09-28-2015, 05:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-28-2015, 05:09 AM by SamuraiGaiden.
Edit Reason: I suddenly remembered who the Lizard Squad were...
)
It's not necessarily just celebrity, though. Put the same celebrities on equal footing and it will generally be the female celebrity who gets gender-based harassment, and harassment in general, more. I find it highly doubtful that Arin Hanson gets nearly as many threats of rape as Anita Sarkeesian.
Now, does that mean that Arin doesn't get anything? No, of course not, he recently said that he gets enough flak for stuff that he doesn't even read comments anymore because there's too much vitriol.
And you could easily argue that Arin is the bigger celebrity. Anita's last video on Youtube has 335 thousand views; posted a week ago. One of Arin's video on Game Grumps, from around the same time a week ago, has 856 thousand views. Even if we assume 50% of the people are watching for Danny and miraculously mute the video any time Arin speaks so have never even heard of him, even though they watch his video, that's still 428 thousand to 335 thousand.
Does Arin have an entire community who actively plot to try to get him to leave the internet and possibly even kill himself? No; at least not the size that GamerGate is. Even that video you linked to is just a GamerGater, near as I can tell. If Anita made a video where she said that Bananas were yellow guys like him would make videos talking about how she's wrong and show a bunch of unripe bananas to prove they're actually green.
Celebrity breeds vitriol in jealous people, you are 100% correct. But to pretend or claim that male celebrities in gaming and female celebrities in gaming get the same amount of vitriol?
You said...
Meanwhile Terrence Howard beats his wife (wives, actually, plural) and his coworkers jump to his defense.
To some people success is a reason to hate others. We all have that inside us a bit. You look at the guy who was born into wealth while you're digging in your pocket to see if you can buy two packets of Ramen noodles today, instead of just one, and you hate him. Sure, it's gonna happen. The difference is why you hate him.
You hate him because he is wealthy and you are not. He is not successful, he simply had wealth and power dumped on him. You resent his opportunities he was born into wealth. You don't really hate him; everything you read about him makes him sound like a half-decent guy, actually. But boy-oh-boy do you hate his lucky wealth!
A woman makes a decent video game and its popular and you look at her and see the game you've never had the courage or fortitude to make...and you hate her. She's just a woman and she did something I couldn't? She sold a thousand copies of her game? I'm a man and I only sold eighteen copies of my game...and two of those were to my mommy. What's this? She's not a perfectly infallible person? I had better start building a guillotine just for her, because she deserves for having a vagina and a mind!
Now, as I continue to say...harassment is wrong. Just plain wrong. But if you stand two people in a room and give people the opportunity to throw rocks at them and one of them gets 27 more rocks thrown at them than the other...you have to start thinking about how to address the rock-throwers to help alleviate that bias.
I would argue that not doing something makes it far worse. Let's assume you are absolutely correct...young men and boys (the ones who are most susceptible to harassment and suicidal thoughts of the male gender) who are being harassed will be less likely to do anything about it because they'll feel it's a women's issue and they're just not man enough to exist online.
Is that worse than these young men and boys growing up watching their peers and elders harass women and being taught, "It's okay, nothing will happen to you because these bitches deserve it". Then they start to harass as well...and that's where we are now.
Even the conversation we're having a difference in vitriolic value based on gender. Anita says Feminist things, she gets death threats. Skallagrim says Feminist things...people threaten to unsubscribe. Arin Hansom says Feminist things...and people threaten to unsubscribe. See the difference? There are far more people in the world who believe that women shouldn't have a voice and for that matter, women need a voice.
Edit: BTW...the Lizard Squad you mentioned. These are the same guys who falsely claimed they hacked Taylor Swift's computer and threatened to release nude photos of her if she didn't pay a ransom, right? So tell me...how many naked photos of the guy in the video you linked have they threatened to release?
Now, does that mean that Arin doesn't get anything? No, of course not, he recently said that he gets enough flak for stuff that he doesn't even read comments anymore because there's too much vitriol.
And you could easily argue that Arin is the bigger celebrity. Anita's last video on Youtube has 335 thousand views; posted a week ago. One of Arin's video on Game Grumps, from around the same time a week ago, has 856 thousand views. Even if we assume 50% of the people are watching for Danny and miraculously mute the video any time Arin speaks so have never even heard of him, even though they watch his video, that's still 428 thousand to 335 thousand.
Does Arin have an entire community who actively plot to try to get him to leave the internet and possibly even kill himself? No; at least not the size that GamerGate is. Even that video you linked to is just a GamerGater, near as I can tell. If Anita made a video where she said that Bananas were yellow guys like him would make videos talking about how she's wrong and show a bunch of unripe bananas to prove they're actually green.
Celebrity breeds vitriol in jealous people, you are 100% correct. But to pretend or claim that male celebrities in gaming and female celebrities in gaming get the same amount of vitriol?
You said...
Quote:Anita and Zoe will get harassed while people hide behind gender-based insults, but those same kinds of insults would still come at them using different words if they were men.Zoe Quinn had an entire anti-Woman movement start up because she made a successful game and had the audacity to not die a virgin.
Meanwhile Terrence Howard beats his wife (wives, actually, plural) and his coworkers jump to his defense.
To some people success is a reason to hate others. We all have that inside us a bit. You look at the guy who was born into wealth while you're digging in your pocket to see if you can buy two packets of Ramen noodles today, instead of just one, and you hate him. Sure, it's gonna happen. The difference is why you hate him.
You hate him because he is wealthy and you are not. He is not successful, he simply had wealth and power dumped on him. You resent his opportunities he was born into wealth. You don't really hate him; everything you read about him makes him sound like a half-decent guy, actually. But boy-oh-boy do you hate his lucky wealth!
A woman makes a decent video game and its popular and you look at her and see the game you've never had the courage or fortitude to make...and you hate her. She's just a woman and she did something I couldn't? She sold a thousand copies of her game? I'm a man and I only sold eighteen copies of my game...and two of those were to my mommy. What's this? She's not a perfectly infallible person? I had better start building a guillotine just for her, because she deserves for having a vagina and a mind!
Now, as I continue to say...harassment is wrong. Just plain wrong. But if you stand two people in a room and give people the opportunity to throw rocks at them and one of them gets 27 more rocks thrown at them than the other...you have to start thinking about how to address the rock-throwers to help alleviate that bias.
I would argue that not doing something makes it far worse. Let's assume you are absolutely correct...young men and boys (the ones who are most susceptible to harassment and suicidal thoughts of the male gender) who are being harassed will be less likely to do anything about it because they'll feel it's a women's issue and they're just not man enough to exist online.
Is that worse than these young men and boys growing up watching their peers and elders harass women and being taught, "It's okay, nothing will happen to you because these bitches deserve it". Then they start to harass as well...and that's where we are now.
Even the conversation we're having a difference in vitriolic value based on gender. Anita says Feminist things, she gets death threats. Skallagrim says Feminist things...people threaten to unsubscribe. Arin Hansom says Feminist things...and people threaten to unsubscribe. See the difference? There are far more people in the world who believe that women shouldn't have a voice and for that matter, women need a voice.
Edit: BTW...the Lizard Squad you mentioned. These are the same guys who falsely claimed they hacked Taylor Swift's computer and threatened to release nude photos of her if she didn't pay a ransom, right? So tell me...how many naked photos of the guy in the video you linked have they threatened to release?