After recent Twitter death threats culminate in Anita Sarkeesian and her family leaving home in fear of their safety, /r/TumblrInAction debates: Are these threats real or just a PR stunt? (np.reddit.com)
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81 ups - 0 downs = 81 votes
334 comments submitted at 12:56:49 on Aug 28, 2014 by Responds_to_Woosh
if you hate her, don't pay attention to her. people get pissed off at stupid things too easily.
>I would also like to point out that if Sarkeesian hadn't gotten those death threats to begin with, her Kickstarter probably would have barely succeeded and we wouldn't be hearing anything from her today.
Thought this was hilarious, true, and relevant to your comment. Now I like Anita Sarkeesian (yeah yeah boo hiss whatever) but even I recognize that the "haters" are the reason she has a platform. For one, the misogynistic harassment she got over her kickstarter boosted support for her cause. But beyond that, the fact that her mere existence and the fact that she sees gender representation in video games with a critical eye, earns such vitriol, kind of cycles back to prove her point.
The recent co-optional podcast with Jontron, Dodger, Jessecox, and Totalbiscuit had a lengthy segment on gender in vidya. They discussed how they agreed with Sarkeesian's points, but disliked her videos. I found it quite fascinating. And then Jon says "I am Jontron, I am cis scum who makes videos that shit on feminism"
>And then Jon says "I am Jontron, I am cis scum who makes videos that shit on feminism"
... Why? Just being edgy? Or is it even edgy to be anti-feminism these days. Just appealing to his target audience then.
Is the podcast still available anywhere? I want to hear why in particular they dislike her videos if they appreciate her points. Bias showing but I expect it to be the typical reddit response about cherry picking and the times she used other people's clips and artwork as examples. Oh and something about her earrings. But maybe they've got more nuanced reasons.
Because he's been being shit on by SJW recently.
It all started from a backlash when he referred to a PSN service as "retarded." He has also worked with Zoe Quinn during that failed Game Jam, and mentioned that he had "nothing nice to say" about her and she was "nothing worth starting a controversy about." SJW somehow twisted that into implying that Jon was calling her ugly, when he was just merely commenting on her personality, likening himself to a "turd who crawled out of a whale's vagina."
TL;DR: He said some "no-no" words, was misinterpreted on Twitter, and received a lot of harassment and "death threats" from SJ bullies. Him shitting on feminism is him making light of this Twitter slap fight.
> received a lot of harassment and "death threats"
But I just read that this only happens to women!
Edit: Man I need to stop being sarcastic on here
I don't see anybody saying that or anything like that here.
There is a lot more attention given to women when they receive online harassment.
Yesterday, a Let's Player got "Trolled" when someone anonymously reported a shooting in the guy's office.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/parents-warned-of-active-shooter-near-broadway-and-mineral
Twitter threats seem like small potatoes when you have five rifles pointing at your head. Maybe that's what WorldOneWon was implying?
CityTV News in Toronto has done two reports on "Virtual Rape":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Njt5FsU5Xc&list=UUVKAcQQCO8vv87Gk62SutAg&index=12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcNqdfL3AZM&list=UUVKAcQQCO8vv87Gk62SutAg
I should contact them with the demos I recorded back in my CS:Source days of enemies "tea-bagging" me after I died.
This morning my local (and by local I mean network, NYC) news did a segment on the streamer who got swatted and the problem of "swatting" as a real life manifestation of online harassment. They've never done a segment on harassment women face online, certainly not even when Sarkeesian was "in the news" for the kickstarter campaign.
We all have anecdotes to prove our biases.
Maybe because swatting is something that effects real life and anonymous death threats online are hard to prove and hard to track down.
I was being sarcastic.
Well then I was being oblivious, my bad.
Eh I jumped the Jon Tron train after he made a joke about lynching. I was like nothin to do here!
> I want to hear why in particular they dislike her videos if they appreciate her points.
I dislike some of her videos while appreciating many of her points. I can't speak for Jontron or anyone else, but my main problem with her videos is when she misrepresents a game or mechanic to make it appear sexist or misogynistic. There are plenty of examples of sexism and misogyny in games that there is no need to exaggerate or fabricate things to make a point.
I will give an example, the recent Hitman segment she did is probably the most egregious example of her blatantly misrepresenting a game to make a point that could have easily been made without resorting to fabrication.
Isn't the cherry picking enough? In this last/current video series I feel like she's picked a whole cherry orchard clean going back to the same examples every time. While the points may be good, it's 10pm news level of obvious reporting to tell us how rockstar or irrational games does controversial things for the shock value.
He's making fun of the sjws that attacked him for saying he disliked Anita's videos and making a dumb comment about Zoe Quinn.
