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A couple of days ago, embattled indie game designer Zoe Quinn embarrassed some of her biggest critics by posting screenshots she’d collected from a 4channer IRC channel, showing an assortment of hateful and duplicitous #GamerGaters literally conspiring to wreck her reputation and create the illusion of a vast grassroots uprising against alleged corruption in the gaming business.
Her critics, put on the defensive, tried their best to dismiss her screenshots as “cherry picked,” and a few even accused her of writing the very messages she screenshotted and posted. Oh, there might be a few bad apples in the bunch, some were willing to concede, but they were in the minority.
And then they pulled out what they thought was their trump card: the full chat log from the IRC channel #burgersandfries from when the Zoe Quinn “scandal” first erupted in mid-August up until September 6th. All anyone had to do, they suggested, was to read the log, and they would soon see that Quinn was presenting a distorted picture based on out-of-context, “cherry-picked” quotes.
Of course, reading this particular log is a bit easier said than done: it’s 3756 pages, in 10-point type, of chaotic overlapping IRC conversations.
This is a classic case of what’s come to be known as “doc dumping,” which Wikipedia helpfully defines as
the act of responding to an adversary’s request for information by presenting the adversary with a large quantity of data that is transferred in a manner that indicates unfriendliness, hostility, or a legal conflict between the transmitter and the receiver of the information. The shipment of dumped documents is unsorted, or contains a large quantity of information that is extraneous to the issue under inquiry … .
It’s clear that those posting links to the log are hoping that their opponents will take one look at this enormous, messy document and simply give up.
What they didn’t count on was anyone calling their bluff – and actually taking the time to read it. Because if they actually knew what this document contained, and thought anyone would actually read the thing, they would have kept the links to themselves.
Even a quick skim through the document demonstrates that Quinn’s screenshots are hardly cherry-picked; you can flip to literally any page in this long, long document and find evidence of egregious misogyny and outright malice. Look a little deeper and you can find discussions of doxxing and spamming and all sorts of other dirty tricks.
But I’ve given the document a lot more than a quick skim. So far I’ve spent probably ten hours going through it, collecting evidence of all the things that the defenders of 4chan insist isn’t there. Even after ten hours, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface, but I would like to present you with some of my results so far.
Today, let’s look at some of what the 4chan chatters had to say about Zoe Quinn herself.
On Twitter, the standard line of the #GamerGate partisans is that what they’re doing isn’t abut Quinn herself; its a protest against corruption and nepotism in the video game world. They also insist that they’re not motivated by misogyny, and that they are more concerned about the alleged ethical lapses of game journalists than they are with just who Zoe Quinn allegedly slept with.
When it comes to the 4channers in #burgersandfries, these claims are complete and utter bullshit. The name “Zoe” appears 4778 times in the document, more than once per page; by contrast, “Nathan” – the first name of the allegedly corrupt game journalist she allegedly slept with – appears only 108 times. The words “ethics” and “ethical” appear, collectively, only 146 times.
Zoe’s name is in the official thread topic; chatters include it in their jokey nicknames. She’s the topic everyone always comes back to. She’s the reason everyone is there.
I decided to examine each occurrence of the name “Zoe” in order to see just what 4channers thought of her. After about 6 hours on this particular quest, I’ve only made it through roughly one-third of the mentions. But the results are not pretty.
The 4channers express their hatred and disgust towards her; they express their glee at the thought of ruining her career; they fantasize about her being raped and killed. They wonder if all the harassment will drive her to suicide, and only the thought of 4chan getting bad publicity convinces some of them that this isn’t something they should hope for.
They gleefully distribute nude pictures of her, posting links to online archives of them and emailing them directly both to Quinn’s supporters.
They dig up all sorts of information about her and her family and do their best to track down anyone and everyone with even the most tenuous links to her. One industrious researcher even manages to find a picture of Quinn at age 13; while acknowledging that it had no relevance whatsoever to issues of gaming ethics, she posts a link to it anyway.
