It's, as usual, full of generalization and the like. The line about Gamergate says all what you need to know about the author.
I could absolutely sympathize with her, because her basic point is true. There are a ton of people out there who will do exactly as she says in the article. But she lumps these in with all others who voice criticism (Altough, it might be the exact same thing with the earlier article, and you're supposed to exclude yourself from the picture if you think it doesnt apply to you. But I think she does an even worse job than the guy from before).
I especially love the line about complaining people never having any evidence. Because that's the exact thing that's pissing me off so much. You can provide sources, evidence, screenshots and whatever you want, stuff that actually PROVES that certain people on twitter, or on their respective Blogs are either actively lying, or just arguing based on wrong facts. But then you're just a mean harassing troll, out to discredit poor journalists and writers, trying to ruin their lives. Or even better, a sexist pig trying to get women out of games and the internet in general.
A few weeks ago, I would've said that the whole #GG crowd was overdoing it, and that there really was no need to for any of the stuff we're having now. But the more articles from the other side I read, the more convinced I am that the movement was right all along. I'm really getting sick and tired of being lumped into the same cave as these trolls, as being a sexist, harassing hatemonger on the Internet. These sites and people can dissappear, get fired or whatever, from my point of view, nothing of value will be lost.
Now, I am almost through the article and anything that is a gross generalization I could find is this:
* A document issues an explicit threat, warning women against speaking out. Lots and lots of women in tech have seen this document.
* Weev endorses this document, enthusiastically, repeatedly.
* Prominent people in tech endorse weev
Which could easily be seen as…
* Prominent people in tech tacitly endorsed that threat against speaking out.
She did talk about techies before, but never did she accuse them of anything, she only stated what she observed.
Now, that last part, that's an accusation, but, damn, the part I quoted is quite straightforward and I don't see how you would even think of denying how that could be seen as a hostile environment. I mean... What?
For the whole article before that any accusation she made was against two groups:
1. trolls
2. dangerous trolls
I think her accusations are actually valid. I mean, those are trolls. That group actually is
defined by most of the very accusations she is making.
Are you actively
looking for something you might construe as offending?
Seriously, I really thought there would be a mention of gamers or geeks or anything like that, but there just isn't anything that ever indicates that she did say anything against gamers, geeks, nerds, whatever as a group. Even that one accusation against "prominent people in tech" is only a statement of "there are prominent people in tech who endorse weev", so, how the hell is that even a generalization against people in tech in general?
In her last section she even talks about how there is a big group of programmers out there who definitely isn't awful.
I don't know what kind of demands some people in this topic have. When would you ever consider an article not "badly written" if this one is? I don't see the flaw in it. Seriously, I just cannot find anything that seems to be plain wrong, unfair to anybody, hazy, a bad example for what she's writing about...
What the hell?