Giving Voice to the Voiceless: The #NotYourShield Project
Oliver Campbell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwGIHUCtjU

You've done exactly the things which gamers are angry about. You've failed to research and thus have posted smears from your bully pulpit. Even in september that was over a month into the debacle, even rudimentary research would have led you to a different opinion. And the most glaring evidence your writeup is entirely wrong? You point to 4chan!! Sorry but gamergate discussion was banned from 4chan because moot became a sjw thanks to his relationship with a gawker PR girl and his desire for venture capital. This was just more evidence of how anti gamergate people manage to suppress speech on the internet and are the ones with the power to control the narrative. And you demonstrated the results of their control perfectly. If your "research" consists of reading the very same media echo chamber articles from polygon and kotaku, then of course you are going to be wrong. Its like getting all your news from fox. But in gaming, all the channels are fox news, but they claim to be progressive instead. But just in the way fox doesn't represent true classical conservative values, these gaming media publications do not represent anything progressive, which is why they are so dishonest and dangerous.

Again, go watch

Oliver Campbell stream #gamergate Threedog's news radio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8SG7QuxqD4

And square that circle, because you can't. Your demand we abandon an identity is a demand based on ignorance, and that is not all right at all.

I can see why the Wikipedia page, which linked me to this article, was flagged for bias.

They only sourced supporters of this Indie developer. This article lost all objectivity barely before it reached halfway through.

"If you want to be seen as a monolith, publicly shame the bad actors in your cohort. If you want to be seen as individuals, well, stop calling yourself gamers. Come up with some other means of self-identification. Because as of right now, the worst people standing behind the mantle of gamer have spoiled it for all of you."

Should I stop calling myself German now, because of Hitler? Should I stop calling myself Norwegian because of Breivik?

Are you mentally challenged?

Man, but the butthurt does flow :/

Checking in from the far flung future of early October, and this is still the best summary of #GamerGate I've read. People are still harassing devs, fans, and journalists over accusations of "breaches of journalistic integrity".

I feel really bad for the more reasonable people in the #GamerGate movement -- the ones who feel like the movement really should be about cleaning up gaming journalism. They get lumped in with some of the whiniest, most hateful, most entitled #Gamers I've ever come across. The worst part is, I'm sure they are trying to take the reigns of this movement, to push it in a productive direction rather than a destructive one, but they have not succeeded. Since the time this article was written there have been bomb threats as well as seriously disturbing threats of rape and murder leveled at female game developers and journalists. It's really sad.

The people in this comment thread who critically point at your 4chan link are right when they say that it doesn't show a case of "4chan ... pretending to be minorities and women". It shows an individual 4channer setting up guidelines for the use of the "#notyourshield" hashtag for use in bolstering #GamerGate's relevancy and authority in the face of accusations of racism and sexism. What the other critics have glossed over is the traditional 4chan-y casual racism involved in saying that #notyourshield should be used by "traditional minorities only" and definitely by no one with autism (sometimes 4chan slang doesn't well align with progressive movements :/ )

idk, maybe I'm just some libtard sjw lgbtq gamedev.

"If you see yourself as a bloc of people who call themselves "gamers," to outsiders you are only as good as your worst representatives, and the past month have shown those representatives to be racist, homophobic, misogynist, and threatening"

Does that mean I can't call myself Muslim because Bin Laden?

"But when there is clear evidence that 4chan is trying to bolster Gamergate's fight by pretending to be minorities and women, all credibility is lost."

That's simply not true, and it is actually self-evident from the screencap you've provided, Alex.

Quote in quote:

""IF YOU ARE WHITE, CIS AND MALE DO NOT MAKE 'CLAIMS' ON THIS TAG""

4chan is a community which supports anonymity. Problems how to distinguish people from crowd and to check they are the factual person behind some identity / text have prompted people with few ways to prove one's identity, a photo with a timestamp being one of them.

It is extremelly easy to check that most of people claiming #Notyourshield ARE in fact minorities.