And then there is the ongoing discussion of her vagina, described variously as “wide,” large enough to “fit 12 dicks at once, and “a festering cheese-filled vagina” that leaves “a trail of cunt slime” wherever she goes. Several 4channers speculate about its smell.
It’s not clear how exactly the size or shape or smell of Quinn’s vagina relates to the high-minded issues of gaming ethics that the #GamerGaters are said to be concerned with. But in the IRC log no one ever seems to call out any of those talking about Quinn in the crudest sexual terms.
Lets’ go to the logs directly. Everything that follows is cut and pasted directly from the full log, available here.
That said, IRC discussions can be chaotic and confusing, generally with more than one conversation going on at once, so in some cases, I have removed extraneous comments in order to make what is being said clearer. I’ve indicated all cuts with ellipses, and if you want to see what I’ve removed it should be trivial for you to locate the quotes in the full log by doing a search for an appropriate phrase or the relevant time and date stamp.
TRIGGER WARNING for discussion of rape, suicide and murder.
The log starts early on in the Zoe Quinn “scandal,” and numerous people in the chat talk about distributing her nude pictures to as many people as possible:
Aug 18 17.37.57 <SweetJBro> lol I’m tweeting Zoe’s nudes to some of her defenders.
A few days later, several other chatters talk about harassing Quinn by sending her own nude pictures to her:
Aug 21 23.20.35 there should be a massive campaign to tweet zoe her own nudes …
Aug 21 23.21.01 <Silver|2> They’ve been tweeted at her a lot
Here’s a chatter making clear that he’s mainly interested in seeing Quinn suffer:
Aug 18 20.10.06 i couldnt care less about vidya, i just want to see zoe receive her comeuppance
Here are some speculating about her state of mind:
Aug 19 01.34.01 if you were zoe right now what would you do
Aug 19 01.34.07 <FIVE-GUYS> get mugged
Aug 19 01.36.41 in all seriousness, i dont know
Aug 19 01.37.03 <FIVE-GUYS> ive never been in a situation like this
Aug 19 01.37.15 i’d probably kill myself tbh
Here are some others talking about the possibility of Quinn committing suicide, a possibility one chatter greets with a smiley:
Aug 19 02.28.30 okay, is zoe actually depressed?
Aug 19 02.28.35 i bet she is now
Aug 19 02.28.37 <mugg> diagnosed etc?
Aug 19 02.28.39 kek …
Aug 19 02.29.22 <Opus> I think she tried killing herself before
Aug 19 02.29.28 <kailasha> she should try that again :^)
“Kek,” by the way, is a nerdy version of “lol.”
Here one chatter suggests that focusing only on Quinn is a bad idea – because it will make 4channers look bad:
Aug 21 17.23.31 <sarahv> The problem is that making it about Zoe sleeping around amounts to a personal attack which, while funny and something she totally deserves, will hurt our chances of pushing the other point …
Aug 21 17.23.38 <rd0951> ./v should be focused on the implications of gaming journalism …
Aug 21 17.23.47 Because SJWs will cherry-pick the /b/ shit posting and say “See? It’s sexist MRAs!”
A few days later, this (relative) voice of moderation gleefully jokes about Quinn being choked to death during sex:
Aug 22 02.02.46 <CutestGAmerGorl> Okay guys, how much does Zoe like being choked
Aug 22 02.02.49 <CutestGAmerGorl> during sex? …
Aug 22 02.02.58 <sarahv> clearly not enough
Here one chatter openly fantasizes about driving Quinn to “an hero” — that is, kill — herself:
Aug 21 17.48.06 I’m debating whether or not we should just attack zoe …
Aug 21 17.48.29 <Opfag> push her… push her further….. further, until eventually she an heroes …
Aug 21 17.48.51 <OtherGentleman> … What makes you think she has the balls to kill herself?
Aug 21 17.48.57 I kind of want to just make her life irrepairably horrible …
Aug 21 17.49.16 <NASA_Agent> but what if she suicides …
Aug 21 17.49.24 <Opfag> Good.
