Gawker Media (Kotaku, Gawker, Jezebel, etc.) loses lawsuit and is fined $115M

[solidbatman]

The penalty likely stems from what the court sees as damage to Hulk Hogan's brand. He does plenty of advertising work, and I'm sure is paid quite well for it. So perhaps, the money being awarded to him as damages is in place as a loss of his revenue resulting from the case along with court and lawyer fees. 

[VirginSmasher]

Actual footage of Hulk Hogan after winning the lawsuit

 

[Darklord Rooke]

6 hours ago, Down said:

I definitely don't agree with the reduction of Gamergate to "modern youths morals"; Gamergate is a reactionary movement sharing ideologies close to extreme-right, it's not a very "youth" thing: you could find similar reactionary movement full of old people.

It's a real, huge thorn in the foot of the video game community which, in my opinion, has become irreducible to a simple trend among youths who need to mature.

But I like complaining about the youth of today ...  

[mitchhamilton]

so apparently they also awarded hulk 25 million dollars in punitive damages on top of the 115 million. it just gets worse and worse for gawker.

[niku]

From a geek/weeb/gamer perspective, this thing with Gawker is certainly a big topic. Personally I don't really care if Hulk Hogan is offended or if Gawker goes bankrupt but these things have become symbols for some kind of war. Actually I find it astonishing, when I was a teenager I thought that people around me were too tame, I wanted to have extreme opinions and provoke some kind of reaction. Now that I'm a mid-20s geezer I kind of have an opposite desire: I'd rather just get along with people and go about my business.

I'm not sure if the world suddenly got super extreme or if I became the most boring person ever. Either way, it seems to me that everyone I talk to nowadays have picked a side in an ideological showdown. One side believes that there's a Jewish conspiracy to exterminate white men and establish some kind of Matrix-like society. The other one thinks that the slightest expression of opinion or even the private habits of other people is extremely offensive, an affront to democracy and that it's somehow controlled by a male conspiracy, a patriarchy, instead of a Jewish one.

Am I misunderstanding something or is this really how things are nowadays? I don't actually meet people offline, mind you, so my experience is purely based on what I see online.

[Kelebek1]

 

 

Just replace "world" with "Gawker."

[Chronopolis]

On 2016/3/29 at 7:05 PM, niku said:

From a geek/weeb/gamer perspective, this thing with Gawker is certainly a big topic. Personally I don't really care if Hulk Hogan is offended or if Gawker goes bankrupt but these things have become symbols for some kind of war. Actually I find it astonishing, when I was a teenager I thought that people around me were too tame, I wanted to have extreme opinions and provoke some kind of reaction. Now that I'm a mid-20s geezer I kind of have an opposite desire: I'd rather just get along with people and go about my business.

I'm not sure if the world suddenly got super extreme or if I became the most boring person ever. Either way, it seems to me that everyone I talk to nowadays have picked a side in an ideological showdown. One side believes that there's a Jewish conspiracy to exterminate white men and establish some kind of Matrix-like society. The other one thinks that the slightest expression of opinion or even the private habits of other people is extremely offensive, an affront to democracy and that it's somehow controlled by a male conspiracy, a patriarchy, instead of a Jewish one.

Am I misunderstanding something or is this really how things are nowadays? I don't actually meet people offline, mind you, so my experience is purely based on what I see online.

There are a lot of angry and active people, and their voices are the loudest...I think? Some time ago I checked out MGTOW (Men go their own way). The idea is actually pretty meritful in theory, but in practice, their site attracts way too many angry men that it's just not a nice place to hang out.

Head to places where such radical opinions aren't rewarded and I think you'll find that people are more chill and open-minded.

[Guest]

On 3/19/2016 at 2:40 PM, Down said:

 -Gamergate is a reactionary movement sharing ideologies close to extreme-right

-for their harassment campaigns

I've read some stupid shit in my day, but boy do you take the cake. 

 

[Kurisu-Chan]

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

I've read some stupid shit in my day, but boy do you take the cake. 

 

It's okay, you're extreme-right.  

[Funyarinpa]

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

I've read some stupid shit in my day, but boy do you take the cake. 

 

Regardless of what you think about Gamergate, it's undeniable that people have done fucked up shit under that name.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Kurisu-Chan said:

It's okay, you're extreme-right.  

And here I thought I was a left-leaning liberal 

1 minute ago, Funyarinpa said:

Regardless of what you think about Gamergate, it's undeniable that people have done fucked up shit under that name.

