GamerGate, so depressing and destructive and … inadvertently hilarious?
Like the MRAs I write about so often here, GamerGaters have a certain fondness for the propaganda of the meme, attempting to win hearts and minds with elaborate infographics, repurposed propaganda, and basically any sort of graphic they can pull together in a few minutes with Photoshop or MSPaint.
They are, unfortunately for them, terrible at it. It’s not just that the amateur graphic designers of GamerGate lack a basic understanding of good design. They are also so completely lacking in self-awareness that they are unable to see when their graphics completely undercut the messages they are intended to convey.
So today, let’s take a look at the The Top Five Most Ridiculously Ironic #Gamergate Memes that I’ve found posted recently on 8chan and Twitter.
1) Vivian James, the Real Woman of Gaming
Why it’s ironic: Uh, because #GamerGate mascot Vivian James is … imaginary? GamerGaters, if you want to convince us that you represent “real women” in gaming, you probably shouldn’t use a cartoon girl who always agrees with you to make your case.
2) Gaming is as diverse as you are!
Why it’s ironic: Look a little closer at this colorful crowd of video game heroes — you can see a larger version here. The overwhelming majority of these heroes are white dudes, with much smaller numbers of women and people of color. There are as many dragons as there are black people, and more anthropomorphic foxes than either of those groups.
3) Anita Sarkeesian, feminazi
Why it’s ironic: Because when GamerGaters aren’t depicting Sarkeesian as a Nazi, they’re repurposing neo-Nazi propaganda in order to depict her as a greedy, scheming Jewish stereotype. Remember this picture from the other day? And there are a lot more where that came from.
4) Fat, Ugly and Slutty
Why it’s ironic: Project much? I’ve been following GamerGate since it started, and I’ve never seen any anti-GGers ever try to slut- or body-shame GamerGater women. But GamerGaters love to present the women they’ve dubbed their “Literally Whos” — Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu — as sexually voracious monsters.
Here’s a detail from one cartoon I found on 8chan, featuring GamerGate critic Arthur Chu as a virtual puppet controlled by monstrous incarnations of the the Literally Who three.
Even when they’re not depicting the Literally Whos as monsters, GamerGaters uglify them in nasty caricatures:
As for slut-shaming, #GamerGate began as #BurgersAndFries, the very name of the “movement” a reference to a crude meme designed to humiliate Zoe Quinn as a supposed slut. The internet is awash in shitty sexualized caricatures of Quinn; I’m not going to post any of them here.
5) Journalists versus publicists
Why it’s ironic: Yep, I actually found this on 8chan. New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm has written brilliantly about some of the central tensions of journalism. I’m a bit stunned that any GamerGaters have even heard of her.
What’s ironic here is that it’s GamerGaters, not their opponents, who want to turn game journalists into publicists. GamerGaters lash out at journalists who challenge their “blind self-absorption” while celebrating pseudo-journalists and ideological hacks who swallow and regurgitate their bullshit whole. Indeed, if the GamerGaters have their way, all games journalists will be reduced to little more than publicists for GamerGaters’ particular prejudices.
The mere existence of Vivian James is like a black monolith of meta. A whole group of people looked at this and thought it was a great idea that proved a valid point! Multiple people examined this concept and completely failed to detect the irony in it! How long does someone have to simmer in misogyny for them to become completely impervious to something like this?
Their obsession with Anita Sarkeesian continues to dumbfound me. She’s just someone who makes Youtube videos. If you don’t like them, you could not watch them. Or make fun of them on your blog. Or any number of things that don’t involve demanding she be stopped like she’s goddamn Hitler or something. How much of a privileged baby do you have to be that the mere existence of a Youtube video that harms no one and only criticizes some consumer products you like sends you into this levels of tizzy tantrum rage? She’s never called “all gamers” anything, let alone sexist. She’s not “trying to ban video games” outside of their imagination. And even if she was, uh, who cares? She couldn’t. I can promise you, so long as they are profitable, your tits and guns games will continue to be produced en masse.
Oh wait, but it has nothing to do with her. It’s about forcing game reviews to adhere to GamerGate opinions.
Wait, no, it’s about censoring opinion pieces that offend GamerGaters.
Wait, no, it’s about stopping people from like dumb girl games like Gone Home.
Wait no, it’s not that. It’s… uh… anti-GG is mean too! Look at this joke about nerds! That’s bullying!
GamerGate will be remembered as the stupidest thing to happen in the history of things to happen. Imagine if these spoiled shits put their efforts into something useful, like forcing governments to address climate change, or income inequality, or literally anything else on earth other than forcing women to stop talking about video games.
I think the worst thing about vivian is that she is basically a 4chanified version of the main character from watemote (it is not my fault I am not popular.) an anime which is literally about a person who blames everyone else because she is a reclusive shut in who hates everybody.
I think that the bad memes just prove that most of the #GGits can’t distinguish reality from vidya games.
The underlying current here is that GamerGate makes perfect sense as long as you’re willing to ignore objective reality.
GamerGate: supporting real women, like this animu mascot we made. 2D girls forever!
