A petition to black out Steam for an hour

A petition to black out Steam for an hour to combat online sexism in gaming

FYI forgive if this isn't where it's supposed to go.....

Pissing off millions of gamers is not a good way to help promote this cause.

[Sarcasm] If anything it will just reinforce that they shouldn't be there in the first place, I mean look at how bad things go because they are! [/Sarcasm]

In all seriousness, this issue needs to be addressed, but this isn't the way to do it.

Considering Steam goes offline about an hour eachday(especially Tuesday), they have already won.

I only heard about her yesterday, so I went ahead and saw a couple of her videos. And oh god... I really wish I hadn't.. -____-

Feminists are trash, I shit on Anita Sarkeesian

Black out steam for an hour to make Valve and its customers pay for the fact that the smallest vocal minority of gamers who are in no way related to Steam are sexist hateful douchebags,and forget that the rest of us are just normal people who are no more sexist in the gaming world than in real life.

Yep,makes perfect sense..........

I actually agree with some of what she says. The portrayal of women in most games is pretty despicable and the (over) reaction to her videos makes a lot of gamers look like knuckle-dragging, small minded (and probably small in other ways, too) neanderthals, but "blacking out" Steam for an hour will not solve much of anything. If the video-game industry ever wants to be taken seriously as an "art" form than this is an issue that should be addressed.

The portrayal of men in video games is just as bad.

Not really...

how so?

Thank you for ironically providing the justification for supposed "SJWs" to exist. lel.

Why? he's not saying he wants to kill or rape her, SJWs have said much worse for much less.

I don't agree with all of Anita's points but men aren't hyper-sexualised in games to appeal to adolescents (mostly males) like women are.

She's an attention whoring idiot that knows absolutely nothing about video games. All she cares is about is money and attention. She probably made the threats herself. If you don't want to be bullied on the internet then turn off the computer and get a life or just stay away from social media. How dumb can you possibly be. Close you account and go play video games. No one gives a crap that your favorite video game doesn't have a female lead.

In video games, women are sexualized and men are treated like disposable utilities.

SJW's care about one and not the other, so I shit on them too.

Blackout steam to protest sexist harassment? Pretty stupid idea imo

Honestly all of this is just adding more fuel to the ugly, rancid fire. It's like a war at this point with casualties on both sides. Innocent bystanders are being hit and dirty tactics are being used. I'm not protesting just because a few sorry excuses for human beings thought they would harass others in real life because of some internet argument. People that feed abuse are disturbed individuals that will likely get a lot of satisfaction when they see their victims react.

I wish everybody would get back to playing games.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

That's dumb. What most of these people don't seem to or don't care to realize is that most of these people are young kids and young adults. Most of them will grow out of it eventually, but there will always be a new crop coming up behind them. It's not a problem that you can solve by trying to shame the people doing it.

The ways to solve it would be to petition the social media companies to hold their users personally responsible for their abuses. If Twitter had an agreement when you signed up that if you were repeatedly and obviously abusive to another user then you would be charged a fee, and then they actually followed up on that, that would stop everything. It would take someone like Anita to sue Twitter in civil court for allowing these abuses to continue, but it might could be done.

Joan Rivers who sadly, is about to be dead, is a very good example of a feminist. These gamers ones and the bandwagon, bleh.

No. Just no.

Talking of Steam. Origin just popped up with a survey asking would I recommend it to a friend. So I put a big fat 0. Then it asked why so I put. Don't like DRM. :P

Women are sexualised in games, sure.. but she's not really trying to address that issue. I've seen her "tropes against women in games" videos, and all she's doing is showing small sections in games and making up a whole story about it that doesn't exist. The solution to what she's saying is to make women in games immortal.. >_>
She's not a feminist, just an annoying person trying to get attention which she is sadly getting.

So punish some Steam users for the actions of others? Brilliant plan.

She might be Lizard Squad....

Breaking News Threats against Anita Sarkeesian Tweets were made after she had received them. Yes, apparently Anita is that dumb.

That might be helpful if it was readable.

Click and maximize dude.

I mean in general it's just a bunch of screencaps with writing. No flow at all. Not sure why it's so hard to put information like that in a concise fashion and remove all the garbage that is not necessary. They are saying she basically replied to a tweet before it was posted? How do we know that the harassment was isolated to tweets?

What a pathetic excuse for a human being.

The fact these type of people keep proposing actions that clearly wouldn't solve the problems they claim exist, pretty much tells you everything you need to know about their intelligence.

The portrayal of women in gaming may be rather despicable. But doing this is only counter productive and will only worsen matters.

Edit: I dont like SJWs, but the opposite end (the small minded, insecure, knuckledragging manboons) are easily worse.

punish steam because a feminist bitch seems to think it is a good idea?

yeah no thanks. **** her.

Self-Entitlement, Steam Black Outs, and You: Why This is Silly

File this one under “Holy self entitlement, Batman”: But apparently some of Anita Sarkeesian’s supports/friends/whatever have started an online petition to get Steam shut down for an hour in a show of protest for Anita’s recent cyber-bullying. Wow.

