Tag: #GamerGate

Mount Gamergate

I’m pleased to announce that every Monday, we’ll be running a regular political cartoon created by Red Meat and me. As for the inaugural cartoon, one could probably suggest 10 or 15 other GGers who belong on Mount Gamergate; the thought of there one day being a giant, topless tribute to Mercedes Carrera is certainly amusing. But for me, when I think of #GamerGate, these are the five individuals who first come to mind.

And, of course, if you’d like to see more of our collaborative efforts, you can find them in SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police.

The idea with these graphic memes is to pass them around. They have been a very effective tactic for #GamerGate because they are one-way communication in pure rhetoric. So, if you’re on Twitter or other social media, I would encourage you to do so.

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.

Embrace your extremists

Nero explains some of the rules of ideological alliances to a moderate:

Winston Churchill once said, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a positive reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” The logic of this should be obvious. Churchill recognized (rightly) that maintaining Britain’s liberal order was worth allying with the devil. No one went to war with the Nazis just because of the tactics they used. They primarily did it because they couldn’t stand the idea of living under a Nazi regime. I can’t stand the thought of living under what Cathy calls the “quasi-totalitarian” Social Justice regime. And I will pay any price necessary to make sure that quasi-totalitarian ideology is defeated and sent back to the urine-soaked faculty lounge from whence it came.

Cathy confuses what is prudent with what is moral when she says that rejecting certain far-right allies doesn’t count as appeasing the Left. Certainly, taking on allies who alienate the vast majority of people you’re trying to persuade is tactically stupid. But purging people when they have done nothing to damage your cause, but happen to have made you uncomfortable because of something unrelated, is simply cowardly. There is a very troubling tendency among many Gamergaters to believe that anyone to the right of Noam Chomsky is somehow “icky” or should be held responsible for the sins of Jack Thompson. This isn’t the early 2000s. Most conservatives have moved on from the stupid anti-video game craze, and the ones who are most loudly on Gamergate’s side generally never bought into that craze in the first place. Refusing to accept support from people who would destroy your ability to maintain your coalition is one thing. Simple bigotry against conservatives because you don’t like the idea of being on the same side as people you laughed at on the Daily Show is quite another.

I agree completely with Cathy re Nyberg, so I won’t respond to this prong. I will, however, only say that Social Justice Warriors take no notice of the difference between “combatants” and “non-combatants,” which is typical of fascists and terrorists. The only way to stop such people from targeting non-combatants is to make them afraid to do so, because they know the retaliation from you will hurt so much more than anything they could do. Mutually assured destruction requires the commitment of both sides to destruction if the other starts something, and it is why we have yet to see a nuclear war. If you want to stop people using bad tactics, the only way to do it is to make them prohibitively costly. And the only way to do that is to use the same tactics with such brutal efficiency that they cry “uncle” and agree to a ceasefire.

As I have noted on several occasions, for reasons unbeknownst to me, moderates are always more focused on firing on their own side than on the enemy. They are also always more open to negotiation and dialogue with the enemy than with their own extremists.

This is one of the reasons why moderates never accomplish anything. Ideally, moderates would stay out of the way, let the extremists lead the charge, and then show up after the victory is won and handle the negotiations using the extremists as leverage.

“Do you want to surrender to me or do I stand aside and watch as my very good friend here follows through on his promise of no quarter?” Accepting surrender is the true and proper role of the moderate. Policing those engaged in positive action is not.

Sneaky little hobbitses

Nero’s reflections after a year of covering #GamerGate:

Despite the common stereotypes of gamers as losers, nerds and shut-ins, gamers proved to be the perfect opponents for cultural authoritarians. The left relies on destroying the reputations of their opponents — but how do you destroy the reputations of people who have been ridiculed as often as gamers? When you’re already hated by the left, the right, and the media, the only way to go is dank.

Gamers also benefited from being one of the few genuine grassroots communities, with few leaders and no official structures. Unlike the tedious “movements” that regularly emerge from college campuses – whether Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) or Slut Walks – the gamers have no radical ideology.

They are ordinary, in some cases really quite apolitical, people, brought together by a shared hobby. They have no grand social objective beyond protecting the medium they love from authoritarian scolds and they cannot be neatly categorised.

The more you try to paint gamers as basement-dwelling straight white nerds, the more paraplegic black lesbian World of Warcraft addicts come tumbling out of the woodwork. (Is that offensive to dykes? I have no idea. Nor would the lesbians in GamerGate give a flying toss.)

