Recently I had a discussion with a friend about Gamer Gate in light of the most recent doxxing event (Felicia Day, posting about her concerns, became a target). His response? By taking what he deemed to be an offensive action (posting about her feelings on her blog) she essentially invited the harassment. In other words, if you don’t want to get harassed, don’t open your mouth.
I’ve heard this argument before in response to my own gaming habits. I’ve been told more than once if I don’t want other players to treat me differently once they know my gender I should just keep my mouth shut and not say a thing on voice chat. The very act of speaking (regardless of content), this line of thinking argues, is creating an open invitation for anyone in earshot to lash out in response.
It’s certainly easy to understand why various people might want to keep their voices down. While things have clearly been worse lately, even before the events of the last few months games (and particularly online gaming communities) have been a generally tough place for people with identities that fall outside of straight white male. Even when direct threats and bullying aren’t the issue, simply attempting to be part of the gaming community can be: I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts my own tendency to keep my mouth shut in response to language that in other situations I might call out, in a desire to continue to be “one of the guys” and get invited back to groups. There are lots of reasons why, for one’s own personal well-being and mental health, you might make the choice to bite your tongue or hold back what you otherwise want to say.
However, while I understand and even sympathize with individuals and their choice to be silent at times for their own well-being, I am absolutely opposed to the move to silence various individual critics and sites. I certainly support everyone’s right to read or not read particular websites, articles, or authors as they choose- there are a lot of popular sites on the internet I refuse to read because I don’t agree with previous articles that have been posted. But there’s a wide gulf between choosing not to read a site (not giving them your page clicks/views) and trying to get a site’s funding pulled- the former is your own decision that content is not valuable for you, the later is an active attempt to silence a group who’s viewpoint you disagree with.
As I mentioned in my first post in response to the Leigh Alexander piece, I firmly believe what gaming needs right now is more voices, not fewer. Indeed, in a recent speech at a conference Alexander spoke to the need for more people to discuss gaming from an aesthetic and critical perspective, something I fully agree with. Likewise, Polygon recently explored the difference between a smart phone review and a movie review, and announced that they’d rather do “movie reviews” of games (of course, I would say that this is a false comparison, because smart phones are tools for transmitting and accessing texts, not texts themselves). It completely baffles me that mass groups of people not only don’t want these things, but actively seek to deprive others of them as well. This, I argue, is harassment; this is aggressive, sustained, direct intimidation meant to permanently silence , and this is not ok.
3 thoughts on “Silencing is not the answer”
We both agree that people should talk. No prob. GG wants everyone to talk, no matter the side.
I couldn’t disagree more that trying to get a sites funding pulled is silencing them. Ultimately we live in an interconnected marketplace and we purchase products from vendors who in essence seek exposure by purchasing advertising dollars. If i buy an Intel chip, and i’m looking at the box my Core i5-3570k came in right now, and then Intel advertises on Gamasutra there is a rather clear economic connection between my wallet – my labor – and the revenue section on Gamasutra’s or Gawker’s parent companies income statement.
Because of my willingness to buy products that advertise with various media entities i give various people voice in this interconnected web of commercial activity. I amplify an individual’s decibel level when i buy products and those vendors then buy add time/space. Agencies that are oriented to provide advertising infrastructure are able to invest ad revenue funds into bigger megaphones to then scream at me and call me a neck beard or scum. The financial calculus is quite clear here, i am funding my own despoliation and abuse and I am not a masochist.
These individuals we speak of will always have voice but it will transmit with the same magnitude as my own voice and others that don’t’ have large online publications that can intensify the volume of that speech, basically we will be more EQUAL now. I have no personal obligation to continue to finance the equipment, logistics and capital that enable them to convey that voice with ever greater reach. Negotiation and trying to seek value is the hallmark of dynamic institutions in the market place and I want to ensure that I am getting maximum value out of my purchases. One aspect of value, to me subjectively, is knowing that I am not indirectly supporting media outlets that have contempt for me.
As far as review methodology is concerned and trying to diversify what elements of a product are focused on we have yet to see if there is sustainable markets for cultural critiques, etc in games. Maybe there are but because of the nature of the hostilities between ideologies I want to make sure as little of my labor is going to support these agencies as possible. IF they can seek alternative means of financial stability like Patreon or pay before you get value investment models fine, I would be severed financially from them as best I can be and fell satisfied with my position and media backers and the writers of these entities will have higher fidelity with each other.
IF there is one thing that is clear to me there are already too many radical voices out there as demonstrated by that coordinated article release related to gamers being dead. People that think this way can get their funding from people that actually support the outlets political agendas and thus live in harmony being in total agreement with their source of revenue.
As gamers we don’t have the same power as media outlets and so whatever value we seek in the market place regarding how our money is spent is just. We have no OBLIGATION or DUTY to support, financially, views that we disagree with and people that think we are toxic.
Your argument assumes too much. You are taking business relationships to be transitive. You are suggesting that if x does business with y and, in turn, y does business with z, then x does business with z. (e.g. Buying a chip from Intel means supporting Gamasutra.)
There is a reason people don’t think of business transactions as transitive: it makes no sense at all. Transactions are clearly symmetric: if x does business with y then y does business with x. If you have both transitivity and symmetry, then you have a reflexive relation. This would mean that for all x, x does business with x. Or, putting it in English, everyone does business with their own self by virtue of being a human being.
Maybe you are a better capitalist than I am, but I have a hard time believing that I sprang from my mother’s womb already doing business with myself. Before you obfuscate off into the sunset, you need to find a better argument.