Intel’s big goal last year was to eliminate conflict minerals from its processors and supply chain, and this year it’s putting some of its money into something completely different: diversity. During its keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show today, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the company plans to spend $300 million over the course of the next five years to improve diversity. That goes for both the underrepresentation of women, as well as minorities in the technology industry, something that’s become a hot button topic as technology companies try to diversity their workplaces, and increase the appeal of computer science courses.
As for why this is happening now, Krzanich cited issues faced in gaming and technology over the past year, alluding to Gamergate, which the company became embroiled in following an advertising snafu.
Good move by Intel – and a clear sign the company distances itself sharply from the GamerGate idiots.
The worst thing about gamergate has been the fear it’s generated. I mean, even when Felicia Day simply said “Personally I am terrified to be doxxed for even typing the words “gamergate.” I have had stalkers and restraining orders issued in the past, I have had people show up on my doorstep when my personal information was hard to get”, she (ironically) almost immediately got doxxed. If these overentitled, overprivileged arseholes will dox the amazing Ms. Day simply for saying that? That generates a total climate of fear, one in which I’ve refrained from using any online account actually linked to my real name to say something I’ve wanted to say for as long as this misogynistic gender-terrorism “movement” has existed: FUCK gamergate. Damn, that was cathartic! And good on Intel for this, I don’t often see a move by such a massive corporation that really seems to say “we genuinely want to make up for mistakes we’ve made” rather than a hollow “we need to repair a PR disaster while doing as little as possible”.
what does this have to do with Gamergate, other than the obvious clickbait?
Nothing, except it’s the very thing GamerGate opposes, under the guise of ‘corruption’.
Get some new depends, your agenda is leaking…
Having crappy products, mediocre products, and a vast array of “diverse” products is apparently more important than having “excellent products”. Ask Github where the “meritocracy” had to go because women found it offensive.
Diversity, equality, excellence, pick 2.
That said, it appears, other than throwing a lot of cash at Anna Sarkeesian (maybe to make her go away – Jesse Jackson with Push might follow), I don’t see anything gamergate related. The SJW folks have been involved in supporting bullying doxing, and a lot of other bad behavior. There was/is some on the GG side too. But the error is in excusing bad behavior by your side instead of condemning the behavior itself equally.
The bullying, doxing, rape threats etc. is pretty much entirely done on behalf of GamerGate.
Wait, what? Several of the famous GG threats were either declared as non-credible or outright fabricated to the point that nobody had to leave her house.
While there is definitely harassment by the GG side (which I do not approve of), it’s just an order of magnitude worse by the social justice warriors (such as harassing of family, work, swatting, mailing syringes, dead animals, identity theft and cancelling utility services, hacking Amazon accounts and ordering a gun and a map of the Whitehouse; and stuff like asking a cancer patient why he hasn’t died yet, false rape accusations and false child porn accusations).
And they get away with it because nobody bothers reporting on it. In fact, prominent anti figures openly support harassment and doxing. There is no investigative journalism whatsoever, the media just parrots the media*. It’s a total disgrace.
Seriously, you should read about the other side a bit more often.
And before you accuse me: I’m just a lurker. I don’t participate in any way whatsoever, but I refuse to bend the truth and ignore the abuse of one side completely. I have no Twitter, no Reddit account, no Facebook, I don’t post anywhere – well except here because I already had an account. I think people should talk less and lurk more, the world would be a lot better that way.
(*) Anyone who has ever come into contact with newspapers should know this, you have to write your own press article and submit it to them. They do not fact check anything anymore. Corrections can always go at the end of some random page the next day. It’s cheaper that way.
Edited 2015-01-08 15:30 UTC
What you’re putting so prominently on display is called ‘double standards’. Look it up one day.
Try following your own advice. The idea that all the abuse has come from Gamergate is either deeply dishonest or utterly delusional.
The toxic characters in Gamergate should be called out for their behaviour, but the same is true for the doxxers, abusers, and false accusers in anti-GG.
If you condemn your ideological opponents, then ignore your own side’s equally ugly side, that’s the biggest double standard on display here.
