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.
I enjoy WoW, but I have to admit, it’s one of the biggest reasons I’ve avoided doing any hardcore raiding. I positively hate people telling me what to do and yelling at me every five seconds for some such nonsense. It’s annoying and it doesn’t TEACH ME ANYTHING. If you want your players to improve you need to give helpful tips or constructive criticism. Badgering and insulting players doesn’t do anything but make people feel bad. And angry. And not want to raid or LFG. Fuckers.
Sorry I am having trouble with the typing on my phone. It’s a combination of the autocorrect with Swype and my l school of proofing.
Anyway, I was restating some of vg the things I thought I had read in the other threads here, and apparently I hadn’t read them close enough, so I apologize again for being unnecessarily combative and confrontational.
There’s a famous set of WAV files out there that’s basically nothing but a guild leader heaping abuse on his fellow players. It’s always made WoW seem less like a game and more like an annoying second job to me, which is probably why I’ve never tried playing.
More dots!
Looks like, after trying to explain that part of my incoherence is due to the fact that I don’t proofread my posts so whatever they Swype autocomplete suggests makes it into my post, I failed to proof my explanation. So much for trying to convince anyone that I can communicate coherently. X(
No.
I’ve got 8 level 90 characters on WoW, one tank (though I’m not good enough to raid with her yet), one healer, and the rest damage. My favorite role is ranged damage (hunters and warlocks in particular), because it’s easier to avoid mechanics if you don’t have to be right up in the boss’s face.
I’ve never gotten any gender-based abuse that I can recall, but just the regular abuse for being not up to other people’s standards is enough to make me want to rage quit. At least my guild mates are awesome.
What was your opinion of when a bunch of 4channers joined forces and donated 2000$ to TFYC.
http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/Voting
It’s a video game production which actually empowers women who wants to design games. It’s an event which received way more attention than the dumb little post you’ve screen-capped here for your blog, actually. It was constantly at the /v/ front-page for a couple of days, to the point of spamming, and people generally seemed to think that it was a great idea to donate money to the project.
The 4chan post you decided to post here got a shocking four (4!) replies: https://archive.moe/v/search/text/260859145/
I just don’t really see what makes this worthwhile to talk about, I guess. It’s a weird post which received almost no attention on an anonymous website.
@kittehserf Thank you for the welcome package! I’m afraid I may have laughed myself into hysteria at your pain when reading about the blockquote warning in the comments. I apologize.
I also think I may have resorted to one or two ableist terms in my posts and will try to do better. Although I’m glad you like “asswit,” I can’t claim to have coined it.
On other fronts, the conversation seems to have evolved into a discussion of WoW. Thank you for this comment, Arithia:
I found WoW somewhat friendly, even though my main was a damage dealer. On the other hand, the supply of patience, if they knew you were a woman, was possibly shorter. But frankly, the supply of patience for anyone on a learning curve was just incredibly short. That, too, is part of gamebro culture. Brag a lot. Tell everyone how awesome you are as often as possible. If something goes wrong, deflect by quickly blaming someone, anyone, else. If you know someone is a woman, that’s an easy target for deflection. If you learned something and someone else doesn’t know it yet, make them feel as stupid as possible, because that surely makes you look superior. These are the young male assholes who make the online gaming community suck for everyone who is decent and human.
Of course, I may find WoW sort of friendly only because I played EQ first. There, you were already automatically pretty useless if you’d spent a year or so of your life leveling anything but a warrior, enchanter, cleric, or monk. Gender only came into play after that.
Unceasing viciousness from entitled, deflecting braggarts in online gaming communities is a real downer. Especially because, for some reason, a lot of people seem to buy the braggarts’ bullshit. What is that all about? I guess it might have something to do with Blizzard’s making everyone’s stats available to everyone (although some people just accept the braggarts’ words for it). I just wish they’d add a few stats like “team player” and “nice person” and “fun to play with” and “helpful in general chat” and “great mentor” and even “not remotely an asshole” that other players could upvote them for and make being a generally decent human being a reasonable part of the game. Because in the larger scheme of things, the attitudes and social aptitudes of their gaming community really is one of the very most important parts of their game. It’s certainly the reason I never cared much for the endgame and tend to quit again a couple of months after every expansion when I’ve leveled a few toons to max again.
