Zoe Quinn has had it.
Yesterday, fed up with the equivocating bullshit that’s constantly being said in the media and within gaming circles about #GamerGate, and pissed off at all those who think of themselves as good people but still refuse to see the hatred and misogyny and harassment and doxxing that has been central to GG since the start, Quinn posted a series of (justifiably) angry tweets calling out the cowards in the profession who know that what’s going on is deeply evil but won’t say anything, and documenting the unending harassment she and her boyfriend, and her family, and his family are still getting.
Was that even a sentence? I don’t know. The point is she’s STILL getting harassed. She’s STILL getting “prank” calls. She’s STILL getting death threats. People are STILL digging around in her personal life and the personal life of everyone connected to her.
And she’s not the only one. The newest target of #GamerGate wrath? Indie game developer Brianna Wu, who, as I noted in my last post, got death threats … for posting memes on Twitter.
Meanwhile, two creepy obsessed assholes are still begging for money to make a documentary they hope will ruin Anita Sarkeesian.
Oh, but #GamerGate is about ethics.
I’m just going to paste in a bunch of Quinn’s Tweets here, because they pretty much speak for themselves.
to the "moderates" of gamergate: how do you think you can get rid of corruption in journalism when you can't rid your own movement of it?
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
and to those who are anti-gg and silent – the more people who speak out the less vulnerable those who do speak out are.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
If you are just watching this from the sidelines, scared, I don't blame you. But it does force the burden of fighting this on those targeted
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
"How do you fight it?" – Condemn it. Offer moral support to those targeted. Signal boost the stuff that debunks the ridiculous claims
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
If you are still remaining silent or saying "but both sides have points" I am losing more and more patience for you as this continues 🙁
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
I make a post saying I refuse to talk about my personal life? Hacked and doxxed. Phil stands up for me? Hacked and doxxed.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
We all keep being told none of this is happening, people and websites still treat the movement with skepticism about what it is
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
Meanwhile *I* had to do the investigation into gamergate and blow that shit open with the IRC while watching them talk about raping me
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
I followed up on the IRC log here and here, but I wouldn’t have known about it if she hadn’t been there first collecting screenshots.
Anything but scorching the goddamned earth on gamergate is turning a blind eye as more and more women & feminists are targeted
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
if you have ANY shred of decency and consider yourself part of gamergate, stop asking us to suffer for your movement. Leave and start anew.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
I don't care how many enemies I make now, this shit needs to stop. If you've just watched and let this happen, you should be ashamed
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
There is no "both sides" here. People against GG's actions are not organized, or campaigning, or using a hashtag.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
There's a mob, and their targets
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
If you are choosing to stay silent, let me ask you this – how shitty would you feel if one of these people made good on their threats?
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
How can you be comfortable letting people like alex & I, who are combatting the IRL fallout of GG, fight the online fights too
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
god damnit I hate being angry and going on twitter tirades but fuck this has to stop
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
Take the time to enlarge the pics on these tweets:
for those of you keeping score, on the 16th it will be two months of alex and I living under shit like this pic.twitter.com/S1HC1DVph2
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
stop defending this pic.twitter.com/GzO9BKMDas
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
stop defending this pic.twitter.com/XNuNcD3dx6
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
stop defending this pic.twitter.com/poVhGZGGjc
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
stop pretending this isn't happening in your front yard pic.twitter.com/HhueTH4tV8
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
I have a 16 fucking gig folder of this shit
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
And then there’s … this:
Literally getting accused of killing gamers pic.twitter.com/km6GXoiIVc
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 8, 2014
Also, she gets phone calls:
cool dude with a soundboard who has been calling me around this hour for the last week periodically is back at it again
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
between that and the pizzas they tried to order to me with my dox I think we may be dealing with real actual 12 year old, folks
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 11, 2014
Oh, you don’t believe she gets phone calls? Ta da:
.@Kheapathic @the_moviebob oh I'm sorry, did you just say this didn't happen? Bad news we recorded it https://t.co/LE0CQj8Upe
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 2, 2014
As the MRAs say: Always Be Recording. Except that Zoe Quinn actually has a good reason to do this.
It’s kind of amazing that Quinn manages to retain a sense of humor in the midst of all this.
whenever gamergate is finally over and the dust settles, someone's gonna go "The aristocrats!" and it'll all make sense
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
because the last two months have been the grossest, longest drawn-out-est joke I've seen in my entire life
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
and it's not even a funny joke. it's just sad, absurd, and has destroyed a lot of peoples' lives
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
Gamer inside joke!
every time a creep yells at me for something anita did I delay half life 3 another year
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 8, 2014
Also, kitty:
to make up for my grumpyass, here's the cutest twitter feed. It autotweets when a cat comes home through its catdoor https://t.co/StWNbK8Q8d
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 10, 2014
Equal attention does not mean equal credulity. Otherwise, there is seriously no point in believing anything, because both sides of every argument are equally true and there is no truth or reason in anything.
*eyeroll* This is just embarrassing.
That he did…(yes, I’m going with “he”, because that’s how approximately 100% of them would identify anyway…)
I think Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best, and I’m definitely paraphrasing: there aren’t always two sides to every issue. Sometimes there’s just one right side.
