SXSW isn’t supposed to be a tech conference, dammit. From its inception, it was always meant to be a music festival, dammit, and it’s a good one. But in recent years, it’s expanded its coverage to include movies and technology. Being the biggest con in town, SXSW frequently gets a ton of local coverage, but usually not an above-the-fold front-page story in the Austin American Statemen describing how the conference shit the bed (electronic version).
On Wednesday night, SXSW became the latest large tech organization to not fully understand the GamerGate controversy, and therefore fundamentally screw it up. This has been an all-too-frequent occurrence, with Intel’s $300M mea culpa being, of course, the most noteworthy example. SXSW’s clusterfuck began on Wednesday night, attempting to play Solomon with two GamerGate-adjacent panels on their docket, cancelling both due to security concerns.
One of these panels was not technically GamerGate-related at all. It was a panel about how to combat online harassment. It was shut down due to threats to the conference and the panel. Which is to say, SXSW allowed a panel about online harassment to be shut down by online harassers. Chris Kluwe, who is running a panel whose description actually DOES mention GamerGate by name, but has the benefit of not being targeted by GG as much because he happens to have a penis, said it best.
First off, the panel was not on Gamergate, did not mention Gamergate, and the only tangential relation it had with Gamergate was that the odorous denizens of that particular hashtag have made it their mission to try and ruin the lives of the women involved in the panel (among others). The fact you felt the need to connect it to Gamergate shows quite clearly where the pressure to silence these voices came from.
What you did, what you’re doing, is providing the blueprint for harassers and hatemongers as to how they win. From this point forward, any fringe group of spiteful lunatics can point to this moment and say, “We will silence the voices of anyone we dislike at SXSW, any view we disagree with, because we know the mewling slugs in charge have not the backbone to stop us. All we need to do is confront them with our vileness, and they will fold.”
As for the other panel, it was a panel put together by GamerGate devotees in order to ‘counter’ the anti-harassment panel — and the fact that GamerGate feels like they are on the opposite side of an anti-harassment panel pretty much tells you all you need to know. Here, Arthur Chu talks about how that panel was birthed.
Generating a shitstorm against our panels wasn’t enough for r/KotakuInAction. They decided, even though the deadline for panels had passed, that they needed their own panel to be up against “ours” for balance. r/KiA put together a proposal for a panel, carefully avoiding using the word “GamerGate” in the proposal but openly planning it on a GamerGate forum with GamerGate panelists. The organizer disingenuously presented himself as representing a “neutral” organization, the “Open Gaming Society,” even though he had hosted a GamerGate meetup in Austin in May….
SXSW’s FAQ says 30 percent of the selection process is the public vote, 40 percent is the advisory committee’s recommendation, and 30 percent is the SXSW staff. Neither the public nor the advisory committee weighed in on this panel. [Hosting GamerGate’s panel] was a unilateral decision.
Given the farce that was Airplay, it’s likely that this talk would have been a lightly attended farcical recitation of GamerGate talking points, but no matter now. Both talks were cancelled. Right? Welp, about that. Turns out, the cancellation of the panels (particularly the anti-harassment panel) got a lot of coverage: the New York Times. Slate. the Verge. Engadget. Mashable. Re/Code. The Washington Post. Austin360. Motherboard. The Outhousers. (Note: all of these articles helpfully pointed out by the primary GG reddit helpfully listing out the authors of these articles so they can get the special ‘attention’ from the inquisitive minds of Gators, which I am sure will in no way take the form of being harassing bullies).
Then Buzzfeed started to weigh in on withdrawing support for the conference.
Digital harassment — of activists of all political stripes, journalists, and women in those fields or participating in virtually any other form of digital speech — has emerged as an urgent challenge for the tech companies for whom your conference is an important forum. Those targets of harassment, who include our journalists, do important work in spite of these threats.
BuzzFeed has participated deeply in SXSW for years, and our staffers are scheduled to speak on or moderate a half-dozen panels at SXSW 2016. We will feel compelled to withdraw them if the conference can’t find a way to do what those other targets of harassment do every day — to carry on important conversations in the face of harassment.
Then Vox backed up Buzzfeed’s decision.
