Watch out, Milo Yiannopoulos, you’ve got competition! #GamerGate has a new journalistic champion — and this one, like Milo, seems to have come straight from central casting, a virtual embodiment of every snooty reactionary preppie stereotype from every bad 80s movie.
A libertarian think tanker and erstwhile journalist with the unlikely name of Mytheos Holt, this new contender has one great advantage over young Milo: as you can see in the photo above, which I have not photoshopped in any way, he appears to be made entirely of wax — which means that unless someone accidentally sets him near a heater he will last forever.
Mytheos’ first intervention in #GamerGate comes in the form of a long opinion piece in the right-wing e-rag Daily Caller that attempts to recast the GamerGater struggle as a glorious resistance campaign to an ongoing #WaronNerds by “Far-Left Feminists And The Media.” Mytheos, who looks so much like an archetypical tormenter-of-nerds, might seem an unlikely GamerGate champion, but he’s a gamer, too, and his piece has been embraced warmly by the GG masses.
Commenters in Kotaku in Action, Reddit’s most influential GamerGate hangout, describe his piece as “excellent,” “insightful,” and “incredibly well researched.”
“Time for #WarOnNerds to start trending,” writes one enthusiastic commenter. “Welcome to the next level, Mytheos,” adds another, “we’re the only people in the history of ever to beat Social Justice, and this train has no brakes.”
The enthusiasm for the article might at first seem a little strange, given that Mytheos starts out by comparing GamerGaters to … a British teenager who earlier this year stabbed some girls in the face:
On February 11, 2014, the Daily Mail reported on the case of 19-year-old Ryan Walker, a thin, bespectacled “wimp” by reputation who, upon being bullied one too many times by some neighborhood girls, attacked them furiously, stabbing one in the face and bashing the other’s head against the pavement. …
And so it was that half a year before it began, #Gamergate was explained.
But the rest of Mytheos’ post reaffirms most of the GamerGate mythos: that it is a fight against corruption, not a campaign terrorizing outspoken women in gaming, and that it actively roots out the harassers in its midst. Above all, Mytheos argues that GamerGate, however rough it might be around the edges, is a justified rebellion against the Social Justice Warrior oppressors.
Mytheos’ indictment of the (alleged) evil leftist nerd-tormenters is as histrionic, and as utterly divorced from reality, as any GamerGate manifesto pasted into a bad infographic:
Along with their furious denunciations of the gaming press, the movement also appears to be fighting a new culture war — one against a new, radical and dangerously illiberal left which marinates in a hideous quagmire of resentment, smugness, vacuousness and contempt for free discussion. This movement prefers the vile ochlocracy of the Twitter mob … celebrates the Maoist public shaming of doxxing, and seems incapable of distinguishing between a .gif and an argument.
In case you’re wondering, ochlocracy means “government by mob.” It pays to increase your word power!
Make no mistake, when it comes to #Gamergate, both the SJWs and the gaming press are facing a backlash that is not only thoroughly warranted, but of their own making. …
America’s nerds are fighting back against what they rightly see as ages of persecution and dismissal by an extreme left wing fringe that they believe has co-opted the very press they used to trust and used it as a weapon of oppression despite claiming to speak for the oppressed. …
Their case is historically next-to-impossible to dispute.
Well, at least until Mytheos actually tries to make such a case. His alleged proof of the ongoing oppression of nerds by the SJW?
- TotalBiscuit, YouTube blabber and “moderate” GamerGater, has been “flamed” by GamerGate critics
- Sam Biddle of Gawker made a couple of joking Tweets declaring that “Nerds should be constantly degraded and shamed into submission.”
- Aaron Sorkin once described the dudes of Silicon Valley as “a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80′s.”
- The Nice Guys of OKCupid blog
Mytheos leans pretty hard on #4, devoting more time and energy to railing against the “feminist cruelty” of the Nice Guys of OkCupid blog (and those who were amused by it) than he does to the alleged “journalistic corruption” that is supposedly the real reason for GamerGate.
