A new article from STGRB (Stop The Goodreads Bullies). This one involves a “bully” review that was removed by… http://t.co/ao6TGaQW91
— Anne Rice (@AnneRiceAuthor) June 1, 2015
Just in case the recent imbroglio wasn’t weird enough, Anne Rice (perhaps accidentally) aligned herself with #GamerGate by slamming Randi Harper in Twitter, pointing to an article on ‘Stop the Good Reads Bullies’, a site dedicated to shaming people who abuse . This has resulted in a flurry of responses to Anne, including a veiled rebuke from Neil Gaiman.
From 2004: what I think about authors replying to people on Amazon etc who write bad reviews. Seems apt now: http://t.co/GCVVSVvzxA
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) June 2, 2015
It also earned a ringing endorsement from the crazy uncle of neoreactionary cultural conservatism. In many ways, these are old battles that just oddly crossed paths. Anne Rice has long had a history of activism against people who abuse author rankings on sites like Good Reads and Amazon by brigading, for example. Whereas Randi’s objectionable posts were from a pre-GamerGate crusade that her and other feminists had against Vivek Wadhwa, a (male) advocate for female empowerment who apparently had a habit of occasionally stepping in it.
In 2015, Wadhwa was criticized publicly by several women in technology for the way in which he was speaking on behalf of women in technology. One example mentioned was that at an event, he had used the slang word “floozies”[87][88] when referring to technology companies needing to take hiring women more seriously, in the context of his advocacy for tech companies to include higher-ranking women on interview panels for female candidates. Wadhwa responded to the criticism, writing that he had not known what the word “floozy” meant due to his poor grasp of American slang, as an immigrant, that he had apologized at the event as soon as his misstep was pointed out to him, and that he had lost sleep over this.
To be honest, I’m so unfamiliar with the Wadhwa case that I don’t know if I have much of an opinion on the matter, and to be honest, I’ve tried to care a couple of times, but I just can’t be bothered to give a fuck. Work’s been a bear, you know? For all I know, Randi was right here, or she was a bully. Here’s my point, though.
Harper is the target of Anne Rice’s wrath, which means that Anne Rice’s opinions are now being uncritically and enthusiastically supported and touted by the #gamergate hardcore on Twitter. The hypocrisy of GamerGate followers in this regard is an impressive new low for them, because Brigading shit is one of their favorite things to do. Check out, for example, the reviews of Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest. Or the grossly disparate ranking for the Nightline story about GamerGate. Or the fact that KiA actually manipulated IMDB’s ranking system just so they could write negative (and frequently dishonest) reviews about noted #gamerGate villain Anita Sarkeesian’s work. And that’s before you get into them using their numbers to bully and harass individuals with dogpiling, harass organizations and events with coordinated hashtag campaigns, and attempting to bully the press into their point of view with dishonest boycott campaigns. These, by the way, are frequently NOT the acts of third party trolls, but are indeed happily orchestrated and bragged about on sites like KotakuInAction.
I’m pretty happy whenever I see prominent voices speak out on online bullying. If Anne Rice really wants to repudiate horrible, petty online bullies, though, then I welcome her to take on the big game and call out the voices currently attempting to hoist her on their shoulders. Because if an honest anti-bullying advocate is offended by Harper’s advocacy, GamerGate’s coordinated campaigns of brigading and bullying over the last 8 months must be utterly stomach churning.
If I don’t like something, whether it’s a book, Gamergate or Broken Forum (say hello there for me, will you?), at least I’ll make sure to maintain my own independence in whatever I have to say. And if I say something, I mean it.
I don’t care for sycophants (and if I don’t like them, or if I see they’re trying to rally me to a cause I don’t like, I’ll let them know very rapidly), nor for coordinated campaigns to accomplish whatever. And since this is the Gamergate MO to a tee, is it any wonder I saw it for what it was from the start?
Since I’m apparently a “shitheel” for not pointing out what should be obvious, we’re talking about Anne Rice, best known for writing vampire novels. We’re not even talking about an ambitious endeavour by a struggling writer. We’re talking about a mass-market, at best middlebrow, writer who unlike most writers has had more than a few bestsellers under her belt.
I see that the LGBT community is fond of Anne Rice, because apparently vampires are social outcasts just like them, which would make it quite ironic if Gamergate tried to enlist her, just because she attacks Randi Harper?
And really, why should I care about Randi Harper just because Gamergate is out for her neck? Does that suddenly make her flawless, an object of admiration, someone I must rally behind OR ELSE? And that’s really my problem with this: To force me to defend Randi Harper against all people who object to her, regardless of the evidence, regardless of her attitude, is indeed an attempt at “brigading”. With us or against us.
And Harper isn’t Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian, whatever her faults, actually contributes something, and deserves to be heard. I’m still not sure whether Harper actually contributed anything, or seeks to contribute anything. Even if I discard dubious sources like the Encyclopedia Dramatica (when ED is the most fleshed-out resource about her, that already says something), I doubt she is anything beyond a little shit-troll who sought to out-troll the trollers, and, like that time Anonymous tried to target the Mexican drug cartels, suddenly found herself overwhelmed. It doesn’t excuse the drug cartels. It doesn’t make their harassment of Anonymous acceptable. But it doesn’t turn Anonymous into a knight in shining armor either.
And I mean, look at Randi’s entire “I won’t read the book, but I’ll write a negative review of it just because the author pisses me off in some distant way.”