One of the features of GamerGate is that it includes people from every background imaginable. A survey on GamePolitics found a broad mix of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Gamers don’t care if you’re black, white, gay, straight, or disabled. All that matters is that you know how to game. They’ll even welcome right-wing bastards like me.

That kind of diversity and tolerance — the genuine kind — frightens cultural authoritarians, not just because they are so mercilessly intolerant to their opponents, but also because it undermines their view of the world. Gaming is that most hated of words in identity politics: a meritocracy. Who you are is unimportant. All that matters is what you know, what you can do, and if you’re being honest with yourself and others about those two things.

It’s interesting to see how many people who actually take the time to listen to #GamerGate, pay attention to the interactions between #GamerGate and our enemies, and learn the substantive issues involved eventually end up declaring themselves full-fledged members of #GamerGate.

So, welcome to the Shire, Gandalf the Gay.

The one thing that the SJWs simply did not understand is that for the average gamer, the gamer identity supersedes all his other identities. Oliver Campbell is a black GAMER. Brixton is a female GAMER. I am a Native American GAMER. The SJWs misapplied their identity politics to the subject; they assumed race and sex, the identities we did not choose for ourselves, were more important than the identity that every single gamer has chosen and made his lifestyle. They focused on the adjectives, never realizing that what we value is the noun.

Meanwhile, the SJWs are, in addition to opposing #GamerGate, standing up for tranny pedophiles. Seriously. And to think there were those who thought I was going too far when I referred to Mr. Sandifer as Peddy Phil.

Harbingers of #GamerGate

Decades before the thought of cheating on Eron Gjoni was even a stirring in Zoe Quinn’s meaty loins, there was this infamous review of Doom in Edge magazine.

If that doesn’t sum up the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence, I don’t know does. To say nothing of the way it shows how the SJW’s instinct, when faced with an acid-throwing Baron of Hell, is to want to make friends with it rather than strafing and shooting a rocket in its face.

What more do you need to understand that SJWs are pure and unadulterated evil? They see a Baron of Hell and think: “He seems nice! I wonder if he will be my friend?”

Speaking of SJWs and GamerGate, this dialogue was so beautiful and succinct that it nearly brought a tear to my eye.

Young Snake @117Baz 4:44 AM – 1 Apr 2015
If #GamerGate hit’s the 1 year anniversary I will dress up in a French Maid uniform and keep it as my twitter profile pic for all time.
Xenimme @Xenimme 9:09 PM – 27 Aug 2015
Get the dress.

It is, as they say, the very toppest of keks.

Happy Birthday, #GamerGate

This is the chapter-heading cartoon for Chapter Eight: Striking Back at the Thought Police, from the #1 Political Philosophy bestseller, SJWs ALWAYS LIE: Taking Down the Thought Police.

From the Dedication:

This book is for all the gamers around the world who simply wanted to be left alone to play their games in peace. You didn’t go looking to fight a cultural war, the social justice warriors in game journalism brought their war to you….

This book is for the thousands of sealions whose names I don’t know, who sent emails and created memes, who persisted and leveled up, and who, in doing so, shattered the SJW Narrative.

This book is for #GamerGate.

Call it justice, call it karma

Regardless, it exists. You may recall Sam Biddle as one of #GamerGate’s primary targets:

Earlier this week Gawker lost “thousands of dollars” in advertising after a poorly worded tweet was posted by one of its writers. Sam Biddle, one of the more sarcastic employees among the sarcastic throng at Gawker Media, tweeted out a joke:

    Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we’ve known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission
    — Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) October 16, 2014

He immediately followed it with:

    Bring Back Bullying
    — Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) October 16, 2014

Naturally, the Twitterverse pounced. While the issue goes into convoluted gamergate territory, it didn’t make Gawker, the intellectual fraternity of the internet that invites people to their parties only to make them buy the booze, look good. Adobe pulled its sponsorship in response to the uproar, which was followed by multiple posts by site editors attempting to explain the situation, apologizing and admitting they “fucked up.”

Now the nerds are shaming back twice as hard.

Grummz ‏@Grummz
Oh hey, the Sam Biddle on Ashley Madison story is trending in the US.

Grummz ‏@Grummz
Sam Biddle had an account on Ashley Madison, but he never inhaled.

