Here’s an interesting post by someone claiming to be a former GamerGater on Reddit explaining why they left the, er, movement and helpfully summing up a lot of what’s wrong with it. At least when it comes to GG’s rampant hypocrisy. Take it away, turbonerdsupreme!
It was a mixture of things really, but I think the starting point was Milo’s “You take your tits out for a living tweets” to Liana K. Basically what gradually convinced me GG wasnt about ethics (journalistic or otherwise) was the bayonetta affair, and their sheer hypocrisy.
They claim to be fighting for Journalistic ethics, while supporting and championing highly unethical journalists like Milo and Pinsof. It’s also important not to forget the Bayonetta affair where they tried to pressure a publisher into pulling a Gerstmann, and dropping advertisments on a site that gave their game a bad review. THEY LITERALLY TRIED TO BRING ABOUT THE SECOND COMING OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS EXAMPLE OF CORRUPT GAMES JOURNALISM IN HISTORY.
They denounce journalists like Leigh Alexander, being rude to people on twitter, while joining in with and celebrating the outright bullying, abuse and harassment of Milo “real professional journalist” Yiannopolous (i’d hyperlink an example but there’s way too many of them to pick just one, this guy is really scum, google it)
They attack Anita for not providing good value for her kickstarter money, while supporting, glorifying and No I’m Spartacusing, someone who scammed around $15k out of people using kickstarter as well as the obvious scam that is the Sarkeesian effect. [Although good news is Sarkessian effect stuff is starting to be voted down sometimes on KiA] They also welcomed the support of the Amazing Atheist a known scammer
They mock Cheong’s neo-nazi past, while having Davis “white nationalist on paper” Aurini, Milo “Iron Cross” Yianoppulous/Wagner (seriously what the fuck is wrong with this guy), the Holocaust denying King of /poll, and Stormfront among them. Not to mention their propagating of anti-Semitic /pol/ memes and frequent use of Jew as a slur.
They Call Chu a rape apologist (a completely bullshit accusation), all the while endorsing Roosh “No never means no” V, and Mike “Why Should I care when women are raped?” Cernovich. [Although to be fair support for Roosh has met some opposition]
They get super mad at Sarkeessian for supposedly not even liking video games, all the while championing Christina “Still hasnt actually played any video games to my knowledge” Sommers, and Milo “Are you noticing a reoccurring theme here yet?” Yianopoulos.
They claim they want politics and politically charged thinktank funded academics out of video games, while supporting Christina “works for a rightwing think tank” Sommers.
They claim Anita is the new Jack Thompson while supporting Jack “The Old Jack Thompson” Thompson.
They claim Milo Yianopoulos has redeeming qualities as a human being, while being frequently exposed to his tweets, articles, and videos. While admittedly this is not hypocrisy it does show extremely poor judgement.
In conclusion the majority of GGers show such a massive double standard in their treatment of progressives and social conservatives, that it is impossible to construe it as anything other than a thinly veiled right wing socially conservative movement, with no real care for journalistic ethics. That is why I left.
The links scattered around in there are pretty illuminating.
H/T — A Division by Zer0
“They claim Anita is the new Jack Thompson while supporting Jack “The Old Jack Thompson” Thompson.”
This made me laugh more than it should’ve..
Yeah, I have to admit, I was disappointed that he didn’t mention the horrific harassment that people like Sarkeesian and Quinn receive from gators. I was also put off when he talked about Anita as if he agrees with everything GG says about her, and only has a problem with them supporting someone who has done worse with Kickstarter money. He also doesn’t mention TheAmazingAtheist’s horrible attitude (towards women, feminism, rape victims, whatever) or the fact that gators support him even with his shitty attitude, just the fact that he’s a scammer/e-begger.
Sorry for being a downer, it’d be nice if more people who turned away from GG actually took the harassment that gators sling seriously. I do agree that it’s at least good to see someone turning away from them for whatever reason. The post did make me smile at first, I just wound up overthinking it as usual.
” I was also put off when he talked about Anita as if he agrees with everything GG says about her”
Not really… He says “They get super mad at Sarkeessian for supposedly not even liking video games.” Using “supposedly” like that doesn’t really suggest much confidence in GG’s claims about her.
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
Don’t let’s let perfect be the enemy of the good, here, people. We’re not saying “they finally got it perfect summa cum laude”, we’re saying “hey someone’s not actually failing the course anymore”. Credit where credit is due, and expect that things will continue going in the right direction if we encourage and support them. I’m going to choose to be happy someone got disgusted with the hypocrisy they saw. I’ll be disappointed later if they don’t continue developing, but I’m not going to make myself pre-disappointed now.
Tell me this is @Plaat being sarcastic.
There’s another post in that thread that says the following:
I find that pretty heartening. It means that GG has succeeded in pushing at least one person off the fence and helped them realise that yes, misogyny in tech industries really is that bad.
@titianblue: The use of “JuiceBro Lawyer” makes me think yes.
