I saw one of Anita Sarkeesian's videos in my recommended and I said "fuck it" and gave it a good faith watch. I may not agree with, or understand every single point, but I remember that she got DEMONIZED for making this. I was told that she hated men, that she wanted all these sexist roles inverted to be in women's favor, and that she was some authoritarian fun police (ironically said by the ringleaders of the satanic panic).
She said some things, and people thought some of what she said was wrong. Even I did. For example, she mentioned Betty from Rugrats as an example of a "straw feminist", but she was portrayed in a sympathetic light and was not meant to imply "feminism bad". Yes, she's androgynous and she's a lesbian, but she's handled pretty well as a character. I'd hardly consider Tracer a straw feminist (I would at least assume she considers herself one since she found Mondatta "an inspiration growing up).
I know that this was just ONE video, but from the information I have, it seems like this whole thing was blown WAY out of proportion. So what gives? Why Anita in particular? Also, how did this whole gamergate thing grow into being rightoid woodstock?
honestly her stuff's so banal, but sarkeesian was the first time teenage /v/irgins ever encountered basic feminist criticisms of their children's toys. there was a strong undercurrent of misogyny before they found her, mostly arising out of the same sort of stuff that has always animated young male nerds who hate women: social isolation and projected self-loathing.
back then were there any other women doing feminist critique of that sort of media in an easily shareable video format?
i could see her becoming the face because these people weren't going to read
there was plenty of feminist gaming bloggers, but i don't think anyone was really doing it on Youtube yet.
No money after financial crash, escapist hobby is changing, also bait and switch from grievances with gaming journalism into hating women (instead of corporations) :vivian-shrug:
Wait, was Betty from the Rugrats actually a lesbian, or is that something people read into her character because she acted masculine compared to her very passive husband?
But yeah Anita's analysis always struck me as pretty 101-level. Maybe she gets more into it as the series goes on but I remember thinking that almost everything she said was obviously true - what really made it stand out was the fact that when she started doing that series, Gamers were undeniably craving "adult" media analysis.
This was when Roger Ebert was saying that games weren't art, and when John Romero got blasted by the community for comparing video game stories to the ones in porn. Gamers wanted the hobby to be as legitimate as cinema, and when Feminist Frequency put out that they were going to do a series of media critiques it clearly struck a chord with a lot of people because their Kickstarter went viral and raised way more than expected.
Thing is, the G*mers never actually wanted their medium to be treated like a mature form of entertainment - what they wanted was for people that they percieved as being legitimate to praise gaming. So when someone who had legitimate media credentials entered the space and tried to treat gaming as legitimate media, with both the praise and critique that that requires, they lost their collective minds.
Re: Betty - In the reboot she's an out lesbian with a wife, but in the original it never confirmed anything beyond her being gender non conforming.
Chuds seem to like to hyper focus on one person (usually a woman) that represents everything they hate. Just look at Brie Larson, who still gets 20 min long video essays made about how evil she is and how she ruined Captain Marvel. All because she said years ago that there should be more diversity in movie critics because movies have different target audiences
Yeah, her work is mid. I remember watchijg one of her videos in a debate lord debunking mood and being shocked how unpoisioned her brain must be. All good stuff, but nothing for anyone to stress over.
Probably the biggest irony is that for all the talk th4 GG people never adressed any of the actual issues in game journalism and the field mostly died and is run by the industry now. Of late there has been a small revival of boutique leftist content but that's it
She a woman, nonwhite and criticized video games.
That's literally all it took.
There were some legitimate grievances with gaming journalism, that then got turned into a personal drama affair, that turned into a general misintrophic hatred of any critiques of gaming culture and gamers (specifically women and minor feminist critique). It was actually incredible watching the SA and channer right wingers turn the narrative over the course of a week and the journos eat it up because it drove content algos.
The concept of GG was created entirely in response to a female indie dev who’s game (an artsy walking simulator) was reviewed positively by a journalist who had previously slept with her.
