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My thoughts on "Why #Gamergaters Piss Me The F*** Off"

“Do you know why you piss me the fuck off?”



The venerable opening to Chris Kluwe’s “thoughts” on Gamer Gate which when you get down to it come off more like the ramblings of your friends who doesn’t quite follow the news but tries to jump in with their own opinion in a desperate attempt to feel important.



Make no mistake Chris is an intelligent person, I’ve read enough of his thoughts and listened to him speak to know better than to accuse him of being an idiot, for all of the issues I take with his writing the guy is no dummy. However my issues with his article come from many of my issues with other people’s opinions on Gamer Gate (which I fully admit is a term that from its inception I have loathed). The largest of these is the argument that the trolls and bigots that have made their home amongst Gamer Gate are somehow the face of the movement, that somehow the shit heels of one side are all there is to it. If one were to assume this then well it’s easy to start painting the detractors in much the same light. There is some intense irony to be had in the notion that all supporters of Gamer Gate are either idiots or misogynists. If we apply the “Kluwe Method of Logic” then all NFL players (past and present) are wife beating animal abusing bigots.



Of course such a statement would not be representative of the NFL and falls prey to what is known as the Negativity Bias; that is people have a tendency to focus on the negative. This is of course no particular failing of one man but rather something that we as humans tend to do but it does highlight a key issue within Gamer Gate that should be addressed. We (everyone who involved themselves in the issue in some way) has a strong tendency to only look at the negative and this is how we so often miss the point.



Much of Chris’ article comes off as a vulgar tirade against Gamer Gate but one cannot help but enjoy some of the hilarious insults he flings at “gaters” (cringe), I must say that “paint-huffing shitgoblins” is perhaps one of my favorites. However he makes some odd choices in supporting his position that make me question how much he has actually looked into this situation. He brings up the “Gamers are dead” articles and the subsequent fallout from their release as a sign that no one really understood what was being brought up, namely that the old stereo type of the “gamer” was long since over. In this Kluwe is right, games have become very mainstream and for many like myself who grew up being ostracized for being that “nerd” kid I am so happy to know that is the case. However where Kluwe seems to be missing the point is that even the article he sites from Erik Kain (one can’t help but wonder if he’d mistaken it for the Leigh Alexander article…the one that actually pissed people off) completely undermines his entire premise that everyone in Gamer Gate is either a misogynist or just a moron who has been suckered by the movement.



Kain’s article points out what many of us already know, that the times have indeed changed, that misogynist assholes have made threats to female devs, critics and personalities under the guise of Gamer Gate but Kain also points out the legitimate issues that Gamer Gate has brought to light. Namely that the consumer is tired of being talked down to anytime we point out an issue within our hobby. Oddly enough though critics like Anita Sarkessian are championed by the industry but when the rest of us have a complaint it seems that the gaming media is all too quick to sell us out.



At the end of the day much of what Chris has to offer is nothing new, it’s yet another voice painting with a broad brush and unwilling to actually look into the issue (despite claims to the contrary). The article can be briefly summed up as a cased of “missed the point”.

Yes Chris, there are indeed ass holes that have no business reproducing but if all you can see of this issue is them then you have failed to grasp the big picture. For someone who cities Erik Kain’s articles, you could certainly do with reading a few more.



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