Anita Sarkessian drama when r/QuitYourBullshit finds a tweet (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
196 ups - 0 downs = 196 votes
579 comments submitted at 00:08:58 on Sep 13, 2014 by Mogwoggle
Anita Sarkessian drama when r/QuitYourBullshit finds a tweet (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
196 ups - 0 downs = 196 votes
579 comments submitted at 00:08:58 on Sep 13, 2014 by Mogwoggle
\>3 hours
\>180 comments
I think this thread will be even more entertaining than the linked one.
Can't piss in the popcorn? Bring the popcorn here!
Brilliant!
every time feminism, racism, or anything sexual is brought up people always get more hateful and illogical in the SRD thread than the thread where the drama is supposed to be.
Please do not vote on the linked thread.
Also, I think this thread is mere minutes away from belonging in /r/SubredditDramaDrama
It's already should be. This thread has a ton of popcorn!!
Artists have LITERALLY died trying to provoke 1/10 of emotions annita does just by breathing
What kind of flawless performance art is her whole existence
QUEEN
Not really relevant, but I've essentially been conditioned to think of this this song whenever I see the word Queen.
Aw man I was hoping that'd be Don't Stop Me Now.
Janelle Monáe is never irrelevant, I adore her
you know what, fuck anita and this stale-ass popcorn
this is now a Janelle Appreciation Post
She's a redditor too! /u/janellemonae
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
She replied to a PM I sent her once saying she promises to do an AMA soon, it was the best day.
I've been really into the duets she's been doing with Stevie Wonder, here's Superstition. And here's them covering I Feel Good.
And I love her cover of Heroes
Covering Goldfinger
Covering Smile
Coming back to originals, the amazing fucking bassline from Come Alive
Holy shit, that Goldfinger cover. She is a living legend.
That is unexpectedly funky. I was not prepared.
The rap part at the end is fucking awesome! I'll be looking up some more Janelle.
omg that's my jam
She got rich through scamming people and it's negatively effecting the primary activities of a lot of redditors. The hate makes sense.
>and it's negatively effecting the primary activities of a lot of redditors
How
uh i think it's actually positively affecting the primary activity of a lot of redditors
bitching about dumb shit
please don't derail and at least, try and stay on topic
now, what's your favorite janelle song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPFgBCUBMYk
Cool story bro.
If I say "I don't care" enough times with this whole gamers Vs feminist thing ever go away?
The only time I ever hear about this woman is because she is being shit on, she's making money and maintaining spotlight because people keep complaint about her. So if you don't like what she's saying isn't it best just to ignore her and go play video games?
You don't understand. She's scamming people. Sure, she's doing exactly what she said she would and whatever, but did you see how much money she got!? It's gotta be illegal. We will not stop until that money we didn't donate goes back to the donors who are not us!
I mean, maybe only 1/3 of games fully deliver on kickstarter, but this woman... She wants to talk about games. That's waay worse than taking money and never making a game.
Yeah, people are pissed at her delivering late but I've backed games on kickstarter that have been pushed back two years.
Also, I remember someone on SRD calling her hypocritical because she wore makeup.
I'm still waiting for that witch hunt on Tim Schafer.
We almost got it when Schafer tweeted support for Sarkeesian a while ago.
I would start it, but I blew the budget for my pitchfork and need some more money.
Hell, webcomic artist John Campbell had a mental breakdown and burnt a large portion of the books she'd done a kickstarter for, and she received a tiny fraction of the hate Anita did.
Wait what?
John Campbell, writer and artist of webcomic "Pictures for Sad Children." It was extremely minimalist in art, and dark in "humor." He did a Kickstarter for a compilation book, "Sad Pictures for Children." It was successfully funded far beyond the goal. However, the rewards (which were very odd) were slow in coming, as were the books. Campbell's update posts were very bizarre, claiming he faked depression for profit, and then that he faked faking. He then posted a video where he burned the remaining books that hadn't been shipped out yet, and that he would burn a book for each new e-mail received regarding them. He expressed contempt for money, capitalism, the system, or whatever you want to call it, and took down his comic, which lies defunct to this day.
TL;DR: Depressed webcomic artist gets his book Kickstarted, is crazy, only sent out some of them, burns the rest in spite, quits the Internet.
Holy shit, that's depressing. That dude is clearly unwell.
Also he was experimenting a lot with DMT for a while before the meltdown (he even made a comic about it, here's a review), I'm curious if that had anything to do with it.
Man, that was even a reward for the kickstarter (that he would do DMT and write a comic about it). Can you imagine being the guy who paid for that and feeling like you contributed to his breakdown? That would suck.
At the same time, those of us that followed his work weren't too surprised by the whole breakdown thing. It felt almost inevitable.
I thought he only burned the books he couldn't deliver for whatever reason. As in people gave him invalid addresses or they got returned.
Doubtful.
"I shipped about 75% of kickstarter rewards to backers. I will not be shipping any more. I will not be issuing any refunds. For every message I receive about this book through e-mail, social media or any other means, I will burn another book."
Who can truly know the reasoning behind this man's actions. HOWEVER, It does look like someone more stable took over the whole process back in May, and got some books to as many people as possible. Kudos to them.
I had no idea this happened! Although I vaguely wondered why he'd stopped updating. The comic is brilliant but I'm not completely surprised to hear it's the product of an unwell mind.
> John Campbell
He is kind of cray. Just saying.
Cray? Cray what?
Cray-1? Cray X-MP? Cray-2? Cray MTA-2? Cray Red Storm?^.^^.^^.^^^^keeps^^^mumbling
Cray cray
Crayfish linguine in white wine sauce.
Well that was a one time event that screwed over just her (Campbell is MTF transgender last I was aware) backers, which were mostly web comic enthusiasts. So it was a single event that affected a much smaller group of people. That said, there was a shit storm surrounding that.
I remember being especially disappointed when the SJW groups turned rabid on another webcomic artist who offered to send books and prints to anyone who didn't receive their kickstarter stuff from Campbell. They called him greedy and opportunistic and said he was using someone else's mental anguish to promote himself until finally he rescinded the offer and publicly apologized for trying to help people.
I should do a kickstarter to restore my car and document the whole process...
But what the fuck would I call it and what would I submit it under...
One guy did get 50k to make potato salad, so you probably should.
My favorite thing about that Kickstarter is he turned around and donated the money to charity.
Seriously? Wow that is one stand-up guy.
Yeah, check it out:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/14/kickstarter-potato-salad-guy-charity-concert/14050411/ >"This will create a permanent fund to help Central Ohio's non-profits end hunger and homelessness," Brown said in his July announcement. "These types of funds gain interest every year and grow over time, so, while our little Internet joke will one day be forgotten, the impact will be felt forever. "
It doesn't have to be complicated the Potato Salad kickstarter was straight to the point, and since you're recording the process why not submit it in the doccumentary section?
Most of the 2/3 of games that deliver are crap as well.
Are you serious? She asked for** 5000**USD. If gamers had just shut the fuck up and waited for her videos to pick apart, she would have been irrelevant by now.
She does not owe anyone shit. The rest of the money she got does not entitle anyone to demand what they want from her.
WeLP!
Sarcasm
*(()()()(()()(()()<------ clouds
----- Earth------
ಠ_ಠ ^My ^head.
> Are you serious?
What about any of that read as serious?
whoosh.
>Are you serious?
No... Sorry. Forgot to tag my sarcasm.
Nice clouds.
I donated $100 to the kickstarter entirely because /v/ was raging so hard about her beating her goal (and I thought the videos sounded interesting). I do not want my money back, and given a chance I will happily donate to anything else that looks interesting and will piss off /v/ or /pol/.
Anita should do another kickstarter, maybe to write a game based on feminist themes. I'll chip in, and I bet a lot of others would too, it will be hilarious.
> Sure, she's doing exactly what she said she would and whatever,
Is she? She said she'd make 12 videos. It's been more than 2 years and she's only made 4. The content is stolen from other people's "let's play" videos and she basically repeats the same points over and over again. Most of it is either cherrypicked nonsense or outright sensationalist bullshit.
Shh, she is a female and feminist, so she's obviously an amazing person incapable of misleading anyone. Anyone who disagrees is clearly the real sexist here.
My issue is that she's being taken seriously and her bullshit is actually affecting the industry.
You'd think that might cause you to rethink your stance about her 'bullshit' when the people who make the fucking games are agreeing with her.
Because if they don't, then they are sexist, misogynist, violent man-children who hate all women.
Except she's been proven to be a lying non-gamer who cherrypicks the bad parts out of video games, pulls from other gamers "Let's Play" footage without permission, and even grossly misrepresenting plot lines and characters. Not to mention stealing a small artist's work for a logo without even bothering to attribute credit, bring a critic who is unopen to criticism, and the list goes on. She's on morally shaky ground, on top of being a public figure "attacking" one of the internets favorite pastimes. It's not just about the kickstarter. She gets hate for a ton of reasons, but roll them all up into a ball and it's like a juicy drama overflow that no troll can resist.
lol. You literally copy+pasted thunderf00t's video which has been debunked time and time again (thankfully).
Do you have a link to any of the debunkings? I think it would be hard to disprove all of that direct evidence, considering it's not just he-said-she-said: it's been shown through by video, what she does and doesn't say/write, statements from the people she screwed over, or simply playing through a game to see that what she's claiming about is untrue. I haven't watched his video, all of this is pretty common knowledge about her that is very well documented and backed up. For example, she quite literally wrote a response to the person she took the artwork from admitting that she did it and posted it publicly. If that isn't damning evidence I don't know what is.
Here is a video response to Thunderfoot, as requested.
Not caring is my approach, and it's working out pretty well. I don't particularly agree with many of her points, but whatever, she's not doing anything to harm or against me, or against the game industry in general, so more power to her I guess. And if it causes people to look more critically on how we portray woman in games, awesome. I don't get the hate against her, but, really, nor do I get the praise.
I dislike her because instead of doing what she said and actually exposing sexism, she makes shit up, hands us this steaming pile and tells us its journalism, she went to the gawker school of reporting
Can you argue without copy+pasting thunderf00t's debunked argument videos?
Due to her wide spread exposure surrounding her fake police reports, her bullshit rhetoric is being absorbed by a lot of gullible people that don't play video games. Among these people are politicians. Politicians can enact laws. Laws which can greatly hinder creativity and quality.
It's a big deal if playing games is a hobby.
You can always hide the threads if its really that bothersome.
YOU'RE RIGHT!
If we don't act now and call her a bitch some more and keep arguing with her and her followers we might end up in a world where American politicians ban all video games except ones that have a female protagonist. They might even make it mandatory that all gamers must buy Zoe Quinn games and all outlets must give her games 10/10.
The horror.. Oh please don't let that happen we must fight these atrocities.
Or something.
2 for 1 thread! The drama here is just as good as the drama linked.
Best part is one of the top comments in the full thread pointing out that the journalist made a follow-up tweet confirming that she did speak to the police. But the post still lives, the users still rage, and the butter still drips.
It actually says she talked to the FBI. Which is likely completely unrelated to what people are discussing in the thread, she is likely talking the FBI because someone tweeted child porn at her and she retweeted it.
The local police say they haven't been involved with her because of death threats, which is what she is claiming to be talking to the SFPD about.
Edit: Found the tweet, she explicitly states "local police departments". https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/506868742509182976
https://twitter.com/Nero/status/510484796943114240
>2/ They don't have records of calls made in August, which may or may not be because the case was handed off to federal agencies.
^^I ^^linked ^^to ^^the ^^first ^^tweet ^^because ^^I ^^don't ^^know ^^how ^^to ^^do ^^twitter ^^much ^^good.
So really, it could go either way. But regardless of the truth, I'm just glad we've got so many things that are perpetual drama generators to bring content to SRD.
Oh for sure, the last month has been a butter factory and no matter what the truth is, we get entertainment.
I just fear that we're going to end up at a point where we take the drama for granted...
I used to casually browse this sub when something interesting came across my front page. After the last couple of months, I'm actively checking to see what else has happened. It's been great.
oh god. What would happen if the people who have seriously threatened her and sent cp like... actually have consequences.
Oh god. I... I think I'm going to need cholesterol medication...
Love how people are justifying the abuse she got with "she angered the gaming community". Yeah, that totally justifies an unending torrent of violent abuse, rape and death threats - she made some gamers a bit unhappy by criticising their games.
I really like how claiming that there are issues relating to sexism in the gaming community leads to massive amounts of overt sexism from the gaming community.
Well... yeah. If we don't exercise our freedoms, the terrorists win.
Lewis's law
She even has her own more specific version of Lewis' Law called Anita's Irony
>Online discussion of sexism or misogyny quickly results in disproportionate displays of sexism and misogyny.
> she angered the gaming community
People who say this are the reason gamers are not taken seriously.
It's like they're implying that gamers are wild animals that attack when provoked, out of instinct, without the higher brain functions to think the situation through.
And then watch a lot of them react just like that
Run! They're swarming!
Ever played a DotA style game?
No, but I'm familiar with the song DotA by Basshunter. It's pretty much the same thing.
\> Implying all gamers are part of a zerg rush.
One of the many, many reasons.
Living in our families basements certainly doesn't help
'You have angered the hive mind, you have been judged unworthy. Prepare to die.'
You have to micro in this situation! Micro!!!
I've been following SRD since its conception. Overt the years I've seen unlimited and "unending torrent of violent abuse, rape and death threats " over most ridiculous things here on reddit. We all did. It's all fun and games for us here, but there is just a bit of too much when everything spills over in real world and instead of rape threats to some /u/trhowowayusername, it is addressed to real person.
There is no justification for it... no matter how much someone angered you with their ....ah ..opinion.
Maybe it's because "the gaming community" is made up of more than a quarter of a billion people, a tiny fraction of whom are antisocial and psychotic? It's almost like "the gaming community" is just a slice of society itself, full of all the different types of people one would expect to find in society.
