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How Gamergate started in Dorchester and keeps playing out in Dorchester District Court
By adamg on Tue, 04/28/2015 - 9:44pm
Boston Magazine details an idiot savant's obsession with a woman who broke up with him and how it led to a national wave of death threats and other forms of harassment against women in the gaming industry.
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Comments
Sigh.One of big reasons I
Sigh.One of big reasons I like uhub is because it isn't polluted with GG reporting.
Can we get back to talking about what is really important in this town, like space savers, allson xmas, and bizarre citizens connect submissions? Perhaps a heated bicycle debate?
The local angle
I mean, Dorchester District Court ...
How the hell do you all know
How the hell do you all know what this is? Yet again it's on uhun and as far as I can tell minus the threats it's just some nerd soap opera by people who need to grow up and go outside and nowhere near a scandal like Watergate. Is this the same story as the transvestite that made fake tweets about rape threats or whatever too? Does it come from that rolling stone about the false rape report? How the hell do video games attract so many weirdos and why should anyone outside of their socially maladjusted community care or follow the story? If it's harassment why not just go to the police, get a restraining order and leave the harmful environment because I don't know why everyone should care about some nerds' relationship drama and 4chan trolling to this degree of coverage.
I think you need to calm down
Maybe a nice walk and some fresh air?
that's exactly the attitude
of dismissiveness and derision that the women who have been harrassed and threatened have been facing from police.
Whether we understand or can relate to it or not (I'm not a gamer myself, I pretty much shut down at anything beyond the Wii), this is a legitimate livelihood for people, writing and designing games, like an actual career pursuit. And there is a festering cesspool of really dangerous behavior from people who do not want what they perceive as "their world" tainted by women, who they consider to be inferior and against whom they have deep resentment.
It's not just a bunch of "maladjusted nerds", it's gotten to where it's an organized group of potentially dangerous sociopaths feeding off of each other and taking advantage of a legal system that has no idea how to process it and no interest in taking it seriously. It hasn't been that long that "stalking" entered the legal vocabulary as a prosecutable crime, either, and it took a long time and lost lives for people to take it seriously.
Maybe I'm just not convinced
Maybe I'm just not convinced at first that this is all about women being game designers or whatever, because that just sounds so absurd. I don't deny it, but the logic is unbelievable.
It just sounds utterly ridiculous that manchildren would want to rape/murder people because their toys are designed by girls. I can't imagine what causes such a large group of people to think that way. How much of it is real and how much is Streisand effect to get a reaction? Neither are acceptable.
You find it hard to believe
You find it hard to believe that emotionally-stunted geeks might be misogynists? Which day last week did you first arrive on our planet? What's it about, then? What's your alternate theory? Ethics in gaming journalism?
I don't hang around with
I don't hang around with emotionally-stunted geeks so I don't have any frame of reference for this. I don't deny that it's all terrible, it's just bizarre to imagine. I thought geeks were usually desperate to get girlfriends, wanting to murder women because they are involved with video games doesn't seem like the best way of accomplishing that.
Really?
You've never encountered misogynists before?
Never heard about them on the internet or on TV?
Remember this guy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings
I have no idea whether or not he was a gamer, but it's the same idea.
Can't find them anywhere
Y'know, there's an old saying at the poker table: if you can't spot who the fish is, the fish is you.
No, I don't associate with
No, I don't associate with total creeps who hate women or hold video game toys to some absurd standard of identity.
they are afraid women will somehow ruin gaming.
It's about women having any power whatsoever. It's about women making games with female characters who aren't just there to be rescued or be eye candy. One of their favorite targets is an academic who examines how women are portrayed in games. They don't like facing the truth, which is that on the whole, women are portrayed pretty poorly. These guys are afraid that if people start paying attention, the mainstream game studios will start dressing women in real clothes instead of chainmail bikinis. They're afraid the next version of their favorite car stealing game won't have an option to gain bonus points by raping a woman and then killing her.
"minus the threats"?
Well, one way to know some of it would be to read the linked article, which I don't think you've done, based on your questions.
Women have been driven out of their jobs and/or homes because of this. It's local because Brianna Wu is a local resident, and because Quinn's court case is in Dorchester. Quinn did go to the police, and did file a restraining order. What does leave the "harmful environment" mean? When the gamergate bros send threats and dead animals to your house, or call your parents, employers, and friends and tell them lies about you, how do you leave that environment?
Whoa
Wait, they make heated bicycles now?
wtf? 1570 comments already?
This article has been on Boston Magazine's web site for less than a day. How does it already have that many comments? They are coming in so fast that I can just sit on the page doing nothing, and banners appear at the top and bottom of the page: "3 new comments above" or "5 new comments below", with the numbers increasing steadily as I watch.
...
Makes a 144 comment bitchfest on public sunscreen dispensers look goddamn endearing.
GG
That's the small army of psychopaths Gjoni recruited. They appear everywhere there's an article critical of GG and shit all over the comments.
2500 comments now
and they either haven't found UH yet, or Adam has a very good spam filter.
A strong argument for registered users...
If I'm correct, Adam previews the AC comments before posting. If that assumption is true, I fully expect Uhub to be down for a couple of days due to 'technical issues' while he's holed up in the Pleasant.
Do they have WiFi?
If so, I'm there, otherwise, it's up to Bruegger's on the parkway :-).
And, yeah, I preview all anonymous comments to decide whether they go live.
can you preserve/show some of them?
I'd love to see the anonymous comments that will come in on this article. Maybe a screencap or summary of the best in Crazy?
A better idea -- just don't allow them
Can you disable anonymous commenting on a particular post such as this one, so that you don't even have to screen them out? That's what I'd do.
