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Comment by chiaro | Hacker News Reader

A shame the point needs to be repeatedly made. A five minute foray into the wasteland that is twitch chat will show some pretty stark differences between how men and women become targets for trolling and vitriol.

While some of the concerns of the whole gamergate mess were perhaps reasonable at some point in time, the whole thing has disappeared under a huge number of people who see their any supposed righteousness as license to indulge in the pettiest of attacks that aligns them with segments of society I'd foolishly thought we'd largely left behind.

Seriously, if you're looking for some injustices in the world to help make your life meaningful, you can do a hell of a lot better than "ethics in video game journalism", vitriolic element or no.

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I tend to think Gamergate was a brewing culture war that was just looking for a spark to start the fire. Gamer culture has had a persecution complex for well over a generation, particularly with respect to the press - even the gaming press. Being repeatedly insulted and attacked by the media has made them circle their wagons instinctively. Combined with a substantial fraction of gamers that are intensely misogynistic and this ugliness was practically inevitable.

The problem is that gamers picked a fight with SJWs, which are effectively their own mirror image - the same obsessiveness and mean-spirited put-downs and in-group high-fives. I mean, the fact that the SJWs are right is almost immaterial - in the words of The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole". Online social justice groups have a knack for utterly alienating and insulting everyone they could ever hope to convince, even those who broadly agree with them.

Combine that with Gawker media's spectacular ability to stir the pot, and a few prominent right-wing culture-war bloggers feeding the gamer-gaters' persecution complex, and we're seeing outright radicalization.

You isolate and insult a guy and then give him an online culture of like-minded outcasts and they start encouraging each other to do drastic things. There are obvious parallels to other movements of angry young men...

It's a perfect storm, and it's only going to get worse before it gets better since anybody who's trying to talk the gamergaters down from the ledge has to have infinite patience for their monomaniacal rationalizations. They see themselves as the defenders of rationality surrounded by SJWs who fling glib insults... and gaming is founded on endlessly grinding against a pointless task for fun.

It's profoundly sad to see so many gamers rally behind that gamergate banner. To see harassment and threats and ruining women's lives become the public image of core gamer culture.

I'm really worried that this is going to get worse before it gets better. The "us vs. them" mentality of the hardcore gamer world is too old and well-established, and everybody else involved is either feeding into it or is drowned out by the din.

I started seeing the phrase "Social Justice Warrior" used a lot as soon as #Gamergate happened. I have yet to see it well defined, though.

I realize it's tangential to your point, but I'm curious how would you define or describe a SJW?

Traditionally, the term has been used to describe people who make comments like http://i.imgur.com/QMbGVLG.png or http://i.imgur.com/vJgiov8.jpg or http://i.imgur.com/fMcjKsg.png.

Essentially, radical social justice viewpoints taken to absurd extremes. Sometimes to the point of expressing highly racist, homophobic, or transphobic views in the course of supporting some other group they feel is even more persecuted than those groups.

Now, the term is being thrown around by some people to describe those who are left leaning and support a viewpoint they disagree with.

So-called "Social Justice Warriors" are indeed an actual and rather ridiculous (yet amusing) group on the Internet, mostly centered around Tumblr, but their overall population density is pretty low compared to progressives and feminists in general.

More examples of the first group, because we could all use a laugh:

http://a.pomf.se/vrwobd.png

http://a.pomf.se/mdiqol.jpg

http://a.pomf.se/jdwkkw.png

http://a.pomf.se/brsunc.png

http://a.pomf.se/wcjfcv.jpg

Some examples of the second group might include the people who flagkilled half of my comments in this thread. Man, I know political threads on Reddit News are a steaming pile, but y'all could at least pretend to be capable of talking to people you don't agree with and downvote me into oblivion instead.

It's weird to see the term "sjw" used by someone who isn't a repellant fuckwit. It's been a reliable flag -at least on HN- so far. That's something you might want to be aware of.

I'd gotten the impression they and their supporters had started to self-identify with the term.

I believe the speed of communication, gratis internet, has exceeded the speed at which a population can agree on the meaning of terms.

Absolutely. You can find this for even some of the most basic terms nowadays, like "feminist" and "liberal". Some people have extremely different ideas of what those 2 words mean.

For example, I consider myself both liberal and a feminist, but I take serious umbrage with many of the "radical feminists" and very far left leaning voices that have emerged out of these debates. Those same people would simply be considered just plain old feminists or liberals by some others, though.

Very well put. The phrase "perfect storm" crossed my mind when I first heard of this.

I'm commenting to register my frustration with what I call the "harm reductionism fallacy".

At it's most extreme point, it can be parodied to something like "You have no right to complain about a problem in your privileged life because people are starving in $COUNTRY"

In all it's forms, it's a sort of ridicule directed towards people trying to make their lives better. I believe people have the right to complain about, and try to improve, any and every element of their lives- right down to asking for better/healthier free lunches from their employers.

Working for ethics in video game journalism and to reduce nasty sex related comments towards women stands to reform a genuinely nasty cesspool in modern society

The impassioned hysteria over 'ethics in video game journalism' is the problematic part, not the issue itself.

And, to be frank, that ridiculous level of hysteria makes it clear that it's not really about ethics in video game journalism. No-one is dead or has been maimed by it. Lives aren't destroyed by it. Basically, it's a good example of dog whistle politics, using a term that is more palatable to push a less palatable agenda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

You can be concerned about ethics in game journalism and try to do something about it even though other injustices exist, by my book at least. But the gamergate tag has been effectively taken over by the misogynists and haters. That may not be fair, but it's a fact. If people in the first group continue to use that umbrella they are aiding the people in the second group. Again, not fair, but that's the way it is.

It's incredibly unfair because the members of gamergate that aren't spewing misogyny and hate can't really start another movement, that movement would just be taken over by the same people they are trying to distance themselves from. So they can't distance themselves from the hate and their movement is being attacked because of the hate coming from these interlopers and Gawker/The Media is going to just continue to inflame the haters.

How are people supposed to get anything done?

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