I’ll warn this is a very personal post. If you just want to consume my writing and enjoy it, the following words are not required reading. No harm, no foul.
This week has been rough on me. But not me, personally, no. The world hasn’t directed any venom and ire in my specific direction, so technically speaking I should be sitting pretty on top of a pile of good vibes right now. And yet… I’m not. The only reason we have any story for you to read tomorrow at all is because I was able to pull myself together DESPITE feeling down in the dumps lately.
No, no. The world hasn’t hurt me directly. But has done so indirectly. The world has let me down.
I was indirect witness to two wildly different yet oddly similar incidents in which humanity exposed its ugly underbelly for all to see. Namely: the horrific racism and systemic abuse of law going on down in Ferguson, and there’s the unending campaign of hatred and malice being poured on the head of Zoe Quinn, independent game developer. One offline, one online. One against a race, another against a gender. One physical, one psychological. But both are rooted in fear, hatred, and ultimately… bullying.
(Before you decide to lead the charge with flaming sword and war steed right into my comments section to say that Michael or Zoe deserve what they have coming to them… do yourself a favor. Turn right around and never come back here again. I know I only have a dozen or so readers, but I can stand to shed any that stand firmly on the neck of others.)
But I’m not here in my personal blog to talk the particulars about either of those. No, it’s not these incidents and the exact details of them that drove my mood into the toilet this week. It’s something larger than that.
I’m sitting here writing a story about another tyrannical bully — the Citadel — representing a seemingly unstoppable force that always gets what it wants. They are the rule of law gone too far, determined to bring all in line with their thinking or else. In my story, the essential core of human spirit struggles to push back against that kind of bullying. That’s City of Angles. But… the world is continually reminding me that, well… that’s not the reality of the situation, is it? Flashy heroics do nothing. In reality, the bullies tend to win.
What I’m writing feels disconnected, as a result. An escapist fantasy, where we can ultimately triumph over generations of fear and loathing. Where women like Marcy can walk the streets at night looking for tagging opportunities without a worry. Where Penelope can run a blog online where she’s got opinions and she doesn’t get tarred and feathered by a fedora wearing brigade. Where Milly can be cyberbullied but empathically turn it around to make the accuser into an ally. All lovely sentiments which do not reflect what IS, merely what I WISH was. Reality, this week at least, has been hammering home the point that No, That’s Not How Things Work.
I’d like to think that intellectually, I know tolerance and cohesion of community will win out in the long run. Humanity can overcome, can unite, can become something greater. But it’s tough to feel that in the face of incidents like this. Like the hippies of the sixties who saw their peaceful movement collapse, and became uncaring stockbrokers as a result… it’s disheartening.
I know I shouldn’t take this personally. I’m a straight white male, and despite technically being in a minority (disability) I have it good. None of these things really impacts me. And yet, I feel them. I feel them deep down, the injustice, the frustration, the sense of futility. As much as I know I shouldn’t internalize all that, some weeks it’s difficult not to, particularly when I’m trying to write about a world with similar conflicts but different resolutions.
I’ll still finish City of Angles. I managed to write a spectacular finale for //024 which you’ll be reading tomorrow; it’s got the flavor of optimism that I wanted. I won’t change one bit of my plans; the ending will be triumphant. (Hardly a spoiler, that.) But I figured I’d get words down on digital paper all the same, to explain why it’s been difficult. See you tomorrow.
wyredwolf says
Oh, where do I begin? Good things, though! Good things. I promise. I know what it’s like to be in your situation, you feel like the world hates you for not wanting to hate. So, good things.
I’ve written about this before, in fact, I’ve written at length. I’ve written about how xenophobia is a human instinct, and how we like to hate and fear things; I understand that it has tribal roots, outsiders are out for your resources and all that. I get that. Is it relevant today? Not really. How many people stop and question their instincts? Not many. Had a feeling you’d be one of them.
