Men's Group
In reply to the discussion: A number of my issues with the brand of Feminism on DU [View all]Hayabusa
(2,135 posts)Yep, the revolt against corruption in games journalism is clearly all about harassing the women in the business. I hadn't seen that much about it on here, but apparently that's because I wasn't paying attention. All I've seen in the threads that I've searched have pointed to the same thing: Zoe Quinn is being harassed because a vengeful ex-boyfriend aired dirty laundry. The truth, however, is more like this:
* In mid-August, Quinn's ex-boyfriend released The Zoe Post, documenting the end of their relationship including text logs. Other than an outpouring of empathy (since several of those logs can easily be read to hint at an emotionally abusive relationship) was the identity of a few of the people that she had had affairs with: one of which was a video game journalist that had covered her video game Depression Quest. Despite the fact that the timeline on the article and the affair didn't match up, the issue of such a conflict of interest began to raise questions about the integrity of games journalism and how truly unbiased where they, especially after the events of DoritoGate (when a gaming television reporter did a segment in front of Mountain Dew and Doritos plastered with the logo of Halo 4) and when a Gamespot reviewer was fired for giving a bad review to Kane and Lynch.
** Admittedly, there were trolls out in force. Trolls will be trolls.
* A massive censorship of the story was carried out on sites such as 4chan and Reddit, where a thread there had over 20,000 comments deleted after a mod on it had tweeted Quinn.
* Several online gaming publications then released --within 24 hours-- several articles proclaiming that gamers were dead and that the misogynists in the movement didn't want their "Boy's club" invaded.
* Actor Adam Baldwin coins the term #GamerGate to refer to this backlash and several surmise that the articles had to be coordinated somehow.
* A Brietbart UK tech reporter is e-mailed a series of Google Group messages showing that the articles had indeed been coordinated and urged the online magazine The Escapist to purge discussion on their forums. When they refused,they were shunned.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to get the other side of the story out there. It's been framed as sexist from the beginning, mainly by the very ones that are trying to avoid being called out on their lack of ethics. And on DU, as well even Wikipedia, that is the only narrative that is being spun.