“Don’t start me trolling,
I could troll all night
My sense goes sleepwalking
While I’m putting the world to right
Our career is disinformation
Come join the sockpuppet nation…
Our hashtag army is here to stay
Our hashtag army are on their way
And we’d rather see anything else
Than a girl gamer play…”
Michael, autocorrect accidentally made you say “misogyny only started recently?”
I so wish they would do this, and there was some way to make it without it being abused. My strategies are maintaining a comprehensive blacklist, and joining randoms guilds on alts to see what they are like, and then avoiding anyone with that guild in future if they are arseholes. Some guilds I haven’t lasted in for 10 minutes before I knew everything I needed to.
redpoppy and I were discussing forming a WHTM guild, which anyone here would be welcome to join. But even if you don’t feel like rolling a new alt, perhaps we could swap real ids and play together some time.
@Belladonna993,
ROFL no need to apologise, that’s one of my greatest … er, well, something-something moments here. Seeing that string of unreadable blargh still makes me laugh, too!
The more anonymized version of my real ID is dontpanic#1295 if anyone wants to add me 🙂
Anyway, some stupid person I follow for some stupid reason on Tumblr approvingly reblogged this stupid tweet from Christina Hoff Sommers:
https://twitter.com/CHSommers/status/506155641019564032
Right, because #GamerGate is totally about male-bashing and female chauvinism. I mean, come the fuck on. Nobody is even saying that. The sexists are pretending that this is about journalistic integrity, not hatred of men. Get with the program, Christina.
I wouldn’t leave my current guild for the world, but trading real IDs sounds like fun. Do you guys play Alliance or Horde? I mostly play Alliance these days, since I’m an officer in my Alliance guild, but I have level 90 Horde characters too.
Errrrrr…no.
Of course, I said neither that misogyny started recently nor that autocorrect caused me to say so.
I thought I was repeating what had already had been stayed in several threads here: that the concerted gendering of video games in the last couple decades had led to an increase in misogyny in the gaming community as gaming became increasingly seen as an exclusively male domain. I, however, did not use that many words to elaborate my point, so, quite understandably, what I was saying was much less than clear.
Concerning the autocorrect issue, I was specifically responding to the fact that I had written, “[W]omen have been present in the having country since its inception”. Because of the way the way the Swype dictionary is set up, the word that I trace out is not needlessly the first option for entry if I’m not paying attention to what actually appears when I trace out a word and if I don’t proofread what I have written, nonsensical phrases such as the above appear in my posts.
tl;dr
I didn’t explain or proofread well enough to makes what I was saying clear.
Equality feminism – it’s like actual feminism, but completely fucking useless!
Yep, I’m mostly talking about Warcraft. I did end game in Final Fantasy XI, Guild Wars and a variety of other mmos. It’s always the same idea- don’t stand in the fire. lol I’ve tanked, I’ve healed, I’ve one shot people as a shadow priest with Dragonwrath. I play a variety of other games too, WoW was just a big part of my life for a long time.
I retired in April, midway through last tier’s hardmodes. I had run my own guild from the last month of of Lich King till then- no sexism, no homophobia, no racism. We also had an over 95% retention rate, 0 drama. (Go figure!) All but 2 of the raid team wanted to retire with me- now we just play Steam games together.
Mid level guilds are where you find more dudebros, but it’s mostly because there are more mid-level guilds. 25 mans have a higher chance of them too- it’s easier for the inept to hide. Those cut-throat damage dealers competing for spots based on dps often sacrifice mobility and survivability to get an extra hit off.
I did top 20 for a while and encountered some of the worst of the sexism there. It’s also where I encountered the highest degree of sabotage to keep women off the team…. and the highest number of unsolicited dick picks sent to my email. One raid, I was treated to someone streaming porn over his mic. Since it was the raid leader, I couldn’t mute him.
I think WoW will change. They have to at this point- the shareholders fired the dudebros who founded the fraking game after they lost the bulk of their player base. Shoot, the lead PvP dev is praising Feminist Frequency on twitter. I don’t know how genuine the effort is, but it’s a move in the right direction.