The Co-optional podcasts get posted on the polaris YouTube channel but I don't know how much of a delay there is between the stream and the VOD. The stream was on Tuesday I think.
I'll look for the podcast. The name is "co-optional" ?
Yes.
Simply enough, internet hate is a large part of what fuels the continuing discussion about this topic. The minority that is irritated by this discussion and wants to silence it, creates press for the people targeted - thus heightening their platform.
Yeah the thing with her is the reaction towards her made her a sympathetic charecter. I have never bothered to watch a video of hers but I respect her purely because of the shit she went through just for trying to make a video series.
Yeah, I never heard of her till watching the ThunderF00t video and his first rebuttal was so bullshit I just sided with her after it.
I haven't really seen any videos either way but the amount of hate she got instantly makes me sympathise and support her purely from a freedom of speech standpoint because all she was trying to do was make a series expressing her viewpoint.
Basically thunderf00t smugly said that Marian from Double Dragon Neon wasn't a typical Damsel in Distress because the final scene as her punch the villain in the balls after he's been defeat by the twins. I looked at it, closed the video and said "yep I think I'll side with Anita from now on".
No offense, and I'm not necessarily trying to force you to side with someone, but I was interested in watching Anita Sarkeesian's videos too, so I decided to actively look up shit, while she talked about it. My conclusion was that both people are full of shit. A large problem with the way the industry is the way it is now, is that people bring up evidence of sexism or etc, and there is a group of people who immediately counter that by saying they're wrong. There is no group of people who are completely neutral, and try to find the facts in certain things. It's such a "EITHER YOU'RE WITH US, OR YOU'RE AGAINST US" type of situation.
Anita point with the series is that certain trope are very prevalent in video games, and that we should work on adding more varieties of characters to games. The damsel in distress problem is that it makes the women a prize vs invoking the idea of saving someone. It also talk about that women main characters switch to damsels in distress a lot when a strong male figure shows up, like ~~Other M~~ that collective fever dream everyone had. She also brings up that you shouldn't play the games, but should raise awareness about the overuse of these tropes. The tropes themselves aren't the problem, its that there overused tropes and more flavors should be there, basically there should be less Princess Peaches and more Princess Zeldas.
Maybe you should learn to think critically
I sided with Anita after I watched her first video.
The blatant hate and misrepresentation of her is fucking nuts.
Well I'll watch a video and see how it is.
I watched thunderfoot for years and those videos are what convinced me to stop caring about what he had to say.
Along with the anti-Muslim stuff, same here. The more he rails so maniacally against feminism, the more I'm embarrassed I ever liked his earlier videos.
Honestly, how do you assert such hyperbole as "Feminism ruins everything!" and still hope to represent concepts like skepticism and critical thinking? What an astounding lack of nuance.
It was the Muslim Cultural center that did me in.
What was that one about?
Without the backlash, this idea that she and a militant troupe of feminists are hellbent on making sure nobody will ever have fun playing vidya gaemz probably wouldn't exist either. The truth is, while she makes good and valid points, her videos aren't anything revolutionary. The conclusions are pretty basic.
Another way of looking at it is that the reason she feels the need to make the videos is because of the sheer amount of misogyny in games and tech
Just demonstrates the immaturity and toxicity of many in the gaming culture. Reddit will never admit it because gamers are such a huge demographic here, but you get so much shit if you even point out how hateful the gaming world can be towards anyone, women or men and how it needs to be addressed by the reasonable people in the community. But no, apparently online abuse is no big deal and you are a pussy if you pay any attention to it
Like the dota2 dude the other day who started with "yeah I've told people to kill themselves, I'm not proud of it"... " But here's all the reasons I was justified in doing it".
Dude, do you just completely lack self awareness?
Are you serious? What were his justifications?
Along the lines of "depression or no, if you're playing this game you should be aware of how toxic the community can be" and "I get angry sometimes".
It's that classic "People are assholes welcome to the internet; ergo I will be a complete asshole to you".
Oh man the depths the moba communities will go to justify them being assholes are amazing. Like I play league and I play dota with friends, I won't be ashamed of it and I can get getting angry but when people try to justify what they say as anything beyond "I got pissed off at the vidya" (Which I can dig, I'll admit I get pissed off at the vidya which is normally when I'm playing awful and it annoys me to be failing) I just kind of go "Shut the fuck up". Especially the "it's just normal for us to tell you to get cancer or kill yourself god welcome to teh inturnetz" or the worst by far was one from a relatively well known streamer called MoonMeander who said that the constant flaming in dota "builds better players".
I've had my worst gaming experiences from the MMO crowd so I'm not surprised.
My worst is definitely in a game of LoL, multiple people told me to quit, and one guy told me to kill myself. It was my first game, and I was on a noob server. Haven't played since.
