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.
I didn’t even read the garbage you added in between the pictures. I was just too amused by the fact that you’re giving free publicity to your enemy.
Alex – as Sun Tzu put it, when your enemy is making a mistake, build him a silver bridge.
Alex is positive that David has made a mistake, not that he knows what David did.
Reading *is* a difficult skill for trolls. Self-knowledge, you has it.
msplasmatic
Well worn is right. Anita’s merely bringing well known and understood ideas forward and critiquing games rather than books or films or other art in that light. Nobody needs to have any formal training or education in feminism or art criticism to understand the points she’s making. I’ve not watched more than a few minutes of her videos as I have little interest and less knowledge of gaming beyond a bit of Mario, Zelda and Tetris from when the kids were young, but nothing I’ve watched directly or seen quoted contradicts that view.
This is not new, bombshell stuff like Greer or Friedan’s books from 40+ years ago when they were putting out ideas that virtually no one had said out loud before and they were actively opposing the common armchair Freudian views about women and families into the bargain along with the legal and religious baggage.
That stuff was radical. It was criticised and rejected in parliaments, in academia, in most media, by doctors and from multitudes of pulpits. What Anita is doing is mainstream. These bleatings from the further fringes of anti-women, right wing politics will be overwhelmed, eventually, by the march of common sense, just as the earlier criticisms by genuine authority figures were.
Yes, but that was after he surrendered.
Exactly mildlymagnificant. She’s just points a few things out, she doesn’t condemn or even call for the games in questions to be banned. It’ just a critique of the the lazy writing, if anything. To listen to these guys, she’s all but had the games pulled from shelves and the ones already purchased removed from their homes at gunpoint.
She merely analyses them. I do not understand why this whole ‘Lets hate on Sarkeesian’ thing has so much traction, if it is not, at its core, misogyny. And as for that hot mess of screencaps in the actual post above…. I do not even know what kind of sheltered lifestyle causes somebody to react in such a disproportionate manner.
I’ve been lurking here for awhile, just watching this all unfold and came out of obscurity as this particular compilation of screens actually managed to surprise me.
In response to #4: Real threatening. What’s next, THE ICE STONE HAS MELTED? (Sorry, couldn’t resist the WoW reference.) But seriously, the Narm levels are out the wazoo with this one.
As a gamer since before the NES days, I have to say I honestly don’t care about Gamergate nor do I care about what this lady has/had to say. The Gaters seem to be upset about how some indie games with little content and poor design are getting high marks…who cares? Don’t buy the game, don’t play the game, don’t give it any attention and the programmer will move on to doing something else as no one likes their game…regardless of what some reviewer says…and honestly, who really give the ‘gamer media’ any thought?
If I’m going to look for a real review, I’m looking online at Youtube videos of game play and what other gamers are saying, not some man or woman who have journalism degrees. Their opinion holds the least weight. Friends’ opinions of games are what influences people more than somebody working at a magazine.
As for the whole ‘games are anti-women’ thing, I don’t really pay any attention to it, even with gamergate being in the news. Most gamers are NOT anti-women. You have a bunch of trolls and some anti-social guys who are, no doubt, but it is a small and vocal minority.
Not every game needs to have a male and female lead to choose from…like Mass Effect or Skyrim. Some games do just fine with a single gender as the player character. Portal and Modern Warfare jump to mind (then again, when you play an FPS or racing game, most of the time you can’t see your character anyway so does it matter what sex they are?)
You have a lot of action movies with big name male actors as the main character….only a few of those movies have a strong female lead. Why? Men are more attracted to that movie genre then women…just like more men will buy and play COD than women will.
I understand the idea to stop making women in those games a damsel in distress…but for guys, there is a stronger motivation in saving a woman in danger than there is to say stop a bus full of male soldiers blowing up. The game devs cater to that.
Take a look at the movies being made as well. Same thing happening in the movies, especially the action genre. Telling game developers that things need to change in games to make everything equal for both sexes in all genres of games is ulturistic but ultimately futile. It doesn’t happen in the movies, it doesn’t happen in TV and it doesn’t happen in Books. Why is it that games are the target? Need to start somewhere….ok, I get that but honestly we are not going to see parity in this issue until society as a whole starts to change.
Gamergate really, in all honesty, is a non-story…on both sides. Neither truly understands the social dynamics at work in society as a whole. Telling game developers to change their product is fine but dont honestly expect results when the other entertainment genres (movies, TV, books) go on with the same tropes.
Yawn, another above-it-all white boy dumping his fallacy of the mean on us. I’m going to look for more hot historical composers. Wake me if he melts down or has a moment of self-awareness wherein he realizes that if he really didn’t care, he could just not talk.
That’s a lot of words you used there just to say “I’m clueless and boring, feel free to ignore me”, buddy.
TL;DR: “I’m not a #Gater, but I agree with the #Gaters.”
My, how lucky to have been shat out into a world that pretty much caters to you. I’m currently marveling at what a cool dude you are by just existing without giving two shits about how anything effects anyone else ever.
All the women and various minorities are just looking for things to be offended by instead of acting like cool white dudes. Fucking duh! The answer has been there all along!!
/sarcasm , just in case
Speaking of ridiculous things said by men about the appearance of a woman…
http://38.media.tumblr.com/0123cc2952cd987d6a30ce3b4baa3725/tumblr_ne8k4sxIdx1qbyzeio2_1280.jpg
It’s like he and our new friend Brian are twinsies!
TL:DR dude, yeah, rape and death threats forcing women out of their homes is such a non-issue.
The comments policy here includes turfing people out for being tedious. Lift your trolling game, or better yet, piss off.
Alex Reynard,
Ah, Puddin. Do I need to read you the the heading at the top of the page?
David mocks misogynists. We laugh along with him and a good time is had by all non-misogynist assholes.
Personally, I want the world to see you. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
That’s cute that Brian thinks nobody is talking about representation in movies and literature. Mean old SJWs are just picking on poor wittle gamers. Boo fucking hoo.
The only things that exist are the things that Brian sees happening right in front of him. The rest of the world? Imaginary.
Then fuck off. You don’t matter. Really. Nothing you have to say is worth reading. Bye. Go not care about sexism all you want. Just don’t expect an audience for your self important, mansplain’in pout here.
@Brian Schott
The game devs cater to men at the expense of women, but there’s no sexism in videogames. Do you even realize how absurd you sound?
Haiku Brian:
I don’t care about
Or pay attention to it,
But it’s biotruths.
“Hello, there! I heard you talking about something of which I know nothing. Please let me educate you on that subject, especially in those areas that particularly affect and concern you.”
… Trolls are Clippy the paperclip?
THIS GENUINELY EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.
Ok, somebody needs to make pictures of Clippy saying “Not all men.” and “Actually, it’s about ethics in game journalism.”
It’s funny because I know Clippy is obnoxious and frustrating but his company still makes me feel somewhat less alone and I appreciate him for that.