But let me back up, way up. A long time ago, in an era almost forgotten to my hazy mind, I remembered you. I remembered playing your Neverwinter Nights campaigns, they made me feel good about myself, I read your stories, I was especially fond of Unreal Estates. I was even in a Neverwinter Nights campaign with you. (I think I recall something about stinking rich foreign investors.) I think I saw that through without my anxieties getting me too badly.
Anyway, see, I’m neurodiverse. That’s a whole bag of fun for me, I forget things, I have trouble processing things sometimes, I’ve been diagnosed with Asperger’s and I find things can overload me and give me panic attacks. My condition is getting worse. What I’ve found is that the average person isn’t very understanding, so if you have a panic attack because of something they did that startled you, it’s your fault because you’re some kind of crazy person. I’ve been exposed to that attitude more and more of late.
But this isn’t about me.
I began to think on how many other people are suffering like this. With gay people, at least, we’re seeing some kind of social equilibrium. I saw a video on Youtube the other day, kids reacting to videos of gay proposals, a very positive thing. They loved it, it was adorable to them, so that’s one hurdle we’re overcoming. But I find that racism, sexism, ableism are still very prominent, and in some parts of the world, even gay people still fear for their life. And I realise… this is the kind of world we’re living in.
I’m also an introvert, you can’t really be an Aspie and not an introvert, it doesn’t work that way so much, not to my knowledge at least. Stimulus overload and extroversion don’t really go together. So instead of being an outdoorsy person, I sit indoors all day, and I think big thoughts. I like to think big thoughts, it’s not my place to, but I think that we need to be asking important questions about the future of humanity, our destiny, where we’re going, and what’s holding us back. I also think we need to be asking questions about ourselves, too; about who we are, about what we think, and what we want out of life.
If I have an opinion — why do I have it? Are you truly self-aware if you’ve never asked that? I find that so many have xenophobic opinions because of reasons they don’t understand. In the kids reacting video I mentioned, there was only one kid who didn’t like the gay proposals, but he didn’t understand why, it was just ingrained. Most people will go through life without ever undergoing this self-examination and analysis, they will believe as they believe, they’ll think what they were taught to think, and they’ll just do as they do.
Why? They won’t know. They never thought about it. They didn’t think.
A lot of people go through life… not thinking much. Especially for an extroverted personality where, when you think, you need to open your mouth to do so. Thinking is harder for them inside their own heads, this is why addictions and classical conditioning work so well on extroverted personalities, because they don’t ever really question what’s happening to them. I’m not saying that introverts are innocent of this, we’re really not, but it’s more difficult to find an introvert that doesn’t think than an extrovert who doesn’t think.
I think we need to start educating people from a young age on ethics, as a mandatory thing, and on the virtues of examining yourself and your own opinions. I think that that’s the way forward, and I don’t really understand why we’re not doing that yet. Why aren’t we?
I can give you an example.
So many people are afraid of spiders, so many. I look at this and I see it as them being afraid of spiders either for rational reasons (their area has a lot of poisonous spiders), or not knowing why. In the UK, where I am, we don’t really have a lot of poisonous spiders, if any, so most of them are harmless house spiders. I’m personally drawn to insects, because I see them as the ever-hated underdog. I love crane flies, for example, big fan. Sorry if I’m being overly verbose, part of the condition, I don’t know what’s normal. I don’t know what I should or should not be telling you, so I just tell all.
The thing is, though, is that a lot of children see their parents being afraid of insects (even harmless ones) and it becomes an ingrained, instinctive thing that they never bother to question. So they go through life being absolutely terrified of spiders. Yet spiders often do helpful things, like getting rid of the flies which actually can make you sick. So I’ve never understood the hatred of spiders, even.
Again, this is a bit off-kilter, but it’s something I’ve been thinking of for a long time.
Like how, in games, we play idealised versions for ourselves, perfect persons, almost Aryan in their perfection. And what do we fight? Ugly, disabled people. That’s what many games are an analogy of, really, because you’re just killing the ugly people to make way for the pretty people. It’s funny that with, say, Guild Wars lore you have a very distinct note that the humans arrived in Ascalon only to commit genocide against the charr who were peacefully living there, killing women and children alike (because they saw them as animals).
