GamerGate and Why I Gave Up

Saber explains why she’s so over #GamerGate and quite unhappy with everyone at this point.

[See the full post at: http://www.nevershutup.com/?p=292]

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Saberpilot

Saberpilot

To make me and the forum feel for alive, I’d like to raise a few question.
First, I agree zealots are a huge problem in social movements, gaming related or not.

But did they actually volunteerly ally with zealots? After all, GamersGate is a hashtag, meaning anyone can use it if they want to. And there are zealots that can craft points that makes any rebuttal from GamersGate sounds like contradicting their own purpose. And said zealots will make damn sure this point is heard by everyone.

The anonymous nature of Internet make things worse, you can only know this article is written under such hashtag, but have no idea whether the writer is to help it or harm it.

Is there really any way to stop zealots from sticking to you, and scare the general public off? Zealots in itself is not a bad thing, but they are kind of extreme, which is bad for their message to come through. So if there’s a milder movement, they will consider this a chance to convey the message, and stick to it. This apply to both side to the spectrum, really.

And then there’s headline issue. If they don’t make their title zealous, not much people would notice it. Controversy is the best way to attention, I’m afraid. Is there really a way around this?

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blasteg

I think you’ve highlighted a number of good point about the situation. If anything, this has once again proven that only the loudest and most radical voices are heard in any argument. And this is especially problematic if you don’t have some sort of central organization that can say, “Sure, these people are using our tags, but they’re not actually affiliated with us.”

It doesn’t matter if you voluntarily ally yourself with anyone. If you don’t have a central organization that can denounce zealots, anyone can chime in. This proves that social media activism is a somewhat flawed idea. Beyond the fact that sitting and tweeting about a problem is a lousy way to accomplish anything, anyone can use any tag just to get attention or to make someone look bad.

To answer your final question, not really. Sadly, we live in a culture where controversy, slander, and downright lies are the best way to get media attention. I don’t give a single crap about Kim Kardashian, but thanks to the sea of people who do, I have to put up with her every day. She’s far from newsworthy, but because she’s outrageous she’s the center of attention.

So is there a way around giving zealots the mic? Not anymore, no. With the advent of cable news and the internet, anyone with the faculty for speech and a half formed idea can give their opinion (look at me, for example). Until we as a culture can start valuing facts a little more and treating each other with actual respect, I don’t see this problem changing anytime soon.

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EvilDrReef

Evil Dr Reef

Evil Dr. Reef

I agree with both your points. Unfortunately from what I understand the main GamerGate movement had a mixture of both hijacking and willingly inviting some of the people in that took over their movement. So I’d say it’s about 50/50 blame that can be spread towards the original GamerGate movement.

As for the internet, yes, things can be spread/veered off track by opposing forces, but I can think of other movements that have had attempted “hijacks” (Malala’s cry for education comes to mind, I forget what the hashtag was though) that have had damage control from the original organizers and still managed to weed out the trolls.

As for not making the headlines overly volatile, I don’t think that headlines for this particular issue would’ve become so attention-grabbing if death threats hadn’t been made towards the original women developers that were the targets in the beginning.

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Saberpilot

Saberpilot

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