This graphic by somewhat_brave on Reddit pretty much nails it. (Click here to see a larger version.) When #GamerGaters talk about “ethics” in journalism, this is pretty much code for “journalists shouldn’t be allowed to say anything critical of us!”
And in case you missed the all-Cat version of the manifesto, here it is again:
“GamerGate” is a joke.
That manifesto still scares me shitless.
Then it has served its purpose. The whole culture that #GG rose out of relies on fear and intimidation.
I’m grading a bunch of intro philosophy papers on ethics right now. One of their most common defects is that they wander off into rhetorical excess trying to express just how much they think something is good/bad, and end up never getting around to saying why they think that.
The writer of this manifesto has a similar problem; he gets so caught up in his grandiloquent excoriation/approbation that he never actually gets around to adding any meaningful content. The translation is wonderful because it’s all the manifesto author has managed to say.
I would like to build a satellite that would fire copies of Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” at people from orbit.
That was the most irritating and self-aggrandizing thing i have ever read in my life.
Nothing like plain English to cut through the bs.
Y’know, it actually does read better in English than it does in the original Whiny Space Alien.
I second “Politics and the English Language”. Smart as I am, I found it extremely difficult to cut through the duckspeak to the actual meaning; my brain fogged over from all the purple word-salad verbiage. But I did grok that it really comes down to “We’re gamers and you’re not, meow, ‘cuz you disagree with us which makes you suck, meow, so get your cooties out of our treehouse, meow meow meow.”
I like the roundabout way it takes to say “We want games to be free (of stuff we disagree with)” and “We want to think for ourselves (as long as everyone agrees things are okay as they are now)”.
My hat is off to whoever distilled the (atrocious) meaning of all that inane gibberish. They’re a braver soul than I am.
Originally I thought it was just whiny and pretentious, but now I can see why you would think that. The verbiage is part of the fear mongering, to make the Enemy as big and scary and possible and to cloud your judgment. Basically, it’s designed to scare and confuse you.
@Bogdan – I know it’s designed to do that, and for people who have been harassed or otherwise mistreated by this group of people it is terrifying because this is kind of like a religious chant wherein they condone their behavior. Like patting eachother on the back and saying “GO FOR IT. :D”
Ugh. I have so much to say on that manifesto but I will limit myself to two things:
1. If you want something to be considered art, it has to be subject to critique. It can be argued that the critique is inherent in making art art. You can see that in the different ways we talk about things we consider art (like music and painting) and things we don’t (like sports and hobbies). A lot of art comes from critiques like Realism being a critique of Romanticism and Postmodernism being largely made of criticism. If you don’t want video games to be critiqued like an art, they don’t get the title of art.
2. You can’t just cut out what makes a person an individual and for many people, things like gender, ethnic identity and sexual orientation are what makes them who they are. I have a hard time imaging myself as me if I were to change those aspects. Obviously, we are all humans and these differences shouldn’t divide us but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Some suggestions. “We are gamers” and “we are alive” need translations into English as well because “we are gamers-except for the Nazis, MRA’s, washed up actors and political flaks who have never played a computer game in their life” is more accurate, and “we are alive” is incomplete. The second half of that sentence should read “except for the sockpuppets”.
I disagree with one part of it, although overall I think it is excellent. Where the manifesto* states “We reject the Industry of Outrage** and it’s*** guilt-based economic model, which parades fabricated martyrs and calculated victimhood…”
– I don’t think this statement is simply that people who say they are (GG) victims are bad
– I think they reject the notion, a priori, that anyone can be a victim of GG.
My evidence for my interpretation is the number of fecking delusional comments from GGers about how it’s all about ethics and integrity. That means, in their hivemind, they see that the people negatively affected by GG deserve it. Ergo, these people are not victims at all.
They don’t see what they are doing as any time of crime. Only “crime” has victims. This is reading from the MRA psalmbook, where there aren’t rape victims because she led him on, or she’s a liar, …
* why do they keep coming up with manifestos. Haven’t we had enough manifestos from spress murdering MRAs? Guys, this is who you associate yourselves very strongly with by intersecting misogyny and having a manifesto. Think about it, you brave free thinkers.
