stereotype of a gamer is dead.
And the industry stereotype of a gamer is dead.
But the identity of a gamer, the people who play games a lot, that obviously is not dead.
That could not be more flourishing anymore if it tried.
This is the problem.
This was the fundamental, I guess, misunderstanding that they had.
And so it's with bizarre glee that you had Leigh Alexander and Dan Golding writing their death of gamers articles, where they so joyfully decided that they thought they could dictate and tell other people that the gamer identity was over because the stereotype that they held in the industry of gamers was no longer valid.
That's what it's about, Joe.
That is the only thing that those articles refer to.
So I don't know what you were reading, but you are wrong.
Which, for the most part, if you spent any amount of time on YouTube comments like I have, or on Xbox Live or PSN when there are females playing, you would know there is a bit of sexism in gaming.
And it's not because gamers are sexist, it's because there are shitty people who are gamers and who are going to do shitty things like that anyway.
I think this is right on the money.
And, you know, I'm feeling kind of bad that I got so fucking angry, but it really pissed me off.
You were so misinformed about those death of gamers articles.
I think I would like to have given the anti-gamers that much credit too.
And I suppose if I was a neutral, then it would be very tempting to do so to try and make sure that my neutrality on the situation was well established.
But it's simply not factual to have said that.
But again, like you say, I agree.
It's not that gamers are shitty people.
It's that there are shitty people who are gamers.
And that is always going to be the case anywhere you go.
You're going to find shitty people wherever you go.
There are always going to be a minority of people who are shitty people.
And they need to be dealt with as and when it is appropriate.
I completely agree with you on that.
Do you know what I'm saying?
But these articles were written to blame it all on gamer culture, even though that's not fucking gaming culture.
That's shitty people culture.
So they done fucked up when they made these multiple articles about gamers are dead.
And then this guy, Adam Baldwin, who the fuck is Adam Baldwin, the guy from Firefly, who isn't really a gamer at all.
He just linked internet aristocrats or videos and put the fucking tag Gamergate because, you know, right-wingers love to fucking put gate on the end of everything.
Obama gate, white gate, booty gate, Christmas gate, gamergate, because he doesn't understand.
Oh, it's just something for him to pick on and push his political agenda.
I'm sure he does have a political agenda, but there is currently a very valid concern here.
I'm not really a fan of the hatred of the right wing.
I'm not right-wing.
I'm center-left like most British people are.
Even people who might well consider themselves to be right-wing in Britain are very much on the left.
So none of this makes any odds to me.
I'm really not fussed.
But I don't think that the inherent bigotry against the right is valid.
I think that it's not, you can't simply just say, well, they're right-wing, therefore they must be wrong.
This isn't something that he is inherently wrong on, just because Adam Baldwin isn't a gamer or right-wing.
These are in fact ad hominem arguments, Joe.
And I noticed a bunch of, a bunch of people latch onto the Gamergate movement early who are staunch right-winger conservatives.
It was really weird to see.
And many of them, not even gamers, and admit that they're not gamers.
I think there was a guy named Milo who made it a point to try to debate people within.
It's just, it made no fucking sense to me.
And this thing just spiraled out of control.
And just people, you know, what happened is, is, you know, people like Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu were getting a lot of fucking harassment.
Their personal information was out there.
A lot of shitty people were harassing them.
Period.
Exactly the same thing happened to me, Joe.
Exactly the same thing happened to me.
Why aren't you crying crocodile tears for me?
This is the exact thing, isn't it?
This is the thing, it's, they are professional victims, Joe.
They're currently profiting from the fact that they can scream harassment.
They are profiting from it.
And it is no good for anyone in Gamergate to do anything that they want.
They are profiting from being harassed and doxed and whatnot.
If anyone in Gamergate feeds into that, then they're fucking idiots.
Anyone in Gamergate engaging in any of that kind of behavior is a fucking retard.
That is just handing victories to the enemy.
What is the fucking point in that?
And it defies logic that anyone in Gamergate would want to do anything of the sort.