There are more gamers in the world than the entire population of Norway, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand combined several times. That is HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, out of whom maybe less than 100 have harassed Ms Sarkeesian. The way that she continues to claim "the gaming community" has a "problem with misogyny" is one of the most overt displays of solipsism and arrogance and sheer stupidity I've ever seen.
Saying "the gaming community has sent Anita death threats" is like saying "Americans hate black people". It's an utterly insipid statement based on ignorance of the sheer number and diversity of people involved.
> The way that she continues to claim "the gaming community" has a "problem with misogyny" is one of the most overt displays of solipsism and arrogance and sheer stupidity I've ever seen.
> Saying "the gaming community has sent Anita death threats" is like saying "Americans hate black people". It's an utterly insipid statement based on ignorance of the sheer number and diversity of people involved.
But America does have a huge problem with racism, just like the gaming community has a huge problem with misogyny. Saying that you "don't hate women" after sending threats to Zoe Quinn is like saying you're "not racist" after ranting about Obama faking his birth certificate.
> But America does have a huge problem with racism, just like the gaming community has a huge problem with misogyny. Saying that you "don't hate women" after sending threats to Zoe Quinn is like saying you're "not racist" after ranting about Obama faking his birth certificate.
I did neither, can I say those things?
No, when they said you, they obviously meant not them. They wouldn't do that, but literally all of us are sending death threats to ASark. I send mine with my morning coffee while refusing to check my privilege off the newspaper. With a bagel.
> just like the gaming community has a huge problem with misogyny.
I have yet to see any evidence of this besides anecdotes and sensationalism. The vast majority of gamers are just normal dudes who don't bother anyone.
The gaming community does have a problem with sexism though.
> The gaming community does have a problem with sexism though.
Again is there any evidence of this? Just saying it over and over again does not count as evidence. Making all kinds of claims about how terribly the gaming community treats women is good for clickbait and pageviews, but it doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny.
It seems to me that some people have discovered they can get rich by stirring up moral outrage, and everyone just jumps on the bandwagon without asking for proof.
Which is why when Anita comes up in a broadly representative community like /r/Games every post condemns the sexism. /s
> a broadly representative community
Well that's where you're mistaken. /r/Games isn't a broadly representative community. It's representative of redditors who are into gaming, but not the entire gaming "community".
I'm quite sure many redditors have unsubbed from that cesspool.
What sexism are you talking about here? And saying /r/games is a "broadly representative community" is like calling advice animals a broadly representative community of the whole of reddit.
Relevant username?
U r funny
most of those quarter of a billion people would not actually consider themselves "part of the gaming community" i think
Without talking about the reasons why she has them, the fact is she constantly lies, then uses these "threats" as a means to promote whatever she wants money for.
I just can't stand the bullshit. She's waving the banner of feminism and raking the money in. Stealing people's artwork and profiting from it. When caught out stealing work she claims she's a non-profit, then refuses to prove it (you don't have to provide any sensitive info to do this).
But a lot of people like what she says so they lap it up and defend her like nothing else. That's what pisses me off. People are following a charlatan.
>People are following a charlatan.
Funny how you say that when none of your gripes have anything to do with what she's actually arguing.=
Trolls mate, trolls.
You can't judge a community based on trolling done in their name.
I get not liking someone's videos. I get not agreeing with someone's analysis.
But seriously, why do people have harbor this much rage for this woman?
Maybe it's some people's irrational unfounded loathing for anyone that labels themself as feminist?
The responses to her are out right terrifying.
She never killed anybody. She makes videos some people disagree with.
Because people take her criticisms as an affront on their personality instead of a statement of her opinion on the medium. There are many who play games and watch movies and read comics. We see criticisms levied against all 3 mediums. Only in gaming have I seen this level of vitrol against someone for probably misrepresenting some facets of her argument.
I think part of the scrutiny she gets is sour grapes after having her kickstarter injected with nuclear donations. People who were responsible for the initial vitrol are now searching for a reason to call her a liar. Man children IMO. There are few valid criticisms against her but those voices are drowned by the wailing majority who have made her infamous.
> I think part of the scrutiny she gets is sour grapes after having her kickstarter injected with nuclear donations.
I think that's exactly it. All that money is proof that this isn't some tiny, irrelevant, tumblr-based SJW crusade; it's something that a shitload of people think is important and worth supporting. And it makes them so mad.
> All that money is proof that this isn't some tiny, irrelevant, tumblr-based SJW crusade
TiA had this same image submitted and there were a lot of 'I wouldn't care, but people in the industry agree with her, how can they be so wrong and not right like me?'
I wonder if people in TIA know how they look to the outside world. Especially in situations like this, and also when they go apeshit over very obvious trolling.
> All that money is proof that this isn't some tiny, irrelevant, tumblr-based SJW crusade; it's something that a shitload of people think is important and worth supporting.
But it's not proof of that, anymore than that busdriver reddit donated shit tons of money to is proof that reddit is really super pro-school transit. She received loads of money because she was a victim of harassment, and the only thing the internet as an entity loves to do more than harass people is to build up harassment victims as a fuck you to harassers.
That is why people are so mad, is because she received a ton of money NOT because she was performing a service that is needed (open, honest discussions about sexism and misogyny in video games are needed, but Anita is NOT the one to talk about them), but because she was a victim.
So are you saying she was a damsel in distress? :D
A small fraction of the gaming community.
I'd say its a healthy fraction but def not the majority. Many gamers don't give an iota of a fuck as long as they get to play games. Those who define their lives by gaming and actively feel they are "citizens"? of gaming are the ones on this salem bitch hunt.
I would say it's a small majority because I am sure a portion of people who invested aren't even gamers, but are feminists.
Plenty of feminists play games, you know.
Good. The press and critics and tastemakers that are supposed to be watchdogs for gaming culture have failed spectacularly and it's nice to have fresh outsider eyes looking in.
Honestly though, the amount of "gamers" who even know who she is, and gives two fucks about her, is incredibly slim.
Who? The people supporting her or her critics?
The people supporting her.
It's definitely not a small fraction.
Considering there's over a billion people in the world playing video games regularly , I think it's safe to say it's a very small fraction.
I have no idea what this whole thing is about but think about the "vocal minority".
I think that's what's happening here.
I don't know what games you play, but the people being vocal aren't the minority.
Even if they were the minority, it wouldn't matter because they're clearly controlling the disscussion.
Actually, they are. For every kid you encounter on Call of Duty that fucked your mom, there's even more people playing different games or playing without a mic. Just think of how often you run into these people. It's maybe one or two people every few matches from my experience. That means that the other twenty or so people I meet during those matches aren't being assholes.
Would you consider the two kids the majority or the twenty being silent?
The same thing is happening with the #GamerGate thing. While some of the people truly are assholes, they're the minority. A lot of it is just a reactionary crowd that's defending their hobby from people that they perceive to be threats to that hobby. The few people that are actually assholes just get highlighted since it fits the agenda that some of the journalists are trying to put forth.
Just in case people don't realize this, the gaming journalists aren't all attacking gamers either. It's a small minority of them causing issues.
In other words, it's a huge battle caused by vocal minorities within large groups of people. The attacks from the gamers' vocal minority is getting more journalists to believe that "gamers are dead" while the attack from the journalists' vocal minority is getting gamers to lash out against the companies that these journalists work for.
What do you mean by nuclear donations?
She was asking for $6k, got $150k.
Damn, I should start a YouTube channel.
It'll only sky rocket if you tackle a sensitive subject people who have been bullied all their lives want to protect because they have anchored themselves to that definition. And make it an equality issue for extra points. And then get rape and death threats not just on the internet but to your home too.
Sure, then you'll strike it rich :p
Sounds like a plan.
Make sure you are female though, no one will care if you get threats and are a man.
You mean, no one will care to send you too many threats if you're a man.
Don't you know? If you get doxxed and have your address sent you while along with a death threat while you have a penis it's just one bad egg. If you have a vagina it shows how misogynistic the community is.
> People who were responsible for the initial vitrol are now searching for a reason to call her a liar.
The reaction to her may or may not be extreme, but there's no real need to search for reasons to call her a liar. She's already provided many of those.
It's more a question of what the proportional response is.
True. That much I agree. Like I said, there are valid criticisms that should be leveled against her in the spirit of having intellectual discourse.
Got any links? All I get is thunderf00t and Repzion, both of whom I find to be pretty stupid.
Here is a fantastic article that also goes more into the theory of her argument and where it stems from.
http://gamesided.com/2014/09/08/sarkeesian-truth-part-1-straw-feminist-trojan-horse-censorship/
And unlike Sarkesians' work it is actually properly cited.
JJ McCullough of Filibuster Cartoons makes some good points against parts of her series, while maintaining a neutral view of the topic:
http://www.jjmccullough.com/index.php/2013/03/10/a-rebuttal-to-anita-sarkeesians-tropes-vs-women-episode-1-damsels-in-distress/
and
http://www.jjmccullough.com/index.php/2013/08/05/another-critique-of-anita-sarkeesians-ongoing-tropes-vs-women-video-series-with-focus-now-being-placed-on-the-third-damsels-in-distress-episode/
Neutral view?
>This is not an uncommon perspective for white progressive-types to take, of course, loath as they are to offer any critique that could possibly smack of bigotry or ethnocentrism.
Not neutral.
>Nintendo of America was actually quite the little moralizing busybody in those days, removing strippers, Playboy bunnies, scantily-clad fairies, and even bare-chested Greco-Roman sculptures from all manner of Japanese titles during the 1980s and ’90s, lest any impressionable young Americans be subjected to such crass depictions.
Not neutral and just kind of strange. Nintendo was marketed to children in the US at the time. To call it the company a "moralizing busybody" for taking Playboy out of games they were marketing to 10 year old is crazy.
I checked his bio after reading the first piece and I was really surprised he was born in 1984. These commentary reads like the musings of a Japan obsessed fanboy under age 25.
I don't know... these feel like minor quibbles. I discuss feminist issues a fair bit on Reddit am am met with these kind of comments: often that it's misleading because comments aren't qualified and qualified again.
>Sarkeesian ignores absolutely all this, and instead asks for a feminist evaluation of the cultural impact of ’90s-era video games in a bizarre, vacuumed-sealed context in which countries, culture, politics, economics, and history simply do not exist.
In a 20 minute YouTube video, is it really reasonable that qualifiers explaining "countries, culture, politics, economics, and history" be included? I think a lot of people who object to her videos don't read much cultural commentary. Most people who consume this kind of commentary don't need that kind of qualification because they understand context.
For example, the author notes:
> [Sarkessian] will continue to lump the games of both nations into a single category and lazily analyze them as a collective blob from her own prefered perspective: a 21st century white American feminist.
> This is a bit like taking a few Bollywood productions from the 1960s, some Andrew Lloyd Webster plays from the 1980s, a couple avant garde lesbian community theatre shows from the early 2000s, and asking a strict Irish Catholic to draw some sweeping conclusions about how “musicals,” deal with, say, homosexuality. The findings would be worthless without acknowledging the vastly different cultural contexts of the case studies, as well that that of the critic.
In fact that kind of thing happens all the time in cultural theory and analysis: tying together broad themes and representations. I suspect a lot of people critiquing these videos aren't familiar with this style of critique. And if people don't like that kind of analysis, that's fine, but there are many others that find it to be an engaging and thought-provoking approach.
Although I would suggest that a feminist discussing representations of women is nothing like a 'strict Irish Catholic" discussing homosexuality. It's a disingenuous comparison and I think it's probably pretty telling about the author's perspective.
I think, if nothing else, JJ has a point that it is completely ignored in the series that Princess Peach and others are very differently represented in American and Japanese-made media. I'd at least like to see a comparison between the markets or cultures, or something, because even if analysis is about tying broad trends together, cultural differences that impacted the two main markets for video games over the years seem to matter at least a little.
I'm not disagreeing that the argument doesn't have any value but, as I said, I think it's a quibble.
And this is the thing about the Sarkessian drama, when it comes down to it, most criticisms are relatively minor. There seems to be a suggestion that she's outright lying, and I don't think that's the case. Years ago, I wrote a 20,000 word thesis about the representation of femininity and feminism in pop music and there were probably a lot of different ways that I could have approached the topic. Even when you have pages and pages to explain context, or look at cultural difference, there is still more context you could provide.
I think it's important that in pretty much all mediums - a YouTube video, an opinion piece in the press, a thesis or a complete book - not all angles will be covered. Expansion of a topic is fantastic - other critics finding other ways to look at an issue - but I don't think the author's criticisms are some kind of proof that she is entirely incorrect.
And that's my issue with the Sarkessian drama - people often say "she's a liar! She's wrong! She's a fraud!" and the "proof" is often something relatively minor.
I'm kind of on the fence on the whole issue, possibly leaning towards the Sarkessian side. Generally speaking I think she has a point, but it seems like mistakes may have been made. (I don't believe there was any deliberate attempt to mislead.)
With that out of the way, I feel like the point made about cultural context is fairly major, or at least more than a "quibble".
This is just one example of hypocrisy
http://youtu.be/FW-69xXD734
Care to take me through the gymnastics of this one? It's been a month since the last time.
And then get me something that isn't just a personal attack
So, there are three clips here. In order of viewing; one from a post-kickstarter interview, one from the kickstarter advertisement video, and one from a talk she gave two years before the kickstarter.
In other words, what we have here is a fairly simple case of dishonesty on the part of whoever made the video (voiceover sounds like thunderf00t) by trying to portray her as simultaneously calling herself a fan and saying she's not a fan. In real-life chronological order, she started off not calling herself a 'fan' of games, and then later (2+ years down the line) consistently does call herself a fan of games. That is not a contradiction.
