If you search Google for “Anita Sarkeesian” and “not a gamer” or “not a real gamer” you’ll find links to hundreds of angry gamer tirades against the gaming critic for allegedly not knowing what she’s talking about, among them several videos devoted to proving her “not a real gamer,” an article declaring her “the worst thing to happen to videogames since Sonic ‘06,” and an Encylopedia Dramatica entry that declares her to be, among other things, “a feminazi bitch and “pop culture critic” with whore earrings” as well as “a filthy Jew and a white race traitor [with] sandn*gger parents.”
Given this obvious antipathy towards people who aren’t gamers but who still have opinions about gaming, you might not expect the #GamerGate masses to embrace putative allies who who admit they’ve never played games. Yet #GamerGaters have not only welcome but lionized neo-con faux feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, Breitbart “journalist” Milo Yiannopoulos and PUA blogger/lawyer/juice marketer Mike Cernovich, a #GamerGate crusader who recently offered to fight entrepreneur Anil Dash in order to prove something or other about bullying. (Yeah, I don’t get it either.)
Well, it turns out that not only are Yiannopoulos and Cernovich not gamers, but before their emergence as #GamerGate celebrities both of them had histories as nerd-baiting gamer haters and bullies. Matt Binder — yep, the guy from The Majority Report with Sam Seder who recently gave Paul Elam a drubbing in a YouTube debate — has been poking around in the Twitter histories of both men, and has uncovered some pretty foul stuff from both.
I mean, it’s not news that these guys are assholes, but some of what Binder found might shock their new #GamerGater friends.
Let’s start with Milo Yiannopoulos, nerd baiter:
#gamergate pic.twitter.com/4iEBRorSCu
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 20, 2014
wow he really respects the people in #gamergate pic.twitter.com/ayCB7Un2Ui
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 20, 2014
You can find more examples in this handy Storify: The GamerGate-supporting journalist who hates gamers
But it’s Mike Cernovich who has the truly nasty past, attacking not only “nerds” but fat people, trans women and rape victims.
Here’s his take on “gaming media,” in a Tweet from August of this year:
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/505066536873521152
But that’s just scratching the surface. This alleged opponent of bullying turns out to be quite the bully on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/384517684764762112
For many more examples, including Cernovich’s repellent thoughts on murder, see @MattBinder reveals the truth about #GamerGate’s anti-bullying hero Mike Cernovich with his own tweets.
Meanwhile, Sam Biddle — the Gawker writer who recently became a target of #GamerGaters after posting nerd-baiting comments about gamers similar to those posted by Yiannopoulos and Cernovich — offers his take on The D-List Right-Wingers Who’ve Turned Gamergate Into Their Loser Army in a post titled, er, The D-List Right-Wingers Who’ve Turned Gamergate Into Their Loser Army.
“b) calling her Neo-Nazi. Because someone decided her tattoo of the recycling symbol for a swastika.”
Probably trying to project away Weev and his literal swastika tattoo.
@tinyorc: from the people who were approvingly quoting weev, a *literal nazi*, when he came out with pro-GG sentiments?
Words don’t mean anything, everything’s a false flag, and there are No True Scotsmen in GamerGate.
Ninja’d by a Ranger!
I saw that too. I was ready to stop reading his list of “things about me” by #3, but I’m glad I kept reading to the end. #30 (of 31) is a gem. “I hate talking about myself.”
Clearly not.
@ aghostfart – People get angry when their favourite authors and books are criticised. I’ve even heard people defend the fascist fantasies of E E “Doc” Smith.
P Z Myers has just put up several links that show exactly how misogynist GamerGaters are
The Bad Apples of #GamerGate
The He-Man #gamergate-rs Club
#FtBullies and #Gamergate: A Love Story
@schwadevivre In that third link – gamerghazi. That’s genius. I’d been calling it “the hashtag campaign” when taking people to task at Polygon, but I’m gonna take that name. (I hate tacking “-gate” onto something. I won’t enumerate the idiocies of the practice here because I don’t want to bore ya’ll.)
Hang on. Don’t these guys hate Anita Sarkeesian because they think she said bad things about their precious games (she didn’t, she plays them too), didn’t they fool Intel into pulling sponsorship of Gamasutra because they wrote an article suggesting they weren’t the only people who play games anymore? (traumatizing I know)
Don’t they hate Cracked, Vice, Kotaku, Polygon and probably now the New York Times because they gave negative coverage to their little feminist-hatin’ cargo cult?
So…It’s ok to call them pathetic cheeto encrusted virgins who smell of smegma, sweat and soured mountain dew as long as you loathe both feminism and social justice?
They won’t act civilized to women who share their hobbies but they’ll buddy up with the kind of sadistic creeps who used to cram them into lockers back in high school. I always suspected that a vanishingly small self esteem lay at the heart of this movement, now I know.
This is so totally about corruption in journalism!
Since Jack Thomson is mentioned here, I believe it’s time for a bad argument to die.
One thing I keep seeing in those types of discussions is how Anita Sarkeesian is just like Jack Thomson. After a bit of thinking I have concluded that this argument is wrong. Here’s why:
1) Jack Thomson claims that violent video games cause violence and should be banned. Anita claims that video games trivialize sexism and that this trend is a worrysome one. There is a big difference between the two.
2) There is a big difference between violence and sexism; Violence is a state of action and can easily be observed and measured. Sexism on the other hand is a state of being which is highly subjective and very often insidious.
3) As a consequence of (2) Jack Thomson’s claims can be demonstrated to be false (the rise of violent video games actually coincides with a decrease in violent crimes)
4) Again, as a concequence of (2), Anita’s claims can be demonstrated to be true. There IS a raise of sexist attitudes and an increase in female sexualization within the medium of video games.
