Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

gamergate will stop in a couple weeks prob, misogynistic sociopaths will never stop

”They determined the threat seems to be consistent with ones (Anita Sarkeesian) has received at other places around the nation,” he told the Standard-Examiner. “The threat we received is not out of the norm for (this woman).”

wtf is wrong with people

As I was just saying on FB, lets just call this what it is - terrorism. Straighy up.

If I ever meet anyone who agrees with this shit they will lose the use of their nads, just sayin.

you won't b/c they won't leave their moms' basements tbh

the event has been canceled.

can i just

A gamergate is a reproductively viable female worker ant that is able to reproduce with mature males when the colony is lacking a queen. Most commonly occurring within the primitive species of the poneromorph subfamilies, gamergate females differ from their fellow workers by a combination of elevated fecundity and aggression-related mutilation of competitors' secondary sexual characteristics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate

re: mass shooting threat upthread- the loons are saying that Anita did this herself (which is exactly the kind of panicked nonsense you'd expect) but i think the whole terrorism thing is turning people off. critical mass perhaps reached

you won't b/c they won't leave their moms' basements tbh

― Spirit of Match Game '76 (silby), Tuesday, October 14, 2014 7:15 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if only this were true

i read elsewhere that anita asked if weapons would be permitted in the venue, and the school said they couldn't stop people with valid concealed-carry licenses from bringing in a gun. that's pretty !!! so i'm glad anita canceled, even while being furious that yet again a terroristic threat has "worked."

no scare quotes needed

LOGAN — Canadian-American author, blogger and feminist Anita Sarkeesian has cancelled her scheduled Wednesday speech at Utah State University after learning the school would allow concealed firearms at the event despite an anonymous terror threat promising “the deadliest school shooting in American history.”

http://www.standard.net/Police/2014/10/14/Feminist-speaker-cancels-appearance-at-USU-after-terror-threat.html

Man it feels weird where they need to add "feminist" like it was another one of her job titles

that is def. not the weirdest thing in that sentence.

poll

If they do not hunt that stalker down and jackboot him into next week I will lose what little faith in authority I have left. You know right now he'd already have a jillion FBIs around him if he were middle eastern/black/a tinfoil teaparty dude.

(ugh Im never reactionary about authority/punishment, this feels gross, but I cant fucking put "bomb threats" and "over women talking about video game" together without losing a large chunk of brain).

USU officials earlier consulted with federal, local and state law enforcement and determined it was safe to allow Anita Sarkeesian to give her presentation, said spokesman Tim Vitale.

In order to determine the degree of risk the letter posed, police ran the information they had through the FBI cyber terrorism task force and a number of other statewide database analysis information centers.

”They determined the threat seems to be consistent with ones (Sarkeesian) has received at other places around the nation,” he told the Standard-Examiner. “The threat we received is not out of the norm for (this woman).”

Wow, is this really how police do threat assessments? "She hasn't been murdered those other few times, so no need to worry about her being murdered this time."

this keeps getting more grossly offensive and stupid

Xp - i mean i assume that these guys are all cowards but i wouldn't bet someone else's life on that assessment

without looking, i'm sure some idiot has already accused Sarkeesian of cancelling the event to somehow promote herself by ignoring the police's low-enough risk assessment

yup

ur prediction is too conservative she has been accused of fabricating the threat against herself of course

http://i.imgur.com/052qGZB.png

going into the mentions on any tweet by any remotely prominent person about this whole thing is basically being in hell

Wow a gamergate fatwa wtf

Hang on are the feds saying "its ok, its safe to proceed she gets threats like this all the time nbd" ?? Cos thats sure as shit how it reads.

it def reads that way

one wld hope they used some other more standard risk assessment other than hey they havent killed her yet

http://i.imgur.com/gpUJTpb.png

lol hanging out in someones mentions straight claiming ownership of the whole scene these people are loony as hell

I just posted about this on FB btw and a friend I thought better of derailed the discussion of "omg this is terrorism" with BUT QUINN WAS A GASLIGHTING NUTTER.