Besides which, assuming that the vid is dead on and she does sometimes call herself a fan and sometimes doesn't. What exactly does that prove? Whether or not she labels herself a 'fan' has nothing to do with the content of her Tropes videos, which is what /u/DocileBanalBovine was asking for criticisms of.
I do somewhat understand how things can escalate though. I can't imagine getting upset over somebody saying things I disagree with in a Youtube video. Oddly enough, I don't sub to things I fundamentally dislike.
On the other hand, content theft and even pretending to misuse police resources kind of irks me. Am I gonna stalk her twitter and post on 4chan about how I wish she was dead? No, that's just insane. But I think it's a good thing for there to be a large, educated group of people who will warn others about someone so horribly manipulative.
It really boils down to the whole "trolls are ruining everything for both sides" thing again.
There is a weird overreaction to her, both positive and negative , she's just another critic of video games. There are plenty of them. I think she has some points, after all, a stopped clock is right twice a day, but a lot of stuff she says I don't agree with at all.
I'd argue there isn't enough games criticism in the same vein that she's trying to do. \
Seems the only valid criticism gamers will accept is frames per second.
I disagree. there are plenty of journalists criticizing the video game industry and gamers for being misogynist. I think a lot of the valid reasons why people don't agree with what she says is because a lot of her criticisms seem inconsistent and nit picky at this point. There is sexism in video games. there is poor writing in video games. but theres a balance between creative freedom and political correctness.
Oh I was being sarcastic, it seems that the only time gamers agree wwith a criticism it's over graphics.
you'd be surprised. I've seen console fanboys argue that 60fps hurts their eyes and that 30fps is 'cooler and more cinematic'.
I've had people explain how 30 FPS is better than 60 FPS because it's "too fast" even though it's just twice as many frames. Also, 1080p looks worse than 720p somehow even though there's totally no difference between the two of them. People will disagree on just about everything when it comes to games.
Same. Honestly if people stopped being haters I doubt we'd hear a peep out of her. It's not like anyone is going to shut her down by proving her wrong - she doesn't allow or respond to criticism and she has a shield of followers and "journalists" to back her up. People have proven her shittyness time and time again to no effect. It would have been much better to just let her fade into obscurity, but it's definitely too late for that now.
>People have proven her shittyness time and time again
Until thunderf00t stops being the most commonly touted videos as 'proof', I don't think you can comfortably make that assertion
I didn't entirely agree with her, but I still enjoyed her videos just for the perspective. And she does makes some good points most of the time.
It's really not that difficult to have a more balanced view on what she's saying but, like you said, people just feel the need to overreact to each other.
I know man. I respect Anita for tackling an unpopular issue. I've seen her videos, and while I certainly agree that there is sexism in video games, she's been scraping the bottom of the barrel in her recent videos to find instances of what she believes to be sexism in games, when its bleedingly obvious she hasn't even played the game she's discussing.
She said that in "Hitman", players are encouraged to get erogenous satisfaction out of playing around with female corpses, my mind was like HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK. That is a gross misrepresentation and nobody sane would think that. It makes people feel she's disingenious and she's tackling a problem she doesn't really understand.
Still I respect her for not backing down in the face of all the hate, and the ones sending her death threats are not creating a positive image of the gaming community at all.
I think what "gamers" forget is that to people who aren't in the subculture, it seems incredibly fucked up that there are random strippers you can kill if you feel like it. Like why is that even a game play option?
I know it has been a game play option for like 10 years, but the fact that you lose points or whatever for killing innocent strippers doesn't really justify the fact that the game includes strippers you can kill if you don't mind losing the points.
So, forgive me, but why is killing strippers such a problem, but not killing, well, everybody else?
Come on- you're not looking to be illuminated with that question, you think you're calling me out with your superior intellect.
I literally don't understand why killing strippers is bad (are we taking about gta?) but killing some lady with groceries or some old dude is OK. I said "forgive me" because I didn't want you to think I was taking offense in an argumentative way at your post, just wanted to ask why one is worse than the other because I don't know.
Edit: oh, it's hitman. Whoops. I never played the series so can't comment too much on that.
There is a difference between setting up a world where you can kill anyone but lose point for killing the innocent and setting up a world with sex workers who you can abuse if you so chose.
I think lots of people don't even know that happens in games. Because those big gaming numbers include people who might only play football or fantasy games, some of those numbers even include people who play Farmville.
What hardcore gaming culture sees as normal, isn't something everyone knows about. It is a little under the radar.
The gaming community thinks Anita is a crazed feminist. I think most people who view her videos are either committed feminists or hardcore gamers. She gets accused of taking things out of context, but I actually think a lot of what she points out would seem worse to non gamers because movies don't have these kinds of options or plot points.
What she points out seems worse to non gamers because they don't understand the concept of the interactive medium set up in a sand box style system of which the player has the ability to be as good or horrible as they want (but still killing people regardless because video games).
If a game has a gameplay style rooted in the freedom of anybody can be killed, but not killing many or any innocent people is encouraged to compete the objective(I think this is how hitman works? From what I've seen in videos) , and then one of the environments is a strip club, it seems obvious that those strippers would be able to be killed.
Did hitman go further than that and encourage killing those people? Or was it problematic because a strip club was one of the environments in this kind of game, or that they could be killed in general, or that they shouldn't have been there and had the mission while the strip club was closed or something?
Or maybe I just don't understand, Iunno. I should play the game in question and see what the deal is, n check out her video on it. Coming in to this whole situation a little blind, so sorry if I bungled or misrepresented any points.
>What she points out seems worse to non gamers because they don't understand the concept of the interactive medium set up in a sand box style system of which the player has the ability to be as good or horrible as they want (but still killing people regardless because video games).
No, it isn't. It is because of mainstream media, gaming has some of the most fucked up shit.
>If a game has a gameplay style rooted in the freedom of anybody can be killed, but not killing many or any innocent people is encouraged to compete the objective(I think this is how hitman works? From what I've seen in videos) , and then one of the environments is a strip club, it seems obvious that those strippers would be able to be killed.
But why is there a strip club? And if there is one strip club, why not have two, one of each gender? I'm guessing like the other guy is that your response is going to be "because it is for guys!" but that just circles back to the point Anita is trying to make in her videos.
>No, it isn't. It is because of mainstream media, gaming has some of the most fucked up shit.
Well, yea, when games give players real freedom, that includes the ability to do fucked up shit since times. A movie about some dude killing strippers and moving their bodies around is a lot different than an environment with strippers in it, of which the player can kill strippers and move their bodies around, and is somewhat discouraged since they are innocents, not an objective.
>But why is there a strip club? And if there is one strip club, why not have two, one of each gender? I'm guessing like the other guy is that your response is going to be "because it is for guys!" but that just circles back to the point Anita is trying to make in her videos.
I'd certainly have no problem with a male strip club in a game(actually don't think I've ever seen one). But I don't see why they should have to write in another strip club to be more inclusive if it didn't fit into their story to include 2 of them.
Does every movie with a female strip club go directly next to a scene of a male strip club? Is every movie with a female strip club problematic? Movies I'd say set the precedence of big crime stories having scenes in female strip clubs.
Anyway, while this is interesting, you seem oddly antagonistic from the second I respectfully asked for clarification and continue with "oh i bet your answer will be..." like, what is the point of being angry or presumptuous to someone talking to you about this?
I tried my best to be non-confrontational and but it seems you just want to judge my opinions(before I actually said any) and, well, generally act like a prick to me, so I'm just gonna leave it at that. It's not worth it to debate with someone who is just angry and snobby to me. I'm not against you or her, I'm not one of those people who hates her or rallies against her, and you seem to be presuming that I am.
I'm just gonna go back to playing games and not giving a shit about the politics of it all, because that's what makes me happy. Sorry for even putting my head into this debate. Have a good one.
Why is abusing sex workers worse than abusing non-sex workers?
If you can't answer the question, might as well resort to being a smartass.
Would you rather have the strippers be completely immortal and impervious to damage, or would you rather the game not have strippers in a strip club? The fact is the game allows you to kill anyone, any civilian on whim: postmen, firemen, doctors, birthday clowns, waiters, chefs, policemen, anyone, and yes, strippers, because the mission is in a strip club. It doesn't encourage to kill people, but the game is non-linear, and allows you to kill innocent people, who come from all walks of life. You are asking for special treatment to be given to the status of strippers, it would make no sense for strippers in-game to be immortal. I don't even see why strippers, compared to any other profession in the game, should not be killable. Do you not realise how silly it sounds?
Why is the mission in a strip club?
Does the game also go to a Chippendale's review and let you kill the hard bodies on stage there?
Are there boy hookers in the newer versions of Grand Theft Auto? Or is it still all girl hookers like it was 10 years ago?
You accuse me of asking for special treatment, but it doesn't even occur to you that the existing special treatment is having hot, half naked girls for the hetero male viewers and no equivalent for anyone else.
The mission is in a strip club because that's where the target is for that mission. Are you saying that you take issue with there being a strip club in the game in the first place?
Also, you know the vast majority of people you kill in the game are males. And you have the option of stripping the clothes of dead men and leaving them naked, but you can't do that to dead women.
As for "hot, half naked girls for hetero male viewers", assuming thats even true, so what. They make games intended for adolescent boys, what a crime.
I have a feeling that people like you don't even play the games, and even if they changed it to how you desire, you still wouldn't play it. You just don't want other people to be able to enjoy it.
Look dude, I made a point that "what "gamers" forget is that to people who aren't in the subculture, it seems incredibly fucked up that there are random strippers you can kill if you feel like it."
And your response is to keep saying "Why shouldn't they kill female strippers?!"
You're so deep in that you don't even understand the comment.
Okay, I understand what you're saying. I'm not trying to be hostile, I apologise if I came off that way. In response to:
>"what "gamers" forget is that to people who aren't in the subculture, it seems incredibly fucked up that there are random strippers you can kill if you feel like it."
I would say that to people who aren't gamers, (ahem Sarkeesian), maybe they should try to understand the games they are critiquing and why the elements they believe are "incredibly fucked up" (like strippers that aren't immortal), are in there in the first place.
Bitching that Sarkeesian isn't a gamer is stupid. She's trying to be a cultural critic, not a gamer poster girl.
For better or for worse, her videos have gotten a lot of positive attention from grown ups who work in the industry. And I don't think a lot of y'all get why. I mean you're response to me is "why should strippers be immortal?" If you're not trying to be hostile, you're coming off as dumb here.
Oh for fucks sake, okay now I am hostile. Its not stupid to point out she's not even played the game she's criticising, because if she hasn't played it, how can she on earth understand the elements that she says shouldn't be there?
She says "you are encouraged to kill women" and you get erogenous satisfaction out of playing around with their bodies. That is completely ridiculous. You are not encouraged to kill women in the games, anybody who's played the game knows this.
Your responses so far show you don't even understand it either, you haven't even played the game. How is the fact that there are strippers and you can kill them even a bad thing? She says its sexist, its not. The game allows you to kill anyone, and there's a mission set in a strip club. That is not sexist, strip clubs exist in real life. You can kill anyone in the game, including the strippers.
I don't see why you can't understand this basic point. You're the one coming off as really dumb.
You realise GTA is satire, right?
Calling something satire isn't a catch all excuse.
If we're talking about films, and I use Scary Movie as my primary example of misogyny or misrepresentation in films, that's pretty dumb.
It's because they don't like her narrative that women are excluded from gaming communities and marginalized in video games - they want to live in their Dreamland where they save the mi'ladies and their fedora tipping earns them much pussy.
The concept of strong women is something that frightens a lot of these men.
>But seriously, why do people have harbor this much rage for this woman?
Because internet culture has glorified stuff as 'not being serious' for years. I can go play League of Legends right now and have people tell me to get cancer and die in a fire and explain in graphic, explicit detail how they'd like to rape my mom's burning corpse. Why? because I died 12 times in the game.
Those same people then log on twitter, and see some 'dumb bitch' saying 'obviously wrong' things, and think that verbal abuse is a perfectly acceptable way to communicate the fact that they disagree.
It doesn't help that everyone is clear that sexism is bad and wrong, but nobody's 100% quite sure exactly what 'subtle' sexism looks like. Like, the vast majority of gamers agree that calling a woman a stupid worthless whore is probably not OK in real life. But nobody's quite sure where the line is when it comes to criticizing this woman because they believe she's wrong.
It gets even worse when you consider that the incredibly loud, vocal minority proceeds to spew their usual corpse-raping woman-burning garbage and then suddenly the entire "well we don't think gaming is that sexist" movement suddenly becomes the "anti-Anita Sarkessian movement for the promotion of raping Anita Sarkessian's still warm corpse, because god knows they'll never get to touch any other boobs" movement.
As a result, the normally rational members of the "gamer" community suddenly feel attacked and unfairly so, because they're being grouped in with a bunch of crazy-ass motherfuckers.
Meanwhile, Anitia Sarkessian has absolutely no incentive to actually foster an intelligent discussion about gaming sexism that includes the rational section of her opposition - in fact, she benefits massively if the people she disagrees with are drowned out by the angry minority on their side. So she happily allows that fire to burn and plays up the threats and personal attacks - when she even needs to bother playing them up, which probably isn't often, given the general internet community.
The difference is, Anita acts as though she receives this attention because she's a woman, when the reality is essentially every divisive public figure on the internet gets death threats. Hell, people getting attention from the SJW crowd get constant personal attacks on the level of "I hope you commit suicide" all the time. But again, she benefits massively when this gets cast as a massive, monolithic reaction from the gaming community to essentially terrify her out of her job.
Basically, people harbor this much rage against this woman because she's been pretty excellent at ensuring that the loudest, stupidest, angriest part of her opposition is the ONLY part of her opposition that gets any attention, and then she's just given them enough rope to hang themselves with.
>because I died 12 times in the game
I hope you weren't playing Co-op vs. Bots. Even when I didn't know any of the meta, I rarely died more than 7 times.