Yet you have many people who see the humans in Guild Wars as paragons of good, and the charr as evil, why? The charr are so alien and vicious looking, they must be evil! And… you know, do you care to question that, to think about it? Because if we’re ever visited by aliens that look like the charr, yet are a pacifistic race until they’re aggressed against, then we’re so completely boned. Yet, because the charr look ugly, the humans look pretty, it must mean that the former are evil, and the latter are good. And if the charr want to retake their land, letting the humans escape in the process (since they don’t want the humans, just the land), then… the charr are the most evil creatures in creation? For wanting their land back?
To me, that’s like saying that the white men who invaded the lands of the Native Americans, only to kill them and steal it from them, are the good guys. And were those natives able to find a way to take it back, without the brutal slaughter the white men engaged in, then the natives would be evil for doing so.
Nope.
But this is everywhere in our entertainment. The Aryan, perfect person is a representation of good, the ugly, deformed, disabled person is evil. It’s just subliminally a campaign for eugenics and hatred. So, if our entertainment is teaching us to be like this, and our schools aren’t teaching us to be the opposite of it, how can we ever be any different? Because some people, maybe a lot of people, need entertainment to think for them, to tell them right from wrong. They sit in front of their TV and expect it to think for them, so maybe that’s what it has to do, that’s what we have to do. So not only do we have to approach education as a possible cure for xenophobia, but entertainment as well.
I’ve wracked my mind for as much as I can find of those memories where I did an NWN campaign with you and a bunch of others. I remember… I was an Archon. A dog thing. And you were cool with it. And I liked you because of that. I won’t lie that I relate more to dogs than I do to people, in general, because dogs aren’t ableist, they don’t give a care about my status as a neurodiverse person, they just like me for feeding them and playing with them. They just enjoy the company, and they’re fiercely loyal. I often look at the dog and see something that’s better than what we are, because they’re not riddled with the horrible xenophobia that we have. And then you have dogs like samoyeds, who seem to have endless love for every kind of creature alive, for every new person they meet.
I love sammies.
Anyway, I liked you then, and I like you now. I only just… sort of remembered you, and I apologise for that. My memory doesn’t work so great, and sometimes I’ll remember persons or things that I forgot about for the longest time, it sort of drifts in and out. I know it’s that way for regular people, too, but even moreso for me because I’ll completely forget about things. I remembered I used to follow your Livejournal quite religiously, and it’s because I liked what you had to say, and what your brain wanted to create.
You’re one of the good ones, Stefan. It’s nothing to be depressed about. You’re just centuries ahead of your time. It’s just a matter of waiting for everyone else to catch up.
One day we’ll have a world without xenophobia. It’ll be great.
Until then, we soldier on.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
Thanks for sharing. Unloading your personal self on the Internet is (sadly) an act of utter bravery lately, and I appreciate you felt comfortable enough to do it here. Thanks for reading my stuff and I hope you enjoy my future writing, too!
wyredwolf says
I’m sure I shall! And I’m glad to see that you’re still around, Stefan, doing what you do. Do keep doing what you do! I think there will always be those of us who see it as important, because far too many people never ask the sorts of questions that you do, or even go further to write stories to ask those kinds of questions.
Andy says
I agree with much of what you say, Stefan. How to respond?…. I have just blocked some people whom I decided were not going to change and were only trying to abuse me. Hence, my previous comments elsewhere that sometimes you just need to turn it off for a bit and ignore it. However, bullying and abuse is not ok, regardless of whether the target of the bullying someone is worthy of your positive regard or respect. I remember once getting to know someone who was pretty constantly bullied, and you know, I actually disliked him a lot. I don’t know if the bullying made him that way, or if he was already a jerk. Either way, he still should not have been treated as he was. And the bullying I received affected me greatly. I had three major responses: 1) I was hurt by it and internalized it and felt bad about myself. 2) I realized much of it had nothing to do with me, did not reflect on me, and therefore I could dismiss it and be who I wanted, 3) anger at injustice and the irrational damaging behavior based on fear and desire for perceived power. So I think people should NOT tolerate it, although I try to balance my life by not losing sight of the lights in this world.