This is coming from a white cis male from Poland who supports LGBT rights and player games throughout his whole childhood. I am for GamerGate not because of some Zoey Quinn's promiscuous behaviour or because the nepotism her sex-for-favours behaviour has unintentionally revealed. That game just isn't that important! And everyone in gaming actually knows the journalist industry is corrupt, whether indie or AAA games!

I am for GamerGate because it is actually SJWs that are trying to shame us, gamers. Because this whole "hate speech" thing has turned the tables, and right now it is gamers who are being slandered, collectively accusing us of non-existant misogyny and homophoby.

Underepresentations of women and LGBT people in games is NOT misogyny or homophoby. It is the crippling lack of such people developping GOOD GAMES.

Forcing BAD GAMES is not going to help your cause. EVER.

End of Line.

Hi Alex,

Heads up that there is a typo in the sixth paragraph. The word 'against' should be removed from the line "It's too hard to cover all of the accusations that are being made **against** by gamergate in detail, but I can bullet them pretty well."

Also happen to have two quick points regarding the links in the line "But when there is clear evidence that 4chan is trying to bolster Gamergate's fight by pretending to be minorities and women, all credibility is lost." I notice that the linked picture from the article "by pretending to be minorities and women" actually shows the exact opposite. From the text in the linked pic there is the quote "...IF YOU ARE WHITE, CIS AND MALE DO NOT MAKE 'CLAIMS' ON THIS TAG" which instructs users of 4chan to avoid pretending to be minorities, women, and LGBT.

Regarding the linked article in the line "bolster GamerGate's", the author mentions only one instance of a person posting a call for users to create new twitter accounts which seems minor in light of the GamerGate hastag being tweeted over a million times as of this post.

Hope this information was helpful!

4chan, a site that requires no account creation and is used by people all over the world, is discounted because you assume that it serves only a single demographic?

That screenshot is open to anybody. I'm Asian and that post would have fit me just fine. Europeans, South American, Africans, and so many other nationalities are capable of using the site any time with no hassle.

I came looking for this article because I saw you referenced on GamerGate's wikipedia page and I wanted to confirm that such a poorly made assumption was actually written and to see if there were any sources to back the claim. Color me disappointed then, not just in your poor journalism on that aspect but also in myself for increasing your view count. This isn't as bad as that one news channel saying "that 4chan guy" as if it was a single person.

Also, that image you have up top? That girl was designed by 4chan's /v/ideogames board. For The Fine Young Capitalists. For donating some $22,000 to them. For a project they were working on specifically designed to help attract more female game designers into the industry. That drawing they did was a simple request to have the character included in the game that TFYC eventually brings out and TFYC agreed because they wanted to thank /v/.

TFYC also plan on giving a portion of the profits for the game they eventually make to the designer, and then donating the rest to charity. And yet the only place I've seen them mentioned so far is in APGNation where they've mentioned that they've tried contacting several news outlets to give their side of this whole fiasco but the articles were never published.

Journalism in general is dead.

The mess continues to emulsify. Further coverage of its spillage into Wikipedia, as both sides fight over history: http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/07/wikipedia-and-the-war-on-womens-dignity/

So let me get this straight - one person posting about #NotYourShield in 4chan means that 4chan was trying to co-opt the movement? You do realize that 4chan allows anyone to post anything, completely anonymously and really doesn't take down a lot of posts?

Just because one person is attempting to corral a bunch of people does not mean all of the people acted in such a manner.

It almost sounded for a second that you understood 4chan. You clearly do not.

"There is a scintilla of truth and merit to some of the Gamergate complaints. The industry and journalists are too cozy."

Very true. That must be why GamerGate has shifted its focus away from slut shaming and onto bigger issues like the influence of AAA developer money on gaming journalism.

Oh right. They don't actually care about stuff like that.

And the worst of it is that a lot of the claims are actually totally legitimate. You claimed it was only a little bit of goodness, but the fact of the matter is that sleeping with someone immediately before they hire you is incredibly inappropriate, and yet, no one in the industry even batted an eye at that. Are young female developers expected to sleep around to get hired? Who knows!

