Full disclosure: Was pro-gg, now not sure really - anti-thewholething really? Don't have time for professional offense taking SJW lunatics, bad blogspam journalists and don't believe GG is a hate movement. Agree with ethics in journalism but think GG support for morons like Milo and Adam Baldwin, as well as the general mindlessness amongst some of the dumber elements, has dragged the whole thing into a vortex of infinite tabloid-style stupidity. There is a problem where far too much attention is paid to individuals, which at this point is beyond appalling. Including Sarkeesian. So I'd like to talk about Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series and it's actual value rather than how much of a big bad meany she is for daring to have opinions about women's depictions in video games or for that matter, anything at all, I mean, why can't the bitch just shut up and get back in the kitchen? What a hateful mess we've all made. Great, now that I've insulted all of you and isolated myself against both sides in an act of spellbinding narcissism, like I'm any better (I'm not) - but I'll continue. Feel free to go do something less boring than listen to me. I wouldn't blame you. Replying to OP's post and quoting:
Being late delivering a product, even if that product was paid for in advance, isn't a scam. It's an open ended situation until she adheres to her own deliverables. You can demand everyone agree that no one's allowed to call it a scam because time still passes regardless, but personally, I find that an unconvincing argument. It's always bad to fail on your promised deliverables. Not a scam, but still poor form. I'll go one further: Being late delivering her product has made her product vastly more effective than it would have been if she'd released it on the original stated time line. You say that as if it's a masterstroke of PR genius, as opposed to lazy business practice. Her increased fame (or infamy, depending on your preference) has certainly increased, and the volume of people anticipating the release of her next videos have skyrocketed. You appear to be championing such an approach, but call me old fashioned, that's more like WWE melodrama than anything worth taking at all seriously. For the record, I don't think that she originally intended for it to take this long, but by this time, she's surely realized that the way to maximize the amount of attention that each individual video gets is to release them one at a time and then wait for the shitstorm to die down before releasing the next one. Thanks for letting the record know that you don't think Anita Sarkeesian deliberately wanted to hold off on releasing videos for any nefarious reason. For the record, you are implying that if she had, that's still brilliant WWE melodrama. As I'm sure some people will point out that I'm speculating about the desires of Sarkeesian's backers, I want to stress that regardless of the desires of those backers, lateness does not equate to a scam.
It's not really about it being a scam. I know that in a thread about it being a scam me saying it's not about it being a scam is moronic, but hear me out. I think most people who are pissed at Feminist Frequency are pissed because they find the whole exercise cynical in the extreme. The ones arguing that it's just a scam are just ineloquently highlighting that her work is cynical. Call it what you want, but it's not opinion or discourse worth taking seriously on any real level - any discussion of gaming, storytelling, gaze, agency etc has to be more far nuanced than the kind of simplistic contributions of the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, or the rest of her output.
She didn't just take the money and run. She just missed her deadlines (by quite a while), but that's pretty common in the games industry, and you don't see people suing gamestop for taking pre-orders on games when those games don't make their original release date. She isn't in the "games industry." She's a youtube video producer, amongst other things, none of which involve games development. Development schedules are moving goalposts that can change for all kinds of reason - yes, release dates exist, but all this means is that while the game is (usually) finished, the testing time is either truncated and cancelled early or not. (This is assuming the developers aren't way behind schedule and it's an absolute world-ending clusterfuck.) Creating a video, particularly those of the trivial, low quality production and content levels of a Feminist Frequency video, doesn't even begin to compare to the logistics of creating a computer game, so the comparison is ridiculous. Being intellectually dishonest in academic writing isn't the same as scamming people. Deliberately being intellectually dishonest in academic writing absolutely is the same as scamming, in that deceitfulness is inherently sleeked in any form, whether you define it as the word "scam" or not. The end result is the same. The reader is deceived, ergo it's a lie and a con. There are plenty of intellectually dishonest people who sell books about politics, and we don't call those people scam artists, even though they may plenty of claims in their books that aren't actually true. We don't? Since when? Again, Sarkeesian isn't selling a video series that's intended to be factually accurate I know you don't mean this in the way it could be construed, but it's still kinda funny! The people who paid Sarkeesian for her videos already believe that video games are anti-woman. They don't need to be convinced of that. What they want is for her videos to convince other people that this is the case. You can take a capitalistic view of the legitimacy in the promotion of what amounts to, let's face it, propaganda, by arguing that the donors of the propaganda drive support the propaganda drive and that makes it OK, but you shouldn't really expect anyone to take it seriously as any kind of defence for the propagation of propaganda. I know it's everywhere these days, but it's still bullshit, regardless of how much of it there is. Finally, a lot of what Sarkeesian claims is a matter of opinion. Yes, her opinions may be dumb, but it's very hard to actually disprove them. We're not obliged to disprove them. She's obliged to prove them. That's basic discourse. Setting aside for a moment the obvious fact that there's no way she could have planned to raise $150k on a $6k kickstarter, Sarkeesian was never under any obligation not to make a profit on her work. Making a profit isn't a scam. I'm in full agreement with you here. That being said, I'd have to argue that it doesn't really make any substantive difference to the content of the videos (plus, if she were playing the games herself, here series would probably take even longer to produce). You appear to be arguing that point by saying this: Regardless of whether she played those games or watched LPs, the conclusions were essentially foregone. She's reaching the conclusions that her backers are paying her to reach. So, essentially you're saying, "It doesn't matter that Anita Sarkeesian is speaking from a position of ignorance." Well, it kinda does... But you know what? I would totally agree with you, if she didn't present herself as a legitimate academic speaker. But she does. Scam or no scam, it's still In every academic circle I've ever been in, this is clearly plagiarism, although comments I've read from (people claiming to be) social sciences professors, particularly in gender studies fields, lead me to believe that the standards for academic rigor are vastly looser (at least in terms of citations). I think that's largely an irrelevance, though, myself. Her laziness in citation isn't half as egregious an academic offence as arguing from a position of ignorance. Her videos have a small notice at the end pointing this out, although that notice isn't strictly necessary in order to be in compliance with the law. Oh, I guess that makes everything preceding it just fine and dandy, then. Cheers!