Tag: media

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!

SJWs always lie (TV edition)

They always lie, even in areas where you didn’t know lying was possible:

If I mistakenly write “NBC Nitely News,” you can probably still tell what program I’m talking about. Nielsen’s automated system can’t, however, and a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal details how networks are taking advantage of that fact to disguise airings that underperform with viewers.

It’s described as a common practice in the world of TV ratings, where programs with higher ratings can charge advertisers more to run commercials. When an episode performs poorly with viewers, the networks often intentionally misspell the show title in their report to Nielsen, according to the Journal. This fools the system into separating that airing out as a different show and keeping it from affecting the correctly-spelled show’s average overall rating.

The report says the practice was initially used sparingly — for instance, when a broadcast would go up against a major sporting event. But it has now grown fairly common, with NBC misspelling the title of “NBC Nightly News” 14 times since the current TV season began last fall. At one point, that reportedly included an entire week of broadcasts.

Competitors ABC and CBS allegedly followed suit, with ABC reportedly submitting “Wrld News Tonite” on seven occasions over the same time period. CBS reportedly misspelled the name of its evening newscast as “CBS Evening Nws” a total of 12 times. (CBS is the parent company of CNET.)

Translation: the ratings of the failing TV companies are collapsing even faster than the official numbers indicate. So keep in mind that when you’re reading books, playing games or pirating video instead of watching it on TV or at the theatre, you are helping bring down the media enemy.

CNN: silenced

Ivan Throne has been tracking all of the CNN social media accounts.

Ivan Throne‏ @DarkTriadMan
#CNNBlackmail is still #1 on Twitter and @CNN has silenced every single one of their correspondents on Twitter.


TexitMachine‏ @BrowningMachine
Note @KFILE’s last tweet was 2hrs ago. Right about when @CNN’s in-house lawyer came in after 4th and went “HOLY SHIT WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??”

Sounds as if someone is trying to come up with an organization-wide strategy. Want to bet they don’t get it right?

Especially in light of new information that indicates CNN ID’d the wrong guy, and the original creator of the meme is a Mexican man.

Coercion? What coercion?

And yet, something isn’t quite adding up. One story, two versions. Kaczynski is trying to claim that since he only emailed with HAS, but did not speak to him on the phone until after the apology was delivered via email, he could not have coerced HAS. And remember, this is the same guy who set the global media on Justine Sacco when he was at Buzzfeed. This is straight-up Internet karma.

It looks as if GamerGate II may have just begun, with the announcement of Operation Autism Storm.

CNN is the new Gawker

This public threat issued by CNN to an anonymous meme maker marks an interesting development in so-called “professional journalism”. Since when is it the job of the news media to report, or not report, the news depending upon whether someone behaves how they want? And since when is it acceptable to blackmail a minor?

The apology came after CNN’s KFile identified the man behind “HanA**holeSolo.” Using identifying information that “HanA**holeSolo” posted on Reddit, KFile was able to determine key biographical details, to find the man’s name using a Facebook search and ultimately corroborate details he had made available on Reddit.

On Monday, KFile attempted to contact the man by email and phone but he did not respond. On Tuesday, “HanA**holeSolo” posted his apology on the subreddit /The_Donald and deleted all of his other posts.

“The meme was created purely as satire, it was not meant to be a call to violence against CNN or any other news affiliation,” he wrote. “I had no idea anyone would take it and put sound to it and then have it put up on the President’s Twitter feed. It was a prank, nothing more. What the President’s feed showed was not the original post that was posted here, but loaded up somewhere else and sound added to it then sent out on Twitter. I thought it was the original post that was made and that is why I took credit for it. I have the highest respect for the journalist community and they put their lives on the line every day with the jobs that they do in reporting the news.”

The apology has since been taken down by the moderators of /The_Donald subreddit.

After posting his apology, “HanA**holeSolo” called CNN’s KFile and confirmed his identity. In the interview, “HanA**holeSolo” sounded nervous about his identity being revealed and asked to not be named out of fear for his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family.

CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

If I was a CNN employee with any big secret to protect, I’d consider resigning today. I somehow doubt the channers are simply going to take this sort of thing lying down. #CNNBlackmail is already trending globally and the firing of the four members of the KFILE team has already been publicly demanded. As Mike Cernovich says, CNN is the new Gawker. And #CNNBlackmail is the new #GamerGate.

Based on what one of the KFILE employees, Andrew Kaczynski said, it appears that this CNN meme may be the real reason HanAssholeSolo was targeted.

andrew kaczynski  ?‏Verified account @KFILE  6h6 hours ago
This was someone who shared an image of CNN reporters’ face with Stars of David next them.

Oh, well, in that case, it’s totally justifiable to threaten someone with public exposure, right? And this tweet cracked me up.

CNN producer: “I’ve had the worst week!”
Van Jones: “Dude, Please!”
@KFILE : “LEEROOOOY JENKINSSSSSS!”

The memes must flow.

Body slam!

The God-Emperor tweets himself bodyslamming Fake News CNN.

He added insult to injury by tweeting it under the hashtag #FraudNewsCNN #FNN. Needless to say, the media has gone absolutely apeshit, unable to believe that a sitting president would hammer them back rather than simply enduring the abuse in dignified silence.

As it happens, I’ve been reading Jomini recently, which tends to make it pretty clear what the God-Emperor is doing here.

The general should do every thing to electrify his own soldiers, and to empart to them the same enthusiasm which he endeavors to repress in his adversaries.

If Twitter provides us with any sound basis for judgment, Trump’s supporters are electrified and his detractors are horrified. Mission accomplished.

Of NR and NPR

Today’s Fun With Twitter stars the estimable J. Goldberg:

TWTIsCancer @twt_cancer
Here is better advice.  Put an end to funding anything related to NPR, that will help President Trump win even more.

Jonah Goldberg‏ @JonahNRO
I think this person thinks National Review = NPR.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
In fairness, you guys have been moving that way for decades now. It’s getting harder to tell the difference.

Jonah Goldberg‏ @JonahNRO
Uh huh. You’re trying too hard, Vox.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Not at all. Look at everything from gay marriage to opposing the GOP candidate. If NPR hadn’t moved further left, NR would have caught up.

3 = 17

The Associated Press is Fake News:

In stories published April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29, The Associated Press reported that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have agreed that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump. That assessment was based on information collected by three agencies – the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency – and published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which represents all U.S. intelligence agencies. Not all 17 intelligence agencies were involved in reaching the assessment.

Well, someone ELSE said the other 14 agencies agreed, right? And the media wonders why they are held in such contempt.

Infogalactic in L’Express

A French take on Infogalactic. The original article in French is here.

Presented as “trustworthy” and “unbiased”, these encyclopedias are the privileged terrain of racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. Because they considered Wikipedia to be unreliable and contaminated by the “social justice warrior”, several extreme right-wing figures have invented their own online encyclopedias. Their names: Metapedia , Infogalactic, or Conservapedia .

These sites now have several hundred thousand contents. A success such as the first of them now exists in no less than sixteen languages. The second, currently only available in English, will also be launched in France by the end of the summer …

Supremacy, anti-semitism and complicism

At first glance, these three encyclopedias resemble Wikipedia . The design, like the participative concept, have indeed been borrowed from him. On the other hand, the difference is quite clear. Founded by extreme right – wing American and Swedish figures, the sites do not hide their political

On the home pages of Metapedia and Conservapedia, there are two columns relaying theses and theories negationist, supremacist, antisemitic, racist, islamophobic, antifeminist, complotist, or homophobic. Infogalactic is more subtle. Its founder, who calls himself Vox Day, is the first to denounce the “extreme right bias” (movement to which it belongs elsewhere). “We are trying to make available to the Net surfers a neutral platform, which allows them to form their own opinion”.

