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Notes -
Part 1/4
Recently, someone sent me a video about GamerGate made by BreadTuber Ian Danskin in 2021. The video in question is his talk to UC Merced about "digital radicalism" using GamerGate as a case study. Here is the link to the video and here is the link to the transcript of the video, posted on his Tumblr.
It's truly shocking how many errors and misrepresentations there are in it. There are so many I can't and won't cover them all, but I do want to highlight the most notable ones.
I'm genuinely not sure where he's getting the idea that Gjoni posted to 4chan. Not even his supposedly "too comprehensive" RationalWiki source detailing the timeline of GamerGate states that Gjoni posted it on 4chan - it just states "Eron Gjoni publishes "The Zoe Post" on Wordpress, accusing Zoe Quinn of infidelity. This time the post is shared to 4chan's boards /b/, /v/, /pol/, and /r9k/." One of his other sources claims Gjoni attempted to sic 4chan on Quinn, but this claim is not cited.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Gamergate
According to The Zoe Post, here Gjoni’s side of it:
“If you take my recommendation to opt against the TL;DR — yes, this is written almost entirely in shitty metaphors and bitter snark. It’s a post about an ex, and the tone reflects its intention as the starting post for forum threads entitled Cringe-Worthy Break Up Stories on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, because I figured it would be best to announce on friendly communities in innocuous ways. Penny Arcade and Something Awful deleted those threads, so now this blog stands alone. I will not take it down, because I know the information is important, even if what I have omitted means you never might."
"And no, I never posted this to 4chan.”
https://thezoepost.wordpress.com/
There is, however, another page on RationalWiki which states that "After he got banned from Penny Arcade and Something Awful, he shared with 4chan's /r9k/ and /pol/ who then decided to call her a "whore" and a "cunt".[1][2] How non-misogynist."
https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Gamergate_claims&diff=1587662&oldid=1587661
RationalWiki posts two sources to "prove" that Eron Gjoni shared with 4chan's /r9k/ and /pol/. However, none of their sources prove at all that Eron Gjoni shared it - others rehosted what was removed from other places as posted by Gjoni, but he himself did not provably rehost on the chans himself.
https://archive.is/qrS5Q
https://archive.is/QIjm3
The tone of these chans is very 4chan, meaning it's not amazing. However, I found no evidence suggesting Gjoni sanctioned or approved of either.
I'd also add that Gjoni has stated repeatedly that the reason why he posted them on Penny Arcade and Something Awful was because they had positive views of Zoe, not because they had a history of harassing her.
"I chose the Penny Arcade forum because all mentions of Zoe there have been positive. I chose the Something Awful forum because Zoe used to visit there a lot before making DQ, and they like her in a "we knew her before she was famous" sort of way."
https://old.reddit.com/r/SRSGaming/comments/2ef26g/what_all_that_zoe_quinn_stuff_was_about_2nd/cjz8hb2
"She was a regular on Something Awful. And they like her in a "we knew her before she was famous" sort of way. Which is why I chose Something Awful as one of the two boards to drop this one."
https://web.archive.org/web/20141204063637/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BxRecBCIAAEIcOG.png
Then, Danskin goes on to make this bombshell of a claim:
Now, his source for this is the Boston Magazine hit-piece on Gjoni, entitled "Game of Fear". Here is the link (to an archive page, since I would rather not give clicks):
https://web.archive.org/web/20221008092349/https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2015/04/28/gamergate/
Reading it is incredibly funny, actually. There's not a single piece of evidence presented in the article in favour of these claims (because they're based on interviews), and the tone reeks of exaggeration and editorialising. But I'd think if you're going to try to use Gjoni's own statements to impugn Gjoni, I'd think looking at Gjoni's actual statements would be a better source for that instead of accounts of his statements that are filtered through a lens of journalistic bias.
Here's Gjoni's two-part commentary on the Boston Magazine article, entitled "What The Hell Is Journalism Even". As far as I can tell, it is still unfinished to this date, but what exists seems to demonstrate a clear pattern of falsehood and misrepresentation in the Boston Magazine article.
https://antinegationism.tumblr.com/post/117661182576/what-the-hell-is-journalism-even-part-1
https://antinegationism.tumblr.com/post/117729753311/what-is-journalism-even-part-2-zachary-jasons
Incorrect. This is a really big error. Here's what Gjoni actually says the "typo" is in his edit to the Zoe Post:
"There was a typo up for a while that made it seem like Zoe and I were on break between March and June. This has apparently led some people to infer that her infidelity with Nathan Grayson began in early March. I want to clarify that I have no reason to believe or evidence to imply she was sleeping with him prior to late March or early April (though I believe they’d been friends for a while before that). This typo has since been corrected to make it clear we were on break between May and June. To be clear, if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and Nathan regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature."
https://thezoepost.wordpress.com/
So as you can see here, Gjoni was not correcting a section in the Zoe Post which stated that she slept with Nathan Grayson for a good review of Depression Quest. He was correcting a typo which made it seem like they were on break between March and June instead of May and June.