People have done dumb shit under any name, and considering that gamergate was not a closed group where you had to fill out a form to be part of it literally anyone can say they are a part of gamergate and spew garbage.

If you however look at the people had a voice in gamergate i.e Sargon of Akkad or Yahtzee from the Escapist, you saw that they didn't engage in any of that kind of stuff, at least not as I'm aware.

[Funyarinpa]

Just now, frogstat said:

And here I thought I was a left-leaning liberal 

People have done dumb shit under any name, and considering that gamergate was not a closed group where you had to fill out a form to be part of it literally anyone can say they are a part of gamergate and spew garbage.

If you however look at the people had a voice in gamergate i.e Sargon of Akkad or Yahtzee from the Escapist, you saw that they didn't engage in any of that kind of stuff, at least not as I'm aware.

That's true but it doesn't change that the whole debacle got started due to a review that doesn't even fucking exist. Kind of pointless to associate your name with something so closely intertwined with harassment, misogyny and such shit either. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Funyarinpa said:

That's true but it doesn't change that the whole debacle got started due to a review that doesn't even fucking exist. Kind of pointless to associate your name with something so closely intertwined with harassment, misogyny and such shit either. 

That's is an awfully strange way to derail an argument to something else, but I'll bite.

If you'd do your research you'd know it wasn't about a review, but positive coverage for the game (which does exist). This has been repeated by gamergate since the very beginning and I'm surprised people still bring this up.

The only reason gamergate is so closely associated with misogyny and whatnot is because others keep labeling as that, instead of any real action on their part (They have an entire subreddit for the movement and you can see for yourself how it is).  I have myself yet to meet a single gamergater who was openly misogynistic but that might be of more or less relevance.

Neither am I a part of gamergate because I don't like putting labels on myself, I just watched the whole thing errupt from the background.

[Funyarinpa]

1 minute ago, frogstat said:

That's is an awfully strange way to derail an argument to something else, but I'll bite.

If you'd do your research you'd know it wasn't about a review, but positive coverage for the game (which does exist). This has been repeated by gamergate since the very beginning and I'm surprised people still bring this up.

The only reason gamergate is so closely associated with misogyny and whatnot is because others keep labeling as that, instead of any real action on their part (They have an entire subreddit for the movement and you can see for yourself how it is).  I have myself yet to meet a single gamergater who was openly misogynistic but that might be of more or less relevance.

Neither am I a part of gamergate because I don't like putting labels on myself, I just watched the whole thing errupt from the background.

Eh, it's been a really long while since I dabbled in what GG was about so I'll take your word for it I guess. 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Funyarinpa said:

Eh, it's been a really long while since I dabbled in what GG was about so I'll take your word for it I guess. 

Trust me, I think gamergate has way overstayed it's welcome and I wish the whole thing would just disappear now.

[Darklord Rooke]

4 hours ago, frogstat said:

The only reason gamergate is so closely associated with misogyny and whatnot is because others keep labeling as that, instead of any real action on their part

No. The reason Gamergate is associated with misogyny is because loud and visible people using their banner are on a crusade. Gamergate's negative reputation is the fault of themselves, and nobody else's.

Quote

It is the height of ridiculousness that I feel compelled to come down on one side or another of the “death threats” issue.  Like Danny Glover, I am too old for this shit.  One of the ways you know I am too old is that I make references Danny Glover.  Here’s what’s going on: a distilled form of Abuse is being iterated on a profound and gruesome scale.  Such people cannot be allowed to win.  Ever.

You can’t threaten people with death, and I resent very strongly being made to type that out.  Not only can you not do that because you can’t fucking do it, it has the power to obliterate everything else you say.  In fact, it obliterates everything the people around you are trying to say.  That’s what has happened now.  I know that this situation is more complex than anyone is willing to enunciate.  I know that “Gaming Journalism” is a contradiction in terms.  But they’ve broken your banner, now, and you helped them do it.  I grieve for the ones who tried to do it right.  When your media doesn’t represent you, or actively attacks you as it has here, it’s not your media.  You’ll have to make your own, and it’s not impossible.  It’s more possible now than it has ever been in human history, and you’re reading an example of it at this moment.  Go your own way.

From Tycho, Penny Arcade.

4 hours ago, frogstat said:

People have done dumb shit under any name, and considering that gamergate was not a closed group where you had to fill out a form to be part of it literally anyone can say they are a part of gamergate and spew garbage.