I don’t think the artist of that diversity picture tried very hard. There are some definitely Japanese characters in there and they look just like the white folk, largely due to everything being drawn with manga eyes.
And anyway, just because they pulled together a group picture of video game characters doesn’t prove that their movement is equally diverse.
magnesium: This! with the possible exception that GG is so stupid it won’t be remembered at all. While reading yesterday’s post I was thinking how very immature these people are, underscored by their thinking that displaying it to the world was profound rather than pathetic and embarrassing.
I’ve been an artist for nearly 40 years and one thing I’ve observed is that being artistic requires a level of imagination and self awareness that is entirely lacking in people who will do or say absolutely anything to preserve the status quo.
“Real women in gaming.” I see, the “No True Scotswoman” approach. Because “Real Women” just giggle and say “Oh YOU” when someone says something gross to them over Teamspeak. That’s a hoot, mon.
And for supporting evidence of this, I (re-)present to you this Clickhole article. Even they’ve picked up on what gamergate actually wants out of journalism.
On another WordPress blog I saw an poster of a bound and gagged women that was actually used to “support” GamerGate (by somehow implying that Anti-GG is censorship or something like that). Obviously, the irony (of using the image of an abused women for that) was completely lost on this guy. (Won’t link to it, but if you search for “GamerGate fight censorship” on Google Image search, you’ll find it).
Thinking something through doesn’t seem to be a very strong point of some people… But ok, they also think that trying to keep journalists from writing stuff they don’t like is somehow Anti-Censorship. Yeah, sure.
Also, the “Supporting real women in gaming” is a meme advertising that they donated to a feminist charity (I’m assuming, never really looked into it). Because donating to a worthy cause as a cover for your actions is totally not an utterly transparent tactic even used by participants of the Fappening. Nope. Not at all.
I believe there’s two most probable courses for #GG: either they will be subsumed into already existing hate circles like the Manospherians and white supremacists, or they’ll hang there as gaming’s own hate group, which everyone already knows and goes “oh fuck not THESE guys” when they show up.
Oh god… Can you imagine if gamergate just never went away? Like, for multiple generations? They just kept recruiting new younglings and perpetually posted those “we’re winning, the fire is burning” screeds while complaining about a woman that hadn’t been alive for decades while simultaneously saying it was never about her? That’s be terrifying.
Here’s an idea for a Let’s Play video! Let’s play spot the black people among the “diverse” range of videogame heroes!
CJ from GTA: San Andreas. Yes he’s possibly the most famous African-American character in gaming history. He also conforms to the baggy-pants gangsta stereotype. I wouldn’t really have a problem with that if he wasn’t THE ONLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN MALE in that image.
Sheva from RE5. Oooh a real African. Famously described by Yahtzee Croshaw as looking like a white girl who’s been dipped in tea. Black, but not SCARY black.
Alyx Vance from HL2: Alright, no problems here. Generally considered a bit of a triumph for diverse characters in gaming.
Well, that was a short Let’s Play.
Props have to go to the artists behind the image though, it really is an ode to many of the characters that we love. But using THIS as a symbol of diversity is just ridiculous.
So… subsumed into the MRM?
Also, hello again all my beautiful people
I don’t think meme #1 is that ironic: the “real women” do not refer to Vivian James, but to the devs in TFYC, to which gamergaters apparently gave money. Admittedly, it’s still kinda ironic to boast about supporting real women using the picture of a fictional character. Anyway, why the meme features a large picture of Vivian James that has no purpose except for decoration, whereas the actual important message is written in fine print at the bottom, is beyond me.
#4 is awesome! Why yes, that’s obviously body-shaming, slut-shaming and really misogynistic! Good for you to have understood this, we can agree about the fact that your strawman really is an awful human being!
@Falconer:
The original picture comes from deviantart and has (presumably) nothing to do with gamergate. The author was not trying to show off the ethnic diversity of game characters.
Falconer:
Judging by that diversity picture, the movement is a) bigger than you’d have believed b) made of young white people and furries.
@Falconer, Arctic Ape: Indeed, I forgot to add that even if the picture showed actual inclusiveness, the meme would make no sense whatsoever, “not even wrong”-style.
I doubt that GamerGate will ever go completely away. In 20 years, people will still point to old postings and say something stupid like “See, it has been proven for 20 years that women will use sex to get good reviews of their games!”. The fact that the old accusations have been shown to be false more than enough times will simply not matter, they will be ignored like any other fact conspiracy theorists do not want to hear.
But hopefully, it will blend into the background, like to many other stupid things.
Looking at that diversity picture, even the small one, the immediate impression I got was “that’s a whole lotta pale skinned people”.
(also, as diverse as you are? It made me think of the SNL sketch from the Chris Rock episode a couple of weeks ago that used “a diverse person” as a euphamism for race)
@Arctic Ape, don’t fall for this picture co-opting furries into GG! :O All we want is a few more games where six-foot-tall rabbits are represented. (Seriously, games were better when they were about mice with jetpacks and so on.)
I’m so tempted to do a comic of Vivian James telling off GamerGators for intentionally making her silent and a partner to their little sexist crusade and shit storm.