Wait, it wasn’t obvious from the moment it slouched on to the interwebz that GamerGate was completely full of shit?
The vibe is, understandably, against major plaudits for Mr turbonerdsupreme. But I feel we should give him some recognition and encouragement.
How would you feel about a “Most Improved” sticker?
I’ve seriously just witnessed a Gater post “I just want to play video games”, and then immediately follow with a 2000 word drunken screed about how a single weapon name changing from “marksman” to “shootist” in a video game has ruined it forever, inclusivity is an agenda, why do you force me to acknowledge other people exist, skeletons are going to make all video games about dildos and gimp suits, wah wah wah.
(do note that “shootist” is actually a John Wayne reference)
That inspired me to craft this meme:
https://imgflip.com/i/edpjk
So someone has woken up? Let’s hope that many more have the scales fall from their eyes and GG will sink into obscurity (though saying that my gaming sons know fuck all about it!).
I don’t actually think it’s “good” (in the sense you are using it) that someone decided to leave GG because GG didn’t live up to their standards, as opposed to because GG is a toxic sewer of misogyny and hate. I think that displays a fundamental and willful belief that misogyny is actually NBD and the real problem is that GG is pro-scammer and pro-Jack Thompson.
When someone decides to claim that they no longer support a terrorist group because the terrorists aren’t effectively pushing the correct message, rather than because they are fucking terrorists, I don’t jump up and down for joy.
And for people like Jon H, who are trying to parse this post to make it say things it does not say, go find a new hobby.
I just hope more of these goofs leave GG.
I think Chaltab got the measure of this guy. I don’t think we need shower turbonerdsupreme with cookies, but I’m happy for him, and I hope there are many others like him who will choose to leave GamerGate, having realised that they’ve been duped into co-signing some hateful shite.
Group Psychology can be a terrifying force for evil, but at least this one person has managed to shake himself free, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
GG poisoned itself the moment it started accepting recognisable faces of Hatred. It’s easy to get sucked into “defending” something you like from those “eeevil SJWs”, without necessarily connecting that to the hatred of women, but nobody with a shred of awareness wants to be associated with Neo-Nazis.
Now I hope it’s reached the point where more people are reacting in the same way as turbonerd, and that they’ll leave the seething morass of opportunistic hate-mongers to chew GamerGate apart from the inside…
Turbonerd and the kitten video have very much brightened my day.
It’s not like he said “I would have totally stayed with GG, if not for those meddling hypocrites”. Just because he does not complain too much about the misogyny in GG does not mean he’s otherwise fine with it. You accuse Jon H of parsing the post for things the poster did not say, yet to the same thing when you infer that, just because he does not explicitely mention it, he has absolutely no problem with it.
That, and he DOES cite two rape apologists and Milo Yianopolous as an example of the kind of people he does not want to associate with anymore.
I generally like the commentary here, except for one thing.
“Meme”s are the worst thing to happen to wit since paying authors by the word.
I’m still legit confused about these supposed issues in video games journalism that people are mad enough about to join Gamergate in the first place. I’ve read some articles that say the only valid problems are caused by big companies abusing their power (like the Bayonetta thing, I think). But I can’t plausibly see someone joining GG because they have a problem with that stuff, because… GG never talks about it. They talk about indie games, and the bone of contention seems to be… that some indie games are popular despite being really different from AAA games?
I saw a quote from a website that was trying to soberly interview people from both sides, and so all the GG people were on their best behavior. And one guy was answering a question about what a perfect post-GG gaming website would look like, and he said something like, “There could even be reviews of stuff like ‘Gone Home,’ as long as EVERYBODY isn’t giving it 10 out of 10 when it’s not THAT GOOD.”
It’s hard for me to understand how people are seeing that as a less corrupt system, unless you immediately believe that no one has sincere reasons for having different tastes from yourself. (I have come to the conclusion that this is utterly true of lots of these people.) Some people seem to bemoan that popular indie games are cynically designed to push all the right liberal, hipster buttons and so people go, “Oh hey, yeah, this validates lesbianism! A plus!” but I can’t see how someone could believe that without believing that telling a non-sexualized story about lesbians isn’t something anyone would do just for its own sake. Other people complain about how cliquish the “indie game scene” is, but frankly, that sounds less a recipe for corruption and more just interpersonally annoying (and I’ve never heard anyone who isn’t an indie game maker who’s outside the ‘scene’ complain about it.)
So…. yeah. I really kind of don’t understand how someone can get sucked into GG out of completely innocent and fair-minded dislike of corruption in journalism. Even giving ALL benefit of the doubt about misogyny, it doesn’t hold up without a core of “I can’t abide how people like games that I dislike.”
@ Michael Lindsay – assuming you’re not being sarcastic, Gamergate told the lies that its followers were prepared to believe.
My hope is that there will be more turbonerdsupremes out there, who maybe didn’t recognize GG for how wrong it was, but who become disaffected because of the illogic and hypocrisy. Once outside the self-reinforcing, baby-MRA bubble of Gamergate, maybe they can experience the same growth that Viceroy did.
