GamerGate provides a rare example of rats climbing aboard a sinking ship.
As the “movement” stews in its own conspiratorial rage, a small army of reactionary misogynists, sensing opportunity, have joined the cause. Sure, right-wingers like Adam Baldwin and Milo Yiannopoulos have long been Gaters, but it’s only in recent days that they’ve been joined by some of the better-known manospherians, from angry lawyer and juice seller Mike Cernovich to the charming Roosh V.
The latest manosphere douchebag to take up the GamerGate cause is the lovely and talented Matt Forney, who has promptly claimed for himself the mantle of GamerGate leader and hero.
Oh, sorry, he hasn’t done this, as this actual tweet from his real Twitter account makes clear:
I'm not a hero or a leader. I'm not here to be worshipped, merely to be read. All I care about is the truth. #GamerGate
— Matt Forney (@realmattforney) October 27, 2014
No, he’s just a humble man drawn to the movement because of his deep Vivian Jamesian love of video games. Oh, wait, that’s not it either?
I have no designs on being a #GamerGate leader or major figure. I don't even really play games anymore. But I hate hypocrisy and liars.
— Matt Forney (@realmattforney) October 27, 2014
Ok, well, maybe he feels a certain kinship with gamer culture? I mean, like a lot of angry gamebros, Forney likes to think of himself as a sort of outsider maverick misunderstood and underappreciated by the masses.
Maybe these excerpts from a post he wrote last year will help to shed some light on this. You know, the one where he described hardcore gamers as
narcissists. … the basement-dwelling, poorly-shaven, masturbating troll of legend. The kind of person who doesn’t shower and has gigabytes of porn on an array of portable hard drives. The nerds. …
Because these dorks don’t have the social acumen to build normal human relationships, their false identities involve submerging themselves into trashy pop culture. …
I remember trying to research an article about Mass Effect around the time of the game’s release, sifting through thousands of angry threads on BioWare’s forums before giving up out of depression. Seeing all these people crying, fuming, screaming, acting like their lives were over because of a fucking video game… it made me want to drink.
Huh.
Well, anyway, he’s part of #GamerGate now, and hoping that the movement will help him in his neverending battle with the Real Enemy: “Weird Twitter.”
No, really. He thinks the anti-GamerGate “movement” is an elaborate plot orchestrated by Gawker and a bunch of people who make weird jokes on Twitter.
How many of these Weird Twitter sockpuppets are formally connected to Gawker? How many of them ARE Gawker writers in disguise? #GamerGate
— Matt Forney (@realmattforney) October 25, 2014
We've already seen massive collusion between SJW game journalists. Weird Twitter being a Gawker operation is not impossible. #GamerGate
— Matt Forney (@realmattforney) October 25, 2014
There’s just one problem with Matt Forney’s new gig as not-leader and not-hero of GamerGate: he’s such a reprehensible pice of human dogshit that even GamerGaters find him a bit repellent.
After all, this is the guy who thinks women with tattoos are “broken,” psychopathic, “unlikable cunt[s].” He’s the pudgy wannabe Lothario who believes that “fat girls don’t deserve to be loved.”
He’s the guy who once declared that “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps,” and who wrote D-I-Y guides titled “How to Beat Your Girlfriend or Wife and Get Away with It” and “How to Crush a Girl’s Self Esteem.” (As Forney sees it, constant gaslighting and generous helpings of emotional and physical abuse will do the trick.)
Anyway, in order to address the issue of his own loathsomeness, Forney today posted what he called a “Publisher’s Statement Regarding Matt Forney’s Articles and GamerGate.”
Yes, he published this on his own blog. He’s the “publisher” making the statement, and referring to himself in the 3rd person.
In the “statement,” Matt Forney’s publisher, Matt Forney, offered a bit of a mea culpa for some of his more, er, questionable past statements.
I have said things that I have later disavowed. For example, two years ago I wrote an article gleefully celebrating the suicide of a teenage girl who engaged in a gangbang with several football players. While I still believe that [name redacted by DF] behavior was evidence of a poor upbringing and deeper psychological issues (which the media coverage about her suicide completely ignored), rejoicing in her death was morally abhorrent. For that, I apologize.
