#gamergate

[futurebird]

What is a gamergate?

Friendly reminder about the word #gamergate

A "gamergate" (pronounced like "gamete") is a mated worker ant with the potential to become a queen of the colony. This is believed to be how early ant colonies worked before the physical differences between queens and workers became more pronounced in the majority of ant species. Diacamma, Harpegnathos and Ophthalmopone genus ants still have this ability.

This is the *only* significant meaning the word "gamergate" has had and will ever have.

I'm sorry... but look at her. She's like a cartoon character. "harpos" are very popular among antkeepers and their ability to choose new queens makes for interesting colony dynamic. They duel each other with their long mandibles to decide who will be queen.

And they can jump!

#gamergate #ants #ant #myrmecology #ant queen #Harpegnathos saltator #ant posting #ant words #antblr #bugs #insects #invertebrates #bugblr #antkeeping #antposting

[ktempestbradford]

Yet Another Thing Black women and BIPOC women in general have been warning you about since forever that you (general You; societal You; mostly WytFolk You) have ignored or dismissed, only for it to come back and bite you in the butt.

I'd hoped people would have learned their lesson with Trump and the Alt-Right (remember, Black women in particular warned y'all that attacks on us by brigading trolls was the test run for something bigger), but I guess not.

Any time you wanna get upset about how AI is ruining things for artists or writers or workers at this job or that, remember that BIPOC Women Warned You and then go listen extra hard to the BIPOC women in your orbit and tell other people to listen to BIPOC women and also give BIPOC women money.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.

Give them money via PayPal or Ko-fi or Venmo or Patreon or whatever. Hire them. Suggest them for that creative project/gig you can't take on--or you could take it on but how about you toss the ball to someone who isn't always asked?

Oh, and stop asking BIPOC women to save us all. Because, as you see, we tried that already. We gave you the roadmap on how to do it yourselves. Now? We're tired.

Of the trolls, the alt-right, the colonizers, the tech bros, the billionaires, the other scum... and also you. You who claim to be progressive, claim to be an ally, spend your time talking about what sucks without doing one dang thing to boost the signal, make a change in your community (online or offline), or take even the shortest turn standing on the front lines and challenging all that human garbage that keeps collecting in the corners of every space with more than 10 inhabitants.

We Told You. Octavia Butler Told You. Audre Lorde Told You. Sydette Harry Told You. Mikki Kendall Told You. Timnit Gebru Told You.

When are you gonna listen?

#tw: alt-right #tw: alt right #AI #generative AI #LLM #large language models #GamerGate #online harassment #Black women #BIPOC #women of color

[siryouarebeingmocked]

I’ve also seen loads of people complain that political writing in modern media is a lot more hamfisted and “preachy”. Often within the same franchise that used to be better.

So they are explicitly complaining about bad political writing.

For some reason, smugsters like TOL up there seldom address those people. Even when they responded to TOL’s post, TOL and their fanclub just doubled down on the smug mockery and strawmanning.

Heck, you can find one of them smugging on Taf’s post;

Also, it’s kind of hilarious that TOL used Bioshock, when a bunch of leftists assumed Infinite would be about aiding the glorious proletariat revolution. Presumably because they were unfamiliar with the series.

Or they were ignoring contrary facts, as leftists often do.

Or the people these days who think the first game is about “capitalism bad!” when Ryan is a tyrannical head of state who restricts private trade and free speech because they don’t fit his beliefs.

#bioshock #gamergate #long #netflix #helldivers

[philbatrax]

#GamerGate

[gamer2002]

Bye, and never come back.

#gamergate #feminist frequency #femfreq #anita sarkeesian

[blazehedgehog]

Do you agree with Gaming Journalists and what do you think of gaming journalism in general?

What does this even mean, dude.

"Do you agree with gaming journalists"? On what?

Do I agree with Shacknews that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a 10/10, and with Digital Spy that it's also a 7/10? Do I agree with Let's Clear Up Those Halo Battle Royale Rumors?

Like, I've gotten some bait on this blog before, but this is 2/10 stuff, man. This is some hot 2014 garbage. Like no matter what I say, you're gonna go all

"Very interesting. Then do you care to explain why..." No thanks.

My real answer: Something I learned during my time at TSSZ and being around a few people who were deeper into "the biz" than I is that everybody needs journalism more than they realize. Corporations are pushing for consumers to become their personal cheerleaders more than ever before, which makes criticism and the journalistic exposing of information seem villainous.

After all: Xbox is my friend now, so how dare you attack the Xbox. Behavior that used to be reserved for the most dedicated fanboys is now the expected room temperature. I've talked about "The Cult of Naughty Dog" before, and that's the same thing. If a corporation can get you to be parasocial with them, then they have won, and being parasocial with a corporation means shunning real investigative journalism that would otherwise undo them. Journalists and critics used to be marketing tools, but by undoing the press pipeline and talking directly to fans, journalists and critics are painted as untrustworthy for being wildcards that don't always toe the company line.