It’s irresponsible. You really can’t say anything about the book, yet you make it sound as though you can. It’s also an ideal way to destroy everything in literature that way, because several works of literature have been written by utterly rotten individuals. And if the quest for political purity involves a destruction of any aesthetic sense, then —
— then fuck her.
It clearly didn’t come across, but I’m no more thrilled about Randi’s review than I am about GamerGate’s tactics vs. Polygon, Depression Quest, etc. That being said, I do think that at the very least, Randi was open and honest about not reading the review before posting her comments, which is definitely more than I can say for many review brigades.
Still, what of her ending the conversation screenshotted in one of the links with “set yourself on fire”?
How is that not a death threat? Or is she going to pull the old saw of saying that “well, if he kills himself, that’s not a death threat”? And this, in the light of all the people who *did* kill themselves as a result of online harassment?
No, let Harper sink. In all that I have seen and read of/about her (within the limits of privacy), she’s nobody you want to associate with.
I’ll be plainer: she’s the Gamergate of the Left.
This is really simple, Vetarnias: it isn’t a threat because there’s no threat there. It’s rhetoric. Shit-talking. Overheated argumentation. A total dick move. It’s a lot of bad things. It isn’t a threat, and yes I’m going to go with “it’s not a threat even if the person really does it” because it’s not a threat, even if the person really does it. Why can’t anything ever be kept in perspective? When we’ve reached the point where people feel the need to exaggerate *telling someone to kill themselves* into an actual death threat, that ought to be a sign that we have a problem. Why isn’t a straightforward description of what actually took place sufficient? Why embellish? Is everyone in such a constant state of hysterical anger and panic that *telling someone to kill themselves* isn’t dramatic enough or what?
“best known for writing vampire novels”
I think you mean “best known for _reinventing_ the vampire novel”. Are you serious?
(when ED is the most fleshed-out resource about her, that already says something)
From my experience every gg target big or small has encyklopedia dramatica entry as both their first Google search result and most extensive entry about them, It happens when anyone can write anything about you there, instead of keeping any sort of standard. In case of anyone involved with gamergate , or at least every woman their prominence on encyclopedia dramtica proves precisely one thing, that it is one of gaters favored harassment tactics.
Whether Randi Harper is the “gamergate of the left “ like you put it or whatever, there are a lot of woman stuck in the same boat of that cesspool of a site being “most fleshed out resource” about them on the net, and that is why I believe putting significance even in roundabout way to someone’s prominence on that site is wrong.
A lot of these people are trying to argue that if you don’t like something, just don’t read it. They don’t want you to say anything about it. I enjoy book discussions, so this is deeply offensive to me.
That being said, it’s probably also worth pointing out that misusing reviews of specific works to attack its author without actually saying anything about the work in question is a shitty thing to do.
The good thing about Steams’ reviews is that it also shows how much time the reviewer actually spent in the game.
How about you quit fucking lying. Gamergate is not a harassment campaign. The anti-GG side are much worse when it comes to the harassment. I mean, it was Randi Harper who started this shit because she couldn’t even follow the simplistic rules of a product review. Anne Rice was right to call her out.
Whatever else you may say, you must understand that anytime that people purport that Gamergate is not a harassment campaign, anyone who knows anything about anything laughs openly and mocks you. GamerGate was FOUNDED as a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, being a natural offshoot of Burgers and Fries, and now is a group whose focus is on anti-progressive and anti-feminist game theory, who either openly engage or cheerfully endorse blatant harassment and brigading campaigns.
Even if you think that Randi is in the wrong here — and I’m not entirely inclined to disagree — somehow arguing that she has been somehow worse is either a blatant lie or hysterically lacking in self awareness.
Personally, for me #GamerGate started with a question “Isn’t this stuff about personal relationships and disclosure worth a discussion?” When the response from outlets to this implied question was “NO! We’ve done nothing wrong, and you are a misogynist harasser for asking”, #GG exploded, and I was left wondering “Why are they so averse to having this discussion?”, puzzled over what exactly the games media were trying to achieve by trying to gloss over behaviors that no honest, critically thinking person would try to pretend are just fine and dandy .
If the response had instead been “Yes, there’s a good discussion to be had over these matters”, and then had one, #GamerGate would not have grown so rapidly as it did. The discussion didn’t have to even address individuals specifically (better in fact to leave specifics out, so to reduce the exposure of said individuals), just acknowledge the observation that things could be handled better than they have been in the past, and moving forward efforts will be made.
Instead, we got “Gamers are Dead” articles, complete with a boat load of stereotypically derogatory language. How’s that working out for you so far, games media “professionals”?
Let it go. That was 9 months ago.
You’re welcome to have the conversation, but if you use #GG to do it, you are either a harasser or a fool. There’s no more gray area anymore. There is nothing you’re talking about that hasn’t been debated without resolution for 30 years, or as long as it’s been possible to create and play a video game. Now we have the Internet, we have mass echo chambering, and no closer to any real resolution.
Do you want a resolution? Start a blog and strive to discover the truth. Don’t beat other people up about it, though.
If you shoot someone’s dog and then have a respectful conversation with them about political philosophy, guess which part the news is going to cover? Gaming journalism is a niche subject, and even within the niche gaming media it isn’t nearly as interesting to a news editor as all this harassment stuff.
