Current Events > Why do people hate Anita Sarkeesian so much

(+) Yeah! (+)

It started largely due to her fanbase that basically said "we want to have a discussion, but only with people that agree with everything 100%." I got yelled at for suggesting games with female characters that broke out of the tropes she brought up. Guess it was my fault for thinking people actually wanted them. The more the wall went up to protect the damsel from criticism, the less I respected her, continuing today as even having someone in the audience of a panel she was at that **might** make a response video, equates to harassment.

Ultimately it's produced a person that can be summed up as whining that the "people aren't doing what I want and are mean to me by saying how I'm wrong." That's her career. That's what people really care about. Not her analysis. Not her commentary. Her ability to be a harassment sponge so they have some subculture they can attack and feel good about themselves for doing so.

So that's why I hate her:: she produces nothing but enables hipster douches to act like superior jerks to others because the can claim to be "woke" people that don't like the big tittied fighter.
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ElatedVenusaur posted...

Because a lot of people don't like what she has to say. I don't always agree with her, but much of what she's pointed out is true, and rather than be angry over the baked-in inequities in our society and culture, some shoot the messenger for bringing them bad news.

What has she actually said that was true that isn't presumption of intent or can be summed up as "I don't like thing stop doing thing" (read: no fun allowed)?
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epik_fail1 posted...

She is not wrong on everything she says.

Are you sure about that?
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because her speech about the "male gaze" set fire to at least 45 of my brain cells

ElatedVenusaur posted...

Because a lot of people don't like what she has to say. I don't always agree with her, but much of what she's pointed out is true, and rather than be angry over the baked-in inequities in our society and culture, some shoot the messenger for bringing them bad news.

lmfao

I've paid very little attention to her so I don't know how misinformed she is about other games. That said I remember that she attacked Zelda: Breath if the Wild because she thought it portrayed Zelda as an damsel in distress that doesn't do anything about it. Anyone that has played through the game would know while she had her moments where she lacked confidence, she probably had her best showing out of any Zelda games. (big spoilers incoming) She saves Link from certain death, single handedly held off Ganon for 100 years, and was the one that ultimately beat Ganon at the end.

If she's as misinformed about other games as she was with BotW, I can see why she's so hated.

Srk700 posted...

If she's as misinformed about other games as she was with BotW, I can see why she's so hated.

That is exactly the case and if she's not misinformed she outright lies about the games she talks about and part of that is as I said before about how she has a habit of presuming to know what the developers had in mind when they made these games.
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Everything that banana already said in his post


And also, because she's a stupid, fake, obnoxious, victim card playing c***. She always locks her youtube comments because, like all idiots whose arguments hold no water, she can not and will not debate anyone, ever, and just labels them harassers, because she knows she's a hack fraud and absolutely full of shit. Her boyfriend is her puppet master and writes all her material.

If she and her fellow hobgoblin zoe quinn were even remotely right about people making death threats etc, they would both be dead already and the world would be a much better place for it.
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She's a pretty bad video game critic.

But since she's an outspoken feminist who criticizes games, people overreact to every little thing she does.

Gamers generally don't like it when a non-gamer struts in and pretends to be an expert on video games so she can tell everyone how sexist and harmful games are and how sexist straight, white, male gamers are.

I think she'd get less flack from gamers if games journalists looked at her content and assertions with a critical eye instead of bending over backward to support her and accept her position at her word. They were ready to shit all over Jack Thompson, who was also wrong about his claims regarding video games causing societal ills, but the moment a pretty young white woman shows up flying the flag of progressive feminism, they bend the knee.

It's not like gamers, or Gamergate even, are entirely opposed to feminists looking at games. Liana Kerzner, another feminist voice in gaming, doesn't get the attention that Anita does (positive from journalists or negative from gamers). While she doesn't get the same support from the gaming press, she is much more well received by gamers who consume her content because she talks about games as a gamer. She probably gets some sympathy points because she's been harassed herself by Anita supporters and may have been blacklisted in the games press for being critical of some of Anita's work and by Zoe Quinn who, in CON chatlog leaks, said she would "talk to editors" about how awful she thinks Kerzner is ("literally the devil").
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She's really not some horrible evil monster, and obviously the death threats were completely out of line*. She's just not a very interesting or engaging critic, and at least in the past she would get basic facts about games wrong, fueling the theory that she doesn't actually play the games she criticizes. I think she's been caught stealing footage from let's plays so that further fuels the fire.

The good points she does make, again, are simply not all that interesting or even new things.

