InBlack wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 09:32:

yuastnav wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 09:26:
I'm not some kid, I've been using the internet for about 13 years (I was a teen back then) and the first thing that I actually did was download mIRC. I guess I've been hanging around in the wrong channels since death threats wasn't something that happened often.
Yeah, some people were assholes and on some boards I visited you could catch some death threat by some idiot before the mods cleaned it up but it was just that. A threat. It wasn't someone stalking you over the net, trying to find out as much info about you as possible.
This is what's sociopathic. Obsessing about someone, looking for their address, sending cops to that place and then gleefully laughing at the thought that this might get someone killed. This is of course a minority but if someone is determined enough he could do some real damage.

So you feel it is justified that Sarkesian labels an entire culture (of which you are a part of) as sexist and bigoted as a result of personal death threats made against her? (Of which BTW I have yet to see her produce any evidence or relevant police reports) I dont see Angelina Jolie, or Brad Pitt etc. labeling movie goers as psychopaths despite being on the recieving end of much worse. This is what is happening in gaming, gamers are being called out and this is what people take issue with.

I don't know exactly what she said. I don't recall her saying that all gamers are sexist etc. but I don't know. Personally I've never felt that she's addressing me, even though I am a male gamer. Maybe it's also because I agree that there is sexism in games but also probably because this is an important topic for me and because I have very strong opinions about sexism.
I understand that some might be offended because they are called something they are not in which case I can only recommend to just be cool and deal with it in a rational way. Maybe then you can see things differently.
In other cases it probably hits too close to home and people are offended of being called sexist because it's true and they don't want to admit it.

Yeahyeah Yeah wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 09:26:

yuastnav wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 06:21:
What I don't yet understand is why so many of you take offence at what's being done to combat that kind of behaviour. Judging from the wording some of you even take that as a personal affront.

Pardon me if I'm skeptical of Quinn's 'doing something to combat that kind of behavior'. I'd support people who I could trust were committed to dealing with harassers and providing support for people who were harassed, period. In this case? I'd bet parts of my left hand that what Quinn envisions is a platform for boosting herself, legitimizing her (political, social activist) friends, and de-legitimizing her (political, social activist) enemies.

Maybe that's true. Maybe that's paranoia. Time will tell.

Agrolith wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 09:54:

it's difficult to come across something like that for someone who hasn't followed what went down very closely

Then how can you draw, what looks to be a one sided conclusion if you haven't followed everything?

How can I not? The alternative would be to not form an opinion at all, to say that I don't know everything and that I just stay silent.
But I'll never know anything. Feminism is an important topic for me and I will call out sexism where I see it. Regardless of how gamergate started, one of the sides definitely has a lot of sexism (again, I'm not saying that there aren't people who truly believe that they are fighting for something important, i.e. ethics in journalism) and I have the feeling that a lot of feminists are maybe misunderstood? I'm not talking about extremists like Alice Schwarzer or whoever who claim that "all men are pigs" bla bla.
Some here describe Anita and Zoe etc. in ways that I don't see. Of course they aren't flawless. And who knows, maybe Anita is really not a real gamer (I remember something along the lines) but what's important is the bigger picture and that's something that is above the individuals.

Yeahyeah Yeah wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 10:05:

So you feel it is justified that Sarkesian labels an entire culture (of which you are a part of) as sexist and bigoted as a result of personal death threats made against her?

It's also mighty targeted. If you disagree with them about anything, if you're critical of them, bam... you're on the side of people who hate women and love to send them death threats. If you condemn that sort of behavior? That's just your cover story. If you really meant it you would abandon all your criticism of them and criticize their critics!

See, that's just something that I don't see. Maybe I'm not getting the whole thing so correct me if I'm wrong but they are not impervious to criticism and I don't think they behave in this way.

panbient wrote on Jan 20, 2015, 10:17:
[...]
It's pretty simple, people can't find out personal details about you unless you choose to make them public online. And fact is, regardless of how mainstream the internet has become, it's still very much a free for all. If you're going to poke a stick at a hornets nest you should expect to get stung. I'm not saying it's right, or that the people making threats are justified, only that it's foolishly naive to be any sort of shocked or surprised by the behavior.

But the fact of the matter is that we as humans don't learn from other people's mistakes and there is always the thought that somehow this will not happen to you.
It's difficult to comprehend something before you didn't experience it first hand. It's easy to say "Oh, he or she got doxxed, no big deal. They are partly to blame anyway since they released so much of their info on the internet."
Everyone can slip up. And how many of you can honestly say that they are in complete control over how much information they released on the net. Unless you are very careful and/or paranoid you may say or do something that will be used in way that you've never imagined.

Let's say someone wants a personal website and buys a domain. At least here in Germany the information can be obtained via whois, don't know about providers in other countries, so it's not really hidden in any way. Someone who has no idea about this will be very surprised when he or she gets some very nasty things in their mailbox all of a sudden.
This is a crude example, of course, but most of us aren't in control and quite often when you publish something on the net it's there to stay.