It is up to Gamergate to control their own image. This means loudly and visibly disassociating themselves from any toxic individuals who are using that banner to pursue the harassment of others. That Gamergate didn’t do this is their problem. That they couldn’t control their reputation is their problem. 

Most reasonable gamers want nothing to do with that banner anymore, and have moved on.

[Darklord Rooke]

Ethan Ralph, for example, who's now on felony charges.

[Guest]

57 minutes ago, Rooke said:

No. The reason Gamergate is associated with misogyny is because loud and visible people using their banner are on a crusade. Gamergate's negative reputation is the fault of themselves, and nobody else's.

It is up to Gamergate to control their own image.

They are and did control their own image, it is not their fault that you create your own narrative and ignore everything they show to the contrary. 

Gamergate, since the very start and partially to its own detriment, has almost always been about justifying it's own existance and deflecting accusations of misogyny because they were constantly bombarded with those accusations. Go to KutakuinAction and find an upvoted post that says anything misogynistic, go to any popular and respected gamergate youtuber and find something misogynistic they said, you can't just go to 4chan or twitter and find some random ass comment to justify your position.

By that exact same logic feminism is no different to gamergate in the sense that there are a lot of loudmoths running about spewing garbage.

57 minutes ago, Rooke said:

This means loudly and visibly disassociating themselves from any toxic individuals who are using that banner to pursue the harassment of others. 

It doesn't surprise me that you don't even know of the massive amount of infighting within gamergate about who was a "real" gamergater. You had people denouncing other peoples actions left and right, there was even a gamergate twitter watchdog account who would find people using the gamergate hashtag to spread harmful messages such as misogyny.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Rooke said:

Ethan Ralph, for example, who's now on felony charges.

For reasons completely unrelated to gamergate, nice try.

[Darklord Rooke]

Just now, frogstat said:

For reasons completely unrelated to gamergate, nice try.

Congratulations for missing the point.

[Guest]

Just now, Rooke said:

Congratulations for missing the point.

There was a point to that?

[Darklord Rooke]

2 minutes ago, frogstat said:

They are and did control their own image, it is not their fault that you create your own narrative and ignore everything they show to the contrary. 

Nup. A select portion of Gamergate control their image among another select portion of Gamergate. This is not 'controlling your image'.

2 minutes ago, frogstat said:

Gamergate, since the very start and partially to its own detriment, has almost always been about justifying it's own existance and deflecting accusations of misogyny because they were constantly bombarded with those accusations.

They were constantly bombarded with those accusations because prominent people using their banner started harassing women. Of which Gamergate said 'we're not about that, but we'll do nothing or say nothing about those doing the harassing.' The goal is not in question, the means is, and when people step well past the line of decent human behaviour in pursuit of goals most people view as trivial, then naturally the reaction is to the group will be negative.

In short, Gamergate entirely deserve the reputation they currently have.

5 minutes ago, frogstat said:

Go to KutakuinAction and find an upvoted post that says anything misogynistic, 

Exactly my point. 'Go to the hidden Gamergate subreddit and see where we've endorsed misogynistic nonsense' - Not Good Enough. That isn't protecting your reputation, that's called hiding in your own circlejerk.

8 minutes ago, frogstat said:

go to any popular and respected gamergate youtuber and find something misogynistic they said,

You mean like Ethan Ralph, who's misogyny lies in his actions?

8 minutes ago, frogstat said:

By that exact same logic feminism is no different to gamergate in the sense that there are a lot of loudmoths running about spewing garbage.

Let me post something I said about feminism the other day in a private group:

Another aspect is what I've been talking about the past few weeks. If someone seeks to pursue an agenda, they'll often wrap themselves up in a flag with strong emotions related to it to try and give their argument more weight. So let me give you an example, if you rock up to feminism clubs in University sometimes they'll be infiltrated by women who've been hurt by men, and are not really interested in equality so much as they're interested in lashing out. But by wrapping themselves in the veneer of feminism, it gives them some protection in doing so. There was a case in America where feminists at University were going around stamping 'rapist' on the body of random men they pass. Not so cool. 

So feminism is losing the language war around the debate, and losing it in a big way. 

Yes, feminism is losing the language war and it's partly their own fault. They give airtime to trivial issues (like trying to ban men standing up and peeing in Sweden) and they allow people who are looking for revenge to run unchecked.

