On Friday, expat woman-hating woman-chaser Roosh Valizadeh put up a post on his Return of Kings blog with the sensationalized headline “Did Anita Sarkeesian Commit Felony Wire Fraud?”
Roosh breathlessly “reported” that
Two independent journalists have confirmed with the San Francisco Police Department that Anita Sarkeesian, a video game social justice warrior, may have used false pretenses to raise money for her non-profit entity. The police have said that she has not contacted them as she claimed after receiving a Twitter death threat in August. Under Federal law, this may put her on the hook for felony wire fraud.
The two “independent journalists” in question are tech journalist and self-described “fan of 4chan” Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart, and Davis Aurini, the cigarette-smoking, scotch-drinking, Anton LaVey-looking blogger who’s trying to raise money to make a “documentary” about the evils of Anita Sarkeesian and “social justice warriors.”
Both journalists – well, the one dude who writes for a sleazeball right-wing site and the other dude who’s not actually a journalist at all – did indeed contact the San Francisco Police Department and were told by a media spokesman that he couldn’t find a record of Sarkeesian contacting them about the threats she received in August.
This bit of “news” sent #GamerGaters and other Sarkeesian-haters around the internet into a bit of a frenzy.
But it turns out they got worked up over nothing. The police spokesman just hadn’t looked hard enough. A day after Tweeting a number of accusatory questions to Sarkeesian, Yiannopoulos had to backtrack, noting in a series of Tweets that he’d had another conversation with the SFPD, who told him that Sarkeesian had in fact reported the harassment to the FBI.
Another writer posted emails he’d gotten from the police spokesman that seemed to confirm Yiannopoulos’ updated information. In the emails, SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza said that Sarkeesian had indeed contacted the SFPD in August but that the case had been handed off to the FBI. (I’ve confirmed this with Esparza .)
Given that the main “proof” that Sarkeesian was lying about the threats she said she received had just vanished into thin air, you might expect that Roosh and Aurini might, you know, correct their now-clearly incorrect posts on the subject and retract their accusations. Well, not so much.
Roosh’s post remains up, with only a brief “update” at the end, noting that “the police have changed their story and now state that they were contacted.” Aurini’s post remains unchanged, and as I write this he’s posted nothing more on the subject.
Even considering the people we’re dealing with here, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Roosh ends his post by declaring that
these new revelations concerning Sarkeesian show that no form of media is safe from the SJW and feminist agenda, and that we must do all the fact checking ourselves. The entire media establishment in the United States is potentially corrupt. Proceed accordingly.
Yet he refuses to frankly acknowledge that the “new revelations concerning Sarkeesian” were based on faulty information, offering instead a weasel-worded “update.”
Aurini, for his part, claims in his post to be “fight[ing] for openness and integrity within Tech and Video Game circles.” But he hasn’t bothered to update his post.
When ethical journalists discover that they were wrong about something, they acknowledge their errors and post straightforward corrections. When they get something spectacularly wrong, they apologize.
Somehow I don’t think we’ll be getting apologies from either of these guys.
And thus we get to the whole wire fraud thing. In his post, Roosh repeated a claim made by Mike Cernovich of the “game” blog Danger and Play, who tweeted:
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/510245982131335169
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/510246926990594048
As it turns out, there’s zero proof that Sarkeesian lied about anything here. And she made no direct connection between the threats and her Tweet asking for donations.
Indeed, by Cernovich’s logic it’s Davis Aurini, not Anita Sarkeesian, who’s guilty of felony wire fraud. Why?
Because in his post, he made a direct connection between his accusations against Sarkeesian and his own fundraising efforts. Here’s how he ended his piece:
Personally, I’d like to see a lot MORE documentation on Sarkeesian, because this isn’t the only claim she’s made which I suspect is fraudulent – and not just her, but all of the individuals hiding behind the shield of Social Justice, and the journalists who have been aiding and abetting them, culminating in outrage known as #GamerGate. That’s why Jordan Owen and myself have started a Patreon page, so that we can create a feature-length documentary about these people and their methods, and how they bully and victimize the very people they claim to support.
So please help us get this documentary made, so that we can fight for openness and integrity within Tech and Video Game circles, and expose the professional victims for the con artists that they are. Please support our documentary, The Sarkeesian Effect: Inside the World of Social Justice Warriors.
Given that Aurini now knows that his post was based on faulty information, and given that he hasn’t corrected his post or retracted his insinuations, could he now be guilty of felony wire fraud?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think so. While admittedly I’m no lawyer, Cernovich’s logic seems to me like a bit of a stretch.
I do feel safe in saying, however, that neither Roosh V. nor Davis Aurini should be lecturing anyone about ethics.
UPDATE: I confirmed with the SFPD that Sarkeesian had indeed called the SFPD and that the case was handed off to the FBI; the post has been updated to reflect that.
This is actually an excellent example of when to use that old Razor thing you’ve heard about.
Which is a simpler explanation; that a phone call to a random police officer whose job probably isn’t public relations got through to somebody who couldn’t be bothered to find the file,
OR
That the police department has decided to cover up an action taken by a member of the public in not filing a report, and is now falsifying records in order to support that coverup?
