Over on 4chan, angry gamebros are organizing a vast wave of Twitter, er, ” activism” to SAVE VIDYA GAMES from the evil fake gamer girls and their Social Justice Warrior allies.
According to one anon, who’s been posting this message into numerous threads, the best way to fight “journalistic corruption” in the gaming world is to … set up fraudulent sockpuppet accounts on Twitter to make it look like there’s a groundswell of opposition to the evil game ladies.
If that’s a bit hard to read, here’s the text, with some bolding for emphasis added by me. The bits at the end are my favorite.
We campaigned against journalistic corruption; we were told that gamers are dead. Both lawfag and marketingfag told you to flood the pax hashtags as it would get the attention of their advertisers. You now have the opportunity to save vidya and get the average person on your side.
Why are you not doing shit /v/? GET OUT THERE AND FLOOD THE HASHTAGS. Here is a quick guide:
>1) Make a gmail throwaway if you don’t want it linked to your main email.
>2) Make a testing tweet and choose an appealing description of your account.
>3) Make a few tweets proclaiming your newness.
>4) Make a few tweets about #GamerGate.
>5) Increase your visibility by following people — search the #GamerGate tag and follow people you like. Remember, you’re legit new, so at least some should follow you back.
>6) FOLLOW THE PEOPLE WHO ARE FOLLOWING THESE PEOPLE. Chances are some of these are your fellow anons, so with luck we can increase our follow counts.
>7) Continue tweeting about the cause with the pax hashtags (#PAX #PAXPrime) with the #GamerGate tag.
>8) Seach the hashtag, favorite and retweet supporting tweets. That’s the star icon. Get your anons to the top.
>9) If you get stuck with zero followers. Reply to someone, chime in that you agree with them. But don’t argue on this step. Let them do that if they want to do that.
>If you are confronted, remain calm, don’t lose your spaghetti, and be the better person. Explain that this is not about girls being victimized, it is about the vilification of gamers and jounalistic integrity in the media.
>For extra class, present yourselves as normal people who sjws by their own standards should sympathize with, like an indian cab driver who can’t read traffic signs. (this requires extensive shitposting experience.)
So what’s got these dudes so enraged today? Aside from, you know, their normal misogynstic manbaby rage, there’s been a FLOOD of articles on gamer sites and mainstream media outlets alike arguing that “gamers” — as they’ve traditionally defined themselves — are about to take a plunge into the dustbin of history, and that if the game industry is to survive it needs to free itself from the clutches of the angry young dudes currently yelling at the top of their lungs against Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.
Here are some of the articles that have really pissed them off:
‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over, by Leigh Alexander at Gamasutra
The End of Gamers, by Dan Golding, on his own blog
It’s Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry? by Arthur Chu at The Daily Beast
The death of the “gamers” and the women who “killed” them by Casey Johnson at Ars Technica
A Guide to Ending “Gamers” by Devin Wilson at Gamasutra
This guy’s embarassing relationship drama is killing the ‘gamer’ identity by Mike Pearl at Vice
If you only read one of these, make it that first one by Leigh Alexander, which is awesomely blunt.
Guess they don’t, and WordPress at my last post.
By letting not forget that we do, in fact *exist* and that we *are*, by the very nature of our existence, human–and all that our humanity entails.
It’s a funny code of ethics that thinks impersonation, mob harassment and using the traits of oppression to deflect criticism are all above board, but women breaking up with men in the same industry or raising money for popular projects discussing narrative themes in games are unforgivable ethical lapses.
The dudebros will not go quietly into the night on gaming. Speaking as someone who has played at a competitive world level for years, it’s their main source of ego gratification. Some feel powerless in their real lives, so they grief and abuse the less powerful. Others have no real self esteem without the feelings of instant gratification and accomplishment gaming can give you. The only thing they share in common is the fallacy that being a particular gender makes you better than someone else.
It’s why their jimmies get rustled when a woman shares their space. It’s why they lose their minds when that woman is GOOD.
I have known and raided with many dudebros. I have been harassed, threatened, lied about and even flat out denied raid spots based on my gender. I also ranked among the top 100 players for my class for over 5 years straight, so none can claim it was an issue of skill.
I was stalked for over 2 years by a sad little Canadian neckbeard that I rejected romantically. I’d get 30-40 messages a day telling me to kill myself, that I would die alone, that I was a whore, that no one would ever love me… you get the point. I was told by GMs that the stalking was MY fault because I “must have led him on, cause that’s what chicks do.”
I am eager to see these children grow up or leave the community. Women aren’t leaving gaming. If they don’t like what gaming becomes as cultures and markets evolve, they can take a fraking hike. I’ll gladly take their raid spot when they move on to another hobby.
I’ll probably do a better job of it, too- I’ve never met a dudebro who didn’t stand in fire.
Arithia- damn that’s infuriating. What games do you play? I keep getting sidetracked but I intend to message one of the Mammotheers here about starting a Mammoth themed WoW guild. If you play WoW, would you be interested? Because fuck dudebros.
As a side discussion, is anyone else massively disappointed with how TotalBiscuit has been handling this whole situation? He’s doing that shit where you advocate for apathy in the name of “finding a middle ground”, but has spent about 100 times more “ink” (for lack of a better term) whining about and people disrespecting gamers than he has saying these misogynistic assholes are a cancer making everybody look bad and telling them to fuck off. He doesn’t seem to (want to) understand that what he’s doing is turning a blind eye to horrific abuse and pretending there’s no problem with gaming culture. He has a massive platform and is using it to make assholes feed persecuted and justified in their actions.