You know how in certain heist plots or spy movies or whatever, someone will set off a bomb or shoot up some people or do some other big dramatic event in order to distract the authorities from what they’re actually trying to pull off? It’s like you guys are trying to do that in reverse: demand that everyone pay attention to your press conference about gaming ethics right after you blew up some cars during downtown rush hour. If you want anyone to pay attention to the good stuff you guys are about, then stop doing so much bad stuff. And stop hiding behind “muh anonymous distributed leaderless hashtag, third party trolls, blah blah.” If you want credibility, earn it.
As has been mentioned on this blog before, I think, it that since there is not much by way of official leadership or organisation, Gamergate can mean, and can be, whatever people who use the hashtag want it to be.
And this means, even if the majority of people who view themselves as part of it are reasonable and polite, you will get people who do stupid things. And, by and large, people who do stupid things are more likely to get attention then people who don’t.
Since poor behaviour is what people pay the most attention to, that becomes part of the general perception. Which might not be fair, but is how people work. And so, while you and others might feel you are being rejected and demonized when you haven’t done anything wrong, I’d suggest that the rejection of Gamergate, and refusal to engage in discussion is largely based on that perception – which, yes, might not be a reflection of how you behave, or the majority of the people associated with it behave. But it is the extremes of behaviour that attract the most attention, so I would suggest that in large part, the rejection of Gamergate by the games media was not a collusion or a conspiracy, but simply an assumption that the worst of the behaviour was largely representative, meaning that they brushed off the whole movement.
Which, at the same time, had the effect of putting the bulk of those who didn’t do such things feeling under attack, and for something they themselves didn’t do, and more convinced of the problem then before by the seemingly unreasonable and unwarranted response they received.
Just my reading of it, based on a somewhat limited following of the events of Gamergate.
The funny thing was that people were already having that conversation long before GamerGate. Including on lists like GJP, where there was *endless* debate about ethics.
But GG only jumped on it when it came time to attack women.
That was definitely not the question GG started out asking. In fact, it did not start out as a “question,” nor has it ever been one. It started out as screaming accusations of Zoe Quinn being a SLUT and a WHORE and a CHEATER.
And no, the “question” of whether a minor independent developer had a minor personal relationship with a journalist who never even reviewed her work, is not a question that is worthy of being covered in the gaming press. There are far more serious ethical issues that need discussion. Gjoni’s personal vendetta against his ex is not one of them. In fact, it would have been rather ethically dubious if the gaming press did give attention to such personal dramas.
The people who started Gamergate were not interested in any kind of discussion. They just wanted to shame women. Notice how it is Zoe, the female developer, who bore the brunt of Gamergate’s ire, but Grayson, the actual journalist, did not?
Well, yes, the gaming media did have a discussion about the whole shebang – quite and extensive one considering.
The outcome of the discussion was quite simple: “Nope. None of this was worth more discussion than quietly raising the concern with the parties involved. It certainly isn’t worth attempting to sabotage and disrupt the legitimate buisness concerns of several companies just because they don’t agree with you”>
The fact that we’ve HAD the discussion and came very firmly down on the side of “Gamergaters are total loons and utterly incorrect on all fronts” doesn’t mean the gaming community hasn’t had the discussion.
The thing I LOVE about Anne Rice is the way she neglected to mention that her little minion—-about whom I left that review—–had spent weeks threatening, harassing, and insulting me (“She must be a man because women weren’t in combat in 2004”), and threatening to doxx me. This is on top of outright lies. “She called me a rapist on all of my books. She did thirty hate pieces on me AND created a hate blog about me.” The guy has doxxed AT LEAST five women, though he thinks deleting his comments from various locations will protect him. And this is the standard that both Anne Rice and GG fight acceptable, apparently: if a man says something about a woman, she’s a lying bitch, but if she says something back……she’s a lying bitch.
https://archive.is/PkXLO
This is the guy Rice is defending. He writes for a hate site that advocates violence against women. His contribution involves a character named “Debbie Irontwat”, which he first previewed for his teenaged girl fans. He resorts to shopped “screenshots” to attempt to explain his actiobsbut ask ANYBODY about him who’s not a Rice fan or a gator, and you will be BURIED with shots of threats, slurs, hatred, and grotesque misogyny.
Stop The Goodreads Bullies have had their rating bombarded by a mob on web of trust, a dishonest and cowardly tactic to try to silence them.
but keep on pretending you’re on the side of justice, you hypocrite.
So let’s get this straight: Anne Rice is “aligned” with #GamerGate because she has called out a brazenly-malicious review of a book by someone who openly admitted to never having read the book.
If we’re going to talk about hypocrisy, why are you defending a person who has constantly encouraged her followers to attack people on Twitter, including Wadhwa (and has openly admitted that she intends for her followers to sic her victims)? Why are you defending a brazen act of bullying by a chronic bully? And why do you claim that pro-#GG people are “bullying” by writing “negative” and “dishonest” reviews of Anita Sarkeesian’s works in the same rant that you’re defending Harper doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING you allege pro-#GG people are doing?
If these are the same “Stop the Goodreads Bullies” I remember from a while back this sudden intersection with Gamergate is very…apt.
Without going into too much information “Stop the Goodreads Bullies” was a website started to combat “bullying” (ie criticism) of certain books by intimidating the so-called “bullies” through harassment – trolling, doxxing, intimidation, the works. (sound familiar?)
Anne Rice herself isn’t a saint, either, and has taken actions toward her own critics that has led to harassment and removal of their criticisms out of fear.
Still, it’s rather strange to see these guys pop up again.