> Just demonstrates the immaturity and toxicity of many in the gaming culture.
It appears to have gotten really bad, thing is, I only notice these psychos threatening to kill people when they pop up in in /r/games threads or subredditDrama here. Most of the time I've never heard of the person being attacked or the game they made/reviewed until it appears here either. Like Fez the other day, never heard of that game or the guy and I saw this was his second attack/doxxing because what? He didn't make a sequel to his game or something? How fucking inane is that to attack someone for? "MAKE A SEQUEL OR WE WILL STEAL YOUR BANK INFO AND KILL YOU!"
I just don't get where all this "GAMING IS LITERALLY LIFE AND DEATH, ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!!" behavior comes from? I'm in my 30s now, but I began gaming back on NES in the 1980s, then at the end of PS1/N64 cycles I became a fairly dedicated PC gamer, building my own rigs and all, being part of communities, dabbled in WoW for 3 years in a raiding guild and been part of multiple WWII combat flight sim squadrons.
While I have much less time to game now while working full time, having just finished grad school and being married, at no point in my life did I ever become so enraged about a game that I even felt like yelling about it. At most I might say "sucks they removed my area attack" or "they nerfed the LaGG-3, time to use a new plane" in passing to guildmates. I never once knew a group of people who went insane to this level over changes or game reviews/commentary.
So what I'd like to know is, who the fuck are these people? Who the fuck cares so much about video games that they write 1,000 word e-mails to someone calling them a "lying dirty whore" while making death threats? Are they 13-year-olds whose entire lives revolve around games? Are they 28-year-olds who have so little going on in their day that games are the only thing on earth for them? Are they fully employed people/full time university students who still find the free time lose it over a bad game review or patch changes? Do they have actual mental disorders?
I would love to see a study of the age, marital and employment/student status of the people who regularly do this.
Yep, she's again back in the spotlight because of whoever this asshole is and all the people going online to half-defend it.
Guys can you please please stop making me look like a frothing maniac for not being a fan of Sarkeesian? Pretty pretty please? With a fedora on top?
Seriously. When I heard that the latest video came out, my reaction was "meh" and I promptly went about my day without another thought over it.
That's because you have shit to do.
Oh shit, you're right. -gets back to work-
Bingo. She's a sub-par critic, but I can't actually tell anyone that - because then I'm in the same camp as the gaming community's Al Qaeda.
Her criticisms are pretty shallow, but the reaction to them is far more damning than any video she has ever made.
I have zero doubt there were death threats made against her. NerdS get mad about video games.
I don't doubt the threats at all. The people who are passionate about this can do villainous things, and do it all the time. Look at the random "swatting" attacks on Twitch streamers - it's far from uncommon for one dick to find personal information, and turn trolling into physical harassment.
I don't think the reaction is all that damning of the gaming industry, though. All it really proves is the presence of a vocal minority - which will pop up any time you see similar criticisms made in any medium. Talk about representation in comic books? People lose their shit. Talk about representation in movies? People lose their shit. Talk about representation in TV? People lose their shit. It's a topic that nobody wants to talk about in modern pop culture, and is consistently dominated by the extreme ends of the opinion spectrum. Every moderate voice has stopped trying to raise their point in the debate.
NSFL This is a chain of tweets she posted yesterday. I believe the blacked out part is her address.
Holy fuck.
The scary thing about these death threats is that really, you can never really be sure if they're serious or not... Because you never know, there are a lot of sick, twisted and violent people who might follow up on their threats. Even scarier is when they know where you live.
If they really needed to re-locate due to fear, this has gotten way out of hand. You can have whatever opinion on Sarkesian you want, but this is absolutely disgusting and scary.
> Even scarier is when they know where you live.
I actually believe that fact, people knowing your address and spreading it online, would be a lot scarier then whether or not the threats were realistic. Because, if its not them, it might be someone else who now how your information and want to cause you harm. Christ people, it's literally just games. Like people can have opinions and analyze them, it's okay.
I'm often so happy that I'm just another random motherfucker on the internet surfing reddit, listening to music and being amused by adorable pictures of corgis. Piss off the wrong corner of the internet even if it's over something trivial and if you're of the slightest repute the shit hits the fan. Jesus I don't like her videos, I think they're terrible and full of shit but I'm not going to find her address and send her death threats over it. Fucking priorities people, go play a game jesus christ.
The scariest part in my opinion is that if I was actually planning to kill you, I wouldn't tell you I know where you live or that I was going to kill you.
Dude, you are aware that there are people who make death threats and then do try and follow through with them?
I wasn't saying they didn't but it's scary to think that someone could be plotting to kill you and you wouldn't even know to defend yourself.
Not usually though. I wonder what the statistic is between uttered death threats and an attempt at a follow through.