Sigh.

xp this really is some pua board level grossness

I thought these two make great points:

http://ellaguro.blogspot.ca/2014/09/on-gamers-and-identity.html

http://dropouthangoutspaceout.tumblr.com/post/50472859975/videogames-are-the-gardens-of-the-bourgeoise

"...videogames have become one of those 'spheres' that was supposed to separated from 'real life', which explains, once again, why 'gam3rz' are so virulent in their defense of sexism, separate spheres, border patrolling, racism etc. It’s that 'private sphere' that they shared with others which was conceived as their private garden, their summer cottage...

...The bourgeois class created the private because it had the resources to manufacture a world distinct from the aristocracy and the monarchy while the previous classes, farmers and serfs had no concept of the private. Think about how brands are supposed to be private - they are families you bring into your kingdom because they are lifestyles and ideas and whatnot embodied as subjects - even if those subjects are just commodities. Brands, rather than products, become citizens of sorts and are represented by their various manifestations in your private kingdom.

...Remember, this separate sphere is all we have outside of work itself. It’s this private sphere that is supposed to lend true meaning to our lives - not our shitty job that we grudgingly wake up for every day. This is where shit matters and as it happens when things are under your care you give a lot of damns when something appears to attack them.

So what comes out isn’t so much entirely about a hatred of women (though much of it is) but also about the reaction against the drive of a more communal impulse to challenge that hegemony of the private sphere. To move against bourgeois values means to attack, in one sense, that autonomous sphere of production and reproduction of the monarchy of the home. It means to rip that tiny sphere of sovereignty that so many people, robbed of any other space of control in their lives through rampant capital accumulation, have. It also shows how the economic movements of our world come around and viciously react against things they seem so far away from."

that sounds right on

i remember how ridiculous the rhetoric about violence in videogames around an event like Columbine was to me as a sixth grader, how they don't understand how abstracted and silly the violence in a game like Doom was, how it was all simulated, how little of a basic understanding they had of how games work. but as those debates have largely dissipated over the years, videogames have only become more violent, have only ventured much further into simulated realism meant to more convincingly substitute for a disappointing and disempowering reality, have only catered much more deeply and pervasively to the entitlements of their users, and have only become more ingrained and ever-present in culture. where we stand now, videogames have deeply entrenched themselves as the primary venue for disempowered people to elect themselves as servants and act out the sociopathic fantasies of the ruling class. videogames literally train soldiers. if you feel disillusioned, if you feel not particularly smart or skilled, videogames are there. no surprise, then, that this learned rhetoric is further blurring the lines between fantasy and reality and creating a battleground in such a seemingly arbitrary part of popular media. no surprise that this battleground is very real.

the problem is these violent impulses are self-destructive at their core. they're not actions of autonomous actors, they're culturally programmed. they're the impulses of a suicide bomber throwing himself into a crowd of people. they're deeply emotional, deeply disconnected, and deeply afraid of what's happening in the world - and that's what makes them scary, and very real. and that's why we need to see them for what they are - fear, and understand how and why they're deeply intertwined with our culture.

I am thinking, suddenly, of how criticism of sexism in porn has been around for aeons, and afaik no one formed vigilante mobs to tweet about how all the stupid SJW femmos were destroying their nice boobies and they'd kill women who tried... wait who am I kidding, its probably out there isnt it :(

http://i.imgur.com/LD1QtMw.png

i might've railed against this POV pre-gamergate, but when a splinter subculture considers threatening to kill game critics acceptable lulz for the sake of a morally unobstructed view of the new COD, it's a persuasive argument

TBH thats crossed my mind as well.

but I cant fucking put "bomb threats" and "over women talking about video game" together without losing a large chunk of brain).

Like, someone actually thought it was a bright idea to become a terrorist in order to stop a game critic. This is not a hard cost-benefit computation!

https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/522315820291350528
https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/522315786288132096

Gamergaters are arguing with an Eliza Twitter bot: https://twitter.com/ElizaRBarr/status/522159233547382784

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-re_oIAAAOJwP.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-uP0sIEAAGmqT.png

okay that's a lol

Hahahahahaha

http://i.imgur.com/RVrPYjJ.jpg

Dead Cousin Squinky OTM

sad otm

the BBC's attempts to sum up the whole farrago using Auntie's balanced language and formal tone are pretty amusing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29626809

all-time: https://twitter.com/JamieBworth/status/522380269223809024

Gamergaters are arguing with an Eliza Twitter bot

― bizarro gazzara, Wednesday, October 15, 2014 6:43 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

looool

oh man i could read that all day