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!
Actually, there is a sense in which the “we” of goobergomb has been doing this for a while: many of those people are probably the very same who started harassing Anita Sarkeesian when her Tropes VS Women project began (as she pointed out herself). Hell, I bet more than a few of them were also involved in the hyperoverreaction to “elevatorgate.” Statistically speaking, there must be at least a few who have been part of all of these things going back a decade or more, including misogynistic popular blow-ups we don’t even think of as being remotely related to this one.
Aw, poor Paul.
This will probably send him into yet another grift-a-thon so his dumbass followers can prove their love.
Shut up, Woody.
Couldn’t resist making a stupid meme out of this
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/56330324.jpg
Reading the title cards of the latest Sarkeesian Effect teaser (which has JT in it), it looks like the angle they’re going for is “This guy isn’t afraid to come be interviewed and discuss his opinions, but Anita silences all dissent! Anita is the real censor.”
Despite, you know, Jack Thompson filing literal lawsuits in the name of censorship and Anita, you know, not.
So, on the one hand they aren’t calling him a hero or anything. On the other hand, their supporters are. Also on the other hand, they basically ignore everything they would find wrong with him in order to levy yet another baseless attack against Anita.
My brain can’t even comprehend the cognitive dissonance.
Not only was Jack Thompson actively trying to have certain games banned, he was also disbarred for ethics violations.
Yeah, he’s totally a suitable part of our movement for promoting ethics in the gaming industry and saving it from those evil SJWs who (don’t actually) want to ban games!
… wut. O.o
Anita’s done a bunch of interviews (hey, remember Colbert? Rolling Stone?). She just doesn’t do them with hostile assholes who think she’s evil. And refusing to have the same vile, hateful misogynistic shit yelled at you all over YouTube comments every day FOR THREE YEARS is not the same as censorship. These guys seriously think “free speech” means “my right to yell at you until you STFU”, don’t they?
@weirwoodtreehugger, what’s so hard to understand? It’s just that it’s about ethics in game journalism, is all.
I am straight up flipping out over the news that Jack Thomson is involved with The Sarkeesian Effect thing now. That is amazing. AMAZING.
Have you guys seen the “teaser trailer” for it??? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tF8m0q_CQM&feature=youtu.be
Sorry, Paulie, looks like the kids haven’t even noticed you yelling at them and they are never, ever going to get off your lawn.
I — gamerghazi and Jack Thompson? Wheargledascht.
That’s my attempt to sum up my feelings. There’s probably some great, 35-letter-long German word to sum up that feeling one gets when viewing something that’s a) impossible in a very real sense and yet b) obviously and patently true.
Like, a sense of utter disbelief mixed with absolute credulity, tinged with enough ennui but still shot through with the desire to act – with the only possible result being brainlock. I don’t have that German word, but I’ve got Wheargledascht.
I have so much Wheargledascht right now.
I love that a thread about how Paul Elam is angry that #gamergate is getting the attention he deserves is immediately hijacked with a news update from #gamergate.
Please let this derail continue, it’s freaking poetic.
@shadethedruid, ONE WHOLE INTERNET FOR YOU.
Am I the only one who noticed the demographic info on Alexa for his site?
The largest percentage of traffic to his site comes from non-college-educated males accessing his site from their home.
Does such a world exist, or is the rage the point for Elam?
I like how they claim Anita is “censoring” them for not allowing comments on her videos, but neglect the fact that they one, can still discuss her videos on other places in the net besides on the video itself, and two, they and the bile they spew at her on a regular basis are the reason why she turned them off. You abuse your rights to speak on a video, you lose them. It’s not censorship. No one has to hear your bile, no one has to give you a platform or a microphone. “First Amendment!” is #NotYourShield.
I mean, just look at Anita’s Twitter feed and mentions and you’ll see why she turned off comments where she can. Look at the numerous death threats she receives on a daily basis, look at what simply saying her name does on just about any internet forum. Her name alone invokes screeches of “I WANT TO KILL/RAPE THAT WHORE/BITCH/CUNT!” from most of the Gators.