It wasn't even a walking simulator in the vein of Gone Home or Dear Esther but a browser-based game about depression
:frothingfash: NOT A REAL GAME
The ground zero for GG was her jilted ex going to 4chan to spew bile. Not sure, but she may have somehow angered the basement dweller collective beforehand which made them extra receptive and jumping at the bit to spread the controversy
it was a free browser game about depression! she didn't even make any money off of it! these fucking consoomers were witnessing an industry continually sliding from crass commercialism into unfiltered garbage but since they couldn't bear to attack the shitty corporate publishers who were doing the profiteering and dictated most of the content of the gaming press, they decided that The Cabal was actually indie devs working day jobs to make weird artsy shit for no money.
The ground zero for GG was her jilted ex going to 4chan to spew bile.
fuk tht gui hop he nevr gt laid agin
was reviewed positively by a journalist who had previously slept with her.
Two notes, he never reviewed it, he put it on a list of 50 indie games he liked, and according to the account of her ex she didn’t sleep with him till after this.
The thing is, that journalist didn't even review her game. It just showed up in a list of browser based indie games on the same website that the journalist in question had published some reviews.
The legitimate grievances existed before hand but were understood by most in the same way the average person has unfocused grievances with "the elite". GG was able to channel those vague sentiments that were rooted in legitimate problems (basically the myriad of ways capitalism intercepts with gaming) into the contrived reactionary grievances.
Probably true. I just remember having talked about gaming journalism issues (not in an 'ethics in gaming journalism sense' just as in an general consumer industry journalism sense, with games being like an in that people would understand) with people online before anything was called 'GamerGate' and then some seperate personal drama thing involving the dev, journo and I think the dev's ex that I didn't hear about until a couple days later.
(Edit: This was when I was younger and more lib so I thought you could organize around some level of consumer culture. Ah youthful idiocy.)
(2nd Edit: I'm trying to remember the specific things but the big thing was ratings inflation, where more and more games were getting perfect scores even if they were coming out unfinished (little did we know that they would look practically polished compared to most modern games))
From my perspective it was a small discussion among some online leftists trying to talk to people about issues of industrial capital blowing up into some sort of internet phenomena because of weird Internet drama that was immediately exploited by the right because of the sexual politics.
this. any grievances with "ethics in videogame journalism" or indie game development where added later. i spent way too much time on 4chan in the late 00s / early 10s and the culture that later led to gamergate was already fully developed back then, it already was exactly the same chud shit that's still around today.
these people do not care about legitimate reasons to get worked up about anything. all they care about is their seething, uncontrollable hatred of anything that's not a white cishet reactionary man. they'll latch onto any opportunity to act upon that hatred and all rationalizations for this are applied after their outburst of rage as needed.
I personally dislike Anita Sarkeesian because she talked a lot about intersectional feminism but then promptly platformed Germaine Greer (I think that's how her name's spelt).
CW: a bigotry and nonce shit
Greer is an outspoken transphobe and also has a history of saying incredibly shitty things about homosexuals. For example: in defence of her book the beautiful boy (a deeply :epstein: brained picture book of shirtless prepubescent boys that was compiled without the consent of any of the people pictured) she claimed that it was hypocrisy to call her out for rubbing it to children because gay men do it. Y'know, casually accusing all gay men of being pederasts.
Giving someone like that a platform and treating her merely as a controversial academic is hella sus.
this video, which pre-dates GG, explains it pretty well. I can't properly say why their reaction was so vitriolic, but I think it became such a big deal because she spoke out about it, which pissed them off even more.
Dan Olson did a good video on GG as well, which I'd recommend watching.
There were also multiple grifters cashing in misrepresenting Anita. Then all the channels with smug fursonas used sprouted up and built upon these mischaracterizations. However I doubt most of the gg audience cares because the core of it was a bunch of weirdos harassing that indie dev.
Sarkeesian if I remember right. Looks like this English TV actress I feel like I have seen in lots of stuff, but can't remember what stuff except Doctor Who, and not what episode of that either. I don't think I've ever put the two together before but now, trying to remember what they both look like, it's the same.
