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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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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.

Hernandez is now Kotaku's editor-in-chief.

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).