Ok, this is the last time I'm repeating myself, so yeah. You keep saying bad bad bad with gamergate like if you repeat it enough time God is going to come down and smite us. All I'm asking for is proof. It's not hard, it shouldn't be hard if there's as much as you say. Yeah, there are assholes, there are assholes everywhere. But you need to prove it from Gamergate, not going back to another hashtag that Gamergate came out of. Prove it.

Your hypothetical argument makes no sense, it's like me putting the Pope's Hat on Satan. These are people that cause problems where they picket in hopes that someone will snap so they can sue. These people are an ACTUAL hate group. They go to the funerals of soldiers and school shootings and march with signs saying that this is the fault of the US allowing Gays to live.

It's a fringe group of Christians, so I ask you, is Christianity tainted by their existence? That's what original question I asked you and you didn't even consider that. They claim to be God Fearing Christians.

That is a good point, but the alleged harassment didn't stop after the hashtag changed. If it had stopped, then there would definitely be no argument from me.

Now all this is said in the context of, I'm not really sure there is much proof that #gg'ers have engaged in harassment, I'm speaking of the effect that it has on the public perception, which is what I thought the author of the article was speaking about.

Well, that's pretty clear, but it totally avoided my question about the hypothetical WBC (not the actual WBC which you have referred to in your post) and how people in that hypothetical WBC should be treated, but thanks for your input anyway... ;)
Can you point me to where in the last 24 hours of posts I have said #gg is bad? I've been attempting to draw an analogy between #gg to hypothetical organisations which have good and bad elements, but I don't think I have said that #gg has either good or bad elements.

I'll answer your question. No I don't think that all Christians are tainted by the WBC. Just as I don't think all gamers are tainted by #gg.

Now, just to clarify, I'm actually not making a hypothetical argument, I'm putting forward a hypoethical scenario and inviting you to comment on it. Obviously you don't have to, I'm just generally interested in your views about it.

I have to give kudos to 227 here for actually responding to that hypothetical scenario. Whilst I don't agree with her/her view, its nice to actually get one...

The areas in Lebanon and Gaza where these groups rule could be described as failed states. The groups therefore organize a number of what can be called social contract responsibilities, and their defenders use that as an ethical shield of sorts. Just what antiGG accuses GG of doing. The obvious difference being that these Islamic groups do not condemn violent action to achieve their goals, which imo is enough to justify war on them by other interested parties.

Hamas actually does have more and less extreme wings, so would be a better comparison than Hezbollah, though again, I don't think either wing disavows violence or agrees Israel having legitimacy to exist.

There are 21,620 "readers" (I'm unfamiliar with what that means, exactly, but I'm assuming it's like a subscriber or frequent visitor) on KotakuInAction. Let's be generous and assume that there have been 10 threats against anti-GG people, even though you only ever hear about three of them. Even assuming that all of GG is on KiA, that's still only 0.046% harassment. In reality, the percentage is likely far lower.

And yes, the author was making a point about public perception, but GG has accomplished far more than he has. Why is his input even relevant? Listening to him would be like the third-place finisher in a race taking race advice from the seventh-place finisher. We donated money to a sea lion and named it "Ethics." Anyone who wants to ignore the good and see only the bad is free to, but that's on them. I'm not willing to play games with a "media manipulator" to trick people into supporting us.

Yeah... I still think you're wrong here, and there's no maybe about it. :) Having to postulate some prolifegate is a bit of a dodge as well. Attacks on pro lifers along the lines I proposed, or that they are misogynistic - to go more on topic, are an actual thing you know. Why the hypothetical then?

Guilt by association, or presumed ownership/ assumed responsibility to use words closer to yours, is dehumanizing of individuals by default. Make of that what you will, I certainly fall into it as well, as a human wired for heuristics.

As others are saying, you seem to be doubling down on it being a valid AND ethical approach to politics. I could kind of agree if you just limited yourself to saying that is how the world works and it is effective to obtain political support, which you are falling back to slowly, but you are almost explicitly supporting it as a good approach. Enemies are very convenient to create group cohesion, sure, but I don't have to think such manichean, divisive, intolerant methods are good.

Makes me wonder if the socialist mentality of shared property inherently implies shared (totalitarian) responsibility... :) suggestive... ;) Also makes me wonder if the conflation of methods with intentions being projected on the 'others' is intentional, or accidental... conscious or not. Interesting stuff for political philosophy.

Whatever, don't want to gang up on you, so I'm bowing out for now.


PS edit, consider this and answer if you want, because this is the critical point of objective disagreement which you are avoiding, apparently on purpose:

But you think all GGers are tainted by the harassers. What's the difference?

