All right. Let’s talk about GamerGate.
This link will take you to an article dissecting the IRC chat log taken from a 4chan room where GamerGate began as a movement. wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/0 … more-13184
This link will take you to the full IRC chat log. puu.sh/boAEC/f072f259b6.txt
This is not a she-said-he-said kind of situation. Regardless of what the movement may or may not have become, this is where GamerGate started - with an organized harassment campaign.
(https://intfiction.org/t/my-serial-idea-spaceman-robbins/129/1)
This suggestion - discuss the issues, avoid using the term GamerGate - it’s not a bad one. I want to say yes to it, because I want this to be over more than I can possibly tell you. I want to go back to making games and discussing interactive fiction and being happy to be part of this community.
But I keep coming back to the chatlog above.
(xyzzy)
(xyzzy)
I’m willing to believe that people affiliated with GamerGate have been harassed. (Raph Koster did an AMA specifically to talk with GamerGaters a few days ago. It was an enlightening read that gave me greater perspective on the other side of the situation - reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/ … _ama_here/.)
But that doesn’t negate the fact that if GamerGate is welcome here, this is not a safe space for inurashii - or any other person who is experiencing harassment.
I don’t think that GamerGate should be named specifically in the intfiction code of conduct. But I do think that we need to take a stand against hate groups - and clear evidence exists both that the GamerGate movement started as a hate group, and that people identifying themselves as GamerGaters are harassing people.
The volume of harassment directed against Zoe Quinn - the rape threats, the death threats, the doxxing - was sufficient that the FBI got involved. The people responsible for that harassment considered targeting inurashii in the same fashion. And they are where this movement originated.
What I want to know about the people defending GamerGate in the Code of Conduct thread is:
Are you okay with what happened in that chat log?
I’m not. I can’t be. And that’s why I went on record to say that I want intfiction to officially bar advertising by hate groups. Not because I think every person calling themselves part of GamerGate is a monster - but because there are monsters associated with GamerGate, at a very fundamental level.
And because those monsters have already hurt members of our community.
And if what those monsters did is acceptable here, then I can’t see this as a safe space.