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.
@Ikanreed:
I may be wrong, but I think chaltab is just using the standard definition of “trigger,” as in “cause something to happen.” The meme is literally designed (nsfw, but no nsfw images) to cause people to remember the gif just through color association.
@ friday jones:
I could actually believe it if we assume it to be this one:
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/41976433281165190/99BF822429E0D0ABD87F59E9AE72A48BE826991B/
@bunnybunny:
Back in the 90s I was playing Reader Rabbit.
Back in the 90s … man. Game Boy and Lucasarts all the way. My first console was a GameCube.
Which wasn’t a cube. That bugged me.
On Vivian James: I thought she always looked tired and annoyed, which is how I’d be if I let myself play games on random servers and used Teamspeak while female.
There is something to be said about @bekabot’s interpretation of her essentially being the “average gamer” drawn female. As evidence, I give a link to Shaenon Garrity’s sudden realization that she had been drawing surly gaming youths to look kinda like Giovanni Ribisi on “The X-Files” for years:
http://www.shaenon.com/monsteroftheweek/2013/07/19/07192013/
Further evidence of the fact that GamerGate thinks “ethical” journalism is being a publicist, take a look at their “Gamer Bill of Rights”
http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/Gamer_Bill_of_Rights
Literally their first demand is that game reviews shouldn’t be negative, because negative reviews will offend fans of said video game.
Basically, if a review is any more than an extended advertisement, it hurts GamerGate’s feelings, and is therefore unethical journalism.
They care about “ethics” in journalism, but aim to dictate what that journalism should say.
So, let me check my scorecard, here: (1) threatening women has nothing at all to do with journalistic ethics; (2) their evidence of unethical journalism consists of one non-existent example (Grayson’s DQ review) and zero others; and (3) even if you take them completely at their lying word, they consider honesty and accuracy to be unethical, demonstrating that their supposed movement all about “ethics in journalism” gets the definitions of “ethics” and “journalism” exactly 100% wrong.
The fact that any of them pretends for a second to any degree of seriousness is beyond laughable.
@Aerinea: Whoever posted the first link to Shaenon’s Monster of the Week, I oughta thank.
Netflix streams the entire X-Files.
I just last night watched Dana Scully, an educated woman, a trained woman, a woman who should know better, shove her pistol down the front of her waistband like some kind of cowboy.
Yeah, it looks like some kind of small Walther (i.e., auto-loading) and she set the safety first (I assume, she fiddled with it and the Foley guys put in a loud click) but that seemed dumb. Shouldn’t she be wearing a holster?
Also I’m remembering how flat Duchovny plays Mulder most of the time.
Anyone who’s still following the Gamebro Clusterfuck, you need to see this article about Tauriq Moosa’s #ReaderGate. Short version is it’s a glorious piss-take of the whole debacle, showing how ridiculous GG would be applied to the book world.
I’m following the hashtag right now and it’s wonderful.
@strivingally
“It’s high art, it’s not just games! B-b-but don’t criticize it like art, because they’re just games!”
“It’s not about Zoe Quinn, it’s about ethics in games journalism! But it’s actually all about protecting the gaming world from Zoe Quinn!”
“Anita Sarkeesian is literally Hitler! What a typical Jew!”
@sylviaplant:
Tauriq prefers to highlight the absurdity of their calls for “objective” game reviews:
https://twitter.com/tauriqmoosa/status/530305472109494272
I did play Jazz Jackrabbit and count it as a very small part of why I’m now so messed up 🙂
This thread reminded me – I was at Furpocalypse last weekend and an ambassador from GamerGate was there! Obviously nothing threatening was going on at all.
http://www.teamouse.net/images/halloween2014/ethics.jpg
Pals, come play on #ReaderGate! It’s the most fun you can have on a Twitter hashtag!