Games journalism and media was unreliable even before Gamergate, consisting of "mass-produced" reviewers and critics who can only see things from the same single f'n perspective. Whether it is IGN, GameSpot, Rev3, TotalBiscuit, AngryJoe, ProJared, GiantBomb...its the same opinions and perspective being recycled over and over. Games journalism has been impotent and barren for a looooong time, Gamergate is insignificant in light of this.

Well, I did say "Please not [sic] this is an analogy and I am not actually trying to suggest #gg'ers are anything like ISIS."

Anyway, thanks again for your input :)

Oh don't worry about ganging up on me. I'm an adult, I have controversial views, I express them, it happens to me all the time.

Putting to one side #gg, my philosophical point is, you can't be a member of, for example, the KKK, and still claim to be against racism and still a good person. In that sense, I stand by "guilt by association". Do you disagree with this limited proposition?

I do disagree, but since I don't know enough about KKK and US reconstruction history, let's use Nazis, racism and being a good person? Take it from there and let's see where we end up, if you are smart you can already see Schindler and Von Stauffenberg will come up. So not just can you claim it, you can claim it truthfully.

By the way, we probably cross posted. See my edit to the previous post because objectivity will come into it. Are the bad parts of GG or Nazism a majority or a minority? Defining or tangential? These are questions one can answer objectively, and ethically. I suspect such logical determination is not what you are interested in doing however...

Very good examples!! Now those people expressly worked against the Nazi party. What about those who did not, what if they just had a philosophical disagreement, tweeted about it, but actually did nothing about it? Would that make a difference?

In response to your second paragraph, it really depends on how you define "bad". I don't know that any of GG are bad in a moral sense. Is GG bad in the same sense that the Philadelphia 76ers are bad? I would say yes, but that is very different :)

That's the thing, how do you think it would have been possible for is to stop ? Do you think the harasser who used the original hashtag would have magically disappear as soon as it was changed ?

For me that's what is the most silly with all this "guild by association" thing and all those "analyses": they consider GG as being some sort of political movement, except it's not, at it's core it's an hashtag, nothing more.

If you want to become a member of the WBC you have certain "requirement" to meet, you cannot wakeup a morning and decide that starting now you are a WBC member even thought you are not Christian, same goes for most organization, political party, religion, etc...

With GG it's different : Let's say you never played a video game in your life and send a death threat on Twiter to somebody else who never player video game in his/her life; if you sign it with the #GG hashtag; guess what, it will become part of "Gamergate harassment".

The only requirement to make tweets in gamergate's name is to have an Internet access, anybody can do it, there is no membership requirement, no leader, no organization, no control, nobody to accept or expel you, not even a precise common goal.

The "harasser/assholes/whatever" that use the GG hashtag to insult/harass others existed long before the hashtag was first used, and if the hashtag is ever changed they will simply use the new one because it will give them more visibility.

And why do they get more visibility ? because you will have a certain group of peoples/journalists that will be more than happy to make tons of tweets/articles/blog about how the new post-gamergate hashtag is still all about harassment and how it proves that all its members are hell spawn misogynist or socks puppets.

And actually the same is true for the "other side" too; there are plenty of anti-GG that uses the various anti-GG hashtags as a convenient excuse to freely insult, threaten, harass and just be general douche to peoples they don't like or simply disagree with; and usually they get free pass for they awful behaviors because being anti-GG is trendy and automatically makes you an hero it seems.

That's really why the analogy is imperfect. :)

Thanks. I think we don't need to go into metaphysics. Good is not sending death threats or threats of violence, or insults. Good is not sending people to death camps, invading countries for lebensraum. I'm sure you agree.

Then defining who is or not true Nazi might be tricky. Certainly they were trying to win a war and were the legitimately elected government. Both of my examples willingly cooperated with Nazi Germany war aims. One of them actively subverted Nazi racial politics while being a card member. The other I think didn't and maybe wasn't.

Defining what GG is trying to achieve is kind of easier. Ethics in journalism. Just because you refuse to listen doesn't make it false, it does show an element of prejudice or bad faith on your side. Especially when you take the defining aspects of an apparent minority of bad apples, which may not even be GG in the mission sense, to tar the whole movement.

At least when I compare you to the media, in that you both frame GG in a negative light intentionally, I am not making a misrepresentation. If I were to speculate on motives I'd be less objective...

It is said that online arguing is not done to convince the one you're arguing with, but to convince the one reading it and not posting. That would be me, I guess. And so far, I'm leaning GG.



I'm posting for the first time here to reply to this, because it annoys me. A lot. Let me take my time replying.

