A scalp is a scalp

In which we are informed #GamerGate has taken “its most disgraceful scalp yet”

For many people, Gamergate isn’t really a thing anymore. For the most part, it has receded from the headlines — we’re more than a year past the period of peak thinkpiecery on Gamergate, online harassment, and how the two intersect. But that doesn’t mean some of the group’s more enterprising members have stopped rabidly going after anyone they think is promoting an SJW (social-justice warrior) narrative or messing with their previous vidya.

For a particularly gross example, look no further than a piece of news that just dropped (part of a Twitter thread that starts here):

    Today, the decision was made: I am no longer a good, safe representative of Nintendo, and my employment has been terminated.
    — smol pterodactyl (@alisonrapp) March 30, 2016

Over the last few months, many of these gamers have turned their ire on Rapp, a young marketing employee at Nintendo who, as Patrick Klepek wrote in a comprehensive and well-reported article in Kotaku, “has been accused of somehow being a driving force behind the supposed censorship of that company’s games.” Rapp, it should be said, doesn’t even have anything to do with localization at Nintendo; she’s been targeted simply for having been “outspoken on Twitter about online abuse against women in gaming,” as Klepek put it. In the course of digging as deeply into her past as possible to find ways to discredit her, some gamers found an undergraduate thesis she wrote in 2011, and it seriously exacerbated the campaign against her.

In her thesis, Rapp laid out a highly academic case for why the U.S. shouldn’t pressure Japan, where the sexualization of young teens has long been entrenched in certain corners of the culture, to adopt child-pornography laws similar to our own. It reads like pretty standard-issue undergraduate cultural relativism. Anyone familiar with these arguments — even those inclined to think it’s fair to judge someone based on academic papers they wrote in college — would know that Rapp wasn’t condoning child pornography, but rather making a more nuanced argument about American cultural imperialism and so forth (she also argued that child pornography doesn’t cause people to abuse children).

These nuances were lost, perhaps willfully, on a group of Gamergaters and their allies, who quickly used the thesis and various old tweets of Rapp’s to launch a campaign to tar her as a defender of child pornography.

Ah, pity the poor SJWs. We aren’t correctly nuancing their defenses of child pornography. We aren’t treating them fairly. We are digging deeply into their pasts. We are contacting their employers. We are targeting their sponsors.

I wonder where we learned to do that? I wonder why we have adopted these terrible tactics?

They began this cultural war. Now they’re whining that someone is finally fighting back. If you’re not engaged yet, you should be, because they are coming after you just as surely as they are going after gaming, comics, the universities, and everything else.

Read SJWs Always Lie if you haven’t already. It’s all in there.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Kotaku has rushed to the defense of the indefensible:

Rapp specifically mentioned the GamerGate today as being agents of her
harassment, but it was never clear whether one particular group was
after her.
My reporting suggested
some people had taken tactics used by harassers during GamerGate and applied them here.


Adios Gawker

This should bring the Denton empire to an end sooner rather than later:

Hulk Hogan Gets $115M Verdict Against Gawker at Sex Tape Trial. Weighing free speech against privacy, a Florida jury has decided to uphold the sanctity of the latter by turning in a $115 million verdict against Gawker over its 2012 posting of a Hulk Hogan sex tap.

Showing someone else’s video isn’t free speech. But regardless, it’s good to see the one of GG’s most egregious enemies going down.

Cernovich’s video analysis summarized:

  •     Gawker had excellent legal counsel, this was simply a case no one could win.
  •     New York snark does not translate well to judges and juries.
  •     Gawker will need to post an appeal bond of 10% of the damages verdict.
  •     The jury may award up to 3 times the $115 million in punitive damages, for a total award of hundreds of millions of dollars.
  •     Gawker’s revenue last year were around $44 million. There’s no way Gawker can afford to pay this verdict.
  •     Gawker owns several websites like Jezebel and Kotaku. Those sites may be sold off to the (lowest) bidder.
  •     In order to appeal the verdict, Gawker must put up the full verdict amount, or pay 10% (non-refundable) to a company. Bottom line: Gawker will need to pay millions of dollars out of pocket to appeal the Hulk Hogan verdict.

Fire the SJW

Parents are calling on Nintendo to fire SJW and pro-pedophile Alison Rapp:

Nintendo is facing calls to sack a feminist employee who penned a highly controversial academic essay questioning whether it was morally correct to censor child pornography.

