Did Anita Sarkeesian fabricate the death threats made against her on twitter?

[MikeRox]

badgenome said:

MikeRox said:

And without wanting to delve any further into this incredibly toxic subject, that is quite possibly the single biggest issue with her whole "critical" analysis of the subject.

I don't really think it is. It frequently helps to have an outsider's perspective on a subject because they tend to notice things that other people may be too close to really see. Now, I can't say whether Anita Sarkeesian's commentary is any more worthwhile because of this, as I've admittedly never watched one of her videos, but if there's a problem with her work I don't think it's because she's some carpetbagger who isn't qualified to talk about video games. Games are just another form of media, and I sincerely doubt most of the same gamers who so resent Sarkeesian for sticking her nose in "our" business would give a damn if she were just another person criticizing movies from a feminist perspective. If her work is really so bad or sophomoric or uninformed or whatever as to justify any of the venom she's been receiving, I suspect it has more to do with being a professional activist who stirs up controversy to make a buck (which, again, I don't know if she does or doesn't do) than with her non-gamer status.

Her critical analysis was pitched as having had extensive experience with beloved videogames.  And the money was meant to pay for her to be able to do thorough research.

The fact that this was masked, gave the entire thing an instant bias agenda making her entire project of zero academic worth, other than how not to do an academic critical investigation in something.

An outside perspective would be great, but when the examples are so cherry picked, again, it's not really a critical analysis, more a lets find the worst stuff and uses this to form a generalised conclusion supporting the initial hypthesis.

Critical analysis starts with a hypothesis, then looks at all the evidence both for and against this hypothesis, then decides whether the hypothesis has been proven.

I certainly wouldn't say there is no issue at all with the portraital of women in video games. Some games are even outright offensive to me. But to find these moments and state they are the norm is incredibly unfair. When people are challenging this, just shutting down the debate is completely unhelpful to both gaming and the "cause".

That said, I'm also hugely disgusted at the internet in general at the moment. It's not just gamers lashing out with death threats, you only need to look at the more extreme opinions in the Scottish independence debate, I feel 2 groups are being merged and painted as one. As the death threat throwing trolls exist in social media in general thanks to the anonymity of the internet. I don't personally understand how anyone can communicate so prehistorically with another human being with or without a veil of anonymity masked in 1s and 0s.

Two wrongs don't make a right and the trolls on both sides are killing what could actually be a genuinely interesting debate.