Posted on September 4, 2014
Gamergate
It’s called Gamergate. Because every scandal has to evoke Watergate as a shorthand for Something Bad Has Happened. And something bad has happened, only not what the Gamergate people want you to think. Not familiar with this whole Gamergate business? Don’t worry; I’ll fill you in. And I’ll stop saying Gamergate. Because it’s stupid.
You see, “gamers” – some gamers – are really, really upset about the lack of integrity in games journalism. Or that’s what they say, anyway. But mostly, it just looks like they’re mad about vaginas, and they’re not gonna take it anymore. And it’s all because one young woman, Anita Sarkeesian, had the nerve to successfully fund a Kickstarter campaign to produce a series of videos about video game tropes involving women. That’s it. That was the starting point. After that, a female game developer by the name of Zoe Quinn had an angry ex post all sorts of intimate details about their sex life, and about her alleged sex life with games “journalists”. So now her game only got decent reviews because she let game critics stick their joysticks in her squishmitten. Or something. But it’s totally not about being angry at women calling out misogyny in gaming or daring to code when they have boobies. It’s about INTEGRITY!
Except that it isn’t. Read More
Posted on August 31, 2014
What’s Wrong With…?
I come across a lot of misinformation and confusion regarding a variety of topics on social media, so I thought I’d take a minute to create a handy reference guide for the good folks of the Internet to use whenever you find yourself wondering about a controversial issue. I hope you find it useful in your online discussions.
If you find that I haven’t covered a topic you’re interested in, please let me know by clicking the “suggest a topic” link at the bottom of the list. I want to make this as comprehensive an information source as I possibly can, so please don’t hesitate to let me know what I’ve left out.
Now, let’s get down to business. Read More
Posted on July 9, 2014
Butterfly In The Sky
I never really got into Reading Rainbow. With the show having started in 1983 when I was eight years old and already an enormous geek, I didn’t need any encouragement to read. I was already doing that. A lot. Sure, I wasn’t reading anything too heavy at the time, and I was watching just as much Star Wars as I was reading any books with words in them, but I did read. At that age, it was mostly Encyclopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure Books, the Lone Wolf series, and that sort of thing. The ’80s versions of Captain Underpants and Wimpy Kid, I guess you could say. The closest we had to Harry Potter back then was Lord of the Rings, which was a little too dense for eight year old me. Read More
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