Probably much much less than 1%
I doubt anyone would follow through, I doubt the guy doing the threats is even in the same area, state or even country.
It would be scary sure but the threats are empty.
Edit: apparently police in the US won't do much so I can understand not wanting to take a chance
Like i said, you really never know. There are cases where people would make threats and follow through with it.... My ex girlfriend once had a guy from an anime board stalking her, first online, and then IRL.
And what of Elliot Rodgers, and his videos?
Make no mistake, there are people who would follow through with their threats, and it's best to be safe, IMO.
Video games are serious business
Don't get me wrong, this is all sorts of fucked up, but how is this not safe for life?
probably some sort of joke about death threats because being killed kills you
People who have experienced sexual violence would probably think so.
So, Triggers?
This isn't Tumblr.
TW's have their place. They can be overused, but I think its appropriate here. Unless you've experienced that, or know someone close that has, you need to just not comment on it and move on man. Now's not the time to be an asshole so you can start your internet tumblr war against 16 year old girls.
You know triggers are a real thing right? Like they are a proven thing that actually exist.
Yes, I know. People with PTSD can suffer greatly from being triggered for example. But screenshots of typed threats on Twitter don't warrant a "NSFL" warning. Especially in a thread about such threats.
A lot of people filter out threads tagged as NSfW just go not see things like this, I really don't see why it matters to you if it's tagged or not
I thought NSFL referred specifically to pictures with gore, NSFW for pictures with sexual content, and trigger warnings covered the rest of the bases.
Because it's a stupid thing to do and is symbolic of the changes this subreddit has gone through recently. In the past it was accepted that if you came to SRD that you would see shitty people doing shitty things. But now we have to care about people's internet feelings and unnecessarily tag posts with trigger warnings.
How do those warnings affect you in any way? It's as if you think people ought to be expected to act like complete assholes and you're upset when the majority of people turn out to not want others to unintentionally come to harm.
Can't you see how fucked up that is?
>How do those warnings affect you in any way? It's as if you think people ought to be expected to act like complete assholes and you're upset when the majority of people turn out to not want others to unintentionally come to harm.
I've never even implied that. All I'm saying is that the NSFL tag is stupid and unwarranted.
Not to mention a thread in SRD regarding death threats against Anita Sarkeesian that caused her to leave home.
Yeah - you don't enter this thread expecting to see pictures of puppies.
Well...
That's genuinely terrifying.
good lord
What´s up with the trigger warning?
Who is getting triggered by her tweet?
TW is tumblrese for "at least a bit disturbing". She speaks the language of her crowd.
>Her last release got very little exposure
I mean, who the fuck is Joss Wheadon and Tim Schafer right?
You know, Joss Wheadon, not like he's the director of the Avengers or anything.
I dunno, you can see a decline in her videos watch numbers from the first couple of videos, personally all bets on where harassment comes from have been off since the people from /r/TwoXChromosomes sending themselves harassing pm's bit, but I think it's been a trend for people in the media writing/etc about contentious issues (especially if they are making polemics) around popular stuff to be victims of stuff like this.
But I can also see that these death threats are treated quite differently from ones that happen in other cultural genres. Steven Moffat deleted his twitter account because of death threats and abuse and look at this write up from TheMarySue, it's just pretty matter of fact compared to the Sarkesian stuff, I think because of the different narratives about gaming culture and Dr Who fans.
You mean that white knight mangina?!?
Joss Wheadon, insanely successful filmmaker, is a blue pill beta bitch. I, on the other hand, am a red pill alpha male who works in IT and just discovered squats and deadlifts last year.
Yet every just about every sub sucks The Avengers dick like it's the single best film ever made.
Off topic, but t.his entire Sarkeesian thing pisses me off to an immense degree. If video games are art, doesn't having an 'art critic' legitimize the medium? If her videos are crap, and she shouldn't be getting any exposure, why the hell does every one get so goddam worked up and write so much about it? The greatest irony is how often these people inadvertently prove all of her points.
Honestly, I've not watched a single one of her videos. I rarely play video games (outside of nostalgia benders like Mt recent FFVII binge), but it would appear as though it's an industry in desperate need of criticism and change. So much of this is just so obviously teen-edge and blatant woman hating. "Girls don't even play real games!" is patently horseshit. "B-b-but The Sims isn't a real game!" Yeah? And watching LoL on twitch and bitching about it on reddit doesn't make you a fucking 'gamer'.
> If her videos are crap, and she shouldn't be getting any exposure, why the hell does every one get so goddam worked up and write so much about it?
Shouldn't surprise you some people would be annoyed that a bad critic who makes bad content would be popular. Detractors (the reasonable ones anyway) write about her because they're frustrated poorly researched and poorly argued content is hoisted up as "revolutionary" and "essential viewing."