In fact, he literally couldn't have retracted the statement that she slept with Nathan Grayson for a good review of Depression Quest because not a single sentence in The Zoe Post ever states that in the first place. Even when you go back to the earliest archive.org snapshot of the Zoe Post (all the way back in 16 Aug 2014), no such claim is made.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140816104303/https://thezoepost.wordpress.com/
The only mention of Depression Quest he made is contained within his later edit identifying the typo, and the purpose of him mentioning it was to caution people to be careful when making claims about the conflict of interest.
Even Nathan Grayson himself admitted that Gjoni did not state in his post that Quinn traded sex for reviews.
https://archive.is/pNJvE
Given the centrality of The Zoe Post to the whole thing, this mistake is incredibly damning. It establishes that Danskin hasn't even read the Zoe Post. You would think that someone speaking at UC Merced about the Quinnspiracy and Gamergate would have at least read one of the Quinnspiracy's central documents, but this seems to imply that he's simply obtained his information from predictably slanted secondary sources.
Here's a link to Part 2 of this post, in case it gets buried under the replies.
Gamergate always seemed like a lot of the two sides talking past each other, and this post strikes me as no different.
The counter to "there's lot of ethics problems in videogame journalism" was never "no there aren't", it was "duh, everyone knows that; no one takes videogame journalism seriously. Why are you harassing women about it?".
So one side (that it seems you agree with) lied... A lot. So that means both sides are talking past each other?
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I don't think you have an accurate picture of the other side's grievances in this case - hell, I don't think you even have an accurate picture of the post you're replying to. Did you actually read parts 2,3 and 4?
Yes, that was the response. Kotaku said that there weren't any and put out an article saying as much.
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Sure, I think we would disagree on which side is doing most of the "talking past".
This sane-washes the anti-GamerGate stance. The general anti-GamerGate stance, exemplified by Danskin, was not "well, there are ethics problems, but harassing people is a step too far", it was the stronger claim that "You people are misogynists who are just using ethics as a cover for your misogyny". Often, it does in fact veer very close to claiming that there was nothing to complain about ethically, as evidenced by Danskin's dismissal of the idea that there was an ethical conflict of interest in the Quinn/Grayson case.
As to why people got harassed, it's because it's the internet, and everybody who's even remotely controversial gets harassment. The mistake of anti-GamerGaters is to characterise basically the entirety of the harassment as being ascribable to GamerGate, when there were a large number of third parties that existed to stir shit. It, furthermore, also ignores that GamerGaters also received harassment and threats during that whole kerfuffle, and ignores their actual attempts to stop harassment. Cathy Young expounds on that argument here:
https://archive.is/W9YFk
I was mostly trying to avoid speaking for the pro-GamerGate side as I don't think I can represent them well. But from my perspective it looks like it's basically "we're just talking about ethics in videogame journalism; we have nothing to do with those other people harassing women, why are you grouping us together?".
... and the response I always saw was along the lines of "there's plenty of ethics problems in video game journalism; somehow all the ones you come up with involve women and totally not organizing internet mobs against them on purpose".
With any self-organized group, there's always the question of who the True Scotsmen are. The pro-GamerGate side wants to focus as narrowly as possible while the anti-GamerGate side wants to cast a wide net and talk about all of the fallout.
You have to take anything that the media was reporting on with a huge dump truck pile of salt, if they're not outright lying that is.
The biggest issue with GamerGate was that the people reporting on GamerGate, the media and journalists, especially the videogame related media, was itself the subject of the criticism. The media obviously has a huge, self-interested reason not to accurately report criticism levelled against themselves.
Who watches the watchmen, basically.
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This is just repeating the previous claim, with the focus now moved from "harassment" to "not necessarily doing the harassment yourself but purposefully inciting harassment by drawing undue attention", a claim that's much more difficult to falsify because it requires information into one's intention and other relevant details that often don't exist.
As to the "somehow all the ones you come up with involve women", that ignores the centrality of Nathan Grayson to the whole "Quinnspiracy" drama, and furthermore there were plenty of ethical breaches identified by GamerGate with a female reporter/male dev, or those which did not involve women at all.
A few examples from the Deepfreeze site (a source which takes a pro-GamerGate perspective):
"Perhaps, though, Grayson’s most blantant impropriety is the overwhelming coverage given to his friend, sound designer Robin Arnott. Author of Oculus Rift game Soundself, Arnott received an abnormal amount of coverage from Grayson. Grayson plugged him six times in three months, with the bulk of the coverage for Soundself coming from Kotaku."
"Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Philippa Warr, who wrote three articles about Sunset without disclosing her friendship with Alexander, has also written three disclosure-less articles about her friend, indie developer Terry Cavanagh — the same Cavanagh that also received coverage from Jenn Frank, who didn't disclose she provided the game's voice acting."
https://deepfreeze.it/article.php?a=unfair
The Quinn story blew up because it was the spark that lit the powder keg, and because there was a salacious story (The Zoe Post) behind it, which meant it had legs.