It was the endless dying Yorick bug.
I was plat 4 about six months ago, and then I took, well, a five month break, but played just often enough to avoid muuuch MMR decay. Suffice to say, I spent a week or so dying a whoooole lot before I stabilized again at gold 5.
Either way, I see an awful lot of 70+ total kill games. People dying 10+ times is hardly unusual - I'd say at least one person in every game I've played that didn't end at 20.
In PvP, sure. I'm rather low-level, so I only play vs. Bots, and usually the person who dies 10 times is the person who ends up at level 6 while everyone else is around 16-18.
How does someone even manage to die 10 times to bots? Just mindlessly walking into turrets?
Annie Bot
>The difference is, Anita acts as though she receives this attention because she's a woman, when the reality is essentially every divisive public figure on the internet gets death threats.
Yeah right, they probably wouldn't have even watched those videos if it was a man talking. I've only ever seen one or two of her videos (years ago), but all the guys I talk to online have seen a lot of them. I found out a couple days ago that one guy I linked one to years ago watched them all after, and he admitted he wouldn't have been as interested if it was a guy.
And how come people explicitly say all kinds of bad stuff about Redditors and no one ever gets mad, but when gamers on Reddit perceive any kind of negative attitude about gamers, suddenly the sky is falling?
>And how come people explicitly say all kinds of bad stuff about Redditors and no one ever gets mad, but when gamers on Reddit perceive any kind of negative attitude about gamers, suddenly the sky is falling?
Have you considered that you treating "gamers" like some uniform group might explain why you see this inconsistency?
From what I gathered (I'm a bit new to this drama and have a somewhat good idea what's going on), she claimed to be a gamer, but steals footage, may have a bit of an ego, makes videos that many disagree with, yet if you "criticize" her, the vocal minority who calls themselves SJWs come out and call you a woman-hater, someone who's against feminism, etc. It doesn't help that many game sites and journalists side with these "SJWs" and Sarkessian, in fear of being called out by this minority.
Her videos are basically the equivalent (keep in mind, I've only seen her Women as Background images in video games video and got a good sense of her) of the argument that violence in games creates violence in the real world. What she's getting at is, what happens to women in video games causes an effect in the real world, that we're desensitizing ourselves to violence against women that in real life, we will think it's just an everyday thing and a "necessary evil." With the overall hate for something in vain of blaming ____ in video games for ____ in real life, a social media platform not designed for insightful discussions (Twitter), vocal minority extremists, a dash of Anita doing some "questionable" things, and the topic of feminism is a recipe for disaster.
Edit: May I ask why I'm being downvoted? Did I get something wrong and need correcting or is it just some downvote train?
> Her videos are basically the equivalent (keep in mind, I've only seen her Women as Background images in video games video and got a good sense of her) of the argument that violence in games creates violence in the real world.
I see this argument thrown out all the time, and I don't get it. I mean, I understand that for years, there were people accusing video games of being murder simulators that made people commit violence. Those were demonstrably false. I was there, I remember those days.
But "gamers" seem to be unable to move past that mindset. Anita's videos aren't different from feminist critiques of other media, from books to movies to TV and so on. Only in video games does it seem to be interpreted as attempts to censor or ban the medium rather than as basic criticism and a request for better art. Anita even starts her reviews stating that it's possible to like something and still critique it, yet people like to equate her to Jack Thompson.
>What she's getting at is, what happens to women in video games causes an effect in the real world, that we're desensitizing ourselves to violence against women that in real life, we will think it's just an everyday thing and a "necessary evil."
I mean, she's getting death threats for this. Maybe she has a point? Even if it isn't influencing actions (and that's liberally counting issuing death threats as "not an action"), it seems to be influencing thought.
It's a misinformed point. The origins of that idea comes from a guy who trained police and military on marksmanship and was fascinated with the proficiency of supposedly untrained shooters in mass shootings (one of them, if I recall correctly, was 9 rounds fired and 8 head shots after training on the gun for only a single magazine of rounds). His personal research into the matter discovered that highly proficient mass shooters with no marksmanship background were avid players of light gun arcade games like House of the Dead and Area 51. He suggested that the light guns simulated real handguns well enough to require only minimal training to acclimatize to a handgun and be proficient or better.
Of course, the media ignored the details and decided that StarCraft was training people to kill or some such nonsense.
> Of course, the media ignored the details and decided that StarCraft was training people to kill or some such nonsense.
Of course it does. I've read Ender's Game, the proof is right there!
I got death threats from a redditor for calling chiropractors quacks.
I got death threats for wearing Mets/Giants hats in Philadelphia every half hour.
A lot of people get death threats on the internet, sometimes for the most stupidest things. Saying that getting death threats means you have a point is a ridiculous statement people always make with anita.
I used to get a lot of death threats from religious people because I help run an atheist gaming group(I haven't gotten one in a while though). People are willing to threaten others for just about anything, it seems.
The difference between Thompson and Sarkessian is that, yes, Sarkessian has a point. Women in video games are in need of better representation and the overuse of tropes (damsel as the prize) isn't helping. I do not agree with the idea that it will have an affect in real life. I should have clarified that I don't hate her and that the death threats to her and shit are totally uncalled for.
> the overuse of tropes (damsel as the prize) isn't helping.
This is a ridiculously dumb point. Games that use that use it as a filler plot to hold up good gameplay, think Mario and Zelda. People don't remember those games as amazing for the plot, they had revolutionary mechanics, so criticizing the plot is slightly ridiculous. I hate that she chose to talk about that when she could have talked about how women often wear bikini armor. It smacks of lazy research and no real knowledge of what she's talking about.
> I hate that she chose to talk about that when she could have talked about how women often wear bikini armor
Maybe she doesn't mention that because it's a point that's already been made multiple times, and there are other examples of sexism.
Yeah it's been made multiple times but League of Legends continues to release more and more hypersexualized skins. You can't move on until you solve the blatant issues. Tropes is so far down the list of problems, if it even is a problem, it blows my mind that we are talking about it.
In art criticism, opinions are the coin being traded, facts are not always as important. People that say "Yeah, but <subtle plot point only an extremely attentive player would realize> or <other completely valid channel of criticism that has little to do with the critique it's responding to>" miss the point. In my opinion.
Your opinion is backed up by facts. If this is not the case, you do not deserve to have your opinion heard by others.
In most things, I would agree. But not in the case of art. I think the impression art leaves on the critic is what's important.
>I mean, she's getting death threats for this.
It's the internet. Everyone gets death threats for everything. Take a look at the movie End of Evengaleon. Literally a portion of that movie is just 30 seconds of hundreds of different death threats the shows creator got from people who thought the anime ending was dumb.
Plenty people get death threats, but they're not equal. Some are more credible than others. There's a difference between a random PM that says "I'll kill you!" and a message that has information about your location and/or daily routine. Sarkeesian has said that only the latter type of threat made her involve the police.
You mean the location that she had on her Patreon page? Her address wasn't exactly well-hidden for anybody that wanted to find it. I wouldn't consider a threat that has easily-accessible information to be a real threat. If they actually had information about her daily routine then, yeah, that would be a pretty credible threat and she should contact the authorities(if this has happened, I must have missed it). Unfortunately, if she already tweeted about it then any investigation will have been destroyed so if this does happen then she should remain silent about it while they investigate it.
What are you talking about? Your address being public information in no way "destroys" a case against threat of violence. You know your address and phone number are public information, too, right? All up through the early 2000s we even had a book delivered to our door that alphabetically listed everybody in the area, with phone number and address. If I called you and told you "I know where you live and I'll fucking kill you," you think the police would dismiss your complaint because "aahhhh see, you're listed in the phone book, so the information was out there. There's no need for an investigation, it's your own fault for not preventing the info getting out" ?
Its seen as an attempt to drastically alter the media of gaming and that kind of is the goal of people like Anita. Backlashes do occur in other medias when feminist criticism is seen as crossing the line into demanding the media be heavily altered to better fit their ideals. The reason its so pronounced in gaming is due to the close nature of the internet, gamers, and internet bloggers. Gamers can instantly hear the persons opinion, reply to the person en masse, then have a story written about the incident later that day. repeat cycle. This creates quite the shitstorm that would't be seen in other medias. But as those other medias have been catching up to having as large an internet presence, they've been running into similar issues.
> steals footage
No. She "steals" it just as much as the Let's Play people "steal" it from the game studio that made the game, i.e. not at all.
You hit the nail on the head on your description of why non-troll's dislike her. Maybe thats why the downvotes are there.
You could also throw in cherry picking examples, ignoring positive examples from the games she's critizing, and her failure to met her kickstarter goal in terms of videos produced.
A game having positives doesn't mean the negatives magically go away or stop being negative. In fact, I'm pretty sure she says "it's possible to enjoy something while still criticising its flaws" at the start of every single video. "Cherry-picking" examples of important flaws in media that a good percentage of people either don't care about or are not aware of is what a critic does
Except her entire argument is that gaming et al is sexist. Therefore, it is cherry picking. If her argument was "This specific thing here is racist while the rest is fine", it would be a valid point, but that's not what she claims.
> Except her entire argument is that gaming et al is sexist.
No, her point is that sexist tropes are overused in video games, and that as a result what female characters are included in video games are unlikely to be anywhere near as interesting as the male characters. Pointing out the developed characters as if it disproves that point is 'cherry picking' in this case, because her point isn't 'there are none' but 'there are not enough.'
My specific beef with this is that she criticizes the absence of including love and sex as something with a deep emotional connection, and says that video games would be a perfect medium to express that, right after she finishes criticizing a collection of Bioware RPG's.
While opinions differ about how effective Bioware RPG's really are at it, that's definitely the goal in how their main NPC's are written. From there, it's not that she's just ignoring the positives, she's flat out saying they don't exist, and then challenging the gaming community to include things that are already included.
Someone who was actually interested in improving the state of affairs would provide criticism focused at improving or expanding these characters. As it is, she comes off as someone with an anti-video game agenda, rather than an honest critic.
Thanks, I lacked a bit of knowledge on the kickstarter incident and I totally agree that she just focuses on the bad elements on the games and the examples she uses are usually out of context.
Because somehow SRD has turned into a den of PC SJW's.
SRS=SRD GUIZE
were all SRS shills here.
And might I add, DRINK!
The real fun happens when I call you all white knights.
Wait, I thought the new term was 'morality knights'? Oh well.
On my noble shill steed I ride!
Well it looks like someone's not gonna get their SRS shill salary this month. I just told Zoey Quinn to shadow ban you. Bai.
Actually the responses were pretty average for discourse on the internet. It was simply fueled further by sensationalist media coverage which brought even more attention to it.
Think about it. Browse through subreddit drama and you'll see people getting shitpissed over how rare their steaks are. Imagine if the guy who likes his steak pink is black. Now imagine if there was an article saying "Gourmands rally racist campaign to silence cook" followed by "Chef overwhelmed by harassment over overcooked steak because he's black." The drama would just expand further. And get bigger and bigger every time one of the articles kept getting published.
Personally I think I'm done with the sarkeesian crap. She's clearly baiting her critics just to get more notoriety and it's not really worth the energy to engage with the discussion any more. Eventually that crowd will get bored and move on, and the people who just like games will still be here.
I don't know. I don't even play video games regularly and even I know about this woman. That's how much infamy she's been getting.
People are really really committed to hating this person in particular.
There's a poem by Paul Hamilton Hayne that I believe should be the motto for anything ever on the internet:
Art thou in misery, brother? Then I pray
Be comforted. Thy grief shall pass away.
Art thou elated? Ah, be not too gay;
Temper thy joy, this, too, shall pass away.
Art thou in danger? Still let reason sway,
And cling to hope: this, too, shall pass away.
Tempted art thou? In all thine anguish lay
One truth to heart: this, too, shall pass away.
Do rays of loftier glory round thee play?
King-like art thou? This, too, shall pass away!
Wherever thou art, wherever thy footsteps stray,
Heed these wise words: This too shall pass away!
> Eventually that crowd will get bored and move on, and the people who just like games will still be here.
I hope she inspires at least someone to do a few pro-feminist games (and actual games not just Gone Home or Depression Quest "pieces") before the whole thing moves on, just out of curiousity's sake. It'd be a waste if this ended up being nothing but baiting and trolling =\
[deleted]
Uh.... That has nothing to do with Sarkeesian. At all. That was part of the Zoe Quinn drama. They are different people.
[deleted]
Then why are you trying to misinform others?
Lots of people coming into the thread doing this. I think they're just angry
Unfortunately complaining is infinitely easier than actually creating. I'm guilty of it too. I just wish people who want to see feminist games would donate hundreds of thousands towards creating them instead instead of hundred thousand dollars to film a few YouTube videos complaining about games not being feminist.
This is completely correct. It's not a problem with gaming, it's a provlem with the Internet. Of course gaming is basically married to the Internet so it's easy to mix the two together.
The crowd was already getting bored. Her last video had the lowest views yet. Then she started posting that she was being harassed on twitter and the gaming journalism press picked it up and started lumping it with the Zoe Quinn thing.
This sub has a special flair for gender wars precisely because it happens so often and goes off the rails so easily. Heck, it used to be flaired "low hanging fruit".
> Maybe it's some people's irrational unfounded loathing for anyone that labels themself as feminist?
It has to be this or just people hating the idea of a woman criticizing video games, because the hate started before she put out her first video on games.
There probably was some against her idea of bringing out sexist tropes. Most of it is because she does stuff like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI
You know, I'd like for once to have a clear explanation, so I clicked on the video link. After 2 minutes, there is still no content. Could you tell me at what time Anita starts to be "SOOOOO BUSTED" At that point the narrator said that the women were not background decoration because the main character was trying to shut down a sex ring.
Can you tell me where her analysis was very wrong, in your opinion? And why does this opinion makes people hate her THAT MUCH? I'm trying to understand here. Frankly, I don't get any of it.
