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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.
@emilygoddess – WOW! I never knew that about sJws..
I just thought that an SJW was someone who stood upf eor what they believes in and called people out, when necessary.
I need sot stope ty[eing now. Bye!
I’m pretty sure that if someone with full sleeve tattoos turns up at a hospital they’re not going to refuse to give them a needed drip/injection just because of the tattoos.
@LBT, yeah what cassandeyreokyy said, and GO YOU!
Michelle, that is some pearl-clutching bullshit “news,” and the Mayo Clinic more or less thinks so too:http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/labor-and-delivery/expert-answers/lower-back-tattoo/faq-20057949
@hellkell – Really? Hoeoory1! Hororay.
Oh,e phooey. Getine off now.
Yeah, no.
I can imagine the anesthesiologist not wanting to mark up your nice tattoo, but otherwise it’s hard to imagine why it would be a problem.
I know…Why I wish they were easy to learn…I have fantasies of using a set of highland pipes to reply to really loud car stereos…
I had an idea that I doubt I’ll use, but someone else might like?
…If you had Charlie Chaplin’s character tattooed on your lower back, it would be a Little Tramp stamp.
MCY: Only if you really want to decorate your body more than you want the possibility of a future epidural.
I can safely say that I have never considered the need to have an epidural.
Katz: I can imagine the anesthesiologist not wanting to mark up your nice tattoo, but otherwise it’s hard to imagine why it would be a problem.
The theory is that pushing the pigment into the spinal area may be a no-no.
Absolutely love how you’re buying into the shit she’s dealing out too. And conveniently ignoring all the responses those people got, where people either ignored the idiots or told them they were fucking retarded.
How the fuck do you get people donating anyone to you?
Pretty sure it’s not possible to donate a person, Anonymoose.
Ewwww, troll slime got on this thread just now.
What’s up with all the 4Channers coming here to defend their nonexistent honor?
Next they’ll start doxxing people to prove … Honestly, everything 4channers do just proves they’re complete little shits. But they seem to think they’re noble or something.
Alais – People dared to criticize 4chan publicly so now it’s their sacred duty to throw the largest possible temper tantrum they can. After all if you annoy, harass and even hurt people enough it’s the same thing as being correct.
If we’re on the actual topic of journalistic integrity, I will say this:
I don’t know anything about game reviewers, but I know how journalists in the political sphere operate, and I can’t imagine it’s much different. Politicians and public figures won’t give you an interview if they think you are likely to frame it in a way that looks poorly on them. Sometimes you have people coming out badly in an interview because they didn’t realize going in what it was going to entail, and the POTUS gets the side-eye if it becomes obvious that interviews are only going to friendly outlets. But, in general, the fastest way to lose access to political figures is to give them a bad “review.” Then you’re on the outside, with no advantage over the average schmoe on the street.
Game reviewers? I can’t imagine it’s much different. If you want the advanced release copies, you have to be viewed as a friendly outlet. If you want to be able to interview the developers, you have to be viewed as a friendly outlet. Someone want to contradict me on this?
If you want “journalistic integrity” you have to actively fight this capture by the covered field, and I’m definitely looking forward to 4chan outlining their strategy. So far it seems like their only strategy is to smear a single developer, who (by total coincidence I’m sure) happens to be a lady.
Oh, and the tattoo thing. There’s some new super-advanced MRI scanners that could in theory cause problems for someone with a lot of tattoos, especially if the tattoos are a few decades old (because older tattoo ink sometimes contained tiny metal fragments). Still probably not a problem, but if you wanted to be extremely cautious and had a bunch of 30-year-old tattoos, you should probably request one of the older MRI scanners. The worst thing you’re likely to experience is pain; it’s not like your skin would fly off.
I had an interesting conversation about this with a doctor when my mother was in the hospital and they had to do an MRI, and I had to answer all of his questions about whether she had any metal parts they should know about.
@Policy of Madness: Not really, from what I have seen. Blacklists are incredibly rare, the only company that I have seen engage in is Konami. There have been a few isolated incidents of paying for better reviews scores (most notable of which was probably the firing of Jeff Gertsmann from Gamespot in 2007, and the effects of that controversy are still seen to this day), but not many. The gaming press is probably more comparable to the film, book, and movie press than the political press.
Finally, don’t know if this is the right thread, but I wanna be a Social Justice Librarian. Or maybe a Social Justice Baker, ’cause that seems useful.
@ troll:
At bottom, this is about one man out to exact revenge on an ex-girlfriend.
Unless someone did something to you for which they are civilly or criminally liable while in a consensual adult relationship… you don’t get to go after your ex.You figure out what you did wrong so you don’t do it again and you move the fuck on. Note that I’m not using gender pronouns; that shit is universal, alright?
If Eron was treated so shitty he should be GLAD that she’s out of his life, right?
Instead, he decided to flood the internet with his butthurt.
That course of action says the guy is the kind of guy who can turn stabby. He really should have thought this whole thing through, because this is going to haunt him forever.
The FBI is dealing with this. Probably with a boost from the NSA.
I anticipate finally knowing for certain who did what after the criminal trials.
Policy – Game publishers have refused to provide advanced release copies to reviewers and outlets before because they didn’t give reviews that the publishers didn’t feel were good enough. See the freakouts from a years back about “Kane and Lynch.” Unfortunately the entire games industry sometimes seems like it’s run by a particularly angsty thirteen year old.
As for 4chan, they have a single strategy. Scream and break things until people give you what you’re demanding and then tell yourself how right you were all along.
Cloudiah – I think I recall reading something about that about myself when I got my bionic ankle a few years ago. If I recall correctly it can actually be pretty bad pain since it can cause the metal to heat up and basically feel like you have fire embedded in the skin. It’s pretty rare though for a tattoo to contain enough metal to cause that sort of effect.
Granted this is all hazily remembered knowledge. 🙂
Sure Anonymoose, just come here without any support for your argument whatsoever and a slur, that’ll totally make you sound credible.
So are dismal game reviews, from what I’ve seen. There aren’t many blacklists in politics, either, because the movers and shakers in journalism know better than to crucify a political figure, even if that figure totally deserves it. The closest the American press has come to that recently was when Katie Couric interviewed Sarah Palin, and if you watch those inteviews knowing what you’re seeing, you’ll see that Couric went out of her way to try to coach Palin into not looking so dreadfully bad.
Even despite that, Palin has said that she will never give Couric another interview, and I would not be remotely surprised if other Republicans gave Couric a tactful rebuff as well.
How many mainstream, big-time game reviewers give 9/10 reviews to mediocre, forgettable games? My cursory contact with the game reviewing industry says “a lot.”
Yeah, that’s what I would expect. And apprehension about being one of the reviewers denied that access would incentivize glowing reviews when the reviewer would have otherwise been inclined to give a thumbs-down.
@Policy of Madness: I don’t give a shit about the scores that outlets give games, nor do I think people liking games that the community loathes is a sign of corruptions; reviews are opinions, and opinions are different between people.