Aug 21 17.49.29 Then we get to troll #Rememberzoe
One chatter warns that this strategy might … make 4chan look a tad misogynistic:
Aug 21 17.49.45 The more you try to attack her directly, the more she gets to play the victim card and make a bunch of friends who will support her because, since she has a vagina, any attack is misgony
Meanwhile, one of the other chatters suggests a rather creative division of labor amongst partisans of different 4chan message boards:
Aug 21 17.49.48 <rd0951> ./v should be in charge of the gaming journalism aspect of it. /pol should be in charge of the feminism aspect, and /b should be in charge of harassing her into killing herself
In the following excerpt, the IRC channel moderator asks one chatter why he is so obsessed with elaborate fantasies of Quinn dying in particularly gruesome ways:
Aug 21 18.26.37 <Cyberserker> You need a reason …
Aug 21 18.28.14 <Opfag> Well I don’t have a legitimate reason.
Aug 21 18.28.21 <Cyberserker> Nothing?
Aug 21 18.28.21 <Opfag> I just want to see her die horribly.
Aug 21 18.28.29 <Cyberserker> I’m talking about [your particular fantasies]
Aug 21 18.28.33 <Opfag> Oh.
Aug 21 18.28.39 <totality> sometimes you just want someone to get hurt
Aug 21 18.28.43 <Opfag> That, I have no idea
Aug 21 18.28.48 <totality> nothing wrong with that
Aug 21 18.28.51 all I know is I want zoe to die like that
While some fantasize about Quinn dying, others fill the chat with crude and often bizarre sexual remarks. All of the following comments came from a mere seven minutes in the chatroom:
Aug 22 02.21.54 i want to smell zoe quinn’s armpits …
Aug 22 02.25.42 you all would fuck the zoeholes
Aug 22 02.25.46 <JTG> given a chance too
Aug 22 02.25.47 <The_Remover> I am extremely aroused right now …Aug 22 02.26.47 someone seduce zoe quinn
Aug 22 02.26.53 <vanu> follow the shekels
Aug 22 02.26.56 <The_Remover> I volunteer to take one for the team
Aug 22 02.26.57 <vanu> to her vagina …Aug 22 02.28.51 meditate to nude pictures of zoe
Aug 22 02.28.53 <The_Remover> she gonna get raped
Of course, the 4channers are quick to profess disgust at the assorted nude pictures of Quinn they’re happily passing around to one another and the internet at large:
Aug 22 04.50.24 by the by, trigger warning on that mediafire archive. don’t download if you don’t want to see zoe naked …
Aug 22 21.17.13 <JCTheDenthog> Zoe’s mouth must be the strongest vacuum in nature to compensate for her face, body, and everything
Another suggests that his 4chan brethren download Quinn’s nudes if not for their own sexual gratification than for possible further blackmail later:
Aug 22 04.53.14 Eugh, why would you want to have her on your HDD? …
Aug 22 04.53.45 <The_Remover> because, a couple of months from now, when all this shit has died down, a raid may just be in order …
Aug 22 04.54.10 and i bet her dad doesn’t know she did porn …
Several days into the scandal, one chatter laments that there’s not much dirt left to dig on Quinn:
Aug 22 23.00.55 <Drinky_Kraw> I don’t think there’s anything left to harass Zoe over anyway. …
Aug 22 23.01.00 <Drinky_Kraw> The laundry is pretty much all aired
By the 23rd, some bored chatters compare notes on what they see as the relative sexual pros and cons of Quinn and game critic Anita Sarkeesian:
Aug 23 05.40.20 <Josh_> Zoe has a gross robotic hand, blue hair, and tats 4 days
Aug 23 05.40.29 <Josh_> if I was forced to put my dick in one of them
Aug 23 05.40.29 <Josh_> Anita
Aug 23 05.40.39 <GribFabdabgib> If I had to put my dick in them, yeah Anita
Aug 23 05.40.43 Anita is a skinny bitch whos all bones
Aug 23 05.40.48 <DarkHiero> True …Aug 23 05.41.07 <DarkHiero> But at least it looks like she tries to take care of herself. …
Aug 23 05.41.15 <Headsmash_> From just looks alone, Id rather do Zoe than Anita. Fat bitches usually give better head anyway.