By now you probably know of the supposed harassment Anita Sarkeesian received for her recent Tropes video and the ensuing fallout, so I won’t waste time repeating it here…since the entire gaming internet has fallen over itself in a mad rush to paint her as the injured, suffering victim. You can’t shake a digital stick right now without bumping into some depressingly apologetic article that grovels at her feet like a wounded dog begging for mercy. As it stands now, you, reading this article, are being told you have to be ashamed to be a gamer and that your hobby is either dead or deserves to die.

All because a fake sockpuppet troll on twitter cyber-bullied Anita Sarkeesian.

Yes, let’s talk about that before we go on, shall we?

Notice anything about this threat maker?

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see this isn’t even real. Ten tweets? Default “egg” avatar? Every tweet solely devoted to Anita? Smells like a typical sockpuppet troll to me.

But no, Anita, like every other emotionally stunted internet neophyte, thinks this is real. She thinks someone is going to broadcast over the internet their intent to do her harm and that they’ll actually follow through with it. You know, like every single one of us got stabbed when some angry jerk-off on twitter/IRC/4chan/Gfaqs/Gamespot/IGN/ICQ/AOL/Instant Messenger/Facebook/Myspace/Ebaums/Newgrounds/Yahoo/ messaged us and told us they’d kill us. I mean, yeah, we were so totally dead right? I mean, after all, the internet is as real as real life, so if someone says they’ll do something to you online, they will so totally do it in real life, right? It’s like that really hot blonde I met on Yahoo ten years ago who said she had a model body and wanted to “do me all night”. She totally wasn’t a guy with a beard and severe acne who just turned 53 and lived with his ailing mother. Definitely not. Because, you know, everything on the internet should totally be taken at face value.

Is Anita this dense? Are her supporters that dense? How long have these people been online, anyway? If I went and hid under my bed every time someone told me they were going to kill me online, I would have shriveled up and died behind a locked door ages ago. Newsflash Anita & friends: This is the internet. Saying you’ll rip someone open is pretty much a term of endearment here. Heck, the first time I got on IRC back in 1996, the very first private message I received was from someone telling me he hated (slang term for homosexuals) and that he’d kick my (slang term for rear-end) for coming into his chat room. It’s just how the net is. Even someone as unimportant as me gets crap like that thrown at them on twitter. It’s meaningless. To actually give it power over you is to basically admit you’re too sensitive to be here in the first place.

I know what people will say to that though. But…But…They had her real address! They knew her family!

Ever hear of Google?

It’s shocking what you can find out about someone on Google. Googling my own name revealed an online document detailing the purchase I made of my old house in NJ back in 1999. From that, you could have gotten my address (If I still lived there) the name of my grandmother whom I bought the house from, and how much I paid. Further digging, which wouldn’t take too long, would get you my age, current address, marriage documents and loads of other info…all from easily obtainable public sources. You also wouldn’t be the first person to do it to me either.

Though imagine what a highly visible public internet figure like Anita has sitting out there. Especially if you get one of these highly motivated 4chan types who want to “dox” her. You’d have names of family members, addresses and god knows what else.

So does merely copy-pasting some googled info with some really poorly written almost joke-quality threats require a call to the FBI and the purchase of a dog? Didn’t we stop taking online death threats seriously back in the late 90s? Isn’t it considered passé by now? Do people actually think they are real? In 2014? Will that 14 year old kid on battle.net sending me hateful messages kill me? Yeah, I’m sure he’ll show up at my house with his noodle arms and try to stab me for doing something to him in a video game.

No, and the real reason Anita made such a big deal of this is due to two things:

#1: It now makes her a sympathetic victim instead of the rabble-rousing negative attention seeker she truly is, and…

#2: It moves all the internet attention away from Zoe Quinn and the scandal involving gaming journalist’s lack of integrity.

It’s really a masterful move on her part, to be honest. I am willing to bet you that when she saw those threats pop up in her @mentions she was jumping up and down for joy and triumphantly texting her pals at Kotaku because she finally had a way to make gamers look like the bad guy again. Sort of like how we found out Adam Sessler and his buddies were in a bar watching Phil get “hacked” in “real-time”.

Actually, I wouldn’t be shocked if she purposely created that account and posted the threats herself. If Phil fish can “hack” himself and pretend the “leader” of “Capital letter /V/” got him, then it makes absolutely perfect sense that Anita would borrow the same tactic to make herself look victimized and gain sympathy as well.

It didn’t work for Phil because Phil was a dude. Anita, well, the internet always cries for a girl in danger, so she knew she could rely on people leaving their bullshit detectors at home and jumping to easy (read: incorrect) conclusions.

Maybe I’m wearing too much tinfoil, but I think this was all planned. The SJW crew has been looking for a way to spin this whole fiasco back in everyone else’s faces and get the spotlight away from their own highly suspect shenanigans, and this is the perfect way to do it. Me? I’m not buying it. Two decades of internet use taught me a lot, and the most important lesson is that people lie to gain sympathy. All the time.

