Pity poor Paul Elam! The Men’s Rights elder has spent, by his estimation, nearly half of his life ranting and raving against the supposed evils of feminism, and for what?
The movement he claims to lead has had no tangible victories in the real world beyond sullying its own name; traffic at his website has stalled out; and his latest publicity stunt – appropriating the name of the White Ribbon antiviolence campaign for his own dubious ends – has put him and/or his allies at legal risk without garnering him much of the attention he clearly craves.
And now a bunch of video gaming whippersnappers are generating more buzz than he ever has by launching their own misbegotten campaign against the so-called Social Justice Warriors they think are trying to take their hobby away from them.
The straw that broke Elam the Camel’s back? Some GamerGater on Twitter — perhaps this fellow? — telling those who’ve worked themselves into a rage about feminists criticizing rocket scientist Matt Taylor’s shirt that “this is what GamerGate has been fighting all along.”
That was enough to send Elam through the roof of his condo — and then to his keyboard, to pound out one of his angrier rants.
What. The. Fuck. Since when did people who never noticed jack shit was happening (and still don’t notice most of it) until their hobby websites went south a few months ago, come up with the words “all along”? For that matter, “we.” …
Perhaps there are a few in the gaming community that need to hear that “all along” for some people means decades. And they would do just as well to remember that we have been dealing with flak, and a lot more than flak, working in a filthy swamp of social indifference and hostility trying to prevent there ever having been a GamerGate or Matt Taylor fiasco to begin with.
As they say, respects is earn. And Elam, an old hand at the fine art of making a great deal out of nothing, thinks he’s earn a lot more respects than he’s getting from these vidya gaming upstarts.
I am just a guy who has been doing battle with these sociopathic fucks in one form or another for the better part of a quarter century.
Translation: PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEE!
Well, Paul, I just did. Hope this helps!
@friday jones
Yes please, I would love some eggs on toast.
What? I thought we were making random non-sequiturs.
Did I forget that it was Radfems Are All Evil Bitches, Just Thought You Should Know day again? (Sigh) Have to figure out how to get those updates to stop going directly to my spam folder.
I watched tv and did some crochet and came back to this weird post from friday jones.
Is it “identify one person in a group who is viewed as problematic and use that to smear an entire group” month?
Gee, and I thought it was the MRAs who were doing that to us.
After that bizarre thread the other day I’m blaming everything on drugs. Everyone is tripping balls and that’s why people are acting so weird, it’s the only explanation.
If this is my trip, I demand better drugs.
I laughed well at that picture and at the fact that “gynocentrism” is the highest listed search term leading to AVFM on Alexa. (I guess “whore” is a more competitive category.) Thank you.
In my heart of hearts I like to believe that Jack Thompson sought out Aurini and Owen, not the other way around. He was fading into an irrelevant joke, and seems just desperate enough to think aligning with these people will work out to a good career move. They took care to make him look reasonable, saying all he disapproved of was graphic sexuality and violence in CHILDREN’S video games. And never you mind whatever silly things you’ve heard about his past.
Sarkeesian’s past, on the other hand, is a free-for-all. Mind you, if the best dirt they can dig up is a publicly posted video of her arguing against advertising to young children (an argument with the support of both precedent and, interpretatively, science – their unthinking dismissal of concerns about the effects of rigid gender roles on young brains certainly ignores evidence too), well let’s just say I’m not super worried.
There is the production quality, though. That production quality. There’s always a risk they’ll win us ALL over with that.
It might just interest you to know, friday jones, if you’ve missed it, that there are radical feminists (though, as has been pointed out already, Brennan doesn’t claim to be one) right here on this board. So you might want to learn to read the room a bit better, perhaps. Just a thought.
This is completely OT, but a number of posters had expressed interest in non-MMO games that are atypical for the industry, and this one seemed like it may interest some of you:
http://majornelson.com/2014/11/19/never-alone-now-available-xbox-one/
Is the idea that Thompson is their token dissenter? So that Aurini & Owen can say “see, it’s not one of those dishonest productions that only interviews people who agree – we aim for *balance*”?
I can’t believe I’m saying, but I think Elam does have a point. He was being a raging misogynist asshole on AVFM before gamergaters were being raging misogynist assholes over “ethics in game journalism.”
I will give him that. He was a raging misogynist asshole first.
Though I don’t think that’s anything to be particularly proud of or wanting to be reminding people of or anything like that.
A walk down memory lane with The Poor Man via C&L reminding us just who Dean Esmay is lest we forget.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060822124745/http://www.thepoorman.net/2005/11/23/the-wanker-wingnut-continuum/
He battles?
That’s rich.
Siting behind a keyboard telling men to hate women while you fleece your rubes isn’t battle.
It’s nice to see he’s so frustrated at his irrelevance, though.
Hey Paul,
You didn’t invent misogyny. You can’t take all the credit every time some dudes send death threats to women or call a bomb threat into a school. Well, you can. But, you’ll have to take credit for Elliot Roger’s too. If these upstarts need to be put in their place about riding on your shoulders then you need to tell the world that wipper-snapper stole all your press. You have worked so hard to convince men that women are less than human and deserve abuse, rape and various kinds of punishment for being women. Don’t let one guy with a gun steal your thunder. You get out there and tell ’em all that you did all his heavy lifting for him. All he had to do was believe the kind of shit you spew and pull the trigger. After all, you’ve been encouraging men like him for half a century. Your work was bound to pay off in bodies sooner or later. You really do deserve some of the credit. Don’t worry, buddy. I think your work has had an effect on the world.
I would get a Twitter account just long enough to take part in that.
Wha..?
*looks at tea cup containing only tea*
*feels a sad*
Why isn’t anyone sharing with me?
*kicks dirt*
Shucks guys. I wanna get high as Queen Kong’s twat too.
Maybe it’s not that we’ve taken drugs. It’s that we’re coming down off of them, and now nothing makes any fucking sense.
Re: friday jones’ link, which has nothing to do with the article or misogyny. Yes, CB doxxed people. Doxxing people is bad. Are we done now? Can we get back to the mockery now?
Who comes up with the pictures? Lol!!! Someone’s got a sense of humor. XD
I do love the various reactions #gamergate has been garnering from people outside their echo chamber.
Older non-misogynists and/or women.into gaming: “Shut up, assholes, I’ve been gaming longer than many of you have been alive!”
Paul Elam: “Shut up,whippersnappers, I’ve been hating women longer than many of you have been alive!”
Everybody else: “Shut up, Woody.”
Or something to that effect. I might have gotten a bit confused towards the end there.
paulcarlton – I think David put together the Super Paulio Brother one there. It cracked me up, too!
@Lea:
That is an astonishingly evocative phrase, there.
@proxieme, video games are never off topic. This looks freakin’ amazeballs (this is what my 14 yr old called the game).