“…grown-ups have a hard time believing that ethics in video game journalism is worth sending death threats to a feminist on Twitter. It’s entertainment journalism. It might as well be E!, and the absolute worst thing that can happen is an undeserved game gets a good review or a great game gets trashed. Is that unethical if the opinion of the reviewer has a conflict of interest or has been compelled to do so by a game studio? Sure, of course it is, but that story will never, ever be more important than, say, Felicia Day saying she’s afraid to comment publicly on GamerGate because she might get harassed and then immediately getting called a stupid cunt and having her home address posted. One of those is a real news story demanding immediate attention, and the fact that so many people chose to double down that the journalistic ethics concerns were of equal weight made GamerGate look entitled, childish, and most of all mean.”
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Houston Press on why GamerGate failed. There’s lots of stuff in here, but this bit seemed key to what some of the more moderate gamergaters simply never understood, especially the ones who came to it post the “Gamers Are Dead” articles. “I will start associating with a group which is born of harassment of women because I have hurt feelings about an article I misread” is just not a good look to the rest of the world.
(Via Rowan Kaiser)