Aram Zucker-Scharff

Check it out! I’m presenting PressForward at WPNYC. I had a lot of fun!

‘The Inevitable Small Rebellions’ by Apollo Run
Rock out with Apollo Run’s Animal Farm-inspired music video.

Once again, I will not negotiate with terrorists.:

ohdeargodbees:

Ok, let’s try this again.

This has nothing to do with games and is not a matter of legitimate public interest, but is simply a personal matter. I would hope and request that the games press be respectful of what IS a personal matter, and not news, and not about games. This is explicitly about…

The crap that is being sent to Zoe Quinn is complete and utter bullshit. The internet’s reaction to these allegations being leveled at her (by which I mean Reddit, 4chan and related) is terrifying. Even if every allegation about her was true (which I very much doubt) the scale and vehemence of her detractors are totally out of proportion to the issue at hand. 

The way the allegations are being perpetuated and the accompanying personal attacks on her are completely unethical and vile. Any possible actual ethical question is completely negated by the methodology of the accusers. 

I 100% support Zoe Quinn in this. Even if, let’s say, everything her accusers say is true, 0 of the fault would lie with her. The journalists involved have certain ethical responsibilities that are part of their professions, those ethical responsibilities are theirs, ones they receive upon taking up their particular professional mantles. Ones that should be checked and supported by their editors and bosses. They aren’t applied to the subject of a journalistic report or beat. The ethics are theirs to uphold, not Ms. Quinn’s. If there was an ethical breach (and I am going to assume that there was not, because that is the fair way to consider it) then the fault and blame lies with the folks who have a professional responsibility to ethical reporting, not with the subject of any such reporting. A private citizen may do what they wish, with whoever they wish. A journalist may not. 

That little tangent into the ethics of journalism aside, the reaction to the allegations against Quinn have been mostly vile and so considerably overwrought (as the reactions were, and continue to be, to her work) that it deserves to be considered as abnormal. I believe that abnormally terrible behavior lies in some pretty terrible sexism. For that reason alone, Quinn deserves our support. The work she has done and continues to do in order to defeat that type of thinking is vital.

I won’t link to any of the awfulness here. For what little my support is worth, I support Zoe Quinn and her work.

“Scepticism of the notion that our entertainment consumption shapes our political perspectives only has traction if you think that we arrive at our political views rationally.”

– Magic effect: how Harry Potter has influenced the political values of the Millennial generation.