And like I said, I have been doxed.
What?
Do you think it was someone in Gamergate who doxed me?
Of course not.
It was a fucking third-party troll.
Just like I suspect, third-party trolls have been going after Brianna Wu and Quinn and whoever.
It's just not something that someone who legitimately cared about Gamergate would think to do unless, of course, and I'm not going to rule out that there aren't fucking idiots in Gamergate.
I'm sure there are fucking idiots everywhere.
So I'm sure we've got our fair share of morons.
But it really would be counterproductive.
That shit actually happened.
I know there's conspiracy theories, but they never once received one bad tweet and she didn't actually leave her house at all even because there are pictures that show this fucking proof.
It's fucking bullshit conspiracy theory crap.
I don't think anyone's saying that they never receive any bad tweets.
Zoe Quinn, Brana Wu, and these Sarkeesian, they've been receiving bad tweets for God knows how long.
Ever since they became public figures.
That's not what anyone's saying, I don't think.
I think that's a mischaracterization of the argument.
I think the argument is, how is this connected to Gamergate?
Like I said, these people have been receiving threats and bad tweets and whatnot since long before Gamergate began because I think that they are the sort of person that rubs another sort of person up in exactly the wrong way.
I'm not condoning this in any way.
I don't think any threats should be sent to anyone because it enables professional victims to carry on being professional victims.
But again, I don't really think that, or at least I've seen no proof that any of this comes from Gamergate.
I mean, the death to Brianna one seemed awfully specific.
And Kevin Dobson, whoever Kevin Dobson is, just an egg account.
With a real name, as if anyone's going to send fucking threats with their real name.
So, I mean, just they're anonymous threats, man.
No one's saying that they're not receiving them.
they're saying that it's nothing to do with us because you can't prove no one can prove that this has anything to do with anyone who's actually involved in fucking Gamergate That's the problem.
And if you can, let us fucking know.
We will go and get them and sort them the fuck out.
You know, I'm pretty sure that we can force them to make public apologies or we can completely fucking ostracize them or something.
Okay, these girls were harassed and they deal with this type of harassment all the fucking time.
And that doesn't mean that the Gamergate movement was created specifically to harass women.
It means people within Gamergate at the time were still a part of this whole five guys and public slut shaming and who did she have sex with and oh, she's a terrible person because she's having sex with all these different guys and all this stuff.
So all that stuff was still a part of this community that formed Gamergate.
Zoe Quinn's numerous character flaws are literally nothing to do with me and I don't care.
I care about people like Nathan Grayson who are allowed to cover the people they're fucking and promote their games, promote their products.
I care that Stephen Totillo won't address this.
Grayson should have absolutely recused himself from any kind of coverage of Zoe Quinn.
He should never have typed her name into a computer and sent it to Kotaku for publishing.
Not once.
And yet he did.
And yet Stephen Totillo, he still has a job with Kotaku.
So this is the problem.
Joe.
It's not about Zoe Quinn's low character.
It's about the fact that the gaming press is fucking corrupt.
And a lot of that stuff got, you know, pushed and kept going.
And then I would go through Gamergators tweets just to see what else they would tweet.
And it's filled with anti-feminist stuff.
Like, they fucking hate Anita Sarkeesian.
There's really offensive shit in there.
Feminism is an ideology.
Anit Sarkeesian is a con artist.
Offense isn't really anyone's issue.
I don't care how offended people are by criticism of Anita Sarkeesian.
The criticism of Sarkeesian is warranted.
The criticism of feminism is warranted.
But I agree that we don't need to be talking about feminism and Gamergate or Anit Sarkeesian and Gamergate.
Again, if you look at my Gamergate videos, you will find they are remarkably on point when it comes to talking about journalistic impropriety.
That is what we need to talk about when talking about Gamergate.
Anita Sarkeesian, I'm sorry, and what, Leia Alexander, they were hammering those girls in jail.
