Purple Link · @AboveUp
8th Sep 2014 from TwitLonger
Blocklist: temporary allies and permanent enemies. #gamergate #notyourshield
If that Polygon blocklist teaches us anything, it's that a "Us vs Them" mentality only breeds temporary allies and permanent enemies.
Something like that is easy enough to maintain if you only validate people from a small clique with the same world view as you. But in a global stage, with an actually diversive audience like you'd have on the internet, it doesn't hold up.
We all know those young kids who say they like every genre of music, but later on in life they learn it isn't true when they get more exposure to what else is out there in the world. Some of them might actually open themselves up to more genres as they grow accustomed to them, some of them lash out and become angry, saying that the music they don't like or agree with "isn't really music" on the basis of them not enjoying it.
This is pretty much what the "Diversity or Leave" stance really means. The people employing that line of thinking don't know what diversity is, but it sounds open and nice, so saying you're fighting for it means you're on the Right Side. By extension, anyone who disagrees with you to any extent is immediately wrong and evil. Because that is how the world works when you overly simplify it. Anyone you disagree with is a terrorist and will not be negotiated with.
They don't understand that real diversity opens you up to a lot of paths you don't like and that shutting them out because you don't like them is the direct opposite of what diversity is.
Games journalism, at least a large chunk of it, has been on a road to exclusivity under the banner of inclusivity. In the same way, they're using a lot of words to describe people who do not agree with the line of thinking that they're employing themselves. The exclusive treehouse, the gatekeepers. That's them. In the past several weeks, it's been clear that gamers have been more than ready to open the door to others so they can speak for themselves. The ones shutting the door on them, the actual gatekeepers, the people who systematically cancel out every single voice they do not agree with, are the people who have been claiming they're combating this behavior, and that they're doing it for diversity's sake.
What's especially baffling about all of this is that it's straight white men using genders and race as their tools to justify their viewpoints, to a point of calling everyone who calls them out on it a straight white male no matter what their background is. Later they would take a step back, saying they might be minorities, they might be women, but they're just being weaponized by 4chan and other seedy groups on the internet. Because when you've been using a tool for a single use long enough, you start becoming unable to look at it any other way. Use an axe as a weapon for years, and you forget the axe also counts as a tool for purposes beyond killing.
Dehumanize a group and use them for personal gain long enough and every time you come across them you see them as something less than you.
This isn't to say all journalists are terrible people by the way. My world isn't an overly simplified binary sequence of on/off switches. Just like there are assholes on the /v/ and /pol/ threads and in the hashtags on Twitter, there's good people currently being paid to write for video games. Keep supporting the people doing their jobs without blind antagonization and stupidly long blocklists, they're the people we want to keep around for the long run.
Keep in mind, these are the ramblings of a straight white guy, most of this is train of thought, but I thought it was worth posting.