I’m not on any side. I just observe GamerGate, and am utterly disgusted.
Why is all your disgust aimed at Gamergate, when the other side has shown itself to be every bit as bad?
If you claim to not be on any side, that just highlights your double standard here.
There is no other side. If there were, it should be corrupt gaming journalists. However, those are not who GamerGate attack, for some reason.
That seems like a rather disingenuous claim considering the fact that some people define themselves as “anti-GG activists”. Not to mention partisan bloggers like Thom, or various gaming media sites, who find any excuse to bash Gamergate supporters. From what I can see there’s a pretty clear ideological divide.
Much of Gamergate’s energy has been directed at attacking the gaming journalists/publications that they consider corrupt, especially the ones that published “Gamers are dead” articles. The attempts to get companies like Intel to withdraw their advertising is a rather obvious example of that.
And you wonder why GG has no credibility. They don’t know what corruption is. They are a bunch of easily manipulated children.
I feel much the same way about the people who credulously swallow the scaremongering and moral panic over games/gaming that I see pushed by many on the anti-GG side of the debate.
I’ve seen feminists and people pushing for social justice come down hard on supposed allies who cross the line. But from those gullible enough to believe that any of this has to do with journalism, I’ve seen the same tired excuses over and over again, with token statements rejecting the worst behavior, coupled with a complete lack of action to do anything about it.
About that ethics in journalism deflection: a couple broke up, the guy made damning claims about his ex trading sex for good reviews, but the reviewer who was supposed to have done this never reviewed her games. Real ethics in journalism includes retracting stories when they turn out to be false.
Gamergate started^A with attacks on women well before any journalism issues came up, and continued after those issues were debunked. There are real issues regarding reporting on games,^A but those stories don’t get much traction, possibly because they are about men in gaming companies and men at review sites. Somehow, gamergate only cares about the ethics of women. Imaginary ethical lapses by women are more important than real, documented conflicts of interest by men.
The whole thing has been bizarre. A woman wrote a story pointing out that the stereotype of gamers as petulant little boys was wrong, that gamers are often older, non-white, or female set off a shitstorm of petulant little boys complaining that she was attacking gamers. I think the evidence of who is buying and playing games supports her thesis, but there is also a very vocal, politically reactionary, poorly-socialized group of misogynists who are quite defensive of what they thought was their exclusive club.
We don’t need more excuses for why there aren’t more women in gaming, or in technology, or in the sciences. The reason is obvious: they aren’t welcome. I’m glad that Intel is reaching out. That will help. What I can do, and I challenge my fellow men to do, is to speak out when other men act like jerks. Silence implies consent, so speak up when people do things that you know aren’t right.
I hope others speak up when I slip up. I try to treat everyone well, but I also know that I grew up in a racist and sexist society, and when I’m not paying attention, that can come out. That doesn’t make me a racist, it means that I said something racist. Things have gotten better, but there’s still a long way to go.
If you read his actual post, you’d see he never made such claims. Instead he focused only on her cheating and emotional abuse. It’s an interesting perspective on how one can get suckered into an abusive relationship. Unrelated people found the post and made the link with collusion in journalism. It wasn’t even a big deal until all the censorship started and she invoked the DMCA to remove valid criticism (on her game) from Youtube. It pretty much exploded after that.
Secondly, one of the guys she slept with did highly recommend her game a few times (as a journalist, on the RPS site) without any disclosure of their relationship. Though not directly as a review, more as a “here is a list of new games, but this one stands out and you should definitely buy this”.
It’s amazing how much misinformation is out there on this topic. There is just too much noise.
Edited 2015-01-09 01:41 UTC
For those just downvoting rather than correcting me, I’d recommend you to read: https://archive.today/2OJ0G which is an excellent post on Buzznews of how gamergate started from the gamer point of view (though already censored for some reason, hence the archive link).
Originally it was about exposing some unethical behavior in gaming journalism. But it got spun into some punching bag for SJW types and the majority of the main tech sites on the internet. I haven’t followed any of this in months but it seems that idiots of all varieties have hijacked the conversation into a flame war putting internet trolls against internet trolls in disguise (professional victims).
