http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Gamergate_claims&diff=1587662&oldid=1587661

https://archive.is/X75r5

Continued from:

https://medium.com/@infiltrator7n/a-point-by-point-analysis-of-rational-wiki-s-list-of-gamergate-s-claims-part-1-2249404f6a97#.ml8j6pz5u

https://medium.com/@infiltrator7n/a-point-by-point-analysis-of-rational-wiki-s-list-of-gamergate-s-claims-part-2-54d49c259de#.x5dhoiklu

“Citogenesis”

Claim “We’ve had this with GamerGate. Certain individuals, all of whom with a vested personal and financial interest,

Like who? Citation needed.

told a number of specific lies — for instance, that Eron Gjoni’s ZoePost was a ‘bitter ex-boyfriend’s rambling screed’ that accuses Zoe Quinn of performing sexual favors in exchange for positive reviews (this is an interesting case, because we have a primary source — the ZoePost itself, no material fact of which has ever been denied by any involved party — that no mainstream writer seems willing to actually read)

Who specifically do you consider mainstream, and please provides sources, RW.

,when in actuality it’s a chronicle of domestic abuse suffered at the hands of a game developer.

So the assumption here is Gjoni is completely in the wrong, Zoe Quinn is blameless in this, is that what you’re assuming, RW?

That lie is told by writers in tech, and then is picked up by careless writers at larger publications failing to do their due diligence. A chain reaction of public opinion is created from a single lie in the right place. Then, much like you have, everyone approaches the subject with a pre-conceived notion of what the subject is about: ‘harassment.’”

Rebuttal “Citogenesis” is a neologism from a 2011 xkcd strip that raises the issue of circular reporting when it comes to Wikipedia, which has been an issue they have noticed. The quote above, lifted directly from /r/KotakuInAction, nests the entirety of Gamergate’s use of “citogenesis” as the cornerstone of their conspiracy theory against Zoë Quinn. According to them, the only reason the message in Eron Gjoni’s blog was derided by the mainstream media was because that was how it was covered by tech news websites because the writers at those websites are either financially tied to or personal friends with Zoë Quinn. Things fall apart very quickly when the tech websites never covered anything regarding “TheZoePost”. Every single major tech website did their best to not cover it at all because one of the primary tenets in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics is DO NO HARM.

Nice lie, RationalWiki, but that’s nowhere in their listed tenets.

https://archive.is/2wWs6

In fact, this is the only thing that comes close:

Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness.

All of these websites that would be labeled as “unethical” by Gamergate never wrote about “TheZoePost” because they were ethically not invading Zoë Quinn’s personal life.

Nice white knighting, but meaningless since, by your own contention, Gjoni made that a meaningless gesture. Here’s the SPJ’s own guidelines on that:

– Realize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than public figures and others who seek power, influence or attention. Weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information.

The only people who should have ever known anything about this relationship are Quinn and Gjoni.

On this, I concur.

The earliest coverage of what was not even yet called Gamergate (found as of writing) is a blog entry by Fruzsina Eördögh on Motherboard that doesn’t focus on Gjoni’s blog but rather the irrational reaction towards it by the mob Gjoni stirred up, and even points out that Nathan Grayson never wrote a review of Quinn’s game (before Stephen Totilo ever made that official statement himself).

This could use a secondary source without a bias to verify it.

Even Leigh Alexander in her “’Gamers’ Are Over” article doesn’t even address “TheZoePost” outside of linking to Eördögh’s prior blog entry.

This is true.

It’s almost as if people in multiple levels of journalism, from as miniscule as a blog editorial on Motherboard to established journalistic institutions like The New York Times and the BBC, all independently came to the conclusion that Gamergate was bullshit from the start.

Citation needed, you make a big claim here.

And not only that, Gjoni’s public actions and multiple statements within his blog itself were evidence enough that he was attempting DARVO and got people who already hated Quinn, women in general, feminism, and progressivism in general to enlist themselves to serve as his personal revenge army. After all, it’s now (as of writing) August 2015, a year since “TheZoePost” was written. So tell us. Which partner in this supposed case of emotional abuse is currently trying to litigate their way into being able to legally stir up an Internet lynch mob against the other person after being hit with a restraining order and a gag order? And which partner just wants to go on with their life and never have to deal with the other person again?

No citations to prove this point, assumption Gjoni is 100% wrong and Quinn is 100% right, and no notice the legal restraints have been rescinded.

Gamergate is not right wing

Claim Anti-Gamergate unfairly paints Gamergate as a right-wing hate mob when it’s clear that Gamergate leans left and is libertarian.

This is a BS question and they don’t cite anything more than one blog using PollDaddy polls. It also makes an assumption of fact and seeks to assume they are right from everything they try to prove afterwards.

