It’s been a pretty shitty week. I don’t think I need to explain why. So here’s something to help take the edge off — a new meme featuring a phrase anyone who’s ever said anything critical of GamerGate has heard, again and again: “Actually, it’s about ethics in games journalism.”
This new meme, which started really taking off today on Twitter and Tumblr, seems to be becoming the new “not all men.” Which makes sense: “Not all men” is to mansplaining what “Actually … ” is to Gatersplaining.
Here are some of my favorites, taken from Twitter and from the new Tumblr blog titled, naturally, Actually … it’s about ethics in games journalism.
I made one myself out of an old #NotAllMen meme:
I made one! #ActuallyItsAboutEthicsInGameJournalism #GamerGate #Gamersplaining pic.twitter.com/NQK1F6Myga
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) October 24, 2014
This blog, meanwhile, uses the phrase as a caption for New Yorker cartoons.
And then there’s this Tweet.
https://twitter.com/alqaeda/status/524985414973935616
Thank you, anonymous meme-makers, and whoever came up with this in the first place! We needed this.
Hell, I’ll throw in my version https://imgflip.com/i/dgxfp
@proxieme:
The whole “conflict of interest” thing about people in the industry kind of undercuts one of their main aims. A lot of the Gaters want to go back to the days where the gaming press was simply enthusiast press (Yay! Gaming is awesome! Gamers are awesome! Let’s write about how amazing and great our hobby is!) rather than somewhat serious journalism with a critical eye – as we’ve seen with the concerted campaigns against anybody seen to criticise gaming culture. Firstly *that* runs directly counter to their claims about pushing for greater journalistic integrity, and secondly, when gaming press was enthusiast press it *was* common practice for the devs and writers to be pally, because without the weight of a “real” publication behind them a lot of the independent games journos had to rely on personal connections for access.
@kt:
Yeah. The analogy I like to use is if I randomly shoved a stranger on the street all of a sudden, and 20 people around me called me an asshole for doing it, that doesn’t make those 20 people a “side” – it just means they’re people who don’t think others should be acting like assholes. But large slabs of GG are either convinced that all media coverage is brainwashed by the SJW conspiracy or that there’s a mass PR campaign going on to defeat them, when really the media coverage is covering the effects of GG and not paying much mind to their stated aims. Given that their stated aims are both vague and not reflective of the impact they’ve had, that sounds like a reasonable way to cover the whole shitstorm.
Oh fucking hell. I really shouldn’t have read the comments on that Scalzi post.
I wonder if this is going to become the next talking point for the Gators: “Actually, it’s about personal accountability”. Gamergate: Alternate Theory
I’m not even entertaining that premise from someone defending a movement largely consisting of anonymous trollmobs, no matter how lengthy, politely worded (Sea Lion!) and Gish Gallop-y the post.
@strivingally
Ugh, I’ve seen that one before. Individual responsibility in this case only applies to Zoe Quinn and anyone else that’s against GamerGate, apparently.
Mra version: “Actually, it’s about helping men!”
MGTOW version: “Actually, it’s about men choosing not to get married!”
RedPill version: “Actually, it’s about self-improvement!”
It is a truth universally accepted that a single man who plays games and harasses women for having opinions on his games must be in want of ethics in journalism.
Shaenon that comic was excellent
An, now it’s about individual developers and journalists… who all happen to be women, critics of GamerGate, or both.
And that still doesn’t explain the obsession with Anita Sarkeesian.
@strivingally:
Yeah, I’m someone who constantly tries to find the little glimmer of good in someone/something, but I think I’m fucking done trying to do so for GG.
Time for scones and frufru coffee 😀
http://www.manfeels-park.com/comic/actually/
It all starts in a dark sleazy hotel, Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian cackle as they finish the last touches on their plan to ruin videogames for Men and start their Lesbian Feminist Dystopia.
To promote their work, Zoe purposely creates mean and nasty posts on Wizardchan so she can tell everyone she is being persecuted, and then everyone will want to play her game because reasons. Wizardchan is actually a front for the Feminist Cabal, who operate from their secret military base in Diego Garcia.
Now the game gains popularity as innocent citizens are duped into playing “Depression Quest”, a game which features jokes about rising male suicide rates, and a video clip in which Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian kick a male puppy back and forth.
This puppy was secretly trained by the Reptilian Illuminati to infiltrate the Feminazi Overlords, a rival group to the Feminist Cabal, who have a secret military base in Antarctica. The Feminazi Overlords are a radical feminist sect created by Adolf Hitler to bring back his Second Coming so he can rain doom upon all who dwell in this docile domain.
The puppy is captured by the CIA and is arrested for impersonating Bigfoot. The FBI try to kidnap the puppy and set fire to the CIA Headquarters. However, the puppy escapes and survives as a prostitute for 3 years in Mexico.