Can’t believe people are wasting money on this flame bait.
Everybody participating in the Gamergate nonsense is a complete idiot. From the social justice warriors forcing artists to adhere to their world views to the boys pretending to be freedom fighters while in reality ruining people’s everyday lives. Choosing a side in this bullshit is participating.
Idiot.
I’ve got a couple of friends who support Gamergate (both of them women actually), but I still struggle to argue with your assessment.
I’ve no time for the scaremongering and puritanism pushed by the likes of Anita Sarkeesian. In my opinion the claims about video games causing misogyny and violence are about as evidence based as the fundamentalist Christian lunacy blaming Dungeons and Dragons for promoting witchcraft.
I’m old enough to have seen the results of previous media moral panics, for example police raiding my local video store on suspicion of stocking “video nasties” like The Evil Dead, so I can see why people are concerned about censorship, and push back against “social justice” types rather than just ignoring them.
Unfortunately, the behaviour of many Gamergate supporters hasn’t done their cause any favours. Tactics like doxxing and threats just support the SJW victimhood narrative (no matter how often their side does exactly the same thing) and stifle any chance of real debate. The focus on the sex lives and gender identity of certain anti-GG people strikes me as especially hypocritical and counter-productive for a movement that claims to oppose puritanism and defend freedom of choice…
Right now I wouldn’t particularly want to be associated with either side.
As Christina Hoff Sommers explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MxqSwzFy5w
Intel will come around to their senses. It’s not a good business proposal to spit on your own customers. Especially to cater to hate groups like feminists and con artists.
Gamers won 2014. And will win again in 2015.
Proving you’re to immature to be discussed with is not really ‘winning’.
Project much?
Yeah, it’s more profitable to cater to hate groups like dumbass gamers.
Indeed, dumbass gamers constitute one of the most profitable sectors of the tech industry.
Workplace diversity is BAD!
…if the hiring practices are fair.
If you have 80% men applying for a job, you should expect 80% of men (or thereabouts) working at that job. If you expect 80% of applicants to be white, then you should expect for about 80% of the employees to be white.
That’s the real measure of diversity: the ratio of applicant to the ratio of hires. They don’t need to be exact, but they should be relatively close. These days, though, it is not terribly uncommon to see the 25% ‘minorities’ applying for a specific job getting a 50%+ hire rate while the 75% of non-Hispanic whites see a 15% hire rate… all in the name of “equal opportunity.”
It disgusts me. The hire rate should be more or less identical, assuming the qualifications are evenly distributed – which is no guarantee.
You are wrong here on two counts:
1) Applying means that you want the job, and think you can get the job. In a white-male-dominated business culture, less women and ethnic minorities will apply, even if potentially they are equally skilled.
2) Not all applicants are equally skilled. If the 80% men, or the 80% whites, are less skilled than the 20% of women, or the 20% of coloured people, you should not want 80% whites/males being hired.
Not necessarily, as explained above. Unless you assume that per group of applicants (whites vs. coloured, men vs. women), the skills are the same. Which, typically, is not the case: women in male-dominated jobs or coloured people in white-dominated jobs typically are far better than their white male collegues, as with equal skills, the while males are hired. So only when there’s really a big difference in skills, women/ethnic minorities get hired.
I call this bullshit, just as American Christians claiming they are “persecuted”. Also, see above: if the most skilled are hired, such a ratio may not be rare.
Ah, now you’re talking. First an enormous rant (I bet you are a white male, right?), then one sensible remark that completely undermines your ranting.
I have never heard any dumber than this.
Gender has nothing to do with anything and the job should automatically go to the person that is more qualified for it. Not for someone just because she is a woman and some dumbass has decided there should be some pre-decided ratio of women working.
Wake up really. I think there are not too many jobs where it matters that much what you have in your pants. “I am sorry I can not hire you for this job. You have the necessary skills and experience but the thing you do not have is a vagina. Our company policy requires we have enough vaginas working to us, increasing the diversity of the workers.”
Sounds like a really great idea…..