Indeed, aside from mentioning Biddle’s Tweets and taking a few swipes at Valleywag, the Silicon Valley blog that Biddle used to work at, Mytheos offers no real critique of journalistic corruption at all. NiceGuys of OkCupid, by contrast, gets more than 600 words, as Mytheos stands up (sort of) for the honor of a group he describes as
dumpy, white, awkward looking men whose primary crime in their profiles was expressing either insufficiently feminist viewpoints … or simply of being sad or angry about their lack of romantic options.
Yep. Mytheos does indeed seems to be suggesting that GamerGate is fundamentally driven by the resentment of “dumpy” white dudes who can’t get a date.
In a lot of ways, his argument is a cruder, and crueller, version of an argument I made about Men’s Rights Activists a few weeks back. In my post, I asked if
the rage that drives so many MRAs come from the same dark place in the psyche as the rage that so many romantically and sexually rejected feel towards their exes? …
Think of the fury many divorced MRAs feel towards their exes and women at large. Think of the self-pitying rage of “nice guys” MRAs in their teens and twenties who feel they’ve been unfairly “friendzoned” by stuck-up women. …
The self-righteous rage of the rejected is a dangerous thing. It’s dangerous when it’s directed at individual women. And it’s dangerous when it’s directed at women at large.
The continuing debacle that is GamerGate, which after all was called into existence by one dude’s long diatribe against the alleged evils of his ex-girlfriend, seems to reinforce this point every single day.
It’s just strange to see a supporter of GamerGate making a similar, if more simplistic, case — and being applauded for it by the very guys he describes so patronizingly as angry dateless “losers.”
NOTE: Make your own Mytheos Holt #NotYourShield memes here! And post them in the comments below!
@btomdarga
…That is the best satire blog post I have ever seen. Seriously. Clickhole continues to be amazing. 😀
Bluff and bluster. The perfect mask for all those poor widdle huwt feewings.
Shalimar: I think both the post and the column linked to were satire.
Just to clarify: he’s actually talking about the opponents of #GG? Can anyone possibly be this gob-smackingly the exact cardinal opposite of right?
Steve Holt!
See, I’m confused now. Is he saying that SJWs shame people who dox and are therefore terrible (because everyone knows shaming is thw most terrible thing you can do)?
Or is he saying SJWs support doxxing and are therefore terrible (because everyone knows doxxing is the most terrible thing you can do)?
As a SJW, I need to know!
https://imgflip.com/i/e63qu
https://imgflip.com/i/e63y0
It literally has The Onion’s name and logo in the upper right corner..
In only tangentially related but simultaneously horrific and not terribly surprising news, have you guys seen this?
http://m.newser.com/story/198606/report-nola-cops-blew-off-1k-sex-crimes.html
LordCrowStaff – HA!
He looks like he’s trying to model himself off of “the most interesting man in the world” character but is managing to only pull off waxwork creepster.
So Anna Sarkesian went on Colbert, and the best that Gamergate can manage is Breitbart and . . . whatever the fuck this guy is.
If the media campaign is anything to go by then we’re already winning this fight.
What is it with these guys and cigars? *Cranes neck to see if she can spot a skull in the background*
@titianblue –
He’s saying the second thing.
The whole argument over “which team” doxxes and harasses is so tiresome and just fucking asinine. EVERY group of thousands or more people is guaranteed to have it’s share of assholes (and sometimes just plain mentally-disturbed) who do shit like make death/rape threats, doxx, etc. Obviously GamerGate has harassers, but I also have no doubt at all that there are people who hate GamerGate and consider themselves for “social justice” who also think that doxxing and harassing misogynistic pricks is just an awesomely righteous blow against the forces of evil. I don’t think any rational person can really think that in the 10s of thousands of people (at minimum) put-off by these douchebags there aren’t any who would possibly do that kind of thing *eyeroll*
This isn’t some mealy-mouthed “both sides do it” bullshit. It’s just a simple statement of reality that applies to any very large group. I’m sure that if you got into an online argument with crochet enthusiasts you are likely to get doxxed and death threats too. Probably less than with GamerGate, but until someone actually finds a way to fairly quantify harassment that will be an unverified, but justified, hypothesis.