Sidebar: is there any possibility at all the original ‘the cops said no!’ report was in some way an exaggeration or faked? How does that possibility interact with multiple reports of the police confirming the report?
Conclusion: critical thinking 101, son. You failed the course and have to take it again.
And you know this because you work there, and you know exactly how information is maintained and how easy it is to locate. I mean, obviously, because if you didn’t work there you’d just be pulling this out of your ass.
Yet you’re following this closely enough to have opinions not only about Sarkeesian, but about this rather meta story about her.
“Both sides do it?” I’d like some citations where a group of feminists made spurious, completely unsubstantiated criminal allegations against some dude(s) in order to shut him/them up about something.
Why do I have the impression that Adria Richards is at the heart of this particular screed?
Well, that, and go onto someone else’s blog and drop that “fuck it” into the comments, because of Reasons.
Also, a special note for this.
So first he points this ‘using the levers of the law to SILENCE’ at feminism. But then he backs of and says it’s all over these days–because he actually did read the article and realize that it was Anita’s critics who were trying to do this, not Anita. (I’ll give him this, that’s more reading than most of the trolls who come in here do)
So now he has to paint all of society with this, so that we don’t focus on how very fast Anita’s ‘critics’ went to that lever. (and we don’t notice that she’s never really tried to use that lever herself… how odd!!)
Muddying the waters, acting in a way that’s not really super honest–hmm!!!!
Oh, that is wonderful. Kind of makes it sound a bit as though Anita S. and the SFPD are in cahoots. Another “feminist” plot to make the poor, brave MRA souls look bad?
If only….:)
I believe she is a professional victim. You folks don’t. Okay, opinions won’t change on that either way. (Yea, I know, it’s not opinion it’s fact, and I’m wrong!)
Lets see. Apparently I failed logic 101, I’m possibly a troll, and I’m an aggrieved dudebro. (wtf is that?) Well, that’s not as brutal as 4chan I suppose.
Just more reasons for me to dislike the advocate of feminism these days – everything is personal – whatever the concept even means anymore.
Why post here? I don’t usually. I just lurk and prefer to get my news on the views of the “feminists” from the actual proponents of feminism instead of what MRAs say said views of feminists are.
Continue bashing me though. I don’t care honestly. Whatever makes you feel good.
Government employee here. It’s frequently much harder than you’d expect, since government agencies, despite what you may have heard, don’t like to spend money. That means that frequently their software is decades out of date and highly kludged to make it run on current equipment. Frequently budget cuts mean a lack of personnel actually qualified to maintain those databases, and attemtps to modernize result in layer upon layer of patched-together systems, meaning that unless you know exactly what you are doing, it’s almost impossible to find much of anything.
armenia4ever: Did you miss the part where we mock misogyny? I guess you did.
Okay, what’s your evidence? Let me go over the “evidence” that is usually presented: the money she got on her Kickstarter.
The only way that line of thinking works is if you believe that a woman on the internet MUST be looking for victimization, that there is literally no reason to expect a different outcome, and that the hordes of people who then victimized her just couldn’t help it, like they are a swarm of bees or something. If you instead assume that women go onto the internet for the same reasons as men, and that the other people on the internet are actually people and not bees, with control over their actions, the “professional victim” line of reasoning doesn’t work.
So what’s your evidence?
Oop, apparently, I still don’t know how to code for strike through, let me try rephrasing that as a question…
@ Armenia, do you often find perfectly good reasons to ignore the opinions of women, much more so than the opinions of men?
…I would like you to think hard about this.
As far as whether Sarkeesian’s not a true gamer…please define true gamer, in your own words.
I contacted my local police department once because I found someone’s keys in my yard. I called the non-emergency number and got transferred to three different wrong departments (including the jail) before I finally got through to an officer who could advise me on what to do.
It surprises me not at all that a random inquiry regarding someone else’s harassment would yield an inaccurate result.
Honestly, I’m not as interested in her kickstarter. It’s her “Tropes vs Women in video games” that leads me to that conclusion.
Misogyny means that one hates women. Whatever, label me what you wish.
Considering the mutual ethnicity of me and Sarkeesian, I usually would be more biased in her favor, but alas, it didn’t happen. (At least I and her can claim the ultimate lack of privilege card though.)
OT (with apologies if anyone has brought it up already):
There is a smashingly good article by Mark Oppenheimer at buzzfeed about misogyny in the atheist movement:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/markoppenheimer/will-misogyny-bring-down-the-atheist-movement#4dr50rh
Yeah getting the wrong answer from the police, if you think of it from the perspective of the person footing the call, really isn’t that strange. Unless they know exactly who is on top of what in the organisation, which I’ve never heard of at any workplace – private or public sector – the best you can hope for is that they pass it on to someone they hope know more.
Public sector cuts removing staff with actual experience doesn’t help either I’m sure.
But, you know, the public sector just wastes our tax money. Unless you need it, in which case it’s incompetent. Hmm.
LOL how do you figure that she is a professional victim without involving money? How do you involve money with the TvW series without involving Kickstarter?
Is professional just a word you fling around that has no meaning for you?
