Wednesday News: Google & Net Neutrality, Gamergate, the ‘science’ of extraordinary appeal, and extreme OKCupid date = new romcom.
Publishing Newsblind date / FCC / Gamergate / Google / harassment / Internet / Misogyny / net neutrality / Romance / romantic comedy14 Comments
Google is sitting out the net neutrality fight. Here are 4 possible reasons – Although Google was once a vocal advocate for net neutrality, as the FCC moves toward a resolution of the great ‘fast lane’ debate for Internet Service Providers (i.e. allowing different service speeds for different customers) Google has remained curiously quiet. This post rehearses some of the possible reasons for that silence, finally settling on the following, which strikes me as more self-serving than mature:
Google is all grown up
This is the realpolitik theory, and represents the simplest and most likely explanation. The point, which National Journal makes too, is that Google is a mature, diversified company that sits on both sides of many policy issues. The company has less interest in staking out idealist positions and, in the case of net neutrality, is rich enough to cut a “fast lane” check to whoever is demanding one.
There is, of course, an irony here in that companies like Google, and especially YouTube, might not have emerged in the first place were it not for net neutrality. But that was then and this is now. –Gigaom
The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate – A compelling and depressing analysis of Gamergate, with background information and discussion of the potential for similar movements to design success by following Gamergate’s lead. In particular, I found interesting the assertion that Gamergate “exploited the same basic loophole in the system that generations of social reactionaries have: the press’s genuine and deep-seated belief that you gotta hear both sides.” Although I’m not convinced that this is a “loophole in the system,” I do think a certain naiveté around the very real danger that women face from online harassment is operational in some quarters.
By design, Gamergate is nearly impossible to define. It refers, variously, to a set of incomprehensible Benghazi-type conspiracy theories about game developers and journalists; to a fairly broad group of gamers concerned with corruption in gaming journalism; to a somewhat narrower group of gamers who believe women should be punished for having sex; and, finally, to a small group of gamers conducting organized campaigns of stalking and harassment against women.
This ambiguity is useful, because it turns any discussion of this subject into a debate over semantics. Really, though, Gamergate is exactly what it appears to be: a relatively small and very loud group of video game enthusiasts who claim that their goal is to audit ethics in the gaming-industrial complex and who are instead defined by the campaigns of criminal harassment that some of them have carried out against several women. (Whether the broader Gamergate movement is a willing or inadvertent semi-respectable front here is an interesting but ultimately irrelevant question.) None of this has stopped it from gaining traction: Earlier this month, Gamergaters compelled Intel to pull advertising from a gaming site critical of the movement, and there’s no reason to think it will stop there. –Deadspin
The Curse of Meh: Why Being Extraordinary Is Not a Matter of Being Universally Liked but of Being Polarizing – So I’ll be the first to admit that I take everything OKCupid’s Christian Rudder says about data with a grain of salt, especially since his ‘everybody does it’ defense of the site’s experimentation on users without their consent. Still, he’s probably right about this phenomenon, which I think most readers of Romance would recognize in terms of what types of characters become most popular with readers. According to Rudder, those people who have the most “romantic opportunities” are not those universally appealing, but rather those who tend to divide opinion in a more extreme way. In there words, extraordinary = strong responses from both directions (positive and negative). We see this often with Romance characters who readers love, hate, or love to hate.
What Rudder and his team found was that not all averages are created equal in terms of actual romantic opportunities — greater variance means greater opportunity. Based on the data on heterosexual females, women who were rated average overall but arrived there via polarizing rankings — lots of 1’s, lots of 5’s — got exponentially more messages (“the precursor to outcomes like in-depth conversations, the exchange of contact information, and eventually in-person meetings”) than women whom most men rated a 3. –Brain Pickings
An OKCupid Date Is Being Made Into a Movie – Actually, one of the most interesting things to me about this story is that Jeff Wilson, professor of environmental science at Tillotson University, both lives in a dumpster and leads something called the Dumpster Project, where students help transform a 33 square foot dumpster into a fully habitable space. I’d kind of like to see a movie about that.
What happens when “a reclusive writer who spends hours identifying new constellations in the ceiling paint” agrees to go on an OKCupid date with “a wildly energetic university professor”? Well, if they’re two twentysomethings who share an overly robust sense of whimsy, the date turns into a spontaneous three-week trip around the world, which turns into a Salon essay and then into a big-time Hollywood movie. –New York Magazine
“Grown up” is not the phrase that comes to mind when I am think about Google’s silence now on net neutrality.
when I think (I cannot type on my tablet with this keyboard auto insert stuff)
in regards to gamergate, you probably went to press before this broke.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/tech/utah-anita-sarkeesian-threat/
I don’t know if DearAuthor has covered Anita Sarkeesian before but after learning about what was going on in the gamer community I looked up her website and watched her commentary on video games. I went into watching her thinking I wouldn’t agree with much of what she had to say. After watching I have decided that my house will not be buying any games from companies that produce games that promote violence on women. I would really encourage anyone who has a video game players in the house to watch this video from her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i_RPr9DwMA
Anita gives a content warning at the beginning and I’d just like to add that if you have any triggers whatsoever do not watch. I have zero triggers and found that I had to stop watching and come back to finish watching the video. It is very very disturbing.
