Chu Chu Train = Salon Aboard!

[El Jefe]

I feel like we've all strayed from the topic of conversation, which is Arthur Chu's new writing career. Here are two links to his writings at The Daily Beast and Salon, both of which have been generally negatively received.

Praytell, how did you ever come to that conclusion? Is 30-40 articles over the past year 'new'?

[BRD-98]

I feel like we've all strayed from the topic of conversation, which is Arthur Chu's new writing career. Here are two links to his writings at The Daily Beast and Salon, both of which have been generally negatively received.

Praytell, how did you ever come to that conclusion? Is 30-40 articles over the past year 'new'?

Yes.

[El Jefe]

if someone is saying "good riddance" in response to a person dying, I'd call that a celebration.

Who tweeted this? Cite or retract please. It is totally trollish to move on to points B,C, and D when challenged on the details of point A. The Guilt By Association Fallacy is alive and well in your words.

[bleezy]

if someone is saying "good riddance" in response to a person dying, I'd call that a celebration.

Who tweeted this? Cite or retract please. It is totally trollish to move on to points B,C, and D when challenged on the details of point A. The Guilt By Association Fallacy is alive and well in your words.

https://twitter.com/radicalbytes/status ... 7026844672

Johnathan McIntosh. Some guy related to gamergate. BRD cited this as soon as he first mentioned it.

[Robert K S]

When I was a kid, Microsoft Flight Simulator was a Big New Thing. Anybody with a decent IBM compatible PC could live out the dream of flying a Cessna around Chicago and buzzing the Sears Tower. A high-dollar prep school in my area built a mockup plane out of plywood with a big giant PC monitor for a windscreen in their computer lab and charged big bucks to attend their summer-long "Flight Simulator Camp". I went on scholarship one year. I learned how to fly a plane so well that when I took my first real flight lesson when I was probably 14 or 15 I was able to land solo with no assist from the instructor. Although the tenor of camp training was serious, and crashing meant your turn in the bird was up and the next camper took the controls, the experience had its fair share of horsing around after official hours were over. Mostly, it involved choosing a target and seeing who could thrill his friends with the best kamikaze suicide. If it had been the post-9/11 era and the FBI had known what kind of "training" kids were getting, the operation would have been SWAT raided.

Anybody who says Flight Simulator wasn't sold for entertainment, and that for a majority of purchasers the majority of that entertainment didn't come from crashing into buildings in spectacular fashion, doesn't know what they're talking about.

Just because a video game makes possible, or invites, simulations of heinous acts doesn't mean that the creators or players deserve to be branded with labels. At least no more so than authors or readers of literature or producers or watchers of TV programs that depict the same things.

[alietr]

I just want to point out that if Arthur Chu used an abbreviation for his first name that his byline would be A. Chu.

I was sitting at SFO many years ago, and the paging system came on and said, "Ms. Choo. Ms. Ah Choo, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Ms. Ah Choo." I looked up from my newspaper with an expression of "did I really hear that?" and looked at another passenger near me. He started laughing and then I joined him.

And in my younger years, my nom de paging was Zonker Harris.

[Rex Kramer]

Just because a video game makes possible, or invites, simulations of heinous acts doesn't mean that the creators or players deserve to be branded with labels. At least no more so than authors or readers of literature or producers or watchers of TV programs that depict the same things.

The qualifier doesn't really save creators or players; there are plenty of authors, readers, producers, and watchers who are sexist, racist, elitist, homophobic, etc., etc., etc.

Obviously the problem is that people can disagree about the merits of art, high or low. People thought Nabokov's work was filth when it came out, and now he is considered a genius. But when critics wrote that Lolita encouraged paedophilic perversion, AFAIK they weren't met with a massive outpouring of hate mail of Lolita fans who threatened to seduce the underage daughters of those critics. Yet when a video game critic writes that a video game is associated with violent sexism, the response is a seemingly unending stream of violent rape threats from video gamers. And then the less inflammatory defenders of video game culture say something that amounts to "I don't support that kind of vitriol; therefore, it should not be seen as evidence of an association between video gamers and violent sexism."

