Over on Twitter, a small army of #GamerGaters and their pals have shown up in my mentions to assure me that the only reason Anita Sarkeesian was attacked after offering her opinions about the Marysville shootings was that it was somehow inappropriate for her to discuss the possible causes of the shootings so soon after the shootings, and so, naturally, people were angry at her.
And angry people, I guess, just can’t help but send rape threats and call women c*nts! There’s nothing misogynistic about it at all!
Well, this is an argument, I guess. Too bad it’s not really borne out by the facts.
Because, the thing is, Sarkeesian gets harassed pretty much every time she says anything.
Case in point: Last Thursday, she announced that Twitter had, after much delay, officially “verified” her account. As you might imagine, she’s had to deal with innumerable malicious impersonators. Now people will have an easy way to confirm it’s really her posting.
It’s hard for me to see how this could be considered controversial. Yet here are some of the responses she got to her announcement:
https://twitter.com/richardcranium_/status/525480407798939649
https://twitter.com/EnglishToff/status/525559860969373696
Later on, in response to one of her comments about the Marysville shooting, another of her non-fans managed to work a snide reference to her verified status into his harassing Tweet:
https://twitter.com/Bworth69/status/525817761558437889
So, yeah. Anita’s haters don’t just hate her for having opinions about video games and school shootings. They pretty much hate her for verifiably existing.
PS:; Oh, that guy complaining that it’s in “incredibly poor taste” to discuss the possible causes of a shooting on the day that it happens? He apparently thinks that posting this is in good taste:
https://twitter.com/AlrightAnon/status/526453952993570816
— Cat of Many Faces —
It may be time for a re-release of the film “Gentleman’s Agreement”
On the bright side, I just received an email from Facebook concerning that Oy de la Vey page we talked about late last week. The one with that stupid hateful cartoon in the radar screen at the end of the OP all over it. Facebook took it down.
Took them long enough. And at first they said it didn’t violate their community standards.
I wonder if that first one was some kind of automated response?
Nerd culture in general has this problem with mistaking the appearance of depth for depth, trivia for knowledge and smart-assedness for intelligence. It’s not anti-intellectualism as much as it is pseudo-intellectualism.