Watch out, Milo Yiannopoulos, you’ve got competition! #GamerGate has a new journalistic champion — and this one, like Milo, seems to have come straight from central casting, a virtual embodiment of every snooty reactionary preppie stereotype from every bad 80s movie.
A libertarian think tanker and erstwhile journalist with the unlikely name of Mytheos Holt, this new contender has one great advantage over young Milo: as you can see in the photo above, which I have not photoshopped in any way, he appears to be made entirely of wax — which means that unless someone accidentally sets him near a heater he will last forever.
Mytheos’ first intervention in #GamerGate comes in the form of a long opinion piece in the right-wing e-rag Daily Caller that attempts to recast the GamerGater struggle as a glorious resistance campaign to an ongoing #WaronNerds by “Far-Left Feminists And The Media.” Mytheos, who looks so much like an archetypical tormenter-of-nerds, might seem an unlikely GamerGate champion, but he’s a gamer, too, and his piece has been embraced warmly by the GG masses.
Commenters in Kotaku in Action, Reddit’s most influential GamerGate hangout, describe his piece as “excellent,” “insightful,” and “incredibly well researched.”
“Time for #WarOnNerds to start trending,” writes one enthusiastic commenter. “Welcome to the next level, Mytheos,” adds another, “we’re the only people in the history of ever to beat Social Justice, and this train has no brakes.”
The enthusiasm for the article might at first seem a little strange, given that Mytheos starts out by comparing GamerGaters to … a British teenager who earlier this year stabbed some girls in the face:
On February 11, 2014, the Daily Mail reported on the case of 19-year-old Ryan Walker, a thin, bespectacled “wimp” by reputation who, upon being bullied one too many times by some neighborhood girls, attacked them furiously, stabbing one in the face and bashing the other’s head against the pavement. …
And so it was that half a year before it began, #Gamergate was explained.
But the rest of Mytheos’ post reaffirms most of the GamerGate mythos: that it is a fight against corruption, not a campaign terrorizing outspoken women in gaming, and that it actively roots out the harassers in its midst. Above all, Mytheos argues that GamerGate, however rough it might be around the edges, is a justified rebellion against the Social Justice Warrior oppressors.
Mytheos’ indictment of the (alleged) evil leftist nerd-tormenters is as histrionic, and as utterly divorced from reality, as any GamerGate manifesto pasted into a bad infographic:
Along with their furious denunciations of the gaming press, the movement also appears to be fighting a new culture war — one against a new, radical and dangerously illiberal left which marinates in a hideous quagmire of resentment, smugness, vacuousness and contempt for free discussion. This movement prefers the vile ochlocracy of the Twitter mob … celebrates the Maoist public shaming of doxxing, and seems incapable of distinguishing between a .gif and an argument.
In case you’re wondering, ochlocracy means “government by mob.” It pays to increase your word power!
Make no mistake, when it comes to #Gamergate, both the SJWs and the gaming press are facing a backlash that is not only thoroughly warranted, but of their own making. …
America’s nerds are fighting back against what they rightly see as ages of persecution and dismissal by an extreme left wing fringe that they believe has co-opted the very press they used to trust and used it as a weapon of oppression despite claiming to speak for the oppressed. …
Their case is historically next-to-impossible to dispute.
Well, at least until Mytheos actually tries to make such a case. His alleged proof of the ongoing oppression of nerds by the SJW?
- TotalBiscuit, YouTube blabber and “moderate” GamerGater, has been “flamed” by GamerGate critics
- Sam Biddle of Gawker made a couple of joking Tweets declaring that “Nerds should be constantly degraded and shamed into submission.”
- Aaron Sorkin once described the dudes of Silicon Valley as “a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80′s.”
- The Nice Guys of OKCupid blog
Mytheos leans pretty hard on #4, devoting more time and energy to railing against the “feminist cruelty” of the Nice Guys of OkCupid blog (and those who were amused by it) than he does to the alleged “journalistic corruption” that is supposedly the real reason for GamerGate.
Indeed, aside from mentioning Biddle’s Tweets and taking a few swipes at Valleywag, the Silicon Valley blog that Biddle used to work at, Mytheos offers no real critique of journalistic corruption at all. NiceGuys of OkCupid, by contrast, gets more than 600 words, as Mytheos stands up (sort of) for the honor of a group he describes as
dumpy, white, awkward looking men whose primary crime in their profiles was expressing either insufficiently feminist viewpoints … or simply of being sad or angry about their lack of romantic options.
Yep. Mytheos does indeed seems to be suggesting that GamerGate is fundamentally driven by the resentment of “dumpy” white dudes who can’t get a date.
In a lot of ways, his argument is a cruder, and crueller, version of an argument I made about Men’s Rights Activists a few weeks back. In my post, I asked if
the rage that drives so many MRAs come from the same dark place in the psyche as the rage that so many romantically and sexually rejected feel towards their exes? …
Think of the fury many divorced MRAs feel towards their exes and women at large. Think of the self-pitying rage of “nice guys” MRAs in their teens and twenties who feel they’ve been unfairly “friendzoned” by stuck-up women. …
The self-righteous rage of the rejected is a dangerous thing. It’s dangerous when it’s directed at individual women. And it’s dangerous when it’s directed at women at large.