In any given thread about how women get the shaft in video games someone inevitably says "Well, if you believe there is a market for more women-focused games, make some and sell them."
I actually agree with that stance, though think it is a bit short sighted.
But let's run with it:
If you believe that Anita is doing a bad job. If you think her content is lacking and she's a "bad critic", then make better content and market it. Simple as.
>If you think her content is lacking and she's a "bad critic", then make better content and market it.
This is the worst kind of argument.
"If you want to criticize a film, go make your own movie first."
"If you want to criticize an album, go make your own band first."
"If you want to criticize an artist, go chisel your own sculpture first."
No. That's not how criticism works. A person does not have to be accomplished in a field to criticize works produced in that field. Roger Ebert is entitled to build up or tear down a movie he sees despite not making a film himself.
There's also the fact that I'm not a woman, and while I'm perfectly capable of criticizing misogyny in gaming, a female critic here would bring credibility and offer a perspective I can't.
I think she made some pretty good points in her latest video. Like the watch dogs example.
>Yet every just about every sub sucks The Avengers dick like it's the single best film ever made.
I brought up the Avengers because it was his most publicized and most successful project.
You can like or dislike the Avengers if you want, I merely brought it up because that shit is fucking huge.
Oh, absolutely. I was just bringing attention to the hypocrisy of the people currently upset with Whedon's comments, who would simultaneously claim that The Avengers deserved Best Picture at the Oscars.
Oh shit, sorry, me misunderstanding to fuck.
The problem, of course, is that while video games are art they are also something a large number of children/manchildren are part of their IDENTITY. So rather than seeing someone critisizing art, they see someone critisizing who they are. It seems the vast majority of these really angry gamers are incapable of seperating their hobby from themselves.
That's a really good point. Like metal fans who get super obsessed with their favorite bands/genres and extremely upset when anything is criticized.
Anita is not an art critic.
She makes sensationalized videos that attack games that are pretty much innocent and attempts to make them look and sound worse than they are.
See: hitman
Then using the pretty much average death threats that are against every controversial YouTube personality to garner sympathy and prove how hostile gamers are to women.
Want to see a real video game critic talk on the subject? Watch the extra credits video about hostility in the gaming community.
>She makes sensationalized videos that attack games that are pretty much innocent and attempts to make them look and sound worse than they are.
So, kinda like Yahtzee?
Yeah, but Yahtzee has a Y chromosome. Know the difference!
>Then using the pretty much average death threats that are against every controversial YouTube personality to garner sympathy and prove how hostile gamers are to women.
Is including addresses now standard fare for receiving death threats now? Do we live in a world where receiving death threats is so normalized that it doesn't matter? What kind of fucking world is that?!?
This example is not included, I'm talking about the past two or three years of complaining about getting death threats.
Oh, ok. THen only the second half of what I said is applicable. Sure, you can be a cynical realist and argue that "that's the way the world is, accept it". But why should we, as a collective, accept a world in which death threats are a common trope in public discourse? It's completely absurd that we should dismiss the fears of someone who's very life is threatened.
Woooowww of all her criticism to shoot down as innocent/innocuous, you opted for Hitman?
Upvoted just because of the ff7 call out.
nono he is a transmisogynistic hater nowadays. get with the times/s
http://observationdeck.io9.com/really-joss-whedon-really-1510302906
I actually didn't know who Joss Wheadon is or that he said something about that topic. I know who Tim Schafer is but did not know he commentated anything.
He posted this tweet on the 25th.
Firefly and Buffy.
Joss Whedon: Firefly, Buffy, Avengers Assemble
Tim Shaffer: Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Psychnoauts, Broken Age
Don't forget Monkey Island!
Thanks for the information so he actually made good stuff before Avengers, that adds points in his case, especially Buffy that was for a long time one of the only decent female characters on television.
Like I said I already knew who Tim Shaffer is.
I dunno who the hell Joss Wheadon is, but I heard that Joss Whedon commented on the video. Which is surprising given Feminist Frequency's bashing of his TV show, Dollhouse, and how he writes his female characters.
I legit don't know who Tim Schafer is though.
Tim Schafer is a fantastic video game designer behind awesome stuff like Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and Brutal Legend.
He designed Psychonauts, Monkey Island, and Brutal Legend
Ohhhh Monkey Island! Nice!
I found that super funny that Joss was tweeting about that, but I remember reading a long ass time ago her master's thesis was basically trashing Buffy and Firefly saying the women characters he writes are shit and just women pretending to be guys.
