Like their identical cousins the Men’s Rights Activists, GamerGaters have a bizarre fondness for terrible graphics and “memes” and collages of blurry screenshots designed – if that’s the word for it – to spread their sometimes incomprehensible propaganda.
The graphic above, found on Twitter, is my favorite GamerGate graphic so far, I think, and not only because it looks like a famous old Windows screensaver gone wrong. No, this little graphic wins my heart because it so baldly, if inadvertently, reveals the sheer ridiculous hypocrisy of GamerGaters claims of victimhood, and the intellectual bankruptcy of their #NotYourShield campaign.
In the graphic, as you can see, GamerGate’s mascot Vivian James, the perpetually petulant girl gamer who wants to do nothing but game, tries to fend off an array of accusations and epithets swirling around her. “Cis White Male,” “Misogynist,” “Rapist,” “KKK,” “MRA.”
But Vivian James can’t be any of those things, apparently, because she’s a GIRL. NOT YOUR SHIELD!
While it’s certainly true that Vivian James is not a cis white male, or a rapist or a member of the KKK, it’s also true that she is COMPLETELY IMAGINARY.
Unlike all those GamerGaters who are indeed cis white males, misogynists, rapists, nazis and MRAs.
If you’re trying to change the perception that your movement is made up of a bunch of entitled (and, FWIW, mostly white) manchildren who feel threatened by real women with opinions different from their own, you might want to think twice about using a manic pixel dream girl whose slogan is “shut up and play” as your, yep, shield.
Oh, I know, there are real women involved in GamerGate. But aside from Vivian James and the non-gaming “based mom” Christina Hoff Sommers, and perhaps our friend Cameralady, it’s doubtful even most GamerGaters could name more than one or two, if that.
EDIT: As several people on Twitter have reminded me, I forgot to mention one of the most creepy things about Vivian J. — the color scheme of her sweater is apparently a reference to a really creepy, rapey meme called “piccolo dick.” Which you can read about here, if for whatever reason you want to.
Also: the phrase “manic pixel dream girl,” a reference to the manic pixie dream girl trope, popped into my head partway through writing this. But after posting this I decided to google it to see if anyone else had used the phrase — it seems like a pretty obvious one. And indeed people have. Here’s a cartoon called Manic Pixel Dream Girl, an account of growing up as a female video gamer.
@wordsp1nner
We are Quilters.
We are alive.
(We should totally do a fabric swap!)
@Chevrolet,
I barely have any fabric. I just finished my first top, so…
I agree with AlexNCC! We should adopt Vivian! 🙂
🙁 yes, it does. In my experience, it’s usually men/boys doing it to women/girls in hobbies that are or are perceived to be ‘manly’ or dominated by men/boys
*the sound of a helicoptor pierces the silence, and suddenly SJWs in commando gear burst through the window*
“Vivian! We’re here to rescue you, come with us!”
“The hell? Who the fuck are you? I just want to play video games!”
“We know, that’s why we’re here. Take a look at this”
*Pulls out a crumpled sheet of paper and holds it out*
“… What? I… what the fuck? I look like a blow-up doll from Wind Waker.”
“If you want to leave a movement that makes ‘art’ like this, then come with us.”
“I don’t know, give me three good reasons.”
“One: We’ll let you play video games and not use you as a shield to deflect accusations of bigotry. Two: We’ll respect you as a person, and if in the future you have an opinion of games other than “it’s fine the way it is, I don’t want any heros other than beefy white space marines,” we’ll let you express that opinion.”
“Umm… ok, what’s the third?”
“We won’t draw you into porn.”
“… Ok, let’s go.”
@zennurse
“Mad” and “madness” are reclaimed words to some people, like myself, who have mental disorders and want to dispel the stigma. Mad people are treated extremely poorly by most health care systems. The mistreatment of mad people and the outright murder by neglect of mad people is not at all uncommon, and it’s outrageous but few people care. Because: mad, after all.