While the internet allows for any jackass to mouth off and abuse , often unchecked, it has also allowed for often immediate and canded exposure of mistreatment and bullying, which can lead to opportunities for responses that could make some difference. I recently read about a woman who’s picture went viral and she was insulted to no end for being fat. She tracked down several commentors and confronted their stupidity and cruelty with dignity. Several did back off and remove their comments. I think public appologies might be even better.
Do not give up.
Andy says
Additionally, I have on at least two occasions confronted bullies and ended up good friends with them once they backed down and became more genuine. So your chapter on internet bullying was absolutely believable to me.
Lirazel says
So, on a personal level, I would place a small w know what I would probably say.
Instead, I’m going to tell you what my sister says.
My sister is black. She’s unmarried, has three children, and lives in a kind of dangerous part of Boston, a city with its own vexed racial history. And in a longer conversation about Ferguson, and the police attention my older nephew sometimes deals with, she said,
“You know, I have a friend who went to a local hospital for something recently, and as she was at the desk, the woman there said something racist to her.”
“And I said, ‘What did you do?”
“And she said, ‘I went into the bathroom, and cried, what do you think I did? And then I sent out a tweet about it.’ ”
“And I said, ‘No, what did you do? Did you get her name? Did you ask to speak to her manager? Did you write the hospital a letter? Did you even tell her that was inappropriate?’ ”
“And she said, ‘I’m only one person. One person can’t change things.’ ”
“And I said, ‘How would you know? You didn’t try.’ ”
“I learned that from our mother.”
As for your work, I remind you that one reason people write and read fantasy is because it allows us to examine moral issues in a a way that we can’t when struggling in the mud of life.
To compare medium-sized things with great, I remind you that in LoTR, while one particular bad guy loses, the good guys do not “win”. And that is fine. I am really not sure that anyone in CoA wants to live happily ever after, and that is also fine.
Lirazel says
Can I just say that I HATE AUTOCORRECT? Please pardon mangled first paragraph.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
Stupid autocorrect. And it raises a good point; if you don’t stand up to the evils of the world, they win by default. This is why I see chatrooms or forums which let the worst tendencies of the Internet go unchecked not as “bastions of free speech” but as “passive enablers who can’t be arsed to do anything about it.” They assume it’s unstoppable and take a Why Bother Trying attitude as a result.
You HAVE to stand up. You HAVE to be heard, and to speak out against it. Whether or not you alone can fix the problem is irrelevant, every time the problem goes unchecked, it gets stronger the next time around. That’s why I felt I had to blogpost this rant against the bullying mentality in general. (Again, the actual two specific victims in question and how good/evil they truly are is irrelevant; it’s the outpouring of absolute malice in wake of their alleged-or-actual transgressions that matters more.)
Lirazel says
I don’t understand the impulse that makes people utter vile things, anonymously or otherwise. I mean, I curse and swear and all, but only once or twice have I done so at people, not things.
But I have used words as weapons of humiliation. Very dangerous things, words.
Schadrach says
Referring to the Zoe thing as a campaign against a gender is a gross oversimplification, of about the same scale as describing US-Middle East relation over the last 30 years as “Arabs hate our freedom.” It’s *wildly* more complicated than that.
It should be enough to say that on the whole 4chan, Reddit, and Tumblr all lined up on the same side, and that’s not a thing that should be able to happen. The phrase “the appearance of impropriety” also comes up a lot, and how incestuous the games industry and gaming media really are.
Zoe Quinn’s sex life in and of itself is probably the least interesting thing about the entire shit storm. But, it did start people looking down rabbit holes, and it gets really messy after that.