Whoa, right, okay, no, no, no, no, Joe, you don't get to lump Leia Alexander in the same category as Anit Sarkeesian.
Leia Alexander is the editor of a fucking journalistic press outlet.
She is the editor-in-chief of Gama Sutra.
She is also someone who needs an ethics policy and her ethics policy is get money, fight quote-unquote bullshit, and make sure the people she loves are standing last.
That is not an ethics policy.
And Leia Alexander is not exempt from criticism based on her being a girl.
That's fucking sexist, Joe.
Women are full and equal partners in this world.
You do not simply get to dismiss them on the grounds of their sex.
They are fully adult human beings, Joe, and must be treated as such.
Just like totally, you know, being really fucking mean about it.
And I noticed this trend with a lot of Gamergaters.
Maybe I was looking at the bad ones.
And I eventually realized that, yes, there are really good people within Gamergate.
The problem is it's a fucking hashtag movement.
You cannot control people within a hashtag movement.
And I'm saying there's blame to go around on both sides.
Anti-GG have been harassing GGers, doxing them and doing really fucked up shit.
And the same thing with GGers, doxing and doing really fucked up shit.
shit against the anti-GGers and it needs to fucking stop.
It needs to fucking stop.
If it's about gaming ethics, more needs to be accomplished by the Gamergate movement.
And I encourage them to continue to do their charities, to continue to, you know, seek out better gaming journalism.
And for you anti-GGers who want the movement to be completely destroyed, stop it.
You're mad at the elements within GamerGators.
Maybe it's origins that came from fucking creeping on some girl's personal information and life and fucked up personal problems.
People have problems all the fucking time.
It's not our fucking business.
Oh, what she did.
Joe, is what she did fucked up?
Yeah, it's fucked up, but it's not your fucking business.
What does that have to do with gaming?
It doesn't.
Very little has to do with gaming at all.
Gaming ethics at all.
Yeah, you could say all claim conflict of interest.
That's great.
That's the stuff that you want to go after.
Go after it.
But a lot of the things that came with GamerGators is a lot of this other bullshit.
And I've seen a lot of it on the internet.
You know, the 8-hand threads about me, about like this and that.
It's just, it gets fucking crazy out there, guys.
See, it comes to this point where I think that maybe, maybe we owe Joe an apology.
I'm going to talk from personal experience of being a public figure.
It's not easy.
I've only got 60,000 subscribers if I had over a million subscribers and I was putting out a controversial opinion and people and that's the difference People like Joe, he cares about his audience.
He cares about what they think and what they say and what they do.
And he cares about people's opinions of him.
You can tell.
And I can really relate to that.
And it's really not easy.
I mean, I get a lot of support from people watching my channel.
And the people who want my time generally want my time to be complimentary or to be supportive.
And even that gets to be quite overwhelming when you're not used to it.
And even when you are used to it, I think.
You know, I can see why King of Paul had his moments.
You know, I really can.
And so I really can see why this has been a lot of stress for Joe.
And it's something that I don't wish on him.
I mean, I'm annoyed that he has been factually incorrect at certain points.
But it's not any personal animus against Joe.
Because, you know, I get the feeling that if I was sat down playing some games with Joe, I'd probably have a really fucking good time.
And he's probably a really decent bloke.
You know, and I can see why he would want to remain neutral.
Just be like, you know, you guys just, if you want to carry on doing it, okay, fine.
Leave out the, you know, any harassment and abuse, which anyone is going to agree to.
No one is in favor of harassment or abuse or anything like that.
And stick with journalistic ethics, which indeed we should.
You know, I mean, I just want to make something clear.
I'm not even against the idea of feminism in gaming.
If feminists want to make games and produce games, then great, do it.
You know?
But answer to your critics.
If you are saying things that are not true, you must address those criticisms and either correct your position or accept that you were wrong.
But that doesn't mean that games like Gone Home and whatever, the Stanley Parable, you know, these Revolution 60, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be on Steam.
It doesn't mean that they shouldn't be available for people to buy.
I believe in a free marketplace.