Harassment is an issue Vox Media takes extremely seriously. As a digital media company, our journalists often face online harassment and find themselves on the receiving end of threats. We support our staff when they encounter this kind of abuse while continuing to do the work that can result in it, and want to continue an open dialogue about how best to do so.
By approving the panels in question, SXSW assumed responsibility for related controversies and security threats. By canceling the panels, they have cut off an opportunity to discuss a real and urgent problem in media and technology today. We have reached out to SXSW organizers and ask that they host a safe and open discussion of these issues, rather than avoid them. Vox Media will not be participating in this year’s festival unless its organizers take this issue seriously and take appropriate steps to correct.
Then Congresswoman Katherine Clark wrote a letter.
Our message to targets of online threats and harassment should not be that the internet is closed to their voices. It should be that we stand behind them and will not tolerate any online abuse or violence that jeopardizes their opportunities in a world that is increasingly online.
Harassment of women in the video game industry is not a recent phenomenon. But attention on this issue intensified in August 2014 after Eron Gjoni published an online rant about independent video game developer Zoë Quinn, alleging, among other things, that she had a relationship with a video game journalist. The essay fueled a Twitter debate, coalescing around the #GamerGate hashtag, about misogyny in the video game industry, political correctness, and media ethics. It also provoked a campaign of harassment and violence against women in the industry, including many of the panelists who would have spoken at SXSW.
Threats of violence, and their devastating effects, are not to be taken lightly, and they’re just as criminal online as off. Women in the video game industry who have spoken out in defense of Quinn or criticized the portrayal of women in video games have received rape threats and death threats, had their personal information published online for all to see, and even been forced to flee their homes. No one should have to tolerate this behavior.
EDIT: As did state Senator and former candidate for Texas governor Wendy Davis.
Women face harassment & misogyny in gaming. That @sxsw empowers aggressors in defeating discourse is disturbing https://t.co/V06fsNIl4o
— Wendy Davis (@wendydavis) October 28, 2015
Apparently, all of the above reached a critical mass of ‘whoops, THIS was a fuckup’, because SXSW is now reconsidering the decision, and is in fact considering holding an all-day seminar on online harassment. (Psst, SXSW, I’m available!) Which, if true, will mean that once again GamerGate’s attempts to silence their critics will have resulted in massively amplifying them.
I won’t pretend that I haven’t been watching this thing unfold with a certain level of bemusement. Still, in some ways, the story is reaffirming. Online harassment is a huge problem, and we do not truly have free speech on the internet while marginalized voices feel they cannot speak without fear. But it’s a solvable problem – only doing so requires the people, the press and the government to start realizing that this is a problem that requires a solution. As stupid and misinformed as SXSW’s actions were, at least the response to these events showed that more and more people are starting to take this issue seriously.
Arthur Chu’s article on the situation has an interesting little paragraph buried in the middle:
“SXSW’s FAQ says 30 percent of the selection process is the public vote, 40 percent is the advisory committee’s recommendation, and 30 percent is the SXSW staff. Neither the public nor the advisory committee weighed in on this panel. This was a unilateral decision.”
A unilateral decision to approve the Gamergate panel *after* the close of the panel application date, no less. That looks less like blind carelessness and more like covert sympathy.
I was going to respond to this with ‘don’t ascribe to sympathy what can be ascribed to stupidity and attempting to create buzz for their conference’. But Leigh Alexander’s piece on the subject seems to suggest that, at the very least, it’s not ignorance.
Clearly one thing it is *not* about is ethics in panel selection.
I laughed out loud. Well done.
As far as I am aware, conventions administration can be pretty rigid in regard to application of rules. At very least, it create a filter against those panellist who might lack organization skill to obey the rules or even just reduces the workload on the selection process. If an application can manage to be accepted despite being in order, there is a need to have a pretty good reason to bend the rules and even them, the default answer is a disapproval. That especially true for late submission where the risk of logistical complication increases.
Bending the rules for harassing jackasses needs a very strong justification.
Damion, if no one’s said this, I really respect your clear writing style, both on this and in general.