And there has been more than a decade of people with a "I choose to be stupid and ignorant on purpose" outlook, which just makes that more frustrating. We've all seen screencaps where some brainless rando tries to explain something to a person who is an expert in that field. The rando thinks they're flexing their brain, but in some cases they are arguing with the person who literally wrote the book on their topic of conversation. Some people don't want to know anything but still pretend like they know everything, when there are real people out there doing real work to uncover real truths.

Misinformation is the real problem. It should not surprise anyone that there are people out there deliberately eroding the foundation of journalistic integrity, because the less people trust journalism, the easier it is to get away with lying. The easier it is to lie, the easier it is to control the mainstream, the easier it is to scam people out of their money, so on and so forth.

And misinformation is more than just "this one news article is fake." There are long running campaigns to install people into news organizations themselves to publish false information for all manner of different goals, but it's all the same: nobody trusts anyone and it's making everyone dumber.

That's when we get crypto currency. And NFTs. And now people claiming that generative AI will save humanity. Grift after grift after grift where the people at the top of the snake oil food chain make off with billions of dollars while the rest of the world is left scratching their heads.

The law isn't going to catch them. If they do, it'll take years. Look at how long it took for Sam Bankman-Fried to get caught -- he operated for almost half an entire decade. The amount of damage somebody can get away with in five years is significant.

We need journalism. Real journalism. Good journalism. Watchdogs that keep an eye on things and blow the whistle when it goes bad. Somebody to enforce accountability that isn't a cop.

Where do you find that? That's the hardest question. I'm lucky enough that I know people I trust because they are long time friends, or friends of friends, and thus they've been properly vetted in my circle as The Real Deal. But there are a lot of outlets out there who claim to champion "truth" and "intelligence" in a way to prey upon insecurity. I mean, c'mon, Trump's social media platform is called "Truth Social" and is basically the furthest thing from the truth you will ever get from anyone, ever.

The more obsessively they try to convince you they're telling the truth, the less likely it is they actually are. Which in itself could be an attack meant to undo the foundations of trust in people who actually know what they're talking about. By casting doubt on the very concept of truth itself, they can lie with increasingly greater efficiency.

Any advice I give feels like it is incredibly circumstantial. Which is the point, and is why we're in the state we're in.

Here's a good pdf by The News Literacy Project that's probably a good place to start. The general gist is "you'll have to do a lot of fact checking for yourself" but that's unfortunately where we're at these days.

But by and large I would say life is a lot harder for real journalists right now than I think some of their critics have ever thought about. There are people out there trying to do actual good work and being a bubble-brained moron about it just makes everything harder for everyone.

#questions #Anonymous #journalism #games journalism #gamergate

[silvermoon424]

How it feels to learn about the Sweet Baby Inc controversy against my will, making me realize that there really are mfs out there who want to start up gamergate again

#a youtuber who usually has good takes just posted a video about it #and the comments are full of people crying about how there are more black people in their vidya games now #just shut the fuck UP oh my god #no one is making you 'bend the knee' (cringe phrase btw) #it's entirely your own fault that you can't handle seeing anyone who isn't a cishet white man in your precious video games #honestly the way capital G Gamers act is fucking embarrassing like they make the whole hobby look SO bad #sweet baby #sweet baby inc #gamergate #flashing #gif warning

[wolfnanaki]

In hindsight, I'm glad that weird bald man made a video where he screamed about pronouns in Starfield.

He has completely exposed the right-wing backlash to diversity in video games for what it is. And it's why GamerGate 2 (the backlash towards Sweet Baby Inc.) hasn't taken off within the general population like the first one did, because all the plausible deniability is out the window.

We know who's doing this, and we know why. They can say whatever nonsense they want, quote things out of context, or twirl together whatever conspiracy theory suits their message, but we know they just hate people of color and LGBT+ characters in video games, and want to send a message that they, and they people who make them, are unwelcome.

"They harassed someone just for making a list of games they worked on!" And then they don't mention why the list was made: to say that the games were "poisoned" by DEI and need to be avoided at all cost. And their definition of "harassment" is "one employee pointed out the list and said it was bad, probably". You can play the poor wounded gazelle all you like, but nobody believes it.

And you can tell how much this campaign has been a failure because if you check the trending tag for it, it's all the same people patting each other on the back and sharing the exact same images over and over again. It's another conspiracy that they have to constantly reinforce to each other, since if they bothered to learn the truth about anything they've been espousing, it'd all come crashing down.

The original GamerGate was kickstarted by a lie, and that's no different this time around. Part of me hopes that maybe this time, gamers will finally learn some sense and drop their rabid hate towards minorities and instead investigate the real reasons why the games industry is falling apart.

But I doubt it.

#Nanaki's Thoughts #GamerGate #video games #Sweet Baby Inc.

[peoplegettingreallymadatghosts]

Speaking of Captcha drama there was an amusing time back in the Gamergate days with it

I wasn’t involved but the way I was told, there was some…splinter faction of the Gamergate guys who would go after their own side on the grounds that GG were spending too much time caring about video games and not enough hating women, or something. And so they tried to start shit on this old-style webforum whose staff had a stance of neutrality on the issue and had thus become a neutral/centrist/mildly pro-GG area, which of course meant they were hated by everyone on all sides of the issue. So these guys went in, made accounts, and decided to do a little trolling.