Well, gosh, I guess you deserve a few points for recognizing that a post “gleefully celebrating the suicide of a teenage girl” doesn’t look too good on your resume. Pity you had to sully that “apology” by suggesting that she was psychologically damaged and that the media should have been saying even worse things about her than it did.
Still, given that a lot of GamerGaters seem to have no problem gleefully harassing vulnerable women, Forney’s other big apology might turn out to matter more to his potential gamebro allies:
[F]our years ago, I wrote an article for my now-defunct In Mala Fide blog titled “Why Nobody Likes Nerds, and Why You’re Justified in Hating Them” that advocated bullying as a way to “shame” nerds into normality. …While I am and will remain critical of nerds and geek culture (a big part of why I have no desire to be a “leader” of GamerGate), I’ve since realized that bullying is wrong. I may not want to hang out with nerds, but they’ve never hurt me and they just want to be left alone. Again, I apologize.
Huh. Well, that may be all you need to become a GamerGater in good standing.
Matt Forney, I now pronounce you King of GamerGate.
PS: Forney has the approval of at least one prominent GamerGater: the amazing Davis Aurini:
@freiherrKvK @jordanowen42 imo, @realmattforney is a modern bukowsky; his stories should make you cry, but you're too busy laughing.
— Leo M.J. Aurini (@Aurini) October 26, 2014
Uh, you spelled Bukowski wrong. But you’re right about one thing: I’m laughing.
Fonzi just jumped the shark. Gamergate making Matt Forney a leader is the death blow this festering sore of a movement so desperately needs. Put it out of it’s misery. Seriously, who can honestly argue they’re about anything other than hating women now. It cannot be done.
Is there a bottomless well of these smug douchebags? Or is there an extraordinarily large rock they keep crawling out from under?
“a rare example of rats climbing aboard a sinking ship” is a brilliant turn of phrase ^.^
@vraydar:
If there was going to be a death blow to GamerGhazi, surely it’d be StormFront approvingly covering GG’s actions:
https://twitter.com/NotAllBhas/status/526853873949220865
It’s impossible to parody these guys. When fucking STORMFRONT is on your side it’s time to examine your choices in life.
Why are so many of these PUAs bald? Is it an inferiority complex?
@vraydar
I wish I had your confidence. Many of the people associated with GG defy all logic and reason … they have NEVER been shy about expressing their hatred of women. Despite that, their success at convincing many that they are the ones being bullied or that they are at least getting as good as they give is a testament to how messed up society is. No matter how many times they label women in public sharing their opinions as c***s, wh**es, and b****es, they still manage to draw support. The situation is so thoroughly depressing that it’s hard to match their energy and insistence.
Perhaps even more depressing … a lot of people want to ignore all of this. I get why (it’s gross), but at the same time, nothing will ever change if we ignore it. Some blame anti-GGers for making the situation worse by drawing attention to it (in essence “feeding the trolls”). Others say this is just what happens on the Internet. Still others say it doesn’t matter because their threats are “empty” … the “sticks and stones” mindset.
For all of the above reasons, I greatly admire people like Anita Sarkeesian, David Futrelle, and Matt Binder (just to name a few). Their dedication and energy in the face of mind-boggling ignorance is amazing.
lol….bullying is wrong…unless you do it to women
Diana, the reason they still draw support is that despite their conspiracy theories is that by and large society is still very sexist and has these misogynist stereotypes they recognize unquestioned. And that’s why we need feminism.
Striving, related to that and the caricatures they posted in other threads… I was thinking that it makes perfect sense that raging new-misogynists are also raging racists and antisemites. After all, the “original” accusations they have for “women/feminists” are a rebranding of traditional racist stereotypes: either the ‘inferior’ type (irrational, dumb, instinct-driven, by-nature-bound-to-serve — attributed to black people), or the ‘evil’ one (cunning, faking or exaggerating victimhood, controlling the media, leeching the money of them, attributed to jews). Added to the good-ol’ misogyny classics like objectification and sexual policing of course.