Or to put this another way: If Sarkeesian had made her allegations, and then received thousands of Tweets and emails reading, "I strongly disagree with your conclusions. I think you are very misguided," instead of "We're going to rape you and then beat you and then rape you again," there would be no Gamergate.

Rex

[Robert K S]

I haven't made a studied inquiry into GamerGate, so I can hardly profess to have a learned opinion on the subject. But from what little I know, all that the situation demonstrates is that there is some intersection between the two sets comprising people who play video games and immature, cowardly idiots who titter at the prospect of making anonymous threats.

I suspect, again without having made a scientific endeavor of it, that the intersection between the latter group and people who read Nabovok is small or nonexistent.

[BRD-98]

There has been a lot of trolling, but there has yet to be a single death or violent occurrence as a direct result of GamerGate. If you can prove me wrong, please post a link!

By the way, Jonathan McIntosh is another one of those obnoxious anti-GG'ers.

[Rex Kramer]

But from what little I know, all that the situation demonstrates is that there is some intersection between the two sets comprising people who play video games and immature, cowardly idiots who titter at the prospect of making anonymous threats.

I would agree with this except that it pointedly avoids characterizing the style of the threats. The overwhelming majority of the threats I have seen have been violent, and most have incorporated some element of sexual violence. Some focus on doxxing -- publicly revealing personal information -- and often that includes a connotation of "we're going to let people know where you live, so they can rape and beat you".

Characterizing them as "anonymous threats" makes them sound vague and mundane, as if they were threats to not invite them to the office Christmas party or to let the air out of her tires. There is some intersection between the two sets comprising people who play video games and immature, cowardly idiots who titter at the prospect of making anonymous violent, sexually-driven threats.

Rex

[jeff6286]

There has been a lot of trolling, but there has yet to be a single death or violent occurrence as a direct result of GamerGate. If you can prove me wrong, please post a link!

By the way, Jonathan McIntosh is another one of those obnoxious anti-GG'ers.

What you call trolling, others might call invasion of privacy, horribly violent threats, and encouragement for others to make more violent threats and invade privacy. People have had their lives hacked, their social media accounts hacked, addresses and other personal information published, along with, again, encouragement for others to use this personal information to do violent things to this person. People have left their homes, not shown up to events, or left their jobs due to concerns over their safety. I am not arguing that a single person has been killed or physically assaulted as a result of GamerGate, as like you, I do not know of any example of this and can't find any online. But are you furthermore saying that because no one has been hurt physically, that nothing bad is really happening?

[Rex Kramer]

There has been a lot of trolling, but there has yet to be a single death or violent occurrence as a direct result of GamerGate. If you can prove me wrong, please post a link!

A) Not sure what your point is; are you asserting that a person could carry out any form of harassment against you or your loved ones, and as long as it did not amount to death or a violent occurrence, you would have no problem with it? If your mother received a thousand e-mails from different people threatening to rape her and beat her until she was paralyzed, and she could expect it at any time because they know where she lives, would you just laugh and tell her to brush it off?

B) I can guarantee you that when the first death or violent occurrence does occur as a direct result of GamerGate, we will not see its defenders reverse position en masse and acknowledge that violent sexism really is a problem in the industry -- nearly every defender will say something like, "Well, that was just some renegade lunatic, he was crazy, it had nothing to do with what we stand for." Unless you are telling me that you yourself are prepared to reverse your position when that first violent attack occurs, why would you even bring up this red herring?

Rex

[zakharov]

Violence doesn't have to be physical.

When you force women to flee their homes because they're afraid they're going to be raped and murdered, that's violence.

[DysonSphere]

Deleted - let's keep Jboard about the show.