Likewise, sleeping with someone immediately after you pen a positive article about them is an obvious conflict of interest - it doesn't matter if you didn't write the article to get laid, to an outside observer, that is exactly what happened, and there's nothing you can say to convince them otherwise. Frequently, the perception of corruption is as bad as corruption itself, and the outside observer has no way to differentiate between the two except his word - and unfortunately your word becomes worth a lot less in a situation like that. The fact of the matter is that he should have recognized it as a potential issue. And his bosses most certainly should have recognized it as a perception issue at a minimum. The fact that, again, people just unilaterally defended him demonstrates a lack of understanding of professional ethics in the gaming journalist industry. They SHOULD have said "Yes, that was dumb, but his bosses investigated and found that he was merely being stupid, not corrupt."

Instead, people claimed that it was none of the public's business. And that's wrong - it totally is their business, because you're asking for their trust. If they can't trust you, then they shouldn't read what you have to say.

I think you're missing a very important aspect of the story here, which is that, fundamentally, this all goes back to the fact that Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish are a big part of the problem. I'm not sure how familiar you are with them, but they're actually both very nasty people; they insult people, call them names, harass them, try to shame them, and Phil Fish is a little ball of rage all the time. Zoe Quinn is little better, though; she may claim to be for social justice, but she goes against everything social justice stands for, shaming people for being virgins, attacking people on the basis of rape or ethnicity, rejecting claims of sexual harassment, ect.

The thing is, none of this justifies any of it. But the fact of the matter is that Zoe Quinn, for all her whining, is exactly the problem - she's no better than the people who are yelling at her. Her behavior is frequently deeply inappropriate, and she often cries persecution when someone claims that her game is bad - exactly the sort of stuff she is complaining about "gamers" doing.

She is, fundamentally, a bully. So are all of these people. They're all small, mean people getting in fights with other small, mean people. And that's really what a lot of this misses - Zoe Quinn isn't a victim of the gaming community. She's exactly the sort of nasty person who gets in fights with people on the internet.

A number of people involved on both sides have gotten death threats - Zoe Quinn's supporters hacked The Fine Young Capitalists, they sent death threats to a Breitbart reporter (reportedly, over two dozen of them) who promptly declared that it must be Tuesday, and called everyone who criticized Zoe Quinn a rapist.

That's... not exactly the behavior of victims. That's the behavior of perpetrators.

In the realm of law, there's a concept of self defense. A lot of people misunderstand it to think that if they are upset, they have the right to shoot someone. That isn't how it works. If two people get into a fistfight, and both of them continue to show aggression, they're BOTH guilty of committing a crime. And that is precisely what is going on here. It isn't assault - its a fight.

If the actions of some anonymous posters on an anonymous board whose intentions are unknowable is enough to discredit the "movement" do the anonymous posters whose intentions are at least somewhat tangible, by way of $5,000+ donated to the feminist gaming charity lambasted by Quinn and ignored in this article, not lend a shred of credibility? Benefit of the doubt?

I understand its reputation and the ease in which it may be generalized, but one should remember it's a website with millions upon millions of unique visitors and no prerequisite to post. While you're correct in saying those twisting the merits of "GamerGate" should be shamed, taking a stance that those who don't are complicit is no more fair than to vilify you, Alex, for posting to Reddit, a website with boards dedicated to beating women. http://www.reddit.com/r/beatingwomen2

If you'd like to read a sourced version of all the events I just posted, you can read them here: https://medium.com/@cainejw/a-narrative-of-gamergate-and-examination-of-claims-of-collusion-with-4chan-5cf6c1a52a60 I get no benefit from this other than reporting facts with sources I can find without conflating accusations and opinions of accusations.

This is what you're supposed to be doing as a journalist. It shouldn't be up to us to factcheck. You get paid for that. I don't.

You should be exposing this stuff, not us.

"For what it's worth, this campaign appears to be working..."

And she's asked multiple times not to be made into the story. But here we are. You're making her into the story. Way to honor a subject's privacy. That, by the way, is another ethical no-no. You always honor your source or subject's self-determination over your right to page views.

"Game designer and media critic Mattie Brice has said that she will no longer recommend other minorities get into the games industry."

I'm sorry, is this something to celebrate? She's punishing minorities. Shouldn't you be investigating, say, why this is the case? Why she would react in a way and, by the way, why it would matter when clearly she's had no effect?

