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Actually, it's about Zoe Quinn. The midwife of #GamerGate has no regrets.

ZoeQuinnPS

Do you remember when #GamerGate was young? You know, back before #NotYourShield and Vivian James and bizarrely complicated conspiracy theories involving Gawker, Weird Twitter and some sort of international Jewish conspiracy?

Remember when #GamerGate was still called #BurgersAndFries, and the angry gamebro army was focused on the real enemy of all that is good and true – a young game designer by the name of Zoe Quinn?

If you’ve been feeling nostalgic for those good old days, you’re in luck. A sprawling blog post by a female friend of Quinn’s obsessive, accusatory ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni takes us back to the dog days of August when his even more sprawling thezoepost was unleashed upon the world.

Rachel M, who describes herself as an “engineer, designer, accidental writer,” recalls the months she spent with Gjoni as he began to process his breakup with Quinn and marshal his arguments against her. She was there when he posted thezoepost, making her a sort of midwife of what became #GamerGate.

It’s no secret whose side of this controversy she’s on. Her depictions of Gjoni are written with affection and indulgence; her portrayal of Quinn is brutal and a step or two beyond unfair. When Rachel M pretends for a moment that she’s not “someone with an ax to grind against Zoe,” that’s because her little hatchet is already buried in Quinn’s back.

If there is a point to GamerGate Launched in My Apartment, and, Internet, I’m Sorry (Not that sorry) beyond making Gjoni look angelic and Quinn look like a demon, I’m not sure what it is.

After presenting us with a series of uninteresting and unnecessary details of her own life, Rachel M repeats a number of largely discredited myths about Quinn and even seems to have made up a new myth of her own, accusing Quinn of “telling Eron she believed I was lying about my PTSD” in an online chat.

Never mind that the chat log itself, which Gjoni pasted into his zoepost, and which Rachel M also pasted into an earlier post of her own, suggests that Quinn was dubious not about Rachel M’s medical diagnoses but about Rachel’s intentions towards her then-boyfriend.

As I searched through the screenshots on Eron’s site to see if Rachel M’s recollections of this exchange matched the evidence, I was struck again by the utter surreality of #BurgersAndFries and its successor #GamerGate.

Because, the thing is, I don’t want to be reading these chat logs. I shouldn’t be reading these chat logs. These are private moments between two people at a vulnerable moment in both of their lives. They shouldn’t have been posted on the internet in an act of petty revenge against an ex-girlfriend. They shouldnt’ be on the internet at all.

The fact that the details of Zoe Quinn and Eron Gjoni’s sex lives and their messy breakup are so central to the conflicts now roiling the video game world that I have to turn to these screenshots to fact check this post is weird and wrong and rather depressing. Zoe Quinn isn’t the president, caught pantsless in flagrante delicto with a Haliburton lobbyist. She’s a video game developer, and the details of her sexual history are none of our fucking  business.

None of this matters much to Rachel M, who seems to have become trapped in Gjoni’s reality distortion field, borrowing some of his narcissism for herself. She describes Gjoni’s decision to “go public” with the ugly details of his breakup with Quinn and her various alleged infidelities and lies:

Eron talked about going public. He talked about panic, about awareness, about making sure that people knew what they were getting into, about taking a hit – there’d be a hit, for speaking publicly against a woman in any field, but especially against a woman with Zoe’s position and friends in progressive indie gaming – for the good of all, eventually.

This is so perverse and backwards and wrong it’s hard not to wonder if Gj himself wrote it.

He talked about evaluating the risk to his current job, his future jobs, his family, himself. You know, whether he’d get stalked or murdered for this. He talked about the danger to Zoe, about how he could minimize personal harm toward her, whether he could effectively defray harassment towards her.

Well, he did a bangup job of that, huh?

He settled on a few plans toward that end, and decided the risk to himself was worth it. Even the total loss cases for him still meant greater than zero public knowledge about Zoe’s manipulative behavior, her role as an abuser, and the number of lies she’d told. Anything was better than the way it was now.

Really? Because for a lot of people, not just Quinn, things have gotten a lot worse since Gjoni launched his attack against his ex.

Rachel M is actually quite aware of this; indeed, she notes explicitly that the movement that was born out of Gjoni’s long post has directed much of its fury towards women.

Zoe received floods of hate and threats within hours of the post going live. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic, was forced to cancel a speech at USU after receiving death threats referencing the École Polytechnique Massacre … Brianna Wu, Liana K, and anyone who identifies as a feminist within gaming — they’ve been getting smeared.

Women in games, creators and critics alike, are working through a tide of hate that’s reached the front page of the New York Times. Each new story makes me a little sicker.

