I've been seeing a lot of stuff popping up all over the gaming-related areas of the Internet about this whole #GamerGate thing lately, including
today[1] in another instance of
this sort of asininity. So, finally, I decided to try to find out
what it is. Basically, from what I can tell, it all relates back to and started with
this shit, but has since been blown up into some sort of massive conspiracy thing. Granted, it's not quite "the moon landing was a hoax" or "the grassy knoll" or "911 was an inside job" levels of nutjobbery, but relative to the video game industry at least, it may as well be on that level. I'll just say that I think it's some weapons-grade paranoid bullshit. While I do believe the video game journalism industry is indeed pretty shitty, I think that's mostly due to gross incompetence and amateurism on the part of most game "journalists" (or "bloggers" or "just guys on the Internet" or whatever they want to call themselves, while getting paid to spout their bullshit) and, yes, due to some low-level shady dealings between more than a few game devs/pubs and so-called journalists, rather than due to some sort of big, crazy feminist Illuminati theory or whatever the hell.
From the
Forbes article that was the top-most link in my Google search of "what is gamergate":
"GamerGate appeals to people who feel alienated by the changing face of gaming, people who feel criticized when they've been the minority, people who want to keep gaming the way it was, people who are already prone to assuming conspiracies, and people who feel as if they're being disenfranchised by the changes in society being carried out in gaming."Well, I feel alienated by the changing face of gaming, criticized when I've been the minority, and want to keep gaming the way it was, sure, and I've said as much in previous entries on this LJ, but that's it, and it's
for various other reasons unrelated to how corrupt the
game journalism industry might or might not be. #GamerGate actually does
not appeal to me at all. I don't buy into the whole conspiracy angle and I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. (The mere fact that they've apparently got frickin'
Breitbart on their side should tell you all you need to know about #GamerGate.)
"If there's an actual discussion to be had here about journalistic ethics and gaming, it's worth having. However ... the well is so poisoned it's impossible to have the discussion in any reasonable or useful way."Yeah, pretty much this. Crazy conspiracy theories are for crazy crackpots and have little place in a much needed adult conversation about the ethics of video game journalism (or lack thereof).
[1] - And, man oh man, take a look at how many butthurt manchildren there are under that PC Gamer article, taking the time to make an account and then post comment (after comment after comment) about how they're never going to read PC Gamer again because of that article. For people who are ostensibly leaving the site forever, they sure can't STFU about how they're going to leave the site forever, that's for sure. I can't help but snicker and roll my eyes. Isn't there a proper term for that type of Internet troll? You know, the one who posts only to make a note of just how hard they're going to unfollow/unsubscribe/whatever from a given site or blog or other such thing because they think it'll somehow hurt the site owner's feelings? I'm pretty sure I saw something like that, but can't think of what it was off the top of my head. If there isn't such a proper term for it, there needs to be. At least most of the commenters under the RPS article seem to be much more reasonable, or at least they aren't being foaming-at-the-mouth ate-lead-paint-chips-as-a-child retarded about it, anyway.
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