Oh, and while we're on it, why not look into the state of journalism diversity while we're at it since you're so concerned with developer diversity. Let me tell you why. Because I looked into it and I found the diversity rates for journalists in games media is statistically identical to diversity in development.

You guys are guilty of the problem!

"Even though Gamergate has insisted over and over again that it is not anti-woman, it seems that the only people who are retreating from it are women. Well, women and Phil Fish. "

Except the tag is full of women. And men. And LGBT people. But you in your concern for diversity dismiss us as fake, non-existent, or helpless puppets. Thanks. So progressive. Much understanding.

"The most frustrating aspect of this, I think, is that there is a scintilla of truth and merit to some of the Gamergate complaints. The industry and journalists are too cozy."

There's a lot of truth and merit! Tons! But every time we try to bring it up, you know what you do? This!

"Gamers are diverse. But when there is clear evidence that 4chan is trying to bolster Gamergate's fight by pretending to be minorities and women, all credibility is lost."

YOU SAY WE DON'T BLOODY EXIST! You write a hit piece saying we're all bad people! You feed directly into the narrative with completely incorrect information derived from the same people who give you completely incorrect information and you're happy to do it because they got clicks and so will you!

"If you want to be seen as a monolith, publicly shame the bad actors in your cohort. If you want to be seen as individuals, well, stop calling yourself gamers. Come up with some other means of self-identification. Because as of right now, the worst people standing behind the mantle of gamer have spoiled it for all of you."

Oh, look, another white, cis, het man of much privilege checking telling other people what their identity is, how they should exercise it, and what they should do if they don't accept your narrative of who they are.

Sincerely,

A gay gamer who exists and is not your shield.

"As for the other accusations against this developer, they too seem unfounded. But as two enterprising tweeters..."

I'm sorry, did you mean to make this leap? "The other accusations aren't true. YOU TRY BEING A JOURNALIST!" Again, the accusations about the developer do not matter. The issue is with the press and the nature of relationships with independent developers who have a convoluted relationship with press including, but not limited to, financial relationships, friendships, sexual relationships, infatuations, and as we've seen now, a hostile relationship with "gamers"

"Part of the problem here is that the world of "gamers" simultaneously want to be treated as a monolith and as individuals... those representatives to be racist, homophobic, misogynist, and threatening. "

Part of the problem is you can't decide what you want. Do you want to focus on sex, ethics, reporting, relationships? Who knows. You're just throwing everything at the wall at this point.

Also, for the record, you cannot advocate social justice while simultaneously dismissing any minority voice because they don't line up with your belief system. I suggest you examine your privilege if you think you have the right to decide minorities don't exist.

"The service of the press is to critique the world it interrogates."

Incorrect. Every single source of journalism says that the press has a duty to the truth for the service of the people who rely on it for accurate decision-making. Critique has nothing to do with the news. It really has nothing to do with editorializing either as every body with editorial ethics also place truth and the reader well above opinion or critique.

"That is the service that the gaming press and Anita Sarkeesian provide when they look critically at the way women are treated in gaming... "

If you're going to praise her, just link to her work and be done with it. Stop flirting around with it and do it. Plug her and move on.

"And sure, there are plenty of stories about the gaming press getting too cozy with developers. Like the time Jeff Gertsmann... "

The events of Gerstmann's firing happened in 2007. Twitter was founded in 2006. Complaining that Twitter didn't explode in 2007 is like complaining that the TV didn't explode because the Titanic sank. Twitter wasn't even relevant and Facebook was in its infancy.

Then saying, "Oh, why don't you guys look over here!" I hate to break this to you, but you're the press here. Not us. We shouldn't have to look into this and show you the facts that you're clearly missing. That's your job, not ours.

The disclaimer you put above was added after someone sent Anita Sarkeesian, an unrelated party, a threat that was unrelated to any of these events. Prior, insults were used against the 5 men involved, the ex-boyfriend, and the developer.

"What was not expected was that harrassers would extrapolate from this interminably long blog post about two people's sex lives..."

