Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women • Hacker News Board

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#11

Post by imanaccount247 » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:19 AM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #4

Ms. Wu's bitterly sarcastic tweet pretty much says it all: > The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe. > Remember, #gamergate isn't about attacking women.

The question is, why does "#gamergate" get the blame for this? This trend of vilifying any group one disagrees with based on the actions of individuals with no indication they are even connected to the group is pretty disturbing. Remember when Jack Thompson got death threats? Remember how it was not acceptable to pretend "gamers" were at fault for that, but rather the individual people committing those crimes were at fault for their own behavior?

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#12

Post by imanaccount247 » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:23 AM UTC

throwawayGG wrote: post #3

It's interesting what a chilling effect the evil "gamergate" people have. By making it clear they target anyone who stands up for women in gaming or for freedom of press they have intimidated people who would usually be up front in their support for the people attacked. I hope someone can come up with a sensible strategy for dealing with these trolls. I'd like to see real-world consequences. The article indicates the…

How have they made that clear exactly? By condemning the actions of the tiny number of people being abusive? The tiny number of people who have nothing to do with "gamergate" in the first place? Do you seriously not have any moral qualms about lying about millions of people and claiming they target and intimidate people? If you are going to make claims like that, you need to back it up with evidence. You can't just claim one sick person's actions are the fault of some other group of people.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#13

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:24 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #7

throwawayGG wrote: post #3

It's interesting what a chilling effect the evil "gamergate" people have. By making it clear they target anyone who stands up for women in gaming or for freedom of press they have intimidated people who would usually be up front in their support for the people attacked. I hope someone can come up with a sensible strategy for dealing with these trolls. I'd like to see real-world consequences. The article indicates the…

This narrative you're pushing here is a very hard sell considering this is one of their most prominent banners: http://www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/09/gamergate.jpg Being the interenet, there are naturally aggressive and violent people who will throw harassment around. With regard to this issue, it is downright false to claim that they originate from, or are encouraged by, any one camp, as there are examples of hara…

It's great that you're interested in promoting journalistic integrity, and not in attacking women. Why, then, don't you start a movement that can credibly claim to support those goals, instead of rallying behind one that was created to attack one woman for completely made-up crimes against journalism?

I would love to see someone do this. Corruption in games journalism is a real problem. But it's not a problem that I've ever actually seen a #GamerGate fan attempt to address except when they were spinning it to attack Zoe Quinn or her supporters.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#14

Post by XorNot » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:27 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #8

My question is how crazy jerks are able to find addresses for targets they want to harass? Simple public record searches? I think in this age, having a very common first and last name combination helps protect your privacy.

Internet anonymity died when the net went mainstream. Most of us have public profiles which are explicitly linked to your real life identities.

Where we've lagged is deciding how we deal with pseudo-anonymous harassment. This has probably been an issue longer then the net though: stop and think for a moment just how utterly ridiculous it is that people can call you on your telephone, but don't have to disclose the phone number they dial from (i.e. so you can't just block them trivially).

I somewhat suspect communications policy of the future needs to, at the very least, enforce the idea that big providers have to take some steps to allow easy selective filtering of contacts.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#15

Post by throwawayGG » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:27 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #7

throwawayGG wrote: post #3

It's interesting what a chilling effect the evil "gamergate" people have. By making it clear they target anyone who stands up for women in gaming or for freedom of press they have intimidated people who would usually be up front in their support for the people attacked. I hope someone can come up with a sensible strategy for dealing with these trolls. I'd like to see real-world consequences. The article indicates the…

This narrative you're pushing here is a very hard sell considering this is one of their most prominent banners: http://www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/09/gamergate.jpg Being the interenet, there are naturally aggressive and violent people who will throw harassment around. With regard to this issue, it is downright false to claim that they originate from, or are encouraged by, any one camp, as there are examples of hara…

Yeah, that banner is bullshit - as far as I can see it is completely ignored by the majority of people supporting gamergate.

The linked thread on reddit is full of people complaining about "SJW" - social justice warriors. These are equated with feminists and are widely condemned by GamerGaters.

Attacks on women in gaming dominate the headlines on the linked subreddit[1], and it's pretty clear that problems they have "biased and corrupt" all revolve around the reporting of women in gaming.

Perhaps there is a problem with biased and corrupt game reporting. I wouldn't know, but as far as I can see #gamergate is just using it as an excuse for misogynistic behaviour.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#16

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:28 AM UTC

imanaccount247 wrote: post #11

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #4

Ms. Wu's bitterly sarcastic tweet pretty much says it all: > The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe. > Remember, #gamergate isn't about attacking women.

The question is, why does "#gamergate" get the blame for this? This trend of vilifying any group one disagrees with based on the actions of individuals with no indication they are even connected to the group is pretty disturbing. Remember when Jack Thompson got death threats? Remember how it was not acceptable to pretend "gamers" were at fault for that, but rather the individual people committing those crimes were at…

Because #gamergate is a name that was created to attack one woman based on completely spurious claims.

If you really care about corruption in games journalism (and I do) then it makes no sense to continue rallying behind this banner that was tainted from the start.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#17

Post by XorNot » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:32 AM UTC

imanaccount247 wrote: post #11

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #4

Ms. Wu's bitterly sarcastic tweet pretty much says it all: > The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe. > Remember, #gamergate isn't about attacking women.

The question is, why does "#gamergate" get the blame for this? This trend of vilifying any group one disagrees with based on the actions of individuals with no indication they are even connected to the group is pretty disturbing. Remember when Jack Thompson got death threats? Remember how it was not acceptable to pretend "gamers" were at fault for that, but rather the individual people committing those crimes were at…

There's a strain of activists which like to operate to by rallying a crowd to shout down their opposition, rather then negotiating policy or changing minds.

It works well on college campuses and the internet when targeted at individuals. It doesn't work against anything else.

The type of articles which try to group and target blame at "gamers" are exactly this type of thinking: they're written on the assumption that "gamers" is a small group that can be shamed into going away. It's telling that they're written with the usual "can't get laid" smarm which fundamentally fails to understand modern demographics, and has a lot to answer for about how exactly one wants to help guide and shape a generation moving into adolescence who'll be wrestling with understanding a lot of these types of issues.

Conversely, they're not entirely wrong in this assumption if you consider the actual demographic audience either: the group of people who know or care about the blogs and personalities involved is tiny if you're not in it. It is not mainstream news. No one outside of the relevant forum communities knew or cared.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#18

Post by tehwebguy » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:32 AM UTC

uvTwitch wrote: post #7

throwawayGG wrote: post #3

It's interesting what a chilling effect the evil "gamergate" people have. By making it clear they target anyone who stands up for women in gaming or for freedom of press they have intimidated people who would usually be up front in their support for the people attacked. I hope someone can come up with a sensible strategy for dealing with these trolls. I'd like to see real-world consequences. The article indicates the…

This narrative you're pushing here is a very hard sell considering this is one of their most prominent banners: http://www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/09/gamergate.jpg Being the interenet, there are naturally aggressive and violent people who will throw harassment around. With regard to this issue, it is downright false to claim that they originate from, or are encouraged by, any one camp, as there are examples of hara…

Probably because they only decided that "integrity in game journalism" was a worthy cause when they decided that a woman paid for a review with sex.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#19

Post by ps4fanboy » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:33 AM UTC

This is no different than fringe radical feminists attacking people on the internet, I dont have a link but there was an incident of a grown woman doxing a 13 year old kid.

If that doesnt make all feminists bad then this shouldnt make all gamers bad at least apply consistent logic and standards.

Re: Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women

#20

Post by throwawayGG » Sun, Oct 12, 2014, 3:33 AM UTC

imanaccount247 wrote: post #12

throwawayGG wrote: post #3

It's interesting what a chilling effect the evil "gamergate" people have. By making it clear they target anyone who stands up for women in gaming or for freedom of press they have intimidated people who would usually be up front in their support for the people attacked. I hope someone can come up with a sensible strategy for dealing with these trolls. I'd like to see real-world consequences. The article indicates the…

How have they made that clear exactly? By condemning the actions of the tiny number of people being abusive? The tiny number of people who have nothing to do with "gamergate" in the first place? Do you seriously not have any moral qualms about lying about millions of people and claiming they target and intimidate people? If you are going to make claims like that, you need to back it up with evidence. You can't just c…

You can't just claim one sick person's actions are the fault of some other group of people.

Actually I can. That group of people acts as an enabling environment, making the behaviour seem less extreme to those associated in that group.

Do you seriously not have any moral qualms about lying about millions of people and claiming they target and intimidate people?

I don't see these "millions of people" actively working to make sure the person making those threats is found and brought to justice. Instead, I see lots of them going "yeah, that bad, but the other side did...." or "hey look, she was logged onto 8chan. She probably did it herself" or at best "We shouldn't say too much until we know who did it".

I'll condemn that behaviour all day (behind the safety of my throwaway account)