Over the last several days, the #GamerGate hashtag on Twitter has been speckled with self-contragulatory Tweets by Gators boasting that they have “found Anita’s harasser.”
Who, this guy?
No, not Thunderf00t, although the YouTuber’s obsession with Anita Sarkeesian is getting a little out of hand.
According to the #GamerGate Internet detective squad, Anita’s real harasser is a Brazilian “journalist” who has been spamming people who’ve posted in the hashtag with links to badly written articles on his website alleging all sorts of unsavory things about game critic Anita Sarkeesian. When one of his accounts is shut down for spamming, he starts another one and spams again.
But he doesn’t just spam: the #GamerGate detectives have also posted numerous screenshots that seem to show the spammer, using several separate accounts, Tweeting graphically violent rape and death threats aimed at Sarkeesian.
If these screenshots are real and not part of some cynical frameup, and if #GamerGaters have identified the right culprit, then, congratulations, guys, you have found one of Sarkeesian’s most active harassers.
But that’s not actually what they’re taking credit for. No, if you look at their Tweets, they claim to have found “Anita’s harasser” — singular — as if there is only one of them.
@maddoxrules We even found Anita Sarkeesian's likely harasser, yo. Of all the ironies? He's a games journo. Reported to FBI. #GamerGate
— Chríss (@Chriss_m) October 16, 2014
@themojowire In fact, we traced down Anita's and (possibly) Wu's harasser and all we got was more misogynist articles + #/StopGamerGate
— Something witty. (@codeGrit) October 16, 2014
@DrBobbyFlavor @BlackIsInYo @CBCNews
And what were Anita's own people doing while #GamerGate was tracking down her harasser?
I want to know— Supperdude9 (@Supperdude9) October 15, 2014
@femfreq That's the thanks we get for tracking down your harasser for you? You're one classy lady, Anita #GamerGate http://t.co/p8ZGjWIx3L
— bubblesort1 (@bubblesort1) October 13, 2014
https://twitter.com/GARlosengen/status/522790768272875521
There are literally dozens of tweets like these, and the ulterior motives of the tweeters could not be more transparent:
1) To deflect attention away from the massive wave of harassment that Sarkeesian has been facing ever since she first announced her “Tropes in Video Games” series.
2) To deflect attention away from the harassers in their own ranks (from senders of threatening messages to “activists” like Thunderf00t and the Sarkeesian Effect duo who seem to devote themselves full-time to tearing her down).
3) To cast doubt on the reality of the death threats that shut down Sarkeesian’s scheduled talk at Utah State University this week because, hey, it was a dude in Brazil who made the threats. (Never mind that there’s no evidence of this, and that the writing style of the Utah State threat bears no relation to the awkwardly worded articles of the Brazilian journalist, for whom English is clearly a second or third language.)
4) To make journalists, particularly games journalists, look bad, though the “journalist” in question has a lot more in common with anti-Sarkeesian rumormongers than he does with any of the games journalists targeted by the #GamerGaters
The sleazeball “journalist” in question may indeed be a harasser. But for #GamerGaters it’s clear that he’s more important as a convenient scapegoat, and an excuse for them to carry on as they have, without any real self-examination or remorse for the harassment their “movement” has inspired and enabled.
If they really want to to catch “Anita’s harassers” — plural — they might start by looking in the mirror.
@beegees : ….but I feel like race is a factor in this discussion? Particularly with all the #not your shield stuff? I would also like to know how people know the guy in brazil isn’t white, though, because I haven’t seen anything on it yet.
They caught A harasser, not THE harasser. The movement is rife with them, so taking out one apple is hardly going to empty the rotten barrel.
And if you really want to know what I want from them, it is just for them all to shut the fuck up, go the hell back to their damn games (which NO ONE is trying to take away from them), and stop harassing women.
Satisfied?
Um, has anyone actually been caught yet. Have the relevant authorities investigated, has a court date been set?