I’ve been following Gamergate from the beginning, but Chu’s SWSX article hit me like a wall of confusing hieroglyphics on first read. I think the writing just got away from him on this one.
“Damion, if no one’s said this, I really respect your clear writing style, both on this and in general.”
lol! Damion Schubert is more of a demonizer then a rational thinker. He’s the American Idol loser Adam Lambert of the blogger circle. This article is somewhat of an exception if it werent for a typical comment like this: “but has the benefit of not being targeted by GG as much because he happens to have a penis,…” Earlier efforts are more akin to full on Nazi propaganda-like raving. I’ll let you dig through his past posts for that – can’t stomache it myself.
Hate to break it to you, but GamerGate’s reputation for harassing women far more viciously and thoroughly than men is well-known and well-understood, not only by people who have been following this idiocy for the last year but, as proven by the media coverage of this event, by literally everyone who pays even remote attention to technology coverage.
Well, except for SXSW, apparently.
gamergate has always been sold in the media as a hate group. There obviously is a bit of that on twitter and lots of assholes on twitter and at KiA exist but as people like Andrew Sullivan and erik Kain and even lefty freddie Deboer have pointed out there is more going on here (though freddie doesn’t like gamergate at all due to harassment claims he offers a cultural critique many in gg seem to share).
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/09/07/whats-happening-and-why-and-why-does-it-matter/
I don’t really think this sort of critique is going to get a fair hearing in the normal media.
There’s no need for it to get a “fair hearing”. DeBoer correctly identifies that some Gamergaters are tired of “explicitly progressive cultural complaints in criticism” and the “heavy-handed nature” of said criticism.
Fine!
Not a single one of those critics is forcing anyone to read their output. Literally no one is demanding that you pay attention to, say, Sarkeesian. In fact, an analysis of games criticism reveals that “social-justice”-flavored critiques comprises less than 2% of the available body of writing on major games journalism sites!
If a Gamergater is involved in Gamergate because they don’t like social-justice flavored criticism, then a few thoughts arise in relation to them:
1) They’re concerned about a problem that doesn’t exist.
2) They’re affiliated with a harassment movement in order to express their concerns about a problem that doesn’t exist.
3) They’re trying to excuse the activities of the harassment movement by pointing out their affiliated with the harassment movement because of a problem that doesn’t exist.
4) The “problem” doesn’t exist.
So no, I don’t think there’s any reason to give those Gamergaters who are oh-so-concerned about progressivism a “fair hearing” when they express that concern by shacking up with the harassment movement. I’d suggest that if they wanted a fair hearing, they could try to shift the focus of their group away from the harassment to the “problem” of progressivism, except I know they can’t do that, because (once again) *the problem doesn’t exist*.
If they’re tired of reading progressive critiques, they should just stop reading progressive critiques.
@Andrew: I’ll add that above the relative rarity of progressive criticism, their claim are often grossly exaggerated by reactionaries.
Let take the disputed reviews of the Witcher 3. Polygon’s review was very positive but the hate mob went ballistic mentioning and describing that the game world is intensely misogynistic, player discretion is advised. That a pretty reasonable statement of some interest to the site readership. Some readers may want to avoid the game, many may think that add grit to the world but, in the end, the reader decides with accurate information.
The other side of the story was a claim the article was a part of the imaginary movement to censor games. There was zero appeal to censorship. Scratch that, reactionaries claimed that comment about sexism are taboo and punishable by character assassination.
That the same story with Moosa’s piece on TW3. Even if I don’t fully agree with it, I don’t think there was anything that warranted any reaction more intense than respectful disagreement.
In a way, GG goes beyond merely inventing a problem. They create imaginary crimes then assign them on their opponents. Their claims are unjustified attacks, turning your first and fourth point into effective harassment (having to defend yourself from said crimes). Like the Benghazi hearing, everything about GG is some form of dishonest attack.
If you actually took time to research than get all your tripe from Wikipedia, Salon, and The Guardian you’d see that GG DOES know about Kluweless and his farce of a panel at SXSW…and the only reason the lame stream media doesn’t talk about GG’s fighting with a failed NFL star that has bullied gaters for a year is BECAUSE he has a penis.