Any link? That would be pretty ironic
I hope it is okay to link this, it contains her name so I honestly don't know if it is considered Doxx or not, if so feel free to remove it or message me mods!
http://www.academia.edu/4066522/ILLMAKEAMANOUTOFYOU1STRONGWOMENINSCIENCEFICTIONANDFANTASYTELEVISION
Edit: The Joss related stuff starts at the tail end of pg.23
Thx
The fact that the guy didn't know who Tim Schaefer is is particularly funny. I wonder how many of these people don't actually care about videogames and just want to hate on women with impunity?
Knowing Reddit, you may be better off not knowing.
I love how users here are calling death threats against her family a "PR" stunt. But no, the video game industries doesnt have issues with rampant misogyny, nope nope nope.
I can have as much fun on TiA as the next guy... At the same time you have to be able to gauge yourself from a 3rd person perspective especially when it's something this serious. How can you look at another human getting death threats as "oh, well I think the odds are that she set this all up herself!" just because it goes along with your one-sided narrative? Depressing.
I don't see eye to eye with her but I'm really hoping Anita's okay and it was just some idiot with no clout, for the sake of her safety.
As a person with a family, like us all, if I received death threats, I would certainly like to err on the side of caution. It becomes a lot different when it is your loved ones being threatened. I hope that it is just some troll and she is alright. I am sure that if I laughed off internet threats and someone did hurt a member of my family, I would never, no matter how long I lived, forgive myself.
Hit the nail on the head. What litmus test is there to determine if it's a hollow threat or a real one?
I imagine they're the same kind of people that saw that guy say that his wife was pregnant on AA and immediately jumped to "she's obviously a cheating bitch."
If only there was a really recent in incident that was documented in excruciating detail on SRD, where people demonstrated how much they really hate women in gaming by proxy of one woman in gaming.
This threw me for a loop. Halfway through your comment, I was sure it was going to be "If only there was a really recent incident that was documented in excruciating detail on SRD, where a feminist gamer appeared to use fake threats against her as a PR stunt."
Gosh-if-there-only-was.
According to the best of my knowledge such a situation hasn't ever occured on SRD, or on the wider internet. Since we have no precedent which we can use to judge this situation, people who adhere to perfect logic (like us) will have to conclude that we can't know for certain if this is an example of misogyny. Maybe a man would also receive the same amount of rape threats. We just don't know.
This talk is making hungry for some reason.
I can send you a pizza if you want to, just PM me your address. You might hesitate a bit about giving personal information to a stranger, but don't worry about it. If there is one thing I know for certain, it's that nothing bad has ever happened when random people on the Internet know where you live. In fact, if you worry about it; that just means that you want attention/publicity.
Well I'd be a fool not to do this then. If I don't answer the door come in, its unlock, I might just be taking a nap in a tub of ice.
Excellent, the pizza will be over as soon as possible. Btw, are you a man, or a woman? No ulterior motive there, I promise hahahahaha lol. I'm a strong believer in equality, and that means that I want to customize the pizza for you. So I want to know if you want a blue pizza box, or a pink pizza box. You don't have to answer, but I would prefer that you do. We wouldn't want any surprises, right? lol
B-b-b-but this isn't about mysoginy and women. It's about the integrity of the press! And how one horrible, filthy cunt can sleep her way to success! The men involved were totally coerced, and have no responsibility, because reasons. And her free game made literally billions of dollars because of a 'top-50 indie games of the year' list on kotaku! (A site I never read btw, I get all my gaming news from the top minds over at /r/gaming)
/s
Yeah, because that was the only thing that was about. /s
And if only 4chan did something vaguely sane in comparison!
I that that her moving could be a PR stunt. Thing is given her videos and stuff she's said and done in the past, people might not be able to put it past her that she would do something drastic deliberately to draw attention to herself again. I don't know enough of her history to have an opinion. However I wouldn't completely dismiss people's suspicion about her. Yes, those death threats are horrible. But a lot of people over the years have gotten those and not many have moved in response.
At the end of the day, one has to remember that blog hits and video views generate an incredible amount of money. Enough to motivate people to do questionable things. Not to mention that publicity on the internet also leads to new opportunities like talks at conferences, possible collaboration with big name people and a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not suggesting at all that what's happening to her isn't terrible. However in a fight between her and the SJWs and the internet gaming crowd, I would not side with either one. Both parties are deplorable and disgusting in one way or another and choosing sides is not a good idea. Both parties are highly militant about their beliefs and both parties are not above doxxing and harassment and what not.
This kinda thing happens whenever Tia is linked. They all follow the bot over. tia is one of the most invasive subreddits.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditAnalysis/comments/25u2vw/rsubredditdramadrilldownmay_2014/
Well sometimes you never know.
http://i.imgur.com/pwANOpJ.png
Yes, some people did get incredibly butthurt over 2x becoming a default and did falsify records. Does this mean all times that women show record of abuse in some fashion it is falsified? I see this same faulty reasoning when it comes to false rape accusations. "Oh there was a false rape accusation in Ohio, thus lets throw doubt on all rape accusations."