12 minutes ago, frogstat said:

TIt doesn't surprise me that you don't even know of the massive amount of infighting within gamergate about who was a "real" gamergater. You had people denouncing other peoples actions left and right, there was even a gamergate twitter watchdog account who would find people using the gamergate hashtag to spread harmful messages such as misogyny.

Infighting is the key word here, implying 'internal'. 

Also, the Gamergate twitter watchdog obviously wasn't doing a good enough job considering the Gamergate accounts that Twitter got reports about. And were shutting down.

11 minutes ago, frogstat said:

There was a point to that?

Of course. Ethan Ralph is a visible leader of the Gamergate community. The point is the type of people Gamergate have who are visible and leading campaigns are often violent people using violent means. What was Ethan Ralph arrested for again?

[Guest]

Stop replying to every single sentence I write, it makes it difficult to make a well-formatted response. Take the text as a whole and make an essay of it if you must.

First off, Ethan Ralph was anything but a "respected" gamergate youtuber, many other gamergaters frequently denounced and distanced themselves from him, including more prominent gamergate supporters such as Sargon of Akkad who for a long while was the biggest youtube channel who spoke of gamergate and he actively discouraged people from behaving in a "harrassing" manner multiple times. But you can try tell me how Sargon is a "violent individual".

I would like to hear you explain how Ethan was being a "misogynist through his actions" because that's a pretty hefty accusation. I never cared to much about him so you might be right, I dunno. 

---

Your comment about KotakuinAction makes absolutely no sense. Hidden subreddit?

KotakuinAction is the most prominent gamergate subreddit and probably THE biggest space to discuss gamergate and their goals with about 70,000 subscribers, it is anything but hidden. If something gets high positive reaction on kotakuinaction it is not unreasonable to assume that is the voice of gamergate itself. And in this place that is basically the subreddit for gamergate the same way r/PCmasterrace is THE subreddit and the voice of the PC master race(Glory to his name), what is being discussed there is obviously going to be important. And guess what, the amount of "Misogyny" on that subreddit is severly lacking, in fact women are welcome to participate like everyone else without begging for forgiveness for being a woman.

At the very least, gamergate isn't being misogynistic when conversing among themselves, which strengthens my belief that most if not all gamergate "harrassers" were just trolls seeking attention like they always do when there is a controversy.

32 minutes ago, Rooke said:

'we're not about that, but we'll do nothing or say nothing about those doing the harassing.'

As I've said multiple times, this is straight up false. Have you gotten all your information from anti-gg or did you actually visit any GG hubs and see what they actually say? There were actions made to preserve the image of gamergate as I've said, and the number of "gamergate harrassers" were actually quite small with most of it being blown way out of proportion by the exact people who have to gain by calling the movement misogynistic, the games journalists who gamergate was against.

That is of course ignoring that death threats and trolls have existed on the internet since forever, and they will pick up any little piece of controversy to piss people of, both regarding GG and anti-GG.

32 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Also, the Gamergate twitter watchdog obviously wasn't doing a good enough job considering the Gamergate accounts that Twitter got reports about. And were shutting down.

You mean to tell me that when there were twitter accounts looking for people misusing the hashtag, people who misused the hashtag got banned? Naaaah!  It may or may not have been very effective because we don't have any real stats, but that is one obvious way gamergate was controlling it's own people, yet unsurprisingly you completely dismiss it and keep talking about how "gamergate does nothing to monitor its members".

[Guest]

Ought to mention, despite all your claims of misogyny and harrassment you haven't done much to provide any concrete examples.

[Darklord Rooke]

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

Stop replying to every single sentence I write, it makes it difficult to make a well-formatted response.

No.

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

First off, Ethan Ralph was anything but a "respected" gamergate youtuber, many other gamergaters frequently denounced and distanced themselves from him, including more prominent gamergate supporters such as Sargon of Akkad who for a long while was the biggest youtube channel who spoke of gamergate and he actively discouraged people from behaving in a "harrassing" manner multiple times. But you can try tell me how Sargon is a "violent individual".

I'm going to flat out say here that I've been there from the beginning. Qhen Twitter was whining about SJWs reporting their tweets, the creation of #notyourshield, their move from 4chan to 8chan, all of it. The Gamergate movement was quite different in the early days, which is where the image in the community was formed.

Ethan Ralph was a very prominent and visual campaigner for Gamergate. His supporters were numerous and rabid. It's only been recently that his reputation (within Gamergate) has been on the wane. You can see this on the KIA thread where he still has quite a few supporters. To try and dismiss him means ignorance on your part. As for Ralph's misogyny, when you're all about ethics in gaming journalism, but a very large section of what you do is about SJWs and feminism, and I'm talking about Breitbart here as well (the dude who just got banned from Twitter which caused his supporters to have a cry,) I would suggest your goals have become confused.