Sure. But No True Scotsman only applies if and when the people doing the thing you want to exclude actually identify as being part of your group. If there is no proof that the severe, criminal harassment was in fact done by people involved in GamerGate, it's much harder to pin these things on them. Furthermore, only focusing on the harassment and blatantly ignoring the members of GamerGate who actively policed and discouraged harassment is indeed its own form of No True Scotsman.
EDIT: a word
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I appreciate your usually well-supported MRA-ish arguments, but isn't this below your pay grade? Endlessly litigating who said what about whether he posted his own stuff on fourchan, going through all the rationalwiki sources and so on, does it really matter all that much?
I think far too much ink has already be spilled on that subject for something so trivial. Best case, it's about ethics in game journalism, and I don't even care about that.
Was gamergate your first time, is that why? For me, elevatorgate holds that special place in my heart. I'll always remember it fondly, but I know I have to let it go.
What?
Yeah, so some guy said the other guy posted his rant on 4chan , and op meticulously went to work debunking that conclusion. Don't get me wrong, one side is more wrong than the other, but both are wasting their breath. If he did post his zoe relationship retrospective on 4chan at the time, would it make the smallest difference to any of the participants? This is meta-commentary of refutations of disagreement about things that don't matter in the slightest. But whatever, we can't all be interested in the same things, carry on if it makes you happy.
This objection could be made to refuting anything, whether current or not. If you refute something, it's probably not going to make any difference to the person whose post you've refuted. And the people on your side already know the truth, so it won't make any difference to them either.
I don't think so. If rationalwiki released a video of gjoni beating quinn, that would matter quite a bit. Or I don't know, clear proof of video game journalists selling articles for sexual or monetary favours. Whether gjoni posted his tale to 4chan otoh, is not central in any way.
I agree that whether Gjoni posted to 4chan or not isn't particularly central. However, the 4chan thing is a very small portion of what I wrote - the post of mine is broken up into 4 parts. Part 1 is an introductory section which exists mostly just to demonstrate the sheer carnival of trivial-but-damning errors that Danskin makes, errors that shouldn't exist when you're speaking authoritatively on the subject for a university. The meat (and the primary point of making this post) is part 3 and 4, which demonstrates that Grayson and Quinn had a glaring conflict of interest that went completely undisclosed when he was reporting about her.
With regards to your other question about whether GamerGate was my first time, yes, it was my introduction to the culture war, and admittedly it has a special place for that reason alone. I still think, however, that it's important not to let your culture war opponents define the historical narrative in the way they want, even on seemingly small things like GamerGate. Ceding ground to them like this gives them the ability to smear you later on and justify increasingly censorious behaviour towards those who oppose them, and at this point I'm adopting an approach of not giving an inch where I don't think it's warranted.
Finally, GamerGate is not in any way my main focus and it is also not something I'm going to be writing about often. This thread is probably the last top-level thing I'm going to be writing on it for quite a while.
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Is anyone gathering this stuff in some place other than a web forum?
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This feels like a good example of how things often never become settled science. Some things do. Other examples:
I still believe George Floyd was likely going to die that day or soon. A fatal fentanyl dose had a good chance of being what killed him.
Trumps “fine people hoax”
Jan 6 has sufficiently been culture warred to just peaceful protestors versus armed coup. Neither are completely true.
Gamergate seems in this category of wildly different interpretations
It’s probably the biggest difference today. In the past we no doubt had accepted false narratives. But media was more centralized so I don’t think we had long term narrative disagreements as a society.
Another good example is Kiwi Farms being blamed for the supposed suicide of Byuu.
Byuu's emulation and reverse engineering efforts were more meaningful than anything KF has done. Privacy is a requirement for free speech.
Wait, Byuu died? That's awful news - could you post a link to an official source verifying his death? The Japanese government reports the deaths of people like him fairly regularly, so given that he died in Japan there's got to be some kind of official record of it happening.
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Not sure what the point of this is. Both can be meaningful in different ways.
Could you make the point of this sentence clear? Do you mean that they invaded his privacy? If so, that's false; they never knew his real name until he pulled his 'suicide' stunt, and still to this day literally no one knows where he lives/lived (well, no one with credibility, that is).
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Those things will all become settled science the moment we all kick the bucket, and all that remains is a bunch of NYT articles.
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Your summary of the Grayson/Quinn conflict of interest is good, and illustrates some of the video's overt misrepresentations, but I'd note there is also dishonesty through omission. GG uncovered a lot of cases of game journalists engaging in undisclosed conflicts of interest, alongside other complaints like sensationalism and ideological witch-hunts against developers. For instance, very early on they discovered that Kotaku's Patricia Hernandez had repeatedly given coverage to both her friend and former roommate Anna Anthropy and to her former girlfriend Christine Love. Hernandez is now Kotaku's editor-in-chief. This image was circulating days before the Gamergate hashtag was even coined. (The expansion of the scandal beyond Grayson/Quinn is part of why people were eager to jump on the Gamergate hashtag when Baldwin coined it rather than continuing to use "Quinnspiracy", other hashtags were already being brainstormed and various strawpolls posted in the days prior to Baldwin's tweet.)
