TwilightBard: Gonna repost this so hopefully we can pull people out of the other thread:
Ok, I have a few questions, I'm not really a conspiracy theory person. I work on logic, I work on the fact that I know people and that people follow a degree of twisted logic. You can generally follow it, even if it's logic based on emotions.
Note, this is a thought dump, I'm not bothering to organize my thoughts, just vocalize them
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The mailing list: I've been in IRC Chans, Mumble Servers, MMO Guilds, hell I even play Mafia on the forums here. Even in these groups there's a core group of friends. A mailing list between 15 people who have rotated from site to site? Reasonable. 50-60? Less reasonable. The alleged 150? No, humans don't remember that many people on a regular basis. Even for friends of friends it's a bit excessive.
Let's not also forget that these are websites that are constantly fighting for an increasingly smaller piece of the ad revenue pie as youtubers become more prominent. Talking about what they're going to and what they're not going to print doesn't make sense because these people are also their competitors. So why? Why would you call to moderate a forum that's civil, especially when it isn't your own?
I don't completely buy the idea that they're doing it to progress an agenda, I've seen the list, it's not everyone that has presented that agenda, and there are also plenty of people who are missing from it in general if it was talking about articles. But I'm kinda at a loss to explain.
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Ok, next issue. The suppression of discussion of the ethics surrounding Nathan Greyson's article and if I recall the allegations of him and an games contest judge sleeping with Zoe Quinn
Big Question, short form: Why?
Long Form: The Streissand Effect (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) has been pretty well documented. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that by suppressing conversation you don't really suppress it, you explode it all over the internet. Hell, confining the conversation to a few places is also the easy way to let it fade away. Most people didn't give a damn to begin with, we rolled our eyes and just moved on with our lives. So why? Why make such a big deal out of it in the forum of The Escapist? Why make such a big deal of it being on Reddit or 4chan?
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August 28, the day of the 'Gamers Are Dead' Articles.
Ok, Big Question, Short Form: WHY?!
Long Form: This has to be the dumbest thing they could have done. And It makes absolutely zero, ZERO sense to me, and I keep trying to wrap my brain around it. It's one of the most unprofessional actions that I have ever witnessed in my life. And it was written so broadly that while the argument could be made that it was only meant to target the assholes, it could have been targeted towards them a lot better.
Most people who work retail get spit on, verbally abused, treated like mental inferiors, and worse because of their jobs. There's a whole subreddit called Tales from Retail, I encourage you to read it if you really don't believe me. But on the clock, they remain professional, they don't scream at everyone, they don't rage in public, they don't take the broadest brush and paint everyone with it. Retail workers.
So what caused this? What made them so angry that instead of ignoring it, instead of pushing it under the rug, instead of calmly trying to have this conversation with everyone, they lashed out like this. Because I have to say, that many articles in a day isn't just random, it isn't a coincidence.
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Ok, big question, and thank you htown for being the one to bring it up because I don't think it was ever mentioned where I could see it.
Why oppose the Gamergate movement like people have? Why try to paint the movement as misogynistic, racist, that we just want our toys to be our toys and no one else can play in the sandbox (Sandbox, seriously it's a fucking beach bigger then the coast of North and South America put together). What do people get out of this, what do people get from the twitter fights, and the circling wagons? Why is it so impossible to get people to accept this, and why has one subgroup who wasn't even the prime focus of this start jumping in like it has?
I...don't know. The only thing I can see is that they lose something if games journalism is forced to adhere to a code of ethics? That they want to desperately claim that Gamers are horrible people for some other reason? This is the thing that doesn't make any sense to me, in fact it's the one thing that makes the least sense. I would have thought that everyone benefits from journalists that are professional and ethical, and articles that are well researched and unbiased. Am I missing something? Please tell me if I am because I can't understand it.
Maybe it all happened because they were arrogant enough to think they could silence any criticism as easily as it was done on wikipedia.
It also makes Jimmy look like a joke because gamergate isn't the only problem area which seems to be supported by wikipedia.