I mean I guess it does kind of imply she’s kind of a shitty person (cheating on her ex with five different individuals being only part of it, technically by her own views on consent she also knowingly slept with him without his consent, and I’ll come back to shitty things Zoe did later) — of course, everyone connected to the whole mess once you start going down the rabbit hole are also mostly kind of shitty people, each for their own unique set of reasons. Including most of the five guys in question, and Phil Fish, and just about everyone else connected to it.
The only interesting part of her cheating is who it was with — the 5 guys her ex knew about included a writer for RPS and Kotaku and Robin Arnott. Kotaku eventually made a post the claim was made that the writer wasn’t involved with Quinn until the beginning of April, while the last article involving her was published on the last day of March. Robin Arnott was the guy in charge of Indiecade 2013 Night Games, and Quinn’s game was among those selected.
Back to Zoe there are four big things that Zoe did that might be seen as, you know, wrong beyond cheating on her ex and having sex with lots of people (the last of these of course not being wrong at all).
1) She called for a DMCA takedown of one of the videos covering the whole thing, back when that video and “thezoepost” were the majority of information available.
2) She apparently doxxed and attacked a group called The Fine Young Capitalists, who were trying to run a game design contest for women. They tried to get some exposure in the gaming media, and were allegedly told things along the lines that they were oppressive because Zoe said so, that they should just give it up and donate money to the game jam that Zoe was running, ad that they weren’t interested in running the story because there wasn’t a harassed or oppressed woman and thus it didn’t fit the desired narrative. Since they came out of the woodwork, 4chan/v/ has thrown a lot of money at TFYC and accepted an offer to design the contest mascot in exchange for the generous donations. They came up with Vivan James (it sounding like vidya games of course being intended). KYM link to her: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/816654-vivian-james
3) She allegedly sexually harassed Wolf Wozniak at a wedding, but Phil Fish and several others bullied him until he deleted the tweet. SS of it are available all over the place. Phil Fish also gets added to the list of people who are kind of shitty, right alongside Zoe and at least a few of the 5 guys (2 of them being married and three of them knowing she was in a relationship with Eron — I think that’s enough to count as kind of a shitty person).
4) Back in DEcember, she accused a site called WizardChan of engaging in a campaign of harassment against her. She supplied two screenshots of people saying mean things about her on an imageboard, and gaming media just kind of ran with it. When they tried to claim that there was no campaign of harassment, they were simply ignored. The two screenshots amount to 2/3 of all the mean stuff said on that board about her at the time. A single thread on an imageboard for depressed male virgins over the age of thirty where some people felt that her talking about depression as a conventionally attractive and seemingly popular woman was insulting to them and that she couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be them. The Escapist is one of the places that carried this story, and I’m going there next.
On to the media:
Greg Tito, Editor in Chief for The Escapist posted on the Escapist thread on the topic (which is obscenely long because it was one of the few places that it was being allowed to be discussed, I’ll get to that later) around page 80 or so that they ran the story, they didn’t fact check, and in fact had no desire to because they will always run stories about women being harassed on nothing more than that woman’s word because they feel the need to “signal boost” an anti-misogyny anti-harassment message regardless of accuracy and that they had no intent of correcting having falsely accused WizardChan of harassing Zoe.
Reddit was removing comments and banning users for anyone talking about the topic in most subreddits (the only real exceptions being /r/TumblrInAction and /r/mensrights). Currently, Reddit admin are shadowbanning (a kind of ban where you can still post, but your posts require moderator approval to be seen by anyone and this applies to all subreddits) anyone who makes any post about Zoe that isn’t positive.
GamesNosh was taken offline after posting about it.
Most gaming media sites were refusing to talk about it and those with forums were refusing to allow users to talk about it. The Escapist was one of the only exceptions from the latter case.
TotalBiscuit made a public post about the whole mess on twitlonger that was fairly moderate, and was harassed by Quinn defenders as a result.
Jim Sterling did similar, I don’t know to what degree (if any) he’s been harassed though.