The articles on Deepfreeze are a decent summary from the GG perspective, with the one titled "Unfair advantage" being the one focused on personal conflicts of interest.
Oof. I shouldn't be surprised that they found a way to make the site even worse, but I am surprised. She was by far the worst writer they had, it's a shame to hear they were foolish enough to keep her (let alone put her in charge).
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Oh, I forgot about those Endnote videos he made. I was unaware they were still ongoing, but I guess it fits his narrative about the alt-right.
To be honest, Gamergate is one of those things I suspect will be the equivalent of the awkward and non-narrative-conforming facts regarding the AIDS crisis in the 80s. Someone might have the link because I can't find it, but I distinctly recall there being a faction of gay men who refused to stop having sex after being diagnosed because they saw it as rebellion against society.
You're probably not going to convince anyone who isn't interested in a good-faith discussion over the facts of the matter, but I appreciate your efforts at disputing Danskin's argument. I only watched his Alt-Right Playbook series and realized he was just a culture warrior who didn't seem to understand why that isn't actually a good thing.
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I'm sure we're already at a point where accurate, unbiased information on Gamergate was scrubbed from any public online platform where normies might find it. This is to be expected. It was one of the Manosphere bloggers (forgot who it was) who explained the simple rule that every ruling class in history has been interested in controlling and blocking the flow of information in society, whereas their opponents are interested in facilitating and unblocking it, because information is potentially disruptive and subversive.
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2/4
I have taken a look at the #burgersandfries IRC logs, and here's what a lot of the quotes from Gjoni look like. You can decide for yourself how fair Danskin's characterisation of Gjoni is.
https://archive.md/Ler4O#selection-9.65374-9.210
Eron_G: The sexual harassment thing on twitter is really killing the causes. I request that if you're on twitter, you continue voicing your support for the causes. And feel free to keep pointing out Zoe on hypocrisy. But basically call out anyone that is saying things openly antagonistic on grounds that accomplish nothing. You want to become the levelheaded side of the debate.
When asked the question "What would make you reveal the stuff you're censoring? Is it because you're afraid of legal action or because you're trying to protect people/yourself?" he answers:
Eron_G: The stuff I've censored has been censored to protect Zoe from undue harassment.
When asked the question of if he had any regrets regarding The Zoe Post, he answers:
Eron_G: I wish the harassment thing would die down
When asked a question about Quinn's past experiences with imageboards, he reveals this answer which again seems to confirm that the reason why he dropped the Zoe Post on SomethingAwful was specifically because they liked her.
Eron_G: She was a regular on Something Awful. And they like her in a "we knew her before she was famous" sort of way. Which is why I chose Something Awful as one of the two boards to drop this one.
When asked the question "Thank you for taking the time to sit with us today. My queston is, taking into account everything that has happened, is game journalism changing because of it? Do you see journalists being more careful because of the Zoe incident?" he repeats his anti-harassment stance:
Eron_G: I don't think journalists are just going to drop their friendships because of this. And for now I think the out of left field attack has caused everyone to band together even more closely. Which is again, why the harrassment needs to die down and become more reasoned debate. One of the links in the blogpost has a good indiestatik article on the issue from a year ago
When asked the question: "Thanks for being with us here today Eron. In case this whole debacle is not properly dealt with in the near future, or if the Quinn side wins and yourself and gamers as a whole are seen in a bad light, would you speak out publicly even so?"
Eron_G: I'm still trying to think about how that would go down. I would recommend avoiding a situation where you are seen in a bad light, by shouting down people who spread pointless harassment. Legitimate concerns will listened to if you organize properly. But the smell of people's genitalia is not a legitimate concern.
When asked the question: "Do you /v/ has missed the mark in targeting Zoe rather than the journalists who published work that had a conflict of interest?"
Eron_G: I think /v/ has targeted both. They aren't a hivemind. But, I think they're targetting Zoe the wrong way. And they are focusing too much on sex in the journalism thing. Sex is a tiny ass part of the problem at most.
In response to the question: "Have you talked with IA via skype? Or through some other means? Why not appear on one of his videos to tell people to calm down on the harassment?"
Eron_G: That might be a good idea. I was thinking it would be cool to see the community come together to simultaneously get people to move the discussion in a more positive direction and deter random harassment though. It just seems -- better.
Eron_G: But if IA reaches out to me I might consider a video. So long as we discuss some terms first.
In response to the question: "I've been an indie game developer for a few years now, and while I haven't been particularily involved in the social side of things or with "popular" indie devs like Phill Fish and Zoe Quinn and the like, the things that you revealed to the general public worry me. We both know that Zoe and Phill alike are very popular and fairly well known in certain areas of the online community do carry some weight regardless of their actions in the past so do you believe that your actions and the resulting actions of them both could spell bad news for the indie dev industry, at least in the way of holding a negative connontation? It's popular talk that Zoe Quinns doxing was all fake/staged, do you believe that Phill Fish's is as well?"