I honestly think that people should be given the choice and be able to decide on their own what they want and what they don't want.
And things that deserve to rise will rise and things that do not deserve to rise will not.
That's honestly my thoughts on it.
But conversely, I don't believe that academic feminists should be allowed to meddle with secretive organizations like Silverstring Media, who have got remarkable and unwarranted influence in the gaming press to get them to march in lockstep with their fucking ideology, which is what is happening.
And on this fucking Game Journal pros list and all this sort of shit, these people shouldn't be allowed to do this, or at least it shouldn't go unchallenged.
And I will absolutely not apologize for being a critic of these things, because they deserve to be criticized.
You Gamergaters need to watch out.
And so, watch out for the elements that are within your own thing, and you need to police your own thing.
I know it's very difficult.
It's almost impossible to.
I don't envy your job, but honestly, I'm tired of hearing about Gamergate.
I'm tired of it because you could be for gaming ethics without the hashtag.
And the same people who are in Gamergate right now are probably the same people who would have tweeted anyway about, hey, that's some fucked up shit.
Let's all talk about that.
But they didn't just put the hashtag GG.
You could still do that.
But if you want to identify with GG, that's great.
You know, it's your prerogative.
That's what you want to do.
But I'd say at this point, the Gamergate stuff, as far as how it has been portrayed in the media, either fairly or unfairly in your opinion, it's just too far gone at this point for neutrals to actually care or want to join Gamergate.
The movement is shrinking.
And anti-GGers want to see it completely destroyed.
You guys need to stop it.
It's the trolls and shitty people within Gamergate who would have been shitty people without Gamergate.
Those same people that you claim are within Gamergate and are constantly harassing women and attacking people and doing dead threats and stuff, those types of people would have continued to do that without the hashtag Gamergate.
It's true.
That's just the nature of the internet.
It's a fucking disgusting place in certain areas of it, okay?
That's why certain threads are deleted automatically after a few hours.
It's the anonymity of the internet.
That's just the way it is.
And there is just so much more to go over about this Gamergate thing, but that's all I have to say on it.
And people can be as mad as they want that I didn't support the movement or that I didn't support the destruction of the movement, okay?
Do whatever you want, okay?
Give me your own opinion in the comments about any one of these controversies, Gamergate included.
Go crazy, alright?
Accuse me of a bajillion different things, alright?
If it makes you feel better.
I really think that we should thank Joe for being as fair as he was.
It probably wasn't easy to go against the tide that was pressing against him.
I imagine that there are quite a few people who absolutely despise Gamergate, who have been pressuring him.
And I think he did a remarkably fair job.
And I know I got quite angry at some points when addressing some of his points, but ah man, some of the things just aren't true, man.
You know, Joe, if you ever listen to this, man, I'm sorry that I got angry.
But you were just misinformed at some bits.
And it's not your fault.
I don't blame you at all.
Like all things, you are right.
It's been a fucking crazy ride.
And I agree that you should be completely within your rights to stay neutral.
And I completely support that.
I would not want to think that there would be any kind of animus between people who support Gamergate and at the Angry Joe show Army or people who like your channel.
I mean, I subscribe to your channel.
I love your channel.
I swear to God, man, your Roam 2 review, it's second only to Reynolds Sanity's Rome 2 review.
And I love your angry reviews.
And, you know, it's in no way a comment on you or your character or your work.
Because I think that, and I'm sure many other people in Gaming agree, that you do a great job.
And that's the thing.
You've always been very much audience and consumer focused.
The people who watch your channel are the people you look out for.
And that's always garnered a great deal of respect from me.
So, that's my opinion on what Angry Joe said.
And so after almost 45 minutes of waffling at Angry Joe, I'm going to address Total Biscuit posted or had posted by proxy on Kotaka in Action, which, thankfully, I disagree with a lot less.
And I feel the need to address in less angry terms because he's far, far closer to what I would say in these situations.
And I think that I think we can all agree on pretty much everything he's saying here.