Aug 23 05.41.21 <DarkHiero> If I’m putting my dick in crazy, that matters.
Aug 23 05.42.00 <DTrig> Yeah but odds are good you get the clap/crabs from Zoe
Aug 23 05.42.14 <Headsmash_> Same could be said for Anita based on what we know
Aug 23 05.42.17 <Headsmash_> lol
Aug 23 05.42.32 * DarkHiero shrugs
Aug 23 05.42.34 Anita looks like she douches though
Aug 23 05.42.36 <DTrig> ANd cleans up
Aug 23 05.42.39 Zoe…. eh
And then it’s back to another discussion of suicide:
Aug 23 19.38.17 <Headsmash_> So does anyone think Zoe’s gonna off herself and become a catalyst for misogyny and hatred of women in video games and video game culture? …
Aug 23 19.38.47 if zoe offed herself she probably wouldn’t be anything but an ED article ..
Aug 23 19.38.55 <Araf> Headsmash_: She won’t, she has a too big ego …
Aug 23 19.39.13 <Headsmash_> I’m not too sure about that. I think she could.
Aug 23 19.39.16 <Araf> She would off herself if everyone ignored her and abandoned her, which is not the case. …
Aug 23 19.39.25 <Headsmash_> Depends on how much she gets stuck in the victimization complex. …
Aug 23 19.39.28 Really the 5guys scandal is the most famous Zoe has been …
Aug 23 19.39.43 <rd0952> yeah but she’s also been harassed night and day for a week
Other chatters indulge in sadistic fantasies:
Aug 24 12.24.22 who really wants to meet zoe quinn and be kind and comfort her in this time of crisis
Aug 24 12.24.43 <Cyberserker> Not if you comfort her with a knife-hug
Aug 24 12.24.45 <Cameralady> and slowly, through friendship and blossoming relationship, get her to repair her shitty ways and come clean and become a good person …Aug 24 12.24.52 <Cameralady> and then
Aug 24 12.24.56 <Cameralady> once she’s reformed
Aug 24 12.24.58 <Cyberserker> knife-hug?
Aug 24 12.25.07 dump her in the most brutal, heartwrenching way possible
One chatter wants his fellow 4channers to declare victory and move on:
Aug 24 15.16.10 <PaperDinosaur> Also Zoe is no longer the target to be focused on
Aug 24 15.16.13 <Josh_> ^^
Aug 24 15.16.14 <sarahv> ^^^^^
Aug 24 15.16.18 It’s about the 5guys
Aug 24 15.16.21 <sarahv> It always has been
Aug 24 15.16.28 <Josh_> It’s more about the journos
Aug 24 15.16.33 <PaperDinosaur> She’s done, we’ve wrecked her in a professional manner. …
Aug 24 15.16.42 <sarahv> Unfortunately most of the people involved in this seem to be interested in destroying Zoe
Aug 24 15.16.46 stop digging up shit on zoe’s past
Aug 24 15.16.47 <PaperDinosaur> Now we have to wreck her shield, the people who tried to defend her
Soon afterwards the same guy who suggested that they move on from Quinn is back making jokes about her killing herself:
Aug 24 16.33.54 <PaperDinosaur> Guys, lets me fair to Zoe here
Aug 24 16.34.02 If every time I did something people sent me nues of her
Aug 24 16.34.07 <PaperDinosaur> I’d fucking kill myself
That same evening, Quinn’s ex-boyfriend – the fellow who started the whole thing going with a long series of blog entries documenting Quinn’s alleged infidelities – shows up on the channel to ask questions from the assembled mob.