That’s what I thought – I remember Stop The Goodreads Bullies having its floruit in 2012. When this all blew up my first thought was “Wait, Stop the Goodreads Bullies is still going?” Followed closely by “Wait, Anne Rice is the one person who still reads Stop the Goodreads Bullies?”. It’s just incredible random. What weird bits of Internet history are going to be dredged up next? “I kiss you”? Zombo.com? Chocolate Rain?
I appreciate you restraint in taking sides in the wadwha case, for what the dude has went through, including death threats and harassment campaigns intended to silence him, it would be sad to have even more people make uninformed opinions.
That all being said, Hi im a Gamergate aligned person, and i find some of your line of thought in this post to be confusing. You call Gamergate community hypocritical for disliking and rebuking Randi Harper, and list seceral examples which you say prove this. But all of these examples that you show prove the opposite.
The steam reviews on the Depression quest page are from people who have purchased and played the game, and all reviews I’ve seen on the first page have left qualitative reviews of the works content, which were negative. Doubly more, many of these reviews are from sufferers of depression, something that i still struggle with, and i m inclined to agree with their conclusions and analysis. Randi on the other hand, never purchased or read the book and only mentioned what she imagined to be the authors character as well as false and libelous claims about Wadwha harassing females. IT was these claims that led to a harassment and silencing campaign against the poor guy for months. There was Even a piece on NPR with the title “Quiet Wadwha” for pete’s sake.
On The nightline YouTube video was not disliked into oblivion because of just ideological differences, but because of false claims and inflammatory posturing and sensationalism that leads to such beautiful creations as the Infamous Law &order episode. But that aside, Countless people associated with the Gamergate community, both prominent and not, left comments on the Content of the video, and why they felt it deserved to be disliked. People such As John Bain, Sargon of Akkad and ShoeOnHead, left their analysis on the video, not the people and it was those responses that the Gamergate Community felt was adequate criticism off the NightLine report.
The Reddit thread you linked to on the IMBD top comment is a reminder to be constructive and only leave a review if you watched the series. The one Disgusting insult you mentioned, was downvoted to -40 showing that there is an interest in the gammergate community to base their “reviewss” of work on the inherent quality of it as opposed to a persons character and false claims, as was Randis review of Wadwha’s book. To venture onto the imdb page, the Review deemed most helpful, supposedly by the “irrational” and “hypocritical” gamergate community contains such “off base” and “personal criticisms such as
“Sarkeesian arrives with her decisions subjectively; A female character is attractive, that’s objectification. This female character needs to be rescued, this degrades her value. This female was killed, this promotes violence against women … Arbitrary conclusions, heavily criticized, without basis in facts and it’s just an incredibly negative experience.”
and ends with the misogynistic conclusion of “I’m sure it’s worth some value to watch it freely on Youtube … but never in a school classroom.”
Look i get you don’t like gamergate, and i still respect al ot ofthe opinions you hold. The fact you actually apologized to Brad Wardell for the horrendous Hate campaign you played a part in sustaining elevates you far and above the other people in the gaming media i have a problem with. But Randi Harpers “review” was no such thing, it was an attack against am an with nothing but the best of intentions, who was unfairly and routinely attacked for months on end. Randi has done such things before, and she will do it again, and if people refuse to call her out, thee will be more victims.
I don’t expect to be listened to, and i do expect to be excoriated here, but i feel like you weren’t fair in your analysis, and i needed to bring it up. If you feel that I got anything incorrect feel free to respond, i have to go for now but i will try to reply as soon as i can, if you wish.
There is no such thing as the “Gamergate community”. There are well meaning souls that are concerned about things that matter, and there are goons, trolls, busybodies and sociopaths.
Which are you?
If they are well meaning why are they such abusive, foul-mouthed haters?
Keep in mind that since Depression Quest is a free game, it is fairly easy to leave troll reviews, because while Steam requires you to own it to review it, there is no financial cost in doing so.
If you scroll down to where helpfulness is rated at or below 50%, you will see a lot of troll reviews (the internet being what it is, you see a fair few for most games, but I’d say this is more so than usual for Depression Quest).
A minor point in the larger post, I realise, but for free games, it is quite possible to do mass troll reviews, though thanks to the helpful/unhelpful ranking system, they tend to quickly fall down the ranks – they still affect the overall positive/negative ratings though.
The point is that they’re all *brigading*. The Nightline downvotes didn’t come from Nightline’s usual viewers. They’re organized efforts to influence something online. Which is what Anne Rice was complaining about.
The one thing that GG and KiA are really, really good at is brigading.
Your reading of the Reddit thread, and the IMDB reviews is especially blinkered, and actually just really really poor.
The thread contains references to ‘SJW’s (an insult over at KIA), references to Sarkeesian “looking crazy”, and accusations that Sarkeesian will abuse and game the IMDB moderation system.
You should have noticed that the posts calling for people to “be constructive” are overwhelmingly concerned with not being written off as obvious harrassment as are the calls to use only pre-existing legitimate IMDB accounts. It’s not a call to actually *BE* constructive for the sake of being constructive, but to hide the obvious brigading under a false flag of legitimacy.
As for the reviews themselves….well the one you highlighted was quite bad. Not only did it attribute claims to AS that she hasn’t made, but also ones that she’s expressly and repeatedly disconfirmed *at the start of several videos* – most notably that she’s ignoring the male target demographic (which she expressly addresses at several points in the videos) and that she’s somehow not enjoying the games because of men (which she expressly addresses as part of her preamble in several videos).