It’s also entirely possible that some of the attacks on Zoe have either been faked or intentionally overblown without actually technically lying.
The nudes: These always seem to get spun in a way to make it sound like a major violation of her personal privacy, but they are actually her photosets from a pair of porn sites she used to model for (I guess I need to point out there’s nothing wrong with being a porn model) circa 2006-2007. So the people passing around her nudes didn’t violate her privacy in some way to get them, they are passing around photos meant for public sale and distribution.
The doxxing posted on tumblr was fake — the numbers that were claimed to be hres are a split between being numbers in Hawaii (about as far as you can get from her and still be in the US) and numbers for businesses that were at least in the right area code.
So, yeah, it’s wildly more complicated and messy than “people are being mean to Zoe Quinn because she’s a woman and a feminist, in an attack on women as a whole.”
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
I disagree with much of that, but appreciate your civility. It’s considerably better than most of the diatribes, rants, and outright spew I’ve seen regarding this incident.
And honestly, THAT is my problem with it all. I don’t believe Zoe is a saint. She’s done some awful things. But the response she’s been getting — death threats, rape threats, personal information postings (I don’t believe she “doxxed herself,” that requires a massively large tinfoil hat) and all manner of harassment and bullying. THAT is what I do not like. She’s getting an amount of venom poured her way suitable for a mass murderer. It’s an intimidation tactic by people who care more about their own sexist views and gamerbro attitudes than anything else.
Is Zoe Quinn innocent? Was Mike Brown entirely innocent, for that matter? Does that actually matter? No. It doesn’t justify a militarized police force tear gassing and harassing protestors, it doesn’t justify online threats which have graduated to offline threats (someone showed up at Zoe’s door a few months ago ready to hurt her).
I write stories about the ascendancy of the human spirit, about the potential of what we can be vs. what we are. And THAT is why I’m depressed lately. It’s not so much about the martyrdom of these two individuals — like I said in my blog post — it’s about the overall pattern of the worst in humanity being unleashed upon us. We can be better than that. We SHOULD be better than that. Even in meteing out justice, even if you think Zoe and Mike should burn in hell or whatever, we can be better than that. We haven’t been better than that and it’s a damn shame.
Schadrach says
“I disagree with much of that, but appreciate your civility.”
There’s no reason not to be civil, ultimately.
I’d ask what you disagreed with, however.
Ultimately, most of the things I referenced were backed by either thezoepost or twitter or reddit posts of the people involved. There are screencaps of a lot of the stuff that’s since been taken down, but I mostly referenced things that could be backed by posts I saw on the respective websites before the posts went down, so I know they actually were posted. The only purely editorial position I really took was declaring a bunch of people to be “kind of shitty.”
As far as “doxxing herself”, the key thing to note is that the doxxing on her tumblr *wasn’t*, the information posted consisted of publicly available email addresses for her and phone numbers that weren’t hers, as could be verified by a simple Google on the phone numbers in question. Did she “fake dox” herself? No clue, there’s no real evidence for or against that position. I’d be willing to bet that /v/ didn’t do it, but beyond that I’m not sure.
You can get more “dox” on her by simply doing WHOIS on her available domains, including her real name (Zoe Quinn is an alias), an address in New York, a phone number, and a couple of her email addresses. She’s apparently from an old-money family with a fair bit of influence.
Oh, the TFYC women in gaming thing got hacked and shut down, the person who took control of the account claimed to have done so because “/V/” was helping them out too much. /v/ was not amused, nor were TFYC who are dealing with IndieGoGo to get it fixed. Also, 4chan’s “share” of the charity money is going to the Colon Cancer Association, to (as 4chan put it) “cure butthurt”. Yep, still 4chan. TFYC also did a video specially for 4chan, and 4chan asked that the topic be women in game development, so it was a video about Roberta Williams.
