Last night, as you may have heard, the woman known to #GamerGaters as “Literally Who 2” pulled off a bit of a media coup, appearing on The Colbert Report for a brief interview by the sympathetic Colbert, who gently satirized some of the sillier “arguments” of the Gaters with a series of deliberatly obtuse questions. You know, his regular schtick.
When Anita Sarkeesian posted the picture above (well, a non-blurry version of it) to Twitter yesterday evening, thus alerting the world to her upcoming appearance on Colbert’s show, it set off a wave of panic and despair on 8chan’s /gg/ board, one of the central organizing hubs of the GamerGate “movement.”
Some declared it a disaster, the end of GamerGate, while others tried to rally the troops with melodramatic speeches. Still others set forth bizarre conspiracy theories about the evil SJWs who allegedly control the media.
There was so much amazing stuff there that I knew I had to start screencapping like mad.
And so, without further ado, here are the Top 22 Most Ridiculous Things Said on 8Chan About Anita Sarkeesian’s Appearance on the Colbert Report.
1) One anon advised the 8chan army on how to turn this truckload of lemons into lemonade:
2) This fella was a little less optimistic. Somehow I’m guessing a lot of his conversations involve bizarrely detailed exegeses of the sinister plots of Cultural Marxism.
3) This fellow suggested that 8chan might be able to lobby Congress for some legislation that would put an end to the SJW “gang.”
4) There were a lot of posts like this. GamerGaters just can’t help talking like cartoon supervillains.
5) This guy urgently warned fellow 8channers not to even discuss the highly charged issue of misogyny, ending his little speech with a bizarre kicker not only denying that 8channers had anything to do with the threats and doxxing that have driven Sarkeesian from her home, but flatly denied that the threats and doxxing even happened at all.
6) This fella lamented Colbert’s terrible betrayal, and the effect this would have on his late-night television viewing.
7) And this charming post reminded us one of the main reasons why GamerGate increasingly appeals only to trolls and assholes. (Note to 8channers: It’s the picture, derived from an anti-Semitic caricature, that’s the real problem here.)
8) This fella reminded his comrades that media figures like Colbert “never really cared sincerely about vidya [games]” anyway.
9) And we’re back to the rising fire.
10) More fire, accompanied this time by the howling wolves of … Twitter.
11) Winston Churchill famously proclaimed that brave British soldiers “shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” This GamerGate warrior will do the same, only with email and Twitter.
12) A lot of 8channers think that Sarkeesian is little more than the brainless puppet of Feminist Frequency co-writer/producer Jonathan McIntosh.
13) This melodramatic fella declared in despair that Sarkeesian had won, “sitting in the lap of a group more powerful, tenacious, driven and sinister than you could ever hope to be.”
Huh. I thought they were supposed to be on the side of Truth and Light. Why would GamerGaters hope to be sinister. Could it be that maybe they are the baddies after all?
14) And speaking of GamerGaters monologuing like supervillains …
15) This fella offered his comrades a “waifu to encourage you along.”
Wait, what?
16) This fella might be spending just a little too much time with the vidya games.
17) This commenter thought that the fact that Sarkeesian appeared in public showed that she wasn’t really scared by all the threats she’s gotten. CHECKMATE, SARKEESIAN!
18) More conspiratorial nonsense about Colbert and his alleged ideological puppetmasters.
19) THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAA!!
20) Uh, dude, “some newspaper” in this case was the New York Fucking Times, and it was more than a paragraph.
21) This fella hoped that this bitter loss would help to harden the resolve of “weak” GamerGaters.
22) And this guy brought a report from the far reaches of Upside Down Backwards Land.
GamerGaters, you are officially ridiculous.
*snorfle*
Let me count the ways in which you could be telling the truth and still be wrong.
1. You didn’t have sexist ideas to enforce, so you’re aware of when things are sexist and you see them as negative rather than normal.
2. You are somehow just unaffected by the sexist themes, or perhaps you get enough anti-sexist reinforcement elsewhere.
3. Your peers are super sexist, so while you are affected by the reinforcement, you aren’t as bad as the people around you.
4. You aren’t accurately assessing how ingrained and sexist your ideas are.
Anita’s argument about sexism in games is the same argument she and others have of all media. Media shapes us just as we shape media: commercials shaped the way we think video games are a dude thing; magazines shape the way we conceive of beauty; TV shows shape how we believe relationships should or do work. Games are no different.
(for 1 and 2, the idea is that the reinforcement still affects others)
As a person who has had a degree in journalism for longer than you’ve been a gamer, I cordially invite you to keep your “both sides” fallacy to yourself. And fuck the hell off.
@Bina: Bravo. :3
As a gamer myself, I enjoy looking at professional journalists reviews as well as Let’s Plays. Let’s Plays cover the gameplay and one person’s reaction thereof, and the professional review might get into detail about the developers behind it, the story as a whole, and the gameplay as a whole.
I enjoy the professional journalists side for the in-depth, nuts and bolts review of the parts that make up the whole, and the Let’s Plays for how it drives, as it were.
However, I’ve noticed that the professional journalists and the Let’s Players are looking at it from two different sides as well: The professional journalist is looking at it from a developer’s point of view, while the Let’s Players are looking at it from the consumer’s, both of which are important to consider.
Both sides are valid, and both sides help me get a really good idea of whether or not a game is worth what little money I have to purchase it. 😀
Christ these guys are nuts!