After one year of #GamerGate

Allum Bokhari collects a round-up of statements from GGers, former aGGers, and neutrals:

ADAM BALDWIN
Actor

When I coined the GamerGate hashtag on Twitter, I had no idea what
would follow, but I’m very pleased with the result. For over a year,
gamers have been pushing back against a new wave of political
correctness, media spin, and cultural authoritarianism. Propagandists
tried to declare gamers “dead” — in response, gamers became their worst
nightmare.

Despite the atrocious things said about them in the mainstream media,
gamers have survived, thrived, and conquered. They detest censorship,
language-policing, and the prioritization of politics over good
storytelling. Everyone who believes in creative freedom should support
them.

NICK FLOR
Associate Professor, Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico

I see GamerGate as the best modern example of how a false narrative can be socially engineered by coordinating the five C’s:

1. Confirmation Bias, leading to the cherry picking of only data that supports one’s position;

2. Composition Fallacy, arguing that a part defines the whole;

3. Clickbait Business Model, incentivizing sensational stories spread through social media;

4. Complicit Mass Media, pushing eagerly any War-Against-Women/harassment story;

5. Collectivism, justifying outrage and action for the “greater good.”

So what is GamerGate? From my one year of observation and interaction on Twitter, it’s simple: gamers pushing for free enterprise and free markets in the gaming industry; gamers asking for a competitive market free of collusion, free of corruption, and free of control of artistic creativity by authoritarians. In short, GamerGate is a freedom movement.

IAN MILES CHEONG
Editor-in-Chief, GameRanx

Ask any gamer or anyone within the game industry what GamerGate means to them and you might get a variety of answers, depending on who you ask.

Over the course of the year, my stance towards the GamerGate movement has shifted. Having initially bought into the “social justice”-approved narrative that all of GamerGate was about the harassment of women, I used to be violently opposed to the movement and engaged in demonizing its supporters, who consist mainly of gamers—including women.

Most gamers don’t much care for political correctness, and the way they speak has been deliberately misinterpreted as bigotry by social justice proponents whose biggest source of angst comes from microaggressions.

The narrative is false, and it’s one I see propped up time and time again to discredit anyone who dissents against what I’d call “social authoritarianism.”

I wasn’t asked my opinion, but had I been, this is what I would have said:

Vox Day
Game Designer

#GamerGate marks an important turning in the cultural war for the soul of the West. It was our cultural Stalingrad. It was our Midway. It marked the first time in decades that a group of individuals collectively stood up against the ongoing SJW onslaught and turned it back.

Goodbye Tiny Tim

After I warned Tiny Tim about his behavior here, he responded:

As if I give a crap. You would be doing me a favor. This blog is as useful as a circle jerk at the Sig Ep house.

I have done him the favor of banning him. I am far too busy these days to put up with commenter antics. If you want to discuss, disagree, analyize, argue, or criticize, that’s all fine.

But if you’re looking for attention, trolling, or attempting to work through your copious psychological issues, this is not the place to do it. It just isn’t, so don’t try it. I don’t believe in fairness or equality, so this is the very last place to look for it or appeal to it.

Be happy it’s just water

Islamic invaders are shocked that their attempts to invade Hungary are being forcefully rebuffed:

Migrants are shocked and angry after Hungarian police sprayed tear gas and water cannons at those trying to push through a border post.

Several people received medical treatment from the Serbian ambulance service at the scene of Wednesday’s clash near Horgos. Most were suffering from the tear gas but one young man had a bloody leg.

“We fled wars and violence and did not expect such brutality and inhumane treatment in Europe,” said Amir Hassan of Iraq, soaking wet from the water cannon and trying to wash tear gas from his eyes.

“Shame on you Hungarians!” he shouted, pointing toward the Hungarian police who were firing volleys of tear gas canisters directly into the crowd.

It’s tear gas and water cannons now. It’s going to be machine guns and naval gunfire next.

They don’t belong in Europe. They will not remain in Europe.

I wonder what might communicate the message to Islamic migrants that they are not welcome with sufficient clarity? I understand previous European leaders once had to address a similar problem, how did they go about surmounting the language and cultural communications gap?

Japan cuts through the convergence

The West would be much better off if it followed suit and shut down all of the social sciences and humanities at its universities as well:

Many social sciences and humanities faculties in Japan are to close after universities were ordered to “serve areas that better meet society’s needs”. Of the 60 national universities that offer courses in these disciplines, 26 have confirmed that they will either close or scale back their relevant faculties at the behest of Japan’s government.

It follows a letter from education minister Hakuban Shimomura sent to all of Japan’s 86 national universities, which called on them to take “active steps to abolish [social science and humanities] organisations or to convert them to serve areas that better meet society’s needs”.