The reviewer completely ignores the nuance of the tropes Sarkessian covers and several explicit statements within the videos IIRC, where Sarkeesian states that not all examples of X or Y are neccisarily troped.
Then they carry on with the well-worn insulting comparisions to Jack Thompson, with the usual made-up bull that comes with that.
That’s the *best*, supposedly “constructive” review the community could come up with? A pile of falsehoods, veiled insults and failed comparisons? An ignorant and confused review?
The other reviews aren’t any better. A whole load of personal attacks, implied and open criticisms of AS, several total failures to actually provide any sort of review amidst the personal slights and accusations.
Come on, no reasonable person could read that rubbish as being anything less than politically motivated smearing. It’s just that obvious.
I’m all for Anne Rice taking a public anti gamergate stance. But realistically, books are probably her thing in a way that games are not, and I don’t think that she has an obligation to care about gamergate in any way just because they’re happy she said something negative about gamergate. I don’t think that they’re so important that any conversation they stick their heads into has to even notice their presence.
I meant about Randi Harper, in the second sentence. Hopefully context clarifies the error.
I don’t think she DOES care about Gamergate. She’s probably surprised and flattered that a bunch of people are now going to her Facebook feed and telling her how awesome she is for slamming Randi (she’s done things like this before, but probably never before for someone who brought a ready-made opposing force like Randi did),.
When I checked last night, there were a handful of people edging towards trying to show Anne Rice the gospel of Gamergate. They leave out the part where they regularly and openly engage in the brigading tactics that Anne Rice despises.
This assumes Rice is as dumb as a door knob. She may write trash, but I don’t think she is.
She’s not dumb. But she’s pretty severe when it comes to people not liking her or her creations. Here’s one that’s 10 years old.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/books/11rice.html?_r=0
From the Times article: “I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself,” she wrote. “I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me.”
Said by every inflated literary ego ever.
Those 2 amazon reviews where by persons that didn’t even bother to read the book in question, both admitted so in the review itself and furthermore instead of giving critique to the material on hand (the content of the book) went on to attack the author, his intentions and his ideology.
I’m glad such reviews are getting deleted, would the review authors instead critique the content of the works I’d be fine with 1 star ratings, because it’s only human to like AND not like some things.
On the other hand steam forces you to own the game, which is a good first obstacle against troll reviews, furthermore it also lists the playtime of the reviewer wich is also a good way for the reviewer to determine if the review at hand is in ill will.
About that IMDB thing, well that’s news to me but considering there is really no other place to rate Anita’s series it’s no wonder that people jumped ship on it (that’s the expeceted backlash of turning off youtube comments/ratings). Also calling people to review something in earnest is not manipulation.
If you’d bother to look at that reddit thread you linked yourself, don’t worry I walked through that cesspit for you, you’d see that most people actually discourage users to make new accounts just to rate and asks for more honest ratings, If you take a look at the rating breakdown you’l see that it’s more than people voting 1s and 10s – but you CAN probably ignore both those extremes.
One of the biggest causes the problems with reviews online is that Amazon allows no-read reviews, as does Goodreads. They have no concern for the validity of reviews their concern is with the preponderance of numbers. They only care for the number of review and have no concern for the content of those reviews as is reflected in their policies.
Randi can dish it out but can’t take it. I guess following the Alex Lipschitz example of making oneself unemployable isn’t working out too well for these clowns.
Do we have to make everyone a martyr? Randi Harper(who apparently is that asshole who leaves useless 1 star reviews on stuff they disagree with, because thats useful) is called out? So what. Maybe she shouldn’t be trolling amazon anymore. This seems childish.
tl;dr: Who cares who’s actually right ? Can’t let that get in the way of my tribalistic shitflinging!
What a joke. Neither I or any of my friends have left negative reviews on anything we haven’t played. Steam TELLS the reader if the reviewer actually played the game or not.
And yet you’ve somehow twisted this whole incident into yet another way to attack people you don’t like. Nice job.
Please keep supporting this kind of bullying and harassment. It does more for us than anything I could do myself.
No, Steam tells the reader how long the person has been in game. Actual active playing isn’t a requirement.
As an experiment; I’ve just managed to ‘play’ 0.1 hours in DQ, despite not doing anything more than pressing ‘play’ and then minimising the window.
Is your opinion of Gamergaters really so low that you think they’re too stupid to spot something that’s at the top of every review? Do you seriously think they are too thick to be able to game the system?
Simply download and open the game. Do something else. Come back and add a review. Et voila! You’ve now ‘played’ the game and added a ‘legitimate’ review!
Now 0.2 hours, and I’ve not even pressed ‘begin’.
I have a habit of not closing some games that take forever to load, like Civ 5 or TS3, when I go to work and I plan to play after my job. As a result, I have few games that my account overestimate my playtime by many dozens of hours while not even planing to inflate my playtime.
Is it trivial to let you game running while sleeping to quickly log a few hours. Is quite easy to accumulate as much h”playtime” as a legit user and pretending that you review is legit or, even better that someone who admit not having fully played the game. And like you say, is it a near certainty that GG has figured this simple trick, they already did more complex fraud. The cost is minimal, few cents of electricity bill, actually small for a group known to have raised many thousands for TFYC just out of spite.
I just wonder how widespread hour farming is used to create an illusion of credibility.