Yet somehow she’s still “not that sorry” she helped Gjoni to launch the movement that caused all this. She thinks it’s all somehow … good for women. Because people now know what she thinks is the truth about Zoe Quinn. She ends her post with these bizarre assertions:

I want more women in tech and media, at all levels—in development, in journalism, in the games and books and comics themselves.

I want those women to be as safe, respected, creative, and supported as any man, and I do not want them unprepared in an industry with Zoe Quinn.

And this, I guess, is how someone who helped Gjoni to usher in a hateful, spiteful, reactionary “movement” that has left numerous women fearing for their lives convinces herself that she’s on the side of the angels after all.

EDIT: I corrected Rachel M’s name. No idea why my brain turned her name into Sarah.

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Zaki
Zaki
10 years ago

Really? There are people that are trying to defend Gjoni behavior?

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

It takes a special kind of person to say that you can kind of sympathize with someone having sicced the internet on their ex and then just a few comments later complain that people are just being so mean and uncivil about your willful refusal to put the minimum amount of effort into finding out whether there’s any truth to your assumptions.

Pretty sure that “tone trolling – we love it” isn’t this blog’s tagline.

Kiva
Kiva
10 years ago

Actually, I think I stated repeatedly that I thought that siccing the internet on her, along with the sustained contact was the reprehensible part, but sure, we can put intention behind my words that was never stated if it makes you feel better.

I’m new to the blog. I asked for a link. If you want, I’ll duck my head and you can strut for a minute.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Really? You think people are that oblivious to subtext?

When multiple people are raising their eyebrows at your comments, the problem isn’t them, it’s you.

UnSubject
10 years ago

I love the disconnect of “I want more women in all these industry fields” combined with “who need to be protected from Zoe Quinn”.

Because it has been Quinn that’s been keeping women down, and now that Gonji made his LiveJournal-level post, her reign of terror is over.

Kiva
Kiva
10 years ago

I must be that oblivious to subtext then, and I appreciate people not putting words in my mouth. Thanks.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

If someone finds my eyeballs hand them back to me before the cat gets to them, yeah?

Kiva
Kiva
10 years ago

And humor is like “whoosh” way up there. I give up. The pro-GGers won’t have me, the anti-GGers won’t either. I guess I’ll have to go play games.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

That awkward moment when you realize that someone thinks they’re funny. Positively cringe-worthy, it is.

Misha
Misha
10 years ago

@Kiva, weeeeell, that’s ok, but it was meant more in a “Look. It’s right here. Go read, or this is going nowhere” kind of way. Mostly out of exasperation as regulars were already telling you there was a summary available and you didn’t seem inclined to go look.

I don’t want to sound harsh, but cassandrakitty is right. You were originally sympathising with Gjoni’s possible intent (although not his actions, as you’ve pointed out) and when evidence was brought up strongly indicating that Gjoni’s intentions were clearly malicious, you refused to find the evidence yourself.

And now it’s awkward turtles all the way down.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

She kind of tipped her hand with this bit.

The pro-GGers won’t have me,the anti-GGers won’t either. I guess I’ll have to go play games.

Vivian, is that you?

gilshalos
10 years ago

I love the image of ‘awkward turtles’. They should definately be a thing. All the way down!

Shiraz
Shiraz
10 years ago

**Looks around** Wow. I wish I could buy the regulars around here a cup of coffee — and biscotti for all.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Shuffling their little turtle legs, shaking their little turtle heads. Awkward turtles, just standing around looking embarrassed for you.

saphy
saphy
10 years ago

@gilshalos

Quickly rage-commiserate with me: English town burns effigy of Alex Salmond, TOTES OK GUYS LOL

Glasgow hosts Commonwealth Games, NO SALTIRES FOR YOU THAT IS DANGEROUS AND MEAN TO ENGLISH

(Sorry for being off-topic, i can’t always catch gilshalos in the right thread. Meet me over in the general chit-chat thread for more anger?)

saphy
saphy
10 years ago

(Also if you feel like not wallowing in anger with me I will understand and accept your significantly more healthy approach to rage)

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
10 years ago

I have no sympathy for people who can’t be fucked to go look for things themselves.

It’s not like folks typically keep an indexed file of “Gamergate 101” and “Gamergate 205” (or “Feminism 001 Remedial Course”) and it takes only seconds to find the correct resource for an inquirer. If someone is going to put a link into the thread, that person has to go searching for it. It can take me 5 minutes or 30 minutes to find something on the web that I need. Is there some particular reason why it would be OK for me to foist that work off onto someone else if I want to read a specific thing? It’s not like that other person is going to get to it any faster than I could get to it myself, and it’s not like that other person doesn’t have other things to do with their time than cater to me.

proxieme
proxieme
10 years ago

Maybe she just meant it as, “Do you have a readily available link to a summary?” rather than, “Do the research for me.”