Here is one of the questions he chose to answer:
Aug 25 00.02.21 <Cyberserker> Last question is from several people actually. I wanted to save it until the end due to how popular it was.
Aug 25 00.02.22 <Cyberserker> “Would you say Zoe was a “big girl” for you?” …Aug 25 00.03.04 <Eron_G> she is heavier than people I usually date. …
Aug 25 00.03.12 <Cyberserker> Fair enough …
Aug 25 00.03.14 <ebola-chan> Did she not fly so good?
And a few that he didn’t:
Aug 25 00.04.13 What does her pusy smell like must answer …
Aug 25 00.07.11 Eron, when you went down on her, did you taste the other guys semen? If so, what did it taste like? …
Aug 25 00.10.40 Eron I don’t think you want your headphones back, it’s most likely splattered in Nathan’s semen and Robin’s Menstrual fluids. …
Aug 25 00.16.52 eron are you going to take up sucking dick now that you’ve been cucked by the 2/10 ugly jew
Later that morning the chatters are back to sharing their creepy and violent sexual fantasies:
Aug 25 00.19.28 <EronLovesZoe> I feel like I would probably fuck Zoe. But not out of a loving sense of sexual attraction. More of that “hate fuck” sense where you just want to assert your dominance as a male on her, a primal savagery. Then I’d probably have to sterilize myself to prevent the genome from spreading.
Aug 25 00.19.59 I’d slap a saddle on zoe and ride her throught the midwest
Aug 25 00.20.02 I wouldn’t even get that far EronLovesZoe, I’d just start raging and headbutting her and gnawing on her cheek …Aug 25 00.20.10 that seabiscuit looking ass bith
And talking again about the pros and cons of trying to get Quinn to kill herself:
Aug 25 07.18.18 <Logan> Any chance we can get Zoe to commit suicide?
Aug 25 07.18.29 if we can get more daming evidence
Aug 25 07.18.29 I think the [doxxing info removed by DF] is a good shot.
Aug 25 07.18.33 <temet> like her fucking a train of lack dudes …
Aug 25 07.18.39 <PaperDinosaur> fuck off Logan
Aug 25 07.18.39 <temet> black
Aug 25 07.18.51 <Logan> Nah 21st century doing a train is so 90s. …
Aug 25 07.18.59 <PaperDinosaur> If she commits suicide we lose everything …
Aug 25 07.20.34 <PaperDinosaur> If you can’t see how driving Zoe to suicide would fuck this entire thing up then you’re a fucking idiot
Aug 25 07.20.41 Imagine the kotaku article …
Aug 25 07.20.48 <temet> PaperDinosaur is right
Aug 25 07.20.51 <temet> not the right PR play
Not. The. Right. PR. Play.
And on that note I am going to end this installment.
This is only a small fraction of the terrible stuff said about Quinn, in the small portion of the log I have managed to read through so far.
I may return with more installments. Honestly, I’m not sure how much more I can stomach.
But I will certainly write more about the 4channers’ discussions about doxxing and hacking Quinn and others; again, I have looked only at a portion of the logs so far, but there is already a great deal there.
EDIT: Just realized that WordPress ate a bunch of the names of the posters in the quotes here. (WordPress likes to eat angle brackets.) I’ll manually add the names back in when I get the chance.
I take it you haven’t read any other posts or comments on this site. We have no problem with anyone joining in. But a.n.y.o.n.e. who makes any kind of blunder in attitudes, language or intent gets called out on it. And that goes for regulars every bit as much as it does for newbies or trolls.
I can see no reason why “nobody can demand anything of them” should be a dominant mode on a site or in a movement. If we claim to stand for something, trivial or vital, we should behave as we do in any social environment. Online is as much a social environment as any other before you get all het up about that. The smiles and nods, frowns and side-eyes that we might use in face to face interactions need more explicit verbal signals online, but we’re all capable of that. There’s plenty of it already going on in the extracts we’ve seen so far. All online communities can have better or worse standards than they do now. Or are you suggesting that Out Of Control Toxic Nastiness is an inevitable, unalterable state?