I'm a glutton for punishment.
I'm a glutton for punishment. I'd like to see the banned comments if Adam feels like making a post out of them later.
Wi-fi At the Pleasant?
I'm pretty sure they are still working on rotary phones in that place.
(No subject)
Late 50s?
Anw who is the king (and of what)?
Uncle T (Attilio), Grandpa Al
Uncle T (Attilio), Grandpa Al (Emilio), Uncle Pompey (Palmarino), King Knickerbocker (of Knickerbocker Beer), ?, ?, ?, John Prada, and Carmelina Prada.
Bonus pic : Al pouring liquor at the bar,
nickvecchio.blogspot.com/
www.boston.com
5784 comments now
and I bet that by the time I finish posting this, it'll be up to 5800 or more.
Lack of social life?
I mean, other than complaining about said lack of social life on line with others like them?
you know what, Adam...
can we ditch the "savant" part of that description?
and maybe the "idiot" part too?
Unfortunately, Gjoni does not appear to be someone of below-average intelligence. His brain is missing plenty of other things though, such as a moral compass. He makes Bernie Madoff look virtuous by comparison.
he's pretty much just a
he's pretty much just a sociopath.
But, but, but, but, but...
He's a VEGAN!!
(No subject)
sad and scary
The GG army comes out in force when the Fedora-whistle is tugged upon. Flaccid sad creatures.
The worst is how repetitive and circular their logic is - and it always plays out the same way in the comments forum. First they argue over and over again that the victims are lying and the abuse/stalking does not happen. About a millisecond later later they will claim that the victims are making it up for attention and sweet sweet cash. For some reason about 80% of them seriously believe that these folks are making tons of $$$ by "playing victim" and "making it all up". They then recast their poutrage as anger against all these silly gals crying wolf and lying all the time.
And 99% of them forget to even make an attempt at tying this all back to "ethics in game journalism".
Fedora?
what's this all have to do with Linux?
Nothing.
..but I have a wool hat just like his.
Fedoras have become synonymous with misogyny on the internet
Fedoras became associated with creepy guys when some of the pickup artist community adopted them as a symbol of power. Now it's just become a meme.
Neckbeards
Neckbeards, too.
Yeah, I have always
Yeah, I have always associated it with neckbeards, not so much pickup artists.
mi'lady
mi'lady
Thats why cool people
wear a fez
Our Court System
On one side we have the government spending millions of dollars to end the life of someone horrible, even though all the victims who have come out publicly have said that's the not the outcome they want and the vast majority of the local public is opposed to that outcome.
On the other side you have computer illiterate police and judges who can't stop a person hell bent upon destroying the life of another person. The aggressor isn't keeping his obsession a secrete, his crimes have severe consequences (though not to the level of the bombers) and he would be easy to find and stop.
What gamergate gets away with
What gamergate gets away with is reflective of what our culture is willing to tolerate. It's disgusting and depressing.
Imagine being the kind of person who is so irrationally angry about women having a presence in video games (pause and let that sink in for a second) that you are willing to threaten to rape/murder someone. Then imagine being someone who doesn't think that's a big deal. The second one is likely to not take too much imagination given our collective response to this whole wretched thing.
It's cool that the internet allows even the most socially inept people to find a welcoming community. It's a shame that for this many people their community is a misogynist circle jerk of lonely chuds who like to cast their own inability to treat people with basic human decency as some kind of absurd feminine conspiracy to ruin the world.
And now we know
The kid who started gamergate is exactly as pathetic as we thought he had to be.
Still not as pathetic
though as anyone who automatically dubs "scandals" like this with the suffix "-Gate."
You crazy rebel
Speaking truth to power and everything.
Additionally pathetic
Since it was his band of fellow losers who coined the phrase. Remember, it's about ethics in journalism!
Actually
You can thank Adam Baldwin (of Firefly fame) for coining the term Gamer Gate.
I know, depressing, huh?
I just have to try and ignore this fact when watching Firefly so I don't damage the teevee...Jayne is great, the guy playing him is apparently a total asshat.
Want to witness some seriously pathetic "mantrums"?
Check out how the Fedora Neckbeard "Menninists" have completely destroyed this year's Hugo awards. Seems they were all pissy last year when a bunch of non-white and non-male people began winning top honors.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121554/2015-hugo-awards-and-history-s...
George RR Martin weighs in:
One asshole running this, "Vox Day", has now slandered and defamed two people I know - one female, one Asian - by claiming they didn't merit their awards. Poor baby can't compete with other human beings, so he has to pretend that he's been slighted because, well, white man. Unearned privilege is the last refuge of the talentless.
Has the sci fi/Hugo community
Has the sci fi/Hugo community ever *not* been dominated by a bunch of socially inept aholes?
I know
You and me both. He is good at playing those types of characters. Maybe we now know why.
Yeah
Yeah - because this is so middle school and all we should do is what our Mommies and Daddies told us to do: "Just ignore them and they won't have anything to respond to." These jerkwads don't need nothing to respond to - they just respond period. All a woman has to do is breathe and they freak the eff out.
Kids these days
Things like this make me glad I'm so old. When I was a young gas bubble instead of the old fart I am now, it was impossible to write a detailed history of an abusive ex-lover's deceit and infidelity, footnoted with damning chat logs, and post it on the internet. The tangled webs we weaved vanished smoothly into false memory.
Correction:
Correction:
Even Gjoni admits he has no proof she "slept with five guys" as he alleged, and that he cherry picked chat logs to "irrepairably ruin her life." Meanwhile, other people who know them both, including people who originally supported Gjoni, have said he distorted stories from her personal life that she shared with him in confidence, online and face-to-face, to hurt her.