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.
@Johanna, don’t you get it? She’s not your shield. She’s their shield. Get your own.
@ikanreed I Wanna steal it from t hemmmmm. That thing has my daughter’s name. I must steal it and unsully it.
Pfft. I don’t see Sam and Max in there. Obviously they’re Not Real Furries. /kidding
I will admit to being a little curious as to why Final Fantasy has its own little corner in the lower left (Kratos is lower center, go on left of him past Samus) but the women of Final Fantasy X-2 are on the other side. Also there’s no one in the FF group from any game before 7.
I try to assume that anyone in a Japanese game who isn’t specifically called out to be from somewhere else (e.g., Resident Evil) is Japanese, or meant to look Japanese (e.g., Samus, Link, the Pokemon trainers, etc.; basically most of the Smash Bros.).
Also: I see male!Shep but no fem!Shep.
Actually, it’s about six-foot-tall anthropomorphic foxes in games journalism.
Hello Shadow! Welcome back.
On to the topic of the post.
Why do drawings of Vivian James always look like she’s sad or scared? It’s like they don’t know how to see women as anything other than a damsel in distress or a slut. Thus proving Anita Sarkeesian’s points. Oops!
Heya Shadow! How’s life?
@WWTH: Actually, in the pic David posted this time, she just kind of looks … done. Just over it. Maybe she’s tired of being someone’s shield hint hint.
@Falconer:
As sff9 pointed out, the image was originally from deviant art. It’s supposed to be a big collage of video-game heroes, which appears to have been added to over time. Kinda makes sense that it isn’t sorted.
RE: Vivian:
Her demeanor is supposed to be constantly irritated and fed-up (according to 4chan, IIRC). It’s all carefully concocted; she’s supposed to be the voice of reason that appeals to just stop the conversation (about SJ stuff) and go back to playing video games. Of course, gamergators are the ones making a huge deal of nothing and elevating normal critiques to a huge controversy… so…
@Johanna Roberts:
If you want to see a (as someone called it) rainbow-six style rescue of Vivian, check out the comics way back here that katz put together. They did an awesome job.
friday jones: Hey, leave us six-foot foxes out of this. 😀
@Kirbywarp That was excellent. 🙂 Thank you for the link!
See, they can’t just ignore Anita’s videos. Since she got so much support, and since that implies that the #Gits are actually in the minority of gamers, they need to do something to undo the cognitive dissonance since they believe that nobody agrees with her.
So it must be a scam, she must be a thief, the videos must be inaccurate, it must be a conspiracy to take down video games. Because the only alternative is admitting that a hell of a lot of video game players agree with her, and were willing to back that opinion with real money. And that scares the living hell out of them.
For number 4: the other only thing I can think of is that one of them saw Fat, Ugly or Slutty, completely lacked any understanding of irony or context, and decided somehow that it was insulting women gamers. It seems slightly too coincidental to me that they would use the same insults in the same order with no awareness of the site.
“Supporting real women in gaming. No, really, once we find one, we’ll support them. There might be one under the couch… no, not here… maybe in the closet? No… not here either… possibly in the fridge, behind the purple stuff?
“Man, screw it, this is too much effort. I’m just gonna draw one. Pretty much the same thing, right? Glad we agree. Whatever gets me back to my Dragon Ball Z porn the fastest.
“But… just spitballing here… what if there were a way to combine the two?”
[5 censored minutes later]
“GENIUS! SHEER GENIUS! That’ll show them.
“What were we doing, again? Oh, yeah, ethics in gaming journalism.”
@Kirbywarp thanks for the link! That was refreshing!
Why do they think that creating a cartoon mascot of a woman gamer is actually going to prove anything? I mean, is it really that hard for them to find one woman gamer who supports gamergate who they don’t hate…
…oh, yeah, right. Now I get it.
Its probably also worth noting that Vivian James color scheme of Green and Purple (as well as GamerGate itself) is a reference to a rape ‘joke’ known as Daily Dose. Like literally, not only is Vivian fundamentally ironic, but she’s clothed in a meme meant to trigger memories of alien-on-alien anal rape.
Because they view most women as cartoon characters. I mean, that’s at the heart of the whole of gamergate, isn’t it? Zoe Quinn was human, wasn’t the “perfect girlfriend” that Eron imagined, didn’t live up to what he thought he loved about her (his own words) and so he turned her into a cartoon supervillain. Because either women are cartoon Princess Peaches, or cartoon Ursula’s.
(Personally I like Ursula. Divine as an inspiration? C’mon, totally amazing.)
I clearly misunderstood the Vivian James meme. I thought the message was that there are no real girl gamers, only cartoons and poseurs.
I don’t get the Sareesian preoccupation either. A friend of mine said it isn’t fair that she “doesn’t allow debate” about her opinions. Ummm…so what are all those videos debating her opinions, blogs debating her opinions, articles debating her opinions, threads debating her opinions…? Anyone can debate her fucking opinions, she just prefers they don’t do it in her YouTube comments because that’s how threats/slurs/all manner of ugliness happened before.
Who actually debates their dissenters in the comments of their YouTube videos anyway? What planet do these guys hail from?
About the fifth point that is what infuriates me the most with GamerGate, with the absolutely revolting misogyny and violence toward women of course: people trying to force their point of view on a medium despite they clearly lack the communication,cultural, analytically and intellectual tools to properly analyze a medium. Not to mention the people that are still stirring up the gamergate crowd while not being interested even remotely by video games.
@charltab
That’s kinda pushing the use of the word “trigger” to the level satirized frequently by dumbasses.
davidknewton:
Not falling for this picture was my whole point! No Tall Furries!
“Why do drawings of Vivian James always look like she’s sad or scared? It’s like they don’t know how to see women as anything other than a damsel in distress or a slut. Thus proving Anita Sarkeesian’s points. Oops!”
I’m willing to give them a pass on this one. I think the drawings of Vivian James look sad and scared because she’s a feminized version of a generalized gamebro, as conceived by other gamebros. IOW, I think they themselves conceive of themselves as sad and scared, and that it bleeds over into the Vivian James depictions. These are people who consider themselves oppressed (would be my contention) and the Vivian James pictures prove it. Add into that the avidity of the pity these guys experience for themselves, and the fact that so many of them claim the games as their only refuge in life (“Pllleeeeezzzzee don’t take them awaaaaaaaaaaayyyy from meeeeee. They’re all I haaaaaaaaaavvee!!“) (etc.) and you’re left with an image of sad vulnerability much like images pro-lifers have of cute fetuses breathing out their last prayers while they await execution.
@85437538efjhdfhduheufhu
Yep, Vivian is pretty clearly based on Tomoko.
But you aren’t meant to agree with Tomoko.
Because that’s how they think all Real Women™ should be. Sad, scared, and in total agreement with their male owners. Because female happiness, like independence, is MISANDRY!
Oh man, did anyone else play Jazz Jackrabbit back in the 90s?