“Keep Politics Out of Gaming” – Why Games Journalists Won’t Leave Their Ideologies at the Door

[binary solo]

badgenome said:

binary solo said:

Well let's be even handed here. The people who oppose the cultural critics also tag any opinion they find to be disagreeable as harmful and problematic. If they didn't find these things harmful some of them wouldn't be anywhere near so vitriolic in their reaction. And indeed the vitriol being spewed from is by degrees worse coming (from what I've read) from the anti-SJWs (for want of a better term). So in actual fact no one's opinion is welcome in gamer culture unless you are sitting in your own ideological echo chamber. But that is the entirety of our social and political discourse, so gamer culture pretty much reflects our broader socio-political culture vis-a-vis intolerance towards people who have different ideas about the way things should be.

It is true that it's just a microcosm of political discourse in general and not at all specific to gaming, but I can't really agree that one side is more vitriolic than the other. I think it can seem that way because the establishment in this case is represented by the writers, each of whom has a megaphone, and the anti-establishment is the thousands of angry people all shouting at them. (This is also why it's difficult to have a "conversation" about these issues.)  But even a cursory glance at Twitter shows that the vehemence is pretty equally distributed. In fact, you'll find most of these very same writers engaging the very sort of trolling and "harassment" they pretend to deplore in their columns.

I deliberately don't Twitter, or Facebook. Mostly I've read articles and then read through comments. I've also watched one episode of Facts vs Feminism on Youtube. My sample size is small but the vitriol has been pretty lop-sided. Both in quantity and degree of vehemence. But I will allow that on places I don't frequent perhaps all sides are being equally shrill.

Lets be honest here though. The hate came from one side to start with, and it snowballed from there. If the proximate cause was Zoe Quinn's alleged corrupt vagina it all comes down to people blowing that story way out of proportion and perpetuating what seems to have turned out to be false accusations levelled by a cuckolded boyfriend who was well motivated to bring hurt to his ex. The worst of this whole shitstorm could have been avoided if people had reacted more rationally, with less leaping to conclusions and judgements in the absence of all relevant facts.

The Sarkeesian saga would still have happened because that train was already rolling when Quinn came on the scene. But it would have pulled into a station much less primed for gender wars with battle lines already firmly drawn.

When people spew forth nasty invective it doesn't really matter which side started it. But Newton's law applies here. For every action there is an equal and opposite reation. If you set out to troll and harrass expect to be trolled and harrassed in return. And don't complain when the obvious and predictable happens. But by the same token if you troll the harasser you're only adding fuel to the fire and things will keep escalating.