So where were you when GG was pointing out Sam Biddles statements about wanting to bully nerds?
Are you scared of volcanoes?
Ah, one of my favorite arguments. Let’s put it in a more familiar analogy.
My neighbor actively creates and promotes lies about several families in the neighborhood (mostly her neighbors who don’t accept her lies). She has spent a good deal of time running to the more gullible neighbors to spread the lies and other miscellaneous gossip. She has accused others of creating her daughters’ problems instead of admitting to her own failings (including refusing to get help for them).
But, you know, she adopted a shelter cat once. So she’s awesome, amirite?
“To be honest, I’m so unfamiliar with the Wadhwa case that I don’t know if I have much of an opinion on the matter, and to be honest, I’ve tried to care a couple of times, but I just can’t be bothered to give a fuck. ”
Right. You give so few fucks that you wrote a whole bunch of carefully formatted and linked text, complete with images, defending Wadhwa’s attacker. Your apathy certainly is… selective.
Rice doesn’t vocally support gamergate, so she doesn’t have to repudiate us. She’s against dishonest reviews of books aimed at harming authors. She doesn’t have to call out brigading in every form or for every medium.
However, she should think before posting attacks on individuals, and STGRB should also. Writing up long rants targeted at an individual and then spreading them on social media to a hundred thousand people just encourages more harassment.
Harper is a hypocrite. So are a lot of gamergaters. People who fight harassment with harassment are hypocrites. People who write targeted rants need to consider making them less personal before it’s used as ammo by some asshole on the internet. It’s just call-out culture fueled harassment all around.
Also, why did you post the Neil Gaiman tweet? That was a post about Rice responding emotionally to people who read and didn’t like her work, and had nothing to do with her supporting a campaign to prevent people from gaming Amazon reviews. She didn’t try to get bad reviews of her book removed from Amazon – she responded to them. The reviews she wants removed from Amazon are from people who just want to harm authors’ financially without reading their work.
The Gaiman tweet was just irrelevant piling on that you at promoting.
I’m sorry, but all of you people need to step away from your computers for a while.
Neither side of the argument seems to come from an objective viewpoint. I hate the fact that this has become a “liberal vs. conservative” argument, tainting my favorite medium with the feces of the rest of society.
I still find it sad that a rational discourse cannot be permitted to exist. I guess that just means I’m incurably naive. I’ll stay that way, thank you very much.
And I’ll stay out of the comment section from now on, cause WTF is the point?
I decided to go and look up the Amazon reviews…
The book’s so popular in the UK it has yet to garner its first Amazon.co.uk review.
I realised that I needed to look it up on Amazon.com (the American site, duh! )
Of 30 reviews 28 are 5 star, 1 is 4 star and 1 is 3 star.
Only 7 reviews were linked to a verified purchase and they were all 5 star.
Even the 3 star review was particularly positive and well written (I suspect like myself the writer of this review has a harsher appraisal system than many Amazon reviewers. Personally I can’t stand the ‘Purchased as gift, arrived on time. 5 Star’ reviews)
What surprises me the most though is that the book has the ‘Look Inside’ link to it so you can get an idea, first hand without relying on any reviews, of what the contents and tone of the book are going to be. The co-editor Farai Chideya is a women, all of the stories are by women
I don’t know who Randi Harper is. She obviously has a deeply ingrained personal issue with Vivek Wadhwa. Having read the retracted review it was clear it was fuelled by emotion rather than reason.
I’m not a fan of censorship. I’m also not a great fan of misusing a review forum for a personal agenda. I would like to think that even if the review had been left up, potential purchasers with an open mind and the ability to click the ‘Look inside’ button would have been able to… gasp… and this is a big leap of faith… make their own mind up.
Most of all though I really hope Amazon do not go on a review clear up policy that takes away the joy of product reviews such as….
http://www.amazon.com/Veet-Hair-Removal-Creme-200ml/dp/B000KKNQBK
or
http://www.amazon.com/Haribo-Gummi-Candy-Gold-Bears-5-Pound/dp/B000EVOSE4
But dishonest and unfair reviews that aren’t about the product aren’t about what is written. It’s about the fact that they are affecting the score and the rankings. And that can impact sales.
People should be able to say whatever they want, but they shouldn’t be able to assign a score to something they haven’t read.
I think there is a word for people that take everything at face value… gullible.
Try to be a little less naïve about reviews being an absolute expression of truth.
They are little more than an opinion at best, at worst a new arena for advertising to get involved with.
Be a little bit more paranoid that reviewers aren’t telling the truth. That they all have personal agendas based on subjective experience (or financial incentive). And, that they all want to be the loudest, and therefore the most valued, voice in the room.
Learn some basic research techniques. If no more than dismissing the most extreme returns of positive/negative feedback and looking at the number of responses.
Learn to recognise constructive critique from subjective whining.
Learn to tell the difference between review content that is subjective or objective.
Amazon identifies reviews left by someone that has purchased a product, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have used/read the item.
Steam may tell you the play time on an account, but is just as open to abuse as any other review site (artificial bloating of playtime is a trivial matter)
IMDB can not make any correlation between review and whether the reviewer has indeed seen the film (and having read some reviews I have often wondered whether they are indeed commenting about the same film).
Metacritic at least makes the effort to collect both the reviews of critics and fans and display the results side by side.
The only real question is whether you have the patience and skills to make up your own mind or need an even easier way of following the crowd.
