#Gamergate

While I didn’t know anything about #gamergate before reading this week’s articles, I was surprised to learn what a big deal it was in the gamer community. Having never really played video games other than the occasional Sega game as a kid, the world of gamers is totally foreign to me. It seems that this whole thing started by male gamers attacking certain female gamers over the idea that women are misrepresented in video games. One article sums up #gamergate here:

#GamerGate, a hashtag that became a breeding ground for all kinds of conspiracy theories surrounding the "corrupt" systems that allowed Quinn and Sarkeesian to figure in the industry as they do. As the hashtag spread, spectators got increasingly drawn into arguments about the ethics governing relationships between game developers and the gaming press.

 I think this issue does introduce legitimate ethical concerns because it really brought out the ugly side of some people. The whole thing seemed to have grown way out of proportion to the extent that certain female gamers like Zoe Quinn were forced to leave her home from fear of death threats. Quinn, also known as a ‘social justice warrior’, was interested in opening the medium to audiences including women and others. It seems that these people who were against her wanted to drive her away while still maintaining the issue was about corruption. I think there is a case to be made for women like Quinn and Sarkeesian who only want women to be more included in the gaming world. Just because some “traditional male gamers” don’t agree doesn’t mean they need to post private information online and prevent people from staying in their own homes. If we were to look at this in terms of one of our philosophers, I think Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance would be useful here. Rawl asks decision makers to examine the situation objectively from all points of view and essentially says ‘do unto others’. Would these male gamers want their addresses and information posted online for all to see? I think not.

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/ladjef/gamergate

 I think this situation of doxing is very unethical and really quite frightening. While there is no way to monitor what these gamers post online, I think it’s shocking that it went far enough that people were threatening Quinn’s life. This is all over video games? I think this situation is a bit different from that of Jackie because Jackie wasn’t receiving death threats saying people wanted to kill her, while Quinn did.

I do think it’s a bit unethical to create false social media profiles to inflate the size of the movement. It’s one thing to agree with the movement and claim there is a lack of female support, but falsely creating profiles seems like it’s taking it to another level. I think Kant’s categorical imperative could be used here as it focuses on the action. The action itself does not seem to be very ethical since it is in itself, a lie.

This brings us to the issue with Intel, who decided to pull its ads from Gamasutra. I don’t think this was entirely unethical as Intel is a huge corporation and didn’t want to be involved with something messy like #gamergate. While this has happened before with other corporations, I don’t find it as troubling here since Intel didn’t want to get caught up between two sides. They say” "We recognize that our action inadvertently created a perception that we are somehow taking sides in an increasingly bitter debate in the gaming community," Intel wrote. "That was not our intent, and that is not the case. When it comes to our support of equality and women, we want to be very clear: Intel believes men and women should be treated the same” (http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/4/6906909/intel-gamergate-advertising-gamasutra).

I think Intel employed the ideas of rationality versus emotion in this respect because they wanted to do what was right for the company. I guess we could also say they were only looking out for themselves (like Aristotle’s Golden Mean) but it seems like it was the right call to make. It wasn’t a sneaky move like creating false profiles, and it wasn’t a cruel move like posting death threats online. It was merely a smart business decision.

This whole #gamergate issue seems a bit troubling. I don’t know if there is a way to resolve this, but I guess the one positive is that something like this brings more light to the situation of anti-feminism in video gaming. Although I am a woman, it’s hard for me to relate to this as I am so completely out of this gaming world. It just seems so unnecessary to hack into someone’s account, post their address online, and threaten their life, all because you don’t agree with something they did or said. 

The Interview

While I did not see the movie The Interview, I did follow the news while all this was going on.  I didn’t really care about seeing it one way or the other but I was surprised when I learned that Sony was going to pull the movie. Not only would it have been a huge waste of time, energy, and not to mention, millions of dollars, but it would have sent the message that we as a people were afraid and weren't ready to stand up for our freedom of speech. 

When a multi million-dollar company decides to create a movie about assassinating the current living leader of North Korea, I think it’s safe to assume there is going to be some backlash. Many have said if the situation was reversed and someone decided to make a movie about killing our president, Americans would be outraged. While that is a valid point, this movie is just that, a movie. It’s a piece of fiction and is an American product of creative art, not history. I think it was not an ethically sound choice for Sony to pull the release for several reasons. To begin, the movie was clearly a satire comedy and while the plot material is somewhat touchy, it’s a farce, a joke. It doesn’t actually threaten anyone and we as Americans have the right of free speech, which is defined as “the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas”. What is the point of having a first amendment if people don’t stick to their choices and beliefs? One moviegoer says, “Other governments can’t censor what movies we watch here. We need to always be sure we’re protecting the First Amendment” (http://www.wsj.com/articles/small-theaters-make-free-speech-pitch-for-the-interview-1419531898). If we don’t release the movie, what’s next?

By pulling the release of the film, Sony was essentially giving in to the terrorists. It’s one thing to be fearful of the consequences and not make the movie, but it’s entirely another thing to make the movie and not be prepared to stand your ground. I think we can look at this through the eyes of Mill’s utility principle which as we know states that the outcome is what is important to deciding whether or not something is ethical. Clearly the outcome in this case was not positive, as the decision to pull the movie was met with backlash from everyone from fans to the actors to the president himself. As Obama said, “I would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks”  (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/12/19/sony-the-interview-hackers-gop/20635449/). We as Americans should not let people control what we do and don’t do through the threat of violence.

I think Aaron Sorkin’s article from the New York Times was enlightening as he discusses some major problems within Hollywood today. It’s pretty telling when he details how the media finally “got serious”, not because the hackers had released social security numbers, bank accounts, and phone numbers, but because of petty salary arguments within the film industry. I knew about the hackers releasing personal information about Sony employees but I was unaware that American journalists were the ones releasing the salaries.

Is this news? Is this what’s important to people when there is so much death, destruction, and war going on around the world? Now I love celebrity gossip as much as the next person, but I don't think it was right for journalists to release this kind of information. I think it’s important that people know that huge companies like Sony are capable of being hacked, but it’s not necessary to know specific information about the hack.

 In regards to how much money Jennifer Lawrence made for the movie American Hustle, I can quote Sorkin by saying “I don’t care”. While I do believe that women should be compensated equally in the workforce, why is it something that needs to be distributed? I don’t think it was an ethical decision on behalf of the journalists to release this information. Had they used Bok’s model and asked themselves how will others respond to this information going public, perhaps they would have come to a more informed decision. I think we can also look at this in terms of Gilligan’s Ethics of Care, which says that people do things for a larger good, to minimize pain and harm for everyone involved. Clearly, in this situation, the journalists did not reduce the negative reactions of the larger public but only exacerbated them.

I think it’s impractical for Sorkin to believe there should be solidarity among the film industry. While that would be nice, it seems that everyone in Hollywood is only looking out for number one. You could almost look at it in terms of Kant’s categorical imperative, which essentially says ‘do unto others’, a mantra that was evidently not used here.