Understanding the scale of things · 9:16am Sep 26th, 2014
One strange thing I have discovered while looking into various news sites is just how little traffic some of them get. Browsing through various articles about harassment of women in video games and similar things, I noticed a really small number of actual comments on the articles; some of them had all of 2 comments, and some notes on Facebook.
What is really weird about it is that these are, at least in some cases, ostensibly fairly large news sites, and yet by all appearances, they get less commentary and feedback on their articles than I do when I write a random story about ponies kissing.
That's just such a weird thing for me. It is kind of crazy to think about the fact that writing pony fanfiction may mean that as many or more people read and care about what I write than people reporting on various games.
But then I take a step back, and I realize that maybe it isn't so crazy after all. I never really go to these sites; I don't hang on their every word. Most of these articles are poorly sourced, and many of them say nothing of note or value, merely regurgitating what is said or found elsewhere. So why should anyone read them?
But it is kind of strange, and kind of sad. Of course, maybe they just have a vastly lower rate of comments... but who knows.
I have to wonder: if we had those little metric things, where people could post automatic links to stories on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other, similar social media sites, how many things our little pony stories would beat out.
I would suggest that one of the differences that may contribute to that fact is that an author here on fimfic is pretty likely to actually read and even respond to a comment. In contrast, I get the feeling that some popular review writer treats their blog/venue as fire and forget.
We also get a handy little stat tracker telling us how many views our stories and blogs have racked up. Do you have similar data to work with for these sites you speak of? Some kind of comments/views ratio would be handy to compare.
While interaction is high, view counts are low here compared to elsewhere. Here, a story with 10,000 views is considered a huge success. Whereas a YouTube video with that many views is just meh. I think we get an exaggerated sense of how big a part of the fandom we are in part because EQD posts o many fanfics and story updates. I tell people Pen Stroke was my roommate at BABSCon and they go "who?"
I think there's also a lo of falloff in interest on the story as well, but I don't have numbers. To a lot of people I interact with online, the general response is "shut up already."
The people complaining about sexism in video games are having a hard time shocking anyone: most of the sexism actually in the games is old news and not that different from what we see in other media. The sexism in the online chats is another animal, but no one has made a coherent argument for how that should be changed. Especially since people worried about that sort of thing are more concerned with Facebook and so on. Also, the fact that there are assholes on the internet is only news to people who live under rocks. And frankly not even all of them.
The people complaining about the flaws* in gaming journalism are unable to get anyone who doesn't read game review blogs to give a fuck, because people who don't read game review blogs really shouldn't give a fuck.
* I did look into the claims real quick after I heard NPR's report on it. Apparently, most of the accusations are very poorly sourced and highly biased.
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Then you didn't look hard enough. Search up Internet Aristocrat on Youtube sometime. He gives a good summery of the situation. Thunderf00t's a shit nine times out of ten, but he did a good explanation as well.
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Most of them do not, though that is not terribly surprising if you think about it; YouTube has a great deal of interest in marking how popular various things are, but a news site has no interest in advertising the fact that one of their articles only got, say, 500 hits. I'm sure they do keep track of it internally, but there is little incentive to show the numbers externally. They do advertise some other metrics, though.
For instance, looking at this Daily Dot article about GamerGate, it got 2.7k shares and over 600 comments. This article, which talks about a panel about bullying, got 89 shares and 2 comments - two orders of magnitude less on both counts. Is that because two orders of magnitude fewer people read that article? Hard to say, but it is possible. The former was also linked to from Wikipedia, while the latter was not, and the former was also one of the earlier articles on GamerGate, while the latter was just some random article which didn't really say anything other than repeating what other people said (a depressingly common thing in games journalism).
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Getting 10,000 views on a YouTube video is actually fairly significant; it is just that the top videos on YouTube get a billion views. But if you regularly reached an audience of 10k people on YouTube, that wouldn't be unimpressive. There are tons of videos on YouTube which get no views at all to speak of, the same as here.
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Oh, there's massive and well-documented corruption in the video game journalism industry. Doritogate is one example, as was the firing of Jeff Gerstmann after he gave poor reviews to a number of games, including Kane & Lynch, which was advertising on the website he was writing reviews for.
Ron Florance quit Eurogamer after a games journalist who had tweeted an advertisement for Tomb Raider in order to win a PS3 from Square Enix (a company which they had, incidentally, previously worked for as well) complained after Florance quoted their tweet, as well as their subsequent confusion about why it was unacceptable for a games journalist to promote a product in that way in order to win a prize, as well as claiming that it wasn't an advertisement.
The list goes on. Corruption is fairly endemic in the industry, but the real problem is that a lot of folks in the industry, like Wainwright, the journalist who tweeted for the PS3, just don't understand the concept of journalistic integrity in the first place, and can't tell if something is okay or not okay - and thus engage in a lot of not-okay activities, ranging from accepting inappropriate gifts from PR for gaming companies (sometimes including things like trips to Disneyland to "review a game" there) to inappropriate financial links (a bunch of games journalism outfits have now barred games journalists from directly financially supporting people they report on, because that is an ongoing financial relationship; apparently the music journalism industry decided on the same thing previously) to undisclosed past relationships (such as working for the company in question, or having a relationship with someone there, ect.).
