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Notes -
I’m at work now, so can’t respond appropriately, but one point:
When making this post, I wasn’t necessarily trying to argue that GG was more virtuous (though I do believe they were) or that GG was more consistently correct (though I believe they were). Rather, the point of this post can be summed up in the following paragraph I wrote:
“[T]he fact that this behaviour has been engaged in by a group of people who make claims of having the moral and intellectual high ground is frankly incredible.”
In other words, anti-GG liked to portray themselves as having the moral and intellectual high ground, and so did the media covering it. They were the ones that made it into a social crusade and claimed they were situated on the right side of history. The mainstream view was that GG were bigoted, biased tyrants using ethics as a shield for actual hatred, and anti-GG were brave activists attempting to “expose” the truth. But when stuff like this happens, it illustrates the falsity of that predominant viewpoint and the utter hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness of those claiming the high ground.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that if you’re claiming moral and intellectual superiority, you should be held to a higher standard and be penalised appropriately if you fail to fulfil it.
I don't think the GG side was claiming to be evil and stupid?
Almost everyone is claiming moral and intellectual superiority almost always, those are the two main reasons people claim to be on any side of any argument. I would think?
I mean, yeah, I think the heart of the GG movement was trolls trying to harass and victimize women in retaliation for entering their cultural spaces, but my impression is that everyone on the other side vehemently denies that and claims that GG was a lofty movement rooting out corruption and tearing down the lies and abuses of the SJWs.
And the same for the anti-gg side, they claim themselves to be lofty defenders of etc etc blah blah and the other side calls them sjw snowflakes cancel culture etc etc blah blah.
There was a popular media narrative that proclaimed one side the good guys, sure; but both sides were claiming to be the good guys in their own rhetoric.
Also, on another note: We applaud the old-school ACLU for protecting the rights of Nazis to hold parades because we recognize that they were fully committed to defending one specific ideal, an ideal that was incredibly important to have someone protecting, and they didn't cares who's 'side' this put them on along any other axis. We decried them more recently abandoning this purity of ideology and considering other factors in their allegiances.
There's an angle from which defending a pedophile against false charges of corruption is not different from defending a saint against false charges of corruption. If the charges are false and you are restricting your defense to those charges, someone should be there to stand up for the truth and the integrity of the system that produces and considers those charges.
Of course, anonymous internet flame wars with millions of participants are never that clean. Obviously even if 99% of anti-gg people carefully restrict their defense to the charges of 'corruption in games journalism' alone, that's still 100,000 of the stupidest 1% producing memeable screenshots defending them against the pedo charges or saying they're a great person or whatever else.
Just like there are 100,000 screenshots of the vilest 1% of the gg side making rape threats and posting pictures of women's houses and etc. etc.
Whether a side can be fairly judged by screenshots of its worst members is an eternal question in these types of debates, and a surprisingly complex one once you get into the weeds on it.
There is a difference between believing you are good, but arguing that you have better policies and such, versus arguing that your side deserves to own a space because your side consists of a better kind of person. The anti-GG side went all in on arguing that the GG side consisted of horrible white male neckbeards who harass people and who should be kicked out of gaming for that reason, while they themselves were inclusive lovely people.
At the point where they argued that they were better than the GG people, it seems perfectly valid to point out when prominent members are, or defend abusers, pedophiles and other horrid people.
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It's a matter of degree. My perception from being in these spaces at the time that it happened is that GG believed on the balance that they were more correct than the antis, but they were more than well aware that there was a good amount of shit-flinging happening on all sides, and often tried to actively police their own communities in order to weed out that behaviour. Like users of KotakuInAction early on creating "Gamergate harassment patrols" and even Kotaku crediting Gamergate with tracking down someone who was sending threats to Sarkeesian.
There's also the fact that none of the criminal harassment was ever tied to Gamergate. I was in KotakuInAction when the whole thing was going on, and didn't see harassment being celebrated. In addition, the Gamergate surveys basically showed GG to have strongly left wing demographics, so that's some data which should be considered when you're evaluating them.
I will say I hardly ever saw any such caution on the anti side, who seemed to be impressively secure in the belief of their superior morality to the point where they seemed to believe they were just better people who could never be on the “wrong side of history” - in part, I think, because they were offered legitimacy by the mainstream in a way GG was not. I did, however, have an anti private message me to fling racial slurs at me (so much for being against harassment). So you might forgive me if my perception of this whole thing is very different from yours.
The case in question here is not "defending a pedophile against false charges of corruption", but defending a pedophile against verifiable charges of pedophilia. The claims that were being made against Sarah Nyberg in this case were not that she was corrupt, it was that she was a pedophile, and as another user here has already noted GamerGhazi, at the time, basically censored info on their subreddit that might suggest that she was. The defence against her pedophilia was at least widespread enough for the largest anti-GG subreddit to actively police the dissemination of information about it.
I mean, if you can find me something like the mods of KotakuInAction moderating KiA to be an active hub for harassment or something in a similar vein, I will concede the point that yes, "both sides". But I have my doubts.
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