Also tiresome and stupid is the dumbass Denouncement Game – played all to often in our time:
A: “I would like to say … ”
B: “Look, I found some asshole on A’s ‘side’ that said some heinous shit. Do you denounce him A? Do you publicly refute him? Huh? Do you?”
A: “Yes, of course. But I was trying to say. ..”
B: ” Wait! Here’s another guy who agrees with A on this issue and also said some odious shit! Denounce him A! A? Why aren’t you denouncing him? Does that mean you support him? You support him don’t you?”
A: “No. Of course not, but I still haven’t ..”
B: “Stop! What about this other guy who agrees with you? He said that he wants to kill all the kittens in the world! Why do you associate with kitten-haters A? Do you want to kill kittens too?”
A: “No.”
B: ” Then why aren’t you denouncing him? Why aren’t you denouncing kitten-murderers?”
A: “Because I literally do not have the time or energy to individually denounce every single asshole who happens to agree with me on any particular issue and I still haven’t gotten a chance to say …”
B: “LOOK! He refuses to denounce kitten-murderers!! A supports the murder of cute kittehs!! Everyone who agrees with A on this issue is an objective supporter of killing kittehs!!!”
Very illuminating :).
@proxieme
He’s got NOTHING on David Aurini for “Trying to look like a cool and sophisticated rebel but only looking creepy as hell”
@b.tom.darga:
Citation needed.
That’s exactly what it is. Claiming that every sufficiently large population will always contain at least one bad apple is no comment on (1) how bad that apple is, or (2) what proportion of that population is how bad. Not that your made-up example isn’t compelling, of course.
I genuinely curious if anyone with wider experiences can tell me…Is it just these new misogyny anti women groups that, In often detailed terms-describe exactly the tactics they’re using to attack their targets as what they are the”victim” of?.I see this -everywhere- these days…
@talbotfish:
I know that one blogger I follow has created a fake award given to people who accuse their opponents of their own worst traits. Projection is an age-old character flaw.
However, I think the specific focus on “victim” is popular because, to the people who use it, it was a successful term that was part of bringing about great social change. The people who simultaneously cry “victim” and accuse the left of crying “victim” do so because they believe that word has power just on its own.
Movements dedicated to fighting real oppression have ended slavery, stopped jim crow, brought about voting rights, and raised the public discourse. Who wouldn’t want to latch on to that amount of success?
@FifthInterval:
Worse. It actively poisons the conversation and silences dialogue about how bad or fundamental harassment is to one side, because “both sides do it,” therefore it’s not worth discussing. It’s not a coincidence that gamergaters have compiled whole copypasta on how some of their members have received harassment and doxxing (obviously by SJWs, totes).
b.tom.darga: The problem is, the ‘bad apples’ were the ones at the start–the core, if you will–of the GG movement; the handful of folks who overstep the line in condemning them are generally not major feminist figures.
So yes, you are making a false equivalence, no matter how much you swear it isn’t.
@kirbywarp
That was really helpful ..thank you replying very much.
Can someone get some antibitics for teh internets already? This GG rash doesn’t seem to want to go away.
And how many cigar-smoking waxy men of mystery can one group scrounge up?
Heeey they’re not happy to have ruined the word ‘gamer’ to imply whiny entitled harasser now they’re going for ‘nerd’ too?
Fuck you, gamerdouches.
(double fuck you since most of my friends are nerds ’cause I’m like the nerdiest person on Earth, and I don’t know ONE that would team up with this bunch of assholes)
Apparently feminists crying sexism on Twitter are all the Death Star, and hapless bros on Twitter are all Rebel ships:
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxf4thx6YA1qjfad9o1_500.gif