Even if you look at it, the news from the main page is always cleverly chosen. Those celebrating the success of President Donald Trump , for example, are regularly highlighted. As for the thematic pages, some, rather well documented, are next to others containing objective nonsense.


For Infogalactic, the Pizzagate was real

An example is evocative. The site Infogalactic has a page dedicated to “fake news” . Among these misinformation is the ” Pizzagate”, a conspiracy theory according to which the former director of campaign of Hillary Clinton would have organized a pedophile network from a pizzeria.

On the page “fake news”, is quoted the Pizzagate. On the page “fake news”, is quoted the Pizzagate. Problem: the site also contains an entire page on this same event . And there, more question of “fake news”: the Pizzagate has for the authors well existed. Pseudo-evidence, such as the number of missing children in the pizzeria region, is even advanced. Asked about this by L’Express, Vox Day explains that according to him, the media “were lying” about this scandal. He accuses them of having conducted “no search, no reportage” before reversing the facts. Notwithstanding the New York Times and other newspapers that conducted the investigation.

For now, these platforms remain less popular than Wikipedia. While the latter is the fifth most visited site in the world, Infogalactic is only 14,710th, and Conservapedia 18,066th in the United States, according to the Alexa ranking. But their traffic would not stop growing, boosted by “anti-Wikipedia revolt.”

It’s a bit of a hit piece, of course, but it was well worth providing the reporter with a few quotes, as the article generally backs up our criticisms of Wikipedia. International awareness continues to grow. Traffic continues to grow. And we’ll have an exciting new feature to announce soon. And for the record, here is what I actually had to say about Pizzagate.

All I know about Pizzagate is that the mainstream media is obviously lying about it. If you look into the timeline of the media’s coverage, you will see that they started claiming Pizzagate was fake news from the very start, just as soon as the news first broke. They never looked into it, they never reported on any of the evidence gathered by the chans, they just unilaterally declared it to be fake news without any research or reporting.


No one in the mainstream media bothered looking into why a little pizza shop owner was listed as one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington DC. If nothing else, you’d think they would have asked at least one or two questions about that anomaly. And they haven’t addressed the fact that the DC police say no shots were fired by the actor arrested at Comet Ping Pong while the Washington Post reported that at least one shot was fired.


Then note that CNN just fired three respected and award-winning employees for getting caught putting out fake news.


Anyhow, since Pizzagate is an INVESTIGATION, not a conclusion, it’s not even correct to say it is a single “story” at all. There are multiple aspects to Pizzagate, so some of them may be true while others are false. I haven’t spent any time looking into it myself, so I don’t have any opinions in that regard, but I will say that I find the mainstream media’s behavior to be suspicious. 

Media Con #2 in action

You may recall that I mentioned the three cons that reporters run on people they want to submit to playing punching bag for an article. Bre Faucheux turned down Rachel Poser of Harper’s Magazine three times, prompting this threatening variant on Media Con #2.


Your name appears in the piece and it is my responsibility to make sure you and your views are represented accurately.

To help put this in context, consider this little glimpse behind the media curtain.

When I told my editor at Literally, Darling I wanted to write a story about conversations I’d been having with a white nationalist, she told me she thought it would be a good idea, but wanted to be careful that we didn’t “normalize” him. I understood this to mean she wanted to make it clear nobody at Literally, Darling supported or condoned Mr. Patriarch’s views (we don’t).

Neither the reporter, the editor, nor the fact-checker is even remotely interested in ensuring that the target or his views are represented accurately. To the contrary, they are very careful to make sure that neither the target nor his views are portrayed as positive in any way. So, what they do write the story in accordance with the negative narrative, then cherry-pick a kill-quote or two, then attempt to get the target to confirm the accuracy of the kill-quote.

What they are attempting to do is to bolster the narrative with the assistance of the bamboozled target. Bre was wise to turn continue to turn them down, because there is absolutely no benefit to her from bolstering the Harper’s narrative about the women of the Alt-Right.