A number of people have taken to Twitter and urged the the Japanese firm to fire Alison Rapp, who works as a product marketing specialist for Nintendo of America and has been responsible for promoting some the family-friendly firms’ most famous games.

In 2012, she published a paper discussing child pornography in Japan, which has come under international pressure to tighten its laws on the depiction of underage sex.

Rapp, who wears a ring through her nose and tweets using the language of combative modern feminism, then drew the attention of male activists, who dug out the old paper earlier this year and began discussing it in Reddit threads and publishing articles on Medium.

Now anger has boiled over onto social media, with one furious parent calling for a boycott of Nintendo to “let them know we love our children more than to support someone like Alison Rapp”.

You know, I don’t think the SF-SJW support for pedophiles is going to go over any better than Alison Rapp’s has, once the mainstream learns about it.


SJWs: #GamerGate is a Nazi rally!

It’s really remarkable how many of these Nazi Rapist movements pervade the creative arts. I mean, we have been reliably informed that the Sad Puppies are neo-Nazis, the Rabid Puppies are neo-Nazis, Roosh has assembled a band of rapists around the world, and now CometCon has cancelled a #GamerGate panel including well-known Spanish #GamerGate Life artist Kukuruyo because Nazi. Kukuruyo explains:

Ok, i’ll explain as best as i can. The event Cometcon wanted to organize a debate about gamergate, and i was the main proponent. I wrote a text here about a month ago looking for people to participate in the debate so you may already know this.

The debate was at first going to be with several people invited to disscuss about it, but we didn’t find anyone against GG who wanted to participate. So we changed it to a small introductory talk, and then i would debate people from the public.

But then, a spanish webcomic artist known as RataUnderground (he does a comic called art 88/46) discovered it and sent them an email telling them we were going to do a nazi rally, that we were sexist and all the usual stuff. His fans and artist friends also talked the organization asking them to cancel the debate. *aparently it was not an email but a tweet telling them we are a harrassment campaign against feminists and then comments flowed from there until the “nazi rally” stuff.

Now, the organization is not really at fault. I know many of them, they wanted to do the debate, and they don’t like the attack on freedom of speech, but they also didn’t expected the backlash they would get, and they wanted to stay out of politics.

Following that i wrote to some of those artist in twitter to reprimand them for taking down the debate instead of debating me. I have asked all of them why they want to take down the debate instead of refuting me, if what we say is so easy to refute, but none of them seem to have an answer for that.

There’s a shitstorm right now on my twitter feed about that, with people from GG discussing with their fans and friends, but as you may guess, it’s all in spanish. But i can tell you that it’s going as usuall. Instead of arguments, they just say that we are misogynist and nazis, and that’s it. There’s a few people i have managed to debate a bit, but with no avail. Every time i refuted something they said they just moved goalposts and thats it. We even offered to make a skype debate to one of them, who was a journalist, but he refused because we were not important people oO.

Notice how the SJW tactics never, ever change? SJWs always lie. Perhaps it is time for GamerGate and other anti-SJW movements to begin their own con, from which SJWs are explicitly and specifically excluded.

I’ll talk to Mike and Milo. Perhaps instead of another GG meetup, we’ll discuss founding #GamerGateCon.


Literally Who admits defeat

The Ralph Retort takes a victory lap as the first fraud of anti-GamerGate finally gives up:

In case you missed it, Zoe Quinn dropped the harassment charges against Eron Gjoni yesterday. It almost brings the long legal saga to an end for Mr. Gjoni, although my understanding is the appeal that was filed against Ms. Quinn’s gag order (Fall 2014 report) will continue. That’s good, because it’s important that we set precedent against this sort of thing happening again. There’s another problem that unfortunately won’t be settled by the courts, though, and that’s the trashy and unethical mainstream media. Honestly, I don’t mind the trashy part. It’s the lies that make my blood boil. I roll around in the dirt here fairly frequently, but I always tell you the truth as I know it at the time. That’s something that will never change. Our opponents on the other side can’t claim that with a straight face.

The mainstream media and the SJW blogosphere have no interest in the truth. They simply want to spin dishonest narratives and get paid for it…. She asked for the charges to be brought and she asked for them to be
dropped. It’s called “loss by forfeit,” you fucking idiots. The first
thing I thought after reading The Mary Sue post was: “How stupid do you have to be to write something like that?” Then, the second thing that ran through my mind was: They aren’t stupid, that was just the best spin they could come up with. Whatever the case may be, it’s asinine. Zoe lost, Eron won, and GamerGate gets the last laugh.

