Live data from Hacker News

SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

51–60 of 86 posts

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#51
post #45

The whole Gamergate drama reminds me of the old saying: “The reason why campus politics are so dirty is that the stakes are so small.” I mean seriously what kind of loser takes video games seriously? Or even worse, who actually cares about video game reviews?

If you're interested in interactive media -- and you've had an account on Hacker News for 8+ years, so let's assume so -- then you really should have at least a passing understanding of how video games work. Both technically and creatively. And as businesses. It's a fascinating topic -- and arguably we're going through a bit of a golden age!

If you're just interested in making fun of nerds for liking video games... Again, you've had a Hacker News account for 8+ years. Might want to watch you you call "loser" for liking stuff related to technology.

(8+ years? Unless you first created your account when you were 10 years old, you're literally an adult who wrote the comment above. Wow!)

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#52
post #45

The whole Gamergate drama reminds me of the old saying: “The reason why campus politics are so dirty is that the stakes are so small.” I mean seriously what kind of loser takes video games seriously? Or even worse, who actually cares about video game reviews?

Well, originally, the female programmers of some videogames took some extreme harassment that was completely unacceptable.

The problem is that the original issue (that level of online harassment is simply not acceptable irrespective of gender and how do we stand against it) and the original victims are now long forgotten in preference to a bunch of new actors who are all about the "political theatre" of their supposed "cause".

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#54
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right, but by making a polarized response to a comment claiming its a complicated issue with polarized sides... Its hard to take away much.

So there is an interesting question. In a polarized situation where there are two sides presenting themselves as victims of the other... how could show one side is ACTUALLY right and one is wrong (assuming reasonable evidence) without sounding partisan? Wouldn't anything that bolstered one side and defamed the other look very partisan? Wouldn't stronger evidence look MORE partisan? Would you have to slowly dish out t…

Um, okay. Here's a paper that did a study based on gendered behavior in Halo 3.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... (tl;dr: there is male hostility towards women in online video games)

No one's stopping you from posting evidence and discussing it, of course. In a debate with sides this polarized, you will sound partisan whenever you use any kind of evidence.

I try fairly hard to combat that fact when I present evidence, although I honestly don't know all the facts and thus can't represent them all fairly. But then again, that's why I participate in discussions online. To learn.

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#55
post #47
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I seriously doubt the anti-GG people sent death threats. No true scotsman

I said I seriously doubt. No true Scotsman would be if someone clearly anti-GG was proven to send a death threat and I redefined them to not be anti-GG for some reason. We haven't reached that point yet in my argument. I'd have to be proven wrong first. Since the reason I'm anti-GG is the harassment and threats (don't agree with their ideas but I think they'd be ignorable without the problematic behavior), I wouldn't…

The unfortunate truth is that Gamergate has been harassed, you just likely haven't heard it. For example, there were bomb threats at several of their meetups, and a panel they had at a Society of Professional Journalism conference had to be evacuated because of several bomb threats.

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#56
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a complicated situation, from the start its been clear that gamergate is solely a vehicle for organised harassment (primarily of women). There isnt any moral quandry or naunced position about it, its just harassment.

[deleted]

Umm... That report does not say what you think it says.

Whoever did that excerpt was either utterly useless at statistics (and reading comprehension), or was trying to twist the results to try to prove a point.

The report was about harassment on Twitter in general, not GG. They were trying to get a very broad sample from all over Twitter, covering any abuse or harassment that was reported to them.

Since the whole GG mess was ongoing at the time of the research, the researchers decided to use the ggautoblocker list to see how much overlap their was between their sample, and people connected to GG, to find out how much it affected their results.

The result is that there was a fair bit of overlap - about 12% of the people in their sample were also on the ggautoblocker list. Most of the harassment they found was not related to GG.

Their finding: "Reports to WAM! constitute a much wider range of harassment than the GamerGate controversy alone".

That's not what the excerpt you posted claims at all. It interprets that as "only 65 out of 9,844 accounts on the ggautoblocker list engaged in harassment". Which is bunk - the study found nothing at all about the remaining 9,779 accounts on that list. Only that those 65 accounts were in both sample sets.

Here's another way to look at it. The 65 harassers who were also on the ggautoblocker list were responsible for 12% of the harassment on Twitter that these researchers found. So they obviously only noticed 0.6% of GamerGate. Therefore, if they'd found all of the GG-associated harassment and abuse, they'd end up with about with 18 times more harassment reports, of which 95% would have been associated with GamerGate.

That analysis is also complete garbage, but it's just as sound as the analysis in that excerpt you posted, and based on exactly the same faulty reasoning.

Many of the accounts on the ggautoblocker list are either bots, or duplicate accounts created specifically for the purpose of harassing people and discarded when they are no longer useful.

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#57

So why not hold the panels in an undisclosed location and webcast them? Preferably for the public, not just conference attendees. Instead of giving the terrorists (for lack of a better word) exactly what they want turn it around and use their threats to garner extra publicity.

Actually, #Savepoint will still be having the panel, at a separate location. It seems like they expected to be canceled, or not get the panel, so they planned ahead. With tempers this high, it's likely have one (or several) bomb threats will be called against the location the day of.

http://www.theopengamingsociety.org/savepoint-dear-community...

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#58
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about the subject, but I've seen this twitter account before and instantly assumed it was parody. Is it a character being portrayed or a real person because I still can't tell.

A parody of what? Seems like a regular human making normal tweets about interacting with ridiculous close-minded misoginist chaps.

Probably assuming that the people she's reacting to are imaginary, because he doesn't believe it could possibly be that bad.

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#59
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I've been following the #GamerGate trainwreck for a while. #SavePoint seems to maybe be about improving gamer culture? I don't know. I've not seen #SavePoint before today. For those who don't know, #GamerGate claimed to be about "journalistic ethics" when they were actually just harassing a women (and later other women) who said negative things about how women were treated in games. [1] The #SavePoint group seems to…

[deleted]

Re: SXSW Cancels Gamer Panels After Threats

#60
post #51
post #45

The whole Gamergate drama reminds me of the old saying: “The reason why campus politics are so dirty is that the stakes are so small.” I mean seriously what kind of loser takes video games seriously? Or even worse, who actually cares about video game reviews?

If you're interested in interactive media -- and you've had an account on Hacker News for 8+ years, so let's assume so -- then you really should have at least a passing understanding of how video games work. Both technically and creatively. And as businesses. It's a fascinating topic -- and arguably we're going through a bit of a golden age! If you're just interested in making fun of nerds for liking video games... A…

Ha ha. I used to be a hard core gamer. Then I grew up, moved out of my parents' house, and got a life. There's nothing wrong with playing games as a hobby. The losers are the ones who actually care about games and take them seriously.
Post reply on HN