Kirbywarp: First test run failed due to memory issues… Allocating more memory and continuing. FOR SCIENCE!
Oh fuck – Kirbywarp is a Son of Ether…
It was funny when their idea of damage control was marshalling and sockpuppeting POC as supporters, even though POC in the scene and in the world at large themselves constantly remark that the best they can do is temporarily embarass and nearly inconvenience their white frenemies by making them realize that they utterly ignored POCs yet again.
Another suggestion somebody voiced in these logs is that maybe they should take the battle to online misoginy in order to seperate the legitimate aims some of them may hold from the bile. ‘sides the fact that that’s a clear sign that they have no idea about the extend of the problem plus they lost that battle when the log starts with people planning to shame Zoe by reblogging her sexual history and the porn she apparently starred in.
They apparently also expected that the orbiting journalists would just sit there and watch their cozy relationship and the money that comes from being owned by these companies evaporate rather than strike back at them, which is sligthly unrealistic, all things considered.
A lot of what we see clearly indicates that the movement is made up of kids who are blissfully unaware of how the world, the media and the internet operate with and around money, race and gender. They really should’ve checked the privilege and straigthened out their attitude and not set off their operation by scapegoating somebody like Zoe for the ills of a whole multibillion dollar industry and its orbiters.
@Binjabreel:
Oh yes, yes there are. And discussing how to engineer “#notyourshield” to further undermine the eeeevil SJW cause. And discussing how to best impersonate other SJWs to play sides against each other and trick feminists to support their cause.
@Phoenician:
I had to look up that reference, but I approve. Now I’m trying to figure out how to include my love of programming by combining the digitization technology of Borderlands 2 with a steam punk aesthetic.
I’m sorry, but when the frak did 4chan forget how to internet? Did they seriously think no one would see this nasty, hateful crap? It’s the INTERNET. If there can be dox, there WILL be dox and thanks to the nature of anonymous as a loose collective, it’s not exactly hard to “infiltrate” their irc channels. If brain-dead Scientology cultists could infiltrate and dox the channers, what made these twits think the net-savvy gamers they are picking fights with wouldn’t?
I am growing more and more convinced that these children (and let’s face it- developmentally, they are children) are completely inept at life and that’s the ultimate source of their anger.
Kim wants to make extra sure that everyone pays special attention to Kim. Kim can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to tackle that wall of bullshit text. BUT BUT GAMEBRO FEELS HOW CAN YOU DENY ALL OF MY RIGHTNESS
No! Not allowed to sully my name. Please call imposter Kim by their full name or refer to them as Imposter Kim. Thanks kindly.
I vote for “kimposter.”
Considering there are only 7,000,000,00 people on the planet, I’m wondering where exatly the 370,000,000,000,000 million male gamers are? Are video games popular on other planets?
@kirbywarp
I like it!
Tony, from a few pages back:
Isn’t it funny that the GamerGate brigade keeps insisting that this TOTEZ ISN’T ABOUT ZOE IT’S ABOUT JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY, but whenever they try to give “examples” of this allegedly rampant corruption, Zoe Quinn is the only name that comes up with any kind of consistency? (Well, her and Phil Fish, who became a target after vocally defending Zoe). I don’t even know the names of the reviewers she allegedly slept with, despite the fact that they should be taking the brunt of the professional backlash. But no, everyone else implicated in this is just “a female dev” or “a reviewer” or “her boss”. It’s almost like there’s literally no real evidence of any sort of notable or structural corruption in the gaming industry and this whole charade is just a smokescreen for shit-stirring. Huh. Funny that.
I am sorry, real Kim.
False “The Kimposter” Kim has committed many ills this day, not the least of which was interminable boringhood. I don’t want to associate that with you. 🙁
@kirbywarp, that generator is amazing,
is the best sentence that ever happened to me.
@Kimposter
It’s Gamergate. No ‘s’. GaMERGate. GamersGate is a video game publisher for PC and MAC games.