Whether the gamers will change or not… that I’m not so sure of. Not fast enough for me to come back any time soon, that’s for sure.
ESO is better anyways. :3
My real ID is Belladonna93#1792. I don’t have any level 90 horde, and I’m sure my level 90 alliance toons are woefully undergeared at this point, but I’d be willing to reactivate my account. And roll an alt. Or level a horde toon. And definitely, I’d be willing to join a WHTM guild. Just name the faction and server. 🙂 I’m pretty dedicated to being a “casual player” these days, though.
BTW, childrenofthebroccoli, any updates on the kitty in your avatar picture? Didn’t you say she was lost in an earlier thread?
@belladonna
I’ll add you when I get home. 🙂 I am also fine to roll a new toon. The plan was to get a few people together, then work out which server/battlenet group was most convenient. My toons are mostly on Oceanic servers, so I knew I’d be moving/rerolling regardless.
@childrenofthebroccoli
All my high level toons are horde, but I as I said above, I am happy to reroll, or do a transfer.
I don’t know what my realid is off to the top of my head, but I am already realidfriends with deniseeliza, so we could meet up that way.
@cassandrakitty
Thank you for this!
@Michael McG
I think Katz was being ironic when she said:
What you actually said was:
You then stated:
I’m afraid that this is also not true. As some others have stated, the Internet has only made us more aware of what has long been a problem. For the most part, games have been tailored for men and game devs have been assuming that men are their audience for as long as I can remember. And this has largely been a self-fulfilling kind of economy. Most male game devs made games for male gamers, and not surprisingly, a somewhat small percentage of weird women like me played them, anyway.
I will agree with you about something, though. The male nerd-gamer-fandom of my generation were often sexist. I’m not going to give them a pass on that. But for the most part, the ones I have always known were beyond delighted to find a woman at the same table who shared their interests. And they were even willing to change their games and attitudes a little bit if it meant keeping us around. I think the vast majority of male nerd-gamer-fandom is probably still like this (or even better). These vitriolic, pathetic pieces of boyflesh who have risen to a new level of misogyny on the Internet are probably not something new. But a collective platform where they can band together from all parts of their sad, lonely worlds and get validation for the shit they spew is something new. And scary.
It appears that Zoe Quinn’s original claim of being targeted for harassment from Wizardchan was based on somebody informing her that somebody said something bad about her online on a board where depressed male vigins gather to wallow in self-pity, dreaming about how having sexual intercourse would totally turn their life around, because that seems to be Wizardchan’s primary and sole topic. She then made an OT post on Wizardchan advertizing her game, which met with some resistance from the locals for being OT and for breaking the TOS, because those guys basically outright state that the board is their treehouse and that they do not want women or girls in it. That resistance was cropped and used to build a case of online harassement she planned to ride to fame on the current wave of harassment and the ongoing backslash to it.
Then some guys who made a hobby of smearing the folks on Wizardchan decided to jump the bandwagon and harass her for real, which is when the usual suspects joined the fray. Apparently 4chan really isn’t to blame as the prime mover here and Quinn was originally actively trying to create success from scandal for herself, but it got out of hand because plenty of folks really don’t mind taking any chance to harass somebody.
Or:
Equality feminism: Stop with the victim mentality, women! It’s the mens’ turn now!
Someone I follow in plurk was posting unabashed praise of Christina Hoff Sommers (including that tweet), and without knowing anything about her, I felt uneasy. And the more I read up on her, the more turned off on her I got.
@Kakanian, oh well, if Zoe was going on what some told her about what someone else said on a board someone AND then did an OT post about her own game – harass away! /snark
Let’s see:
1. victim blaming
2. Claims made with no backing evidence other than “it appears”. Citation needed!
3. Virgin-shaming
4. Oooh, more virgin shaming.
5. Got a thing about male virgins, have you?
6. More victim-blaming.
7. Apologia for harrassers – after all, they had every reason to defend their “tree-house” with rape & death threats.
8. More victim blaming.
9. More minimising of rape & death threats.
10. did I mention the victim blaming?
Thanks for shitting all over our carpet, Kakanian. Now fuck off!
Mod clean up in Aisle, please.