The ministerial decree has been denounced by one university president as “anti-intellectual”, while the universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, regarded as the country’s most prestigious, have said that they will not comply with the request.

However, 17 national universities will stop recruiting students to humanities and social science courses – including law and economics, according to a survey of university presidents by The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, which was reported by the blog Social Science Space.

Not only do most people not need to go to college, but if you’re going to go to college and major in a social science or the humanities, you would be better off not going at all. What is being “taught” is nothing more than dyscivic, dyscivilizational propaganda, contra the pretensions of the academics, the humanities now teach students how to actively avoid thinking.

Higher education has been entirely coopted by the SJWs who invaded the universities fifty years ago. As per the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence, higher education is no longer able to perform its primary function. Japan’s response is the correct one. Shut it down.

The Toad is getting worried

Keep in mind that Teresa Nielsen Hayden, aka The Toad of (formerly) Tor, has never directly addressed me on Twitter. Yet today she did so twice in order to publicly claim that her husband never shouted at Jagi Lamplighter Wright and to insist that both Mr. and Mrs. Wright are lying.

tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden
@voxday Did JCW not warn you how many witnesses were within earshot of his event-that-didn’t-happen? Now you both look like idiots. @pnh

 tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden
@voxday Note for future: if you’re going to make up any more stories like that, don’t set them at the pre-Hugo reception. @pnh

Notice that Patrick Nielsen Hayden hasn’t issued any public denials on Twitter. He doesn’t want to risk getting caught out publicly lying about his own behavior. The Toad is obviously getting desperate. I wasn’t there. I don’t claim to have been there. I haven’t made anything up and it wouldn’t even make sense for me to make anything up.

The fact of the matter is that contra the Toad’s lying, the Senior Editor at Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, did raise his voice, he did shout at a woman, he did tell her to tell her husband, a Tor Books author, to “stick it up his ass”, and he did shout about “blood libel” to a Jewish woman. He is an unprofessional and verbally abusive man.

Those are facts to which there were several witnesses. The Toad wasn’t there any more than I was, but she is an SJW, and as we know, SJWs always lie… and they always try to reshape the Narrative.

Now, I wonder why the Toad is suddenly feeling the need to reshape this particular Narrative? And also I wonder how much longer Macmillan intends to put up with these unprofessional lunatics at Tor Books. I mean, by this point, they have to realize that it is never going to stop until Patrick Nielsen Hayden is replaced by actual professional editors with real college degrees and everything.

We are winning

This is why the Tor boycott hurts. Those who pooh-pooh its effects don’t realize that the real wounds are inflicted on the margins:

In the 18 months between February 2014 and September 2015, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), whose 1200 members include the “Big Five”: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette — have seen their collective share of the US ebook market collapse:

    from 45% of all Kindle books sold down to 32%
    from 64% of Kindle publisher gross $ revenue down to 50%
    from 48% of all Kindle author net $ earnings down to 32%

The AAP releases monthly StatShot reports on the total dollar sales of their 1200 participating publishers, of which the “Big Five” collectively account for roughly 80%. So far in 2015, the AAP’s reports have charted a progressive decline in both ebook sales and overall revenue for the AAP’s member publishers.

During that same period in 2015, Amazon’s overall ebook sales have continued to grow in both unit and dollar terms, fueled by a strong shift in consumer ebook purchasing behavior away from traditionally-published ebooks and toward indie-published- and Amazon-imprint-published ebooks. These “non-traditionally-published” books now make up nearly 60% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in the US, and take in 40% of all consumer dollars spent on those ebooks.

In other words, the Tor boycott doesn’t have to do anything substantial at all to ensure that Tor Books continues to bleed, it is merely pouring salt on what are clearly the self-administered wounds.

At least two of the Big Five are going to collapse in the relatively near future, although I have no idea which of them it will be because I haven’t seen their financials. We know that Tor Books is in trouble simply by observing that it is bringing in foreign authors and trying to pass off midlist authors as its leading men; the so-called biggest publisher of SF/F has published precisely zero of the big SF/F hits of the last few years. Forget Rowling and Martin and whoever wrote the Hunger Games, they couldn’t even get Howey or the guy who wrote The Martian.

This is the price of failing to develop new talent; once a new author hits on Amazon, he has no incentive to work with the traditional publishers. Throw in the Pink SF gatekeeping, the unprofessional and abusive behavior of their editors, and it should be quite obvious that they’re doomed. How long it will take to play out, I don’t know, but the end game is already clear.

