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.
Malorie Nasrallah? That name sounds awfully familiar…
Oh Right! http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2012/01/03/mallorie-nasrallah-says-i-like-it-when-mencallmethings/
@leftwingfox: Well that explains a lot.
That makes more sense. I really wasn’t grasping how you could know about thezoepost from here without knowing his connection to all the horrible stuff that came afterwards. Reading thezoepost because a FB friend linked it and then reading a few threads here that didn’t happen to include anything about Gjoni can happen though.
I can see feeling sympathy with Gjoni if he had posted thezoepost, let the shit simmer for a week or two, then apologized sincerely and publicly to Quinn for the unintended consequences. This in not how he handled it, however. He has said recently he would do it all again even knowing what happened, and has also said he would not comply with the restraining order she has against him.
@ellaindc
I’d like to say that what you just said impresses me to no end. I’ve rarely seen someone presented with information online to clarify a situation and then reverse course when it became apparent that their first impression was incorrect.
+1 cudos
Yeah, ok, Ellaindc. Let’s say for a moment that in Gjoni’s telling of it, Zoe does appear to have said some shitty and manipulative things concerning self-harm. People do say hurtful, abusive stuff when undergoing a messy break-up (Gjoni’s demanding her to show him all her private chat logs to prove her fidelity was also shitty and abusive).
Let’s say that it’s a legitimate concern for Gjoni that he tell others about his experience of that.
He could have kept it within his & Zoe’s immediate circle of close mutual friends, and even then, telling everyone in that friend group would have been inappropriate and gross.
It was NEVER the business of “the gaming community”, nor was it ever the business of anyone who is not Eron Gjoni or Zoe Quinn.
Instead, The guy posted 10,000 words online about it; and when that didn’t get enough attention on its own, he tried posting it on several heavily-populated websites (where it was promptly removed) before finally settling on 4-chan. Then when they went ape-shit over it, he actively gave them more information and marshalled them on how to ruin Zoe’s career.
Nothing justifies the behaviour of this shit-heel.
ellaindc
As for why a seemingly minor difference of agreement would generate such intense blowback, 4channers have a decade-plus-long history of creating sock-puppet accounts and trying to use them to undermine people they see as enemies. Which is part of the reason why any use of the word “ethics” coming from them is such a huge joke. Most if not all of the “people” who come in here to sympathize with gamergators aren’t who they claim to be.
Whoos, I got ninja’d. Sorry about that, Ellaindc, I heartily apologise.
And echoing Hyenagirl, I give you +2 kudos for being willing to revise your stance.
Just in case somebody is wondering if Eron himself is sorry for zoepost: he had an interview with Buzzfeed, thought it’s “uneven” and put it on his own page:
http://www.donotlink.com/c398
So, he lies straight through his post about Zoe (the review he claimed never happened) and here he is all like “he tone of thezoepost is there primarily to keep things entertaining. There’s no point to writing something no one will read.” WTF?
idledillettante:
Sounds exactly like the actions of a traumatized man who wants to put as much distance between himself and abusive ex as possible.
And yeah, ellaindc, a lot of the people on WHTM also have direct experience of abusive relationships, and most of us are familiar with the practice of spreading the word about known abusers active in our various niche communities. Abusers should not be protected or given the benefit of the doubt – I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that.
However, there is a huge HUGE difference between warning a community about your abusive ex, and writing a 9,000 word tell-all public blog post delving into deeply personal aspects of the relationship. There’s an even bigger difference between that, and then sharing that post with a toxic community known for launching harassment campaigns against women (and specifically women in the videogame industry), and then egging on members of that community by providing them with even more personal details about your abusive ex.
I have also not read thezoepost. I have not read it because it is NONE OF MY BUSINESS ON ANY LEVEL. As David says, Zoe is not the president… I haven’t bought her games, I had never heard of her before #GamerGate. Me reading thezoepost would have been the equivalent of reading a stranger’s diary out of pure voyeurism. I am not and will never be one of the people who needed to be “warned” about Quinn, but I heard all about it nonetheless because I like videogames, so my Twitter feed exploded within days of thezoepost going live. I didn’t have a choice: it was disconnect from anyone remotely involved with one of my favourite hobbies, or watch Zoe Quinn get dragged through the dirt over and over again in the most public way imaginable. And that’s exactly what Gjoni wanted – his presencence burgerandfries chat log alone proves this beyond any shadow of a doubt, to say nothing of his utter lack of remorse thereafter.
Gjoni can be an abuse victim and also be out for revenge. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and one does not excuse the other.