And nobody wants/needs sympathy right now in the gaming hobby more than the SJW movement.

Read more at http://nichegamer.net/2014/08/self-entitlement-steam-black-outs-and-you-why-this-is-silly/#oTcAm0XHFA1tyiFd.99

Uh...what does art have to do with sexism? Is something to you only artistic to you if it's politically correct? Do you rank how artistic something is based on how little it offends someone?

I'm pretty sure you might've taken one too many magic mushrooms...

@Shielder7

Ah... Carl Batchelor.

I remember him. He was (and still is) the user taxonomic. Those of us who had been here for a long time would remember that he can be an especially caustic person when dealing with things which he dislikes. He was also quite given to ranting.

He still is, apparently. Little wonder why he was banned from GameSpot back in 2011. He also left - or was banned - from many other sites for his high-horsed attitude and massive ego.

Also, he is wearing a lot more tin-foil than ever too. I suppose paranoia and suspicion goes hand-in-hand with sanctimony.

Take his rant with a pinch of salt, people. He's not any better than Sarkeesian or Thornton.

P.S. I remember having stated long ago that the only gaming site which would take him seriously is one which he runs himself. I suppose that he finally had that site.

P.P.S. Also, do note that this petition was not started by Sarkeesian. It's one of her "ultra" supporters. That's such a silly thing to suggest to Valve, really. Not to mention that Valve only cares about off-loading its share of the work to its customers and content partners.

P.P.P.S. Apparently, due to the site migration two years ago, he's unbanned now. :/

No, art has to more to do with not pandering to an obviously very juvenile and sophomoric user base (i.e. gaming and 90% of so-called "hardcore" gamers). If the video-game industry wants to be seriously or, as I said, as a true art form, then it's time (far past time actually) to grow up and stop creating and marketing games to maladjusted and lonely little boys.

What this woman says is no different then Nazi propaganda.

really..? shit no!

Shit like this just weakens her position.

I guess that makes me disappointed with everyone on both sides of the debate.

oh what a suprise wildflower you take the hipster route.

Nevermin the many MANY counter-videos that debunk her, and even expose her as a liar... and she cherry picks and lies in her videos about certain aspects of the game she is showing (Seen the Hitman one?) or the fact that while she claimed to be a "life long gamer" there is a video avalable of one of her lectures saying "I dont actually play videos game because they are violent and such, so I had to go out and do alot of research".

NEvermind most of her content is wikipedia ..... with no real substance, morons gave her $160k ... to make.... youtube videos... which she STILL hasn't finished... and could be made by anyone for free.

Since when has any aspect of "art" had to conform to social justic or norms or anything....

Valve/Steam is it's own company. They aren't going to entertain a petition.

This woman (and all feminist alike) need to realise that women are genetically made weaker than men. They constantly want to have their cake and eat it. Their rights are already above any mans, they just constantly want more and more.

If they want to spread their selfish ideals, why don't they go to countries where women have no rights what so ever. Then they can prove how deeply they believe in their stuck up ways of thinking.

@-wildflower-: Nice code lavender there

So pandering to politically correct ninnies automatically makes something capable of being seen as artistic? How is it that games are marketed towards "maladjusted and lonely little boys"? Because a lot of popular ones have guns in them and women aren't the leading protagonist of every game?

You do know art isn't made with the pure inclination of generating revenue, right? Art is about making a statement. How are the majority of videogames supposed to be seen as art, regardless of the marketing and content? They are commercial products. They are artistic as a lollipop. Games will never stand on the grounds of being art, in my eyes. And why should they? Games are supposed to be fun, entertaining, and lacking any sense of pretentiousness. Art isn't supposed to be any of that - art is about communicating ideas, usually in a subtle manner. Videogames don't communicate any artistic ideas, nor are they subtle. It's not their purpose, they are "popcorn entertainment". Videogames have tons of art in them, I won't debate that, but games will never be considered "art" in the same way a picture, or movie, or music is.

There are a handful of indie titles on Steam that literally were created for the sake of being art, but those don't sell very well, nor do they review very well. Why is it important to anyone that games are seen as art? Just seems silly to me to think the real reason why games aren't art is because they try to appeal to a target demographic. There are endless amounts of games that appeal to women. Hell - they have a whole console just for them (Wii U).

Everyone needs a axe to grind I guess.

These people thought....they create their own drama and purpose.

@Gelugon_baat:

Actually, I don't own the site. I'm one of his writers and I was hired based on the positive feedback I received on Gamespot, as well as Giant Bomb and Youtube. He was so impressed that he specifically asked me to be his PC RPG and Editorials writer. Considering most of my reviews here managed to garner in upwards of 80+ upvotes with only 1 or two downvotes, it makes sense.

Also, I was never really banned from anywhere else, and even Jodi, the mod here, sent me a message asking why I was banned.

Though to be honest, it doesn't matter much now since I'm paid to work for Nichegamer and it's doing quite well. A lot of people are flocking to us since we have been one of the champions of truth in this debate.

Thanks for your support Gelugon. Weedman says hi!!