Eron_G: I don't think Phil Fish's doxx was faked by Phil Fish. It might have been a real doxx, or it might have been someone using the opportunity to divert suspicion for financially motivated hack.
Eron_G: I I think that the more people harass devs, the worse it's going to get. Like, without anything getting better. It will just discourage people from making games.
In response to "Why are Quinn and her supporters trying to paint all of this as "harassment" even though there's a mountain of evidence saying otherwise?"
Eron_G: Because there's mountains of people calling her "cunt" and "slut" and proliferating nudes of her.
Eron_G: I mean, there's probably a bunch of that right now if you search "zoe quinn" or "thequinnspiracy" on twitter
Personally, I am willing to take what I see in these logs at face value and conclude that Gjoni is advising them that the conversation should be focused on ethics, has explicitly stated he has censored things to prevent Quinn being harassed, and repeatedly states that he doesn't want harassment of Quinn (or anyone else). I'll grant that Gjoni does state in these IRC logs that the initial point of making The Zoe Post was to warn people that Quinn was not a nice person (because of the infidelity and emotional abuse she subjected him to) but I am unaware of any statements where he advocates using the ethics discussion as a front to destroy her.
Furthermore, many of the conversations in burgersandfries and many of the questions people asked Gjoni in that chat log are in fact specifically about the broader topic of ethics in games journalism and do not immediately concern Zoe, which indicates they care about ethics in and of itself.
In response to: "You said that you've gotten accounts from indie devs on how broken the scene is. Can you share any of those, or all they private?"
Eron_G: They are all private and tenuous. And the annoying thing is a lot of them are through other people. Who I do have reason to trust. But it means I have to get those people to try to convince them. Because they won't talk to me directly. They explicitly stated that their reason is fear for their careers.
In response to: "In your opinion, how could the every-day gamer rally around to dismantle the stranglehold that the video game 'press' has in order to create a more honest and transparent industry?"
Eron_G: Demand they rethink their standards of journalistic integrity in light of not only the ways that coverage might become biased, but in light of the effects that those standards can have on the industry they are covering.
In response to: "Thanks for taking my earlier question. Do you think indies themselves could be rallied to lash out against corruption in journalism via panels at gaming conventions, or is this "suicide?" Would you be willing to speak on a panel about this topic?"
Eron_G: hmmm. . .
Eron_G: I hadn't considered the possibility of getting indies themselves to do it.
Eron_G: actually
Eron_G: that gives me a number of things to think on
In response to: "Are there any usernames you think we should check out? Or any websites that might be off the radar but important to the corruption discussion and we wouldn't be expected to find, I.E. old forums used by the corruption clique in the past?"
Eron_G: No. But I do know there are secret invite only forums for devs who have been sufficiently successful.
While the chats are very long (it's thousands and thousands of posts) and you can probably find some objectionable statements in there, it's my perception that that kind of behaviour is certainly not common enough to dismiss #burgersandfries as some kind of coordinated attempt to hide harassment of Zoe Quinn behind a veil of ethics.
Link to Part 3
3/4
Okay, now we get to the main star of the show, which is this claim by Danskin:
This is not technically false, but it's a half-truth that's so egregiously misleading that it might as well be a lie. He is trying to imply that there was no journalistic ethical breach, whereas I would say the evidence definitively points to repeated and sustained ethical breaches.
The Totilo article that supposedly exonerates Grayson and Quinn states:
"On March 31, Nathan published the only Kotaku article he's written involving Zoe Quinn. It was about Game Jam, a failed reality show that Zoe and other developers were upset about being on. At the time, Nathan and Zoe were professional acquaintances. He quoted blog posts written by Zoe and others involved in the show. Shortly after that, in early April, Nathan and Zoe began a romantic relationship. He has not written about her since. Nathan never reviewed Zoe Quinn's game Depression Quest, let alone gave it a favorable review."
https://archive.is/8KjOG#selection-2701.170-2701.197
Again, nothing in this is strictly false, but this is not an honest or accurate depiction of what was going on. Furthermore it's necessary to note that Totilo was, as Danskin states, "editor-in-chief at Kotaku". This is basically "Kotaku investigated Kotaku and cleared Kotaku".
In order to understand what this leaves out, we need to look at the record of discussion between Grayson and Quinn. Mind, I am leaving a lot of discussion between Grayson and Quinn out because there is so much of it and a lot of it is just rehashing ground already covered. There is a lot to go through, and a lot of it is pretty incriminating.
23 Jun 2012: The earliest evidence of interaction between Grayson and Quinn I can find. Grayson posts on Twitter after a chat with Zoe Quinn.