Of course, he was criticizing climate change deniers, anti-vaccination folks, and creationists, but Gamer Gaters are just as misguided and foolhardy.
Oh, and Adam Baldwin can kiss my ass. Jayne is dead to me.
RE: Inez Milholland
You know, the more I hear about Neil Degreasse Tyson, the more likeable a guy he seems. I REALLY need to see the new Cosmos.
@Tyra Lith
I don’t know whether this campaign (it was done by the AfD’s youth organisation) was copied from the “i don’t need”-campaign. It was a reaction to a campaign by the Young Social Democrats in which people held up placard with the words “I am a feminist because…” So the AfD answered with “I am not a feminist because…”
Btw, did this campaign really originate in Poland and if so, was there an organisation behind it? My girlfriend is Polish, and a feminist. We usually take part in a huge annual feminist demonstration. But knowing Polish politics, there is a strong antifeminist (and catholic) current.
The Pirate Party once invited a MANNdat-guy to speak at my university about discrimination against boys in the education system. But a feminist member of the party rallied some friends to argue with him. His presentation was hilariously awful. I actually told him that had he been one of my students, he would have failed the class.
And yeah, wgvdl is quite awful.
So I just found out that a close friend (as in a loyal friend for over 10 years) is a follower of GamerGate, and is convinced that the movement is legitimately about confronting corruption in gamer culture, and that all these nasty threats against people like Zoe Quinn are just a small faction – a fringe – misbehaving.
It was awkward for the first few minutes of our chat since she also brought up Christina Hoff Sommers (that just pissed me off) as somehow legitimate, and I really thought I was going to lose a friend over this.
Thankfully it didn’t, and after I calmed down, she was very much willing to hear out exactly why Sommers and her ilk got so much flak – I brought up the fact that Sommers was against fair wages for women – and then I explained the chatlogs that Dave slogged through to prove that the whole thing was a farce.
My takeaway from this:
1. When it’s a personal friend you’re talking to, it helps to try to explain in a reasoned, rational tone why they’re wrong, and really try to hear out why they’re caught up with #Gamergate in the first place. It’s saddening that people with such good intentions get swept up in this whole thing. The hopeful part is that if they’e like my friend, maybe they’re not such a lost cause.
2. Fuck the people who started this whole hate brigade by stirring up the sympathies of other people with actual good intentions. I do not see any difference between them and con-men, cultists, or snake oil salesmen.
3. I wouldn’t have known this much about how ridiculously awful the #Gamergate FUBAR is if it had not been for We Hunted the Mammoth, Ophelia Benson’s blog, or Skepchick. Thank you, Dave.
@Dipshit Knight
1. “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.” – Douglas Adams.
2. Thank you for saving me the trouble of finding something nasty to call you. I little crude compared to what I wanted to say, but eh, why stop a good thing.
Dipshit knight,
No. Both sides aren’t factually or morally equivalent. Isaac Asimov mocks you from beyond the grave.
@Antonio, that sounds like my experience, only not with nearly as close a friend (internet RP friend only) and she’s been doing more selling me on GG than I have talking her away from it. The point when I decided to walk away didn’t have much to do with GG, though; it was her straight up telling me not to say anything against Erin Pizzey unless I’d read the majority of her work.
The “it’s just a fringe element!” excuse is so frustrating, especially when I give examples of that “fringe element” including their biggest name supporters like Milo and CHS. Then it becomes “They’re not our leaders, they’re not speaking for GG, I’m not going to tell them what to say on their own timelines.” Criticism just rolls off, and I’m pretty sure that’s how they want it to be. Deflect instead of address. They say they don’t have leaders because leaders become targets, but it’s also a convenient way to avoid accountability.
@Hyatt
ikr?
At least in my friend’s case she was willing to listen.
She got as far as saying that Anita was not a gamer, whereupon I said something in the lines of “So? Does a bystander’s opinion become wrong just because they’re not part of the group?” and I explained to her this was a variation of the courtier’s reply.
That investigative writing Dave did with the chatlogs really helped changer her mind. She was about seriously convinced it was “faked”, until I noted “All 4,000 + pages?”
And now she’s asking for articles from this blog and Skepchick. We’re meeting this Sunday to play SSB.
The “leaderless” protests last year where I live showed exactly how a real grassroots movement deals with assholes and profiteers in their midst – shun them, denounce them and make sure they don’t co-opt you for their bullshit.
RE: Bernardo Soares
Btw, did this campaign really originate in Poland and if so, was there an organisation behind it?
IIRC, when we talked about it here, it was thought they might be folks on http://www.fiverr.com who made the signs for money, thus the weirdly seductive poses and such. Not exactly an organization, just assholes paying people to make the signs.
Denouncing and shunning assholes who are making your movement look bad is probably cultural Marxism somehow.
Aaaand… I can’t even. Going back to avoiding the internet for the rest of the week, probably.
What with this, and my pain meds being re-classified as Class 2, requiring a brand new prescription every time!!! BLEH!!!
So, now I’m taking fewer meds, to try to stretch a one month supply out to three months, and I AM HURTING. Just can’t deal right now. These people! Poor Zoe Quinn, Anita Zarkeesian, and all the others! I just can’t…
They are way stronger than I am. Props to all you wonderful women!
Bye, all.