Still, we can’t fool ourselves completely. Ms. Quinn receives
thousands of dollars a month for doing absolutely nothing. She doesn’t
even pretend to make games anymore and has instead switched over to the
“online abuse” racket.

As usual, the truth will out. Sometimes it just takes a while. And that’s why persistence is all that is required for ultimate victory, because SJWs Always Lie.


Gloating Milo is Best Milo

Nero reaches 100,000 followers on Twitter and is characteristically humble and modest about it in an article entitled “Why I’m Winning”:

Earlier today, a student newspaper called Nouse published an op-ed titled, “We Need To Talk About Milo.” It’s a long explanation of why I’m so popular, influential and successful.

I’m mortified by its appearance, obviously. That said, it’s worth reflecting on….

My career is evidence not just that free speech is effective, but that free speech combined with a lack of snobbery and class war always wins in the end. There’s no defence against the truth – especially when it’s wrapped up in a joke and has great hair.

Progressivism and social justice threw everyone out one by one, until the number of people who weren’t permitted to talk was greater than the group allowed to. I’m a direct casualty of that exclusionary attitude: a gay, matrilinearly Jewish conservative Catholic who, according to your worldview, shouldn’t exist.

Is it any wonder I found common cause with the irreverent hordes of GamerGate? It’s the gamers, of course, I have to thank for giving me a leg-up a year ago. We might not look much alike, the average gamer and me. But, when you think about it, we’re natural ideological bedfellows – and we’ve both been cast out by the people who ought to have been our defenders. So we made our own family together, as dysfunctional as it can sometimes appear.

There are few things I like better than breathtaking arrogance that is based on genuine self-confidence and ability.


Fixing what already worked

Milo reports on a gaming-oriented charity deciding to expand its focus:

Operation Supply Drop, a well-respected charity established to help veterans ease back into civilian life using video games, and which provided active personnel with care packages featuring consoles and the latest games, is being torn apart. Insiders allege that this is happening at least in part thanks to negative portrayals of games and gamers in the media.

OSD is in crisis after its founder and many senior staff departed this month, citing the incumbent chief executive’s desire to refocus the charity away from video games, using money raised from gamers to fund a shift into mainstream, non-gaming activism.

Ex-Army veteran Captain Stephen Machuga, known online as Shanghai Six, started OSD on November 1, 2010. The charity claims to have raised $8 million since, but Machuga left on 1 November this year after disagreements about the direction of the organisation, and has pledged to launch a new charity called Stack-Up.Org, which will cleave to the original design and spirit of Operation Supply Drop more closely.

Sources close to Operation Supply Drop allege that its chief executive, Glenn Banton, is manoeuvering the charity away from video games, at least in part because recent negative press and a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode dramatising poor treatment of women in the game industry might make corporate fundraising for gaming-focused programmes difficult, given Banton’s grand ambitions for the charity.

Banton denies this, telling Breitbart that he is “frustrated with this concept of gamer-only water fountains and a trend of not letting non-gamers participate in gaming activities.”

Whatever else this is, it is remarkably stupid. Does Banton think the big breast cancer charities would raise more money if they turned their focus away from breast cancer in the interests of being more inclusive? Without its gaming component, Operation Supply Drop become just another veteran’s charity. As a general rule, expanding your focus is a very good way to miss the target.

I have no idea of Banton is an SJW or not, but this does certainly smack of entryism.


Dialogue with a moderate

This discussion between Nate and a #GamerGate moderate should help illustrate the essential problem with the moderate perspective and demonstrate how they are never truly on the side they nominally claim to be supporting. It should also make it clear that for all his posturing and preening, the moderate is guaranteed, on the basis of his own unprincipled philosophy, to be a loser.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If you respond to disagreement with any of these: Shill, Concern Troll, Divide and Conquer, you want a hugbox just like SJWs do.

Nate @bloggerblaster
horse shit. moderates shooting at their own side because they are scared to shoot at the actual enemy. Concern Trolls suck

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Fuck this tribalistic “us vs. them” crap. If you can’t handle dissent, you’re no better than “the enemy”.

Nate @bloggerblaster
We didn’t make them the enemy. They made us the enemy. Talk to them.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
So? If you refuse to allow dissent and dismiss criticism with labels, you’re no better than “the enemy”.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m not dismissing your criticism of me. I’m still talking to you, aren’t I? Meanwhile, you dismiss all criticism from me.