[BobF]

As far as I can tell, he's not really racist per se, but I do think he purposely walks that line and allows people to get the impression. So, for example, calling a black author "half-savage" isnt necessarily racist, but he probably chose the words knowing it would be used to villainize him so he could then claim misrepresention.

I can't believe somebody typed those words.

I'm a bit stunned by that as well. "I'm not a racist, but I play one on the interwebs for sh*ts and giggles."

[opusthepenguin]

Violence doesn't have to be physical.

When you force women to flee their homes because they're afraid they're going to be raped and murdered, that's violence.

Nobody fled their homes. Zoe Quinn went on a trip to Europe she announced before GamerGate began. She lied by omission allowing the media to get the impression she was in hiding. Brianna Wu gave multiple interviews from her home during the period she told the media she was in hiding at a hotel. Why did they lie? Because they make hundreds of thousands in donations being professsional victims.

Sarkeesian also fled her home after being doxed and threatened. I assume you've read a story somewhere about how that was a lie too. You understand that we need more than just your assertion, right?

It's not impossible that you're right. But it sounds to me more like a misunderstanding of certain facts mixed with vague allegations and a willingness to believe the worst. What evidence do you have? Is it solid enough to justify making such damaging claims? GamerGate, as you may or may not know, got its start because too many people were eager to believe lies told by Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend. His lies were easily exposed. Why haven't hers been?

It's difficult to believe these women have fabricated the death and rape threats, some made by people who provided personal information like their addresses. The FBI may be stupid about a lot of things, but I suspect they'd figure out pretty quickly that the reports aren't credible.

Do you agree that the reports are credible? Do you agree that it was reasonable to treat the threats as potentially serious? Do you agree that you had better have rock solid evidence for your claims above? Otherwise, you are contributing to a culture of tolerance that actively abets terrorizing women with threats of rape and murder. That is despicable.

[DysonSphere]

Deleted - let's keep Jboard about the show.

[opusthepenguin]

I'm on my phone so links are a bit difficult, but a simple Google search can produce screencaps of interviews Brianna Wu gave from the same room of her house while claiming to be on the run from GamerGate. I suppose you could consider the lie justifed if the purpose was to make her whereabouts ambiguous, but it was a lie nonetheless.

Quinn made a Tweet the month before GamerGate began about how she was excited she would be travelling in Europe at the end of the year. Im sure you can find the Tweet if you require evidence.

Sarkeesian's death threat - the school shooting one that launched her big media tour - was found not credible by the police and she was advised she could continue the talk. The police and school put out a press release stating the same. Sarkeesian demanded they set up metal detectors and confiscate legally owned firearms by attendees. When it was explained to her this would violate the 2nd Amendment, she unilaterally cancelled her talk.

I'm not a threat denier or wwhatever. I'm sure they get threats, just as all controversial public figures do. John Bain aka TotalBiscuit, a loosely pro-GamerGate Youtube critic, gets death threats from the anti-GamerGate folks daily. He laughs them off and goes about his business (and chemo - he's suffering from cancer).

That is extremely weak evidence, even granting your questionable assumptions.

In essence, you are saying they should not treat the barrage of death and rape threats seriously, even from people who have dug up their addresses and threatened them specifically. Your argument is that some other guy also gets threats which he laughs off. (I suppose this goes hand in hand with your refusal to admit that women in our society have much more reason to fear that such threats will be acted upon. I wonder if Chris Kluwe has gotten death threats.) And while you claim not to support such threats, you also trivialize their traumatizing effects.

The women have received brutal, vicious threats that have caused them legitimately to fear for their safety and their lives. Your response is that they are being attention whores and cashing in. That is despicable.

[Bamaman]

I should know better than to ask this, but what is a GGer? Is it good if you are pro-GG and bad to be anti-GGer or is it the other way around?

I am really sorry I asked what a GGer is. I said I knew better, but I asked anyway.

[lieph82]

deleted bc this thread sucks