- Joined
- Mar 25, 2015
Alright, alright, stop. I know, for the record, that nothing grinds the gears of Kiwis more than GG or SJWs, so putting them both together, in Deep Thoughts no less, just stands as a great way to rile up a grand 'ol inferno of insanity. I just wanna say that, for the record, I don't mean for this to be clickbait and I don't mean to rile people up. I wanna talk about something I noticed about GG and SJWism and all of that shit, and possibly have a discussion with some other Kiwis in a setting that doesn't immediately devolve into the usual petty GG aGG infighting that's made others sick of GG-related topics.
Alright, so where do we stand now with GG and aGG and the SJWs that are basically intertwined in-between? Well, in recent news, a aGG trans individual is being accused of pedophilia and has Breitbart and baph breathing down her throat, South Park recently made an episode bashing SJWs and some SJWs got livid over it, and this article got produced and people now want to argue what genitalia is between some fictional character's legs. Lots of shit has been kicked up and people that are SJWs or anti-SJWs or whatever the fuck are yelling at other people for picking a side. It's pleasant.
The thing I wanted to discuss is a certain hashtag that likes to crop up in these discussions, namely #GamerGate. Pick any topic and eventually you'll get to the point where someone says GamerGate is involved in some manner. Maybe it's just that the people on the sides associate as pro- or anti-GG. Maybe it's some inherent bias from one side that's twisting the argument in that direction. Maybe it really does have something to do with motherfucking Ethics in Game Journalism (
). The point is that people like to drag this hashtag into these Internet slap fights as though it somehow means something. The recent thing that has somehow dragged GamerGate into all of this is Sarah Nyberg/Sarah Butts, which we've linked above. For the uninitiated, Sarah is some aGG speaker who recently got some pretty damning evidence of sharing crotch shots of her underaged cousin and talking about wanting to fuck her, i.e. she's probably a pedo. Whether she's guilty and needs to be burned at the stake is irrelevant to the discussion though since you can talk about that on her thread. What is relevant is the shitstorm that has been kicked up in the wake of it. Sarah has a line of defenders that are rabidly defending her and discounting the evidence and saying it's all fabricated to libel and shame her for her position, and there is a concentrated group effort across multiple sites of the Internet that are digging up dirt on her and any supporters that throw their hat in with Sarah. You wanna guess what ended up being brought up as a point of contention and solidarity amongst all of these people?
Yep, motherfucking #GamerGate.
Now, I did a cursory Google search to figure out exactly what Sarah did before the entire Internet decided to hop in bed with this pedo story and make every Google search about it. From what I could gather, she's a SJW who made some Let's Plays and has done some mild writing regarding video games. She's not even a game dev like Brianna Wu or someone that publishes reviews on video games, so trying to associate her with anything regarding "Ethics in Game Journalism" is really, really stretching some point (apologies if she has any stronger ties to the video game industry and I simply missed it).
So, why the fuck do people want to keep bringing up GamerGate? Why do people care about this shit so much that they drag it into things that can only be barely related to it? I've kinda been mulling this over both with myself and some other Kiwis and I have an idea, but first, I wanna talk about another phenomenon that happened a couple years ago.
I'm sure that most people are familiar with the Angry Video Game Nerd. For those that aren't or are just barely familiar with him, James Rolfe, the AVGN, made a couple joke videos talking about some shitty old games that no one gave two shits about, and ended up making a popular web series where he, as the titular AVGN, would bash on a bunch of shitty consoles and video games that no one gave two shits about. This would be later repeated by Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic, who would talk about some shitty old movies that no one gave two shits about it. We have an entire topic talking about them. What's important was, back in the early 00's or so, these guys were a really big deal. Both the AVGN and the NC would get millions of views on their shows and the NC was so popular that Doug Walker started an entire company, Channel Awesome, which basically revolved around him and a bunch of other "angry" reviewers that did the same shit to other movies or things like comic books, video games, etc. These guys were extremely popular and had found a huge, untapped source of revenue and were milking it for all it was worth. It got so popular that James Rolfe was able to make his very own AVGN movie and sell it for actual fucking money.
So what happened? Well, it turns out that the whole "angry reviewer" thing was a phase. As of today, the AVGN is a shadow of its former self and even James Rolfe doesn't care about it as much as he did before. Channel Awesome is hemorrhaging money and talent and many former employees talk about the horrors of its management and how it's basically on the verge of collapsing under its own incompetence. Blip.tv, a hosting site for most of the angry reviewers, has shut down due to its waning popularity and many of them have taken to using Patreon to supplement their former revenues. As it stands, they're all dying out and, save for one or two of these reviewer shows that serve a niche that barely any other reviewer covers (MMO Grinder), it's an almost safe assumption that most of them will have completely shut down and abandoned the shows by 2020.
