If you search Google for “Anita Sarkeesian” and “not a gamer” or “not a real gamer” you’ll find links to hundreds of angry gamer tirades against the gaming critic for allegedly not knowing what she’s talking about, among them several videos devoted to proving her “not a real gamer,” an article declaring her “the worst thing to happen to videogames since Sonic ‘06,” and an Encylopedia Dramatica entry that declares her to be, among other things, “a feminazi bitch and “pop culture critic” with whore earrings” as well as “a filthy Jew and a white race traitor [with] sandn*gger parents.”
Given this obvious antipathy towards people who aren’t gamers but who still have opinions about gaming, you might not expect the #GamerGate masses to embrace putative allies who who admit they’ve never played games. Yet #GamerGaters have not only welcome but lionized neo-con faux feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, Breitbart “journalist” Milo Yiannopoulos and PUA blogger/lawyer/juice marketer Mike Cernovich, a #GamerGate crusader who recently offered to fight entrepreneur Anil Dash in order to prove something or other about bullying. (Yeah, I don’t get it either.)
Well, it turns out that not only are Yiannopoulos and Cernovich not gamers, but before their emergence as #GamerGate celebrities both of them had histories as nerd-baiting gamer haters and bullies. Matt Binder — yep, the guy from The Majority Report with Sam Seder who recently gave Paul Elam a drubbing in a YouTube debate — has been poking around in the Twitter histories of both men, and has uncovered some pretty foul stuff from both.
I mean, it’s not news that these guys are assholes, but some of what Binder found might shock their new #GamerGater friends.
Let’s start with Milo Yiannopoulos, nerd baiter:
#gamergate pic.twitter.com/4iEBRorSCu
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 20, 2014
wow he really respects the people in #gamergate pic.twitter.com/ayCB7Un2Ui
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 20, 2014
You can find more examples in this handy Storify: The GamerGate-supporting journalist who hates gamers
But it’s Mike Cernovich who has the truly nasty past, attacking not only “nerds” but fat people, trans women and rape victims.
Here’s his take on “gaming media,” in a Tweet from August of this year:
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/505066536873521152
But that’s just scratching the surface. This alleged opponent of bullying turns out to be quite the bully on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/384517684764762112
For many more examples, including Cernovich’s repellent thoughts on murder, see @MattBinder reveals the truth about #GamerGate’s anti-bullying hero Mike Cernovich with his own tweets.
Meanwhile, Sam Biddle — the Gawker writer who recently became a target of #GamerGaters after posting nerd-baiting comments about gamers similar to those posted by Yiannopoulos and Cernovich — offers his take on The D-List Right-Wingers Who’ve Turned Gamergate Into Their Loser Army in a post titled, er, The D-List Right-Wingers Who’ve Turned Gamergate Into Their Loser Army.
Yes, no evidence of programmers being sexist exists: http://deliajones.tumblr.com/post/43150510426
Note: not sure if SFW. You may need mind bleach afterwards.
Darn, laid that out wrong. The link may not be SFW. The video should be.
Hi Mammotheers: I made a dossier about Mike Cernovich.
http://idledillettante.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/mike-cernovich-gamergate-lawyer/
It includes a photo of what my searches into his attorney credentials said was his law office. Turns out it’s a photo of his house and Cernovich is pissed. Or maybe that was because I inferred he had a tiny gorilla penis.
So… they’re not trying to censor video games, right?
Wow, using encyclopedia dramatica as a source. And people say journalism is dead.