Rebuttal Gamergate oh so loves to post the results of a bulk of /r/KotakuInAction posters taking the test at PoliticalCompass.org showing how many people came out as left-leaning and libertarian. However, that test is incredibly biased to give a left and libertarian result due to its leading questions, the “left/right” axis measures economic liberalism and conservatism rather than social liberalism and conservatism, and it was originally made to attack Tony Blair. The other questions on James “I Believe Rape Is a Valid Storytelling Element” Desborough’s blog posting have equally as leading questions, particularly his use of Christina Hoff Sommers’ “equity feminism”, but we’ll get back to that in a bit. And then there’s an entirely different quiz with equally as leading questions that were determined that Gamergaters were still left-leaning and libertarian, but their responses still show a conservative streak rather than a liberal one.

And you cite a Reddit source, without any more formal source to verify the information.

Gamergaters as a whole need to stop thinking that libertarianism and authoritarianism are even remotely on an axis that concerns social liberalism and social conservatism. The whole concept of “authoritarianism” seems to rise from the fact that Gamergaters don’t realize social critique from liberals is not a condemnation or call for censorship.

So you presume to condemn the political opinions of GamerGaters as nonsense without cited proof to back up your asserts and dismiss what they say out of hand as BS, got it.

Meanwhile, leading a group to descend on one person who said something critically of the group or perhaps wrote a video game review someone didn’t like in order to drive them out of their own profession is authoritarian and censorial. It’s almost as if they’re doing something. Gamergaters can take as many Quizilla quizzes as they want to claim that they’re totally not a conservative mob, but those results don’t provide the whole picture, particularly when the group’s actions speak much louder than their shallow words.

And claiming an entire group is guilty of evil when they are composed of humans with different opinions like yourselves isn’t also psychological projection?

Over and over, people have gone into Gamergate zones on Twitter and Reddit and found nothing but excessive antifeminism and conservative talking points, despite Gamergaters’ insistence that they are not either of these things.

While those points are discussed in the areas you mention, they are but mere facets of the whole picture, not THE whole picture, claiming otherwise is a fallacy. GamerGate is a wide, encompassing group of varying beliefs with some central goals and views, but we all have our own ideas how to achieve them, so nice job tarring us all with the same brush.

For the record, I still support feminist views and am distrustful of the established political parties, and I draw my own personal political views from a mix of liberal and conservative thought, so thanks for the generalizing, but your assumptions do not speak for me and I will bet money nor do they speak for many others.

And it doesn’t help things for Gamergate to claim they’re not political and they’re totally centrist and not chock full of right-wing antifeminist nutjobs when their chosen representatives for the AirPlay debacle were almost all right-wingers and antifeminists.

Anyone notice a running theme of anyone who disagrees with feminism is automatically wrong? There are many valid reasons to contest the points of any political philosophy, feminism is not exempt, so this just presumptuous bullshit that assumes certain opinions are above reproach.

Not very rational at all.

Ashe Schow writes for the right-wing newspaper The Washington Examiner

Disclosure: I have spoken with Miss Schow via email on a few occasions, though they are correct on the facts here.

Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos both write for Breitbart

Very true.

Christina Hoff Sommers is a paid speaker for the American Enterprise Institute

They link to themselves here, they would be better off linking to unbiased sources to verify this, since this page is intended to debunk GG positions for those who they wish to convince GG is in need of debunking.

Cathy Young writes for Reason

Again, they should verify this with third party citations.

Yiannopoulos even explicity said that the only reason he became involved in Gamergate because he saw its utility in fighting the left.

The citation proves the point, but needs additional sourcing to verify the facts against bias.

And yet time and time again, Gamergaters deny that they’re right wing and antifeminist.

Right wingers have come to support GamerGate, but there is no proof they are the only political slant that favors GamerGate, and no citations are used to back up this assertion.

Nothing is going to happen if Gamergate just owns up to this fact. Because after a year it’s beyond disingenuous of Gamergaters to insist otherwise.

And this is just arrogant presumption all GamerGaters are lying sacks of shit by default so no matter what they say they are lying bastards.

Nice ad hominem, RW, doesn’t your own wiki have an article specifically calling out this sort of childish insulting?

Gamergate does not harbor actual suspected international terrorists

Claim Joshua Goldberg doesn’t represent Gamergate. He’s a third party troll. Just look at how he played both sides!

He DID. He even wrote articles on Feministing under the pen name Tanya Cohen, even reached out under different guises to figures as polarized as Milo Yiaanopolous and Brianna Wu.

Rebuttal Joshua Goldberg, who supported Gamergate extensively under the Twitter handle “MoonMetropolis”,

Cites a clearly biased blog, need secondary neutral verification.

was recently arrested by the FBI for representing himself as a DAESH militant operating out of Australia when he was actually a 20-year-old homeschooled Jewish man from Jacksonville, Florida, after he had instructed an FBI informant on how to make a bomb like used in the Boston Marathon bombing.

The sources here check out.

In the days following his arrest, Australian journalists identified Goldberg as operating several other identities, both fictitious and stolen, while presenting himself as a free speech advocate.

Again, sources here check out.