So what happened? Well, for starters, the "angry reviewer" thing liked hinging on "nostalgia". Many of them covered a bunch of old movies that no one gave two shits about and occasionally some old movies that were infamously terrible. There is a finite amount of "terribly bad old movies," though, so eventually their well was tapped dry and their audience got bored of their content. Similarly, their market suffered from saturation where a bunch of people would all get together and do the same damn thing, to the point where there was no real point to watching one person when he was probably just doing the same fucking shit as everyone else. There was dwindling interest and a lot of people doing the same thing, and eventually the craze behind "angry reviewers" died off in the wake of more popular things like Let's Plays and Streaming and all of that other stuff, with these reviewers doing increasingly more desperate things to hold onto what audience they have left as many of them have quit their jobs and hinged all of their finances on this.
So what does this have to do with GamerGate and SJWs? Well, I've said this a couple of times before, but I've honestly viewed SJWism and any of its peripheral movements as a trend, this Internet craze that would die out once its detractors have milked all that was worth from it and everyone subsequently lost interest. And to some extent, that is true. You see, the thing that SJWs and pro-GG and anti-GGs have all been rallying for? It's getting some traction. There's a lot more female representation in media. There's more respect for LGBT people, from gays to trans people and whatnot. There's a tighter leash on corruption and the collusion that led to the first GG debacle is far more difficult to pull now with sites and gamers paying closer attention to the ties that journalists hold with devs and other journalists. A lot of them are succeeding in their cause to revolutionize the world and make it more accepting, and in this society we have where blatant discrimination is frowned upon and inclusion is becoming more and more the norm, it can only get better.
But they don't want this.
Sounds a bit crazy? Lemme explain:
What does GamerGate whine about? Censorship of game developers. The homogenization of games to conform to the norms of people who don't play video games. The increasing influence of people that they don't view gamers on their media. Something something ethics in game journalism.
What does anti-GamerGate whine about? Blatant sexploitation. Misogyny and racism. The lack of diversity in media. To an extent this is also what most SJWs do believe since SJWs and aGG go almost hand in hand.
But let's be entirely, entirely honest here. There is an increasing amount of representation and diversity in video games, from female characters to black characters to characters with a same-sex sexual orientation. Hell, with the way things are going there might actually be more legitimate trans characters in media in general. Niche titles that cater to certain gamers and don't censor for other groups still exist. There's several Japanese titles or some other things like Bloodborne that don't radically change their design to accommodate outside groups. We're far more accepting of groups that were once taboo like gays and trans individuals, and there's probably more female representation across the board in all industries than there has been in years. It's becoming harder and harder to claim oppression.
But that's what they want.
Every single one of their platforms is built on oppression. On being subjugated by the other side. The extremist GGers talk about how aGG is increasingly forcing its influence on video games and other media. The extremist aGGers talk about an underlying current of anti-feminism and discrimination that keeps their own from getting jobs in the industry or being represented in media. Both of these things are not entirely true and in some cases are blatantly false, but this is their story and what they're hinging all of their bets on. There's several prominent figures, such as the ever popular Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian that literally have most of their financial security invested on this narrative that they are fighting against an oppression that grows increasingly less existent every fucking day. They all claim that they want diversity and they want to improve the media and possibly even the world but they never take any real active steps to accomplish anything like this because they know that, if they ever succeeded, their five minutes of fame would be over.
And this brings it all back to GamerGate. GamerGate was probably the biggest fucking stink ever raised over this SJW nonsense, and now everyone that's invested everything, from their popularity to their fucking careers, to it has nothing more to do than perpetually continue its existence. They literally live and thrive on GamerGate, so they'll always bring it up and tie everything back to it. They're make increasingly outrageous claims and articles and do everything they can to demonize the opposing side, not to mention antagonize them so that they can have actual abuse they can weave into their story. They do this because it keeps them relevant, and they'll keep doing this because this is what they want. Relevance.
Anyone that's pro-GG or anti-GG writes every inflammatory clickbait article and engages in every pointless discussion with this in mind: Were they to ever win and forever end the GamerGate discussion, they would become nothing. This is why all of the GG shit seems to live in perpetuity and repeat the same tired arguments. None of them want to actually win. They just want to show off against a foe and get asspats and money from their rabid audience.
And, honestly, even if they never do anything to actually end it of their own accord, the increasingly insane claims they use to perpetuate GamerGate will probably destroy it. Again, take the Sarah case. If she actually gets brought up to court on being a pedophile and convicted, all of the support that the aGG community has thrown around her will literally be incinerated in an attempt to not appear absolutely psychotic to anyone just glancing at their direction. It's possibly the one thing that could sink the GG discussion forever because it'll basically be known as the "thing that somehow led to people exposing or defending a pedophile that somehow had something to do with games."
