>There's a bunch of mostly privileged and mostly white people speaking on behalf of all POC, all trans, all women, etc.

I think that most of the people in question who have been demonized have been women who have been speaking out about treatment of women in games. Or in Quinn's case, someone who was demonized as a cheater with no redeeming excuse at all (at first -- and what rationale eventually surfaced was shown to be lies).

"Internalized oppression" is a real thing. Not listening to the oppressed is also a real thing. #NotYourShield is misguided because it ignores the first and mocks people who are trying to help because some people do the second. Just because a member of a group doesn't feel oppressed doesn't make the experience any less real for someone else in that group. I've met minorities who have it all and who insist that they haven't encountered prejudice for years, and yet I read other accounts of people who are pulled over and harassed because of the color of their skin. The experience of the first person doesn't invalidate the experience of the second.

>Please cite the data then.

I have, above, several times: personal observations of many tweets with #gamergate combined with boorish claims, plus many different articles by journalists who "dove deep" and tried to find people to talk with about #gg. The "data" you sited was restricted to a few specific "obvious" hate words.

And just because I apparently am a glutton for punishment, I just read the top 100 or so tweets on a #gamergate search. Aside from circlejerk-GG-is-awesome-we-are-the-best posts, most were slams of Anita (misquoting her in several), (proud!) reports of the trolling of Brenda Wu, slams of SJWs, or claims that the media was distorting what happened at SXSW. The last was probably the actions of a single bad actor (or a small number of them? and with all of this anti-terrorism technology in place, why haven't they CAUGHT them?!), but the media loves an easy narrative, regardless of the truth. The rest of the tweets didn't do anything to change my opinion of GG.

What kills me is that, if it's true, entire stated premise of #gg is naive: Journalism has existed in an ethical grey area since shortly after the printing press was invented.

So how do you deal with journalists being too close to those they review? Support good reviewers who are willing to slam games that deserve it.

It won't hurt to get journalists to admit when they're being paid by advertisers, but it won't do any actual good either, because most or all journalists benefit from game publisher money or freebies. If every single review ever has a generic "we may have received freebies and/or advertising from this publisher" disclaimer, what have you accomplished? And specific disclaimers won't ever happen (for logistical reasons) except if it's a publisher like Consumer's Reports that never accepts freebies or advertising. And there are very few of those around.

So what is it again that you're trying to accomplish?

P.S. It is a good thing that people donated to causes that help women and/or minorities. I don't want to minimize that. But the bulk of people using #gamergate are still using it to promote what I would consider negative-for-society ideas (in a Kant/Moral Imperative sense), so I stand my decision to block most #gamergate-tweeting accounts and generally criticize the hashtag.

P.P.S. I am at this point tiring of this discussion. I will cede you the last word if you reply, otherwise it's been an interesting chat. Thanks for keeping it civil. Yes, that's a point in your favor.