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!
@cassandrakitty
Exactly. Part of growing up is learning how to deal with the bad stuff that happens to you, especially all the crap still hanging around from your adolescence. I can almost – almost – give the teenage boys a pass, because they’re still trying to deal with hormones, and friends acting weird, and the importance of fitting in, and all that stuff. Men in their mid twenties and older should be starting to get it, instead of punishing every woman they encounter because the girl they liked went to prom with someone else.
@cassandrakitty: I think the words you’re looking for are “I’m sorry I said something so ill-informed and insensitive.”
I got bullied for a characteristic that my brother and sister share with me. They went to the same school as me and they were fine when, logically, by your reasoning, they should have gotten the same treatment as me. They didn’t, becausecthey were surrounded by nicer kids than me.
@ Cyberwulf
I do wonder how old the core group involved in gamergate is. If they’re mostly teenagers their behavior makes more sense, though it’s still not OK.
Mostly this is all just reminding me why I find most spaces centered around geeky interests so toxic even though I share a lot of those interests.
I keep saying this: we need about 100 more Laci Greens on YouTube. Bless that young woman’s courage! She was getting threatened before anyone heard of Anita, and kept pressing on, educating, and using the power of that platform.So, too, HannibaltheVictor13. Please support these warriors. Ignoring the power that site has on minds, young and old, is and was a massive mistake on people who know there is this war on women and have been talking about it when it was beginning to really brew back in 2009. Instead, we get these GWW, Thunderfoot’s, TheAmazingAtheists (clearly on the attack at feminist’s),and Jemma Morgan’s chasing the spotlight there. There really needs to be more voices on there. I’mso pissed now I may join the effort’s myself. I’m SO sick of this bullying, putrid, hate movement polluting human minds. And frankly I am not insulted at all by being called a ‘social justice warrior’. Not a bad kind of ‘warrior’ to be IMO. May we all find the courage to be doxx’d, threatened, etc. Bring it on, fools, and later be seen on the wrong side of human History as they WILL BE.
Cassandra said this:
I don’t see any victim blaming there. I also think she right that bullies will make fun of anything and everything because it’s really about the joy they take in bullying. She arguing with the claim that gamers are a persecuted minority, which is one of the nonsensical underpinnings the new #waronnerds dumbassery.
I’ve never known Cassandra to be insensitive to anyone here. I thought the gist of her posts were basically, bullies act like assholes, and assholes will find any excuse to pick on someone.
No, girlscientist, the fact that you’re reading victim blaming into comments in which I clearly stated that bullies bully people because they’re assholes is not actually something that I should be apologizing for.
It is a pretty good reason for me to avoid talking to you in the future, though.
Count me in for bullied nerd, sf obsessed weirdo, a lot of times I’ve felt upset over the treatment I’ve received but it’s firmly in the past, I think that distance has a lot to do with processing the hurt of ostracism and not turning it back into hate directed outward. The best we can do is to be patient with people stuck in outrage and hope they see sense.
My guiding rule is.
“Don’t be an asshole”
It takes a lot of people to come back to that, it can take people going from reciprocal assholeness all the way through to full on self righteous assholing in the name of their one bastion of themselves. It takes time to realise with enough self awareness how your actions can harm even when you don’t think it will.
But that last step is always the hardest when the easiest thing is to believe you’re not hurting anyone, the pain you’re feeling when confronted with the outcome of your actions isn’t your conscience and self reflection, it’s the scorn of the accuser.
Oh, I can’t do the fan forums either, Cassandra. I tried it for a while, but the peevish sexism that comes out whenever a female character does anything that’s not perfect is legion in those places. Jesus, The Walking Dead forums? Don’t go in there.
The Forbidden Planet store in London is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The actual store? A wonderland full of amazing things that I loved the moment I walked in the door. The staff there? Perfect illustration of how toxic geek spaces can be for women and girls. I used to actively try to avoid them until it was time to pay.
Mythago – cool your jets, man. Cassandra has said pretty clearly that she considers the cause of bullying to be bullies being dickbags. She did say that bullies target the socially awkward, but she never said that they did so justifiably, or that being socially awkward is some kind of crime for which that’s a remotely fitting response. For what it’s worth, I think she’s basically right.
Cassandra – that said, your posts do give the impression that you believe that you’re a better interpreter of my own personal experiences than I am, having, you know, actually lived them and all. I couldn’t have had those experiences because yours were different, and all that. Unless you have some kind of orbital remote-telepathy device, then maybe there are limits to your expertise about my childhood.