All of his online behavior was to attack people who fought against hate speech, such as:

Australian lawyer Josh Bornstein who was critical of the Israeli government’s actions against the Palestinians

Australian activist Mariam Veiszadeh who battles Islamophobia

Australian Islamic preacher Mohammed Junaid Thorne who has controversial views in his home nation

Australian feminist and sex workers rights activist Caitlin Roper who argued Grand Theft Auto V should be banned in Australia

American Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King whom Goldberg helped spread lies that he was not black akin to Rachel Dolezal, forcing him to reveal his mother’s sexual history to the world

CITE SOME SOURCES, RW. Also, ALL of it attacked only these people? I suppose his writings on feminist sites as Tanya Cohen goes unreported by yourselves nor cited since it doesn’t mesh with the narrative you appear to be spinning, does it?

He had multiple Reddit accounts where he moderated the worst of the worst of the site’s forums where both of his identities–European88 and Emily_Americana–were well known for their repugnant behavior. As the Australian DAESH sympathizer “Australi Witness” he made bomb threats against Australian synagogues and took credit for directing ISIS sympathizers to a “Draw Muhammad” event in Texas where they opened fire before being killed by police. He tried to push a “race war” on 4chan. He wrote for The Daily Stormer under the name “Michael Slay” (which his other accounts tried to out him as). He posed as a far-left Australian liberal feminist “Tanya Cohen” and claimed to work for Amnesty International (his Australian jihadist persona claimed affiliation with AI as well). He’s so obsessed with Australia because they have strict laws against hate speech. And of course he was deeply involved in Gamergate.

Sources here mostly check out save the blog with a bias, and while yes, he was “involved” with GamerGate, he was also involved with the other side as well, and was even recently declared mentally incompetent.

Of course, this information is absent because it doesn’t help make GamerGate look bad apparently.

Gamergaters have been denying Goldberg represented them or was even one of them. They say he played both sides, pointing to his “Tanya Cohen” persona, with which he even delved into a debate Brianna Wu had about transgender representation in video games. However, no one who Gamergate would consider “anti-Gamergate” (which isn’t a thing like Gamergate)

Ah, the commonly cited canard “there is not anti-GG, just GamerGate and everyone else”. If that’s true, explain r/GamerGhazi, they explicitly exist to oppose GamerGate, so anti-GG is valid in some form.

believed anything the “Tanya Cohen” persona wrote one bit. People thought the writing was satire or even complete bullshit, and Wu herself found the writing unprofessional and was instrumental in “Tanya Cohen’s” editorial being taken down. But Goldberg, under his main Twitter profile @MoonMetropolis, tried to convince various people that “Tanya Cohen” was real by pointing to what are probably other strawmen sockpuppets he made himself, and even he was identified as the person behind “her” articles back then.

The source for this mostly checks out.

It’s under this account that he publically supported Gamergate, and even participated in #NotYourShield by pretending he wasn’t a man.

Your proof is a Twitter link, mind backing it up with independent verification?

It was under this name that he became acquainted with Milo Yiannopoulos enough that he fed Yiannopoulos the fake story about Shaun King’s racial background.

Obviously biased source, needs independent verification. Also, Milo’s account is that he was provided a link to information used in the Shaun King article by Goldberg, which he published based on his own verification, but the cited link does not add this nor do RationalWiki try to prove Milo lied.

Joshua Goldberg is the textbook example of a Gamergater. He’s a right-wing batshit libertarian free speech reactionary culture warrior who doesn’t give a shit about video games but loves to attack the left and social justice. And the only reason Gamergaters all over are disavowing him at all is because he violated one of 4chan’s most “sacred” tenets: he got caught.

Citation fucking needed. He was a batshit insane asshole even I joined in condemning, and it was revealed he played both sides of the fence, at least in sources RationalWiki refuses to source, and even the ones they do admit he suckered a lot of people on BOTH sides, but of course, the GamerGate supporting side being snowballed too is downplayed and mostly ignored in this clearly biased as hell section.

Gamergate was proven not to be a harassment campaign in a court of law!

Claim Zoë Quinn’s restraining order against Eron Gjoni was thrown out! That proves Gamergate doesn’t harass people! Rebuttal Whatever the result is of the legal battles between Quinn and Gjoni has no real bearing on Gamergate’s actions. Just because one judge ruled in Gjoni’s favor does not mean that everyone else in Gamergate is suddenly exonerated of all that they have done. It also doesn’t help your cause when you post Quinn’s doxxed legal name in your declaration of Gamergate’s innocence.

Again, cite something proving your arguments, RW. And while you are correct, one swallow doesn’t make a spring, you are wrong on the the dox issue, as the legal brief cited Quinn’s legal name at the time, so don’t blame GamerGate for the courts following up based on the name Quinn had at the time which was on record when the case was filed.

Gamergate is tolerant

Best joke of the year.

You got some citations for this obviously insulting and otherwise pointless bullshit, are are you just being assholes because you can?