This thunderf00t person is obviously obsessed with Anita, feminists, and conspiracies.
More-so the fact that later on I think halfway in the video it has a clip of her where it's saying, and I just paraphrase, that the player is essentially encouraged to beat the strippers and drag around their dead bodies even though you are actually punished for it in game.
She just cherry picks pretty hard and doesn't go for bigger things like how women are portrayed in Soul Calibur, DoA, and other games like that.
I could be wrong completely, I've only watched 1 video from her about Mario and Legend of Zelda being sexist and stopped caring about her cause she clearly doesn't play games or even the ones she's criticizing.
Edit: Yeah I know Thunderf00t is obsessed with that stuff, both sides have points it's just eh, there is better ways of going about it then demonizing an entire industry because of a few AAA titles
> and doesn't go for bigger things like how women are portrayed in Soul Calibur, DoA, and other games like that.
You mean the game where woman are main characters and therefore not relevant to a video about women as background characters?
Go figure.
>there is better ways of going about it then demonizing an entire industry because of a few AAA titles
She's referenced at least 50 not unpopular games so far
Iirc so far in her series she's referenced 180+ games, so calling them a few feels a bit off to me.
she also never demonized the industry.
>that the player is essentially encouraged to beat the strippers and drag around their dead bodies even though you are actually punished for it in game.
I've seen the video where she makes that claim and it makes more sense in context. She explains that an aspect of games/gaming is toying with the mechanics, seeing what you are and aren't allowed to do. By having strippers NPCs that are killable, by having ragdoll effects and the ability to drag them about, she's claiming that the game is encouraging this behaviour. She's not saying the game outright says "hey, do this".
That said, I don't really agree with her position, and there were a number of other things in that video that made me say "well hang on a sec" and made it seem like she hadn't really played the games/didn't know them very well. She did, however, have a number of entirely valid concerns - the video really was a mixed bag. I've not seen any of her others though, so I've no idea if they're more consistently good/bad.
> She explains that an aspect of games/gaming is toying with the mechanics, seeing what you are and aren't allowed to do. By having strippers NPCs that are killable, by having ragdoll effects and the ability to drag them about, she's claiming that the game is encouraging this behaviour. She's not saying the game outright says "hey, do this".
A major thing about video games, is everyone is gonna play them in the way that gets them the max enjoyment, you see speedrunners and glitchers and all sorts of weirdoes. So even if she is incorrect that the ludic incentives in-game don't make it a stripper murder fest, it doesn't change the point that that has already made the game into stripper murder fest sandbox game for someone out there. I've seen videos of Postal 2 playthroughs where the dude is just going around and picking on the women in sadistic ways and recording his voice saying gendered slurs, because the possibility for that exists even though its not the objective in terms of being the win-state of the programming. Anyone being intellectually honest can see the point stands even if she phrased it in a way where the particular claim is provably incorrect.
> She explains that an aspect of games/gaming is toying with the mechanics, seeing what you are and aren't allowed to do. By having strippers NPCs that are killable, by having ragdoll effects and the ability to drag them about, she's claiming that the game is encouraging this behaviour. She's not saying the game outright says "hey, do this".
well that's fucking stupid.
i CAN play super matio brother by jumping into every hole i see.
sure i don't progress but i CAn so clearly the game is encouraging this behaviour right?
or i could play with a blindfold and just guess what i'm doing.
these games are ment to be interactive the only other possible way to go about this would ahve been to make the strippers imortal which would ruin any possible imersion.
you could only come to that conlusion in anyway if you lack a basic understanding of what games are.
and if she is so utterly clueless about games her openion of games is as worthless as her critics claim.
Are we taking that clown thunderf00t seriously today? I didn't get the memo that SRD is shilling for MRAs today. Put me on the newsletter next time, so I can get the latest shilling policy changes.
The Shekel tip for 69 shekels has been collected by beanfiddler.
ShekelTip info | ShekelTip video | /r/shillsforhire
^^^^Too ^^^^far?
As a Jew, I do love shekels.
Whoa whoa whoa. Some of us don't have the same access to shekels that you do. Maybe you should redistribute some of that privilege money.
Don't know shit about this thunderf00t guy, but why should his views on feminism and the MRM matter, as long as the stuff he says in the linked video is accurate and sourced?
I agree it's fucked up that she's receiving death/rape threats, and I'm not saying the gaming community isn't terribly volatile and sexist, but come on. Let's not pretend like she's immune to criticism and has never done anything sketchy, or it's impossible to criticize her without being misogynistic.
> but why should his views on feminism and the MRM matter, as long as the stuff he says in the linked video is accurate and sourced?
It's hard to separate the words from the speaker. Should his other views matter in this case? Maybe not. But if you constantly strongly disagree with someone, you're going to consider it a waste of time to listen to them speak on anything.
>Let's not pretend like she's immune to criticism and has never done anything sketchy, or it's impossible to criticize her without being misogynistic
Sure, anyone can be criticized but it's hard not to think misogyny is the biggest factor in this drama. There just aren't enough reasons to warrant this much fuss unless people are venting their hatred of "feminists".
I think the whole death and rape threats issue followed by "nah she's lying" is a clear indicator that this is about more than video games.
To clarify, I'm not saying she's immune to criticism because she's a feminist. I just don't believe this much drama is over just video games. Maybe it started that way, but the extremists have stepped in and taken the opportunity to spread their messages.
>It's hard to separate the words from the speaker. Should his other views matter in this case? Maybe not. But if you constantly strongly disagree with someone, you're going to consider it a waste of time to listen to them speak on anything.
were you trying to be ironic here or is it by pure chance you just explained why so many people have a problem with anita?
>misogyny
That word is meaningless nowadays. It's used to stifle conversation and criticism. Any little bit of criticism going their way and they call you a misogynist.
Not in the vast majority of cases I've seen it used. but you and I probably have different views and read different subreddits. Maybe it's used to stifle discussion in areas you frequent.
Likewise, I think "SJW", "SRS", and even "feminist" are often used as dismissive terms on reddit.
I can assure you, I do mean "contempt for women" and not "disagrees with me".
Pretty clear what your stance is though:
"squatting_doge":
comments containing "feminist":
8 days ago - news
3 months ago - Libertarian
3 months ago - Libertarian
5 months ago - videos
6 months ago - AskReddit
How else do you describe her "critics" using words like "slut", "whore", "skank", etc. to attack her besides misogyny?
> as long as the stuff he says in the linked video is accurate and sourced?
The problem is that I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because of his bias. I have no way of knowing that he's being honest without going through his video step-by-step and verifying every single claim and deduction he makes - and I really don't have the motivation to do that. For all I know, he started with the conclusion he wanted (Anita = bad) and then carefully combed through the body of evidence to find all the morsels that support that conclusion, while brushing aside the rest.
Out of curiosity, do you do any of that stuff with Anita?
Any of what stuff? I'm not particularly invested in the reputation of Anita Sarkeesian.
His videos are usually very accurate and sourced. His main message is that a good argument is based on merits and not who is arguing them. It's funny then to see people calling him a clown without addressing anything he says. He has good points.
>most comments are then calling his lack of content out
Yes, all ad hominem attacks. Interestingly enough, r/conspiracy claims the same of anyone attacking DavidDuke.com links.
Tbh, I'm referring to all of his videos in general, I'll watch the one linked once I get off Mobil. But it's interesting seeing all this criticism towards him all of a sudden when the videos I've watched of his make good points. But I stand by my point, anyone who says he's a clown that should be ignored hasn't seen his science videos
Ya I'm not wasting my time watching thunderf00t's MRM bullshit.
I only made it a few minutes into the video, and it was interesting because it was clear that there were some things he didn't get, and one thing he was kind of right on. His point on watchdogs was poor because having a quest that is about saving women, doesn't mean that the game doesn't use women as window dressing, or objects for the plot. He just hates Anita so much he can't really understand her point. The second thing was a clip of her criticism of hitman, and I have actually played the level both were talking about, and the guy here is more correct, at no point in the game are you encouraged to hurt the women, in fact your penalized for it. Still overall, I feel I wasted 5 minutes. :/
The game penalizes you but the game developer isn't. Those strippers are there for a reason. They could have been replaced with any other npc but they weren't. A strip club could have been swapped out for any other location but it wasn't. We were there in that strip club because the game developer wanted the players to be there. There were murderable strippers because the game developers wanted to give the player the choice to murder them. It wouldn't be very good interactive media if the choices were meaningless. The existence of choice is encouragement to exercise it.
Ehh, that criticism is pretty weak actually. If it were a major level in the game, or if it were the only game in the series you might have a point. But it's the fifth game in the series, and it has about 12 unique levels per game. So basically 1/60th of the game takes place in a strip club. I've played levels at a Buddhist temple, a mafia compound, a small town. It's a game that deals with the underworld a lot, it's a place that's bound to come up. The game goes for realism, which means that all people are killable. That's why there are no kids in the game, because when they put kids in a game like this, they need to make them completely non responsive to violence. But you can go through the club and kill every male patron, leaving all women alive. There is absoluting nothing there that encourages people to hurt the women, they are like every other npc on every other level. You're indicating there is something else at play, but since all 60 levels are virtually the same I think your argument is really weak.
And what do you want the solution to be? Should all NPCs be invincible? That kind of takes a big part out of the game. Or maybe just women and children should be invincible? Personally I think that's worse because it plays into old sexist shit where men are the fighters and women and children are some delicate other.
Edit: I think a good way to look at the argument you're preposing, is to take GTA5. It's a huge game, made to seem like LA. You can kill everyone in the game. Now the city is made to be realistic, so there are some areas that are all black. If I want to I can get a cop car and solely run down black people with my white character. Is that something the game encourages? Of course not. The game designers didn't think that would be an option to exercise, because it's an absurd consequence of creating a giant world. Hitman is similar to that, one level out of around 60 takes place in a strip club. And they kept their rules consistent with every other level.
>Those strippers are there for a reason.
They're there to show you what a cunt the guy you're supposed to kill is. They speak to each other.
>The existence of choice is encouragement to exercise it.
You can choose to kill in real life, is the existence of this choice encouragement?
I'm sorry, your argument here is that expressly penalizing an action is still encouraging it. You're out of your mind.
Oh, and don't touch the poop.
>Ya I'm not wasting my time watching Anita's SJW bullshit
How is that ^ that gets your panties in a knot, but criticizing another right's movement doesn't?
Please stop being so hypocritical.
If people just said "Ya I'm not wasting my time watching Anita's SJW bullshit" and left it at that, no one would care. Every feminist gets shit on the Internet. It's the obsession and harassment that's been going on for years that's stupid.
You don't have to like her. I don't like a lot of Youtube video makers. Know how many of them I've sent angry messages to? 0. Just walk away.
O please, next you'll be saying I have to respect the white rights movement or I'm being a hypocrite.
While I might not agree with everything Anita says, feminism is at least a valid movement, whereas the MRM has decided to ignore real issues and instead seems to only focus on misogyny and trying to take feminists down a peg.
White rights may leave a bad taste in your mouth, I get that, but every single race, and gender has problems that need to be solved.
MRM is mostly to do with the rights of fathers.
As in, equal custody, having a say in abortion, and trying to fix this broken child support system.
I've never known that those aren't real issues, I could've sworn a man being separated from his children and being thrown in jail if he doesn't pay an insane amount of money every month for 18 years was an issue. Especially when the father is raped.
Disregarding a rights movement in one fair blow is not a right thing to do. They have problems they want solved, ignoring them because you don't like them is not something that you should be proud of. People are people, they are not little birds that you can silence when they start chirping.
We are all people, our goal should be to solve everyone's problems. Not invalidate others.
> having a say in abortion
*pokes hornets nest*
Men shouldn't have a say in abortion. Due to the unfortunate biological fact that it solely the woman's responsibility to carry a foetus, they should be the only person who decides whether they bring that foetus to term. The idea of a "financial abortion" is also flawed, as it has puts the entire financial burden for the child on one person, which could have a huge negative impact on the child's upbringing - it would require a huge and unfeasible injection of financial assistance from the government to become a workable concept.
*runs away*
> *runs away*
Get back here! You're not getting off that easy! How dare you say that about mimes??!!?
Mimes are just pretentious clowns.
Did you just defend /r/WhiteRights?
No, I never said that. At all.
Seriously where the hell did you even get that?
I said that every single race and gender has problems that need to be solved.
Then I went on to not talk shit about MRM and got downvoted.
>White rights may leave a bad taste in your mouth, I get that, but every single race, and gender has problems that need to be solved.
The fact that you bring up White Rights specifically sure makes it seem that way. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but I can totally see why people would think otherwise.
> But seriously, why do people have harbor this much rage for this woman?
because she claims to have extensive knowledge of a hobby many people feel a strong connection to and uses that perceived knowledge to her advantage to influence followers. Then she makes a series critical of that hobby that misrepresents and occasionally outright lies about the hobby, then uses those misrepresentations to paint the entire gaming culture with broad strokes of sexism. The people who were already part of the culture both take offense to this (as well as her claim that she has any authority on the subject), as any other person would if stereotyped, and feel threatened that her influence could convince people that the culture is predominantly sexist and take action to correct this sexism when there actually might not be any.
now, whether or not it's warranted is up for debate, but that's why people are angry at her.
edit: grammar and stuff
\>answer the question
\>get downvoted
well fuck you too.
Complaining about downvotes = more downvotes.
I'm not complaining about downvotes, I'm complaining that I'm being punished or silenced (at least that's what they're trying to do) for doing what was asked of me.
The fact that anyone makes this about whether or not she's a gamer is so fucking bizarre to me.
She's trying to be a public intellectual. Someone with an academic background who rights on issues for mass consumption. That's kind of a job people have, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about race in that way. He's a college dropout, Anita wrote her masters thesis about representations of women in sci fi.