*enters*
*sees fight brewing*
*backs out slowly*
@ FifthInterval
Sorry for coming across that way. Part of what I’m trying to get at is that I’m not sure we even know why exactly bullies target the people they do. Sometimes it’s obvious, but other times a bunch of horrible kids will single out one particular kid to gang up on and nobody, including the adults around them, can really figure out why. The why part shouldn’t really matter, though, the focus should be on trying to make them stop.
Also, for bonus irony, driving women out of gaming by bullying any woman who dares to have a public voice and use it to talk about games is exactly what gamergate is about.
Cassandra – It’s all good. As I say, I agree with you about bullying and its essential features. For me, the distinction between “X is the source” and “Y is the source, but then affects X” is too academic in scope to mitigate my original, larger point: GGers claim suffering for their nerdy interests, and that this earns them a certain kind of credibility in demanding some kind of social recompense. Which is horseshit. Even if they have had the suffering, that doesn’t earn them any kind of moral superiority they think it does. I actually have the experiences they claim, by their definition of what they mean, so I know first hand how full of shit they are. 🙂
This conversation has gotten me thinking about my past and how close I could’ve come to being similar to these arseholes.
I’ve always been socially inept, but school amplified that and my social skills basically atrophied (to the point of bordering on anxiety). My outlet for that was to be an arse to other people, like has been mentioned by people here. I could’ve gotten worse still and become one of these 20 somethings who blames women for never having a relationship or showing interest (rather than what it is, which my own fault), but luckily I realised what was going on before that happened.
..Hang on, this sounds like one of those stories where the next part is “then I found Jesus”. 😛 But no, getting into the whole social justice thing was the turning point for me.
Yep. Also, aren’t most boys who’re bullied bullied by other boys rather than by girls? Even if everyone agreed that they deserve some sort of payback, it wasn’t women who bullied them when they were kids, so why are we the target of the attempted revenge and/or the people who’re obligated to make it up to them?
Note – this is mostly a rhetorical question.
They’re not afraid of women — and women should be fluffing their egos like in the movies, not acting all human with personal needs of their own. In the movies, women are rewards for persecuted dweebs. MDPG’s and all that. They’re not suppose to have their own agendas.
Apparently this guy is from Big Sur, so the name Mytheos might not be made up, given the high probability of him having super rich hippybutnotactuallyhippy parents
Cassandra – in my experience, bullying isn’t as gender-segregated like that. Even boy-on-boy bullying has the “we’re making you look less appealing to the girls” subtext. In my experience, this is a game that the mean girls leap to join in on.
For what it’s worth, I think that punishing non-conformity is part of what fuels bullying, for the same reason that stereotypes are so popular among the intellectually lazy: they save on all that pesky having-to-understand-things-in-detail. It’s soooo mentally taxing. Thank god there are pigeonholes to put people in so I can get on with my Dukes of Hazard recap / Shawn Cassidy worship / fill in your era-appropriate activity here.
I was sporadically taunted in high school, but I had a reputation for being one of those uncool kids who would actually tell. Also, I was the sixth of my family to go to that school, and all the teachers and administrators had dealt with my parents. This culminated in my coming out at the beginning of senior year. In 1978. In retrospect, I was trying to prove that I could do it and get away with it. Fortunately, that proved to be correct.
Curiously, the two biggest antagonists in my class later came out. They haven’t shown up to the reunions, though.
@Cassandra:
Also, aren’t most boys who’re bullied bullied by other boys rather than by girls? Even if everyone agreed that they deserve some sort of payback, it wasn’t women who bullied them when they were kids, so why are we the target of the attempted revenge and/or the people who’re obligated to make it up to them?
I think two things are being confused here. Boy jocks shoved boy geeks in the lockers, and (the) girls (that the boy geeks mooned over) didn’t date boy geeks because girls don’t like geeky stuff. So now you’ve got bitter boy geeks who feel under attack like they did back in high school, plus they’re angry that girls actually DO like geeky stuff for its own sake. So how dare these b****es who go for jerks instead of Nice Guys TM pretend to like geek stuff for attention (the attention of bitter boy geeks. What an ego boost!) and then demand that bitter boy geeks redecorate their geek treehouse with female protagonists who wear sensible clothes instead of stuff that shows off their boobs.
Oh FFS
People claiming cassandrakitty’s saying bullied kids bring it on themselves: read for comprehension, will you?
Is that too hard to understand?
Er, that neatly describes GamerGate, not their critics.
Gamergate really is a masterclass in projection. It’s like they think that if they say NO U often enough everyone will believe them.