Category: student posts

Anita Sarkeesian’s TEDxWomen talk about online harassment and cyber mobs describes her experience with harassment after starting a Kickstarter to fund a video series about the representation of women in video games. She tells her audience about the misogynistic hate campaign she endured and tries to imagine the social contexts and thought processes that could have driven her attackers to lash out at her as they did, comparing their hate campaign to a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO).

Given that she’s speaking at a TEDxWomen conference, Sarkeesian’s talk is likely intended for an audience outside gaming culture. She introduces an audience unfamiliar with video games to the culture surrounding them. Despite her focus on how misogyny and harassment are prevalent in gaming culture, Sarkeesian is optimistic and believes that over time the culture surrounding games will become more open to women. By giving her talk, Sarkeesian may have hoped to raise awareness of the problems with gaming culture. She may have even given a wake-up call to people who empathize with her harassers.

I appreciated Sarkeesian’s dissection of the “game” her harassers thought they were playing. It was interesting, although somewhat sickening, to look into how they were able to rationalize their behavior and encourage further harassment from some people in the gaming community.

It’s hard for me to connect Sarkeesian’s talk to my own experience because my experience with video games in very limited, aside from playing Mario Kart and the Sims with my siblings as a kid. On the other hand, my limited experience with video games is likely due at least in part to the problems in representation and acceptance of women in video games that Sarkeesian points out in her talk and her video series. The fact is that, for the most part, video games are not made for women and girls like me.

As we continue to discuss Gamergate and the representation of women in video games, I’d like to know more about games that do a good job of developing female characters and appealing to women. Are they becoming more prevalent? What do they look like? I think it would be interesting to look more into the change for the better that Sarkeesian believes we’re beginning to experience.

Arthur Chu writes to gamers who are supporters of #GamerGate. He wants to inform those gamers that he knows where they’re coming from, but that their violent reactions are unnecessary and cruel. Chu hopes that gamers will be able to create a more open and accepting community.

Chu describes Gamergate as a movement meant to make gamers feel entitled, as if they own gaming and someone on the outside is trying to take it away from them. However, he says he understands what has led them to feel that way.

Growing up, Chu was antisocial and intelligent, made few friends, and retreated into video games. They were his escape from many of the tough moments of his life.

Chu became a fan of Felicia Day, who created an web series of World of Warcraft parodies. The web series showed how “creepy” gamers felt vulnerable, and that there was someone who could manage to forgive them for their intrusive behavior.

When Chu got the change to see Day do a small improv show in L.A., he took it. There, he felt incredibly awkward in the audience of Day’s friends and family. Then, Day approached him and asked him to go to dinner with her and her friends. Chu was impressed that she took the chance with him, that she invited a random fan/potential stalker out to eat.

Someone trusted Chu to not cross boundaries, and that trust led him to never cross into stalker and obsessive territory. This was five years ago, when the gaming community was strong and trusting. Now, Day has said that when she sees gamers out on the street, she avoids them. Now, people who try interact with fans face death threats and stalking, causing them to not interact with their fans, leading to angry fans.

I was saddened to hear that a once strong community was now falling apart. Chu mentioned how he was able to get a group of people together to help him propose to his wife because they were all gamers. Now, death threats are sent and received for inconsequential happenings, such as bad reviews for a game.

 

Todd VanDerWerff writes a piece on #GamerGate, a movement that took Twitter by storm this past summer. He writes this article to the general audience, trying to inform people not as immersed or not immersed at all in the video-gaming world what #GamerGate really means. He works on providing the source of the #GamerGate, the goals of supporters of #GamerGate, and the bigger issues that this movement brings up.

#GamerGate is derived from the backlash of a public break up between video game creator Zoe Quinn and her now programmer ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni. Gjoni wrote several pieces about Quinn, released her public information, and ultimately accused her of cheating on him with video game journalist Nathan Grayson. It was the latter that really sparked the cause of #GamerGate.

After this very public ordeal occurred, many #GamerGate supporters began to challenge the ethics of videogame journalism. VanDerWerff highlights this as one of the main topics of #GamerGate. He expresses that Gamer Gaters feel as though journalists are letting their relationships with video game creators influence their work causing them to report on games that are not worth it as well as reporting on things that are not video games but pertain to the gaming world. However, VanDerWerff brought up a good point that there is disconnect between “what those who read gaming media believe journalism to be and what it actually is.” Gamer Gaters want video game journalism to solely focus on the games and specifically games at are relevant to the masses while in journalism, the reporters are meant to report on that as well as issues pertaining to their broader field such as the bigger issues in the gaming world.