The reason why if she's a gamer is so important is that's her source material.
It would be like if a literature critic critiques books without reading them, but instead listens to excerpts read by someone else on YouTube. Then uses those YouTube videos as evidence to assert her points.
I assume she watched said sci-fi movies/tv shows to understand what she's talking about. Same thing here. You can't understand the context of a game unless you play it, or watch a Let's Play. Even then that Let's Play would have to be unedited, which would defeat the point of watching a Let's Play.
It's important to understand and play games before you fucking talk about them. It's like reviewing a movie without actually seeing the movie. You cannot make extremely controversial claims about a subject when you don't know jack shit about the subject.
This is like if I watched Football for the first time for only five minutes and then made a ten minute video talking about how Football is sexist and misogynistic because there are no woman on the team and Cheerleaders are treated as sexual objects used only for the entertainment and pleasure of men. Those are some pretty ridiculous claims to make if I know nothing about the sport, right? Nobody would take what I just said seriously.
The problem here is that Anita is saying and doing the equivalent of what I just said but with videogames instead of Football, and people and the media are actually taking her seriously and changing some things that really don't need to be changed.
Oh no, you got downvoted! How horrible.
The reaction she is getting is in no way warranted, but it's not surprising. fandoms are scary things. The actress who plays Skyler White on Breaking Bad has nutters who mistake her for her character. The author of the true blood book series Charline Harris was threatened when she ended that series. Lion's wide receiver Calvin Johnson got death threats from angry fantasy football gamblers recently. Ben Afflack has apparently been getting death threats by batman fans. The list goes on. Assholes don't need an agenda to be assholes.
The problem is that we are losing an opportunity to talk about this insanity. Sarkessian and her fan's use the threats to paint us with a broad brush, as if this kind of insanity were limited to gaming, or exclusively tied to gender. I don't treat all basketball fans or hockey fans like criminals just because riots sometimes break out after games. It's not a 'sports problem' it's a deeper problem in our culture that makes excuses for antisocial behavior. I get as annoyed as anyone by Sarkessian's lies and half truths, but I'm kind of in a bind because the problems she is talking about are real and I really want to see them addressed. But, so far I see Sarkessian mostly as a missed opportunity to have this conversation. She isn't going to win any converts by making up facts, and the asshole-crazies are what pushed her into the spot light in the first place. The battle lines are drawn between two sides I wish would just go away.
Hell, Amanda Abbington (Martin Freeman's wife) received death threats when it was announced she would be Watson's wife in Sherlock.
I'll go on a limb and assume those were from 'Cumberbitches' (their own word, not mine) because I don't think many male fans would be upset over the doomed ship of two male characters.
I think because she twists and shits on things that people are quite fond of to get attention. Yeah that'll get a lot of people to hate you.
I also think she purposefully fosters tension between the genders for publicity too. Causing obviously a negative impact of the gaming business in general.
She doesn't foster tension between genders, she fosters tension between people comfortable with the present representations of women in popular video games and those who are uncomfortable.
She calls her self a pop culture critic. She's one of millions on the internet.
Yeah, she analyzes video games and criticizes gender tropes and what not.
But this is a huge overreacting to flawed analysis on a YouTube video.
Just don't watch the videos if you don't like them.
That's not a reason to hate anybody.
She's toxic and trying to erode and devalue something people like for a really cheap petty reason. People will hate her for it a lot. I don't even really like games but it's obvious.
> She's toxic
What's her LD50?
4 youtube links.
Four links killed half the beagle dogs?
They were male hounds.
Did they play video games.
Mostly just DOTA. Think one of them might have played CSS but didn't compete at all and was pretty low rank.
>She's toxic and trying to erode and devalue something people like for a really cheap petty reason.
Wait, do you mean the person who starts every video with this?
> Remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.
Yeah, she sounds like literally Hitlher.
> She's toxic and trying to erode and devalue something people like
Isn't that just a cynical interpretation of all criticism/cultural analysis?
That's what "cultural ctitics" do. They analyze and criticize culture.
I just don't see how her opinions (flawed or not) actually hurt anybody.
If you think she's full of shit, don't subscribe to her channel.
>If you think she's full of shit, don't subscribe to her channel.
I don't but god do I still have to look at her and her sour condescending face somehow.
Than unsub from the anti-anita folks as well.
She has a perfectly fine Armenian face she can not help it.
Why does her existence and face upset you so much?
except she one of the crazies who actually get taken seriously and attempts to present herself as if she is a logical victim to push her crazy shit.
> But seriously, why do people have harbor this much rage for this woman?
Because gamers on the whole have had a good 30+ years of ignorant outsiders telling them that they're terrible people for playing games. They were told that they'd be worshiping satan, murdering people, they'd become social degenerates, perverts, etc. etc. She's just the latest in a long line of this, and has had the misfortune to do so on the Internet where a small number of loud idiots can be quite capable of making everybody look bad. That said, threats aren't okay, no matter who you do them to or why. I hope that everybody (or at least a noticeable portion thereof) doing such things faces assault charges for doing so. And no matter who they are, I think that they're fundamentally shitty people for doing so.
The thing is, for as much as I agree that representations of women in games are pretty awful, I'm considerably less concerned about lazy writers in video games than I am the online gaming culture -- which seems to bring out the absolute worst in so many people.
I don't like her because she had a real opportunity to talk about an actual issue: that women are not presented particularly well, especially in terms of over-sexualization, in games. Instead she decided to talk about how saving Zelda in Ocarina of Time was sexist.
I mean, it's not like it's one or the other. She chose to talk about the Damsel in Distress trope for a bit, do you really think she did that instead of talking about oversexualisation, or is it more likely that she's just treating it as a separate topic for another video?
Well, no. Just saving a female character is by itself not sexist.
It's the way so many games make female characters victims, prizes or objects.
It's the pattern more than any one instance. Hence the "tropes" in the video series name.
Most of the "hate" she's getting is probably trolls. I've been playing video games since I could remember, and I agree with a very few points of hers, but the way that she, the video game media, and the mainstream media portrays us has really upset me. When I was in school, I would get shit CONSTANTLY from girls about being a loser with no life, adults in my life told me I was wasting away my future, and any time there was some teenager with a violent outburst or who killed someone, video games got the blame.
Now they're telling US, not the people who MAKE the games, that were misogynist, that were sexist, and that were afraid of losing our "little boy's club." I personally don't give a damn about if you have a cock or cunt, if you're playing a video game, you're playing a video game. The problem comes from when you make a video game about YOURSELF, instead of about fun.
I used to care a lot about gender issues, I've been on both sides of the fence, MRA and feminist, but now I'm just tired. Fuck Anita, Quinn, Watson, Thunderfoot, Sargon, video game media, critics, whatever. Just play the damn game if you want to, don't play it if you don't. A prisoner once told me, "if you don't like fruit punch, fine, just don't piss in the kool-aid."
Well then like 90% of reddit is trolls because that woman gets a disproportionate amount of hatred.
There is sexism in video games. There is sexism everywhere in culture, in books, movies and politics. I don't see how pointing it out or talking about it is bad or unfair.
If you don't care about the gender stuff, I get it. Concentrate on issues that matter to you. I just don't see the reason to shit on people with different ideas who want to changes things.
If you don't care about the issue or don't like her videos, don't subscribe to her channel. There's no cause to hate her.
I never said I hated her, at least I don't think I did, I just said some of the stuff she's been saying upsets me. I mostly just don't give a damn about her, but it hurts being labeled a misogynist for enjoying a hobby that women used to turn their nose up at.
Saying there is sexism in video games (along with film, literature, politics ect) is not the same as being labeled a misogynist.
Her point isn't that video games are evil or that people who play them are misogynistic.
>just trolls
Just trolls. Duh, it's not normal people!
Like I said in my post, I'm tired. I'm not arguing gender stuff anymore, I just threw my opinion into the mix. I said what I thought and apparently I was wrong, you win.
Now take these downvotes as your punishment for being wrong
> Now they're telling US, not the people who MAKE the games, that were misogynist, that were sexist, and that were afraid of losing our "little boy's club."
You said "us" a couple of time in your comment. Are you sure the message "they" are trying to convey if that "you" and other people you feel are like you are misogynists?
>The problem comes from when you make a video game about YOURSELF, instead of about fun.
Now I'm not sure I can follow your comment.
I think its because she goes out of her way to find things wrong in order to justify all the money that has been donated to her. Basically she has a ton of peoples money and can't deliver on what she was going to use it for, so she makes shit up instead.
So, people see her as a scammer and a liar.
If it was the people who funded her who were complaining then you'd be making sense - but it isn't.
Maybe because even with 100k she took over a year to do a video, still can't play the games, steals let's players footage without shouting them out, and just makes up bullshit about the games she talks about.
Edit: And her doxing other people and her nonstop infinite army of SJW's that raid anyone that criticizes or argues against her.
I agree she takes too long between releases, doesn't play everything she talks about, and didn't properly cite content she used. I still don't see how that inspires hatred or rage or the reaction against her. Even the worst most annoying youtuber in the world if you don't know them personally and have to deal with them personally isn't worth writing threats to, etc. or anything beyond downvoting their video or giving it one star or w/e
How much hate is she getting. I'm not on twitter
Well for one, "gamers" have been marginalized for some time now. They've been seen as nerds, geeks, losers, etc, they are not a powerful group, instead they are a group that often is picked on. As gaming gets more popular, "gamers" get pushed into a corner within their own space, with other more "normal" people displacing them, further ostracizing them. The other thing that happens with its growing popularity is that the bullying reaches ever loftier heights, with politicians and "activists" trying to find fault in games and by extension "gamers".
Anita is yet another "outsider" picking up the torch to chase "gamers" around with. Yes, when it comes to gender equality video games are often problematic, and I'm sure just pointing out these issues would be enough to garner her plenty of harassment, but the fact that she is dishonest in her methods only further serves to rile people up and make them feel bullied.
For me personally, I find I can't sit through any of her videos without getting at least mildly annoyed. For example, in one of her more recent videos she even picked up the old standby that "you get money for killing women in GTA!!!!". There are so many real examples of misogyny in games, yet she feels the need to intentionally mischaracterize even the more benign examples, and that feels antagonistic. It also annoys me because it only serves to further fuel the drama that is centered around her: lying about this stuff isn't going to win "gamers" over to your side, it's only going to anger them and make change more difficult. You need understanding and compassion to solve problems, not misinformation (her) and vitriol ("gamers").
Maybe because she's a flat out liar? And the only thing that comes from her mouth are lies and garbage.. Rage? Nope, just can't stand liars... But this is SRS err SRD, so I know where you stand, so let the downvoting begin...
She makes some good and some really bad points.
But if you don't think her analysis is accurate, why not just unsubscribe from her channel?
It likely stems from a long history of people trying to take away vidya gaems or censor content creators heavily. After that war was won there were many years of relative peacetime, followed by the similar battlecry of the enemy, "video games cause <thing that my agenda opposes>!"
People are just sick of that shit after so long, and now it's coming from a scam artist who intends to hurt everybody else for personal gain.
As much as I love video games, the way that gamers present themselves online makes it really hard to not do everything possible to disassociate myself from the hobby. It seems like games are these peoples only reason for being, and they spew vitriol at anyone who doesn't think exactly like they do.
I game in secret and I never, ever play co-op games. My boyfriend tried to get me into League of Legends...I refused because I didn't want to game with other people.
To be fair, MOBAs, for whatever reason are always mired in absolutely the worst communities. Most multiplayer games are nowhere near that toxic.
If you ever get into multi-player, please don't let league of legends be your first experience.
Or dota or any other moba.
I'm with you, I played LOL for almost a year before I just had to stop. I can't have a hobby that is so toxic to my mental well being. I'll just stick to the single player games and save my sanity.
That sounds more like PVP rather than co-op.
To me co-op is Left 4 Dead/2 campaign mode, Portal 2, even TF2 MvM mode, Borderlands/2, Payday. Generally games where its you + teammates against the AI, or Players vs Environment.
When you get to PvP (Players vs Players), then it gets toxic.
> the way that gamers present themselves online makes it really hard to not do everything possible to disassociate myself from the hobby
Someone else said it in here but it bears repeating. There are almost as many gamers in the world as there are people in the US and they aren't some cookie cutter group of people.
I remember I used to use voice chat and type in ebonics before I was playing World Of Tanks one day and got nigger bombed for 10 straight matches.
Now I like to pretend I'm a white kid named Cody.
Why the fuck do people care so much? I mean, I don't like her videos, as I can clearly see the cherry-picking, double-standards, and flat verbal presentation in them, but there's no reason to get this upset at someone for making videos.
I can understand Gamergate, because Zoe's repeatedly claimed to have filed police reports, lawsuits, etc. without anything actually happening (empty threats aren't good for PR), but why not just stop watching her videos if Anita's existence provokes you into a blind fury?
She has potential influence over the design of video games she could care less about actually playing.
So do 1000s of Activision employees.
Her latest videos are least watched
Because if you are going to call her on her bullshit you need to watch the videos to find it.
Because of the nature of the internet, even if you ignore it, there are people who will listen and be indoctrinated by them. These people will then go and further spread the lies.
And we must be the guardians of truth right?
Is anyone kind of disturbed at the amount of vitriol Anita Sarkessian receives? I know some of what she's done has been questionable (in a more literal sense, as tbh I'm not entirely convinced she's done anything wrong). It just seems she's hit a big nerve in the gaming world and it's scary how defensive everyone is about her views.
Edit: Don't downvote just 'cause you disagree
No, not disturbed. Which is a problem. It's not surprising at all. Women in general get a lot of shit on the internet, women in video games get double. Men get it too. That's not a "everyone gets it, its not misogyny!" thing, because it is, women get a LOT of abuse.