But you agree that in theory, men and women should have equal chances, given the same skills right? And you agree that ideally, the men-women ratio in any job should be 50-50, as all job-biases are culturaly determined, right? Oh wait, you were just doing some bigoted ranting.
I’ll chime in..
I agree that men & women should have equal chances as long as they have comparable skills and experience. You would think an employer would want the job to go to the person best qualified. If a man and woman are equally qualified, the interview process would hopefully narrow down which person would be a better fit.
Of course not, that’s ridiculous. Job-bias is not strictly cultural. Obviously you have fields that are male-dominated and female-dominated, and not necessarily by design. For example, STEM-related jobs.. STEM fields are typically unappealing to women because women don’t typically excel in them. I’m not saying they can’t, I’m simply pointing out that most don’t. You should only expect a 50/50 man-woman ratio in fields where men & women have mostly equal interest and education.
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that men and women are not the same, identical, or equal. Not in nature and not in society. Should men & women of equal skill & ability have equal opportunity? Yes. Should women have the same pay for the same work as men? Yes. Do I think we should do more to promote womens interest in things like STEM? Yes. But let’s not pretend that a 50/50 ratio across the board is realistic, or that it’s even a good idea when the interest, skill, education, and experience doesn’t see the same ratio. Opportunity based solely on gender is idiotic.
Sure, and who would be the better fit, if the company is alrady 90% men? That’s why there’s affirmative action, to create diversity. Not to mention that it has been proven time and time again, that given equal qualification, men always draw the longest straw.
Right. So now you’re gonna link to the final, definit, proof that there’s “men’s brains” and “women’s brains” and that some brains excel in other tasks than other brains, right? Oh wait, there isn’t such evidence, since it’s bullshit.
No, STEM fields are typically unappealing to women because ESA put a guy on tv with an incredibly sexist shirt and for some reason, nobody there had an alarm go off. Women in STEM are just as competent as men in STEM, but there aren’t that much women in STEM because a) cultural reasons and b) sexism.
Sure. But there’s no reason at all (other than cultural reasons) why this shouldn’t go for almost all fields, including STEM!
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging it, but you are not just acknowledging it, you are saying it’s ok and natural. Which is flagrant bullshit, of course.
Good. You even have women friends right, who can use your bathroom?
There’s realism as in “given the current culture, it’s almost inatainable”, and there’s realism as in “given a culture where both men (boys) and women (girls) can do whatever they want with respect to currently gender biased activities, education and careers, a 50/50 ratio is perfectly atainable”.
I don’t even know what you mean by this…
I’d be more inclined to buy the idea that affirmative action isn’t just a self-serving plea for special treatment if it wasn’t made so selectively. But of course there’s only demand for these policies when it comes to representation in particularly desirable jobs in politics, business, and STEM. There are no similar campaigns to get women into dirty and dangerous male dominated jobs, and when women are overrepresented that isn’t seen as an issue at all.
While many differences in outcome may be cultural, there’s strong evidence of some average brain differences between men and women. Male IQ, for example, has a more variable distribution, with a larger number of scores at both the very low, and the very high, end of the scale.
Mental differences between men and women aren’t as clear cut as physical differences, e.g. average upper body strength, but it’s nonsense to dismiss them completely. Like the difference in life expectancy between men and women, the consensus seems to be that they’re down to a combination of both nature and nurture.
You certainly haven’t presented any evidence that discrimination is the only cause of men and women making different life choices. It just seems to be a point of dogma that a 50/50 ratio is what should naturally exist, and to me that’s not justification for social engineering.
Or maybe nobody had an alarm go off because most people, men and women, don’t share the fragile sensibilities of the kind of puritanical, hypersensitive feminists who’d condemn comic book style pin-ups (on a shirt actually made by a woman) as “incredibly sexist”?
I’m highly sceptical about a shirt making STEM unappealing to many women, but the laughable pearl-clutching overreaction to something so trivial definitely confirms that I want nothing to do with the modern feminist movement.
