I really don't think the gamergate point was accurate. It was a clash of burgeoning sjw stuff and burgeoning metamodern right stuff centered in video game culture. If they claim "Something Big Is About To Happen", then they'll have to call it a misstep by the burgeoning sjw culture because the gamer responses are definitionally reactive. The development of narratives to drive the point, whether they're factually on point or not, was already big in 4chan. To skip past all that to focus on the bias narratives happening seems to be completely missing the point a decade later.
The only thing that halfway fits what he calls 'the left' is 'progressivism,' which if he wants to litigate every case from the 20th century where progressivism was on what we retroactively call the right side thats on him. I'm not particularly interested in reading it after seeing his alternate history in the comments where he explains that 'the left' held back bill clinton, barack obama, and joe biden. I particularly will not be reading any further complaints from him about the stagnation of the culture industry, you already got the common-sense market solutions you wanted buddy!
This characterization of GamerGate has seemed like it takes an untenable tone to me since I first read the Max Read piece: "spurred by a set of intricate and boring and extremely unimportant accusations of 'bias in games journalism.'" It was spurred by colorful sex scandals! I like a lot of Max's writing (and I subscribe), but that doesn't land for me.
It might be a small thing, but I do think getting these details right matters a surprising amount in the medium term for deliberative democracy. Still, I'm sure this isn't the right place to hash out that issue in depth, so I'll put this down mainly as a marker for later follow-up.
But it wasn't a sex scandal! Zoe Quinn's ex made it up! She slept with someone in the same industry, not an uncommon occurrence, well after the game was released and after she dumped her ex. Anita Sarkeesian didn't sleep with anyone and SkepChick's addition was explicitly because she didn't sleep with anyone.
Scandals are often fake! Just because a scandal is fake doesn't mean it's any less capable of driving strong feelings and collective activity in response. Even if it's a made-up scandal, that's still a scandal.
This is even more the point that the position by Max is missing something. We're given a narrative of "and then the beasts came out of darkness to criticize what we were already ideologically doing for decades for some reason".
I really don't think the gamergate point was accurate. It was a clash of burgeoning sjw stuff and burgeoning metamodern right stuff centered in video game culture. If they claim "Something Big Is About To Happen", then they'll have to call it a misstep by the burgeoning sjw culture because the gamer responses are definitionally reactive. The development of narratives to drive the point, whether they're factually on point or not, was already big in 4chan. To skip past all that to focus on the bias narratives happening seems to be completely missing the point a decade later.
The only thing that halfway fits what he calls 'the left' is 'progressivism,' which if he wants to litigate every case from the 20th century where progressivism was on what we retroactively call the right side thats on him. I'm not particularly interested in reading it after seeing his alternate history in the comments where he explains that 'the left' held back bill clinton, barack obama, and joe biden. I particularly will not be reading any further complaints from him about the stagnation of the culture industry, you already got the common-sense market solutions you wanted buddy!
This characterization of GamerGate has seemed like it takes an untenable tone to me since I first read the Max Read piece: "spurred by a set of intricate and boring and extremely unimportant accusations of 'bias in games journalism.'" It was spurred by colorful sex scandals! I like a lot of Max's writing (and I subscribe), but that doesn't land for me.
It might be a small thing, but I do think getting these details right matters a surprising amount in the medium term for deliberative democracy. Still, I'm sure this isn't the right place to hash out that issue in depth, so I'll put this down mainly as a marker for later follow-up.
But it wasn't a sex scandal! Zoe Quinn's ex made it up! She slept with someone in the same industry, not an uncommon occurrence, well after the game was released and after she dumped her ex. Anita Sarkeesian didn't sleep with anyone and SkepChick's addition was explicitly because she didn't sleep with anyone.
Scandals are often fake! Just because a scandal is fake doesn't mean it's any less capable of driving strong feelings and collective activity in response. Even if it's a made-up scandal, that's still a scandal.
This is even more the point that the position by Max is missing something. We're given a narrative of "and then the beasts came out of darkness to criticize what we were already ideologically doing for decades for some reason".