Nate @bloggerblaster
more poser bullshit. Look son…we’re being punched. and now you’re bitching at us because we’re punching back.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m not gonna engage in the same tactics SJWs do when it’s their tactics that make me dislike them in the first place.

NOTE:  The tactics are what make him dislike SJWs. He apparently has no problem with their ideals or objectives.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If I “punch back” in the exact same manner, then there is no functional difference between me and “the enemy”.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If you handle dissent this way, then I have no desire to help you “punch back”. And nor will the vast majority of people.

Nate @bloggerblaster
But using dialect to people who only respond to rhetoric is not only ineffective its actually counter productive.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I don’t compromise my principles for what is supposedly “effective”, especially when I remain unconvinced that your rhetoric will do anything other than alienate those who might be sympathetic but aren’t as extreme.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
That’s because you’re ignorant. Aristotle explained your position was hopelessly wrong 2,400 years ago.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m criticizing the idea of using the exact same tactics SJWs do when SJW tactics are what make me dislike them.

Vox Day @voxday
Then you have no principles. It is the objectives that are relevant, not the tactics.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
It’s the tactics that I find distasteful about SJWs in the first place. If I use those tactics, I’m’ no different.

Nate @bloggerblaster
You’d rather lose than win wrong. Then go away loser. We want to win.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.

Vox Day @voxday
Compromise what? You have no principles. You dislike certain TACTICS. That’s just style over substance. That’s etiquette!

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
My principles forbids the use of certain tactics.

Nate @bloggerblaster
so you admit it. You’d rather lose than win wrong.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Winning by becoming just like SJWs is no victory at all.

Vox Day @voxday
You’re being a complete idiot. TACTICS do not make you like the other side. They have different objectives.

Nate @bloggerblaster
I would tell you that history is full of losers with your view. but it was written by those that killed them. so no.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
And history is also full of people who fought against monsters and eventually became them in the end.

NOTE: I actually double face-palmed here…

Vox Day @voxday
No, it’s not. That’s a stupid aphorism that isn’t even remotely close to being true.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
And I’m supposed to just accept that so I can beat whichever enemy is in vogue right now? No thanks.

Vox Day @voxday
That’s fine. Then lose. That’s what moderates always do.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If the extremist tactics on either side win, I lose either way

Nate @bloggerblaster
sounds like you’re used to losing already. So honorable!

 Vox Day @voxday
That’s what we’ve been telling you.


Anti-GamerGate bias in the media

That’s not exactly a surprise. What is a little surprising is the way in which so-called journalists at The Guardian couldn’t even bother to hide the fact that they were taking sides from the very start:

The Guardian put out a piece of trash journalism, calling for the rest of the media to stop giving positive coverage to our consumer revolt. You see, when the SJWs start getting their asses kicked, like GamerGate has been doing, their go-to response is to change the rules of the game. So, they put out editorials designed to shame the few non-biased colleagues they have into not covering us objectively. I can guarantee you that Ricky Camilleri, of HuffPost Live, has gotten a lot of shit for even doing the segment on us yesterday. That’s how they control the narrative.

Earlier this evening, I was provided with an internal email from the technology editor of The Guardian, Jemima Kiss. She thought she was sending it to her staff, but instead unknowingly sent it to an associate of TheRalphRetort.com. After reading it, you can see that we never had a chance with her, or The Guardian. They’ve had their minds made up for quite sometime (at least as far back as Sept. 23rd).

If I had to guess, I would imagine there are many more emails like that, stretching back even further. She shows a clear disdain for our consumer campaign. I don’t think such a woman could ever be impartial. Outright dismissing our claims as “idiotic?” That’s not how a professional journalist is supposed to behave.

This is a cultural war, people. Show them no mercy and give them no quarter. They’re not going to play fair-and-balanced, so they don’t deserve even a modicum of restraint from us.

Notice how they actually brought in Leigh Alexander, of all people, to explain to their reporters what #GamerGate was really about. That’s like bringing in Charles Manson to talk about Sharon Tate.


The collapse of Star Citizen

Derek Smart contemplates the inevitable end game of a project that appears to be in severe distress:

Last week, The Escapist magazine wrote a scathing investigative report (follow-up podcast) into this project. Something that no other media outlet had done before regarding this project. As they have said, I was not
their source. In fact, only an incompetent media person would use me as
a source. Given how close I am to all of this, the fact that I could
not be regarded as an unbiased source even if I swore on a stack of
Bibles to be unbiased etc.