Indeed. There’s “demand for there policies (…) in particularly desirable jobs” because that’s where the pain is felt. If for no other reason than discrimination a certain group of people is unable to get those jobs (whether we are talking about women or other disadvantaged groups), affirmative action is called for, if the members of these groups are equally capable. I think we can agree that women are, on the whole, equally capable as men.
Dirty and dangerous jobs typically require body strength, one of the few areas where men and women clearly differ. Also, it’d be a waste of money to apply affirmative action to such jobs, if no women want them.
In areas where women are overrepresented, almost always men wanting such jobs are easily hired, and affirmative action therefore isn’t needed. As for whether it is “seen as an issue”, I can tell that in the Netherlands, there are campaigns to get more men interested in educational jobs, as it is very women dominated nowadays. But that has nothing to do with the need for affirmative action.
Yes, there are statistical significant differences. However, the curves for men and women overlap so much, that there’s no reason to have a 90-10 representation as opposed to a 55-45.
I never intended to claim it is. It is culture of course, the same culture that feeds the discrimination. No, I haven’t presented any evidence, but neither have you presented any evidence that it’s mostly innate. I think it’s safer to start from a null hypothesis stating equality, than one stating hige differences.
As long as there are clear barriers for women to enter certain fields, we need this “social engineering”. Mind you, nobody is saying it should always be 50/50. 70/30, as the German government wants for CEOs, is already an ambitious goal.
This warrents a discussion of its own, so I’ll be brief here: women are, on a daily basis, confronted with sexism. Catcalling, groping, inappropriate remarks from collegues, you name it. Follow @EverydaySexism on Twitter for examples. It is not up to you to decide whether or not this is acceptable.
You really don’t seem to get it. That shirt is the canary in the coal mine. That shirt alone is not the problem. It’s everything that shirt represents, that is the problem. It’s the fact that nobody even thought twice about that shirt, that is the problem.
Whether it is trivial or not is not for you to decide. Imagine the ESA guy was a NASA guy, and he wore a shirt with Dutch Zwarte Piet images, like this: http://www.doorbraak.eu/blog/wp-content/uploads/Piet.gif or this: http://www.animaatjes.nl/cliparts/speciale-dagen/zwarte-piet/animaa….
You mean the movement that strives for equality between men and women? Yeah, I can see how you don’t want anything to do with them.
That’s the question though. Is it down to discrimination, or is it down to a combination of different choices and aptitudes?
There are plenty of jobs like that which women would be perfectly capable of carrying out. What I find interesting here is that you assume that a lack of female applicants for those jobs is simply a matter of choice, and therefore not something that needs to be corrected. In contrast, when it comes to jobs in STEM, you seem to be assuming that women really do want those jobs, and therefore it’s down to sexist discrimination that requires reverse discrimination to fix.
If fewer women have shown an interest in something while growing up, and most have chosen to study something else in college, I’m not convinced that this is proof of sexism, rather than simply reflecting different preferences. Either way it doesn’t change the reality of the job applications that cross the desk of a company’s HR department.
It looks like Intel are focusing their funding on encouraging more women to study STEM fields, and I definitely don’t have a problem with that. In contrast, some of the crude affirmative action measures aimed at equality of outcome in hiring, ignore the reality that there isn’t equality between the men and women applying.
Do you have any evidence that men are easily hired in those jobs? That’s certainly not the story I’ve heard from men who have tried to go into those fields.
Also, just the fact that women don’t choose to study certain STEM fields is seen as a major problem. In the UK or USA, as far as I can see, there’s little attempt to encourage men into female dominated professions; certainly nothing comparable to the efforts to encourage women into IT and engineering.
Purely based on IQ that’s true, but that assumes that there are no other differences that lead to different choices.
To me the fact that women, despite their freedom to do so, and the many programmes aimed at encouraging them, generally don’t choose these fields, is itself evidence that this is a matter of preference. You can argue that this is all down to sexist discrimination, but in my opinion the burden of proof is on you to make that case.
Those barriers, in liberal Western countries, look a lot less clear to me than they obviously do to you. Especially as women have excelled in once male dominated fields that they choose to pursue in greater numbers, such as medicine.