It’s okay, he was only on there for “research”. That’s a new one. He registered in 2012 and I’m sure he’ll have the well-researched expose ready any day now.

Devs are pro-GamerGate

This interview with an anonymous AAA dev from a Sony studio expresses very much the same sentiments that I have heard from more than a few other devs in the industry:

TechRaptor: What do you think about GamerGate the movement? The things they tend to tackle—corruption, censorship—are those big industry problems from your point of view?

Developer: I have always seen Gamergate as a group of passionate people rallying behind the platonic cause for honesty and accountability. While the Gamergate movement did have a rocky start to begin with, I feel the Gamergate movement has become quite clear with its intended mission. The video game industry has always been both a global community and very tight-knit. Because of how close we are and that we are an entertainment-based industry, it does allow of nepotism and corruption when money is on the line. These are large problems that I feel any entertainment-based industry has. But, what is unique about the video game industry is that we have consumers willing to speak up and demand that we strive for a better way.

Unfortunately, there are individuals who don’t feel comfortable about changing how they do things, especially when it works out so well for them in the past and the present. To those who fight against Gamergate, I can understand the feeling when a large amount of people are saying how you do your job is wrong. Within the game journalism part of our industry, it does seem like the Wild West. Media companies will make deals and write articles that help them grow and keep their employees. However, that stubbornness or misguided grandstanding doesn’t improve the industry or game journalism as a whole. The corruption and censorship that Gamergate is fighting against is after years of such “deals” and how some game journalists have their ingrained mindsets. It is an uphill battle, but it needs to be done.

TechRaptor: Does that corruption impact your ability to create or put undue limits on your projects?

Developer: I am blessed to be in a position where it mostly doesn’t affect our work. We don’t make games so that a gaming website will like it. We make a game so that our fans will like it. In truth, our biggest and most important critics will always be the people that buy and play our game, not the journalists that cover it. However, we always look at reviews and how it is received. If a review is biased against us from an ideological standpoint instead of the content of the game, then that can theoretically cause unnecessary issues for future projects.

TechRaptor: Something that has come up a lot in recent months is the move towards political correctness, is that something that is considered a lot in AAA and taken seriously when making games?

Developer: Political correctness as an issue is mostly addressed on a project-to-project basis. I have seen projects that have bowed to the ideas of political correctness and others that have thrown caution to the wind. Regardless of the project, its has to be considered in some fashion. Ideally, a project can make systems and characters great enough that it doesn’t need hit against the political correctness attitude. In the projects I am been a part of, the political correctness has either been glanced over or it has tailored a project in some degree. Political correctness can become a balancing act, but an act we shouldn’t have to deal with. However, I have seen that affect the Indie scene alot more than the AAA scene. Political correctness has never stopped a project from making a great character or gameplay feature that I have been a part of, and it never should.

Political correctness and thought policing have NO PLACE in the game industry. Neither do SJWs.

How media SJWs spin the anti-GG narrative

Matt Sullivan explains Gamedropping: How Journalism Outlets Reinforce a False Narrative Without Fact:

What does GamerGate have to do with traveling to Mars, Drake’s music, and George R.R. Martin?

You’d expect the answer to be nothing, because well, it shouldn’t have anything to do with any of those things. However over the past year we have seen many organizations, some of them Pulitzer Prize winning organizations, try desperately to make the claim that they are indeed linked.

We call this GameDropping.

GameDropping is a phenomenon wherein an author of an article mentions GamerGate even though the article contains nothing even remotely related to the movement. A few examples of this are The Guardian’s article “How can our future Mars colonies be free of sexism and racism?”, Pitchfork’s “It’s Time to Break Up With Drake”, and PC Magazine’s “George R.R. Martin: The Internet Is Toxic”.

Now one may think that GameDropping is rather harmless. Yes these articles have nothing to do with GamerGate, but the problem comes from the fact that when these articles reference GamerGate, there is either no source provided to what GamerGate actually is, or the source is a heavily biased opinion piece with little to no factual content.

In fact two of the above examples don’t reference sources at all, and the third references another article from the same publication which appears to be an interview wherein the author is interviewing themselves.

Now when readers of these publications read these stories, whether they be fans of Game of Thrones, or people critical of Drake, having no idea what GamerGate is, they now associate the name with something negative, having not been provided the facts, or a balanced article on exactly what the controversy is to make up their own minds. That information is conveniently left out, but the narrative is inserted.

The SJW’s first priority is always to push the Narrative.