Also, that screed was a wonderful exercise in completely missing the point.
The problem is this: I can also, after the quickest of quick google searches, find hundreds, if not thousands of comments from supporters of gamersgate focusing exclusively on how Zoe Quinn is the prime example of ultimate evil in the indie game world. Hundreds if not thousands focusing exclusively on how she should have kept it in her pants, and that SJW’s need to “keep politics (representation, diversity, you know, tedious things like that) out of games”.
Yeah yeah, #NotAllGamergaters. The problem is the disproportionately large numbers of gamergate supporters who clearly have NO interest in issues of journalistic integrity or industry corruption.
Instead of jumping on your gamergate high-horse over #NotAllGamergaters, maybe you want to try getting angry about the very real problem presented by the huuuuge numbers of misogynistic dudebros giving the entire movement Such A Bad Name.
Wow David, kudos for sifting through all of that. I would be rocking in a corner in tears at the foulness.
Then it’s not a movement. It clearly has established rules and values, because those values are what people are rallying behind and those rules are what they want to enforce. If it’s just “People doing stuff”, it’s not a thing. That’s not logical. How odd a thing to say.
If you define “Problem” as “People are being hacked and harassed”, then, uh, yes!
Dude, I go to 4chan too. You know what happens when I see other channers posting reprehensible shit on tg? I tell those nice anons to cut that shit the fuck out. You can demand just as much and just as little of your fellow human beings as you want, and pretending that the fact that someone else might do something makes it impossible for anyone to have a stance on anything is ridiculous in the extreme.
What valueless, leaderless, rule-less all inclusive everyone can join or unjoin at all times movement as everybody in it as it is convenient for the argument at hand?
Color me shocked
You’re not very good at this. It’s not 370.000.000, it’s 7 billion, because your proposition is that the lack of omniscience prevents people from really knowing anything at all. Have you personally seen all 7 billion of the Earth’s inhabitants not game today? Then you won’t know if they do or do not.
Since that’s what those logs apparently literally say, your conclusions are actually invalid. If the stated aims and activities that a group performs both are to annoy and harass women, then pretending that someone might think their professed ideology is benign doesn’t invalidate that. I don’t personally know that every member of the Aryan nation is a racist, but I’m really going to assume they are.
I don’t think every self-proclaimed MRA is evil and hates feminists, but until they tell me that’s not the case and also don’t proceed to make statements wherein that is just the case that’s the assumption I’ll work under.
And I can find examples of the point that they don’t like GLBT people. Since neither of us are omniscient gods of all cosmos (Well, one of us isn’t, anyhow, I don’t know about you, since I can’t know, you might be, who really knows man, it’s just impossible to be 100 % sure!), we won’t ever know and it’s not important. What is important is the stuff that’s actually happening to actual people in reality.
… the Escapist isn’t Australian. Uhm. What? I mean, that guy who does Zero Punctuation lives in Australia. I don’t mean to harp on this, and it’s not important, but it’s just a little funny if we’re discussing journalist standards to get something that simple wrong.
But then I guess we just can’t ever really know.
I… don’t know what’s going on any more. I can’t know. Knowing is a vast gulf of clarity us mere humans can ever hope to reach. Forever beyond our grasp. What the fuck is gamergate? Why do they mention it’s called gate? Is this new? Are we having arguments about the transparency of video game journalism? I fucking read PC gamer in fucking 1997, and I remember conversations about how it was all a giant fluke. After reviewing Kane and Lynch in 2007, a guy was fired from Gamespot. THAT’S 7 years.
7 years!
I… just realized how old I am holy shit wow. Uhm. What was my point again? Right yes.
Knowing anything is impossible and the massive impossibility overwhelms are fragile human capacity to reason because nothing in this entropic universe is ever as certain as we like it to be or as secure as we could desire. Leaves in the wind, dude, leaves in the wind.
Haters that aggregate are haters that aggregate, whether other people agree with their hate or not. Pretending it ain’t so is dishonest.