So TB says, e-celeb bullshit, it's got to stop or be contained.
I completely agree.
Luckily, I've never really gotten into any e-celeb bullshit, so thankfully none of this has anything to do with me.
And he goes on to say, his sole interest are the ethical concerns brought up by the original accusations against Nathan Grayson, then the subsequent censorship and unified narrative of the game press.
In that respect, I'm with you all the way.
If you want to talk ethics, if you want to improve games media, great.
100% behind you.
The problem is, you've fallen into the trap of fighting the enemy.
And he's absolutely right on this.
You focus on people, and that's a battle you can't win.
Why?
Because a few of these people want you to talk about them.
They thrive on it.
Why do you think Wu's game greenlits so fast?
Because she successfully peddled a narrative that Gamergate was attacking her, and she needed support to fight them.
I'm not going to read any of the rest, because obviously the link will be in the description, and you can read it for yourself, but he is absolutely correct.
It's irrelevant what Brianna Wu does.
Any kind of E-celeb bullshit, ignore it.
Just ignore it.
Go for the journalists.
They're the ones who do things that are wrong.
They are the ones who are involved in acts of journalistic impropriety.
They are the ones who are on the Game Journos pros list.
They are the ones promoting their friends at indie game festivals and whatnot.
They're the people to go.
Second point is, be patient.
The desire to find another smoking gun is understandable.
The problem is every time you jump on some half-cocked story that isn't well sourced and blow it up, it has a chance of blowing up in your face.
The Pinsov thing is worth investigating, but the evidence is threadbare at least.
There's a lot of he said, she said.
Frankly, I think all of it's he said she said.
But it's just nice to have another circumstance from within the industry.
But again, it's useful, but like he says, it's not a great deal of proof.
Your time is better spent trying to find proof rather than blowing up a story across Twitter that might turn out to be false and results in yet another setback for you guys.
Completely agree.
Don't get me wrong, it's worth discussing, it's worth investigating, but it's not worth getting too excited about unless you actually have something concrete.
It's kind of the boy who cried wolf, isn't it?
You know, if someone's like, it's happening on Twitter, and it turns out that it's just hearsay.
It's just accusations.
Like, don't get me wrong, the pin-off interview was...
I mean, he had been mistreated with the Chloe Seagal thing, but this isn't anything new.
This is just adding another log onto the fire.
Point number three is Gazi.
It's not relevant in any way.
It's tiny, it's full of silly people that can't keep their story straight.
It's the place my wife goes to get a good laugh in the morning and see what crazy thing they've come up with next.
I never go there myself.
I just don't care what they have to say, and I completely agree.
They are a laughing stock.
They absolutely are.
I would just ignore them.
Point four begins with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote.
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.
This is the optimum way to discuss relevant issues and not give ammunition to bad actors.
Do not engage in an ad hominem.
Do not even talk about people, talk about ideas.
Only bring up people when it's absolutely relevant to an ethics concern, i.e. a journalist slash site did this.
Want to argue against something Sarkisian said?
Post the idea, then debunk it.
These threads always devolve into bashing the person, and ad hominems are a weak argument technique and are being used against you as proof that you're a bunch of harassers.
This is what I hear from people I speak to in GamesDev and games media when I speak on your behalf.
They go to Kotaku in Action, they see that, and they find it hard to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Resist the urge to attack the person, attack their ideas.
Without their ideas, they lose their relevancy.
I completely agree.
Number five, if you haven't already, get a unified, sourced list of achievements and use it at every possible opportunity.
I've been following Kataka in Action daily for over six months, as well as many other related sites, and I can recite for the most part things you've achieved, but so many people cannot.
It's got to be public.
It's got to be front and center.
I totally agree.
I've included a link in the description that is to the Gamergate wiki.
I don't know who's running it, but fucking godspeed, you fucking heroes of Gamergate.
Seriously, it is incredible.
The whole Gamergate wiki is an invaluable source of information for Gamergate.
It should be where we get our ammunition from, because it is all there, documented, front and center.