Grayson: So, after a fantastic chat with @ZoeQuinnzel, I find out she's leaving the city tonight. GOOD JOB, SAN FRANCISCO. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.
https://archive.md/Ih5fB
26 Jun 2012: Grayson responds to a tweet of Quinn's.
Quinn: Another loathsome rainbow. @ Charlton Service Plaza (Westbound) http://instagr.am/p/MWslkWErqC/
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Loathsome Rainbow would make an amazing addition to Lucky Charms cereal. Please make that happen once you're rich and famous.
https://archive.md/gWgHB
29 Jun 2012: Quinn and Grayson friend each other on Tribes.
Quinn: @Vahn16 This is the best idea and I think I must join you because all I am doing for fun is getting in to games as art arguments on OkCupid
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel YES. I will totally friend you and stuff on Tribes. What's your username thing?
https://archive.md/C8ZGD
12 Aug 2012: Grayson wishes Quinn a happy birthday on Twitter:
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Happy birthday! Well, what's left of it, anyway <.< >.>
Quinn: @Vahn16 I'm 3 hours ahead so it just started
https://archive.md/t71XS
5 Sep 2012: Grayson posts an article on RockPaperShotgun called "Green For Greenlight: Valve Now Charging $100 Fee" and namedrops Quinn in it a good couple of times, quoting her a bunch and making sure to include her accomplishments and upcoming games in the article. No conflict of interest is reported.
Some choice quotes:
"“$100 is a lot for me right now, because I’ve released all of my games [thus far] for free, and I’m supporting myself on freelance work and contracts till I get my first ‘real’ game done,” said Dames Making Games founder and It’s Not Okay, Cupid developer Zoe Quinn. “That’s eating for a month.”"
"Steam’s still not as open as, say, Desura – nor, in all likelihood, will it ever be. That’s not the point. Is it fair to charge $100 for that? The jury’s still out. But, for better or worse, developers shouldn’t go in expecting something entirely different. ... “It really just seems like an error in communication,” Quinn added. “Which, again, is one of the reasons I didn’t make a page for It’s Not Okay, Cupid yet. It’s clearly not Steam quality at this point [in development]. And if I don’t have a gameplay demo or video that shows that it should be up there, I don’t know why I’d put it on Greenlight.”"
This seems fairly innocuous for now. It is not an isolated incident, however, it ends up being part of a much larger pattern.
https://archive.md/WtK25
13 Nov 2012: On Twitter, Grayson offers to help Quinn with a game of hers she wants to develop. They also have another exchange where he calls her game It's Not Okay, Cupid (abbreviated as INOC) Game Of The Year (albeit a bit jokingly).
Quinn: Gonna make a game about social anxiety where you master moves like "lean against wall", "pretend to check phone", "avoid eye contact"
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel I will totally volunteer to be a consultant on those things. I consider myself something of an expert.
Quinn: @Vahn16 low five!
https://archive.md/bZ3Fk
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Although actually, I've always wanted there to be a game where people actually, like, react if you just awkwardly stare at them
Quinn: @Vahn16 that happens in INOC, swear to god
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Gasp! GOTY.
https://archive.is/jQtyF
27 Jan 2013: More friendly communication between Quinn and Grayson.
Quinn: I am gonna start a place that sells 60's themed sandwiches and call it "Psychadeli".
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Never stop saying things.
https://archive.is/5fOUx
28 Jan 2013: Grayson on Twitter promotes an "awesome guide on making games" written by Quinn. As established, these two are already seemingly friendly with each other.
Grayson: Speaking of making games, @ZoeQuinnzel wrote this awesome guide that I fully plan on using in the future.
Quinn: @Vahn16 d'awww
https://archive.is/bb6QU
14 Feb 2013: Quinn's game Depression Quest is released on MobyGames. Nathan Grayson's name is in the special thanks section among others (Nathan will later claim he had no idea about this).
"Special thanks for their amazing support during a really difficult time. This game would have been dead in the water months ago without you all."
https://archive.md/LFrir
22 Nov 2013: Quinn tells Grayson "ilu", he favourites her tweet.
Quinn: @Vahn16 nathan ilu
https://archive.md/X2efl
25 Nov 2013: Quinn tells Nathan on Twitter she really wants to buy him a beer.
Quinn: @Vahn16 dude. I really wanna buy you a beer ASAP
http://archive.is/NyfXd
12 Dec 2013: Another indicator of closeness between Grayson and Quinn on Twitter.
Grayson: In other news, I've become a "listen to @ZoeQuinnzel because she's saying important shit" Twitter bot. So yeah. Bleep motherfucking bloop
https://archive.md/hrQyP
8 Jan 2014: Grayson posts an article on RockPaperShotgun called "Admission Quest: Valve Greenlights 50 More Games". The article, while only really being about Valve greenlighting more games, is for some reason named after Quinn's game Depression Quest, and he specifically gives a shoutout to "powerful Twine darling Depression Quest" as being one of the standouts of the bunch. It's easy to dismiss these things as arbitrary without prior context. It's not so easy when you see the communications that Grayson and Quinn have before this article.
As a little bit more evidence in favour of Grayson's probable partiality here, the article's tags are: "depression quest, Steam, Steam Greenlight, Treasure Adventure World, Valve." So the only two games that are highlighted in the tags are Treasure Adventure World, and, surprise, Depression Quest.