In case anyone is wondering what A Wolverine and @85437538efjhdfhduheufhu are referring too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WataMote
…it’s full name must be one of the longest I’ve seen made for any popular entertainment medium. o.O
hey David, talking about crazy stuff from GamerGate you just must watch this video, it the must heinous thing on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CavKAh4OYCE
You know, since Gamergaters stooped to using fictional characters to defend them, I’m a bit surprised they didn’t use Chiaki Nanami from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. She is the Super High School Level/Ultimate Gamer, after all.
But then, that would require some of them to be interested in a non-FPS game series with near gender parity. Too many cooties.
@bunnybunny: I played Jazz Jackrabbit and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 😀 And these zit-faced teenage boys want to tell me I’m not a real gamer? This videodame’s been playing games since before they were born.
On Vivian James: if her motto is “shut up and play”, then shouldn’t the gamergaters, you know, SHUT UP AND PLAY?
@Andrew Norton
Lol, god. That was painful to watch. I made it about 20 seconds. I think someone needs to explain to them that playing WWII video games doesn’t mean you have fought in any actual wars.
Manastu Utakata sez:
The longest I’ve seen so far is the light novel 「男子高校生で売れっ子ライトノベル作家をしているけれど、年下のクラスメイトで声優の女の子に首を絞められている。 (1) ―Time to Play― (上)」 In English: “I’m a High School Boy and a Popular Light Novel Author, but I’m Being Strangled by a Younger Female Classmate Who Is Also a Voice Actress. Book I, vol 1: Time to Play”. Here is an image of the dust jacket (though, the bottom third is an advertising “obi,” not part of the book itself.
Light novels tend to suffer a lot from too many cute female characters who, like Vivian James, are interested in the same things as socially inept nerd dudes but aren’t at all threatening about it. So gross.
The Nazi one is too much. How is it possible to have that much cognitive dissonance? Calling your enemies Nazis when your friends are actual Nazis?
My thirteen year old son writes fanfic*. Despite his predictable limitations, he has yet to come up with a character as shallow and superficial as Vidya Games.
*Or, as he insists, ‘fan FICTION’.
Robert,
Has he considering doing Nanowrimo? You can do it with fanfic (there aren’t any people policing it, LOL) and I find that for me, it gives me both the impetus and excuse to get shit done.
The part of all this that intrigues me is that the GGers are still releasing videos to YouTube, and swamping comments sections with exactly the same shite they’ve been spouting all along. It’s as though they think that repetition is the key to changing minds instead of, oh I don’t know, having valid points/criticisms.
The self-mythologising of the movement has happened really fast.
I think the grouping is here to stay, under one umbrella or another, as everyone else knows they’re scum.
I would be interested to show some actual service members who have been in an actual war the video posted above. I would like to know how they feel about having their very real and terrifying experience used as a rallying cry for “ethics in journalism”. I’m not remotely connected to the services but it pisses me off. I flew with a couple of Marines on their way home a few years ago; they didn’t get into detail but said it was ” intense” and kind of looked away for a few. (We mostly talked about their families) I’d also be interested in the reactions of WW2 vets who liberated the camps, who finally freed all the persecuted from that hell.
So I’d like to see Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen do a 10 mile run in full combat gear in the Texas heat before breakfast. Or maybe Eron and his sidekick facing IEDs and snipers in the desert. Its a lot harder than making YouTube videos and trying to sound philosophical about misogyny.
I know that videogames were part of life in Iraq and Afghanistan so I’d be surprised if veterans didn’t know about this. I’m going to look around and see if anything is out there, it feels important. I’m not in any way connected to the armed services but I’m pissed. These guys create this vision of themselves as larger than life warrior characters from videogames, not realizing that real warriors are human men and women, they get shot and bleed, lose eyes and limbs for their country. It makes me sick that GG thinks their little drama has any comparison.
The reality is the picture from the New York magazine article about their party in a strip club.
Still can’t link but its worth seeing if you haven’t.
The only thing I have found is a sample script in github for reporting Gawker to Amazon using a female disabled vet as the reporter. I did find one twitter screenshot where they were bumping chests and taling about wearing flak jackets for the cause, but not in military towns because that would be ‘stolen valor’.
Sickening