I'm not doing it to be insulting, i'm doing it to try and make you understand.
It might not seem like that's what your doing, but it in the end it is. You expect people to rationally respond to death threats, and appear to defend them when they respond in anger. And then you expect not to be treated the same way when you do this, because your trying to inhabit some kind of middle ground. It's exhausting to the people involved, and is as much responsible for disheartenment as the death threats themselves.
Nobody needs you to defend these people, and if you honestly feel like your being equated with them, reexamine your position.
Nobody who has to wade through this shit cares about hearing how you didn't do it, and just because it isn't your fault doesn't resolve you of responsibility.
So what you're saying is the people who did not start the harassment should themselves also take steps to ensure their response to assholes do not in turn insult yet more people, right?
At a certain point you can't do anything with an argument but dismiss it, and that rightly comes off as insulting.
But that's what you have to do sometimes, and pretending all sides are equal in this argument is almost as bad as picking the wrong one. Because you're enabling criminal harassment by refusing to condemn it completely.
I challenge you to point to where I am not condemning harassment completely.
Or are you saying my statement "insulting third parties is counter productive" is in fact endorsing harassment?
No, what endorses harassment is your assertion that third parties are being insulted at all.
The argument is being sidetracked because people feel insecure about even the possibility of being lumped in with harassers, not because they're actually being singled out. The premise is false to begin with.
So being called a misogynist because you don't believe those fighting back against harassment is doing it effectively is not in fact insulting. Got it.
No one has said this. Full stop.
You can continue to pretend otherwise, but that makes you part of the problem, not the solution.
Nobody who has to wade through this shit cares about hearing how you didn't do it, and just because it isn't your fault doesn't resolve you of responsibility.
So what you're saying is the people who did not start the harassment should themselves also take steps to ensure their response to assholes do not in turn insult yet more people, right?
At a certain point you can't do anything with an argument but dismiss it, and that rightly comes off as insulting.
But that's what you have to do sometimes, and pretending all sides are equal in this argument is almost as bad as picking the wrong one. Because you're enabling criminal harassment by refusing to condemn it completely.
I challenge you to point to where I am not condemning harassment completely.
Or are you saying my statement "insulting third parties is counter productive" is in fact endorsing harassment?
No, what endorses harassment is your assertion that third parties are being insulted at all.
The argument is being sidetracked because people feel insecure about even the possibility of being lumped in with harassers, not because they're actually being singled out. The premise is false to begin with.
Nobody who has to wade through this shit cares about hearing how you didn't do it, and just because it isn't your fault doesn't resolve you of responsibility.
So what you're saying is the people who did not start the harassment should themselves also take steps to ensure their response to assholes do not in turn insult yet more people, right?
At a certain point you can't do anything with an argument but dismiss it, and that rightly comes off as insulting.
But that's what you have to do sometimes, and pretending all sides are equal in this argument is almost as bad as picking the wrong one. Because you're enabling criminal harassment by refusing to condemn it completely.
@masterofmetroid: I don't even disagree that the discussion needs to be less toxic. I would just argue that a good opening statement isn't "Since some of you are dicks, you are all dicks. In fact you aren't even actually a thing. Discuss" a la Leigh Alexander.
This sentence, this right here is the actual problem.
This sentence, this sentiment, is not what the article put forward. It's not what anyone has said, it's not what anyone actually means. But as soon as someone has the guts to say the community is toxic, it immediatley becomes about how "I'm not toxic!", as if that has any relevance to the actual point.
Nobody who has to wade through this shit cares about hearing how you didn't do it, and just because it isn't your fault doesn't resolve you of responsibility.
Whether or not "everyone" is doing it is irrelevant to the fact that the majority are. You do not decide what the argument really is about when everyone is talking about something completely different, that's nonsense.
If you wan't to talk about ethics in game journalism, that's an interesting topic. But you either need to do it outside of an already toxic environment, or make the environment less toxic. And putting any kind of blame on the people receiving death threats for being angry is outright insane, not a reasonable middle ground stance.
Where is the positivity here? Where is the discussion that matters, beyond the screaming, beyond the willful ignoring of salient points to niggle over word choices and how "I'M NOT LIKE THAT"? Where the fuck is all this going, if it's not about running out prominent advocates for representation and variety in games as an art form?
And it needs to be something pretty goddamn amazing to outweigh the cost of death threats and being run out of the industry.
My statement of "objectively not the case" was in regards to the assertion that there was absolutely no positivity from advocates. Nothing more, nothing less. The more people only want to look at negatives, the more negative it will be. There are people advocating for it that are lashing against the harassment of people like Jenn Frank. I don't downplay the harassment one bit. I also don't think that gives people that view themselves as being on the moral high ground carte blanche on the situation either. No matter which "side" that might be coming from. (It's both.)
I won't argue that even the people trying to do the "gamergate" thing for good are mostly misguided. But those people are not hateful, and they are not the ones driving people out of spaces.
There is no "shades of grey" in this situation, there is no "other side" to the story. Nobody is getting "carte blanch" to do shit, except decry the whole thing as ultimately useless due to the toxicity of the place where the argument started.
You can't respond positively to false accusations, and when a couple of people throw a few good questions into a torrent of vitriol it doesn't change the fact that the entire thing is based on a false premise. It's a house of cards, not hard hitting investigation. There's nothing to take from it, and nothing to gain from playing devil's advocate.
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