Again, please note how friendly public communications seem to be between Grayson and Quinn at this point, to the extent that Quinn posts "nathan ilu" on Twitter. No conflict of interest is disclosed.
https://archive.md/QwJbc
9 Jan 2014: A day after the publishing of the Admission Quest article, Grayson tells Quinn on Twitter that if she quits, he will "burn down the gaming industry".
Quinn: No wonder Phil quit. Is that gonna be me in a few years?
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel I hope not. If it is, I will burn down the gaming industry.
https://archive.is/MDt0u
30 Jan 2014: Quinn tells Grayson and another person on Twitter that she misses them, and tells Grayson that she "owes him a bazillion hugs".
Grayson: Suffice it to say, @haydencd and I did really dumb stuff in a videogame today
Quinn: @Vahn16 @haydencd miss you two
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel @haydencd GDC is nearly upon us. Then there will be dumb shenanigans galore. Also karaoke. For real this time
Quinn: @Vahn16 @haydencd fuck yessssssssssssssss I owe you like a bazillion hugs anyway
https://archive.is/DgC9f
16 Feb 2014: More friendly communication between Grayson and Quinn.
Quinn: The Stanley Parable LARP: a British dude just follows you around cattily narrating what you do into your ear
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Can we spend all of GDC doing that? It will be terrible for my interviews, but I don't care
https://archive.is/Q1oqX
21 March 2014: Grayson lets slip that he knows Quinn's middle name in a tweet which Quinn favourites.
Grayson: I'm the third person ever to guess @ZoeQuinnzel's middle name!
http://archive.is/OyfUh
Link to Part 4
4/4
22 March 2014: Grayson publishes an article in RockPaperShotgun called "A Game And A Chat: The End Of GDC Spectacularmathon". In it, Zoe Quinn and Depression Quest is featured again.
Some quotes:
"Part one’s guests include Papers Please creator Lucas Pope, Depression Quest creator Zoe Quinn, and Boon Hill dev Matt Ritter. Part two, meanwhile, brings in such luminaries and champion toe fighters as Gone Home writerly brain man Steve Gaynor, Kotaku features editor Kirk Hamilton, resident Vlambeer madman JW Nijman, Action Henk‘s Kitty Calis, and RPS god heroes Cara Ellison and Hayden Dingman."
"Among many other things, we talked everyone’s favorite GDC moments, diversity in the gaming industry, the virtual reality fuuuuuuuture’s growing pains, my Lost Levels talk, and what happens after you release a game like Papers Please or Depression Quest."
So again, Quinn and Depression Quest are highlighted alongside far larger games like Papers Please. Just like all the others, this isn't incriminating on its own, but it does form part of a larger pattern. No conflict of interest is reported.
https://archive.is/3pja1
23 March 2014: Quinn openly admits she hangs with Grayson on Twitter.
Quinn: @tha_rami I'm headed over to butter to hang with @Vahn16
http://archive.is/J6VGp
25 March 2014: Quinn and Grayson speak again on Twitter and send "solidarity" to each other. Quinn is calling Grayson "friend" and they are confirmed to be emailing each other.
Quinn: Realizing the degrees to which working on my art and career has destroyed like 95% of my personal life.
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel I am sending solidarity from my lonely bedroom work perch. I will be here until 5AM or so, I'm thinking
Quinn: @Vahn16 solidarity from the skies, friend. Also answer your damn email
https://archive.md/mmArt#selection-1387.0-1393.63
30 March 2014: Zoe Quinn speaks with Leigh Alexander on Twitter about going to Vegas with Nathan Grayson for a planned collaboration, the DAY BEFORE Grayson wrote an article about her.
Quinn: @leighalexander good thing I'm launching a gonzo games zine this week I guess
Alexander: @ZoeQuinnzel omg no way i wanna know about this
Quinn: @leighalexander it involves me and @notquitefrodo and @Carachan1 and @Vahn16 all going to vegas.
https://archive.is/7V9OH
31 March 2014: Grayson writes an article in Kotaku featuring Quinn, and it's his most incriminating yet. The article is called "The Indie Game Reality TV Show That Went To Hell". This happens only three days before they go to Vegas (where they have sex). The topic of the article is about the failed GAME_JAM which Zoe Quinn was involved in. He paints Quinn as the "good guy" in the drama that ensued and at the very end, he posts about Quinn's desire to start her own game jam.
"And while the experience was trying for all involved, it was also rife with important lessons. Quinn summed it up:"
""There was this amazing thing that happened after the production was over. Without any organization or prompting, we acquired and shared some refreshments around, set up some multiplayer games, invited production staff to just come be people and play with us, and had a spontaneous pop up party more or less. It was the first time I had started to feel like myself at all since landing in LA. I started to remember what life felt like off-set again, and it reminded me of what I love about game jams and the indie community in general. It felt like such a complete contrast to the 24 hours that preceded it, and a thought clicked into my head.""