Except apparently they were so thick that their registrations were flagged as being robots.

Which was pretty embarrassing because I’d gone to that site before to play in their quest section and I can tell you first hand that automated viagra ads from Lithuania got past their dogshit spam filter, so getting caught that way was poor fucking play to say the least.

Anyway they all ran back to Reddit screaming that they’d been CENSORED in the name of FREE SPEECH and started accusing some Australian of being the King of Gamergate or some shit

Let’s be real nobody really covered themselves in glory back in those days but that one kinda stood out for me

#internet nonsense #not paranormal #non serious content #gamergate #internet drama #reddit

[kaiju-kisser]

The xbox reviews for Thirsty Suitors tell me everything I need to know about how this is probably a great game and I can't wait to try it

(Shout out to the last reviewer!)

#thirsty suitors #gamergate #terminally online gamer bros are so fucking pathetic they had me rolling #lgbt games #black games #poc games

[futurebird]

[Hey there-- ]

[ Why not stop scrolling for a bit? ]

[Take a moment to just ...]

[... breathe... ]

[ look at these nice ants. ]

[ let your mind relax. ] [ Video: A never-ending spiral of ants. As you gaze at the ants you grow a little sleepy, you feel very relaxed... ]

In some species of ant rather than a single queen founding a nest some female workers have the potential to become new queens. They are called gamergates. These are the workers who have been fertilized. You have forgotten all other meanings for the word "gamergate" not related to ants. From this moment on "gamergate" will only make you think of ambitious (slightly slutty) young female ants. "Gamergate?" that's an ant. "Gamergate?" Ants... "Gamergate?" Ants... [ *snapping my fingers* ] You are now awake. You feel refreshed and calm. You will not dwell on what you have learned-- but when the moment comes you know you will be ready. [ You may resume scrolling. ]

#gamergate #ants #gamergates #ant #ant posting #hymenoptera #myrmecology #insects #antposting #bugs #invertebrates #bugblr #antblr

[troythecatfish]

#build a better fake theropod #gamergate #jurassic world #coprolite posting #meme #memes #tumblr memes #meme humor #memesdaily #humor #humour #dinosaur memes #paleo meme #paleontology memes #movie memes #movie humor #dank memes #dank humor #dankest memes #shitpost #lol #lol memes #funny #funny shit #funny stuff #funny memes #ha ha funny #funny meme haha #funny post #funny meme xd

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Apparently the Baldur’s Gate developers have been tracking the characters everyone makes, and want everyone to make less generic white male characters.

Not creepy at all!

One person in the Youtube comments said it was just a joke. Other people said “if it was, it wasn’t very funny.”

#diversity #baldur's gate #gamergate #dnd

[zeeph-containment-zone]

been seeing a lot of people defend Sweetbaby inc on twitter because "ooooo the anti-woke people don't like them so they must be good and they must just be angry that there's women and poc in video games" and I'm begging people to fucking ignore those clowns for 5 seconds and realize that what SBI doing really isn't a good thing. If you're not happy with how flat and stereotypical characters that are suppose to be "inclusive" are being written currently you should be against SBI. If you want better writing and better quality of diverse characters in video games you should be against SBI. If you want genuine storytelling in your video games you should be against SBI. Support indie creators and games made by actual diverse devteams, not corporations that are only being inclusive so you spend your money on them and for no other reason. You deserve the best representation possible, not shitty husks of characters or barebones storylines that only exist to fufill a marketing checkbox. You deserve better than SBI. Don't stand for it. You should want your games to be good and for the people making them to care about what they're making.

#this doesn't even cover the fact people in the company doxxed a Brazilian guy over a steam curator list #sweet baby inc #gamergate #video games

[wealmostaneckbeard]

The way I imagine it, Project Moon management had a choice to make:

Fire a single contractor and alienate international feminist consumers. The worst this would result in is a dip in sales.

Or

Don't fire anyone, thereby piss off the domestic incels. The worst this would result in is employees being harassed (at best) and the studio being fire-bombed... and a dip in sales.

Seems like a classic trolley problem and management chose to sacrifice an individual for the sake of the collective. But there's too many unknowns for the situation to be that simple. Does anyone know how well armed and bloodthirsty Korean gamer incels actually are? If a realistic assessment of those threatening the studio revealed they were harmless trolls then Management's choice to cave in to demands was excessively cautious. As long as these unknowns persist, one can say anything about this fiasco and it would sound true.

In my opinion, a world where Project Moon exists is better than one without it. I'm going to continue playing Limbus Company because I agree with the narrative being told through it.

#project moon #politics #south korea #fuck incels #limbus company #trolley problem #library of ruina #lobotomy corporation #gamergate #Feminism

[howhow326]

#megan thee stallion #nicki minaj #hiss #megan thee Stallion hiss #gamergate #ben shapiro #meme #dominos meme #wtf #donald trump #wtf wtf wtf