It wasn't expected because you thought we'd focus on the sex information. We did not care. Nearly immediately, people wondered if this meant there was a conflict between the journalist and the developer as well as wondering if the developer's lover's wife had been informed.

The insults, again, were not gendered. They were aimed at all involved including calling the ex-boyfriend various slurs for releasing the information.

"A week later, feminist culture critic Anita Sarkeesian,..."

This is unrelated to any of these events other than happening around the events in question. There's no indication the person making the threats was associated with any participants as it was a new account created to send just the threats within a short amount of time.

"From this, Gamergate was born. It's too hard to cover all of the accusations that are being made against by gamergate in detail, but I can bullet them pretty well."

You are incorrect. GamerGate was not born because of Sarkeesian's threats. It came after Joss Whedon tweeted support for her and demoralized the group. The same day, Adam Baldwin tweeted in support and created the tag "GamerGate" the day after.

Prior to tweeting to a woman in response, nobody mentioned Baldwin's name. Prior to Baldwin creating the tag, contact was limited with him. He created it and linked to the videos detailing the scandal and calling into question journalistic ethics.

"All of the accusations of sexual favors for jobs and favorable press have been debunked..."

You are focusing on the affair here. You're ignoring the potential conflict of a relationship that did not spring out of thin air. Relationships are multidimensional and have many forms which can all result in a different report by a journalist who is reporting on a subject he has a potentially unprofessional relationship with. Stop focusing on the sex while also reporting that the sex is the problem.

I am disappointed by your reporting. I'm going to have to correct it now as is needed.

"Before I comment on Gamergate, I guess I have to explain what it is..."

This is incorrect. GamerGate did not form because of Quinn's personal life. GamerGate, as a tag, formed after Adam Baldwin tweeted the tag in response to a video he received detailing the potential conflicts of interest when a male journalist was implicated.

The press decided, erroneously, to focus only on the woman as the victim because the original disclosure revolved around her. However, while the original story revolved around her (from the boyfriend), gamers, Adam Baldwin, and all that followed focused nearly entirely on the events concerning a journalist's potential conflict of interest.

"As is expected on the internet, a predictable wave of gendered insults and death threats followed, even though the blog's author appended the following warning:

I DO NOT STAND BY THE CURRENT ABUSE AND HARASSMENT OF [DEVELOPER] OR FRIENDS. STOP DOING THAT. IT IS NOT IN ANYONE’S BEST INTEREST. "

Again, this is incorrect. Insults were lobbed at all involved. The initial reaction was that 4chan, the third website to pick up the story, was that the story was not related to gaming. In the second time the website discussed it, the reactions were mixed including, but not limited to, calling the men in the story names, saying the story was not games related, and dismissing it as fake.

> If you see yourself as a bloc of people who call themselves "gamers," to outsiders you are only as good as your worst representatives,

So that means absolutely every bloc, party, movement, and gathering is immediately illegitimate because there will always be some mean spirited and dishonest person within their ranks. By this logic you can say the entire human race is only as good as our worst.

> The service of the press is to critique the world it interrogates.

Nope. It is to impartially inform and report while being unbiased. Critiquing is about as bias as it gets.

> Game designer and media critic Mattie Brice has said that she will no longer recommend other minorities get into the games industry.

Dear minorities: you clearly don't know what's best for you, so stay out of video games. Sign, Mattie Brice.

> The most frustrating aspect of this, I think, is that there is a scintilla of truth and merit to some of the Gamergate complaints. The industry and journalists are too cozy. Gamers are diverse. But when there is clear evidence that 4chan is trying to bolster Gamergate's fight by pretending to be minorities and women, all credibility is lost

Once again you tell us we are all at the mercy of the minorities. This logic has a hole in it big enough to park the titanic in!

Also I wonder how the do all the People of Color, People with disabilities, homosexuals, transsexuals, and women feel about you immediately dismissing them as just white dudes as they desperately try to make their voices heard? https://twitter.com/hashtag/notyourshield

But no, clearly doesn't bother you much! So keep on pretending that a few guys control the thousands of people who identify themselves as gamers. Keep on preaching your disgusting, thoughtless, illogical, and massive generalizations. And keep on telling minorities that they're all just white people and don't exist even if they are posting their photos and passports. I don't think anyone's going to do something as silly as call that offensive and bizarre.