The only serious candidate

Donald Trump is not only a serious candidate for President of the United States of American, he is the ONLY serious candidate for the office:

The billionaire politician fired his stiffest broadsides in Texas – the ultimate American border state – at illegal immigrants, the ‘sanctuary cities’ that give them safe haven from deportation, and the pundits who have castigated him for declaring war on them all.

‘We are a dumping ground for the rest of the world,’ he complained. ‘You people are suffering,’ Trump said. ‘I’m in New York, but they’re in New York, too. They’re all over the place. It’s disgusting what’s happening to our country!’

Gang members who are in the U.S. illegally, he pledged, ‘will be out of here so frickin fast’ if he takes over the Oval Office.

And he returned to the brash rhetoric that made him a household name among immigration watchers, referring to child-citizens born of illegal immigrants as ‘anchor babies’ before allowing that ‘I don’t mean to be disrespectful.’

Trump said that just before emerging from the corner of the American Airlines center, where the Dallas Stars hockey team and Dallas Mavericks basketball team play, he had met with Texans who had lost family members to a crime wave brought north by illegal border-crossers.

‘Their sons, their daughters – killed by illegal immigrants!’ Trump boomed. ‘We have to stop illegal immigration!’

Chants of ‘USA! USA! USA!’ rang out even as a small group of immigrants’ rights protesters demonstrated outside.

‘We have to build a wall, folks,’ he said to a crescendo of cheers. ‘We have to build a wall. And a wall works. All you have to do is go to Israel and say “How does your wall work?”‘

He’s definitely listening to the Alt-Right and not the so-called “conservative media”. No wonder they hate him so much. If you’re even remotely concerned about immigration and its societally destructive effects, Trump is the only candidate you can possibly support.

One thing I think those who assume he is bluffing are missing: politicians are affected much more strongly by their wives than most people think. And look what is happening in Melania Trump’s homeland. I’m as cynical about politics as anyone, but I don’t see Trump doing a double-cross on immigration were he to win.

The people have spoken

That will be enough, Porky. A sufficient number of readers have now expressed the same sentiment concerning your comments that I have decided your continued participation in the discourse is not beneficial, therefore your comments will no longer be permitted.

Rest assured that should we feel the need to be blessed with your wisdom in the future, we will not hesitate to seek your no doubt very valuable counsel.

The blessings of diversity

I’m sure this Danish family is absolutely delighted that they didn’t raise their daughter to be racist or Islamophobic:

Lisa Borch had befriended some Arab men in a nearby asylum center. In a particularly radical Muslim she finally fell in love, she worked more and more with Islam and wanted to at times even go to Syria.

Then it turned out that the man she loved so much, was married and had a wife and children in Sweden. He left them and went back to Sweden. Solace she found in Bakhtiar Mohammed Abdulla from Iraq. The two became close friends, but still held firmly in court because they were just pals.

The mother wanted that Lisa separates from its Arab friends and re-live the normal life of a normal teenager. Lisa began to forge plans for murder and even showed one day her twin sister a knife. The only shook his head in horror. Then Tine Romans was stabbed.

In court, Lisa accuse her boyfriend Bakhtiar. He accused her, claiming she had only called him when his mother was already dead. He had only been in the house to help Lisa. Both modified several times their statements, even in court.

The fact is that he was no longer there when the police arrived. However, they found his fingerprints in the bedroom of the mother.

Staatsanwältig Karina Skou said during their speeches: “This murder was cold-blooded, cold and carried out in a bestial way.”

On Thursday, the verdict was: both are guilty of having carried out jointly the murder. Who led the knife ultimately, however, could not be clarified. Lisa Borch got nine years imprisonment, the first year in a closed youth institution, then she goes to jail.

She was a very pretty little blonde. Throw in a little multiculturalism and some mudsharking, and she was quite literally willing to murder her own mother. The wages of diversity are quite literally death.

Facebook moves into speech policing

I don’t even use it, but I’m shutting down my Facebook account. This is why:

Facebook pledged Monday to combat racist hate speech on its German-language network amid an upsurge in xenophobic comments online as Germany faces an unprecedented influx of refugees.

The US social media network said it would encourage “counter speech” and step up monitoring of anti-foreigner commentary, as company representatives were due to meet German Justice Minister Heiko Maas later Monday.

Facebook said it would work with other organisations in Germany “to develop appropriate solutions to counter xenophobia and racism and to represent this online”.

It also urged users to report offensive postings and announced a partnership with the group Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers (FSM).

As Germany faces a record influx of refugees and a backlash from the far right, social media such as Facebook have seen an upsurge of hateful, xenophobic commentary.

Big Brother being corporate rather than government doesn’t make it any better. This is Orwellian in the extreme.