News story on the TFYC bit: http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/08/tfyc-indiegogo-campaign-backed-by-4chan-gets-hacked-shutdown/
The Escapist thread on the whole mess is (I think) the longest Escapist thread, period (240 pages at time of writing). Arguing that this is about misogyny or trying to make it about how many men Zoe has had sex with are considered derailing, and have been for at least 190 pages at this point. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.858347-Zoe-Quinn-and-the-surrounding-controversy
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
I’m not going to go point by point and painstakingly research every single claim and counterclaim and rumor involved in this. That’s not the point of what I was trying to say. This isn’t really about Zoe’s transgressions — this is about the RESPONSE to them.
Harassment. Death threats. Rape threats. The worst of humanity bubbling to the surface because they personally feel slighted by someone they’ve never met. Ridiculous and overreactive madness which is sadly part and parcel with the Internet, because nobody feels any consequences for their words and actions; they can tell “that whore / that cunt / that bitch” to go kill herself and feel perfectly okay with their abhorrent behavior because she’s been raised as a social pariah in front of them, ready to be stoned to death.
And yes… I count her defenders in here as well. If they’re doxxing and making anonymous accounts exclusively to harass people who are harassing Zoe, it doesn’t help anyone. It contributes venom into the jar and nothing more.
This is not acceptable. You can’t excuse it with “Well, that’s just the Internet.” That EXPLAINS, it doesn’t EXCUSE. Honestly, whatever sins she’s committed are secondary; NOBODY deserves to be treated like this and mob mentality is something we should not be encouraging. We should be better than that. We HAVE to be better than that.
And that’s the last I’m going to say about this. If you feel I’m a fool, I’ll live with that.
Schadrach says
My only real complaint with your original statement was that you were making it out as an attack “against a gender”, which seemed like a wild oversimplification of what was actually going on.
Ultimately anyone who says or does anything remotely controversial, offensive, or simply wrong on the internet is subject to all varieties of nastiness. Hell, I once got death threats for posting about WoW class balance on the WoW forums. Knowing how much hate I got for my positions there, I’d hate to see the inbox of someone who is known for something negative or for having controversial opinions (whether it’s Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, TheAmazingAtheist, thunderf00t, or one of the Honey Badger Brigade [one of whom joked that she knew she had “made it” in terms of internet popularity when she got her first rape threat] — hopefully that covers a wide enough spread of views).
I’m not sure what you could actually do to stop it though. I mean people who plan on doing these things are just going to make burner accounts for them, and IP bans are both trivial to circumvent and have a bad habit of hitting people who aren’t at fault (because many areas have dynamic IPs). I’m sure MovieBob calling people who don’t take the same side on a controversy that he does “Subhuman. Vermin.” probably doesn’t do it either. The question of how to fix it, while retaining at least pseudonymity on the Internet is actually a really hard one that is really interesting.
I do wonder if there’s some group of sociologists out there watching this whole thing very closely and planning on publishing another paper on the “online disinhibition effect” (aka GIFT) from the results.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
It’s not ENTIRELY about gender, but you have to admit that’s a pretty large factor. Consider it in the overall context of gender and gaming issues that have been going down lately; any outspoken female game dev gets crap no matter how saintly or sinnerly she may be. Gone Home gets piles of crap dropped on top of it when ultimately it’s pretty harmless and you COULD simply choose not to like the game and move on. Feminism in gaming culture is under attack because it’s seen as dangerous to the status quo by some (yes yes, #NotAllMen) and Zoe’s attacks ARE influenced by that. Not entirely about it… but a major factor.
As for what can be done to stop it? Nothing. What can be done to fight it? Quite a bit. You have to take a stand within your community; push for civility, and rule-of-law moderation when that fails. You can’t be a passive enabler by shrugging and letting it go. Too many online communities do that, figuring since they can’t SOLVE the problem, it’s not worth doing anything at all. Twitter’s attitude towards abuse springs to mind here, as their harassment reporting tool is next to worthless. Will it stop someone from making another account? No. But there should still be consequences, and people willing to dive in and mete out those consequences.
Anyway, I gotta get back to my day here, and this thread’s gone on long enough for now. More CoA chapters coming soon.