But I also think it's more complicated than just hating women. I think there are a lot of people out there who just hate. Recently in the UK we had some convictions from people sending rape threats to women who wanted women on our currency. One of them that was convicted WAS a woman. What is THAT about?
People just hate themselves and their lives. They can't yell at their boss, or the cops, or their neighbours. So they yell at their kids, their dog, or they go on twitter and make someone elses day shitty. A lot of people play video games because they can't talk to girls, or because they are socially inept, and their lives fucking suck and they just want to escape. Anita Sarkeesian is an outlet for them to aim at. It's just an easy target to spew hate at and get a reaction. It gives the haters the power they lack in their life to tell a woman how she'll be raped. If you tell a man anything, they will barely care, you might not get a reaction. Tell a woman you know where she lives and what you're going to do to her...I mean in this world we live in, she can't just shrug that off.
And im just rambling. tl;dr - shitty people with shitty lives looking for someone to hate and get a reaction from.
what i'm more baffled by is the vitriol that comes in response to her making people aware of initial threats. it's like people are getting upset at her for publicizing the fact that she receives hate. the ZQ drama had the same thing - it wasn't enough that Zoe was awful, but somehow receiving death threats, and then talking about those death threats made her more awful. i legitimately don't understand why this is somehow a thing.
I don't even have the time to send death threats or hate mail or even mildly disapproving tweets to dudes that beat the shit out of their wives on camera.
But I'm apparently supposed to care that someone criticized mah vidya, is wrong on some points, and used someone else's gameplay footage and artwork to the point that I chase them out of their home.
Right.
People are looking for the slightest thing to take her down a peg. Simple. That's why they've been conducting CSI level analysis into her assertions of abuse.
[deleted]
Whoa there. Are you saying no one cares about the Ray Rice thing? Because that's all I've heard from /r/NFL and all my sports podcasts for the last month.
It's not like people are calling for the commissioner to RESIGN or anything...
Of all those things, only the plagiarism is worth caring about.
And only in the vein of "man thats shitty dont do that" caring.
At best, I might leave a comment like "This video had some good points and made me think. But I notice that the footage was not yours, and is someone else's. For that reason, I'm leaving a thumbs down on YouTube, because I consider that plagiarism."
I should be up for a medal for being able to concisely advocate my points without being a total dick and excusing harassment, right? Because the skills to do that apparently go over so many people's heads it's really not funny anymore.
> ...I notice that the footage was not yours, and is someone else's...
Which is in itself silly, because you could post the same comment to the people putting up Let's Play videos of someone else's game, but of course that's just innocent borrowing. But when Sarkeesian borrows the visuals again, it's plagiarism? Give me a break.
You actually wouldn't be allowed to comment or rate her videos because she disables that feature.
I never understood what that was such a sticking point, as though there weren't infinite venues on the internet for expression one's opinion.
Commenting/voting an article/video/post directly is different from going somewhere else to comment about it. It does give the impression of "your voice" being "silenced" or a close mindedness of the author.
Yet here we are in the multitudes of internet forums discussing it.
...and?
Bceuase YouTube comments are so down the barrel that they shot through the bottom and into the earth.
"I don't care, and therefore you shouldn't either."
> Is anyone kind of disturbed at the amount of vitriol Anita Sarkessian receives?
I'm still not entirely sure who she is, except for someone who made reddit apocalyptically cross a while back for some reason.
Seriously. This latest round was just absurd. These guys aren't just the Tea Party of gaming anymore: they're gaming's birthers, complete with entitled demands that their victims jump through hoops to disprove one wild, desperate accusation after another.
Yesterday they were harassing the employees of some tiny nonprofit that Zoe Quinn was giving some of the proceeds from the pay-what-you-can sales of her game, because they'd decided she was probably lying about that. Pathetic.
>These guys aren't just the Tea Party of gaming anymore: they're gaming's birthers, complete with entitled demands that their victims jump through hoops to disprove one wild, desperate accusation after another.
Pretty much yeah. Warning: mega bravery.
I like the article about how SJWs ruined sci fi.
Are they talking about Ursula le Guin and Margaret Atwood? Because if they are, I'm deeply looking forward to the ruining of games.
Worse. Gene Roddenberry.
We are going to need a bigger unit than kilosagans to measure that amount of bravery.
Don't have time for that, we are at war!!!
Pretty sure stealing lets play footage and artwork is wrong. But ya the hate is good for SRD
Ok yeah good point, that's true, but I don't think bullying someone is ever justified. Just call her out and then leave it. I do think it's bullying. And then when she says anything about the hate she's receiving, it's like, "Oh look, perpetual victim." I guess my point was that a lot of people have gone way overboard in their attacks, and there must be a deeper reason behind it imo.
But it wouldn't make you that famous. Copyright infringement is on a ton of youtube videos.
People have a completely irrational unfounded utter loathing of her.
I don't know where it comes from.
Thats a lot of hatred to harbor over a video series you don't agree with.
It is because she is Armenian.
I knew Reddit was full of Turks.
Turks with their fierce eyebrows stirring up trouble.
I'm not actually sure it is stealing. I think not crediting where she got the footage from is a mistake, but I think under fair use she's allowed to use the footage for commentary.
Seriously, how do you "steal" Let's Play footage, when it's already "stolen" from a gaming studio that created it?
A gamer borrows visuals and it's innocent copying, but do the same thing again and it's a horrible crime?
Does not compute.
Not going to disagree. I'll admit I don't like her and think a decent bit of her 'Work' is crap but...the level of shit spewed in her direction makes me pause at times.
You're not alone there.
The funny thing is that she wouldn't have any wind in her sail if she wasn't so widely hated. All these people who constantly harass her just put her in the spotlight.
This is so true. Whatever influence she has, it was sparked by being the recipient of so much ridiculous vitriol. Feminist Frequency was just a run of the mill cultural critique YouTube series on movie tropes and sexism. Not anything near a household name on the net. Then she tried to raise $6000 for a series on video games that would be like what she was already doing for movies. Gamers heard about it and the rest is history. $150,000, Ted talks, and Joss Whedon tweets later we find ourselves here.
>Is anyone kinda disturbed at the amount of vitriol Anita Sarkessian receives?
Welcome to SRD.
>Is anyone kind of disturbed at the amount of vitriol Anita Sarkessian receives?
Well, two things... One, it's the internet. Make anything public and you get vitriol.
~~And two, isn't this evidence that she is playing up the vitriol she receives? If someone is willing to lie about something as severe as filling a police report, it isn't much of a stretch to believe she has lied about the other vitriol she has received.~~
Evidently it was passed off to the FBI, hence the confusion.
> One, it's the internet. Make anything public and you get vitriol.
We as humans shape the internet, it doesn't have to be that way.
Proof is a strong word for what we are seeing here.
Unless you are in contact the SFPD I will have to say confirmation bias could be playing a part.
I'd be careful. I think it is still possible she filed a complaint about death threats/someone posting her address with the federal police, rather then using the SFPD.
She did. This is all old news. The department that these guys contacted has verified that the case was passed on to the FBI and is not being handled by them.
>The department that these guys contacted has verified that the case was passed on to the FBI and is not being handled by them.
Link? /r/tumblrinaction is currently jerking themselves raw over it, so that would be funny to see.
I saw it on twitter, I'll see if I can find a good link.
Edit: here's one.; a screenshot of a conversation with the same person from the first screenshot. Better evidence, of course, is that respectable news organizations have reported this information uncritically. They aren't in the business of just taking people's words for things: if they can't verify a claim they'll say 'so and so said that they did such and such' rather than 'so and so did such and such.' But if you're already making up crackpot theories about journalistic corruption I can see why screenshots of gmail conversations would be more compelling.
Even the guy from the first photo said that he would have to contact the federal police and verify with them as to whether or not she had reported it.
I think this is a good example of why journalists should filter their investigations. No point reporting one part of an issue without the context of the rest of it.
Why do you have such a hard on for TiA?
This is the second time you posted almost the exact same comment in this thread.
When videogames are all you have its something you care ALOT about. Call us pathetic but videogames are a great and easy way to escape from reality, and when someone shits on the one thing you love you want to murder them. I'm not for the death threats but i'm all for the I hate anita club, especially considering she doesnt even fucking play videogames.
EDIT: Worded what I said wrong... Going to leave it in because its honestly kind of funny.
> when someone shits on the one thing you love you want to murder them.
That isn't a normal reaction to someone criticising a thing (or a medium) that you enjoy. I mean, I love football, and it's a huge part of my life, but when someone says that they can't enjoy it because the players dive all the time, I don't want to murder them. I just, y'know, disagree with them and accept that people have different tastes. Even when people say "lol soccer = gay", I just briefly think that they're a cunt and move on with my life.
Just to clarify I didnt literally mean murder, it sounded better in my head trust me.
The problem is she's shitting on the one thing people like me enjoy, something that I as are many people very passionate about. The problem is she's saying so much bullshit yet has a large following and has influence in the gaming industry. So of course people are going to want to shout down her opinions, especially when she doesnt play videogames and lies to make things fit her view (Such as her "critique" on Hitman Absolution where she blasts the game for allowing you to kill women but leaves out the fact that you can kill men as well. Not to mention you're punished for killing innocents).
What do you consider "shitting" on the thing you love? Which part of her criticism do you think is so awful that you believe she's going to ruin all the videogames?
> when someone shits on the one thing you love you want to murder them
ayy lmao.
Butt seriously, no. This comment is ridiculous.
upvoted
Err that came out wrong. Like REALLY wrong. I probably sound like a psychopath now...
You should probably get used to it. Gaming is a mainstream medium now and has been for a while, which means it's going to be more and more open to criticism.
You don't think the film, television, radio, music, literature, and theatre industries have received, and still receive, their share of criticism too? Some warranted, some not. But if you get even mildly upset whenever someone says something negative about a hobby you enjoy, you're gonna be having a bad time going forward.
> when someone shits on the one thing you love you want to murder them.
Really?
No.
She's criticizing the medium. You have to be able to accept criticism. You might disagree with some (or hell, all) of her actual points, but that shouldn't be a problem. Criticism makes video games (and everything) better.
She isn't shitting on video games as a whole. She's arguing against some things that video games do. She might be wrong about them, but she's not trying to censor anything--she's trying to push people to think critically.
I see where our opinions differ. I dont see her as "trying to push people to think critically" I see her as trying to get her way in the gaming industry.
"Hate" seems like much too visceral an emotion for someone who hasn't personally messed up my life in a real way. I don't think gamers are pathetic and I definitely see how people use them as an escape from reality after a hard day at work, but rejecting part of your identity in annoying internet videos isn't a reason for hatred, I think that starts at the level of like, slashing your tires, or getting you fired from a job. I wouldn't want to murder someone unless it went all the way to someone maliciously endangering the lives of my family
>It's important to note that she heavily criticizes the damsel in distress trope in videogames yet she has no qualms with using it in her life for personal gain.
+400 Haha what?
It's hilarious because it makes it seem like the people making those statements can't tell the difference between a video game plot and real life.
Wow, first time I've ever been caught up in drama that got linked to SRD! I've stopped posting there, the guy I was talking to kept linking me to 20 minute videos to support his claims.
I asked this in an early post that got deleted, but how are people checking with the police department to see if she filed a police report? That seems like something the police shouldn't be telling random internet people.
Police Reports are public record. Anyone can request them, given they know the name of the victim and the date of the report.
That seems like a horrible idea. That would mean an abusive partner could find out if their SO has put in a police report.
The abusive partner would find out anyway when the police contacted him/her about the report. They don't just vanish, they're acted on.
That would at least be them finding out in a controlled setting with police presence, not through a friend they sent to the station so they have time to get a gun or something.
What, an abuser is going to send a guy to the police station 24/7 to check records? Assuming the records are updated real-time, not at the end of the day when the police already acted.
Corruption is a lot easier when access to police reports cant easily be obtained. Look at all the hassle that's gone on in Ferguson because reports weren't made or weren't being released in a timely manner.
It's a good way to prevent people getting away with the sort of bullshit that AS tries to pull.
O ya, she made a critic of your precious little video games, how tragic.
She has? The only thing I know about her is that she gets in trouble all the time for lying about things like police rports etc. My most recent video games are for the SNES, I think every possible complaint about them has already been made a while ago.
I couldn't care less about the video games.
Some video games really do have sexist tropes. It doesn't make her any less of a liar. She claims she is an avid video game fan, yet her kickstarter started off with "I haven't been a big fan of video games."
This is like me watching maybe 2 movies in my life, and all of a sudden I ask for money to find sexist things in movies, a la Feminist CinemaSins. Anita has been criticized also because her 1st episode of tropes in gaming was handled so poorly. I was looking forward to the episode, and when I watched it I got more and more disappointed. Mostly because of her saying that "saving a damsel in distress is objectifying her" so often. People don't make video games about saving women because they're sexist, but because it's an easy plot to set up. Only sociopaths (the only people unable to form a relationship with others) are unable to feel any passion about saving a loved one. It's not objectifying women, it's helping them. Also because she cited the new Double Dragon game, and claimed it was sexist because the female character was kidnapped and the male characters had to save her. It's not sexist, that's just a primal instinct. What would they do? Not save her? She claimed Double Dragon was placing the female character as weak, and completely disregarding the fact that the game ends with said female character punching the villain in the balls.
Another thing that disappointed me was Anita using LP footage and art without permission. You can be Obama or a random person on the internet, you have to cite your source if it isn't yours.
I was honestly interested with the show, but Anita handled it so poorly. Episode 2 however, brought up some good points, I'll give her that.