Yes, it is a good idea to take all things with a grain of salt and leave open the option to accept someone has been lying. However, I agree with her choice to protect her family as a first resort.
It's not that women do it, it's that Anita did it. She has a history of saying something provocative then opening up comments (which she keeps disabled 95% of the time) just long enough to cherry pick a few juicy ones to highlight for her next fund raiser. Should she be getting death threats at all? Of course not. Reality on the internet is that they come pouring in for the smallest most insignificant things ever. The CoD devs got inundated with them because they had the audacity to change the stats on a weapon by 5% in a patch. Pretending like she's getting this abuse BECAUSE she's s woman and not because it's part of the general shitty toxic gaming community is disingenuous. She's getting the same treatment Phil Fish did for the same reason, wading into the ZQ clusterfuck vocally. It's a shitty gaming community problem for sure, but the venom bile and hate are equal opportunity.
Considering the sheer hatred her kickstarter and videos have generated, I am seeing more hatred for her and her premise than I am for other internet gaming issues. But we do agree on something, the gaming community is shitty. It doesn't have to be shitty and for some reason, it is.
As a girl who games, I see a lot of validity in her arguments. As for her tactic of gaining new commentary supporting her arguments, she barely needs to try to get that. Lets me honest here, people are just quite happy to bolster their arguments online everytime her name comes up. She has become the feminist boogeyman.
I think it's partly that, and partly people riding to her defense. The two warring camps drown out any actual discussion of her points and make the conversation unsalvageable.
Extremists, can't live with them, can't shout over them.
>I have no idea who Tim Schaffer is
And yet I bet this dude whines or at least supports whininh about "fake gamer girls" and "muh hardcore REEL GAEMS". Disgusting.
As a real hardcore gamer (and smug as fuck too) I think we need to be more open, reasonable and accepting and we'll eventually get some recognition as a sub-subculture. Even from a "selfish" perspective this kind of shit is totally whack.
... So that's what david-me has been up to, huh.
Its been said many times, but her videos and the claims she makes are actually pretty mild and reasonable. I honestly do not get why people see her as a great threat to gaming. The fact that she's even being lumped into the "SJW" stereotype shows how useless that term is now. The fact that she's getting serious death threats is disgusting but her most angry detractors still try to ignore it or dismiss it as a conspiracy.
> I honestly do not get why people see her as a great threat to gaming.
I think it's simply because the ill-informed and the unqualified to comment are often given the largest platform. Video games as a hobby and a past time have been vilified more or less since their creation.
It really doesn't help that she is quoted as saying "I'm not a fan of video games" whilst simultaneously taking money to criticise them.
But she doesn't vilify games, she just discusses attributes in their design.
She even said there's nothing wrong with enjoying these forms of media if you understand some parts might be problematic to others.
>It really doesn't help that she is quoted as saying "I'm not a fan of video games" whilst simultaneously taking money to criticise them.
So does Conan on his game segments. You can still be uninformed and make valid points on an art form. From the videos I've seen most of her points are pretty decently researched too.
I don't need to be a fan of something to critically and objectively address it.
I'm not a fan of Guild Wars 2, but I can still critique and address it.
Nobody is saying you can't critique something that you are not a fan of, merely that it implies a bias and/or a lack of knowledge on the subject matter.
That is to say you can comment, but you are much less likely to have anything new or insightful to add to the discussion (which happens to be this moderate's criticism of Anita).
It's clear what is happening here. It's a conspiracy^conspiracy^conspiracy . Anita (or someone close to her) has obviously sent these death threats to herself to generate publicity. Because
If she hasn't sent these threats herself, her moving out is obviously done to generate publicity. Because
Whatever the answer is, we should all be focussed on repeating the mantra that death + rape threats online don't matter. Publishing someone's address, and contact details also don't matter. The constant hate fests for videos that don't matter in any way is a perfectly normal reaction however. In contrast, reacting in any way to harassment just means that you want attention. It's all perfectly simple, and logical.
Well, yeah. I mean, nothing bad comes from doxing people that are SJW-feminazi- leg beards! After all the only people who need to be protected from doxing, harassment and threats are people who peddle kiddie porn or the people who are actually making those totally not real rape and death threats. They're the real victims here.
Even if she had sent the death threats to herself, Anita isn't completely dumb, she knows that this sort of stuff happening once normalizes death threats being sent to her, and enable copycat behaviour.
If you were in Anita's position and had the option of sending yourself death threats, it would probably be one of the worst things you could do. I trust that she's smart enough to recognize this.