Like I said, I don’t care WHAT they write. I care that they are gaming rankings through their assignments of scores. They really won’t affect people who actually visit the page. They will make it easier for other people to miss their product when sorting. I just want it to be easier for people to find products that suit them, and I want sellers to be fairly compensated for their work, and not financially punished for their personal views.
What about people who want to consider social justice views when looking at games? Your preference would eliminate their ability to “find products that suit them”. Maybe they don’t want to play a game that has certain content, regardless of the mechanics. Maybe they want to know if the mechanical execution is so sublime that they should try it despite that problem. Maybe they just don’t want to get blindsided by a rape subplot in the middle of their RPG. Your plan of eliminating a grounds for review would just make it harder to a segment of the market to find the games they want.
I just don’t see how you can stand in defense of “free speech”, but in the next breath argue that critics ought not be allowed to say things you don’t agree with.
Yes, it’s true that numerical rankings figure into the metacritic score. Yes, one man’s 6.0 is another man’s 9.0 for totally difference reasons, and when you average them you get a 7.5 on completely incoherent grounds. Yes, it’s weird that games developers then get bonuses based on that incoherence. No, that is not a free speech issue. It’s not even really a consumer issue. It’s a developer’s labor issue. Consumers can voice support for developers who want to reform the review system, sure, but that doesn’t make it a consumer issue. Note, as well, that major games reviewers started eliminating numerical scores well before Gamergate because they already identified that problem.
The best way to find products you may like has nothing to do with review scores.
It’s about word of mouth and finding sources you trust and/or generally agree with.
More and more the best source of whether I will like a game comes from looking at You Tube clips after a game has launched and not before. I’ve given up reading preview articles and looking at scores a long, long time ago.
Of course, this does mean I have to have a bit of patience and I miss out on the bragging rights of day one (early access) play and pre-order incentives. But it does mean I very rarely make a purchase I’m disappointed with.
If more people were less easily influenced by over inflated scores and non-representative CGI trailers maybe developers/publishers would have to work harder to provide a game worth playing.
That said, just got the ‘Face you Destiny’ picture for SWTOR in my e-mail and hyped that there looks to be another Blur quality CGI trailer on the horizon. The horizon being Monday 15th’s EA E3 press event. Hypocrite much! 😉
@Andrew
I wanted to write some of your points but, I got lazy.
I’ll add that I’ve noticed something odd about the denunciation of the review of The Witcher 3 by Arthur Gies, many people seem concerned about the impact of the sales.
Gamegate, when attempting to paint itself as anything as a hate group, claimed that it wanted unbiased reviews, presented themselves as a consumer revolts and expressed concerns that “biased” reviews could hurt the games of game “approved by GG” or help the sales of the games “loathed by GG”. For me, is it not the concern of consumer, is it the concern of advertizement companies.
That what bugged me for a while, there is a confusion about the concept of advertising, a tool to help companies getting higher sales, and reviews, a tool to help a consumer choosing where to invest limited time and money. A good review will tell its audience, not necessary everyone, the pros and, arguably more important, the cons of the product. Ideally, a good review should aim to maximize consumer satisfaction.
Concerning Polygon, this is a publication by progressives for progressives they don’t hide it. The site publish good reviews when the progressive readers are informed of why they may enjoy a game or not. Some readers can have problems with a misogynist world or, quite frequently among progressives, may enjoy the role-playing opportunity. In the end, readers are free to chose.
On the other hand, advertising aren’t concerned by informing the customers, they care about sales. A successful ad is likely to avoid mentioning points that may result in lost sales even if the customer gets a product it may not want at all.
The critics of Polygon review of TW3, the saner sounding criticism of it concern the lost sales. That no concerns of a good reviewer, that the concern of marketing department. GG literally want Polygon to omit information that it audience care about, effectively using crude censorship to turn the site into an advertising outlet for CD Projekt, apparently against the developer and publisher will, and betraying it readership in the process. Ethics in gaming journalism, my ass.
That a recurring theme, the so called objective reviews are just advertisement, positive ads for the chosen games, very negative for the loathed games. GG doesn’t want reviews, they want ads and they dare to call their demands objective reviews. They call themselves a consumer revolt when they try very hard to forbid anybody that don’t share their tastes any information that may help their choices. The most coherent arguments of this mob aren’t about consumer concerns, they are, at best, advertiser’s concerns.
Hell, I am not aware of any consumer group that actively aim to harm consumers ability to take a satisfying decision with all the required information. GG is closer to pro smoker groups and anti-environmentalist associations.
BTW, when someone claim that metacritics scores influence the paycheck of developers therefore, critics should mind their score, I think they take employees as hostage to influence critics while protecting a frankly exploitative system. If any reviewer needs to worry that employees can be underpaid if the score is fair, the concept of objective review, informing your readership as satisfyingly as possible, fly out of the window. That honestly abusive for everyone, putting reviewer, consumers and developers at the mercy of PR.
It should be noted that the practice of financially rewarding people for good reviews is almost always a (very non-boilerplate) contractually negotiated point between developers and publishers, and is meant to protect the developer from the possibility that they make a critical darling but the publisher opts not to pump money into its advertising. Developers could always choose to seek other methods for measuring success. For example, if you’re making something and you feel that Polygon hates you, you can ask for Polygon to be excluded from these measurements.
@Damion Schubert
Thanks for the clarification, it make sense. Anyways, the more niche the product you create, the chance that any given publication falls outside a given niche gets higher. In that case, those publications are largely irrelevant from a developer/publisher POV but are relevant from the audience POV.
