#Gamergate

I don't want to dignify most of this discussion with a response, especially as I'd like to ignore that some of you are even involved with it, but I feel like I have to say this much: if you think games journalists and developers aren't close, you're wrong. It obviously doesn't mean sex most of the time, but devs (not even just indie devs) and journalists are often very close. Just look at Giant Bomb's E3 or GDC panels. Just look at Twitter. And yet the industry continues. I'm not saying any of this is necessarily a good or bad thing, but if this is somehow shocking to you, if this is the eye opener, that's sorta laughably naive. And I'd add that if you think friendship or association is enough to taint a journalist, I question why you trust their opinion to begin with, because clearly you don't think they have any integrity at all.

Otherwise, I agree with this post for the most part, so I'll let that speak for me rather than repeating most of it if you're going to disagree with it anyway. I'll clarify that I'm not sure I feel ok with commenting on her ex as it does, since I do think he's someone who was hurt and the appropriation of his pain by an internet mob isn't fair to him either. I'm still not sure how to feel about the line between someone's personal relationship details and needing to share them to call someone out as an abuser, but I guess it's clear that the mob doesn't actually care about that either. People would rather act like her sleeping with someone who never reviewed her (free, already somewhat famous) game or mentioned it in an irregular way for the sake of coverage is more realistic than her just sleeping with someone she knew for the same reasons anyone else would; going by what the ex says alone it's clear that there was an emotional component to their relationship. Those people would like to think that this delusion justifies making the rest of it (and then anything else they perceive as a slight) a list of insults rather than things they feel are worth thinking about. The ex has said what he wanted from this was her friends to acknowledge her behavior, so anytime one of the droves of Twitter harassers spouts nonsense in their backwards crusade against her and her friends they're only making it worse.

...also it's hilarious how much I'm seeing the assumption of "/V/ = not really hacked", etc. instead of, you know, that it was just done by someone that wasn't 4chan that wants to pin it on them (or wants 4chan to think it looks fake). No one posts their pineappleing financial information for the sake of getting "attention". If Phil Fish wants attention all he has to do is tweet about gamers. Same for Zoe at this point, though to be frank all anyone has to tweet is Zoe's own name to get name searchers to bother them on Twitter if they're really so desperate for attention. You can bend over backwards repeatedly to convince yourself that they totally did this to themselves or just deal with the far more logical situation that is "these people I don't like had a bad thing done to them by other people that don't like them" (which doesn't have to change the fact that you don't like them).

And that's about all I feel comfortable saying on this.