… what the hell does that have to do with anything?. I guess… the facts he’s gay somehow… something… someone. I don’t know. I’m beginning to suspect that not knowing is the natural state of mankind and ignorance is all we have to shelter us against the eternal night.
What sides? What opposing forces is clashing here?
There is no massive confusion or who is and is not involved in possible activities against maybe potentials. There’s logs of IRC chat, and people talking about other people on them. That’s the extent of the confusion here.
Look, for gods sake man, stop your blistering pretense of permanent ignorance of casuality and just read things for a second.
What part of What is misogynistic? A guy listing things that happened? You can say things happen without adding a value to that thing that has happened. The thing that happened might be both stupid and idiotic
to wit:
which is just… mindbogglingly strange sentence. “Endgame is to destroying X Y Z, so group did not really rally to destroy Z”? Uhh… yeah okay.
I mean, I grant that’s sort of a funny article
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but why do I have to prove that any part of it is misogynistic? I don’t want to, because I don’t like misogyny, and I probably can’t, because it’s just a retelling of events so far in a timeline as confusing and convuleted as the undulating universe of endless inability to properly reason we consistently find ourselves in, where you can just NEVER KNOW what’s really happening or going on or what someone is REALLY SAYING, FOR REAL, MAN.
CAPSLOCK
Indeed. We can never know. I see where you got that attitude from now, it’s in this article too. Truly, the ability to know anything is forever something that we can only aspire too as mere humans, and such things as screenshots and logs and conversations and people saying they will rape your corpse is all just incidental evidence of a possible provisional nature.
Oh cut it out, article. I know 4chan. It’s a lot of things, but it’s not the fucking K K K.
… Indeed. Because the original tag did not specifically include the dictionary definition of misogny, it is impossible for it to have been misogynistic in intent, because the only thing that we can know for sure in this random chaotic universe that ever moves at the brink of dissolution is that only precise, accurate statements with no rational, logical casuality flaws imparts any information.
I… what is this supposed to impart? What are you trying to say, man? I’ve read multiple articles and it’s taken me 30 minutes and the only thing I’ve learned is that man is not mean to know that which moves beyond the black void of the stars fated to die in vain, because to gaze upon those maddening deities will shatter our fragile pre-conceptions of a noble universe
CTH’HULHU FLAG’HAN
I just realized what the #gamergate dudes remind me of.
Remember The Trio from Buffy? These nerds playing D&D who randomly decide they want to play supervillain and take over Sunnydale? And they get progressively more nasty and vile but continue to be so buffoonishly incompetent they have no chance of succeeding, and then when they finally fall apart the ringleader gets a gun, does terrible damage to an innocent person and gets his skin ripped off for it?
They remind me of that.
I remember back when I was 13 when the coolest, most in-crowd thing for my peers was playing FPSs and watching porn. It’s sad that so many people never grew beyond that age.
Hahaha, Fibanachi, standing ovation. Also, I can’t believe that comment was literally just 1000 words of WE CAN’T KNOW ANYTHING FOR SURE SO NO ONE SHOULD SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING EVER.
Umm…no. No it does not. Not remotely.
However, David should be proud because not many people are going to be able to wade through the sewer that is 4chan and he didn’t have to. He did something difficult and tiresome to help other people and that’s awesome. (Thank you, David!)
Whats with people like the Kimposter who couldn’t catch a clue with a net gun being such arrogant assholes?
TIL: If a post doesn’t clearly profess the hatred of all women and does not profess even the hatred for one woman, it’s not misogynistic. /rollseyes
God, this is sick. Thank you for wading through this. I can’t believe that they would take an individual who has been honest and open about her struggles with mental illness and ‘lol’ about her killing herself. Bluergh
*tocks off “I’m not a misogynist” on her MRA bingo card.
@Kim: I know of women who support “gamer gate”. These women also happen to be anti-feminist and incredibly misogynistic.
Nobody ever gave me a welcome package! >:C