Identifying as mad is (for at least some) an attempt to get rid of this stigma and claim some basic rights to human dignity and autonomy. You know, as if we are people or something.
Just something I thought you should know.
Honestly maybe these people creating a fictional ecosystem for themselves is for the best.
Poor Vivian James.
I know she’s just a fictional cartoon character, but I can’t help think she must be feeling so sad right now.
She’s sad because the trolls who created her are spending so much time fighting their misguided astroturfing campaign for ethical journalism that nobody has time to play videogames with her.
Someone should draw a her looking sad and holding a #StopGamerGate2014 banner.
Hahaha so as a kid I assumed that because Kirby spat back out stars when he swallowed things, he must be hyper-compressing them until they underwent nuclear fusion, so he should be able to swallow a huge amount since everything would crush down to almost nothing.
Man, I was a nerdy kid.
@Merus
Elizabeth Simins also made this (you can still buy the shirt)
http://gamingsfeministilluminati.com/
@M the SJR
So, did I understand you right: they have concocted a fictitious woman as their shield and to “prove” they aren’t misogynists, and then proceeded to produce porn with her? The stupid (and evil), it hurts…
Hmm, I had wondered why they chose green and purple, since they clash so horribly, but now my curiosity has been satisfied… of course it’s a fucking rape joke. Ugh, the one thing about 4-chan and their ilk, is that even when trying to appear respectable, their true scum-bag nature always shows through somehow.
It’s really sad, since all the creative effort that goes into drawing Vivian James porn could go into… I dunno, a really decent web comic that fleshes out her character and contains lots of video-game references. They could actually create the content that caters to their own demographic, but they just don’t actually give a shit about the gamer culture, they just want to feel big and powerful by bullying anyone they can find an excuse to pick on.
Love those tees, Bernardo. 🙂
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/620/431/3ab.jpg
It’s funny; when I first saw that meme (especially on my phone), I first read it as Vivian standing defensively between the mean words and the #GamerGate and #NotYourShield hashtags, i.e. “Noooooo, don’t hurt #GamerGate! It’s a nice hash tag! Why do you have to be so mean to it? D:” I didn’t see the words as being directed at her at all.
Also. there’s nothing like seeing the term “cis” framed as if it were an insult to clearly tell you that you’re dealing with someone of manospherian origin.
To clarify the above: I mean that the way the artist designed it, it very much looks like Vivian is being a literal shield to GamerGate. I somehow doubt that was their intent.
@Kootiepatra, and yet, like the hastag itself it’s sort of strangely genius. I mean, they’re keeping the gates up gaming (gamergate, yo) and they’re not our shield, but SHE’S THEIRS. It just keeps getting stranger.
Wow.
Uh…wow.
I have an admission: My clicking on TSJR’s link was the first time that I’d actually tried to read anything 4chan…
…and, wow.
What a cesspool of asinine assholery.
I thought Vivian looked so stressed because she was shown evidence of what a huge bag of dicks GG was.
@AltoFronto
Agreed. The thing with the 4chan userbase is that they are so invested in the whole idea of being edgy, uncensored, rude, “non politically correct” and are so deep inside a culture where things like rape jokes are funny, that they don’t even have an inkling of how 4chan culture appears to the outside world. Did they REALLY somebody well versed with the culture wouldn’t see green and purple and realize the reference?
A bit late for the fountain, but I’m joining.
“Unlike all those GamerGaters who are indeed cis while makes, …”
What’s a “cis while make?”
4chan’s concept of courage is calling themselves heroes because nobody else dared to take a dump in the living room.
@vaiyt: Of course; it’s all about ethics in carpet cleaning.
Let’s have some brain bleach in the form of comedy genius Dara O’Briain talking about video games:
@ proxieme
Want a big bag of kittens? Never, ever read 4chan, unless you want to feel like maybe aliens should nuke the whole planet so we can just start over again.