It’s not that long ago that higher education was utterly male dominated, with genuine barriers keeping women out of university. Now women actually make up the majority within higher education in most countries; they’re just more likely to choose fields like psychology and medicine, rather than engineering and physics.
Actually there are quite a few people who do argue that it should be 50/50, and campaign for quota systems to bring that about.
Yes, that kind of thing does still happen, and should be condemned. In my experience HR departments are quick to crack down on anything resembling that kind of behaviour in the workplace.
What I find hard to believe is that these are daily workplace experiences for most women. To me that sounds like same kind of paranoid garbage underlying the exaggerated feminist claims about “rape culture”. The fact that some of the biggest “sexual harassment” controversies in STEM have been over things like overheard dongle jokes, or shirts featuring rather tame pin-up art, seems to challenge the idea that anything as serious as groping is a regular occurrence.
I get it, I just think that your point of view is utterly ludicrous.
Even ignoring the context (e.g. the fact that it was made by a female friend), to me wearing a shirt like that just represents a bit of individuality and eccentricity, a sense of fun, and OK, a definite lack of fashion sense. I don’t see the evidence of “sexism” that feminists have been ranting about.
All it shows is that they don’t swallow the puritanical world view held by many feminists, who seems to treat sexy as a synonym for sexist. To me that’s a good thing, not a problem.
What gets me is that a lot of the women I’ve worked with have been the ones most likely to share sex stories and make bawdy comments. The women’s magazines I’ve seen lying around feature far more offensive content than many of the molehills feminists have turned into mountains.
There were women in that ESA team with Dr Taylor. Is there any indication that they were upset by the shirt, or are feminists just taking offence on their behalf?
Why should deciding what’s acceptable be up to a handful of hyper-sensitive feminists?
Most of the women I know certainly thought that the “shirtgate” kerfuffle was utterly ridiculous. I wonder how people who get worked up over such non-issues actually manage to function in the real world?
Some religious conservatives might find a woman’s low cut top shocking and unacceptable, but I’m not under any obligation to care about their opinion either.
Modern feminism is a movement for equality between men and women in the same way that fundamentalist Christianity is just a movement for family values.
Just like it’s possible to be moral without embracing fundamentalist Christian dogma, it’s possible to believe in equal treatment of men and women without embracing the collectivism (equality of outcome rather than opportunity), puritanical scaremongering, or authoritarianism of the modern feminist movement.
The #Gamergate has done everybody a favour. They do lots of good and it’s sad to see that there are still people who try to label them something they’re not.
(By the way, Intel did a good job by putting some money on the table. I’d love to see more women who are actually interested in games and technology.)
In any case about the matter at hand: It should be noted that #GamerGate…
-People have Made Escapist, Kotaku, and others change their ethical policies.
-Has become a subculture itself against corruption in journalism and unethical practises. They’ve founded new and more ethical gaming news sites, gaming blogs, and gaming review sites.
-Has funded The Fine Young Capitalists’ charity and supporting actual women and minorities to get into video game development.
-Kickstarted #NotYourShield allowing minorities chance to voice their own opinion.
-Community revealed the GameJournoPros mailing list and corruption in games media. The fact that they predetermined the narrative of stories, and blacklisted people who didn’t follow their “line”, and other stuff including the fixing the review scores. Reveal of how EA’s Australia servers were hacked with tens of thousands of users personal information being leaked and nobody had reported of the incident even thought they knew about it. Proved that collusion exists. And how the rabbit hole goes deep into the games research in organisations such as DiGRA (who apparently are the source for the “end of gamers” claims).
-Corruption in IndieCade and IGF. Especially the part where judges who picked the winners were funding the developers of the winning gamers. How friends of friends were picking the winning games.
-Has caused advertisers (e.g. Intel) pull from sites (e.g. Gamasutra) that promote hate speech. Problems with Gamasutra writers having their self-interest in advocating people who they did games with.
-Public streams and forums allowed discussing the matters like the censorship of the thousands of Reddit comments. Not to mention spreading the word and allowing the opponents of the #GamerGate to participate into the discussion also instead of blocking them out like opponents of the #GamerGate do with their blocklists (which even blacklisted IGDA).