Then again I’m just spitting in the wind as you have clearly already made up your mind about GG, and no amount of rational discussion is going to persuade that.
Enjoy your echo chamber.
An American Idol reference and comparing someone whose opinion you don’t like to a Nazi? I salute you. Well played.
I can’t really blame them for cancelling the harassment panel. I would recommend it if I were their lawyer. Odds are nothing will happen from the threats, but if something DOES happen, they will definitely, definitely be blamed for not having “done something.” And if they did “do something,” they will definitely, definitely be blamed for not “doing more.” And “blame” very likely means “lawsuit” in this context.
If there were some established level of security that they could provide and have everyone agree that they officially “Did Enough,” I’d say go for it. But at this point, if they host the harassment talk, they’re gambling that they’re better off accepting the low chance of ruin in order to mitigate the guaranteed chance of a PR disaster. A crap situation to be in to be sure.
Just saw this. During the election this month, our new Prime Minister actually mentioned Gamergate:
http://blogs.leaderpost.com/2015/10/28/canadian-prime-minister-designate-justin-trudeau-calls-out-gamergate-says-hes-proud-to-be-a-feminist/
So if there was a winner* in all this, it’s Chris Kluwe.
(* There is always a winner in gaming culture.)
I think the problem which led to the present situation is what Jessica Valenti wrote in her recent Guardian article: the good people of the world “just stopped noticing its existence”. This, despite her writing, last year, that GamerGate was “loud, dangerous and a last grasp at cultural dominance by angry white men”. This sort of self-serving wishful thinking, where if you don’t pay attention to stuff, it will just magically go away, because you’re on the Right Side of History (just as Kellogg-Briand, back in the day), was *precisely* what allowed GamerGate to endure undetected. You shouldn’t ask surprised if you wake up one morning to their having occupied the proverbial Rhineland.
I see it all the time on Twitter: people routinely blocking anyone they don’t like for whatever reason. Arthur Chu — fuck him. He blocked me just because I had the misfortune of clicking to follow him, and I’ve since found out that he’s notorious for this, blocking people for following other people he didn’t like, but ALSO running his own blockbot to make others do as he does. It’s people like him, and Valenti, who make GamerGate’s points for it about doctrinaire “Social Justice Warriors” trying to control the narrative. They do more harm than good.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re going to destroy GamerGate, you *must* attack its position on “ethics in video games journalism”. That’s not excusing nor sweeping under the rug the accusations of harassment, etc. against the movement (which, as far as I’m concerned, are entirely true). It’s just that it’s a waste of time, because GG will always deny it, no matter what.
That’s why I can’t support Anita Sarkeesian’s recent position that SXSW should restore the “harassment in gaming” panel while apologizing for ever have considered a GamerGate panel in the first place. I’ll tell you how that “harassment in gaming panel” will goes:
“GamerGate harasses women!”
“Not us. Never us.”
“Well, there was this guy who…”
“GamerGate is a hashtag. It cannot account for all its members.”
Yes, let’s have a GamerGate panel, and not a stacked affair like AirPlay was. A real panel, with people who know their shit. Real gaming journalists. I’d like to see Jeff Gerstmann on the anti side, because GG *always* mentions his getting fired from GameSpot because of advertiser pressure as evidence of the lack of journalism ethics. Nobody could make as persuasive an argument along the lines of: “Yes, but GamerGate explicitly encourages advertisers to pressure the gaming press. So you’re hypocrites.”
And really, anti-GamerGate (which isn’t nearly the organized movement Gaters pretend it is) ought to make an effort, instead of (1) just snark in a corner, like the denizens of We Hunted the Mammoth; (2) mount an anemic retort to one particular site, like GamerGhazi to Kotaku in Action; (3) walk away in despair and just hope for the whole thing to fall apart, like everyone else. Meanwhile, GamerGate continues to spew bullshit in complete indifference to everyone, hijack other people’s hashtags on Twitter with scant opposition, and dox and harass and whatnot.
Nobody’s engaging with anyone anymore, leaving the field open to Gaters. And that’s not wise.