As for Sargon ... well you mean the guy who helped Breitbart attack feminists? Breitbart, as in the one who got banned from Twitter for relentlessly abusing Leslie Jones. That guy? Yeah, he's obviously a Saint.

Anyway, he’s two faced imo - prelude from Wiki: 

Towards the end of 2015, the split within Gamergate crystallized: Paolo Munoz, a popular Gamergater and a respected "moderate" known as Game Diviner on Twitter, authored a manifesto that called for "A Guide to End Gamergate." This meant advocating for the movement to admit that there was harassment on their side, dropping the cult-like identity of the movement, recognizing the failure of the movement, and criticizing the hive mind mentality of the movement. The idea was to get the movement to "reclaim the gamer identity" and take what they learned from the movement back into the gaming community as a whole.[49] According to Munoz himself, Sargon, Yiannopoulos, Oliver Campbell, and others supported his manifesto.

Predictably, Gamergate interpreted Munoz's manifesto as an infiltration by SJWs, a betrayal of the entire movement, or a coup attempt within Gamergate by Sargon's ethics proponents. Once Netscape9 released the manifesto against Munoz's permission, Munoz was immediately and relentlessly cyber-bullied. This led him to post his mental breakdown online,[50] quit the internet, and seek professional help. Of course, Sargon did not come to Munoz's defense, and used him as a scapegoat to prevent the shitstorm from reaching his own channel.

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

KotakuinAction is the most prominent gamergate subreddit and probably THE biggest space to discuss gamergate and their goals with about 70,000 subscribers, it is anything but hidden. If something gets high positive reaction on kotakuinaction it is not unreasonable to assume that is the voice of gamergate itself. And in this place that is basically the subreddit for gamergate the same way r/PCmasterrace is THE subreddit and the voice of the PC master race(Glory to his name), what is being discussed there is obviously going to be important. And guess what, the amount of "Misogyny" on that subreddit is severly lacking, in fact women are welcome to participate like everyone else without begging for forgiveness for being a woman.

Kotaku in Action is a place reserved for Gamergaters to circlejerk amongst other Gamergaters. Posting on that board means you will not be allowed to post on others. People within Gamergate view it as a great community, people outside Gamergate view it as a way to keep all Gamergaters in their own little box.

And no, nobody reads that subreddit but Gamergaters. It’s laughable to think that something which reaches prominence on KIA registers with the outside community. So, once again, Gamergate talking amongst themselves about not engaging in misogynistic behaviour is completely different to publicly disavowing misogynistic behaviour.

In other words, grow a pair and do it in the public sphere.

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

As I've said multiple times, this is straight up false. Have you gotten all your information from anti-gg or did you actually visit any GG hubs and see what they actually say? There were actions made to preserve the image of gamergate as I've said, and the number of "gamergate harrassers" were actually quite small with most of it being blown way out of proportion by the exact people who have to gain by calling the movement misogynistic, the games journalists who gamergate was against.

The actions of Gamergate were not blown out of proportion, it was a horrible strain of abuse brought about by angry men directed largely at women to which the community as a whole cringed at. I have no doubt they were in the minority, I also have no doubt little was done by Gamergaters to take back their banner, it was a passive endorsement and they paid the price.

1 hour ago, frogstat said:

You mean to tell me that when there were twitter accounts looking for people misusing the hashtag, people who misused the hashtag got banned? Naaaah!  It may or may not have been very effective because we don't have any real stats, but that is one obvious way gamergate was controlling it's own people, yet unsurprisingly you completely dismiss it and keep talking about how "gamergate does nothing to monitor its members".

I mean to say that when Twitter took down offending accounts, Gamergate supporters got all up in arms about it and started whining loudly in their own circlejerk. About how it was the SJW’s doing the reporting, how they band together and report them back, how they would never be silenced etc etc. It may be different these days but like I said, I’ve followed THE ENTIRE Gamergate drama.

41 minutes ago, frogstat said:

Ought to mention, despite all your claims of misogyny and harrassment you haven't done much to provide any concrete examples.

Because my argument never relied on concrete examples. I'm not arguing that Gamergate is misogynistic, I'm arguing they publicly did nothing to stop abusive people from using their banner in a crusade. And because of this, they deserve the reputation they have.