Tag: #GamerGate

The GamerGate playbook

I, for one, have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. GamerGate? What is this playbook of which you speak so highly?

The Anti-CNN Harassment Campaign Is Using the GamerGate Playbook

This time the target isn’t video game reviewers. It’s families of reporters. And many of the same characters from the first time are back for Round 2.

KATHERINE CROSS

For Twitter users, the #CNNBlackmail flap has been hard to miss. Angry Trump supporters, furious that the network “forced” the originator of the Trump-wrestling-CNN GIF to apologize even though it didn’t, fixated on a single line in the story posted to CNN’s KFILE: “CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should [his remorsefulness] change.” Cue the angry mobs that targeted not just the reporter of the story with death threats, but his wife and parents.

But for me, this all looked depressingly familiar. A mostly far-right swarm of Twitter users caterwauling about free speech, memes, and ethics in journalism? We’ve been here before.
Many of the same tactics and major players that made names for themselves in GamerGate—from Mike Cernovich to Weev—are being used to push a wide-scale harassment campaign against CNN.

In August of 2014 Eron Gjoni, the ex-boyfriend of Zoë Quinn, a game developer, posted a lengthy screed in which he falsely accused her of illicitly securing favorable reviews for her game. This touched off a tidal wave of abuse directed at her. At first, it all seemed like so many of the seasonal storms of harassment that women in tech are subjected to. Critic Anita Sarkeesian, veteran game developer Jennifer Hepler, and tech evangelist Adria Richards all had their turns as the monster-of-the-week for reactionary internet trolls heaping rape/death threats and slander upon them.

But the abuse around Quinn rapidly metastasized into something larger that attacked several people at once, and brought old targets like Sarkeesian back to the fore (she was eventually forced to flee her own home after detailed, specific threats were made). Using the fig-leaf provided by the false accusation about reviews, the attackers conjured a scandal about gaming journalism to justify their fixation on the female game developers and feminist critics they so hated. They called it #GamerGate.

This movement lasted for months, and constituted a new form of both online harassment and right-wing activism. Though GamerGate putatively drew its adherents from across the political spectrum, they would constellate around hatred of “political correctness” and feminism, and ally themselves with conservative and extreme-right voices.

Terrible stuff indeed. I, for one, denounce this mob intimidation being directed at hard-working journalists who are guilty of nothing more than reporting the news to the American public. I mean, what sort of monster concocts dreadfully dank memes like the one below? (clears throat, adjusts bow tie) Truly reprehensible!

Sargon schools Scalzi

Scalzi, being an SJW, is always one to try to push the false SJW Narrative, in this case the one defending Anita Sarkeesian for harassing someone in the very way she has made a little career decrying. Sargon of Akkad, who was Literally Who 2’s target, sets the record straight.

Typical, though, of the SJW to act as if women who cry about criticism are being harassed, but men who do nothing more than point out that they are being attacked in the very same manner are crybabies.

Gamergate: the ride never ends

SJWs in the game industry are trying to enforce their goodthink again, this time on developers.

Hello Raw Fury fans and friends,

Today we revealed The Last Night during the Xbox Press conference and have been overwhelmed with the response we have received. Both good and bad, and we specifically want to draw attention to a few things the creative director has said in the past.

We at Raw Fury believe in equality, believe in feminism, and believe everyone has a right and chance at the equal pursuit of happiness. We would not be working with Tim Soret / Odd Tales at all if we believed they were against these principles in any aspect.

The comments Tim made in 2014 are certainly surprising and don’t fit the person we know, and we hope that everyone reading this who knows us at Raw Fury on a personal and professional level knows that we wouldn’t tolerate working with someone who portrays the caricature of Tim going around the internet right now.

The wording of his statements toward feminism in 2014 was poor, and his buying into GamerGate as a movement on the notion that it represented gamers against journalists was naive, but in the same year he also cheered the rise of women in gaming. In a similar situation as the one happening now, folks on the IdleThumbs forums found questionable tweets and Tim took it upon himself to address them. What came from that was a dialogue where different viewpoints were considered and debated in a purposeful way.