See, I still bother to engage with Gaters. See my (at present) 334-tweet chain painstakingly trying to tear down GamerGate claims. It’s futile, I know, but at least I’m trying to do something.
https://twitter.com/Vetarnias/status/655986070350360576
Vetarnias, it’s becoming harder and harder to communicate with anyone online. Multiple interpretations, contemporary shorthand, hair-trigger emotions and such. Everything is sexist, everyone’s a troll. Heck, even today, I got into a lengthy argument over “darkhorse.” a) that a darkhorse is a horse that hasn’t won anything yet (false), and b) it’s hella racist. It’s comical and frightening at the same time. Oh, and followed. :))
Uh, I thought “dark horse” was almost exclusively used to indicate an unknown who then wins something (whether a race or an election). I wasn’t aware the word had racist connotations – though that wouldn’t surprise me. Like when I discovered where “sold down the river” came from.
The Twitter experience will likely conclude soon enough, unless I can make the Guinness for longest chain or something (what’s the record?). All that I know is that a few days ago it got the attention of the 8chan crowd, especially the part where I argued that GG was defending the freedom of speech of the KKK (yes, that’s how low they’ve reached) as “not every member of the KKK has done something criminal” because that’s how GG had to defend itself nowadays because it was so toxic. Evidently, that struck a nerve.
I don’t think it’s worthwhile to engage the “ethics in journalism” argument when it’s being advanced in bad faith to cover the less-palatable “I hate Anita Sarkeesian” argument. No matter how thoroughly you tear down the ethics argument, you’ll never convince your interlocutors because you’ve never addressed their real reason for talking about “ethics in journalism”.
They’ll just come back for more, because they still really, really hate Anita Sarkeesian and nothing you said about ethics will change that.
I’ve spent my own time doing as you did, and the only good that’s ever come of it was the Gamergate conversation partner eventually became so angry that he got himself banned from the forum I was on. If that’s the only possible end game, why not short cut to it by running a block bot?
It’s not as though the mainstream media hasn’t already considered the ethics argument intensively, found it wanting, and are more than able to do the heavy lifting of reminding people what Gamergate actually is whenever they pop their heads up.
To be clear, I think the proper response is to take measured, real responses online and in the real world to prevent Gamergate from directly harassing individuals, and to observe and engage with Gamergate only so far as is necessary to ensure that individuals can be effectively protected.
It’s a harassment movement. That harder you make for them to harass, the less fun the harassment will be and they’ll move on to something else. A diffuse culture of angry misogynists is far less likely to harm someone that a concentrated one.
In other words, the focus needs to be on harm reduction and prevention, not direct engagement. Asking Gamergate victims to continue to bear a flag so that the rest of us can easily identify and engage with Gamergate is asking far too much.
“No matter how thoroughly you tear down the ethics argument, you’ll never convince your interlocutors because you’ve never addressed their real reason for talking about “ethics in journalism”.”
I know. I just want to rip off the last of their façade, even though there’s probably nobody left who’s fooled by that. (Funnily enough, Sargon of Akkad looks like he’s gone full ethics, anti-“SJW” now.) But I want GG to stand there, the last of its mendacity yanked away, standing naked before people who know what ethics are.
Technically, “dark horse” is about odds(race by race), not notoriety. In the recent “2015 Breeder’s Cup,” every horse was incredibly well known. And come with a winning record. However, oddsmakers and pundits will decide on 2-5 favorites and literally every other horse will be called a “dark horse” if they win. In Politics, “dark horse” may be a candidate that simply isn’t the media-darling.
As for racist connotations. . . I think that was just an attempt to shame me for using the term “dark horse.” I’ve been in web-publishing / community-management a long, long time. I’ve seen every trick in the book.
“I think that was just an attempt to shame me for using the term “dark horse.” I’ve been in web-publishing / community-management a long, long time. I’ve seen every trick in the book.”
Oh, I know. I remember reading something back in the day that tried to argue “blacksmith” was racist. I’m not sure where that was from, but other people’s opinion was split almost evenly that it’s real/it’s a joke.
Anyone else waiting for Richard Dawkins to weigh in on this?
He did – and surprisingly well, too!
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40RichardDawkins%20Gamergate%20&src=typd