Sounds exactly like the actions of a traumatized man who wants to put as much distance between himself and abusive ex as possible.
And yeah, ellaindc, a lot of the people on WHTM also have direct experience of abusive relationships, and most of us are familiar with the practice of spreading the word about known abusers active in our various niche communities. Abusers should not be protected or given the benefit of the doubt – I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that.
However, there is a huge HUGE difference between warning a community about your abusive ex, and writing a 9,000 word tell-all public blog post delving into deeply personal aspects of the relationship. There’s an even bigger difference between that, and then sharing that post with a toxic community known for launching harassment campaigns against women, and then egging on members of that community by providing them with your ex
Oops, I somehow did a weird double comment with a comment! Apologies!
I’m torn between feeling disturbed by how incredibly destructive this Sarah M woman has been to the plight of women in the games industry (as a woman in the games industry, I can guarantee that her actions have only helped make life harder for us) and feeling pre-emptively sorry for her, since it’s only a matter of time before Eron turns on her, too. Because that is what Eron-type people tend to do.
Anyways, Sarah M, if you’re reading these comments, you’ve done a great disservice to myself and other women in the industry. I do believe we’ll recover in a few years maybe, but we have already lost so many women who were driven out by your cronies. I hope you never stop feeling guilty about being an abusive stalker’s tool.
My favorite part is this bit:
‘A month later, my friend and I sat on the edge of my bed, with our legs crossed and laptops open. “Okay, I’m going live.”
“Do it,” I said. “Go.”
“Fuck,” Eron said suddenly, a few moments later. “4chan found it.”
“Oh no.”
“Well. Gonna be interesting.”’
That’s just so disingenuous I can’t even. Eron was spamming a version of this story on every forum he could find for some time before creating a special blog to host it. Why did he have to create said blog? Because his spam-hate-posts about Zoe kept getting deleted by mods as off-topic, too personal, and otherwise not necessary.
He’s said all along that the important thing to him was getting this story out. Showing everyone how horrible and what a hypocrite his ex was. He was actively working to publicize this story on every channel available to him. And he’s really glad, now, that *everybody* knows what a terrible girlfriend Zoe was to him. That lots of other people got hurt along the way makes him feel a little bad, but not so bad he wouldn’t air all this again.
Oops, also ninja’d. Comment fail. Sorry ellaindc. And I agree with Hyena Girl, kudos for not doubling down when presented with new information. That probably shouldn’t be as impressive as it is, but reasonable and open-minded folk seem to be few and far between on the internet these days. (present community excluded!)
@ellaindc
I really respect that you can change your mind when additional information comes to your attention. I only wish you’d looked for that information from the get-go.
Unless those women are imperfect people involved in a messy breakup with other imperfect people. Then screw them, dox them to hell, set the internet hate machine on them, drive women already in the industry away, and salt the earth for other women who look at the misogynistic, malevolent maelstrom and decide they’d rather sit this one out.
The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, after all.
@magnesium
Sarah M should also feel like a fool for letting Eron play her against Zoe this way. Obv. he’s not really over her, so Sarah’s in a position of having to help him on with his witch hunt to get the positive attention she wants from her little boyfriend.
Eron is still probably angry at Quinn for not donning a hairshirt and going to live in a cave somewhere, to forever be known as “that unemployable, mentally ill bitch who screwed Eron and should never be hired to design a video game, ever.” So Sarah, eager to get Gjoni paying attention to her, writes this post which makes him into the hero of the story; like Gjoni wanted everyone to think all along.
She should feel like a tool, comforting and aiding this abusive jerk. Fortunately it’s only a matter of time before the wheel of fortune is going to turn around to Gjoni actively abusing her to get what he wants. Because that’s Gjoni’s MO.
Well, maybe it’s not fortunate that Sarah’s next in line for Gjoni’s abuse if she keeps on doing what she’s doing. But it’s certainly inevitable.
Yeah, it’s not fortunate, nobody deserves abuse and I would never ever wish it on anyone. It’s just really really sad.
The only thing I wish on Sarah M is self-awareness.
Fun fact: The Zoe Post was not Gjoni’s first attempt at disseminating his hate piece. It was posted on several gaming boards (including 4Chan, I believe) prior to the Zoe Post going up but it was unanimously locked, deleted or hidden on these boards because it was nothing but a slander piece. It was first after these forum topics around the web went down that Gjoni made The Zoe Post in order to keep his tirade “available”.
