Anita Sarkeesian - Delving down into the quote mine lyrics

So over the last few days you may have seen the following quote attributed to me - TotalBiscuit: “I'm also not going to claim they [d**h threats] were credible, because, well, to put it bluntly, Anita is still breathing.” So did I say that? Yes, but it's deprived of vital context. Unfortunately, one of the tactics of character a**a**ination attempts online is that of quote-mining, taking an isolated quote out of context and then spreading it virally on social media to discredit the person. Here is the complete quote. Regarding Anita Sarkeesians d**h-threats and the statement that she should be given the benefit of the doubt. "I already did give her the benefit of the doubt. I already stated I have no doubt they [the d**h threats] exist. What I'm not going to do is attribute them to a group without proof. I'm also not going to claim they were credible because well, Anita is still breathing. This is a silly accusation. I've never at any point expressed the opinion that she did not receive threats. I firmly believe that she did. What I do not buy is that it was part of an orchestrated hara**ment campaign by #Gamergate which is exactly what the mainstream media narrative has pushed." So I'm stating that I believe she received d**h-threats. I have no doubt of this. This is the internet, lots of people receive d**h-threats. Over the last year or so we've received 48 in email form and countless more through burner twitter accounts and those are only the ones that specific threatened to k** us (Jezebel seems to think that telling someone to k** themselves via Twitter is a d**h-threat, the law disagrees). Several referenced specific events that I would attend (or that they thought I would attend). Many more were graphic, involving my family. Why didn't I publish them? Well because I am following the advice given to me by law enforcement authorities, which is not to give them attention. This is especially true since I have a huge social media following and that doing so would effectively give a voice to the people perpetrating the hara**ment, which would in turn encourage more hara**ment. Regardless of this opinion, let's move on. The next component said I would not attribute them to a group without proof. This is reasonable since in modern society we believe in "innocent until proven guilty". It's also prudent since we are dealing with a hashtag, something nebulous and fluid with no membership requirements. Anyone can claim to be a member of it and act in its name, which is problematic. If I sent a d**h threat and claimed to be a member of a church for instance, I could potentially bring disrepute onto that organisation. Simultaneously though I find it less likely that people would jump to the conclusion that said church was responsible, they'd investigate first to see if there was any truth to it, was there an organised effort by that church to commit this act? Yet for some reason with a "group" that isn't really even a group at all, we are very quick to attribute any and all negativity directly to it with a broad brush. #Gamergate did it! Did they? Was this an organised effort to hara** somebody or was it the action of a loner? I don't dig this guilt by a**ociation thing, not at all. It seems to fly in the face of due process and there's far too much "trial by social media" going on these days. Now onto the bit that everyone is quoting, bearing in mind all of the previous context and context that follows. Was it blunt? Yes. Too blunt. Should I have phrased it better? Yes. Have I already apologised for this? Yes. Here is the apology I posted on Soundcloud where the audioblog is located. This was posted 10 days ago, naturally nobody seems to mention it. "So during this audio I made a comment about "credible d**h-threats". I worded this bluntly and this was a poor choice. You can find my clarification here. I also apologize to anyone offended by this. I want to make it abundantly clear that credible or not, d**h-threats are horrific and nobody should have to endure them. My experience with them over the last few years has perhaps left me jaded to them and resulted in me referring to them in a flippant manner. Regardless of my experiences, I shouldn't be saying things that make light of d**h threats, regardless of their credibility" Included here is a Twitlonger statement that the vast majority of online d**h threats are never backed by intent, much less means. This is a statistical fact. Statistically, zero percent of the threats I have received have resulted in anything happening. How many were "credible"? Well according to the police, zero. Now speaking of credible. The reason I believe Anitas Utah threat to not be credible is because that's what the university and the authorities said. "Throughout the day, Tuesday, Oct. 14, USU police and administrators worked with state and federal law enforcement agencies to a**ess the threat to our USU community and Ms. Sarkeesian. Together, we determined that there was no credible threat to students, staff or the speaker, and that this letter was intended to frighten the university into cancelling the event." That is a good reason to believe the threat is not credible. Does that invalidate the feelings of Ms Sarkeesian or anyone that receives d**h threats? Of course not. Did I ever claim that it did? Absolutely not. Some people doubt that she ever received threats but I have repeatedly and publicly stated that I believe she did. They are so common online unfortunately, since it is very easy to create burner accounts behind proxies and vpns to send them. Of course the rest of the quote is also left out by these character a**a**ins. "This is a silly accusation. I've never at any point expressed the opinion that she did not receive threats. I firmly believe that she did. What I do not buy is that it was part of an orchestrated hara**ment campaign by #Gamergate which is exactly what the mainstream media narrative has pushed" My "controversial" statement is that I don't believe you can blame a hashtag for the actions of a few psychos. That doesn't seem like anything to get riled up over, which is why I guess they left it out. As of late I am noticing that social media is being used as a weapon. Twitter is terrible because of the character limit, it disallows nuance but some people take advantage of that to quote mine and take things out of context in order to attack the character of those they disagree with. It's an intellectually dishonest practice. Others with large