As far as I understand the so called "social justice warriors" and "men's right activists" deserve each other.

One group is trying to push a social agenda in which they are victims in every way it can, the other group is trying to troll everything that moves and would find other victims if it weren't these ones.

As far as the gamer tag goes, its easy for you to group everyone together as you seem to be looking for an angle. By your metric "If you see yourself as a bloc of people who call themselves "journalists" to outsiders you are only as good as your worst representatives" so... I should judge you guys by The National Enquirer? 4chan /bastards are not defined by their identity as gamers BTW.

I am a gamer as far as I play games and have been since the days of Commodore 64. That's it. There always was a tag that went with the category since its inception... I never cared so why would I care now?

I hope "social justice warriors" understand that its not only white misogynistic men who are gaming, there are a ton of women too. My sister and a lot of my female friends do. I don't see why they should be cast in the role of victims though. I never saw them as victims, they don't see themselves as victims... why the hell should you try to make me see them as victims? They are doing what they like in a space that is not segmented by gender. Its, at its core, a hobby and a simple question of taste.

As far as 4chan goes, they are trolls looking for victims. They always have been a scary group to contend with and they are definitely the last ones you want to attract attention from. They are like a bored high school bully with good to great technical skills, creative minds and a remorseless dedication that comes from anonymity. Oh, and they also hate convention and hypocrisy.

SJW's want to be portrayed as victims? Great! You have just attracted the attention of the biggest bully of the internet. You get to be a true victim. Have fun with your life.

As far as your opinion goes, Mr.Goldman, I do not need your approval or your pathetic moralistic attempt at a scolding.

"If you want to be seen as individuals, well, stop calling yourself gamers. Come up with some other means of self-identification. Because as of right now, the worst people standing behind the mantle of gamer have spoiled it for all of you."

Mr.Goldman. I love onthemedia and I will continue to listen to you guys but you can, kindly, go fuck yourself.

Is it just me or are there like, no sympathetic groups or humans at any level of this story? To be clear, I do understand the issues that women face in gaming, but every element of this just seems deeply unsavory.

From now on I'm only hanging out with gamers who I approve of (read: playing Star Wars Battlefront II by myself on an empty server)

"Gamers are diverse. But when there is clear evidence that 4chan is trying to bolster Gamergate's fight by pretending to be minorities and women, all credibility is lost."

Am I missing something? In the screenshot I see somebody on 4chan telling white cis males to not actively participate in it.

Journalists are being beheaded in the sands of Syria, arrested and tear gassed in an American city and these people want to invent and drive "scandals" about a video game maker sleeping with a video game writer? Really? They realize, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter, right?

The fact that it's an opportunity for a segment of our culture to show how ignorant, misogynistic and out of touch with reality it is welcome — but if you needed this to see that you've been in a cave.

You're free to call yourself an America all you want, Bradley.

It's too bad that I can no longer call myself an America. Some other people, who also happen to call themselves American, have said things I personally don't agree with and have spoiled it for the rest of us. I wonder what self-identification I should start using now. Westcostaterian.......

Thanks for the clarification, James, I struck that from the article.

Oh, Phil Fish.

Why is 4chan's credibility lost when they fake being something, Sarkeesian's points are still valid? Sometimes the large group of angry people are right and angry for a reason.

Excellent summary of the issues; I particularly appreciate your ability to note that there is a scintilla of a legitimate issue to be considered here without ceding any ground to the unfortunately overwhelming noise of the crazies.

A minor note, however: You link to an article about CBSi's purchase of GiantBomb, describing it as a purchase of a gaming blog by a game store. This is not correct. CBSi is the parent company of GameSPOT, another video game coverage site, not GameSTOP, the (unrelated) games retailer. The linked article does include the SPOT/STOP switchup in one sentence, but Gerstmann was certainly only over a Gamespot employee, and CBSi does not own Gamestop.

That small error aside, I think you did a great job describing and evaluating the issue. I hope you are not hounded by psychopaths for doing so.