In other words, nobody likes Cs.
Regarding Anita Sarkeesian, Marc Randazza has a post up–foul mouthed as all get out, though, so read at your own risk.
@azteclady: Thanks for the link, that was beautiful *sniffle*. I’m now offically a Marc Randazza fangirl. Yes, lots of profanity, but in a poetic, Deadwood kinda way.
#iamsarkeesian
Anita Sarkeesian is why I lol at the tone police all day: She calmly applies a 101 feminist critique to games without anger, profanity or a call to boycott and she still gets death threats.
Civility is overrated. Calls to coddle oppressors are about silencing dissent, plain and simple.
@Ridley: I disagree.
Civility is not for those who have already decided anything you say is crap.
It’s for those who are on the fence. It’s for those who may want to ask questions about your position, but would rather avoid wading into a pool of vitriol. It’s for those who are just reading, not commenting.
Marc Randazza’s post, while entertaining, will not change the mind of anyone who doesn’t already agree with him.
This Gamergate stuff hits so close to home because I’m a woman, and a game developer — these are supposedly the people who buy and enjoy the games I make, that are taking every opportunity to harass and harm me for existing. I… what? It’s just disgusting and infuriating, and makes me wonder why it is I’m even making these games if people will crow about how great they are and simultaneously scream at how I am ruining everything by having a scary gross vagina (not that all women have them, or everyone who has one is a woman).
The office has rallied really strongly and I feel supported and safe there, but there is no freaking way I am going to any industry events for a while, because harassment is par for the course when things are NORMAL. There is no WAY I would go to something like PAX right now. I have that option because I have co-workers who are men who can go in my place, or we can just not send anyone at all, but a lot of smaller companies don’t have that choice.
I shouldn’t be afraid of the people I make content for (and who love that content and seem to have no problems buying it if women are involved, they just whine about it). It sure as hell makes me not want to make anything more for them.
Just ugh, considering a career change, which is exactly what these people want, but it is incredibly draining to deal with the new industry sexist harassment of the hour every hour of every day. I used to think I was making something with some meaning and brought joy to peoples’ lives, but these people don’t deserve joy, they deserve fire and bees.
I have been really depressed over the whole Gamergate thing, especially after seeing so many positive signs that things were getting better for women in gaming and developing. (Aside: I studied/researched media effects in grad school and happily admitted that I played Doom and had never been involved with real guns or violence.) Then along comes Anita Sarkeesian saying things that have been discussed in college classes and written in academic and popular books for years now (content analyses and everything, what she’s saying isn’t controversial there, it’s established in the lit) – and she gets this reaction. And the thought that somehow harassing her offline would do anything to stop the discussion? If anything it will make even more media and psychology students want to study why in the hell this reaction was provoked in this day and time. (That’s the part that keeps me from being totally saddened.)
The boogeyman I remember in gaming circles was Jack Thompson, someone who was legitimately trying to change/censor violent games and present the image of the antisocial gamer as the norm. And that’s not all that long ago – the 80s and 90s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_%28activist%29
I can’t help but wonder what the reaction of the current internet culture would be to Thompson were he to be making speeches now. I’d probably feel badly for him, which certainly wasn’t the case then. You certainly don’t have to infer anything about Thompson’s beliefs or attitudes – he was all over the media with them, far more than any of the women involved in this latest harassment.
It’s also amazing that some are still trying to say that this is mainly about journalism and ethics – and that this is deserving of threats of violence.
@Lindsay – I am SO glad to hear that your workplace is being supportive, and I hate that you and your colleagues have to deal with this crap. As someone who buys and plays games (and has since my crappy Atari!) I want more games out there, period, whether I’m interested in them or not. I hate that anyone feels they have to lay low because of the public – but I myself am also afraid of that public. I keep trying to focus on the fact that it’s an irrational, very loud minority – but it would help if more of the sane majority would keep speaking up and saying to stop this.
For anyone wondering why the vitriol over Anita Sarkeesian, it’s primarily from her raising money to produce these videos, in which she critiques video games:
https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency
@K.L.: I think that’s when the vitriol against Sarkeesian got really loud and widespread, but I believe she was regularly harassed in youtube well before that.
I am so sorry it is like this Lindsay. Yuck. I feel confident that that you *do* bring joy and meaning to people’s lives and that the vast majority of people buying your games are *not* sexist trolls, but they are so loud and vociferous they fill up the conversational space. I hope you decide to hang in there, though I certainly understand why you may not.