-Has The Huffington Post Live Interview to show what is really happening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuiie9zttU
-Despite attempts of censorship got the message out and questioned the unethical and corrupted practises of games media.
-Has helped various charities to rise money for good causes. For example preventing bullying (especially after “anti-gamergate” people promoting bullying), action against hunger organization, and for suicide prevention.
-Has also done other good stuff.
Yes. Both #GamerGate people and people opposing have probably guilty of harassment and other things. But you have to remember that this all begun because of unethical behaviour of games journalists. They tried to avoid the talk about their corrupted behaviour by accusing gamers of being women haters. That move was really cowardly and a really low punch.
And we should remember that #GamerGate Harrasment Patrol people were policing that people who use #GamerGate tag will not harass people.
You guys also should note that when certain people of the #GamerGate movement talk about “Feminists” they aren’t referring to Feminism in-general. Most #GamerGate people have no problem with Feminism. Many of the women in the movement are Feminists.
What they are talking about is a very specific part of the Feminist movement that hates men and hate women who accept the current social order. That part of Feminism has a mixture of Social Justice and Political Correctness in it.
Those people don’t want to make women equal with men. But they claim to be feminists. I cannot say for sure but I think those people want some kind of female lead Marxist society where free market is banned, where free speech and expression is prohibited, and so on. These people are not defending women’s rights. They seem only do what they are doing to fill their own pockets with money, get famous, and gain political power.
It was really disturbing to read anti-GamerGate people like Jonathan McIntosh demanding that state should regulate what kind of games people are allowed to be made. And how Matt Lees suggested that free market should be prohibited entirely with only state appointed entities having the right to make games.
And yes this sounds like an conspiracy but you guys have not seen these people write or talk about this stuff and be completely seriously about what they’re writing.
Websites as Kotaku, Polygon, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun promote such things to gamers. And people who play games have had enough of that and their corrupt unethical behaviour.
I’ve noted in Twitter and Facebook that especially some of the Rock, Paper, Shotgun readers especially seem like they’ve been brainwashed by these people. They seem to think that women are under constant danger at the internet, how gamers are supposedly punch of women haters, and other nasty stuff despite the lack of evidence. When people point out that statistics tell entirely different story they’re quickly censored and banned.
So what does that have to do with Intel?
LOL, no.
People who are anti-#GamerGate claim that it’s a hate movement that tries to drive women and minorities out of the gaming. They think #GamerGate is about harassing people.
People who are pro-#GamerGate say that they are interested in the corruption in the gaming journalism and journalism in-general. They want that actions of certain news outlets and their journalists are investigated.
The pro people are also very supportive towards people interested in games and gaming. Gaming has always been one of the most inclusive hobbies out there. You could play games despite political views or your how much money you have.
The way this relates to Intel as a piece on a gaming board that is the #GamerGate can be summed up in a following manner:
When pro-GG people asked advertisers to pull ads out the Gamasutra and other sites due “Gamers are dead” articles Intel was among the first to do so. That made some anti-#GamerGate people lose their nuts since it undermines their narrative. So they started their own unsuccessful campaign to reinstate the ads at Gamasutra.
Since then they’ve claimed in every possible turn that Intel has reinstated the ads or that Intel has switched to anti-GG side due one reason or another. That article at the Verge is just one of those attempts.
In reality Intel has never been pro or anti about the matter. They just saw that one website they directly advertised at spread message(s) that insulted their customers. So they pulled out because of that. Gamasutra has not written an official apology yet and most likely never will.
As far as I can see Intel spending money to support women and minorities is not related to the #GamerGate. At least not directly. It could be that they’re doing it to appeal both anti-GG and pro-GG people. But I don’t know.
Personally I’m more than happy about the fact that Intel is willing to spend some money to get more educated people into tech industry. That’s what matters most here.
Of course people in anti-GG camp are free to try turn it into their propaganda piece. But it’s likely to fail just like their previous attempts in defaming pro-GG. But it shows that they don’t care women or minorities in tech industry. What they care about is their own agenda.
There’s no such claim.
… I’d be smiling at this news.