VanDerWerff brings forth these issues that #GamerGate supporters have, mainly about video game journalism. However, he also shows the inconsistencies. These supporters want video games to be seen as an art and want them to be solely reported on. On the other hand, evolution is necessary for video games to reach their full artistic prime which means the that the journalism has to evolve as well as the type of games that are created. The supporters are angered by “social justice warriors” who are advocating for more diversity in games in a field that becoming more diverse but that also hinders any evolutionary progress. VanDerWerff goals were to share these inconsistencies of #GamerGate movement and why is won’t really succeed as well as point the overarching question that has been brought up by all of this which is “what games should be and who they should be for”?

I thoroughly enjoyed this article although at times I was lost as to what Gamer Gaters were fighting for and wanted to achieve as well as why this led to the harassment of women in the gaming industry. I really appreciated the author’s highlighting of the inconsistencies in the movement. I felt as though it showed that not many of the supporters of #GamerGate even know what they were fighting against or for because for many of the things they wanted, they were fighting against the things that would inherently get them that such as more diversity and representation in video games.

It surprised me that those who advocate for more diversity and representation in video games anger #GamerGate supporters. I do not know much about video games. I do not really play them, but in a field that is growing in the number of female gamers and game creators, it would only seem right to evolve with the times and appeal to everyone. However, by pushing against this, it is like they are trying to exclude a whole group from the gaming world and identify them as not “real” gamers. They cannot achieve games of more artistic credibility if they want the same types of games that appeal to the same type of people to be made. The games have to change with the demographics – all the demographics. It just puzzles me, because what do they have to lose if more games were made with female representation or LGBT representation?

Hi! My name is Emma and I’m an Economics major at UMD. Outside of class, I like watching movies with great costume design and reading articles about feminism on the Internet. You can find me on twitter @eyeagz.

I like that this tweet expresses the frustration that sometimes comes with being a feminist and that it comes from the amazing Tina Belcher.

I’m looking forward to learning about MITH’s archive of #Ferguson. I think it will be interesting to learn about an academic perspective on social movements going on right now.

Hi! My name is Muftiat. I am a computer science major pursuing a math minor and a biology (particularly neuroscience) concentration. I very much enjoy movies across all genres. I look forward to the Golden Globes and Academy Awards every year. In addition, I love music. I am pretty open to listen to anything. Besides that, I have strong interest in the brain and neuroscience, especially mental illnesses. I hope to be able to use computer science to further progress the field of neuroscience. You can also find me on Twitter @MuftiatO.

Kim Kardashian, Paper Magazine cover

This image above is the winter 2014 magazine cover for Paper Magazine. They did a mostly nude spread of Kim Kardashian in an effort to “break the internet.” After Kim Kardashian posted the pictures herself on her Instagram, I remember people attacking her for doing so such a provocative spread on all forms of social media. However, no one questioned the fact that a magazine company wanted to use naked and semi-naked photos of her in order to increase their worth and their brand. Also, many people, women especially, were quick to judge her on her decision especially since she is now a wife and mother, but when men pose for Calvin Klein underwear ads or even naked, there is much more of a positive response. This photo and the response it received demonstrates one of the double standards that exist between men and women.

I am most looking forward to the digital activism portion of this course. In one of my high school English classes, we explored whether a difference can really be made through social media, and it is something I constantly wonder about and battle back and forth with myself. On one hand, you are tweeting or posting and through that people are becoming aware of the what is going on, but on the other hand, beyond your phone or computer, what difference is being made?

 

 

 

 

Hello! My name is Chris and I am majoring in Electrical Engineering. You can find me on twitter @ChrisFromDCC106. I do very little other than play guitar and write songs and do homework.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/04/gender-flipping-bondi-hipsters-take-the-pss-out-of-miranda-kerrs-gq-photoshoot-nudity-video/

I liked this picture because it really shows the differences society views men and women.

As far as parts of the course go, I’m very interested in all of the topics because I don’t spend a whole of time thinking about these topics.