She has made a couple of tweets over the years that were very questionable, to say the least. Those are probably the worst things she's done from a moral standpoint, unless you believe that she's an actual scam artist.

Also, her videos definitely don't reflect the 140k budget she got from the kickstarter. Hell they don't even reflect the initial 5k or so she was originally asking for.

* - as a separate disucssion, I think we need to differentiate actual death threats from shit like "lol kill yourself", which is not very nice to say but shouldn't be taken seriously as a threat on someone's life. The two often get lumped together. I don't deny that she received quite a bit of the legit kind, though, and that's terrible.
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDWrugXVYAAhLIM.jpg
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literal_garbage posted...

They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.

this is a good parody account
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Romulox28 posted...

WizardofHoth posted...

Sargon of Akkon is worse than Anita

Yea this guy is such a massive moron that he almost makes me like Anita more, even though I know very little about her other than what I mentioned in the OP.

yeah but Sargon is a cynical dude who fights back against the sjw hordes or w/e grandiose narrative they've concocted so he is very rarely going to get criticised by the same people criticising her.

honestly I have seen very little of anita sarkeesian and the vast majority of it arises in the form of complaining quite vociferously about her on here or, when i went there years ago, places like /v/.

I think there is nothing wrong with pointing out sexism inherent in the video game industry and i think she has, from what i can see, pointed out some accurate and possibly even insightful trends/tropes in games that tend to reinforce negative images of women in video games.

considering people who play video games tend to view themselves as troubled cynical intellectual types, it's strange/disappointing that so many react to even the mildest criticism of video games with such vitriol. the same people who probably guffaw at chad thundercock watching transformers movie #2421 because it has a good looking woman in it are utterly incensed at the idea of people objecting to gratuitous sexualisation and upskirts or w/e in games. it's weird, man.

that being said, i do not think she is a particularly good analyst, from what i've seen, despite raising some decent, broader points. i also don't think she comes across particularly well in many cases but again many people who say this about her love weirdos like sargon so it's w/e.
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NinjaBreakfast posted...

I think there is nothing wrong with pointing out sexism inherent in the video game industry and i think she has, from what i can see, pointed out some accurate and possibly even insightful trends/tropes in games that tend to reinforce negative images of women in video games.

Tell me what has she said that was accurate?
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99% of the planet doesn't know who she is.
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because gamers are 99% neckbeard basement dwellers that hate anything to do with women.

Anita is a genius and what gaming needs. gaming needs all gamers to fuck off and never speak again more, however
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She shittalks about men regularly.
She cites spotty and often times debunked sources to prove her point
If anyone criticizes her, she calls it harassment
She cons people into paying her money to do something, doesn't do it, and keeps the money; citing it would have required more money to do what the money was intended for.
Takes other people's work and cites it as her own.
etc...
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Isn't that the same stuff Sargon does too?

WizardofHoth posted...

Isn't that the same stuff Sargon does too?

Not even close.

Also I'm still waiting on what Anita has said that was true or accurate.
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NinjaBreakfast posted...

literal_garbage posted...

They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.

this is a good parody account

it's pasta

it's great pasta though, I cringed pretty hard
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She's a stupid bitch. No other reason needed.
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Banana_Cyanide posted...

You want to know why Anita Sarkeesian gets so much hate? Well lets look at her track record:

-when she first started her kickstarter she lied about all the hateful messages she received to drum up more support for her kickstarter
-lied about "loving" games
-stole lets play footage for her videos
-presented not only piss poor research but didn't even use the scientific method once
-lied about the games she was talking in her videos on top of constantly presuming the intent of the developers (which is admittedly my biggest issue with her)
-constantly bitches and whines about "straight male gamers"
-blames "straight white males" for all the violence that happens against women
-never responds to her critics except to only call them "harassers"
-inserted herself into a controversy that had nothing to do with her
-got into a pissing match with Zoe Quin and Brianna Wu on who was the bigger victim
-tries to tell game developers how they should make their games
-goes to the UN to advocate for internet censorship because she can't handle her critics
-four years and a quarter of a million dollars later has never finished her tropes vs women series
-almost forgot that she even made up tropes like "fighting fuck toy"
-lied about all her critics being "straight white males"
-"everything sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic and you have to point it all out"
-whines about misogyny where there is none (otherwise known as making mountains out of mole hills)
-harasses others then claims she was harassed
-shuts down anything she can't control
-constantly went against both police and FBI recommendations that she stay away from social media while they conducted their investigation


and this is off the top of my head. Now I'll just quietly wait here for someone to insult me like calling me an incel (whatever the fuck that is)

Quality post.
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