SnapShot
(mirror | open source | create your own snapshots)
I would be so embarrassed to explain to my dad that we had to leave home because of the internet.
Not great drama, just a troll trolling. So contrarian, wow
I wish we all lived in a world where if someone says "I got death threats", we don't have a legitimate thought of "wait, can I trust this person to be telling the truth?"
You do live in that world, just shut off reddit.
I'd like to think that but I don't think that would help.
Yup because nobody lies off the internet.
You really think someone would do that, just ~~go on~~ get off the internet and tell lies?
The root of that problem is that in this world whenever we trust somebody we get kicked in the nards.
People are bastards and it's ruining the world.
That looks fairly civil if you as me.
[deleted]
That's not at all what they were saying. They were saying that now everyone is going to be overly skeptical about online harassment.
guy gets swatted and the police take it seriously - 'they have to take every threat seriously they're just doing their job'
woman gets rape/death threats sent to her with her address - 'get over it! its the internet, its probably not serious'
honestly, read these comments - https://www.facebook.com/pcgamermagazine/posts/10153123314023079 I've sort of been on the fence about this whole gender in gaming debate until the last few weeks. I am actually disgusted by these comments
I'd wager that being held down at gunpoint is probably more life threatening than a few anonymous comments.
Of course it is worse than the comments, it actually happened. Why shouldn't Anita take anonymous threats of rape/murder as seriously as swatting? Im saying that they are both anonymous reports and the logic is inconsistent; I'm pretty sure if someone posted me and my parents' address to me saying they will come to my house or something i'd be pretty paranoid and would go to a friends house too.
Calling in a false police report is in no way the same as tweeting something. One of them is a crime and the other is... nothing, really.
Phil must be so fucking proud of his fans, Jesus Christ.
My god, that NP CSS is something else. I don't know why, but it catches me by surprise every time.
Remember everyone, people who are Anita detractors aren't misogynists! They just think it's a shame that she reviews games without actually being a gamer herself!
Do you really think this is typical behavior for someone who dislikes Anita Sarkeesian?
No. But I have a hard trouble reconciling the criticism against Anita Sarkeesian with what she actually did, without factoring in misogyny. When I hear "it's silly to need that much money for a youtube series" I'd agree. When I hear, "a critic should have more familiarity with the subject matter before leveling a criticism" I'd also agree. But the amount of vitriol directed against her is a much more pressing issue, and it's not something I see happen outside of the videogame world. There have been a lot of shitty critics, and a lot of unnecessary kickstarters, but Anita is the only person that is subject of such scorn.
You're right, she doesn't deserve the hate she's gotten. Maybe I just misunderstood your definition of "detractor." I agree with those two arguments against her (and I also think her release schedule is way too slow compared to, say, Nostalgia Chick), so I'd consider myself a "detractor," but I agree that harassment is a much more serious issue than mediocre video game reviews.
Yeah, you're only a gamer these days if you watch twitch, 'troll' twitter and post long-winded rants on reddit! The entry requirements have shifted a whole lot from 'person who plays video games'!
/s
Why the fuck is there so much vitriol against her? I seriously don't get it. Why do they care so fucking much?
vidya games r srs bzns
Because she blatantly misrepresents games and slanders game developers to prove her point?
>blatantly misrepresents games
Sometimes I disagree with her points, yes.
> slanders game developers
What? How?
If the threat comes via twitter it probably isn't real. Not saying it's a PR stunt either, just that the likelihood of someone following up on a threat made via twitter is slim. If that wasn't the case, I probably would have been killed multiple times over by now, along with the rest of the twitter user base.
Let the cops figure it out. I tend to think the threats aren't coming from the Sarkeesian PR machine but her overreaction is meant to generate tons of publicity.
Unrelated, what happened to Mirror's Edge 2? There wasn't anything about it at E3, right? I thought she was supposed to be helping with that game.
If someone post my address with a death threat, I'm gonna take that shit a bit serious.
eh, there's a difference between random twitter threats and random twitter threats from a guy who has your address and the address of your parents. thats what put it over the top
It's coming out April 2016 so we might not see anything functional for a while.
Did you read the tweets?
In my opinion? Real threats, but still a PR stunt. You don't release a video like this in the current anti-social justice climate without expecting a shitstorm in return. Anita knew full well the reaction she would get, and it's not like she hasn't a history of flat out lying for PR purposes.
Why shouldn't she publicise threats made to her family? Why should she expect death threats for publishing a critical series on youtube? What the fuck is wrong with people?
What was the video that she released ?
The latest video in her Tropes vs Women series.
Women as Background Decoration part 2
Part 2 of her "Women as window decoration" video. The first part was released several months ago, and was ripped apart after she grossly misrepresented Hitman and Watch_Dogs to suit her agenda.