5) Unlike Jack Thomson Anita Sarkeesian never attempts to claim a “causal” relationship between sexism in video games and sexism in real life. Rather, she claims that sexism in video games excarcebate already present sexist attitudes.
So, yeah, comparing Anita Sarkeesian to Jack Thomson is really moronic…
…GOD, I THINK I’VE BEEN LURKING THIS PLACE FOR FAR TOO LONG!
And Rolling Stones. And the Guardian. And Charlie Brooker.
It’s a long list. I wonder which newspapers or websites are giving GamerGate a positive coverage.
Last time I checked it was only AVFM. In other words, GamerGate is an epic fail.
This is pretty funny, but you’ll have to bear with me:
My husband and I are currently playing Borderlands: The Presequel (Athena and Wilhelm, w00t) and had a tangential interaction with Mr Torgue (my favorite character in the entire series).
Our mission for/not for him ended characteristically for him:
This is pretty funny, but you’ll have to bear with me:
My husband and I are currently playing Borderlands: The Presequel (Athena and Wilhelm, w00t) and had a tangential interaction with Mr Torgue (my favorite character in the entire series).
Our mission for/not for him ended characteristically for him:
http://youtu.be/lG_VItFUEEI
If you don’t want to watch until the end: he asks a woman for a date, she says that she doesn’t like guys, and he replies, “AH! FRIENDZONED!” but since this whole game is a flashback, present-day Torgue cuts in with, “I’D LIKE TO EXPLAIN. I WAS IN A DARK PLACE BACK THEN AND I NOW KNOW THAT ‘FRIENDZONING’ IS AN IMAGINARY MISOGYNISTIC WAY OF LOOKING AT RELATIONSHIPS!”
Anyway, I Googled “Torgue Friendzoned” to find the clip.
It was the first result.
The second result?
People kvetching, “What does Torgue being a feminist add to the game?!” and calling the game dev an “SJW”.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/783734-borderlands-the-pre-sequel/70323057
Winners.
Sorry about the double half-post.
#Gaters keep trying to discredit Anita Sarkeesian’s “gamer cred” in order to paint her as another know-nothing trying to get video games banned out of prejudice. They can’t accept she likes video games and that’s the reason she’s raising awareness about problems in the industry.
I thought I was an average cis male, but after seeing Mike C’s tweets I’m in love. His foul manliness is too much for me. I’m sure he has that goat-like smell all alpha males exude. Just thinking about him makes my heart flutter. Oh, sorry, that was just gas.
LOL you’re right David; Cernovich is a bully who would probably mock #gamergaters if he didn’t see them as a ticket to becoming internet famous.
I’m preparing an article about Cernovich for my own site; I’ll link to it here once it’s published. I’m holding it because Zoe Quinn says she wants to talk to me; maybe I can get a quote or interview from her for the article.
Anyway very exciting stuff here. Fun fact: Cernovich uses a silverback gorilla for his emblem on his current web site. Did you know gorillas have tiny penises? It’s true. Check out this guardian article, where a very men’s rightsy reader asks:
[blockquote]Dear Carole, Why are women so obsessed with the size of a man’s cock – wanting ones 6 inches and over and kicking others aside when they really should be concentrating on the emotional connection and love being shared, putting the size of the man’s cock right out of her mind?[/blockquote]
The evolutionary biology answer may surprise you! Apparently animals with big balls and dicks have them for the purpose of sexual selection; silverback gorillas have a low sperm count and tiny penis because there’s no male competition in their harem. Chimps on the other hand have larger penises and testicles because they need to compete with other male chimps to get to the ladies.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/06/women-penis-size (Source; ie guardian article I just mentioned)
Makes you wonder if Cernovich is compensating for something, doesn’t it? 😀
The comparisons to the far right in the US just keep on coming. This is like the time that they accused Bill Clinton of having Vince Foster murdered. They’re the true believers for whom no evidence is necessary.
Are there any theories about Zoe Quinn being to blame for Ebola yet?
19:38 on the 1st August: “Some men wanna sell a few books, make the NYT bestseller list. I don’t give a shit about any of that. I want to create an army.”
Says it all really.
http://six.tweettunnel.com/reverse3.php?ga=0&b=y&tz=0&id=358545917&pn=24
This is serious. The man is more organised than the average troll. You could legitimately be seeing the birth of the next big hate organisation.
Former NFL player Chris Kluwe sums these guys up pretty well in a truly epic takedown:
[quote]The real gamers, both men and women, look at your frantic rantings about “ethics in videogame journalism,” and they shake their heads sadly, wondering how you could get sucked in by some script-kiddie /b/tards and conspiracy-nut celebrities gleefully using you as a smokescreen for misogynistic hate.[quote]
https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6
The whole thing is long and full of NSFW language, but definitely worth a read.
proxienne that was great hahahah.
And re this post, good work to whoever uncovered this. These people are so gross.
Who would have thought this dude would turn out to be a nerd-baiting douchebag?
Indeed. It is literally inexplicable.
Jalfrezi Bizarro, he’s a moron with delusions of grandeur. The gravity of your concern is unjustified.
Do these people live in Mars and glean all their information on Earth women from hentai?
How have they [i]not[/i] gloriously imploded from all of these glaring contradictions and ironies yet?
GamerGate is stuck in this perpetual state of almost implosion and has been for quite a while now, much like a moldy peach with a meat thermometer sitting precariously above it ready to fall down and impale it at any moment. I STILL wish I could laugh about it :/.