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Ah, sweet schadenfreude! The gamebros at 4chan have been insisting publicly that the whole #GamerGate campaign — you know, the vicious attacks on game developer Zoe Quinn and other women in gaming — has been a spontaneous grassroots uprising against corruption in the world of game journalism, not a targeted campaign by misogynistic 4channers and their allies to ruin the lives of Quinn and everyone even vaguely connected with or even just aligned with her.
Well, it’s just become a lot harder to make that argument with a straight face. Last night, Quinn announced that she’s been lurking in the IRC where 4chaners have been diligently and often quite deviously planning this “spontaneous” uprising. And she’s started posting screenshots that seem to offer pretty incontrovertible evidence of just how duplicitously 4channers planned every element of #GamerGate.
You can find Quinn’s tweets of these screenshots laid out neatly on this Storify page; it’s essential reading for anyone who’s been following all this.
But I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite bits.
Here, 4channers talk about trying to hack her email:
definitely no raids ever happen because of 4chan and I definitely hacked myself mmhmmm pic.twitter.com/3309AiQk3u
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 6, 2014
Here they spout bizarre conspiracy theory — while conspiring to hack another website.
this has pure insanity AND some illegal shit in it pic.twitter.com/rRo5KVFBhZ
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 6, 2014
In this screenshot — you can find the whole thing here — 4channers talk candidly about how they hope to ruin her career:
More of the same:
because this is about integrity. not revenge. not harassment. not hurting people. pic.twitter.com/rSSm4ZJG4T
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 6, 2014
Here some 4channers talk about #NotYourShield, a supposedly spontaneous bit of hashtag activism in which people of color — and white dudes pretending to be people of color — attack “social justice warriors” for supposedly using them as “shields” for their attack on gaming. Notice the dudes at the end talking about showing up on Twitter “as a Latino” and “in blackface” to support the campaign.
Given how damning a lot of these screenshots are, it’s hardly surprising that they freaked out when Quinn started posting her screenshots:
https://twitter.com/MsMinotaur/status/508177920687210496
Too late, dudes. Too late.
So it wasn’t just off-the-cuff, reactive misogyny. It was orchestrated and planned misogyny. Is it partly just crowd momentum/”how far can we take this fun game?” sort of thing at this point, or have they really just spent weeks in a stew of anger and resentment?
These dudes really need a better hobby. Maybe they could spend more time playing video games and less time worrying about who else is playing them? Just a thought.
“She’s HERE” like she’s Gozer the Gozerian.
The saddest thing is watching the shitheads thrash and try to deny that they got used.
“Screenshots prove nothing” once they don’t jive with the shithead agenda
Remember that troll a few threads back who assured us that the instructions posted to 4chan, telling people to post on twitter as Indian cabdrivers, were completely innocent instructions for naive 4channers on how to use twitter and not get derailed by their lack of cred?
I know I’m convinced now!
I sat in the Rizon.net #burgersandfries channel for like 45 minutes.
If I didn’t know any better, looking at their logs, and their tweets and their live chat, I’d say that it sounds like a bunch of angry children upset at SJWs for some unspecified reason with lots of explicit random misogyny thrown in.
They think that the full log dumps are going to exonerate them. They’re stupid. Willfully stupid. This makes them look horrifyingly bad.
I guess this is just me being naive, but I frankly don’t understand why people are so tucking angry at Zoe Quinn. Even if every allegation against her were true (which they almost certainly aren’t), this is just minor league shit. In literally any other field, a content producer sleeping with single journalist (the complete extent of Zoe’s alleged crimes) would be met with a minor shrug, not incandescent rage of the sort general reserves for genocidal dictators.
I remember the good old days when the trolls and griefers on the internet were just equal opportunity asshats. This is just disgusting to see … I can only hope that certain authorities see this and especially the evidence pointing to illegal activities and acts on it.
taitaisanchez, the /pol/ users are full blown tinfoil hat types who think social justice is a plot by the Jews to accomplish…..something nefarious.
See also: anytime someone uses the phrase “cultural Marxism”
The last post of that Storify is the most satisfying thing I’ve seen all day.
Game, set, match.
She’s a woman. That’s obviously way worse than being a genocidal dictator.
