I learned two new “G” words last night: GamerGate and Gawker. Perhaps I’ve been living under a rock, but until about 8pm yesterday evening, I’d heard of neither of them. Then, suddenly, according to the Twittersphere, we had come out in support of GamerGate – which was news to all of us. I’d therefore like to set the record straight.
First, as I understand it, what has been claimed is this: that we have withdrawn advertising from Gawker following pressure from GamerGate. It would, in fact, be impossible for us to withdraw advertising from Gawker, because we have never knowingly advertised through Gawker in the first place; we have never had any form of relationship with Gawker. Not that this was a conscious avoidance – Gawker just wasn’t something that was even on our cultural radar. We do very little advertising, as it very rarely has much effect for us. Back in the summer, we did run a promotion with StackSocial, who pushed Scrivener through social media and various sites, and from what I understand, we appeared briefly on Gawker through that promotion (although we never saw the advertisement ourselves, and Gawker wasn’t on the list of sites StackSocial advertises with).
Following that, we received a number of emails from apparently concerned Scrivener users, expressing disappointment at our involvement with Gawker, and providing numerous links purporting to show Gawker as an evil, sexist and bullying entity. (It turns out that these emails may not have been from Scrivener users, as I have since learned that GamerGate supporters routinely send these exact same emails to many companies.) This is where we went wrong. The person who responded to those emails (actually two people responded to the emails, but using the same reply as written by one person), having never heard of GamerGate or Gawker either, was somewhat naive in his reply. He thought he was merely reassuring an upset user that we wouldn’t knowingly get involved with companies with bad reputations for bullying or sexism. (If we ever receive a complaint from a user about a company we have been associated with, we always take it seriously as we do our utmost to work only with ethical and like-minded companies.) Unfortunately, then, he wrote his reply without knowing anything about GamerGate and without actually researching the allegations about Gawker, and also over-stepped the mark a little in his reassurances. He certainly had no idea that he was unwittingly stepping into the GamerGate controversy.
Below is his stock reply that was sent to those who wrote to us complaining about our apparent association with Gawker (to put it in context, all of the emails we received contained multiple links pertaining to Gawker, and claims about large and reputable companies dropping support of that site). This is the reply that was posted on social media by GamerGate as though we were coming out in support of them:
Our reply was ill-informed, since we knew nothing about Gawker Media beyond what the person writing to us had told us, and the person who wrote the above email should not have said that we’d be saying no to any further marketing approaches from StackSocial since no such decision had ever been made among the directors of L&L. (And, just for the record, I have no opinion on Gawker either way, as it’s not a site I’ve ever looked at or read. My wife looked at it briefly last night and was less than impressed, but that’s about the sum total of L&L’s knowledge of the site.) What the reply should have said is that we would look into their allegations before pursuing future marketing promotions, which is what we would do with any such complaint.
So, just to be very, very clear: we are not affiliated with GamerGate in any way, nor have we endorsed the movement. Nor have we withdrawn any advertising because of pressure from the GamerGate community, since there was nothing for us to withdraw anyway. We have simply been drawn into something of which we were entirely oblivious because of the over-zealous reassurances of a member of our staff to what he thought was a concerned user.
Our official statement, a version of which was sent to The Verge and which was also posted on Reddit last night, is as follows:
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Literature & Latte is most certainly not aligned with GamerGate in any way, and we have been somewhat caught off-guard. To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of GamerGate until all of this happened. We have, unfortunately, been rather naive. We received several emails complaining about our involvement in promoting Scrivener through a particular company of which GamerGate disapproves. We were entirely unaware of GamerGate and its associations, and the emails we received provided links purporting to prove sexist and bullying behaviour on the part of said company. As our company is – naturally – against bullying and sexism of all kinds, the person on our team who responded to those emails said that we would refuse further marketing approaches, unfortunately before researching the matter further and without consulting other members of the team. That is the entire extent of our involvement. We have not withdrawn any advertising from anywhere, as there was no advertising in place to withdraw. Had our member of staff been aware of GamerGate and the harassment with which it has become associated, our response would have been much more circumspect. We were certainly most surprised to see our reply to what we thought was a genuinely concerned user posted on social media as if we were endorsing GamerGate – we were not.
Literature and Latte is committed to equal opportunities (our company itself comprises an equal number of men and women across all positions on the team). Bullying and harassment, whether online or off, is abhorrent and Literature & Latte does not tolerate such behaviour in any form.
We would like to apologise unreservedly for any offence we have caused in our naive and un-researched responses and the way they have been represented.
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In addition to that official response, I will also say this: bullying and harassment, whether sexist, homophobic, racist or anything else, is never, ever acceptable or justifiable, wherever and however it occurs, and the effect it has on its victims is hideous. I’ve seen some of it first-hand. Julia, my wife and fellow director at L&L, is also a journalist, and some of the online comments I have seen about one of her articles in particular were absolutely disgusting and sickening, of a kind that would never be posted about a man. I’d like my daughters (and son) to grow up in a better world than that, and I have absolutely no time whatsoever for anyone on any side of any movement involved in the harassment of women or of anyone else.