For the purposes of full disclosure: What I did do, as I’ve been doing since July, was made contact with some mainstream (names withheld as per legal) media sources, trying to get them to investigate this project. This was as per my July 10th blog, Interstellar Discourse
in which, right at the top, I had called for the investigation of this
project and all its creators. This was because I had already been made
aware of most of what is now coming to light as portrayed in The
Escapist article.

As part of that effort, I gave them some of my credible sources,
along with an overview of what I had uncovered and why I simply wasn’t
the one to investigate this any further, due in part by information that
I had access to and which was better off being in the hands of those
same people (the media) who helped hype this project to what it is
today.

I was wrong in making this decision and thinking that anything would come from it. They all chose to bury the story….

My question is that, with all the numerous articles out there,
interviews, visits, face time etc. Why is it that nobody wants to ask
the tough questions about this project? Primary question being, where
did ALL this money go? We have pretty much nothing to show for it – four years later.

In response to the article, Chris Roberts, in continuing the downward trend to disaster, wrote a scathing diatribe
that, on the face of it, looks like you’d have to be high to unleash
that sort of tirade into the public domain. From the CEO of a $90m+
company no less. And clearly it wasn’t vetted by legal (LOL!! that would
be Ortwin). It’s a Gold mine of actionable legal liability. And all it
did was lend credence to some of the things being said behind closed
doors about him, and which were now coming to light via these sources
talking to the media.

The gist of it was that “Derek Smart is bad, this was all his fault, and he was the puppet master”.
Oh, and GamerGate. He mentions me a total of 20 times. The author of
the article got a single mention. And I didn’t even write the damn thing.

Sound familiar? Yes, that’s the blame game.

I was concerned about Star Citizen about a year ago, but I wasn’t half as convinced that the project was on the verge of collapse by Derek Smart as I was by Chris Roberts’s disastrous and very poorly considered response to Derek’s questions. What Chris should have done, what I advise him to do, is to invite Derek to visit and see how development is going for himself. Give him a personal tour. Explain to him how well things are going and how good the game is going to be. Then do the same thing with Lizzy and anyone else The Escapist is willing to send.

This is a GOLDEN opportunity to show off and sell Star Citizen. Instead, Chris and his team have reacted if they have something radioactive to hide. They have reacted as if they are on the verge of being caught red-handed. There is absolutely no reason to react with anger, lengthy diatribes, and legal threats to someone who has doubts about how your project is going.

Whoever is advising Chris is going about it the completely wrong way. I know both Chris and David, and when I get the time I’m going to give them a call and urge them to rethink RSI’s response to critics and doubters, because this simply is not the way to reassure anyone, not even the most sincere Star Citizen supporters and true believers.

And #GamerGate? Seriously? Derek Smart isn’t #GamerGate. I am #GamerGate as are many others who wish both Chris and Star Citizen well. I don’t know what that is supposed to be, other than an ill-advised attempt to dog-whistle corrupt game journos who didn’t do their job covering Star Citizen in the first place.

Derek is correct. None of this has ANYTHING to do with him. Like him or loathe him, his opinions and his history are irrelevant. All that matters is the very relevant observations he has made and the very pertinent questions he has raised. And for RSI to engage in argumentum ad impertinens hominem is not merely self-defeating bad public relations, it tends to call their own credibility, as well as the future of Star Citizen, into serious question.

Ultimately, Star Citizen may well prove to be another painful lesson in “Beware the Awesome” ala Homefront:

Dave Schulman was a really good salesman at telling THQ what we could
deliver, and turning back to us to say, ‘Hey, sky’s the limit. Just pack
more features in. Make it great. Put as many bullet points as you can
on the back of the box.’ When Kaos turned that into a demo to show THQ, the ideas
practically sold themselves. THQ executives loved it, and gave Kaos a
green light to complete the game. “Now beyond that initial preproduction phase,” said one producer,
“then you actually have to pay your dues. You have to actually make the
thing you’ve been promising. I think that’s where Dave Schulman’s
expertise fell short. He had promised so much that there was absolutely
no way we could deliver.”

The damning phrase: “We spent about a total of eight months of our production time making a
five minute demo that was … not an actual game. It was a very nice demo.
But it was all smoke and mirrors.”