Also, isn’t it-you know, unethical journalism to presume you can determine the guilt or innocence of the person you have identified before the matter has gone to trial?
So, here’s some hopeful news. I just asked my 15 yo nephew what he thought of this whole gamer gate thing, and he said, the what now? When I explained, he did that eye-rolling, exasperated teenage sigh thing and gave me to understand that gamergaters are teh stoopid.
@fit-to-flip: The issue is that I don’t see any evidence of his race at all, so it’s out of place to start making assumptions about it. This is the partly angle that #notyourshield was aiming for; the idea that “SJW”s spin their racism behind a veneer of progressiveness and white protectiveness.
Again, WHY does race matter here? Please explain.
As for the #notyourshield tweet; It’s possible that the GGs were making a racist assumption that because the journalist is from Brazil that he must be brown. Mammothers/feminists don’t have to do the same. FFS, according to Wikipedia nearly 48% of Brazil is white. I’m saving my assumptions about his race for when I actually know what it is. 🙂
Also, just because someone speaks Portuguese, and it may be vaguely similar to Spanish, doesn’t make them Hispanic.
/Lusophonic Lusophone in training.
It matters if this guy was perceived as non-white, and was targeted as the scapegoat because he is (perceived as) non-white. It’s a whole lot easier to heap blame onto someone who has already been othered. Heaping blame on a person who fits exactly within the demographic of the majority of #GGers would have been to say, “Hey, this was actually one of us.” They don’t want the harasser to be one of them. They want the harasser to be someone “other” than them.
Now, there may seem to be a complicating thing with respect to race in some South American countries, because the way we define someone as white and the way Brazilians define someone as white are not necessarily the same. This guy might identify as white. That actually doesn’t matter, though – if he is perceived as non-white and targeted based on that perception, then that is a racist act even if the dude would, personally, say he was white.
Dear GamerGomers: You just got dissed as immature. By a 15-year-old. You may now commence re-evaluating your priorities and life choices.
Or, y’know, just start feeling pretty damn foolish.
Thunderfoot isn’t “harassing” Anita Sarkeesian by any sane meaning of the word. He hasn’t threatened anyone, or doxxed anyone, or even called Anita anything other than “liar” or “con artist” (both of which aren’t slurs by any stretch of the imagination).
He may have devoted too much time to Anita, but that’s because few people in the media care about Anita’s endless stream of lies (“I’m a gamer since I was a little girl!” “Hitman rewards you for killing strippers!” “I’m not stealing any footage from sources I don’t even acknowledge!” “My criticism of games is well researched!”).
I know that its’ hard for the easily offended to understand the difference between “harassment” and “criticism”, so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. (Even though I probably shouldn’t, since she has a history of playing the victim card).
But you, David Futrelle, are not the object of Thunderfoot’s criticism. You could, if you wanted to, keep a cool head and stop calling what he does “harassment” when it’s anything but.
The fact that you don’t makes me think you’re deliberately trying to portray him as a troll at best or a potential criminal at worst.
Whiteness is a social construct and always has been. White means different things to different people. Gamergate seems to be an overwhelmingly USian and Canadian thing. In the US and Canada, a lot of people, particularly people with racist leanings, don’t really think of Latin Americans as ever being white.
Gamergaters are the ones who brought race into this. It started as a misogynistic campaign of harassment against Zoe Quinn with a side of Sarkeesian hate. With the #notyourshield sockpuppeting, they tried to use the anti-racism of “SJWs” against us.
Ironically, they are the ones using a man they perceive as non-white – whether he is or not – as a shield. Just as they did when they created POC sock accounts on Twitter. This makes the “movement” racist and it’s why it’s important to discuss race here.
Yes, if you are questioning whether his *perceived* race was a factor, then we share this question. It’s a very important point-of all the (possibly) white, Anglosphereian GGs, why was a single racially ambiguous Brazilian the only one produced? Is it by accident or design?
On the other hand, to assume that he WAS brown, to ASSUME that because he was from Latin America and not English speaking, that he HAD to be another race, is racist.