It is amazing.
Congratulations to the people using it.
We really have to make this a more widespread resource.
We absolutely do.
And point six, please resist the urge to label.
This ties into point four.
In the same way that Gamergate is a boogeyman to so many people, so too is SJW for a lot of you.
SJW isn't a real thing.
I actually disagree with this, but it doesn't matter that I disagree with this.
for the purpose of gamergates it may as well not be a real thing it doesn't need to be it's it's kind of irrelevant It ties into the next point, actually.
There are ideologically at play, and ideologies are compromised of structures of ideas.
Ideas can be criticized, and they should be.
It's part of healthy human development.
It's best not to make assumptions about people.
Nobody is the same, and it makes it much easier in turn to lump you guys into a harmful label if you keep using them yourselves.
I agree, that's a good point.
They do so often, though, call themselves social justice warriors or paladins or clerics, but they are pro-social justice, which is the issue, really, because social justice has become a perverse monster bred by academia.
But, for the purposes of Gamergate, it's not really all that relevant, and so I think Total Biscuit's advice here is absolutely sound.
If you can avoid labelling them, you should.
And I know I'm as guilty of this as anyone.
I absolutely know I am.
But it's something that maybe we should try to tone down.
I would actually like to hear more opinions on this because I'm not sure it's necessarily possible and they don't necessarily shy away from it.
So it's a tough one.
But I think that it's probably the best thing to do.
He says, you might regard this as tone policing.
I don't think this is tone policing at all.
I think this is tactical advice and I think it's goddamn necessary.
And frankly, I'm thinking about it and thinking, well, why haven't I done this?
I feel like I've kind of dropped the ball here, but maybe I've been a bit too close to the subject to see it.
I don't know.
Maybe it's just my failing there.
But yeah, you don't win by mud wrestling a pig.
You end up dirty and the pig likes it.
For the most part, you're doing good work, and you just keep falling into traps and taking bait.
Get better at avoiding that, and you'll be more productive.
And stop posting my bloody Twitter as news.
Completely agree.
The issue, and again, we've all got to remember this, is that you are the leader of Gamergate.
You listening who is part of Gamergate, you are the leader.
Therefore, you have to think and act like a leader.
You have to think to yourself, does it reflect well on me and other people for me to do this?
How will this be interpreted?
You have to be the arbiter of your own experiences and your own actions.
And I know that, oh, of course we all are, but it's easy to get into the kind of be swept along with the crowd.
I've done it just as much as anyone else.
So I'm not trying to place blame or anything like that.
But we've got to remember that it's the ethical violations that is our strength because they are just so, so wrong often.
And don't get me wrong, if they have an ideological argument that is being presented and they keep putting it forward, like for example, in Eat Sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh's toxic masculinity is causing school shootings, then by all means, go for that argument.
Go for that bad idea.
I'm all for tearing apart bad ideas.
I'm pretty sure you can see that from my channel.
So I think that we really should really should laser focus.
We know they are despicable, unpleasant people that you would never associate with.
We know this.
But that's not going to change anything.
What will change things is removing their legitimacy and discrediting the things they say and the things that they do rather than trying to discredit them as people as unpleasant people is, I think, a better way.
Show their hypocrisy.
Show their lies.
Show their failings in show their intellectual failings.
But don't sit there going on about how much you hate them because that makes you look like you're part of a hate movement.
And again, I really don't think that Gamergate is a hate movement.
Even though we are dealing with people who it's very easy to hate.
So I guess that's kind of my pep talk.
And I just want to apologise to Joe again.
I really feel like I came off a bit angrier than Angry Joe.
And if he ever listens, he probably won't.
But if you ever listen, it's just, you know, I didn't mean to come off so harsh, but there were some points you were just really misinformed about.
But conversely, some points you were really fair about.
So I should probably uh probably not get angry okay well this is coming up to an hour's worth of me wittering now so I'll speak to all later.
Oh yeah, and remember to use the fucking wiki.
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