If you're talking about in this particular instance, the things which there is actual direct evidence of are:
1) Zoe Quinn slept with Nathan Grayson, who wrote an article depicting her as heroically ruining a reality TV show called GAME_JAM because one of the people involved asked inappropriate, stupid questions. The trouble here is twofold; first off, at best, the relationship started within a week of the article going up, but it may have actually started before it went up - no one knows, and the only person's word we have on it that it was okay was Grayson, who obviously has an incentive to lie (seeing as if it was before, he would have been fired). Secondly, Grayson reported on what she and Robin Arnott, another one of her lovers did, when he wasn't there, relying on their testimony for it - something which is problematic for obvious reasons, as it isn't really independent and they would obviously back each other up on stuff, or at least could be expected to. This isn't really problematic on Zoe Quinn's part beyond the fact that she had a boyfriend and was cheating on him (and lied about it), but it is very problematic on the part of Nathan Grayson, who is a journalist - the appearance of a conflict of interest is very strong, there, even if there was not, in fact, an actual conflict of interest, and obviously the public cannot distinguish between these two things.
There are screenshots of her private conversations which attest to the fact that they had this relationship.
2) Zoe Quinn slept with her boss, Joshua Boggs, shortly before he hired her to work for his company. Joshua Boggs is married, and Zoe Quinn had a boyfriend (or possibly two) at that point. This is obviously problematic, but because Joshua Boggs is one of the owners of his company, firing him is very difficult if not impossible.
The real problematic thing here, beyond the personal issues involved, is the lack of condemnation by the gaming industry and games press. This is hugely awful because it is a young female developer sleeping with someone and then getting hired, which makes it look like she got hired BECAUSE he slept with her (and we'll never know if that is, in fact, the case). If you're another young female game developer and see this, isn't that a problem? What if someone else approaches you for sex while you're seeking employment with them? Is that intimidating? Are you likely to give in because it worked for Zoe Quinn and seems to be expected? Is anyone going to believe you if you report it, or will they attack you and come to the defense of their colleague?
There are, again, screenshots of Zoe Quinn talking about this.
3) A game dev claimed that Zoe Quinn sexually harassed them, and got shouted down. Again, there are screenshots of this.
4) Several folks in the gaming journalism industry were involved with the censorship of information about it behind the scenes. They urged The Escapist to shut down all discussion on it, and one of them noted that no one should even be allowed to talk about it. Obviously these people don't care much about freedom of speech, and they attacked people who questioned why this wasn't being reported on, while several of them noted their support. In all fairness, there were a number of folks involved who were more level-headed and noted that the journalists behaving in this fashion were acting inappropriately.
5) There was massive censorship of the stuff initially, and even still many sites are banning people who discuss it.
6) The culture warriors who are supporting Zoe Quinn and the games journalists, including the games journalists and Zoe Quinn herself, have engaged in intimidation, death threats, doxxing, hacking, DDOSing, and other behavior on people who merely reported on the incident. I myself was doxxed, and in the same incident, the pictures of a teenaged transgendered individual were presented as well, along with their rough location and some other identifying information.
Zoe Quinn herself retweeted them. And this was hardly the first time Zoe Quinn had participated in distributing doxx; she was involved in the harassment campaign against The Fine Young Capitalists as well.
Leigh Alexander has threatened to destroy the career of anyone who comments on it publicly.
The reality is that these people are every bit as vile as the people who are criticizing them, possibly more so because they claim to be about "social justice" and yet pull stuff like that, as well as engage in censorship. It is all about stupid tribalism to them; they don't care about what they're doing, anything they do is right and anyone anyone else does which reflects negatively upon anyone else in their tribe is wrong.
It also is selective reporting by the press, as, for instance, one of the journalists for Breitbart was reportedly sent a syringe in the mail filled with some strange fluid after he wrote an article about GamerGate, which is A) far more severe than anything else which has happened and B) unlike all the other claims, actually has actual, verifiable evidence behind it. They were happy to discuss Zoe Quinn having people say nasty things about her online, but someone getting sent a syringe is kind of beyond the pale, and yet they have remained silent thus far.
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The most delicious of all scandals.
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A syringe? Seriously? I've been avoiding the Zoe Quinn fallout recently but this merits at least a google search.
Not that I ever plan on becoming internet famous, but if I was receiving so much attention in the mail, I think I might invest in an incinerator.
Why on earth would you open a package from someone you don't know ( or some official institution ) ?
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I would imagine that journalists (as it was a journalist) get packages from people they don't know more often than the general public.
Also, frankly, I'd open something even if I didn't know who it was from, most likely.