@Darth Conans
People were harassing her back in December 2013 when she was trying to get Depression Quest greenlit on Steam and these allegations came out within days of the game’s release on the platform, so it seems to be something about this one random game they hate. As far as why, well…
“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‘Why god? Why me?’ and the thundering voice of God answered, There’s just something about you that pisses me off.” – Stephen King
Anyway, I’m really hoping people get “vanned” (to use 4chan terminology) for this, preferably by everybody selling everybody else out like the spineless cowards they are. Amongst everything else, they were distributing child pornography. They know they’re marked for life.
Q. What does #GamerGate have in common with Watergate?
A. Both were deliberately orchestrated by CREEPers.
@ Darth Conans…Yeah…the worst she MIGHT have done is cheated on her maybe-boyfriend. Why this deserves the outrage of thousands of dudebros I don’t know.
The guy’s current observed behavior is really scary.
I hope he gets jail time.
…Zoe was right to get as far away from this potentially murderous guy as she could.
The reviewer she supposedly boinked never gave her game a review.
‘Tis all a crock of shit, and it stinketh.
I find it hard to put into words just how happy Zoe exposing this shit makes me. I just had a huge-ass grin on my face the entire time I was reading that storify link and some of the reactions to it. Bad-ass cyborg (she has apparently had a number of small body-modifications done, like a chip put in her finger) female game-devs FTW. 😀
Hahahhaha yes good please moar.
RE: jbgarner58
I remember the good old days when the trolls and griefers on the internet were just equal opportunity asshats.
Those existed? Naaaaaaaaaaaah.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy would being called a social justice warrior make you? Because, frankly, I think the best I could manage was social justice armchair quarterback.
But seriously–a warrior. For social justice. How is this supposed to be an insult?
@Alex M:
Okay, I learned a new word today.
@wordsp1nner:
When you are for INjustice. Really, I used to think comic books were too over-the-top to be any form of art at all, unless it was to be melodrama or satire.
But no, these douchegabbers are building themselves secret lairs and declaring:
The only thing I don’t get is the reason that there aren’t more handles like “Solomon Grundy” and “Black Manta” and “Cheetah”.
Oh, wait. I guess I do get why there aren’t more handles like Cheetah.
Well, when you’re a social-INjustice wanker, I guess it must be. Anyone with more than two functioning brain cells to rub together would consider it a badge of honor, though.
I hate to say it, but this crap is nothing new. Men – the patriarchal variety – have always laid claim to all territory that is outside the kitchen and the nursery…and even then, they spray around the walls of those. So, when a woman or a group of women step out of the extremely narrow confines defined (by the men) as “women’s” place, they get their jockstraps in a twist and declare that the world is ending. The almighty guy-in-the-sky even says so.
When I was 19-20, I did a cross country trip on my horse – just me, my guitar, my horse and a pack mule. Spent a year on horseback, traveling through all kinds of country – working on farms and in stables and singing in small clubs when I needed cash. I found out the hard way that that was NOT acceptable behavior for a young woman. It was that trip that solidified my already very feminist leanings and taught me well that a woman alone is seen by men as a legitimate target – prey, if you will, to their “superior” hunting skills. I did not have to do anything to hurt anyone or be rude or anything. It was enough that I was existing while female in the world that THEY decided belonged to THEM alone.
My heart goes out to all the women brave enough to wander the cyber world, and threatening enough to the boyz that said penised persons feel the need to create packs and hunt them down.
So the thing is, if you are behaving honestly, then if there’s a big reveal like this, it’s not the end of the world. It could be bad for you in lots of ways, since all of us act different when we don’t have our PR faces on, but it wouldn’t fundamentally invalidate your basic stated goals.
RE: wordsp2inner
So on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy would being called a social justice warrior make you? Because, frankly, I think the best I could manage was social justice armchair quarterback.
I am a social justice berseker. Retired. I work myslef into frothing equality rages with newspaper articles and hurled myself into 4chan, clubbing trolls with a goddess statue.
Had to stop. Not good for the blood peresuure.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/5d547a743ede0bbe07a5a8e2022571e7/tumblr_mrw2fqrzne1qet5hfo1_500.png
I’m totally a Social Justice Dragonblooded.
@vaiyt:
Me a Social Justice Bard!!! Or, no, a Ranger! Yep, I call SJR! Yay!