Of course, the nuance doesn’t interest GGers, they just want to silence progressives.
@Dom
The more niche you are, the more delighted you are to get reviewed at all. Bayonetta and Witcher 3 don’t need to fear bad reviews – they have enough reviews in total that the couple of people who thought the games were mediocre kind of just washed out of the mix. If you’re making HuniePop, you’re going to get many fewer magazines and far less coverage, which means each mediocre review hits much harder. Many will choose not to cover you at all – ChristCenteredGaming, for example, probably doesn’t spend much time covering porn games, because they probably figure their audience doesn’t care for them.
Of course, if you’re making HuniePop, you’re probably also hoping to generate some controversy over those mediocre reviews in order to generate sales from gullible idiots.
1. Regardless of what folks think of this policy, Amazon explicitly does not require a reviewer to have read or purchased the book (or item) being reviewed.
2. For some potential buyers, Wadhwa’s behavior is relevant to their purchase decisions. What he says and does & how he treats those who disagree with him has an impact on who is interested in supporting his work. This, in part, is why Amazon does not require reviewers to have read the book..
3. Perhaps Wadhwa defines harassment as disagreement & criticism, but it is not. Aside from the constantly referenced “light yourself on fire” tweet–which is not a threat–there is no evidence that anyone harassed or threatened him.
4. I am sure Wadhwa had the best of intentions and that this has been difficult for him. However, his behavior & what he says (whether it’s his claims about confidence or publicly insulting women who disagree with him) does actual harm to diversity.
5. Both before the book had been written and before Randi was critical of him, many people had expressed their concerns about Wadhwa’s behavior and statements, both publicly and privately to him directly. None of it was a surprise to him or his critics.
6. Wadhwa could have simply said “hmmm, let me think about your feedback.” Instead, he allied with a hashtag & publications that oppose “SJWs.”
7. Despite his promise to step away from gender diversity, he continues to participate. Given the insults he tweets to his feminist critics and his choice of new allies, perhaps he meant joining those who oppose feminism.
“Light yourself on fire” isn’t a threat? That’s news to me, since it’s illegal (in Canada anyway, and probably in the US) to counsel someone to commit suicide.
At any rate, it’s vulgar. And Randi Harper hasn’t convinced me that she’s anything except vulgar.
“Light yourself on fire” is not a threat, nor is the more common DIACF (Die in a Car Fire). It’s more of an invitation. If Randi had said, “I know where you live and I’m going to light you on fire”, that’s a threat – but whether a threat is allowed or disallowed by the law depends a lot on whether or not the receiver believes he is legitimately at risk. As a general rule, that’s why Ted Nugent is allowed to walk free despite threatening the president (he wants the president to suck on his machine gun, if I recall correctly), but the people who threatened Anita by mentioning her address could be prosecuted if the FBI manages to track them down. Still, being told offhand to ‘light yourself on fire’ is not harassment, although it could well be part of a harassment campaign. Same for inviting someone to choke on a dick, for example.
If the person you’re talking to is depressed or suicidal, then encouraging someone to take action against themselves is considered by many among the pale, and these actions were probably what led to FatPeopleHate’s banning on Reddit. However, urging a suicidal girl is still not a threat, but it can very well be considered harassment, particularly if part of a mass campaign (i.e. brigading).
For what its worth, something doesn’t have to be a threat or harassment for twitter, reddit or amazon to decide they don’t want it on their service. It’s their platform, and if they want to expel people for rudeness, that’s fully within their rights. However, people who use Randi’s one of tweet as an example of a ‘threat’ are delusional. If there is a larger pattern, though (which if she’s posting frequently in multiple venues), then the aggregate combined might be reasonably considered harassment, and someone running a game service may meaningfully decide that they do not want their platform to be part of that campaign.
It’s hyperbole. Anybody that claims otherwise is being disingenuous. If you want to argue that it’s inappropriate, I don’t disagree, but no, I don’t believe for a second that you really think it’s a credible threat.
Great piece, but I feel the need to nit pick one detail. You described STGRB as a web site that shames people who abuse. I encourage you to look further into the people they target. You will find that a large number of the people they list as bullies have done nothing but criticize STGRB. Some of them had the misfortune of criticizing the wrong author. Some of them are John Scalzi. These are not “people who abuse.”
Anne Rice has rapidly become the biggest bully and troll online. She has targeted a hit list of Amazon forum members from the stalker/doxxing hate site, STGRB to her 1.1 million fans on Facebook. Never in the history of the internet has someone done such a despicable thing on such a scale. She is out to cause real damage to the people who disagree with her. Her new catch phrase, “Responsible Shaming ” is a campaign to dox anyone who openly disagrees with her with the goal of causing real damage to the lives, reputations, careers and livelihood of those who oppose her tactics. She is on a campaign of cyber-terrorism using her celebrity and fans as a weapon.
She is now trying to rally the abusive, foul-mouthed haters on Gamergate and Twitter to her cause. She is intent on either silencing honest book reviewers in the Amazon Forums or destroying their lives. The woman is dangerous and a threat. She should be banned from all social media for such disgusting behavior and creating real physical threats to those of us who use our real name from her plastic Halloween-teeth wearing fans.
But her 1.1 million fans are not enough for her. She is intent on spreading her hatred of the Amazon Forum members to every venue on the internet until everyone hates a few dozen targeted members as she does.