The continuing debacle that is GamerGate, which after all was called into existence by one dude’s long diatribe against the alleged evils of his ex-girlfriend, seems to reinforce this point every single day.
It’s just strange to see a supporter of GamerGate making a similar, if more simplistic, case — and being applauded for it by the very guys he describes so patronizingly as angry dateless “losers.”
NOTE: Make your own Mytheos Holt #NotYourShield memes here! And post them in the comments below!
… I thought Btomdarga was being sarcastic in his first post, since his “Checkmate, feminists” link was to The friggin’ Onion and all… But no, either he’s trolling or he really is that deluded, gullible and stupid.
If he’s not trolling, does anybody have a copy of How To Even For Dummies I could borrow?
I have never encountered doxxing on a crochet site.
In fact, I have never encountered doxxing on this site, even during some pretty bitter fights. so no, b.tom.darga, I do not buy your argument in the least.
@kirby @talbot –
I think part of it might not even be calculated. As with the observation from John Stewart that conservative white Christians seem to be very ready and willing to cry “victim”, it may be that when you’ve lived your whole live snugly wrapped in scads of privilege any degree of criticism or pushback feels like onerous oppression.
Then your actions being viewed with a critical eye, your views not being accepted as Right and True, and/or you not getting what you want when you want it = Nazi-like oppression.
[southernidiom]Poor dears. Bless their hearts.[/southernidiom]
Kirby – for real. I know far too many morons who insist that interpreting issues of any complexity in the most simpleminded way possible is a form of wisdom and insight, when it’s the exact opposite.
So the two sides here are people who harass others on social media and people who are being harassed on social media and object to being harassed on social media.
Whole life*
This was actually my friggin’ finger accidentally hitting “enter”.
I was proof reading!
I WAS PROOF READING!
Has anyone read the Wayside School books by Louis Sachar? There was a chapter about a new kid named Sammy who was wearing smelly raincoats that the teacher kept making him take off. After taking off layer upon layer of stinky coats, it is finally revealed that underneath he is a dead rat.
Now I’m picturing Mytheos as Sammy the dead rat 😀
Proxieme,
I saw that story and felt so much rage. Especially when they victim blamed a toddler for not giving good testimony.
Y’know what, between Mytheos Baratheon and Onion Boy, I’m just going to go ahead and post a collage of facepalms.
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g282/whiteshark_2006/cb018f705f3ba173f56d5eddd6e1b8e31310340185_full.jpg
Talbot & Kirby – these entitled, spoiled yahoos claim victimhood because they see other people having claimed it legitimately, and have gotten results. They have zero understanding of the “legitimately” part, and so they interpret the “gotten results” part as some kind of guilt-powered magic linguistics mind-control spell. And hey, they can chant the same words, cast the same spell, and have the same results, right? Equality!
Since they’re baffled by the entire process of education about victims’ experiences and how that can lead to enlightenment and social change, they just get pissy and scream about how unfair it is that “those people” are allowed to pull off a trick that they aren’t allowed to. That’s all the depth their complaints have.
It’s interesting that most of the time the go to insult directed at feminists is some variation of “you’re an ugly/fat/bitter hag and are just a feminist because no man wants you!” This hardly began with Twitter either. It’s been the rebuttal to feminism since the first wave.
Until feminists start talking about sexism in geek culture. Then all of a sudden we’re cast as the pretty popular cheerleaders and beauty queens who wouldn’t fuck them in high school and are now continuing this great injustice by waging a “war on nerds.” We’re suddenly the establishment, out to oppress nerdy men.
Wait. Did btomdarga of the sudden punctuation actually not understand the blog post was satire? Was xe actually serious about us “refuting” it?
Oh, and even the “good” part of GG constantly quibbles with minor, irrelevant, or untrue details about non-journalists. The same ones receiving lots of harassment. Often whenever these non-journalists, who are all women, speak about anything, even things completely unrelated to GamerGate. Wait, this is beginning to sound like it is also harassment…
(I’ve probably been ninja’d by now. :P)
@WWTH
I have indeed read Wayside School! Sammy does indeed make a wonderful metaphor for GamerGate. Raincoats and raincoats and raincoats… then dead rat. It turns out it wasn’t about raincoats at all, but ethics in rat disposal.
On a related but slightly-off-topic note: The Telegraph is reporting that Intel is doing business with Gamasutra again. So one of the only “success stories” for GamerGate has just un-successed itself.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/11231892/Intel-reinstates-advertising-on-Gamasutra-after-Gamergate-campaign.html
The comments are beyond belief. People are claiming that the Telegraph has outright manufactured a quote from Intel about the advertising deal. Because THAT totally makes sense.