followings either deliberately or simply due to the reality of having a large, uncontrollable audience, weaponise their followers to dogpile particular people. Ms Sarkeesian made the decision to retweet the random Twitter person who posted that quote. The results were predictable, hara**ment of myself and my family. Is Sarkeesian responsible for that? No, because I don't believe in guilt by a**ociation. She did not hara** my family, random internet goons did. That said, I'd like to quote something I said a few months back in a blog that I think is relevant today. "On the flip side while people like say, Tim Schafer can be targeted as individuals, they also have a large audience which they can wield and influence. Tim along with others have weaponised retweeting as a way to “unleash the hounds” on someone whose comment they find unsavoury. Adam Atomic retweeted our entire conversation to his 20,000 followers. I did not retaliate this way because: 1) It's completely disproportionate, I have far more supporters than he does, it would not be fair, and... 2) ...because I learned after making MANY mistakes with this exact same behavior that it's just simply not a good thing to do. You do not encourage discussion by shouting “sick 'em!” to your own little private army. " Those of us with large audiences have a responsibility not to weaponise them. We are not responsible for what they do, but we can avoid conflict by being extremely careful not to present targets to the radicals who are just looking for someone to attack. Ms Sarkeesian was given the GDC Amba**ador award. This is not the kind of diplomacy that I would expect from such a person. This isn't attempting to engage in dialogue and build bridges. You are not responsible for what your followers do, but if you had an issue with what I said it perhaps would have been more prudent to investigate it first, find out the context or even contact me prior to retweeting this guys quote-mine. You are the victim of d**h-threats. So am I, we have quite a bit in common in this regard, maybe we could have talked about it and found a way forward. Oh I've done the whole weaponise my followers thing in the past, absolutely. Save yourself some time, there's no need to dig. I came to realise that what I was doing was wrong and irresponsible, so I stopped. That was difficult for me. I have a history of lashing out at people online and getting into arguments. I have issues which I think require therapy to resolve, but I've got too much else on my plate right now in terms of my health to worry about that, I need to focus on getting well and beating this thing. Just know that nothing gets solved by using Twitter as an artillery piece. It just makes a mess. I've had various problems with things Anita has said online. I found her statements blaming "toxic masculinity' for a recent ma** shooting before the bodies had had a chance to cool to be fairly abhorrent. I found her statement that men could not be the target of s**ism to be bemusingly silly. However I saw no reason to go after her publicly for this, or use Twitter in a weaponised fashion because it solves nothing. So, I reiterate what I said 10 days ago. I was too blunt, I should have phrased that better. It's not your fault for being offended by it, it's mine for writing it the way that I did. I can make excuses for that but it doesn't really matter. I'm very jaded to d**h-threats. You don't get 2 million subscribers without making a few enemies. I don't know of a colleague of mine that hasn't received multiple d**h threats in their time working on Youtube. We are very public figures but without any of the traditional protection that a real celebrity gets. As a result a lot of us have just kind of accepted that this behavior is part of the regular cycle of insanity that dealing with an online audience brings. It's a shame, it shouldn't be, it's disgusting behavior but I don't have a solution to it and Wil Wheatons suggestion that everyone should be forced to use their real name online is detached from reality. When Blizzard experimented with this on their forums, the dev who posted their real name was doxxed and hara**ed within minutes. Wil is in a position where his name is already well known, so his perspective is not that of a regular internet user. Real names are attack vectors for doxxing, swatting and personal hara**ment. Didn't like what this guy said in game? Call his workplace and try to have him fired! Track down his wife and threaten to rape her. How about finding out where their kids go to school? This isn't an unlikely scenario, this stuff happens, in fact everything I just said and far more happened to Brad Wardell, a developer who was accused of s**ual hara**ment at his workplace. That case by the way was dismissed with prejudice and a public apology posted by the person who made the claim. He is still being attacked for it regardless to this day. We Wil, those of us who are in the public eye to various degrees, have learned to some degree how to deal with this stuff. Your regular Joe online has not. Should people have their lives ruined by something they said in a fit of anger online? Should we declare open season for trolls and psychos by giving out real names to them as a way to move hara**ment into the real world? Should we open up the floodgates to cases of mistaken identity? No, that is not the solution to online hara**ment, it creates far more problems than it solves. There's gotta be a better way but hey, I don't know what that way is, because I'm just a videogames critic, I'm not going to pretend to be anything more than that. So that's my statement on the matter. The current climate of fear is fertile for these trolls to operate in. They are being given the attention they crave, they are having the effect they desire. I suggest we hamstring them by denying them this attention, starving them of oxygen and moving forward with constructive ideas about how we can make this industry better. I'd like to end by saying one more thing. There are two things that we lost with the internet. The first was giving people the benefit of the doubt, a**uming that actually, maybe that 140 character tweet that lacks nuance by necessity, didn't really mean to hurt people. Secondly, we lost the thing we're forced to do in a face to face meeting, treating the person you disagree with as a human being. We live in a culture of online tribalism where people are reduced to labels and called "the enemy" so they can be mercilessly attacked with "moral" justification. Sad.