On not “News” and Why Gamergate sustains.
One of the problems with the Web 2.0 world is how it’s affected what news is covered. Before the Internet revolution, “News” was as the name described news. The newspaper and the nightly news were your only window into getting the events of the next day. If you didn’t read it, world-changing events might silently pass you by.
And it, well sort of, grounded in the culture in a certain groups of events. Newspapers, like video games, are one of those things where the first one costs half a million, and the second one cost pennies to make. You could be a consumer for pennies, but to print your own was an undertaking. This gave the mainstream press incredible control over what was discussed. 20 years ago today regular people were legitimately discussing the Mir Space Station, for two reasons, one it was a big deal at the time, and two because the “news” was covering it.
There was still gossip of course. Who was sleeping with whom in your community was a popular topic of discussion even among those who didn’t read the paper. The newspaper did have an entire sections devoted to printing the press releases of the stars of course, as well as the “leaked” information from their publicists. But the media was focused on facts, even if they weren’t completely true.
One of the untold stories of the time concerned Entertainment Tonight. ET was relatively unsuccessful at its start. The ad sales were easy but the viewers were poor. When the series began, it focused on what movies were being released, who was in them, and where you could watch or listen to the content. It was more of an on air review of the latest media trends, than a gossip blog. The apparently mythical objective review there has been so much discussion about.
When Entertainment Tonight really started becoming profitable was when they moved away from being reviews, to being a news show. Suddenly those press releases became breaking news, breaking news that warranted interviews with the celebrities involved, or their publicists, or eventually people who were just tangentially related to the issue at hand. The assumption before was that viewers would see through this manufactured drama, but results showed that while many did they were more likely to discuss it with others. Giving sensationalized information was actually better as it not only attracted attention but also discussion, much of which was refuting the points made. All this discussion good or bad made it must watch television.
Howard Stern once said words to the effect of, the people who like my show listen to it once, the people who hate my show listen to it twice so they know where to get offended. In the rating of a show there is no column marked, viewed ironically.
What history forgets is the way the Internet started out. The Internet was more or less a free printing press when it began. If you look at the early net, you actually saw people concentrating on technical news, world news and events (As well as a massive amount of pornography.) The first online publication were surprisingly respectable, almost to counter the assumption by the public at large they weren’t. But just like Entertainment Tonight, they all slowly moved away from covering information objectively and instead focused on the emotions of the issue. Before, discussion on a news story was free advertising, but online with comment threads, message forums, referral links, and online ads it was a way of making money. It’s telling that Reddit, “The front page of the Internet” in not a news site, but merely a means of commenting and organizing existing news.
We’ve been tracking various websites that discuss events around TFYC, /r/GamerGhazi inevitably has more comments and more interaction with us than /r/KotakuInAction. KotakuInAction normally approves of what we are doing and nothing ruins a conversation more than approval. While at the same time GamerGhazi has tons of points to discuss, a surprisingly high number which aren’t true. When we discuss the issue with Anti-GamerGate “journalists” (A term we use only because it’s clear they have a bias), everything becomes about emotion and drama. No Anti-GamerGate reporter has ever asked us about feminism, in fact the only interviews where people have asked us to STOP talking about feminism were clearly Anti-Gamergate.
What fuels the fires of GamerGate is the outrage against it. Just like with Howard Stern people have more or less quit their job, to watch it not once but twice so they know exactly where to be offended, which fuels the other side anger. Commenting on the news shouldn’t make the news. But so much of the GamerGate discussion is not on what happened but what someone said about something that may have happened. @radicalbytes has less followers than we do but he’s retweeted more by his “enemies” than his followers, so he’s much more visible. Crash Override Network has 22 articles not because it’s news, or because of journalistic corruption, but because it drives traffic, and people want to add their own opinion by repeating what others have said.
I regret that in the end the main limiting factor of TFYC might actually be that we don’t fight enough to make enemies with the minorities we are trying to help, and too much time working with them to make the world a better placeI think it’s a sad message when that’s the best way to survive in the current media space is to hate everyone. We don’t know what to say, because all people in social justice want to do is talk about them selves.
But then again, in the current media space I might be saying all of this for attention.
P.S. Boingboing stop linking to articles about us that have no facts in them
