Twitter is broken: GamerGate proves it.

From mere faux pas to outright harassment, Twitter increasingly acts as a pressure cooker for the worst of humanity. Alexander’s Twitter stream is arguably even less temperate, with remarks such as “it’s funny how dudes who are ‘aspiring games journalists’ tweet bullshit at me as if I cannot instantly kill all their dreams” and “maybe mean of me to burn a young female writer but, sorry, this is not gonna be a career for her.” I doubt that GamaSutra would have published her statement that actor and GamerGate supporter Adam Baldwin “jacks off goats.” You are a professional writer who has just written that a mainstream actor who disagrees with you masturbates goats. In a great guest post on Damion Schubert’s blog, Schubert’s fellow game designer Dave Rickey declared that, in the case of GamerGate, “Twitter is a breeding ground for social dysfunction,” where whatever subtleties may have lurked in those “gamers are dead” articles were reduced to blanket statements such as “Regardless of race creed gender or religion you can still play games and therefore still be garbage.” Rickey pointed to the 140-character limitation and its tendency to encourage mindless agreement, but that’s secondary to the bigger problem: that Twitter breaks the public/private divide in a way that people simply can’t cope with. enfant terrible Arthur Chu eloquently summarized the paradox this way: “#GamerGate isn’t abt harassment as long as you define barraging ppl w questions abt shit that’s not your business as not harassment.” Cartoonist David Malki satirized Gamergate supporters’ habit of spontaneously dropping into Twitter conversations criticizing their movement in his “The Terrible Sea Lion” strip on Sept. 19: Even GamerGate supporters conceded that the “Sea Lion” cartoon made a fair point. An unfailingly civil university professor who supported GamerGate on Twitter was doxed, told she was a “self hating fucker,” and warned that if she didn’t stop posting, “its time to just shove something metal and sharp in the closed up cunt of yours and twist.” Another anonymous woman was simply told, “I know where you live know who your family is.