Here is a link to everything including his tweets, his response, and the response of the forum; we hope you’ll take the time to read through it:

Side note: Debating Anita Sarkeesian’s efforts toward highlighting sexism in the games industry is touchy, and though Tim’s post back then was naive we felt that he wasn’t being malicious like so many others have been to Anita in the past, so we share all of this with the hope people can see that first hand. We understand that no matter what there will be people who will not look at Tim the same again and we respect that, too.

A lot can change in three years, including viewpoints, and Tim has assured us that The Last Night does not spout a message steeped in regressive stances. We trust Tim and know that he is an advocate for progression both in and outside of our industry, and we hope that this will be apparent moving forward.

Here we go again….

It’s frustrating, but people encountering an SJW attack for the first time ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS make the same idiotic mistake.

Tim Soret @E3‏ @timsoret  15h15 hours ago
Controversy time. That’s fine. Let’s talk about it, because it’s important.
1 – I completely stand for equality & inclusiveness.

Tim Soret @E3‏ @timsoret  12h12 hours ago
2 – In no way is The Last Night a game against feminism or any form of equality. A lot of things changed for me these last years.

Tim Soret @E3‏ @timsoret
 3 – The fictional setting of the game does challenge techno-social progress as a whole but certainly not trying to promote regressive ideas.

We, the Dread, Academic Edition

Ultimately, Gamergate demonstrated the refinement of a variety of techniques of gamified public harassment—including doxing (publishing personal information online), revenge porn (spreading intimate photos beyond their intended recipi-ents), social shaming, and intimidation. It also provides insight into gender as a key rallying point for a range of online subcultures. Moreover, it set the conditions for the rise of the alt-right. Several of the most active promoters of Gamergate are now core alt-right figures, including Milo Yiannopolous, Vox Day (Theodore Beale), Matt Forney (of Men’s Rights blog Return of Kings), and Andrew “weev” Auern-heimer. Gamergate’s success at mobilizing gamers to push an ideological agenda indicates the fruitfulness of radicalizing interest-based communities.
– Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online (PDF)


I think the Far Cry 5 version is probably more accurate and relevant.

RIP Pepe

Pepe the Frog has been murdered by his creator:

The creator of Pepe the Frog has symbolically killed off the cartoon frog, effectively surrendering control of the character to the far right.

Matt Furie, an artist and children’s book author, created the now-infamous frog as part of his “Boy’s Club” series on MySpace in 2005. Pepe took on a life of its own online as a meme, before being eventually adopted as a symbol by the “alt-right” in the lead-up to last year’s US election.

In September, Hillary Clinton identified Pepe the Frog as a racist hate symbol, and Pepe was added to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols.

Furie launched a campaign to “Save Pepe”, flooding the internet with “peaceful or nice” depictions of the character in a bid to shake its association with white supremacy and antisemitism.

But he now seems to have conceded defeat, killing the character off in a one-page strip for the independent publisher Fantagraphics’ Free Comic Book Day. It showed Pepe laid to rest in an open casket, being mourned by his fellow characters from Boy’s Club.

Furie had been attempting to wrench back his “peaceful frog-dude” – whom he has often said he imagined as an extension of his personality – for more than six months. Pepe’s passing has been interpreted of his ceding control of the character.

Yeah, so, about that….

I cannot believe he didn’t see that coming. The Left has even begun to admit, reluctantly, that all their memes are belong to us.

Angela Nagle, a writer and academic whose book on the culture of the alt-right will be published at the end of next month, told the Guardian Furie’s campaign to reclaim his creation, while understandable, had been misguided.

“I can see why he must be dismayed that his own creation is being used in this way, so I don’t blame him for trying. In general though, I think it’s a dead end, yes.”“Critics of the alt-right have a tendency to try to outdo them at their own game by ‘trolling the trolls’. This should be rejected in its entirety and not ‘reclaimed’ in any way … There are many wonderful ideals for us to reclaim like beauty, utopianism, internationalism. Let them have their tedious nihilistic juvenile symbols.”

