Pikachu With a Gat · @EseKansaiJinBen
11th May 2015 from TwitLonger
Many of you know me pretty well by now.
I can be a caustic little gargoyle when it comes to the constant infighting and dissent, mostly because I want to see cohesion and common sense, and I see many people (sometimes deeply disturbed people who forgot to take their meds) who want nothing of the sort for GG.
I rarely "address the throng" this way as it were, mostly because the requirements of my work prohibit me from organizing my thoughts in a lucid way. In short, it takes time to bang one of these suckers out, and time is a commodity I almost never have.
Early on, I tried my damnedest to point out to those reading the #gamergate hashtag that there are three "layers" of GG, if you will. You can liken it to the rings of an onion, with a "core" in the middle. I would hope many of you by now already noticed what I'm saying to be true or have just grasped it at some level by osmosis. If this is pointing out the obvious, forgive me in advance, because I'll do plenty of that below.
The first group are they who'd likely be the first to pack up and go home if the offending sites put up disclosures of conflicts-of-interest, regardless of the insulting "Gamers are dead" articles and whatever crap ideology fueled them. They're perfectly happy with letting sites run by "Socjus" obsessed hipsters with liberal-arts degrees exist long after this and are willing to accept casual apologies for the "Gamers are dead" collusion if they'd just state who's got ties with who and why. They're they most likely to say "I didn't sign up for this to fight SJWs" and are more likely to stay to the rank-and-file.
The second group is concerned with the ideological colonization of the gaming space and as a result, the media that covers it, by "Socjus" types, in strong addition to a casual feeling that conflicts-of-interest need to be disclosed. The most visible and most contentious outcome of this invasion (from GG's point of view) is the pressure exerted by journos and activists to keep certain games from being available to consumers or even being completed. This group would VERY begrudgingly call of their barrage of e-mails and angry tweets if they'd adhere to disclosures of said conflicts-of-interest, but also realize that the GameJournoPros' steadfast unwillingness to cater to this simple disclosure demand (or give an apology!) affords gamers an opportunity to "rebuild the gaming space" by creating new publications to report from a neutral standpoint or even push back against this censorship's root ideology. In a sense, they favor the unwillingness of GJP to do anything pro-consumer or proactive because they see an entire corrupt system needing to be replaced.
The third group is the core of "GG" that's seen the ideological tweaking of the gaming space and has done massive amounts of work to uncover the actors behind it. This third group is concerned with games being used and funded as agents of social engineering. This group sees the colonization by "Socjus" rightfully as a means of instituting greater social control, and this group is working to bypass, if not "rout" or render completely irrelevant the "Socjus" clique currently attempting to place its own creative bottleneck on the industry. This third group is less concerned with corrupt websites as it is with the influence of powerful networks of individuals across the industry and their financial relationships. Essentially identifying the "clique" and how to work around their restraining of ideas (and render this clique wholly irrelevant to this industry) is fundamental to this layer.
Many have taken a glance at these separate "tiers" and have mistaken GG as not having a clear, specific goal. What includes all three tiers? The simplest demands of all -- the idea that, at the very least, if you have a stake in the "who" or the "what" of what you're writing about, you damn well disclose that fact. This is something that all three of the above "layers" agree on.
As I predicted, many -- possibly goons from SA -- have tried to create factions within each of these tiers to foment infighting.
Some have recently decried focusing on the invasion of the gaming space by narcissistic dictators (and the "clique" of journalists involved) as a non-issue and that we simply need to JUST be talking about journalists screwing up, and promoting the work of their associates at arms' reach, or when they have a financial stake, et cetera.
I do not think the concerns of those wanting to address an authoritarian mob and their installed critics are in any way invalid whatsoever.
I agree, however, that the "ethics" issue is indeed the biggest issue uniting everyone here. The political views of a relatively small clique of powerbrokers and their cult-like mentality... and the way in which they've taken an iron-fisted approach to colonizing the gaming space are ALSO an issue which concern people, and it would be good for people to recognize this and not attempt to de-legitimize it as well.
It would be good to realize again that David Weigel from the Washington Post was fired for being involved in the "template" for the GameJournoPros mailing list, and it was just a bunch of liberal-leaning goofs on keyboards hanging out together on a "cabal" discussing just how uncool Mitt Romney and his aides are, and how they're thinking of spreading their bias.
A "real" journo in the employ of a left-leaning organization was tossed out for talking on a gossip board with other leftie reporters because there was a high probability the list could be used for collusion. In short, he was fired for LESS than what the people we're dealing with now are still doing.
It would do you all well to very logically recognize that BOTH the ideological tweaking of the gaming space and the most fundamental issue to Gamergate-- collusion-- are core issues, and arguing about which is more important not only is incredibly counterproductive but is a cheap way to foment dissent.
It's not wrong to discuss "feminism" laying siege to gaming in Gamergate unless, say, you're at a SPJ panel explaining the root causes of this fiasco. It's not wrong to expound upon what specific contentious viewpoints sites are pushing if asked by those wishing to know further.
In short, all of those tiers need each other to get anywhere, here.
For some reason, provocateurs keep popping up, and you couldn't pay professionals to sow the discord that "Gators" seem to want to be able to do on their own.