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.
Hey… HEY! You leave Dark Souls alone, gamergater goons! It’s too good for the likes of you.
“We are the players, they are the NPCs”? So telling that these people do not view their opposition as human. It’s also hilarious that they think they are winning.
How pathetic, all of them. Power fantasies, denial… they remind me of Saddam’s minister of information, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who declared that the coalition forces were nowhere, with the sound of the battle in the background.
How juvenile. How pathetic.
Yes, I too consider it much more effective to further my political and social beliefs by commenting anonymously on a message board. The NYT? Literally, what?
I’m kind of cringing thinking about how embarrassed a lot of these people are going to be when they grow up and look back on the shit they wrote in their teens. Good lord, the melodrama…..
What a load of melodramatic twaddle! How the folking hull can these kids take themselves seriously?
.
.
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I say that but ! recall all the whimpering,simpering and whining in the chat channels of Guild Wars, Everquest and ESO.
Wow. That’s some serious denial in the last point. Missed the show last night, but I will check it out on DVR.
Oops, blockquote hates me.
I’ve seen so many #Gits sniffle and cry about how their martyring in the media is going to stop them from ever achieving gainful employment and make them look like villains to their children and grandchildren. No, it’s mind-melting nonsense like this that’s only a Google search away that’s doing it.
(What’s that, #Gits blaming everybody but themselves for something that’s their fault and only their fault? I’m shocked. Shocked, I say.)
All dysentery against her name will have been forgotten? So you could say that GamerGate are the voice of dysentery? That poor guy does NOT know what he wrote there.
Do you ever think any channers look around at the over-dramatic speeches their companions make, with all the ridiculous language and hammy imagery, and think “Hans… are we the baddies”?
Or would that require too much self-awareness?
I’m just wondering how anyone could think that Stewart, Colbert or Oliver would be against Social Justice issues? Complete ignorance, willful ignorance, or do they have a Pavlovian response to audience laughter, and don’t actually understand anything said?
The combination of (1) over-the-top, maudlin, pathetic pity-poor-me victimhood, (2) impotent-rage tough-guy wannabe posturing, and (3) utterly clueless, juvenile, action-movie-derived beliefs about how the world functions is both astonishing and hilarious.
THEY CAN TAKE OUR TWITTER ACCOUNTS, BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE OUR KEYBOARDS!
Also, the fact that they think they “Won” because “SHE DIDN’T LIST THREE GAMES SHE THOUGHT WERE SEXIST” despite more than three being listed during the spot and dozens of other games being listed during her videos… Disagreeing on whether or not some of those games are sexist is fine, I don’t agree with many of them either, but flat-out pretending that she never said anything? What?
These people are going to be so embarrassed about all this if they ever attain self-awareness.
The military rhetoric doesn’t surprise me the least. The utter lack of self awareness, however…
Ikanreed – I do not know, but I would be far from surprised if such is the case.
For a video game expert, #16 (“all we have to do is keep grinding”) has some odd blindspots. He’s apparently never played the sort of game where a single bad move can put you into a state where it’s impossible to win, and where there’s no save/restore feature.
Somebody ought to show him Windows Solitaire. They could see how many times he cycles through the deck at the endgame, flipping the same three useless cards over and over again in the hopes that the card he needs will eventually show up.
“Hey, I’ve been think,…” said @Slithlordbigman
“About our awesome crusade against unethical behavior in games journalism?” replied @Gamerdude.
“No, not really. No something else….. Have you been paying attention to our avatars?” Slithlorbigman said hesitantly.
“Not really, but I’m going to guess that they are awesome representations of how we aren’t going to take shit from unethical games journalists.” Gamerdude said as he scanned his twitter feed.
“Not really. It’s always Bane, the Joker, that weird gang leader from the movie ‘Warriors’, or some other comic book villain. Can you think of avatars that are worse than those to represent a movement of truth and justice?”
“Hitler?” Gamerdude said.
“And if the Social Justice Warriors were tweeting and positing using a picture of Hitler, I would feel a little more comfortable. But they are not.” replied Sithlordbigman. “And if this movement is about ethics, then why are we even talking about feminism? Why is the main talking point of journalistic ethics, how bad feminists are?”
“Your point?” Gamerdude looked up.
“Gamerdude, are we,….. you know, are we the baddies?”
They keep saying they’ve “won,” but what exactly does that mean for them to win? Does that mean that feminists will just fuck off and die forever? Does that mean that video game developers will fire all their female employees? Does that mean feminists will stop being interviewed and asked about videogames? Does that mean feminism is over? From every measure I can think of they are losing…and not just any loss…massive, bloody, crippling, devastating loss…yet they keep claiming they’re winning. Maybe my lower, unevolved, unsophisticated, feminist, reptilian brain just can’t comprehend their highly complex definition of victory….
Good golly, Miss Molly…. What is wrong with these guys? Are they actually buying Vox Day’s nonsense about them?
“At this point, #GamerGate is about more than games now. It is a Schwerpunkt in the ongoing cultural war for the West. And the gamers of #GamerGate are the only defenders of freedom and Western civilization who are counterattacking and causing enemy casualties. That is why it is more than important, it is vital to see non-gamers joining the cause rather than sneering from the sidelines.
Because if the pinkshirts haven’t come after you and yours yet, they assuredly will so long as you have not submitted to them.” (Sorry, I don’t know how to do blockquotes here.)
Vox Popoli 10/30/14
The level of irrationality is just astounding.
@Bonelady
… Schwerpunkt. As in literal Nazi terminology for the planning of the Blitzkreig and other operations. Referring back to “Are we the baddies”…
Can they not sign up for the local community theater? Surely that would be a more productive way to express their need to create drama. The only problem would be getting them to ease up on the scene chewing a bit.