Most of the rage about this is how Anita cried wolf and tweeted about how she was getting death threats every day. Fair enough, even Obama gets death threats. When people don't like what you're doing, some crazy guy is going to tell you to die, life is like that, it's a shitty conclusion, but that's what happens. I was supportive of her for that, until I realized that she was playing the card a bit too much. Yes, death threats are a horrible thing, no one should get them, but do you really need to talk about how the same dozen people want you dead to guilt trip others? Another thing cited here is that Anita claimed she called the police department about threats (weird, considering they started a year ago, why the hell are you calling now?) and made up a conversation, which a police officer disproved. The silence from Anita's end is enough to shout "I'm fucking lying". Someone who actually called in the first place would be quick to say "I called the other police department.", but not Anita. She's crying wolf, and I wish she wasn't, as she used to be one of my role models.
One last thing before I go, you shouldn't be so condescending to others, they are stating their opinion on a public website, they don't need you making fun of them for liking video games, especially in a way that just makes you come off as a prick. People criticize video games all the time, the problem here is that Anita is lying through her teeth, and is very uninformed about the stuff she actually criticizes. Next time, don't be so rude to others, they are humans just like you, treat them with respect and dignity, the way you want others to treat you.
Not that you care much...
Shhh, don't tell people.
Tell me how you really feel.
I just wish people cared more about what people fight against than the people fighting themselves.
Most police departments I've tried to get information out of are aggressively unhelpful about it and will take any excuse to avoid giving you what you're looking for. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because as you say, even though this stuff is public knowledge, that doesn't mean it should be trivial to access. You often have to be persistent and ask the right questions to the right people, even when you've got a legitimate reason (and not just 'I want ammunition to attack this woman who says things I don't like about video games on the internet). There's not often a centralized 'public information desk' as there is with a lot of federal agencies, so a 'sorry, I don't have any information about that' doesn't necessarily mean that there's nothing there.
What these guys did was take one 'I have no record of that' from one SFPD employee as 'proof' that she'd lied about contacting the police over a particularly scary and credible threat - never mind that this information had been repeated uncritically by several responsible news agencies who are much better than the average internet jerk at verifying facts, and much more invested in getting the answer that's correct rather than just the one they want to hear. Once those screenshots started getting passed around the internet and resulting in more drama, the same person apparently changed their tune and said that they'd followed up with a supervisor and found that the case had been reported to them but was being handled by the FBI.
So basically it's just made up bullshit? That is about what I thought.
Well, it's 'made up' in that someone came to a conclusion first (that she lied about calling the police about death threats,) and then did the bare minimum of research to prove it, got the answer they wanted, went public with it and was promptly made to look like an idiot. I have no doubt that this guy thought he had a smoking gun, but that's the problem with that kind of mentality: when you're too eager to believe the worst about someone you don't like, you're very liable to wind up circulating bad information because it makes you feel vindicated.
If the guy is to the point where he is calling police stations he clearly has some issues.
Hah, well he writes for Britbart so that's kind of a given.
Funny how I never find myself on the same side of any issue as Breitbart.
He is a case of a cancer that continues post mortem.
Haha wow, ya I'm sure his reporting has no bias to it.
Yeah, he's a known cunt.
why are you surprised. These people are stupid misogynistic fucks.
Don't worry, everyone's trusting that weasel red pill asshole who wears a fedora and never smokes his fucking cigarette. Why does anyone need any kind of confirmation of what that guy says?
While there's no excuse for the abuse Sarkeesian's gotten, it's a source of constant amazement to me how much attention she gets from both sides of the social justice divide for her work. Her videos aren't good, sure, but they're more bland and derivative than they are offensively terrible, certainly not bad enough to merit the reaction some people have to them (even with the Let's Play thing,) and from the other perspective she's hardly the most interesting or articulate person currently discussing sexism in games and the gaming community. Her fame/ notoriety genuinely baffles me.
I think it's partly because she doesn't respond to criticism. People want to LET HER KNOW they think she's full of it and by disabling votes and comments and largely ignoring both biased and unbiased criticism of her work, the internet hoard gets angry that it is ignored.
I always find it odd how aggravated some people get about things like that. After all, it's not the end of the world if you can't tell someone that you think they're wrong on the internet.
You also can't ignore all the soap boxing people do whenever she comes up. Look at this thread. So many "Oh, I can't possibly understand why people don't like her? Crazy gamers!" This is probably the 73637th Anita thread. Most of the people here are SRD regulars. When they say shit like that, they're just soapboxing for karma and that aggravates me.
I understand why people don't like her; as I said in my comment, I do think that her videos are lazy and unoriginal. But lazy and unoriginal videos with exaggerations are par for the course on youtube, and it just makes her a poor cultural critic, not Satan incarnate, and not deserving of the wealth of attention that she's gotten, both positive and negative.
The more positive attention she gets the more negative attention she will get in attempt to counteract her message. It's is a snowballing effect.
>Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) tweeted at 7:47pm - 12 Sep 14: 1/ I've just another conversation with SFPD. They say they are aware that the Sarkeesian case is being dealt with by the FBI. (https://twitter.com/Nero/status/510484796943114240[1] )
Guy who writes for Brietbart and Business Insider says he spoke to the police and says they said that the FBI was involved? Well that's certainly proof enough that this is real. Especially from a guy trying to mend his increasingly dinged-up reputation when it comes to women in tech.
You know why? Because we should totally accept hearsay evidence from twitter. That's how we make sure we have our facts straight.
>You know why? Because we should totally accept hearsay evidence from twitter. That's how we make sure we have our facts straight.
It's funny you say that, because that's just what the folks over at /r/tumblrinaction did with Nero's previous tweet.
The higher up tweet (from the other guy) is entirely reasonable.
edit: Okay, I don't see how that follows.
TiA still jerked themselves raw over hearsay from twitter, don't you agree?
So even though she actually did report it, she told the truth, reading these /r/quityourbullshit comments makes it clear that this will go down in internet lore as another lie told by the evil Sarkeesian. I actually really like that subreddit, or I thought I did, but usually when there's a dramatic turnaround like this it just makes the story juicier. Quit your bullshit Anita!! No, YOU quit YOUR bullshit Breitbart dude!!
But the hatred for her is so personal it's a matter of faith now. Ruining my drama.
That's not exactly the case. She has spoken to the FBI but that was in regard to some child porn that was retweeted to her. There is still no proof to her original claim that she talked to the local PD about her death threats like she said she did in the tweet. So um yeah didn't mean to take away some of your righteous anger she still needs to quit her bullshit
>She has spoken to the FBI but that was in regard to some child porn that was retweeted to her.
Did you hear about this conversation from her or from the FBI, which was it?
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nero/status/510484796943114240
Read this twitter thread sorry to burst your bubble but have you ever heard of confirmation bias the idea that information we want to be true we accept at face value don't fact-check but information we don't want to be true has to go through mental filters and has to be fully proven over and over again to be accepted
I knew you were spewing bullshit! I read that thread already, and what I see is baseless speculation from random anti-sarkeesian tweeters:
Emphasis mine since some might miss it:
> "it may be the cp that she reported was sent to her that they are investigating and not the threats themselves"
And this truly stupid conspiracy bull:
>"There is a possibility that she is dealing with the FBI for the "CP" false flag they tried to put on #gamergate."
Yes, by tomorrow you will have convinced yourselves that the FBI is involved because Sarkeesian tried to frame the gamergaters with child porn. Yes, it is she who is under investigation for a false flag, haha Sarkeesian! Shit, the same dumb tweeter already claims the SFPD is "looking for Anita herself" for filing a false report. Bitch is on the lam omgah!!
It doesn't matter what I say to you guys because you are in full conspiratard mode and in a fucking frenzy right now. But I don't know, I just don't want anybody who is actually interested in facts to fall for what you're pulling here.
Ok let me ask you a question do you believe
A) that the FBI got involved to investigate the death threats being sent to Anita. Even going as far as usurping the local PD to do this
Or
B) that the FBI got involved to investigate the piece of child porn sent to her
Let me remind you that death threats are nothing new on the internet and the FBI does get involved to shut down child pornography rings
This isn't a conspiracy you would have to be crazy to think that FBI got involved because she was getting death threats and the local PD wasn't doing anything about it
if it's an issue that goes over state lines it's in the purview of the fbi, if there were death threats over the tubes of the webernet it would make sense that they would 'usurp' local pd.
Investigating online harassment and threats is actually a major job of the FBI, so it's very likely that she went to her local police and they turned it over to the agency who does this all the time. Which is why her local police can say they're aware of her case and the FBI is dealing with it. Which is what they're saying.
Not only does the FBI investigate these cases, they are now proactively monitoring harassment and threats from within the gaming community, as reported here.
So, we have a huge number of still visible threats against Anita Sarkeesian. We have screenshots of her family being threatened at their address, which is the specific threat that set off this latest brouhaha. We have her saying she reported the threats to the local police. We have the local police saying they are aware of her case but the FBI is handling it (by the way, if the case in question is just about the child porn, how would the local police know about it - they're not actually all tied into the same system or anything and the cp would never have been reported to them).
There's no story here. A Breitbart journalist attempted a gotcha, fell flat on his face as happens very frequently to Breitbart folks, but none of that matters because HATE SARKEESIAN BLARGH
What evidence is there that she is crazy enough to make up death threats?
Cause that's a pretty serious allegation.
She's a polarizing figure who incites absolute rage in a lot of neckbeards. I don't find it at all hard to believe that she's gotten death threats.
And if you're getting threats from non-local people, the FBI could quite reasonably be involved.
Man, I fucking love all the controversial crosses in this thread.
Jesus Christ, these people are fucking losers. Something is not right in your head when you go out of your way to make another person's life hell just because they disagree with you.
The funniest part is that the journalist has altered his tweet. Turns out the case is with the fbi not sfpd. So who exactly is supposed to quit their bullshit?
SnapShot
(mirror | open source | create your own snapshots)
Man, everyone got so damn salty about victim blaming.
Agree with the concept or don't, but asking someone to produce a police report because you don't take their harassment serious is textbook victim blaming.
Also, lol at this exchange:
>The traditional media has been ridiculously hostile towards gamers, and that this made them (understandably) defensive and she ran right into that defensiveness. >>I was not aware that gamers had received death threats from Newsweek or NBC.
How is this victim blaming? Police reports are public records; she's saying that the police brushed off her concerns when she called, and there doesn't seem to be a record of that. Anyone who cares about the quality of the police force should be interested in this.
Victim blaming is questioning anything said/done by a self-proclaimed victim.
What? Victim blaming is saying people are responsible for the crime against them, like saying she made her boyfriend abusive, or he shouldn't have been in that area because it's dodgy. People being skeptical about a report being filed, while strange, isn't victim blaming.
> Agree with the concept or don't, but asking someone to produce a police report because you don't take their harassment serious is textbook victim blaming.
Asking someone to provide proof of the thing they were supposedly a victim of is not victim blaming. If I say you raped me, and you ask for proof, that is not victim blaming.
You want a quasi public figure to post the details of her contact with the police?
Seriously? You think that's a reasonable expectation?
There's textbooks on victim blaming?
In fairness, she isn't the most trustworthy person. Victim blaming is obviously bad but if you have a history of being misleading and non-forthcoming then I could see how people would doubt you.
Of course that's not the case right now, these guys are just pissy because they got nothing better to do.
And on a side note: Even if she is lying about calling the police and filing a report, that doesn't discount the thousands of threats you can see plastered all over the web. It is undeniable that some lopsided dweebs have threatened her life on several occasions.
Holy shit I'm so fucking tired of these gender wars.
We could settle this right now...
IN THE RING! SUNDAY! 9:00PM!
Anita Sarkeesian has had enough of the misogyny in gaming.
BUT THE NECKBEARD HAS HAD ENOUGH OF HER TALKIN'!
WILL HE PUT HER DOWN IN A TORNADO OF MONTAIN DEW AND DORITOS!?
FIND OUT SUNDAY! 1 MAN, 1 WOMAN, 1 FALL!
I saw this drama in the making earlier. I noped right the fuck out of that.
I am still in awe at how poorly the gaming community (especially Reddit's) reaction is to her. Some of their responses, aside from fucking death threats, are just fucking silly. I have been gaming since I was at least 4, and never had an issue when someone points out something about my game. A lot of her critiques are well placed, and do address the issues games have in regards to women.
[deleted]
It's the name of her youtube channel.
I find the vote pattern here very suspicious...
Edit: oops I refreshed and now it's totally flipped.
Could the internet detectives sleuthing in the screenshot posted be any sadder? (no)
I see SRD is back to shilling for SRS.
I kinda hope Anita fades out of fame soon and someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about and who doesn't blatantly fabricate stuff steps in to talk about the issue.
Anita is a grade A bitch.
people get offended when someone attempts to tear down a community, especially if they do it while misinforming others and being a professional victim.
How is she "tearing down a community". She's criticizing video games the way people have been criticizing film, literature, and theater for ever.
you are tearing me apart, ANITA
If a community can't withstand some mild criticism on youtube from one person then they aren't much of a community. And if that community reacts with an unbelievable amount of vitriol perhaps the community isn't worth protecting as it currently exists. I've played video games my whole fucking life and it is how I spend the majority of my free time, but the way the "community" has collectively reacted to this woman is embarrassing.
acted like what? if your going to be outraged so genericlly your going to have to give examples
Your completely unsubstantiated claim that she is trying to "tear down a community" is evidence in itself. When someone criticizes a film they aren't trying to tear down the community of people who love movies, the same goes for literature. When there are thousands of people calling her a cunt, issuing threats, decrying her for wanting to destroy "a safe space for men," and the multitude of other shit that gets thrown around on this and other sites on a daily basis all over criticism, then yeah, the reaction has been fucking embarrassing.
A lot of gamers wonder why they aren't respected, why they are associated with children even though most gamers are in their 20s-30s, why games aren't taken seriously as an art form, and it's in large part because of immature reactions like this ongoing shitstorm.
Edit: Punctuation
>attempts to tear down a community
Who's playing the victim now?
And totally not because she is a woman. That would be ridiculous.