But maybe I'm overthinking things and being paranoid, I dunno. inb4tl;dr
If I had to choose a political leaning, I'm somewhere left but I don't necessarily choose a political party to really associate with. Disillusionment and whatnot. I also identify mostly as pro-GG, but in the sense that I supported the idea of Ethics in Game Journalism and weeding out the corruption with journalists all collaborating with each other and other game devs and publishers to basically all produce the same content and hold a strangehold on profits and news. The whole shit now about GG talking about representation and gender issues and all of that stuff? I try not to choose a side there because it's a literal minefield. Alright? Alright.
Alright, so where do we stand now with GG and aGG and the SJWs that are basically intertwined in-between? Well, in recent news, a aGG trans individual is being accused of pedophilia and has Breitbart and baph breathing down her throat, South Park recently made an episode bashing SJWs and some SJWs got livid over it, and this article got produced and people now want to argue what genitalia is between some fictional character's legs. Lots of shit has been kicked up and people that are SJWs or anti-SJWs or whatever the fuck are yelling at other people for picking a side. It's pleasant.
The thing I wanted to discuss is a certain hashtag that likes to crop up in these discussions, namely #GamerGate. Pick any topic and eventually you'll get to the point where someone says GamerGate is involved in some manner. Maybe it's just that the people on the sides associate as pro- or anti-GG. Maybe it's some inherent bias from one side that's twisting the argument in that direction. Maybe it really does have something to do with motherfucking Ethics in Game Journalism (
). The point is that people like to drag this hashtag into these Internet slap fights as though it somehow means something. The recent thing that has somehow dragged GamerGate into all of this is Sarah Nyberg/Sarah Butts, which we've linked above. For the uninitiated, Sarah is some aGG speaker who recently got some pretty damning evidence of sharing crotch shots of her underaged cousin and talking about wanting to fuck her, i.e. she's probably a pedo. Whether she's guilty and needs to be burned at the stake is irrelevant to the discussion though since you can talk about that on her thread. What is relevant is the shitstorm that has been kicked up in the wake of it. Sarah has a line of defenders that are rabidly defending her and discounting the evidence and saying it's all fabricated to libel and shame her for her position, and there is a concentrated group effort across multiple sites of the Internet that are digging up dirt on her and any supporters that throw their hat in with Sarah. You wanna guess what ended up being brought up as a point of contention and solidarity amongst all of these people?Yep, motherfucking #GamerGate.
Now, I did a cursory Google search to figure out exactly what Sarah did before the entire Internet decided to hop in bed with this pedo story and make every Google search about it. From what I could gather, she's a SJW who made some Let's Plays and has done some mild writing regarding video games. She's not even a game dev like Brianna Wu or someone that publishes reviews on video games, so trying to associate her with anything regarding "Ethics in Game Journalism" is really, really stretching some point (apologies if she has any stronger ties to the video game industry and I simply missed it).
So, why the fuck do people want to keep bringing up GamerGate? Why do people care about this shit so much that they drag it into things that can only be barely related to it? I've kinda been mulling this over both with myself and some other Kiwis and I have an idea, but first, I wanna talk about another phenomenon that happened a couple years ago.
I'm sure that most people are familiar with the Angry Video Game Nerd. For those that aren't or are just barely familiar with him, James Rolfe, the AVGN, made a couple joke videos talking about some shitty old games that no one gave two shits about, and ended up making a popular web series where he, as the titular AVGN, would bash on a bunch of shitty consoles and video games that no one gave two shits about. This would be later repeated by Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic, who would talk about some shitty old movies that no one gave two shits about it. We have an entire topic talking about them. What's important was, back in the early 00's or so, these guys were a really big deal. Both the AVGN and the NC would get millions of views on their shows and the NC was so popular that Doug Walker started an entire company, Channel Awesome, which basically revolved around him and a bunch of other "angry" reviewers that did the same shit to other movies or things like comic books, video games, etc. These guys were extremely popular and had found a huge, untapped source of revenue and were milking it for all it was worth. It got so popular that James Rolfe was able to make his very own AVGN movie and sell it for actual fucking money.
So what happened? Well, it turns out that the whole "angry reviewer" thing was a phase. As of today, the AVGN is a shadow of its former self and even James Rolfe doesn't care about it as much as he did before. Channel Awesome is hemorrhaging money and talent and many former employees talk about the horrors of its management and how it's basically on the verge of collapsing under its own incompetence. Blip.tv, a hosting site for most of the angry reviewers, has shut down due to its waning popularity and many of them have taken to using Patreon to supplement their former revenues. As it stands, they're all dying out and, save for one or two of these reviewer shows that serve a niche that barely any other reviewer covers (MMO Grinder), it's an almost safe assumption that most of them will have completely shut down and abandoned the shows by 2020.
