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.
@indifferentsky:
Isn’t it, though? Like a child trying to win pretend by declaring that they’re immune to bullets.
“fix it so I can hack it”
In case we ever needed more evidence that the ‘gators are entitled canoes.
Huh. So I guess all the talk of fire and wolves and declarations of war and anti-Semitic caricatures aimed at Anita Sarkeesian isn’t “violence, hate and misogyny” enough for Arnold Maynard.
I wonder what Arnold Maynard would consider “violence, hate and misogyny?” Because those screen caps are full “violence, hate and misogyny” from where I’m sitting.
After watching that, potential troll can fuck right off.
I remember once some years back when my (*extremely* white) uncle got back from a new job in, I think it was South Carolina. He went on about how you always hear these stories about how there’s racism in the south, but in the few weeks he’d been there, he just didn’t see any, gosh darn it, and what are these people talking about? The amazing thing was that he was completely serious.
Discussions are not PvP.
This perfectly sums up how they communicate with people…like this IS a PvP match or something, and not, like, real conversations with human beings. It just baffles me. In fact, they all baffle me…so do they think that they’re the only ones on the internet? That other people can’t see anything that they do? That people can’t Google search key words and phrases?
I mean, not only are they stupid about games, they’re stupid about the internet. And life in general, it seems. How do you get so willfully ignorant? Doesn’t that hurt?
That Leader guy who made a lot of the comments…Hitler?
annony
Perfect! Thanks for that, off to share.
I remember the first time I saw that Sarkeesian caricature and the person claiming they did it was all “what do you mean this is anti-Semitic? It’s a totally different context.” There’s some real detachment from reality there.
@holytapes
Cyrus (leader of the Riffs in The Warriors) was actually a progressive bright spot in an otherwise retrogressive movie. His whole speech was about how if the gangs stopped fighting each other, they would have enough power to take on the power structures that keep them down. It was basically one step away from “workers of the world rise up, you have nothing to lose but your chains.”
Of course, from there the movie degrades into sexism, macho bullshit, homophobia… it’s the type of weird movie I’d normally enjoy, but I just can’t.
Absinthe – this is one of the funniest things about GGers – for a movement supposedly strongly rooted in pride for their “internet gamer” identity, they generally don’t know a lot about the internet or about gaming. As you say, Google is a thing that exists – and who knows? Word of its usefulness might get out, and it won’t stay such a well-kept secret for much longer!
Re. Lex Luthor – there have been Elseworlds where he’s sympathetic, or even heroic (Red Son is one, though it’s interesting that in that one, he drives Superman off the planet by…convincing him he’s doing more harm than good). Primary-continuity Luthor, however…on the surface, there’s still some badass involved in being a baseline human who acts as Superman’s nemesis, and he makes pretty speeches about humanity being overshadowed by a super powerful alien, but whenever you scratch the surface, it becomes clear that his real problem is that he can’t bear the idea that someone more powerful than himself exists.
As for the Gamergaters…they really do seem convinced that they can’t help but win because they’re willing to grind for days, weeks, months. The problem with that is that their goal seems to be to defeat feminism itself, and feminism has been grinding for a lot longer.
Well, today, I learned what an SJW is, so I made this meme to commemorate it.
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1410/9645/original.jpg
Nothing. When your worldview depends on dismissing something, no evidence will ever be enough.
#17:
I’ve been in the audience for Colbert. Security is tight. Metal detector. And if I remember correctly belts, phones, and such were collected before entry.
@seraph4377
Oh no. Now we’re talking about comic books. AVFM declared that wholesale safe space for men. No feminists allowed. We’re so evil.
AbsDex : “I mean, not only are they stupid about games, they’re stupid about the internet. And life in general, it seems. How do you get so willfully ignorant? Doesn’t that hurt?”
Also: rage about being ‘censored’ by reddit’s game subs, etc. As if there aren’t myriad free or inexpensive ways to communicate their deep thoughts. New sub reddits, blogs with comments, etc.
Also their belief that the lack of comments on Anita’s videos means they have no way to respond.
I’m waiting with bated breath for a potential Thunderf00t YouTube response that one GGer is predicting. I’ve never watched any of his videos before but I can’t miss out on a chance to watch a Internet blowhard spend over an hour dissecting all the Sarkeesian malfeasance packed in a three minute Colbert segment. Compelling stuff.
sunnysombera:
And also a hot girl wouldn’t speak to them once!
This conflation of bullying and oppression is really confusing to me. I was pretty severely bullied in my early teens. If I followed the logic of “people who bullied me are my oppressors”, then I would not be a feminist, because I went to an all-girls school, so all my tormentors were other girls.
Not saying there is no intersection between bullying and oppression, because there obviously is. But the key distinction is that bullying is the language we use to talk about individual case-by-case nastiness, whereas oppression is the word we use to talk about systems that privilege certain groups over others.
The high pitched melodrama of these GGers is pretty wild, with all that fire, rage and battlefields. It’s kind of amazing to see an entire internet community completely comprised of dudes who haven’t the slightest clue how the real world functions. Ok, maybe it’s more really sad than kind of amazing.
Also their belief that the lack of comments on Anita’s videos means they have no way to respond.
I highly suspect that they mean “we can’t harass and insult her personally so she can see it here, and that is unfair!!!”. Because youtube allows comments, if you turn them off, you’re a censorship nazi or something.
I don’t think they’ll go away to real life either, because in a sense, they’ve always been like this. I can’t wait until 20 years from now, when they just finally realize how computers and blogs work, and start writing crap for right-wing blogs. And there it will be, the Yoostobee A Gamer, talking about how all gamers are awful nowadays, how they were better back in his day, why, they even were ACTIVISTS!!!!. They will even go so far as to be “activists against racism/sexism” yet even in their advanced age will STILL spout horribly sexist/racist things.
Even if the cycle continues, I really hope the circle of idiots gets smaller and smaller. It won’t be zero, but the less there are of the reactionary assholes, the better.
@ brooked – would that be sad and amazing? Sadzing?
So Vox has adopted the hateful “gay gastapo” lingo propagated by Sott “The Pink Swastika” Lively? Lively is probably the most vile homophobe of the religious right, which is no small feat.
Of course Vox has. Why wouldn’t he?
@grumpyoldnurse
Sadzing works for me, not so much for my autocorrect.
I wasn’t even aware Sarkeesian was going to be on the show until Colbert segued from a “Call of Doodie” joke to introduce her.
Right after, I went over to 8chan to see the fallout, and saw a lot of the things Futrelle posted above. One weird thing I noticed was several posts almost immediately and specifically complaining about how she laughed off Colbert’s request that she “name three games that are male power fantasies.” There was even an image macro already (yes, I know about generators, but still, wtf?).
And now people all over the internet won’t shut up about that. I don’t know that it was a graceful thing to do, but Colbert always asks things that throw his guests off, and her entire YouTube channel is a painstaking enumeration of exactly that, so I don’t see how this damages her credibility like so many are claiming.
(Speaking of, the way she summarizes her research, combined with how detailed it is, makes me suspect that she plays these games in the most joy-draining way possible. Even if the conspiracy theories were true, nobody would enjoy video games after all that work)
Seriously? They think there aren’t 3 AAA games that aren’t male power fantasies? Hell, I can do that with one publisher.