GamerGate Round Two

This time, it’s not inclusion and diversity, it’s “resisting fascism”.

Resist Jam Info

It’s time to make games, resist fascism, and meet some friends along the way.

Resist Jam is an online game jam themed around resisting fascism in all its forms, organized by a group of experienced game developers. Our objective is to get as many people making games as possible, with online workshops before the jam and around-the-clock support from expert mentors in all fields of game development. Diverse and inclusive gamedev is the best gamedev.

Read the whole thing at DevGame. SJWs always double down.

All Your Safe Space are Belong to Us

The Grand Strategicon of the Evil Legion of Evil announces the Great Triggering:

If I didn’t make it clear enough eleven days ago, Donald Trump’s re-election campaign begins now. Moreover, the SJWs, the special snowflakes, the thumb suckers of collegiate campuses, and the legion of the perpetually outraged are all going to help us get him re-elected.

For those who don’t like Donald Trump, think of it as the campaign to keep unutterably corrupt Democrats who hate you because you’re either white or an Oreo/Uncle Tom or, in any case, a doubleplusungood male, or a conservative or other than lesbian female, or at least someone who hasn’t embraced victimhood status, away from the White House silver and china. We all have a part to play in this and we can have great fun, fantastic fun, while we play our parts.

#GamerGate didn’t die, it evolved and expanded. And now it is Making America Great Again.

No apologies

Hater Foz Meadows refuses to apologize to the Jewish people for her despicable insult to Holocaust survivers. So hateful! Incredibly, she sneeringly waves off public demands for an apology as “batshit ridiculous”.

Have you ever heard anything so nakedly anti-semitic? Sad!

And in the meantime, Literally Who isn’t taking Literally Wu’s latest bid for public attention lying down and has come back strong by coming out as… something nameless that appears to be somehow related to ambiguous non-cisgendered cross-dressing special snowflake status.

I’m going to tell you something I’ve been afraid to say for basically ever. And it’s gonna be messy, and it’s gonna go to some dark places (including eating disorders so pls be advised) because I’m barfing my heart out onto the page and hoping I can do it fast enough that I won’t reconsider, or hold back. I can’t say all this without first pausing to say this is only my story, and it’s a privilege that I am able to share it. I want to gently remind people that I’m only trying to speak for me and my own experiences, and in no way does that change or speak to others’ realities. I’m coming out (holy shit typing that made me anxious), so this is just my story.

My entire life I’ve not been a girl or a woman.

Growing up, I’d have hissyfits over being talked to or referred to as a girl. People have had to remind me that they see me as a girl or a woman my entire life, because it doesn’t exist in my head. All that ever has is “this isn’t me”.

When I was 12, I started smoking cigarettes because I thought they’d make my voice lower, and I was tired of hearing a high alien pitch come out of my face. About a year later, I started starving myself because i wanted to look like anything other than a girl, and because I didn’t identify with being a boy either. The closest thing I could find to what looked “right” was the waif thin androgynous body type, and when combined with my hatred of my own body I developed a full on eating disorder that I never told anyone about. At one point, I hovered around 100lbs, despairing that my hips were still wide, my shoulders and chest still broad, and that I’d be an hourglass no matter how much I starved.

I managed to recover, mostly, but the hatred of my own body remained, strong enough that I still can’t objectively see myself in the mirror with any sort of accuracy. I found out recently I’ve been wearing the wrong size of everything, always overestimating, always going baggier, always trying to hide what I’d been so ashamed of.

There is more. Oh, there is so much more than you could ever want to imagine. But it inspires a very important question, which is: how is Literally Who 2 going to respond to this? Let’s face it, it’s going to be hard to top the competition from the other two professional victims, especially when they’ve shown themselves more than willing to match death threat with death threat, and terrified-flight-from-home with terrified-flight-from-home, in the past.

I should think, at a bare minimum, LW2 is going to have to come out as a transgendered male rape victim and run for the U.S. Senate just to stay in the game.