So what happened? Well, for starters, the "angry reviewer" thing liked hinging on "nostalgia". Many of them covered a bunch of old movies that no one gave two shits about and occasionally some old movies that were infamously terrible. There is a finite amount of "terribly bad old movies," though, so eventually their well was tapped dry and their audience got bored of their content. Similarly, their market suffered from saturation where a bunch of people would all get together and do the same damn thing, to the point where there was no real point to watching one person when he was probably just doing the same fucking shit as everyone else. There was dwindling interest and a lot of people doing the same thing, and eventually the craze behind "angry reviewers" died off in the wake of more popular things like Let's Plays and Streaming and all of that other stuff, with these reviewers doing increasingly more desperate things to hold onto what audience they have left as many of them have quit their jobs and hinged all of their finances on this.
So what does this have to do with GamerGate and SJWs? Well, I've said this a couple of times before, but I've honestly viewed SJWism and any of its peripheral movements as a trend, this Internet craze that would die out once its detractors have milked all that was worth from it and everyone subsequently lost interest. And to some extent, that is true. You see, the thing that SJWs and pro-GG and anti-GGs have all been rallying for? It's getting some traction. There's a lot more female representation in media. There's more respect for LGBT people, from gays to trans people and whatnot. There's a tighter leash on corruption and the collusion that led to the first GG debacle is far more difficult to pull now with sites and gamers paying closer attention to the ties that journalists hold with devs and other journalists. A lot of them are succeeding in their cause to revolutionize the world and make it more accepting, and in this society we have where blatant discrimination is frowned upon and inclusion is becoming more and more the norm, it can only get better.
But they don't want this.
Sounds a bit crazy? Lemme explain:
What does GamerGate whine about? Censorship of game developers. The homogenization of games to conform to the norms of people who don't play video games. The increasing influence of people that they don't view gamers on their media. Something something ethics in game journalism.
What does anti-GamerGate whine about? Blatant sexploitation. Misogyny and racism. The lack of diversity in media. To an extent this is also what most SJWs do believe since SJWs and aGG go almost hand in hand.
But let's be entirely, entirely honest here. There is an increasing amount of representation and diversity in video games, from female characters to black characters to characters with a same-sex sexual orientation. Hell, with the way things are going there might actually be more legitimate trans characters in media in general. Niche titles that cater to certain gamers and don't censor for other groups still exist. There's several Japanese titles or some other things like Bloodborne that don't radically change their design to accommodate outside groups. We're far more accepting of groups that were once taboo like gays and trans individuals, and there's probably more female representation across the board in all industries than there has been in years. It's becoming harder and harder to claim oppression.
But that's what they want.
Every single one of their platforms is built on oppression. On being subjugated by the other side. The extremist GGers talk about how aGG is increasingly forcing its influence on video games and other media. The extremist aGGers talk about an underlying current of anti-feminism and discrimination that keeps their own from getting jobs in the industry or being represented in media. Both of these things are not entirely true and in some cases are blatantly false, but this is their story and what they're hinging all of their bets on. There's several prominent figures, such as the ever popular Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian that literally have most of their financial security invested on this narrative that they are fighting against an oppression that grows increasingly less existent every fucking day. They all claim that they want diversity and they want to improve the media and possibly even the world but they never take any real active steps to accomplish anything like this because they know that, if they ever succeeded, their five minutes of fame would be over.
And this brings it all back to GamerGate. GamerGate was probably the biggest fucking stink ever raised over this SJW nonsense, and now everyone that's invested everything, from their popularity to their fucking careers, to it has nothing more to do than perpetually continue its existence. They literally live and thrive on GamerGate, so they'll always bring it up and tie everything back to it. They're make increasingly outrageous claims and articles and do everything they can to demonize the opposing side, not to mention antagonize them so that they can have actual abuse they can weave into their story. They do this because it keeps them relevant, and they'll keep doing this because this is what they want. Relevance.
Anyone that's pro-GG or anti-GG writes every inflammatory clickbait article and engages in every pointless discussion with this in mind: Were they to ever win and forever end the GamerGate discussion, they would become nothing. This is why all of the GG shit seems to live in perpetuity and repeat the same tired arguments. None of them want to actually win. They just want to show off against a foe and get asspats and money from their rabid audience.
And, honestly, even if they never do anything to actually end it of their own accord, the increasingly insane claims they use to perpetuate GamerGate will probably destroy it. Again, take the Sarah case. If she actually gets brought up to court on being a pedophile and convicted, all of the support that the aGG community has thrown around her will literally be incinerated in an attempt to not appear absolutely psychotic to anyone just glancing at their direction. It's possibly the one thing that could sink the GG discussion forever because it'll basically be known as the "thing that somehow led to people exposing or defending a pedophile that somehow had something to do with games."
But maybe I'm overthinking things and being paranoid, I dunno. inb4tl;dr