** fecking random MRA capitalisation.
*** fecking MRAs and their inability to correctly possessively apostrophise.
Yea, manifestos on hate movements are always terrifying. They’re too useful to help “organise” people who are disorganised individuals and work in a way similar to cult rules. It creates a rallying cry that people can throw their weight behind, without actually having any face to the movement.
Sorry for the use of an ableism word in there, it should be “the number of fecking comments ungrounded in any lived reality, and easy shown to be disprovable, from GGers…”
I look at Pallygirl’s post and realized, why does that phrase “Industry of Outrage” look so suspiciously familiar? And then it hit me! Yep, there is an “industry of outrage”, an obscenely profitable one too. And what’s it so profitably outraged about! You guessed it: liberals! progressives! secular humanists! feminists! SJWs! Not to mention ebola! and Benghazi! and zomg Obama’s not an American! Of course the Right-Wing Media Outrage Machine has all sorts of people mocking it, especially the late-night comedians. GamerGate just hasn’t gotten big enough in the RWMOM to come to the attention of the late-night comedians.
And I realize I also recognize the tone of voice MRAs say “SJW” and “social justice warrior” in. It’s the same tone of voice conservatives use when saying “liberal” and “progressive”. For what is a Social Justice Warrior but a Fightin’ Liberal? (As a matter of fact, I do have a book called Fighting Liberal, written by one. I ought to dig it out of my bookcase and read it sometime.)
I think the reason they keep referring to their targets as “literally whos” isnt so much for the plausible deniability (because NO ONE is falling for that shit) but to dehumanize them to make their terrorist bullshit easier
@Dennis: yes, their use of well-worn phrases to set the attack pack onto someone else indicates they’re MO is limited to classical conditioning (in the strictly behavioural psychology sense).
Which makes them as much free thinking as Pavlov’s salivating dogs.
*their. I think my recent nap has whacked my thinking processes.
@pallygirl (speaking of which):
They can’t help spewing out these manifestos because, just like so many other conservatives here in the U.S. of A., they believe themselves radical! and revolutionary! as they take on the Evil Liberal Feminist Establishment that wants to oppress their Men’s Rights with Big Government. They probably also chuckle to themselves at the fact that “manifesto” contains the word “man” and think, “Take that, HERstory!” It’s like they’re simultaneously ’70s radicals (which is when the MRM started) and ’50s Cold Warriors crusading against Godless Communism; they’re completely unaware of the contradiction that’s so glaringly obvious to me.
Hmm, never considered that before… (Note: typo corrected. 🙂 )
Actually, it strikes me as a particular attitude very common among US conservatives and reinforced by the evangelical church: if I assert it on faith, it is by definition true. Stephen Colbert famously called it “truthiness”. I first became familiar with it when I learned about the creationist war against science back in the 1980s; it’s why, when pitted against science education in court, creationists have not won a landmark decision since the Scopes decision in 1925 (which held for 62 years, but still).
Yeah. The level of ambiguity of meaning, fuzzy logic and tribalism on display could be used to justify any action, no matter how awful. This sort of confused language is what allows horrible people to still believe they’re the good guys. This is what lets them avoid just coming out and saying “We think harassment is cool if we don’t like someone.” See also: redpillers, MRAs, Dark Enlightenment choads, et al.
Can you imagine what these people would do if they held power?
Yeah. This is the depressing part for me. Either they don’t realise how many women are going to hear extremely unpleasant echoes when Gaters say “She’s making it up for attention!” or they just don’t give a fuck. When you’re dismissing as fabricated harassments and threats online with exactly the same words that countless women have heard used against them to deny and gaslight their experiences of sexual assault, all the “GamerGate is for women in gaming! We’re not sexist!” defences ring pretty hollow.
Exactly Orwell’s point.
A correction: I should have put that last part of my summary like this: