GamerGaters like to loudly profess that they oppose harassment. They also like to claim that most if not all of the harassment that has occurred comes from people that aren’t “real” GamerGaters.
So what do GamerGaters do when they’re confronted with evidence that someone in their ranks — not an anonymous nobody but someone with some standing in their community — is harassing someone?
Well yesterday we had an opportunity to see just that. I wrote about a couple of instances of sexual harassment from a GamerGater known as Cameralady.
While not as famous as GamerGate celebs like Milo Yiannopoulos or InternetAristocrat or, you know, Adam Baldwin, Cameralady is, at least in Gamergate circles, a bit of a player. She was an early and especially eager opponent of Zoe Quinn, and devoted a great deal of time and energy to digging up dirt on Quinn and others. Many of her “findings” made it into GamerGate propaganda on the web and in assorted YouTube videos.
And her sexual harassment was about as blatant as it gets. In the midst of an argument on Twitter, she tweeted a crude sexual come-on to a woman who opposes GamerGate, and was immediately told to get lost. A week later, in the midst of another Twitter argument, she Tweeted another crude come-on to the same woman. The evidence was as plain as day, and I included it all in my post.
So what happened after I posted a link to my post in the #GamerGate hashtag on Twitter? Did other GamerGaters call her out on her behavior?
Well, no. Instead I was besieged by dozens — hundreds? — of tweets from GamerGaters who assured me that the harassment wasn’t harassment at all.
The tone of the discussion was set early on by Cameralady herself, who insisted that her harassment was simple “flirtation” and that anyone who thought otherwise was some sort of anti-sex puritan prude.
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/524967395715477504
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/524968506480410624
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/524969608043044864
I’m not exactly sure how that would absolve her for her bad behavior. If you shoot someone and you miss, you’ve still committed a crime. If you crudely proposition someone who earlier told you to get lost and they for some reason don’t hear you, well, same thing. Also, the woman she harassed did in fact see her tweet.
She also tried to explain that what she was doing really was flirting, and that I didn’t understand because I’m not a lesbian.
@The_Camera_Girl @DavidFutrelle So it's okay to sexually harass people because you've had sex with other women?
— BlackFish (@BlackFish775) October 22, 2014
Later, she tried another excuse.
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/525087005823483904
Apparently she sends crude sexual comments to so many women she can’t keep track!
Other GamerGaters did their best to minimize, deny and deflect.
@The_Camera_Girl @alexvdl0 @DavidFutrelle I think hes jealous
— SteamPunk_Devil (@SteamPunkDevil_) October 22, 2014
Even those who accepted that what had happened was harassment did their best to change the subject.
https://twitter.com/DanielGauss/status/524965533234393088
https://twitter.com/DanielGauss/status/524970974744039424
But if you really want a sense of the sheer horror of dealing with GamerGaters on Twitter, well, you’re just going to have to jump headlong into the middle of it.
Here you can see all of the responses to my Tweet linking to my post. Here you will encounter every type of deflection known to humankind, as you scroll downward through an argument that never seems to end.
Witness the terror of endless arguments with people who ask for proof that is already in the article they are ostensibly discussing! Hear the demands for screenshots that have already been given to them!
I never know if they’re really this obtuse, or if they’re just screwing with me.
It reminds me a lot of this classic Monty Python sketch. The only difference is that the Monty Python sketch is over in six minutes, while Twitter never ends.
OH, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
…Is there any end to this False Equivalence bullshit…?
The journalist? What journalist? Their position? What position? How? Do these people even know what fake facts they are even using as their fig leaves?
Any journalist they happen to dislike, of course. “Abuse” is just code for “saying anything that we don’t like, up to and including giving games we like bad reviews and ones we don’t like good ones.”
@vaiyt
I came this close to getting a #Git to denounce himself as fringe yesterday – he was foaming on about No True #GamerGater so I linked to his own posts on the same site – “[Rape] is always the men’s fault, even if both parties are sober and consenting” and “If by “Female on male assault” you mean non-consensual sex, then the reason for that 0.2% figure is because the numbers have been modified by feminists” (actual quotes) – but he turned tail and ran. Bah. =P
@damselindetech
HEAR FUCKING HEAR.
I keep seeing people say that anti-GGs are harassing the other side but I never see any proof. Not to mention that even if they had screenshots I would be so skeptical of them since they have been urging people to sockpuppet from the very beginning.
Oh, and thank you Myoo, for posting that video. Youtube hates me and always posts playlists for me these days.
I saw another idiot, I forget where, attempting to prove (it’s not about) Zoe Quinn doxed people. Let’s see, we should take your word for it that Zoe doxed people or we should look at multiple pieces of evidence showing you doxed people. Only way to think people are this stupid is not to be in the same room as them.
Or, you know, projection.
@booburry
I’m going to be singing that all day. Awesome.
RE journamalism, youd think one of these clowns would at least try and go to j-school. But these people are so pathetically superfluous that they cant even muster a blog post. The only thing they know how to do is bully and harass, they can’t even review any content much less create it.
Assholes.
Please! at this stage the goalposts are switching so damn fast that you could get whiplash from trying to keep up. Maybe if they keep it up, some sort of singularity will be reached and they will all be sucked into some kind of digital vortex via their
computer screens.
Exactly. Chris Kluwe hasn’t been doxxed, not because he isn’t outspoken against gamergate, but because he isn’t perceived as someone they can effectively victimize. He just isn’t the right kind of target. This all started on 4chan, and that seems to be what they’re all about: who is a target.
There’s a tiny grain of truth in some of the GG objections, in that some gaters (heck, maybe even most of them) genuinely don’t participate in or even support the anti-women attacks. But there are two problems with that:
One: it’s apparent that the lower limit for “policing their own” is outright threats of violence and blatant doxxing. At best. Sustained systemic harrassment of women gets a pass (as made clear in this post), because it’s more important for gaters to stick together than to collectively act like decent people.
Two, and more importantly: it doesn’t even matter how nice the gaters are. Channers started the attack campaign before the hashtag. Channers claimed the hashtag, and used it as part of their attack campaign.
It doesn’t matter who uses the hashtag now; it represents their campaign and always will, no matter what is being said under its banner. And channers are obviously watching it like a hawk, watching for the signal to spring into action.
#gamergate is the painting laser for the *chan cruise missile. It marks the target and they rush in for the kill.
Gaters don’t even have to pull the trigger themselves; if a target is marked, the missile will fire all on its own. And no matter their protestations, they are complicit in the damage that results.
@booburry @myoo Thank you – Jonathan Mann makes me happy and reminds me there are more good people in the world than bad. So do all of you guys. *sniff*
Fucking elevatorgate is back in the twitterstream. Assholes.
When I was in HS games were a safe space away from these people. Now they have come in the living room and put their feet up on the coffee table. Half of me never wants to play games again, but for now the other half (which says that these people are never kicking me out of anywhere ever again) is winning.
I’m not so sure. Women are quite capable of being just as nasty as men are — though they often choose different approaches. So the surprise is really about using the exact same approach rather than the nastiness itself.
There’s also the “more catholic than the pope” phenomenon to bear in mind. Generally I’d call it showing off, that you can be more awful than the awful people in the group you’ve decided to join, to show that you’re really just like them. (Leaving aside the question of why on earth anyone would want to be associated with that group in the first place.)
Fuck this shit. First amendment cannot possibly cover incitement to violence, and twitter is being used to disseminate this. I was never a 1st amendment absolutist but now it’s time for the authorities to get involved wholesale. Good job assholes, youve ruined it for everybody.
Having and respecting boundaries? Soooo sex-negative.
Look, it is impossible to believe these people are as stupid or leaderless as they pretend. They’ve taken the technology of Anonymous and turned it to serve reactionary politics, the same way the Tea Party abused Alinsky’s techniques while using his name to smear the opposition. These clowns pose a threat to the future of the internet as a political tool. If we want to have any use out of it, we need a solution to this nonsense fast.
I really have to emphasize that cameralady’s “real” gender is a complete red herring, just like her claim to autism. This behavior is not acceptable if it comes from a man, and it is not acceptable if it comes from someone who is not a man. If a woman popped up in videos on youtube and said, “I am cameralady, and here’s proof that I am autistic,” that would not in any way cancel out her behavior.
Speculating on how she can’t possible be a woman because of reasons or how she’s probably faking autism obfuscates the real problem, which is her behavior. She could be a woman, and a lesbian, and autistic, and everything she says she is, and still be an asshole, and focusing on whether or not she is really a woman misdirects and deflects the criticism.
I did. Their claims to fight for journalistic integrity were and are completely phony.
Twitter is complicit in abuse. Abuse drives up Twitter usage and accounts, which is all they care for. If they cared about abuse, they’d have implemented an invisible block feature, but then abusers would eventually find themselves cut off from their victims and give up. They know victims are much more likely to stay on Twitter out of necessity.
Twitter is complicit in abuse.
Fucking developers of HTTP knew that the potential of malicious use was vast and built many many safeguards. Fecesbook and all its followers are the IT equivalent of Enron.
Argh! Of COURSE it is, it’s no doubt what got many of them all upset in the first place.
Seconding the people here re: Camera Lady is simply a nasty piece of work, regardless of anything else.
I really have to emphasize that cameralady’s “real” gender is a complete red herring
See also, Christian Weston Chandler. Which does, in fact, make this person’s gender semi-relevant because nobody would put up with her bullshit half as long if she were a man. Which, to be clear, is a good thing.
@Policy of Madness
Agreed for the most part, but so many assholes have lied (by their own admission) about being on the spectrum as an excuse for their assholery that a lot of people have started conflating the two, resulting in “Autistic” being a common go-to insult… So, while it is irrelevant in regards to her behaviour, the possibility of furthering the untrue stereotype and the use of “Autistic” as an insult still makes me uncomfortable.
That is utter nonsense.
I don’t understand. Who is using “autistic” as an insult? How is the untrue stereotype (which is both untrue and a stereotype, I totally agree) being furthered?