Outside of the KKK/Neo-Nazi movement every USian’s race is based on phenotype as well. As long as you can “pass” for being white, nobody’s going to break out your genealogy and comb over it with a fine tooth comb. And yes, genealogy studies have proven white Brazilians are mostly European in origin.
Or lets put it this way- one of my first boyfriends had a grandparent that was part black, yet my ex was a small, pale, light blue-eyed geek. Are you going to say that he wasn’t treated as if he was white by everybody? That he didn’t have white privilege?
Mods? can we get a clean-up in Aisle #Gamergate?
My question is whether or not Chockanga is a sock puppet created by PiatoR or an independent Tfoot supporter troll who has come to us to kindly splain that what women view as harassment is not the same as what sane people view as harassment?
Inquiring minds an all that.
I just have to say that I was waiting with bated breath for the day you guys finally lost your patience with PiatoR. I never said anything because I’m mostly a lurker and felt it was not my place but ooooof he bugged me. He reminded me of one of those smarter-than-thou people who want to start arguments over really dumb things all the time. There is nothing wrong with correcting people if they are wrong but some people seem to just hang around *waiting* for the moment they can jump in with “Actually…bla bla bla”.
As for the Tfoot supporter, there are many of them unfortunately so its probably just some random asshole.
@beegees
I think race or at least nationality is indeed a factor. There are countless screenshots of people harassing and threatening Anita, Zoe, and others that obviously come from the white dude gamer brigade. Nobody pulls these out and waves them around “See! Hey! This guy! HE is the problem!”. They don’t do that, in part, because dude in question might as well be a carbon copy of themselves. They find someone they can sufficiently other and suddenly they are out for blood. I think that matters. Plus, it seems obvious that whoever wrote the Mark Lepine threat was a USian, but you don’t see that stopping any of them from wanting to pin it all on Brazillian dude.
I think a lot of people simply chose not to interact with P based on past experience with them at other blogs over the years. That was my choice. Limit the interaction and wait to see if they would self destruct yet again.
If it weren’t for David and this blog I would not know who most of these he man woman hater club member were.
@ boobury
I thought he was an annoying, patronizing shithead with a tendency to troll when things aren’t going his way from day one, so lack of patience fistbump?
It’s really super weird to run into names I know because of the comments section on this blog in the broader internet and know how trolly they are because of those past experiences. And also it’s kinda gross that they keep butting in to my internet spaces. So many of them read the same shit I do that it’s scary.
Although I hadn’t run into P before, and I’m of the opinion he didn’t even stick around long enough to start up an argument, he just did a weird drive-by. I’m kind of imagining he’s all back at his computer snickering to himself about how he “worked those womenz up”… Tbf, I think that about most trolls.
Keep in mind that a) Brazilian surveys about race are usually based on self-identification (so it’ll tend to skew towards the “white” end of the spectrum as people try to accrue as much white privilege as they can) and many Brazilians are averse to racial identification (last survey I saw had a significant portion of the population identify as “green”).
@beegees
The only thing that matters in this is the Brazilian guy’s perceived race. Because, and I don’t think you’ll disagree with this, race is 100% about perception. If #GGers wanted to find someone who is “other” enough that white North American #GGers can claim, “This guy is NOT one of us, we are NOT involved in harassment,” someone from Brazil is as good of a target as any. All that matters if if #GGers think he is non-white, so that they can scapegoat someone who isn’t part of their demographic. The reality is actually unimportant.
I don’t know what your boyfriend has to do with this.
Sorry for the necro, people, but Kotaku covered some more of this particular harasser and death threat sender:
http://kotaku.com/the-anita-sarkeesian-hater-that-everyone-hates-1658494441
Just checkign just checking
he still doing the same stuff, so nothing changed.
But he is now hunting more brazilians related game sites who talks about women, black people, gay people and trans people on whatever game website.
nice job tracking him down GG, thanks for nothing.