Then, the puppy is captured by the Feminist Cabal, where he learns of their true purpose to take over the world.
The Cabal is run by three regal sisters (Tammy, Tina and Tonsils), who are the daughters of their Tiefling mother, Rebecca, who is head of the Feminazi Overlords.
Rebecca is married to a man named Carl, who is secretly a double agent for the Virus Corporation.
The Virus Corporation is a secret organisation dedicated to spreading chaos, through utilizing distortions in the ley lines that surround the earth. Ley lines are alignments of significant places in the world; think of it as an energy grid. They are directly to blame for the Gulf War and Family Guy.
Carl has an ex-wife named Deborah; Deborah and Carl had a son together that they named Jacob.
Jacob was Zoe’s Boyfriend, but then discovers she secretly handed out Sex to five gaming journalists so that they would write good reviews of her game, thus furthering her plan of driving all Men to commit suicide.
The names of these men are: Layton, Beaumont, Edwin, Kaleb, and Erskine.
Layton lives in New South Wales, Australia. He was the leader of a Hare Krishna sect dedicated to overflowing the universe with bunnies; his Girlfriend is Tina, and this was his way of getting back at her.
Beaumont is a Gay Canadian Model who is a member of The Gay Agenda, and he was told he was sent on a mission to impregnate Zoe with the seed of the Antichrist, so that the Gays can conquer the world. This was a lie; his boss was a man named Elmo, who has ties with Al Qaeda and was directly responsible for the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks. However Elmo had actually been pressured into this by a man calling himself Lyndon LaRouche, with the promise that he was ‘doing God’s work’, Lyndon in turn only did this because of The Bilderburger Group.
The Bilderburger Group helped cause the Holocaust by writing The Elders of Zion so that Nazis would go insane and kill Jews so that The Bilderburger Group could complain of persecution, thus giving them control of the world somehow. But actually the Nazis were Space Goblins and the Holocaust totally didn’t happen, but at the same time the holocaust did happen because Elf Goats Ate Hitler’s Brain back during the Irish Potato Famine.
Edwin is a farmer.
Kaleb holds the Sixth Key of Chaos forged in the heart of Eldetharr, as a way of appeasement towards the Dwarven God Vargtol, as soon shall be the way when all eight keys are realigned in the mystical land of New Zealand.
Erskine was a member of a grassroots movement who sensibly ran away when it became clear that this movement could not rid itself of attention-seeking assholes, con-men and profiteers feeding off the insecurities of a certain group of people who were encouraged to form an angry mob based on what in truth basically amounted to “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, their voices drowned out by a ‘vocal minority’ that also does not exist and if you say it exists one more time I will seriously murder you, but seriously, all those death threats were made by Zoe Quinn herself so she could claim she was being like totally persecuted and that is why she deserves to die. I totally don’t support death threats by the way, and I will fucking murder you if you say I do.
Jacob threatens to expose the Cabal, so Zoe shoots down his plane — MH370.
The MH370 crashes on Diego Garcia and The Feminist Cabal sends the surviving males to their breeding camps to be ‘milked’ and subsequently slaughtered, and forces the surviving women
One of the surviving Women of the Plane crash turns out to be a highly intelligent and skilled woman named Eris joins the team.
Meanwhile, Jacob joins up with the Male Survivors of the plane crash and plan a breakout. The most useful survivors are Mark, a male rape victim who was forced into the war, lost custody of his children and was falsely accused of assasinating the President, all due to the feminists; then there is Shaun, who has struggled to survive SEVEN WHOLE MONTHS without sex.
Eris offers the gift of a golden apple to the three sisters, saying it belongs to the most beautiful one.
The three sisters argue over who is the most beautiful and the cabal falls into chaos.
The Male plane-crash survivors take advantage of the chaos and stage a breakout. Jacob manages to hack a computer and, posting under a pseudonym, warns the world about Zoe Quinn’s ties to terrorist organisations, her sluttishness, and her manipulative schemes. But mostly her sluttishness.
Rebecca boards a plane to go to Diego Garcia, and Carl takes advantage of the situation and takes over the Feminazi Overlords, and thus they become a splinter group of The Virus Corporation. Carl has heard that a broken Merkaba is buried underneath the Diego Garcia island and thus the Virus Corporation heads there, not knowing that at that very moment the puppy has called his Reptilian masters to that very spot, and thus a great war shall begin between all these various groups!
The Feminist Cabal! The Reptilian Illuminati! The Gay Agenda! The Feminazi Overlords! The Virus Corporation! The FBI! THE CIA! the male plane crash survivors! bigfoot!
so, what happens next? I’ll tell you…
EAT A DICKS YOU FUCKERS!!!!
@vaiyt
She said words. About games as a medium. That weren’t effusively positive.
Just kidding.
It’s actually about ethics in games journalism.
Slacktivist made some fun contributions.