*snort/chuckle*
Given that some fool named him “Mytheos” I’m guessing that this is a case where the worm-ridden apple didn’t fall far from the pretentious family tree.
Feh. Don’t tell me nerds are oppressed. I’m a nerd, and I know we’ve never had it better. I actually gave a speech about this a few years ago as part of a public-speaking club — we nerds have won. Video games are ubiquitous — you hear coworkers who don’t think of themselves as nerds talking about last night’s raid in World of Warcraft. The interets that got us teased in elementary school have led us to STEM jobs, and nerd jargon like “hack” and “bandwidth” are now everyday terms. We geeks are, in many ways, the born aristocracy of the information age. As Leigh Alexander put it, “So if you want someone who feels sorry for you because your family grew up with a Super Nintendo, don’t ask me.”
So when the gamergrotz whine about a “war on nerds,” what I hear is “I’m still nursing a grudge over the slights I received in middle school.”
Woot! Victory!
And that means that in a few months when I’m buying a new PC, I’ll be able to follow the suggestions of the techhead friend who was telling me my specs would best be served by a particular Intel processor. (The conversation happened literally the same week I’d decided to boycott Intel until they reversed course.)
Found on Tumblr, home of the evil SJWs! A visual representation of the reaction that many girls such as myself had to STEM and geek stuff as kids.
(My dinosaur books and Star Wars bedsheets, let me tell you about them.)
Oh, hey, this seems interesting, I think I’ll try some!
http://36.media.tumblr.com/1b652ec5f665321ca29a1901bad33e0b/tumblr_n32ajjbvSs1qh66wqo2_1280.jpg
And then, our reaction to the culture that surrounds said STEM field and geek stuff.
http://41.media.tumblr.com/45284d2e39130979cf75a1098459c7f2/tumblr_n32ajjbvSs1qh66wqo1_1280.jpg
Lesson to take away from this? It’s not actually science, technology, or geeky things that women and girls don’t like. It’s you, sexist dudes who make the culture that surrounds those things unpalatable for women and girls. Some women eventually learn to tolerate the taste because they just really love STEM and geeky things that much, but most decided that choking down foul-tasting crap on a daily basis isn’t worth it. This isn’t the fault of the women for not being willing to imbibe said foul-tasting crap, it’s the fault of the dudes who keep forcing them to choke it down as the price of admission to what they see as their treehouse.
Pocket Nerd – I say this exact thing to my wife from time to time. Yeah, I got crazy picked on when I was in school (I played Zork on my Apple ][e, and D&D back when 90% of anyone who’d even heard of it thought it was a division of the First American Church of Satan). I’ve been playing games longer than I suspect most of these GG idiots has even been alive, so they can well and truly take all their “nerdier than thou” crap and shove it. But the idea that gamers – these days – are anything but the privileged class is pure nonsense. We’re living in an unalloyed entertainment golden age for nerds. I can’t keep up with all the zillions of nerd conventions, movies, new games (both huge and small, both video and board), books, and god only knows what else. The fact that these idiots can claim that they’re “oppressed” by the occasional suggestion that maybe they not be such massive dicks to women all the time is probably in the all time top five most ridiculous things said by any nominally sentient being since the Planck time.
The two populations are not equivalent.
1) GamerGate has more harassers. Several times more.
2) GamerGate really is a misogynistic movement. Opposition to it is not a “misandrist” movement.
I just think nutpicking is tiresome and boring, as is the associated demand of people to denounce whatever nut is being picked at the moment.
https://imgflip.com/i/e6ccc
This might have been funnier in my head than it actually is
And, actually, I was thinking of GamerGaters when I was thinking about the nutpicking and the denouncement game. They do a lot of that shit on Twitter – finding nasty comments from some “opponent” of theirs and then tweeting among themselves “See how the Anti-GG people don’t denounce this” in a giant self-satisfied circle-jerk of delusion.
Here’s my contribution
https://imgflip.com/i/e6cxq
Also, another thing? Dudes, you weren’t picked on for being into sci fi or D&D or whatever, you were picked on for being socially awkward, or for dressing oddly, or whatever. Lots of people were into the same stuff you were and weren’t picked on because of it (seriously, everyone played video games when I was a kid, and the Star Wars franchise made billions). Whatever the reason was that other kids didn’t like you, it was never about the geeky iinterests. Which doesn’t mean that it was OK for other kids to pick on you, it just means that you’ve been blaming the wrong thing for it all along. Blame the cruelty of children that hasn’t been reined in by society yet, or society’s tendency to favor the charming and physically attractive, but the video and tabletop games/interest in science? That wasn’t the reason.
One of my high school besties grew up to be a physicist, and so did one of my high school boyfriends. Neither of them were ever shunned or bullied as kids, because they were both charming, pretty, funny, and very outgoing. Again, there’s a common thread to who’s bullied and who isn’t here, but it isn’t their interest in fantasy novels or trying to make rockets.