To your direct question, I agree. You can't be a member of the KKK, claim to be against racism, and still be good (in my eyes). But, and it's a big but, so I'll bold it. But, the KKK is explicitly about racism, that's their core AFAIK. If you're against racism, you can't be part of a racist oriented group. It makes no sense. It is very, very, very different from belonging to a group that explictly condemn actions done by some of their members. That is what you either don't get, or refuse to acknowledge.

An open group based on a particular idea (ecologism, human rights, nationalism, feminism, religion, whatever) will attract many different people whose only common point is that particular idea, and even that will be to varying extent. Some will be polite and nice, some will be assholes, some will be dangerous extremists. That's a fact of life. But you cannot dismiss the whole group based on those elements. I'll try to explain why now.

If the movement is closed and requires some kind of membership, and yet they don't throw their extremists out, that's very bad. That's explicit acceptance. If you active took your time to enter a group that keeps the membership of dangerous elements, you are accepting those elements. Maybe you misunderstood what the group stands for, maybe it has evolved into something you can no longer agree with. It's a "them or me" situation, and if you stay, you get what's coming to you and have no right to complain.

If the movement doesn't call the extremist actions out, that's bad, as it's an implicit acceptance of those. If not enough people condemn those actions, the whole movement is understood to accept them, therefore if you personally condemn those actions you should either leave the group or admit that your group accepts them, suck it up and try to change that from within. Which you choose has its consquences you have to own and live with.

The problem is with an open movement. Anyone can claim to be a part of it and then do whatever you want, and you can't throw those people out because there is no "out", so long as they call themselves part of the group then they are no matter how many others claim otherwise. You even get to the "no true scotsman" argument. You've got this crazy person doing things you don't agree with, but you can't detach yourself from it. And no, changing the name of the group doesn't help at all, the crazy person will change the name as well and you're back in the same spot.

Worse even, if you allow the existence of dangerous elements to taint not just the name of the movement, but also the idea behind it, it means anybody can false flag a crazy action and automatically discredit anything they want. I don't think anybody wants to live in a world where anybody can say "I'm a, say, capitaist and I think the socialist leader #A needs to be murdered" and everybody automatically goes "capitalism is bad, nobody should be capitalist anymore".

So then, what do you do if your open movement is "tainted" by some crazy person? Well, IMO, you keep pushing your movement and its ideas while simultaneously condemning whatever the crazy people are doing. If you find yourself alone condemning, then you've got a problem and should probably give up. But as long as there's a strong voice condemning those actions within the group, it's worth it. Alternatively, you can just give up, because let's face it, crazy people will act crazy no matter what.

I think #GG has many points its concerned with, and it does condemn its share of crazies. At the very least, that's what I see on this forum. So IMO, they should keep going and ignore all those who say that they should give up because of harassment exists.

Perhaps you misunderstood my comment about the 76ers. You asked whether the "bad" parts of GG are a majority or a minority. Bad can have a number of meanings, for example:

1. of poor quality or a low standard

or

2. that which is not morally right

My point about the 76ers (who last I checked had 16 losses and no wins) was that (in a joking way), whilst I think the first meaning may apply, I didn't think the second did. I assume you were using bad in the context of the second meaning As I said, I don't know that any of GG are bad in a moral sense.

Good can be, not sending death threats or threats of violence. Good can also be having a 72 win, 10 loss season. Not exactly metaphysics is it?

But my point is that they were both, two a certain extent, fighting the group they were a part of. My question is, does it make a difference whether you actively fight that group or whether you just stand by and philosophically oppose it? My view is that there is a difference.

Do you really think GG is only about ethics in journalism? You don't think there is a part of it also pushing back against what they consider extreme feminism or SJWism in journalism? In my view, it is those two issues that #gg is really all about.

I don't think it is fair to say that I have suggested that GG is not trying to achieve ethics in journalism. I would certainly argue that not all GG'ers are trying to achieve ethics in journalism, but that doesn't mean that a significant minority or the majority don't believe in that. I have also suggested that many members are naive or lacking an understanding of how the real commercial world works or what an actual conflict of interest is, or perhaps even stupid, but that doesn't mean they aren't also concerned about ethics in journalism.

Again, I don't know that I defined GG by the apparent minority of bad apples. I have tried to be careful to state my view that, whilst I disagree with GG, I don't think it is an evil group. My point was, as I said previously, attempting to defend this comment from the article that I posted "Conversely, it allows opponents to paint you as the opposite. It also creates an environment in which a lot of people are riled up and members who are loosely associated can do things that reflect poorly on everyone else"
For the record, I agree with the vast majority of what you wrote.