She definitely could have phrased it differently than she did (like, uh, that), but that’s how I read it. I just skimmed the whole conversation, though, so I may have missed some subtext.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
10 years ago

The subtext was essentially “link me or it didn’t happen.”

Mohamed Mahdi
10 years ago

I don’t really feel that sympathetic for that guy or his friends anymore even though he has apologized to some people like Brianna Wu for the damage he accidentally caused with his dumb mistake. He makes a fool of himself constantly on twitter and other sites ,obsesses over Zoe at times and even annoys people that talk to zoe on a certain subforum on reddit which may violate his restraining order depending on the type of PM’s he sent to the people on these boards. He has also supported people that leak more garbage from years ago about zoe to cause more damage to her. There are ways to deal with an abuser without destroying there lives or other people’s lives. This mess would have been mitigated the instant the guy apologized for his dumb mistake to the people that got affected by his dumb mistake like zoe’s family,friends and other people she associates with and maybe even zoe to, but I don’t think he will ever apologize to her and it’s way to late to do that now.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
10 years ago

This mess would have been mitigated the instant the guy apologized for his dumb mistake to the people that got affected by his dumb mistake

Mmmmmmmmmno. Shopping his dirty laundry to 4chan wasn’t a “dumb mistake,” it was a deliberate attempt to sic a bunch of misogynist attack dogs on ZQ. And apologizing for this would change precisely nothing.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

I mean, he should apologize, but doing so wouldn’t get him off the hook.

proxieme
proxieme
10 years ago

The subtext was essentially “link me or it didn’t happen.”

Yeah, that’s annoying.
That, and when people want you to dig up something that you said that you read a month ago and can be found with Google search or when you reference something like “a general vibe on MRA forums” and they want you to provide specific links *takes deep breath for run-on sentence* and you’re like, “Dude, I’m stirring Cream of Wheat with one hand and poking around on NPR’s Facebook feed with the other before my kids wake up, so, no – look in those cesspits yourself…I’m not going to find you links.”
*deep breath out*

Sorry.
I have a little pent-up frustration from the discussions on NPR’s stories when they did their Focus on Men series.

proxieme
proxieme
10 years ago

Mohamed – I can see how when this all started a reasonable person could sympathize with the guy’s initial actions.
I mean, I wouldn’t agree with them, but so can see it.

But, dude, the chat logs are now out there. This really doesn’t seem like it was a mistake on his part.
Even the most benign interpretation of events (taking his statements as at least containing truth but also taking into account the his documented communications), he was someone who was abused and cheated on and who lashed out in pain…and was savvy enough to know the likely consequences.

If you add on to that his subsequent behavior (continuing to positively engage with those in GG who’re actively threatening/fixing/harassing women, at best *extremely* loosely holding to the strictures put in place with the restraining order – more likely outright violating it, etc), the basis “best case” interpretation of his actions and motivations gets more and more thin.

Honestly, I have exactly diddly-squat invested in this whole mess aside from being someone who likes to game – I don’t go on Reddit or the chans and I only have an active Twitter account to follow Borderlands/Gearbox tweets for Golden Keys (@proxieme – I’m not terribly inventive), and I don’t even go on that anymore since I found the orcz Golden Key pages – and I can see that he’s been an inexcusably huge, probably abusive douchebag (hence the stalker tactics and his attempts to control the situation vis-a-vís his now long-since-past ex-girlfriend.

Not only would an apology not cut it, it’s not something that someone like him does.
Even if, heaven forbid, ZQ was murdered by one of these dillholes, he’d just come out with something like, “While this is unfortunate, it’s not my fault. I was just trying to shed light on the whole situation. Her actions brought her here.”

Crissa
Crissa
10 years ago

“Is there some particular reason why it would be OK for me to foist that work off onto someone else if I want to read a specific thing?”

Because other people might know where it is immediately, whereas someone who doesn’t know may spend 30 minutes and not find it. This is how groups of people work: Some people will have differing sets of knowledge and skills.

Personally, I wouldn’t know where to start to get any of the information you’re suggesting is out there without possibly also just getting flooded by crap. That’s sorta why I came here – because I was given a link by someone else to a good source. Here. I see categories at the bottom of the article, but I don’t see any way to search more than one category at once, so there could be alot of possible articles to sift through.