Do you Gators really think you’d put up with that if it was directed at you and you had an option to turn it off? Even if you believed that it was #censorship to do so?
I’m going to take a guess from your actions directed at people simply, calmly, and quietly saying they don’t like a shirt (and stated a pretty damn good reason as to why) and thought it was unprofessional, and I’m going to say “no”.
My take from the latest teaster with JT is that they are accusing Anita Sarkeesian of being pro-censorship because she expressed the perfectly reasonable opinion that we as a society should not allow third parties to advertise to very small children. Her opinion on the matter being backed by actual science that has stated clearly that very small children should not be exposed to television or video games AT ALL because audiovisual entertainment inhibits their potential for development into competent adults.
I kind of feel bad for Elam*.. Poor guy is getting passed over by ‘gaters in favour of a bunch of dudes who hate gaming. Hell, they probably don’t even know he exists. That’s gotta hurt.
*Where “feel bad” = “this is f’ing hilarious ow my sides”
I just heard about Jack Thompson’s alliance (if it could be classified as such) with Gamergate, or Owen/Aurini at the least.
My summary, in one word: WAT.
Seriously, forming an alliance with a guy who has been railing against videogames for two decades, a guy who WALKED OUT of a disciplinary hearing about his inappropriate conduct and was subsequently disbarred for ten years, will drive some people out of the pro-Gamergate side. This isn’t even considering the blowback that this will have for people on the fence who know what Thompson is about.
I guess it does show what kind of character Jack is: an opportunist, and firmly right-wing as well.
…I’ll stop typing while I still have some residual sanity.
They are allies with literal Nazis. Nothing is going to drive people out who haven’t already been driven out.
@Katz “They are allies with literal Nazis. Nothing is going to drive people out who haven’t already been driven out.”
Nailed it. If someone is still standing by GamerGate, it is part of their identity and leaving now would be an admission that they made a mistake.
The “teaser trailer” is amazing. Of course it’s not a trailer in any normal sense of the word, just an untrimmed clip from the documentary-in-progress with some sweet Sega Saturn synthesizer music added. Because these guys have no idea how to make anything.
The main points:
1. Jack Thompson isn’t the video-game-hating monster gamers have made him out to be. By which we mean he is not literally a monster, like with fangs and stuff. He does hate video games.
2. Jack Thompson’s detractors are sissy boys who play ukuleles and hang out with girls. Ew, girls. You don’t want to be on the team with girls on it, do you?
3. Jack Thompson and Anita Sarkeesian are both opposed to advertising aimed at small children. This is good common sense when Thompson says it and scary Orwellian censorship when Sarkeesian says it.
4. This clip of Anita Sarkeesian saying something perfectly reasonable about sexist children’s toys is such damning evidence of her evil that we don’t even have to explain why it’s wrong.
5. The only difference between these two people is that Jack Thompson is a scientist and Anita Sarkeesian is an ideologue. So Thompson is reasonable and trustworthy, whereas Sarkeesian should be forbidden from speaking in public. (Note: Jack Thompson is not a scientist.)
6. The important thing is, Jack Thompson hates feminism. He’s one of us! We can recruit him to our courageous YouTube battle against women and liberals! And that’s what ethics in video game journalism is all about.
David, that’s your best photoshopping of Pauly yet. XD
The only way Pauly’s been “doing battle with sociopathic fucks” if if he bashes his head against the mirror every day.
Never heard of this Jack Thompson; to me the name will always be a cool Aussie actor (Wake in Fright, Breaker Morant, The Man from Snowy River, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, The Sum of Us, etc, etc …)
@Shannon, thank you for the review – now I don’t have to watch it, lol.
You know, the deeper down the rabbit hole this goes, the more convinced I become that Aurini & Owen are fake cover names for a couple of art majors who are attempting a new take on social surrealism.
Anyone has more data on the effects of exposing small children to ads, television or videogames? Thanks.
So I tweeted about the Jack Thompson thing, and than 15 seconds later I deleted it, realizing that I really don’t want to get any attention from these people. Someone still tweeted me about it calling Sarkeesian a hypocrite.
Yeah, no using #gamergate for me.