On #GamerGate, reddit, hiveminds and social justice culture.

I don't like reddit. I used to browse it back in 2011, when I had ample time to waste. I think that if you have a small subreddit that you frequent or casually check, that's just fine, but if you are in any way involved in major subs as either a contributor or just a plain old commenter, you'll encounter 'the hivemind.' Forget about mod censorship and shadowbans for the time being, and pretend that they don't even exist. Redditors will tell you that they have a 'reddiquette,' encouraging them to essentially self-moderate what content is popular, and to only downvote irrelevant material. In theory this creates an environment in which crap content isn't seen and only trolls and derailers suffer the ire of the greater community.



In practice, it's the perfect way to foster a hivemind. I hold some opinions that are unpopular among redditors-at-large on the subs I used to frequent. Any comments that I contributed to discussions would be upvoted if in accord with the hivemind, and buried otherwise. Yes, you can filter threads so that these 'buried' comments appear first, but that doesn't really change the fact that there is a hivemind happy to bury them in the first place. What reddit does is essentially give veto rights on any contribution, such that genuine discourse is discouraged in favour of pandering to the community's taste; to use a less tasteful piece of terminology, it is often a 'circlejerk.'



The consequences for the average reddit user are hardly dire. If they want imaginary internet points, they need to pander for them. They'll be rewarded with karma and even possibly reddit gold, a kind of premium account if you don't know, paid for by a kind stranger who likes the cut of their jib. All of this evolves organically from the framework that reddit has put in place. Take away the ability to upvote and downvote comments, and you'd have more dissenting opinions immediately as the tastefully-named 'karma whores' would feel no pressure to conform. The fact that you are a particular user with an identifiable name and post history adds to this pressure as well, as evinced by the fact that people will use throwaways to avoid disapproval being thrown at their main account if they happen to behave in ways that would bring opprobrium upon them.



Why focus on reddit? Well, I'm building up to a point. I reckon it's an obvious truth but let the previous two paragraphs serve as my evidence for the fact that people REALLY want to be accepted and approved of, and they take their online handles and e-scores very seriously. If it manifests on reddit, it surely manifests in the faster-paced, quickfire world of twitter and facebook as well. And of course, nobody would question that approval-seeking is fundamental to interactions in the real world. The reason I am focusing on the internet's social playing field is because this is the era of slacktivism; social activism has never been more mainstream than it is today, with sites like tumblr and wordpress acting as a means for everyone to get their opinions out there. Anyone can make a Youtube video. Anyone can record a podcast. And if we're talking about the social justice crowd - a large and diverse bunch of folks that don't deserve broad-smears any more than gamers do - it's fair to say that much of their scene is based purely on internet interactions.



Applying the reddit model to these interactions reveals a hivemind that most certainly pervades the social justice scene. Except, instead of upvotes and downvotes, the scene polices itself through ostracising and shaming dissenters publicly. This is why someone like me for example, a person who has no issue with trigger warnings, loves feminism, is pro-LGBTQ and thinks that racism of any sort is one of the most base, disgusting failures of human thought, gets accused of 'internalised misogyny' or 'sexism' simply for disagreeing with the crowd - 'my' crowd, you might say - on what we'll call 'the gaming issue.'



It doesn't really matter if you agree with them on most other issues. Like reddit, where frequenting the wrong sub or making a single unpopular comment can completely change how people see you (for better or fore worse) being a dissenter in the social justice crowd is not encouraged. This is why developers like @deviever recently came out and spoke about this very problem, and why many other devs have done likewise. I am frequently baffled when I see legions of social justice types lining up to take potshots at the latest offender, who, yes, is often someone who did something wrong, but still a person. I hesitate to call it 'offence culture', but that's an apposite description of it. Once someone has slipped up and displayed behaviour that does not get the crowd's imprimatur, they're fair game for being harassed, for losing their jobs or having their creative endeavours blacklisted and/or ridiculed (see @draginol and how an ex-Kotaku EIC and his wife attempted to falsely label his novel as racist diatribe). If you question this hivemind, you WILL be subjected to the tyranny of 'social downvoting.' And like reddit, it is more important to APPEAR to be the pre-approved way than it is to ACTUALLY be yourself.



I haven't used the term 'social justice warrior' or 'SJW' once yet in this twitlonger, because I hate it. I don't care if your definition of it is only meant to apply to the profiteers, to the vultures of social justice issues; it's a stupid, broad-smear epithet both in theory and in practice. It also fosters an 'us vs them' attitude that only serves to deepen the entrenched rivalries that have shown up in #GamerGate.That's not even the main reason I hate the term, though; the main reason I repudiate it is because it is a label that is attached to one person, a way of discrediting an individual, and this misses the actual issue. When someone in a hivemind behaves according to that hivemind's wishes, it's less aggressive and more on-point to call it out as 'hiveminding.'



And that's what social justice 'warriors' really are; an approval-seeking, status-quo encouraging hivemind. Just because there is no imaginary internet points on show to quantify it, doesn't make it not the case.



I've been credited with a silly internet meme and 'the three C's of games journalism', so I'm hoping that these things catch on in threes: don't abet this divisive culture war with the 'warrior' moniker; call it what it really is: the SJH, the Social Justice Hivemind.



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