""I want to run a game jam. I'd love to have the LPers do what they're so often so brilliant at and bridge the gap between the games and the audience, and do it super low-tech, low-budget, documentary style. Capture the inspiration, the hard work, the 3am delirium and the dumb jokes that come with it. Show people how we all band together and support each other through the deadline. That's what I want to show the world about game jams. That's the ambassador I'd rather be.""
This is incriminating because at least less than a month later, in April 2014, Quinn went on to solicit donations for her own game jam, called Rebel Jam, despite having no start date and no determined location. Clicking on the "donate" button goes to what looks like a personal Paypal account. Even more importantly, Rebel Jam never actually ended up happening. I'm going to be charitable and assume that Quinn couldn't get enough funding, but there's also the more unpleasant possibility that I don't think I have to mention.
Either way, it doesn't matter because this looks pretty bad regardless of the point of Rebel Jam. Grayson and Quinn's exchanges definitively seem to imply that they are close, and him creating publicity for her projects definitely violates any code of journalistic integrity.
Again, no conflict of interest is disclosed.
https://archive.md/mrVxK
2 April 2014: Quinn states that the Vegas trip is the next day.
Molinari: @legobutts @ZoeQuinnzel Did I hear someone's coming to Vegas? :o
Quinn: @OneMrBean @legobutts Yeah! I'm going there tomorrow for a few days with @Vahn16 and @notquitefrodo
https://archive.is/Bir5V
2/3 April 2014: Grayson and Quinn go to Vegas and even tweet at each other during the car ride.
Grayson: I've lost track of the number of hours we've been on the road (1? 2?!?). I've eaten both my bags of mini-Reese's. Morale dwindling
Quinn: @Vahn16 what the hell you already ate all that?
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel MY FOOT IS ON YOUR CHAIR WE WILL USE HUMAN SPEECH DAMMIT
Quinn: @Vahn16 I don't sound like a human right now tho also you just tweeted me telling me we were gonna talk instead of tweeting you boob
https://archive.is/LpUuY
https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/451535398980706304
3 April 2014: Grayson posts a vine while in Vegas which features Quinn.
Grayson: The most Las Vegas thing I've ever seen in Las Vegas
https://archive.is/4xW7r
Here is the vine in question. You can see what looks like Quinn's hair in the bottom right when you play the video. It's easily distinguishable because of just how oddly coloured it is.
https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/FC9CA59AE21063416897040969728_168ae459224.4.17621807476874265758.mp4?versionId=HiUYmQ9CzaiMVJWoQG7TqZ6BFQsRG79j
At some point during the Vegas trip, they start having sex. This is corroborated by Gjoni's logs in The Zoe Post, and it is backed up by Grayson's admission in the Totilo article where he states that they started a romantic relationship in early April.
5 April 2014: The end of the Vegas trip. Grayson and Quinn act all mushy on Twitter talking about how they'll "miss each other's faces", and a mutual doesn't seem very surprised to see this lovey dovey behaviour.
Quinn: @Vahn16 yep definitely miss yer face already
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame
Quinn: @Vahn16 <3 <3 <3
Harper: @ZoeQuinnzel @Vahn16 Guys, gross. At least invite me next time so I get to be all lovey too. sourface, bitterface
Quinn: @NikaHarper @Vahn16 fuck yes you are invited as HECK
https://archive.is/t56H4#selection-4233.1-4233.73
So let's recap what we have here. Grayson and Quinn seem to have been good friends whose relationship strengthened overtime (just going off their Twitter exchanges alone), and throughout the time they knew each other Grayson wrote not one, not two, not three, but four articles featuring Zoe Quinn all of which brought attention to her future or current projects in some way. The fourth of these articles is the most blatant, undeniable and egregious, and in it Grayson unashamedly shills for Quinn's upcoming game jam project that she solicits donations for (and which never actually ends up happening). And that article is set only a few days before they have sex in Vegas.
As a journalist, if you have a conflict of interest you have to recuse yourself or disclose the conflict of interest, and Grayson did neither. Grayson's excuse was that since they supposedly didn't have sex until a few days after the GAME_JAM article was published, they weren't in a "relationship" at the time, so it's apparently fine that they were at the very least friends before then and were doing a lot of stuff that indicated their blatant personal conflict of interest. But as this redditor notes: "personal conflicts of interest are not limited to people you are having sex with, and putting the sex a few days after the article doesn't really make it notably more ethical".
Funnily enough, Totilo himself stated back in August 2014 on Twitter that "reporters who are in any way close to people they might report on should recuse themselves". Wonder where that principle went.
https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/501817475097702402
Anyway, I hope you've noticed just how different the reality is from the portrayal in Danskin's talk to UC Merced, where he makes sure to completely brush over anything at all that might imply that there was a breach of journalistic ethics. The treatment of Gamergate by the mainstream has been an attempt at historical revisionism par excellence, where any indication of unethical behaviour has been stripped out of the record and replaced with some narrative where no one ever had any justification to be angry and Quinn was only ever a Poor Oppressed Victim being unjustly attacked by a virulently misogynist mob. It is an example of where if you repeat a falsehood enough, people will accept it as truth.
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