Joel: isn’t there some sort of hearsay about how men with less hair have more testosterone or something? Maybe someone took that theory and added a little evo psych to say that women are naturally attracted to bald men because bald = testosterone and testosterone = alpha male. Or some bs like that.
All I know is that they’re making me even more insecure about my own rapidly disappearing hair than I was previously! I think starting tomorrow I’ll be wearing a giant Halloween wig.
Sarah, I know you’re right. A lot of men and (unfortunately) women still believe negative stereotypes about women. That’s why rape, sexual assault, and domestic abuse** investigations aren’t prioritized … why women are much less likely to be in leadership positions (and those who are are often hated) … and why women across the board make less money than men. It’s just depressing. And disappointing. You’d think we would have gotten farther in forty years.
** I recognize that men suffer from rape, sexual assault, and domestic abuse, too (and actually, I think our sexist culture is part of the reason such investigations are not prioritized for men, either … because being a “victim” of such crimes somehow diminishes their “manhood.”)
If I may quote Roast Beef Kazenzakis, “Dogg I cannot brook the gossammer bloatee”.
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09072005
“GamerGate provides a rare example of rats climbing aboard a sinking ship.”
Am stealing.
Diana, you’re right about everything, but look at the bigger picture! Sexism and patriarchy have been entrenched for centuries, they’re not things that you can heal from in a generation or two. The progresses we have made thank to the first and second wave feminists are astounding. My mother lived the sexual revolution, but she was still subject to double standards and slut-shamed a lot more than I am, and she assumed that her job and career weren’t as ‘important’ as men’s. My grandmother all her life believed that sex was something her husband did to her, and didn’t work after she got married. Marital rape and domestic abuse were not considered crimes a few decades ago, and rape was even more widespread, stigmatizing and blamed on the victim than now. We still have a long way to go, but don’t let yourself buy the impression that we’re regressing just because misogynists now have access to concentrating and amplifying their complaints through social media and sockpuppets.
I suspect it’s some kind of subliminal proof-of-testosteronic-excess thing. Like, “Look, I have a phallus sitting right here on top of my neck!” Yes, dude. Yes, you DO!
@joel, @sunnysombrera,
I thought it was because they lost a tiny bit of hair, and decided that made their hair look bad, and just took the rest off — vp! — out of spite.
Also, I love how he’s @realmattforney. Like anyone would want to be HIS imitator.
Doesn’t Mr. Elam make disparaging remarks about baldness (as Mr. Esmay’s forehead continues to get bigger)?
I wonder what it’s like to go around assuming people want you to lead them. “No, please, fair people of Boardroom A; I have not arrived 15 minutes late to this meeting to be your leader. No, I have not come to be a hero to you all, but simply to listen and give my support to the fiscal year budget. Please, carry on, with my blessing.”
Sorry to derail a bit but this video by MaoistRebelNews sums up GamerGate perfectly.
Sorry, wrong video.
What’s with the “Weird Twitter” obsession? It’s not… it’s not a thing. It’s just a label for the collective absurdist humour that’s peculiar to Twitter, having evolved to fit within the 140 character limit.
Does he really think Weird Twitter a clandestine organisation under the control of Gawker? …Why?
And — as incredibly stupid as it is to think so — even if it were true: why would it matter? Is he threatened by people being funny near him?
(Incidentally, gawker.com has a total of six articles tagged “weird-twitter”, and none are actually about “Weird Twitter”. Go figure.)
I guess it really hasn’t occurred to him that people who like to make ridiculous jokes might be drawn to his ridiculous statements, so they can riff on them as source material…
The great thing about this guy is he looks like a slightly adapted version of the Egg avatar that so many Gaters use.
He’s mad at Weird Twitter? I’ve only every heard that phrase in reference to Dril, and now I’m giggling at the prospect of gamergaters trying to convince a fictional character to take their side, and being met with non sequiturs.