So loosely impolite or snarky disagreement is harassment now? Bravo! If that is harassment, you suggesting banning him is also harassment, because I say so.
I find plenty of poorly sourced opinion pieces. But no evidence of a gg ''member'' ''harassing'' people. Post some?

Let's remember that disagreeing with a woman is sexist and harassment while disagreeing with a man is expected...

I agree with Gersen in that gamergate has next to no overarching philosophy or theme, but would argue that, as haydenaurion has evidently understood, what unites supporters usually is the "SJW" witch hunt.

As gamergate doesn't hand out badges or membership cards, naturally asking for evidence of "members" doing anything is a classic catch-22 of the cultural event that has never worked particularly well. Supposedly "gamergate" is the most nebulous and in fact insensible term when it is attacked, yet solidifies into a concrete movement suddenly when a blanket defense is applied.

The way out of this catch-22 is of course broad and richly lit. Those who strengthen gamergate the cultural event/suicide in the way it was created in the first place – by e.g. fostering absurd conspiracy theories in the gaming industry and the gaming press, especially in connection with a supposed "SJW conspiracy" – must be considered gamergate supporters (Among them, of course, the laughing harassers and neo-nazi hatemob directors at Breitbart, reaxxion or the Daily Stormer, which have undeniably poured worlds of fuel into the fire of gamergate the cultural event).

And that's about the only truth there is, because, as Gersen has made abundantly clear, anyone can use "gamergate" for whatever they want. What vile crap one supporter does doesn't reflect badly on "gamergate" or other "gamergate supporters".

It reflects badly on game culture as a whole.



No. But this is e.g. litigable slander: Same guy, very same motive, 100% misrepresentation and 1000s of such posts around in the thread with the title that supposedly doesn't really mean a thing.

So there can be no legitimate criticism of Sarkeesian's or other journos' agenda and any discussion of it ''witch hunting'' and ''fostering absurd conspiracy theories in the gaming industry and the gaming press''? This is not a catch-22? What KiA has hosted and what GGers do is discussion, and if we are to pretend that all of what gamergate talks about is a ''conspiracy'' what is even wrong with it? There are conspiracy theory communities and subreddits and boards, and I don't find them being so grossly detested or taken as seriously.

What about the catch-22 of labeling something to be a ''conspiracy theory'' first and then stating that its because of it? Isn't supposed to be the other way round where you look at the facts and call completely unhinged stuff conspiracy? What exactly and precisely is such conspiracy? And how then is one supposed to criticize the methods and techniques of such ''pop culture critics''?

What you are saying does not hold together. Its like a snake swallowing its tail. Do us all a favor and just state which or what exactly is this conspiracy. Your whole argument is based on things so abstract it doesn't hold up to basic questioning.

If what he said is not factually correct, then I don't support it. Has someone considered telling him of this?

Nevermind, i'm not going to waste my time arguing with people who don't care what they say and do can be harmful. You'll just dismiss anything I post anyways.
This is a nonsense statement, but again, i'm not going to bother trying to convince you why some of the stuff some people say and do is harmful. You don't want to listen and you don't care. I'm going to drop it before I get targeted for harassment.

GOG has deleted hate "reviews" before.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/release_the_shivah_kosher_edition_copy3/post42
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/release_the_shivah_kosher_edition_copy3/post66
I don't see why gender should be treated differently from ethnicity where hate speech is concerned.

Are you aware that people cannot and should not be blamed for everything they say except those kinds of speech which are recognized by law to be harmful? Examples of such include defamation, slander, libel, intimidation, threatening to use criminal force etc. They are all quite objective and clearly defined. Its evidence of GGers doing those acts I'm asking for.

Did you not read my reply to Vania? If it is there, I will except it as bad. If the ''if'' is what makes you reluctant, keep in mind that proper criticism of all claims is important, and for something to be regarded as fact (ie you claiming GG is harassing people is alleging fact) it needs to pass all criticism.

Ok, give a call to the internet police just to be sure. Be safe, friend.

I'd argue instead that there's a difference between making fun of feminism and being a stormfront type dick.

Do you realize that just because those troll reviews and many people's posts seem alike to you doesn't mean they seem alike to everyone? Poor bait is easy to recognize. The types of posts you advocate removing aren't as obvious (to most people or when looked at from the perspective of a ''reasonable'' person).

Those reviews were chunks of rock in a tea strainer. Most of the posts are small grains of sand.

As usual it's a very one-sided and biased view of the issue.