Which kind of makes you wonder if this woman was with him when he posted this on all these boards, if he pretended that the Zoe Post was the first time he posted it to con her or if she is making that particular part up in order to make herself seem more central to the drama than “Gjoni’s rebound girlfriend”. Either way, I am sure GG will have a field day with this and the rest of us game enthusiasts will have to endure yet another two weeks of “it is not about evil women, but look at this evil woman!”…
No matter how much Sarah M. tries to justify this to herself, she’s a traitor to all women. Sarah, take your seat over there with Phyllis Schaffley, Ann Coulter, and the Honey Badgers. That’s the company you’re in. Congratulations.
Also, I’m really hung over and tired and seriously craving a Dr. Pepper. A real one. Not diet. I think I’m going to give in to the urge.
The more this goes on the more I am absolutely fucking convinced that Eron is the abusive one in the relationship, not Zoe. A lot of what he says she was doing could also be depressive episodes, I’ve seen enough of those to actually think of that first before emotional abuse, especially given his blog post, sending 4chan after her and acting like a general human shitpile out to ruin someone’s life.
So, I broke down and read thezoepost. I’m not interested in Ms. Quinn’s or Mr. Gjoni’s personal life, but since the post sits as the bomb at the center of the continual fallout of GamerGate, I wanted to see what he had to say.
That said, I read only the first few posts in their entirety and then glanced over the rest. The thing that I take away from it?
He hates her for being sexual with people who aren’t him. I started to see that pattern when, during a breakup period (he goes back and forth on how official or unofficial it was; he calls it a “break” at certain points), she was sleeping with other people.
What’s more, it’s clear that Zoe was unhappy and handling it badly before any infidelity occurred. The problem, however, is that he places all of the blame on her for not being upfront with him instead of taking any responsibility in seeing the signs and not doing anything about them.
After all, why might she not be upfront with him? Well, he demonstrates a resounding lack of self-awareness on that point. When she hurt him as she did, he showed what kind of person he is in believing that the proper response was to make an entire blog dedicated to how terrible a person she is, organize chatrooms against her, and generally shame her for being sexual (the Burgers and Fries thing comes from her sleeping with five guys, i.e. Five Guys Burgers and Fries, which was the mental label he was “resisting” applying to her).
All in all, it’s a series of angry ex posts rooted in entitlement, obsession (he has not only kept the blog up but defended its existence), sexual possessiveness, and sexual insecurity. I’ve read posts from abuse survivors — hell, I’m one myself — and none of his posts read like one of those. They read like he thought he owned a woman and her sexuality and was completely the victim and that when things started to break down that there was no room for sympathy or communication and only room for outrage that she had broken her (unspoken) oaths of eternal sexual servitude to him. This is even further illustrated by the fact that he has this bizarre and unsettling mental image that Zoe Quinn is only good when she is completely sexual in service to him. See below.
—-
No, that’s not how this works. How this works is I’ve had two possible pictures in my head for the past month. One that looked like some ransom-note collage of letters Scotch-taped over a cum-covered canvas spelling out “Zoe Quinn is the best person. Best possible person. You are a bad person if you think Zoe is not the best person.” And another in the form of a precision-carved jigsaw puzzle, for which all of the pieces I wasn’t missing fit perfectly into what seemed to be a subtly-worded message to the effect of “lol, ur an idiot, she’s a jerk, flip me over for list of dates and names of people she’s cheated on you with.”
—-
So when he and his supporters, like the Sarah M. of the post, say that he only wanted to heal . . . they are clearly deluding themselves. His entire tone for every post is one of wanting to harm a woman because she was sexual with other people and handled their breakup badly.
Also not like it’s so relevant or our fucking business, but I don’t give any credit to all this ‘zoe cheater bad girlfriend abuser yadda yadda’ either. These same people have fabricated all kinds of shit with the explicit intention of harming her, why should we just take their word of some particular chats & testimonies? Not like it would be relevant even there was any truth in it.
@Johanna:
Honestly, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to speculate who’s the real abuser here. It’s pretty obvious that Eron thinks Zoe is basically the anti-christ, which could drive him to write a giant dump of a post on her even if he wasn’t abusive, and a couple facebook logs with commentary are too superficial to give any evidence for Zoe’s alledged emotional abuse.
(Funny that Sarah’s recounting of events almost puts her in the position of convincing Eron that Zoe was being abusive…)
This is a situation that should have never been in the public spotlight, and it’s enough in my mind to condemn Eron for that without needing to play his game by looking at their personal lives to determine who deserved what.
@kirbywrap Good point. I have to remember that, it’s hard when he’s so intent on spilling his bile everywhere and we have to be the better people. I’m sorry for what I wrote, because you’re right we shouldn’t be doing it.
He’s still a human shitpile though. And always will be. That opinion of him won’t change.