Alright fine? But she still stole footage for her videos, at one point stole art (though she at least fixed that), doesn’t represent the games she “plays”, purposefully goes out of her way to portray everything as victimizing women even when it’s not the case (her portrayal of Hitman is the worst – you can find Let’s Plays of the same scene where “THE PLAYER CAN’T HELP BUT BEAT UP THIS WOMEN” where plenty of male players walk right past the and don’t fucking touch them at all probably because the game actively penalizes you for attacking civilians – therefore Anita had to go out of her way to play it that way, breaking the rules of the game, and then tried to pretend like it’s how it was meant to be played). On top of that, if a female character doesn’t fit her stringent and overly critical definitions of a good female character, she will nitpick them and by connection nitpick any woman who relates to them. This is the same woman who simultaneously thinks there should be more female characters but also thinks any action which harms a woman perpetuates “violence against women”. ANY action.
She doesn’t give a fuck about video games. She doesn’t understand them. And there are recordings that prove – she doesn’t actually play them. Prior to this, she said she didn’t really play video games. She picked this up because she knew she could make a ton of money. And she did. Because she tricked a lot of women who wanted an actual, realistic discussion into thinking that’s what they’re getting, when really all they were getting was a rehash of ALL THE SAME POINTS with no solutions, no acknowledge of women who are in the industry, not even an actual portrayal of the games themselves. Whatsmore, Anita got WAY MORE money and yet STILL hasn’t put out all the videos she promised, and yet IS ASKING FOR MORE MONEY.
I am a woman. I am a gamer. I could put out a better series of videos with GameFly, a webcam, and a rudimentary knowledge of editing. You know why? BECAUSE I ACTUALLY PLAY THE FUCKING GAMES. I AM AN ACTUAL GAMER. I didn’t one day decide to apply my women’s studies degree to a popular media and then pry donations from the hands of naive young gamers looking for answers and hyper-radical feminists who just want to hear people talk about how awful men are.
But you know how I really know? Because listening to Anita talk, how she treats games, how she talks about gamers – she would not care if tomorrow video games disappeared off the face of the planet. She wouldn’t give a shit if the gaming industry crash. She wouldn’t have given a shit in the early days when gamers were isolated and alienated. She is not a gamer. She doesn’t care about games. She pretends to care about games so a bunch of idiots who want to hear themselves talk would give her tons of money for her to shower herself in.
So excuse me if my sympathy is lacking for this woman, since I imagine she reported the harassment but I also imagine she doesn’t actually give a shit about any of it because for a second there she was almost completely irrelevant but now suddenly she is not. Isn’t that timing all grand and peachy. People shouldn’t harass her, but only because she doesn’t deserve the attention. Personally, I’m sick of her being the face of female gamers, and I really wish that her Internet presence would disappear so we could focus on women who are actually making a difference in the community, but don’t feel the need to fucking harp people for money.
The problem with these Dork Enlightenment dudes is that the REASON well-functioning psychopaths are dangerous is because they don’t go around pretending to be real life cartoon villains. You’re not going to be abusing a lot of trust if you start out by advertising that you want to be an untrustworthy asshole.
Who died and gave you the authority to hand out Real Gamer cards? Nobody gives a shit what you think – and Anita only became this giant bogeyman thanks to your own ilk’s attempts to bully and silence her. Good fucking jorb.
I would dismiss the “Tropes vs women in video games” regardless of who put it together. The fact that she is a women is just a part of biology… Not sure what it has to do with less or more validation of her opinions…
A “gamer” is a lot more subjective these days. I don’t consider her a gamer, but some here might. My personal basic standard for any gamer is that in order to critique a game, one must play all the way through a game in a thorough manner.
It’s obvious to me she never did that with 90% of the games in her initial video series.
I’ll be honest about one thing. I now dismiss feminism entirely – regardless of who is espousing it or the validity of some of their points. (A position is either valid or invalid, regardless of who advocates for it).
I’m throwing out the baby with the bathwater, which isnt exactly rational, but label oneself an egalitarian and I’ll give it some thought.
The logic, it is not strong with this one.
Unethical dick? Then he has a *lot* in common with Sarkeesian 🙂
“Who died and gave you the authority to hand out Real Gamer cards? Nobody gives a shit what you think – and Anita only became this giant bogeyman thanks to your own ilk’s attempts to bully and silence her. Good fucking jorb.”
Whatever you say mate.
My personal evaluation of a real gamer is merely what I think, not some sort of objective truth on the concept. I however do not consider her to be one and therefore dismiss her opinions on the subject.
This doesn’t mean you have to. It’s just what I think on the matter.
“Everything is an opinion.” Jeez, postmodernist bollocks much? Get out of your ivory tower.
I’m so fucking shocked at this, I might have to go lie down.
You weren’t really fooling anyone before your big announcement, bro.
Well, I think armenia4ever is actually a talking aardvark. My personal evaluation of a real aardvark is merely what I think, not some sort of objective truth on the concept. I do however consider him to be one and therefore dismiss his opinions on the subject of gaming.
Doesn’t mean you have to. It’s just what I think on the matter.
Aardvarks also don’t get to express an opinion on feminism.