I guess it’s not that big a surprise since his idea of “debating” feminists is to repeatedly call the word mansplaining “baby talk” instead of using Google for five fucking seconds.
Arithia
Your explanation is woefully ahistorical. Women have been present in the having country since its inception, and it is only recently that misogyny has started driving them out.
@ strivingally:
So, to try and articulate the possible underlying ethos of their actions:
“It is the moral right of men to subordinate, silence, and possess women.”
I apologize if my response to Arithia was inappropriately strident.
I would suggest, Michael, that you having become aware of a problem recently does not mean it is a new problem.
…huh?!?
If someone finds the decoder ring can I borrow it?
Typing on a phone, maybe? I know I end up looking like I’m drunk when I try to type anything longer than a few words on my phone…
Anyway, I think he’s trying to say “women have been present in the gaming community since its inception”, something I’ve heard several other sources say as well.
Michael, who are you to tell Arithia that her own experience is ahistorical? How does that even make sense?
I would think women have always been there. Dudebros would probably hate to admit it but, women were also present when fire was discovered, clothing was invented, houses were built, weapons were made, etc. And they probably had a heavy hand in inventing them.
Women have always been in the gaming community, but the sexism has almost always been there. See classic arcade advertisements with pointless women in bikinis draped over the cabinet. Or the classic arcade games where you’re fighting to win a nameless woman. Or the “best” ending for Metroid where you win a look at Samus in a bikini.
The only reason you’re seeing more of it now is because women can actually report on their experiences and have millions of people actually read it. The internet has made everything more visible, the way the internet does.
If that’s a correct take, I agree.
…I searched for atari 2600 images. saw some of the old cartridge art…and remembered that I played so much atari as a kid that my right thumb had a callus. on the side
That and I now drive my car like I used to play Enduro..video games give you GREAT reflexes.
@Arithia, during my brief career as a hard-core raider in WoW I was lucky to be in a top 100 guild that was also not-sexist. However, the raging douchebro culture of WoW in general has its effects on everyone, and I was literally the only woman in the guild (of 4 or 5 total women) who played a damage-dealing character. The rest were healers.
And of course, this is far from unusual. The two guilds I was in before that also had no women who were not healers. It was only when I was in the more “casual” guilds where there were women who did things other than heal. However, I don’t think I ever raided with a woman who played a tank.
(For those who don’t know, and who care to know, in WoW raiding your character is either a tank, a healer, or a damage dealer. The tank is responsible for taking the hits from the enemies, and positioning the enemy in the room. The other roles are more self-explanatory I think.)
The climate around playing a damage dealing character was so competitive and toxic that I am not surprised it drives women out. If your raid team was decent, defeating the enemies was a given, so then it became a game of doing better than your teammates, so the trash talking that gamers are famous for becomes focused on your allies. It’s delightful. It eventually drove me out, too. I now prefer playing healers because the environment is less competitive. Tanking is almost entirely out of the question for me, because the tank is considered a leadership role. God help you if your party thinks you are moving too slowly, fighting the wrong enemies, or doing anything else wrong.
Which is a real fucking shame, because if it wasn’t for the other players, tanking is fun as hell.
Anyway, you got me talking about WoW again, oh noes, I’ll stop now 🙂
@redpoppy
I thought you’d forgotten 🙂
@aritha
That’s awesome that you are/were able to raid at such a high level. Like redpoppy, I’m assuming you mean WoW too, but that’s just because I don’t know what other games call it raiding. Have you been to BlizzCon? Do you think Blizzard is making any real effort to change the way things are?
@deniseeliza
I was MT for my guild, and often raid leader. Though I had to co-found that one. I never tank in LFR, and not even in LFG unless my bf goes with me as backup. I do have some healer toons (I have 1 of everything) but my fave healing play style is disc priest where I just attack the boss anyway. 🙂 Not that there is anything wrong with healing, but I find myself staring at health bars and not paying attention to the raid mechanics enough, so I’m not very good at it.
Kim- Nope! I just get easily side-tracked. Sorry about that. I will be able to get to it tomorrow since it’s Labor Day in the US. 🙂
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about manufactured controversy from far-right figures like Andrew Breitbart, it’s that the best way to discredit and neutralize a target is to hide their attacks under the guise of supposedly outing corrupt individuals/groups. The reality – as per usual – is that the person or organization represents something they hate ideologically on some level. Even when they make fallacious claims, they always come back with an :amended statement”…y’know, as if they were making it up…
I left WoW because, as a PVPer, I couldn’t cope with the constant misogynistic slanging. Or, for that matter, the fact that dudebros on my own side would LET ME DIE AND LOSE THE MATCH rather than toss one goddamned heal at the warrior because I was a chick.
I now enjoy GW2 where main characters and sub characters are gay/bi/other and no one cares, and where I can run around zerg-busting to my heart’s content. While shitty stuff does happen, the community is in general not-accepting of it, so it’s just so much more peaceful.
Plus, Sylvari look so awesome.
@Kim yeah to be honest, one of the characters I had the MOST fun leveling was my warrior. I leveled her almost entirely in LFG dungeons during a time when few people knew the leveling dungeons very well (especially Sunken Temple and Blackrock Depths). Everyone was always so nice, and we would often do 3 or 4 dungeons together with a random group of people. And then I hit max level (70 at the time) and it immediately became a miserable experience of people bossing me around and criticizing everything I did.
I know a lot of people who love tanking but refuse to do it outside of their guild or friend group.
I do happen to think that healing is a lot of fun (for me), too. But I think that people who don’t want to be targets for abuse tend to gravitate to that role in WoW whether it is their favorite or not.
You know, for people who complain that gamers are villified, they sure want gamers to be villified.
Yes, they are vile.