Hello readers!
Just to check in, I'm doing fine, just quite busy with the work that pays the bills. That is, I haven't had the mental reserves to devote to blogging at the moment. I hope to get back to it very soon, however, because an end to current projects is in sight.
The Reading Experiment continues, as the end of 2014 approaches. I just finished Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring, and thought it was fantastic. I'm so grateful for the many book recommendations I've received from readers this past year, as I've read many authors I would likely not have encountered.
As I've been away from Internet, I've been contemplating GamerGate, and particularly its so very meta- quality. Namely, I'm convinced that many of the purveyors of harassment, whether consciously or not, kind of see the Internet as a massive online role-playing game. They seem to see the harassment they inflict on those who annoy them or who they deem to be ruining "their" as both real and yet also not inflicted on real human beings.
Like the violence within games, their harassment is something they can undertake, strategize about with like-minded "players," and obsess over with little real-world consequence to themselves.
Their treatment of women mirrors both the way many female characters are designed/treated in games and the way that many men treat/disparage/harass female players within gameplay itself. That is, GamerGate and the harassment many women are experiencing demonstrates that the real and virtual treatment of women within male-dominated gaming cultures is near-fully merged.
In many ways, the legal system needs to catch up. "Virtual" behavior that has "real" world consequences should have "real" world penalties.
Related:
Civility and the "Real"/"Virtual" Dichotomy
No comments:
Post a Comment