"Gamergate" should have been a basic Internet controversy, blow up out of proportion for one week or two and then disappeared exactly like the other "something-gate" controversies. Some accusations were thrown involving the gaming press, which already had a pretty low confidence score, and some female Indy dev; of course trolls took that as an opportunity to do what they do best and started insulting/harassing/threatening peoples, (using rape threat and sexists posts in case those peoples were women).

But instead of simply debunking accusations and condemning the harassers some of the gaming press and twitter pseudo celebrities thought it would be a good idea to use that as a opportunity to push their own agenda and used the actions of some basic Internet trolls as a representation of a perceived systemic toxicity in gaming culture.

And that's how it all started, and in the end :

One one side Gamergate was used by symbol of a fight against real or perceived corruption/collusion in gaming journalism, fight against game censorship or even simply fighting against the outrage and PC culture.

And on the other side Gamergate was used as a very convinient boogieman to be accused of everything racist, sexists, homophobic, alt-right'ish under the sun.

With of course death threats and insults flying everywhere.

Again over generalizing, and again that's one of the main reason why dialogue has become so difficult either on GoG forum or on the Internet in general.

Yes there are extremists who used Gamergate as a way to gather some extra audience (and it happened on both side), but focalizing on those and discarding peoples "in the middle" will only manage to give more visibility to those extreme and push the more moderate toward them. With this kind of mentality things are not going to get better any time soon.

Well the thing is, calling for dialogue is great, but calling for dialogue while at the same time calling one of the side a "hate group" is not really going to work that well ;) .

I agree with you 100% but on the other side I consider that developers should be free to make the game they want without fear being called a racist/sexists/etc and being educated on what not to do in the future.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I would say it tied to the way we consume information nowadays, social media and the echo chambers they help creating and the fact that everybody and their dog can call themselves "journalists" on the Internet.

1. Then they should work to change that image is what i'm asking. Some refuse to even acknowledge there's a problem.

2. I agree with that to a degree, but we need to be careful it doesn't get out of control and cause harm. Games with the intent of directly encouraging or calling for violence or discrimination against others in the real world would be one example.

3. I agree here, though I would add that I think it's partially generational as well.

What do you think is the problem and what harm?

GOG's community is broken beyond repair. People have been allowed to post whatever they want (insults, rape and death wishes, blatant racism, porn links, their successful scamming history, etc.) for a too long time already. There's a deep, long fostered hatred (!!!) between some users here and you can't just "moderate" it away. We can't even gift some games without starting to fight. If you really want to change this, you'll sooner or later end up banning people. And I'm not talking about NES, wakalo or Tauto. I'm talking about "legit" users.

You'll, for example, never manage to keep a discussion between Starmaker, KiNgBrAdLeY, RWarehall and Vainamoinen within some sane limits. They always will start to insult each other. Some will do this more eloquently, without the use of bad words, some will act like pubescent kids, some will just start to scream and some will find hilarious insults that you never even thought of before. You can't "fix" the bad blood between them. They've been fighting each other for years already and I think that at least two of them feel real hate for one of their counterparts. And if you start to ban people, you'll open Pandora's Box. It'll end in an epic discussion about who said what first, recapulating years of dirty fights, really weird private messages and talk about alt accounts and downrepping. And there are more "love pairs" on GOG than just "KiNgmaker" and "Vainahall"...

GOG's been a lawless land since TheEnigmaticT left. When people realized that they could get away with anything, things started to go downhill. Some time ago a user started a thread with lots of "fucks" and "cunts" in its title (because bad words in thread titles seemed to be the only thing GOG cared about), to ask for some kind of moderation on the forums. The result was a thread full of hate, insults, weird comments about "free speech" and users who said that they love GOG for the freedom to insult each other oO And the introduction of a word filter... That's why we can't write "fuck" in capital letters anymore. Oh, and we got a warning from the so-called community manager, that we'll get banned if we don't stop to create threads with swear words in its title -.-

GOG's the best soap opera I've ever seen. But it sucks as a community! I was pretty active until a year or so ago and I admit that I had my fair share of insults and stupid scammer wars that gave NES his "fame". But then I realized that I didn't like what GOG became. Since then I only hang around for the occasional silly post, nostalgic reasons and for "honest news" that you don't see on the front page (the sad increase of gimped versions of games, the state of the forums, etc).

Whatever... Good luck, fables. I wouldn't want to be in your position. This place isn't too bad, but I fear that some things can't be fixed without drastic consequences (and the support of the company you're working for). I could understand if GOG just decides to nuke this forum. We're such a drama-addicted minority *lol*