BTW, do I dare to hope that associating with Jack “Satan of Video Gamers” Thompson might be what finally discredits Gamergate with all but the “No, this really is about running women out of gaming, which belongs to us personally, and we’re actually damn proud of it” hard core?
I guess it’s mostly about people feeling threatened, feeling like their favourite hobby or thing is “under attack”, which, in turn, means THEY are under attack. And when somebody feels threatened, it’s very easy for others, or even himself, to find some obscure, all-powerful target that clearly must be behind all of this.
I guess the chain of “logic” goes something like this:
I am a gamer -> somebody is questioning my games -> somebody is questioning me -> other people agree with the person doing the questioning -> I know for sure that the thing being questioned is perfect -> the people who are questioning my thing are either a) ignorant and not true fans of my thing or b) malevolent and actively hateful.
Note here that “questioning” can mean anything from changing the name of your favourite gun to pointing out feminist criticism to not praising your favourite chosen game into high heaven, or damning your favourite chosen worst video game.
@ted the fed
Well, there technically is something of an ethics problem in gaming – specifically, it’s an open secret that large review sites (namely IGN) and well-known individual reviewers have been accepting bribes from EA and Ubisoft in exchange for undeservedly good scores – but, of course, even #GamerGate’s bullshit cover story couldn’t give one dried-out dingo turd about any of that and they even count some of the bribe-takers amongst their numbers (*cough*TotalBiscuit*cough*). ETHICS!
@ Lordcrowstaff – two factors that add to the toxic stew. One: a persecution complex that leads many gamers to believe that nerds – that is, male nerds like themselves, who are/were picked on in high school – are the victims in any given situation (which of course means that whatever is happening to Zoe Quinn, she’s the real bully, and all of the people trying to defend her are just the popular kids picking on you). Two: the fact that although they feel constantly bullied, they’re actually privileged beyond all measure in the gaming world. Which means that every advance by someone else really does take something away from them, in the sense that their privilege is not total anymore. Where they once got the whole dozen cookies and left everyone the crumbs, now they only get eleven cookies. And since they’re the victim in any given situation, that means the high school mean girls and their bullying SJW minions have come to take away their only haven.
It really does make sense, if you start from a foundation of utter delusion.
It means this is not high on that person’s priority list, and probably not even in that person’s mind at all. If it were a big factor, why would the post not mention it? You’re still writing something into this that isn’t there. My reason for not supporting GG is because GG is a toxic sewer of misogyny and hate. That’s not a difficult thing to state, and this post could have stated that if that were actually a reason why this person doesn’t support GG anymore. That statement is not there.
The “Bayonetta affair” gets the all-caps treatment, but misogyny doesn’t even warrant a footnote. You’re not going to convince me that misogyny was super-important to this person, so important that the breakup post doesn’t even bring it up.
I’m saying it wasn’t enough for this person to leave GG, because it is not listed as a reason for leaving GG. I am taking this person at their word. I believe what they say. Why do you not believe what they say?
Let’s look at what the post actually says about the rape apologists.
Funny, I don’t see, “I don’t want to be associated with rape apologists,” anywhere in there. I see, “Here’s another example of the hypocrisy which I stated in my first paragraph was one of the two reasons why I left GG (the other being the Bayonetta affair).”
Give me some statement out of that post, any statement, that says something to the effect of, “I don’t want to be associated with a movement that welcomes rape apologists.” If you can’t come up with one, then that statement is an invention of your mind and not present in the post.
MY is cited as being bad because he’s a Nazi, because he doesn’t play games, and because he’s an all-around, unspecified bad person. He’s cited as a bully and a harasser, but there is no indication whatsoever that the high-gendered nature of the harassment has even caught this poster’s notice.
In fact, the only mention of any kind of gendered anything is the first paragraph:
There’s no hint that misogyny is a problem for this person. It is not listed as a reason for leaving GG. At best it was a “starting point,” but it wasn’t the ending point, and at no time does this post say anything about gendered terrorism (or gendered anything) as a reason to not like GG. One of the two stated reasons for leaving GG is hypocrisy, and the bulk of the post talks about (surprise!) hypocrisy.
There are many opportunities for, “oh, and also the misogyny” to be incorporated into the post, and none of those opportunities was taken. This means that it wasn’t that important. Nobody writes an essay listing the reasons why they left GG and then forgets to include a big super-important reason that was one of the major factors. The fact that the Bayonetta affair gets all-caps and misogyny doesn’t get a mention means that the Bayonetta affair was an important reason and misogyny isn’t.
If you can’t grasp that, then I can’t help you because you don’t want to grasp it and I can’t make you do something you willfully refuse to do.
But why didn’t he mention the misogyny in GG when he gave out all his other reasons for no longer supporting it? Sure, it’s nice that he doesn’t like blatant rape apologists. But he also called the harassment and threats that gamergaters did “being rude on twitter.” That tells me he still doesn’t get it. I’m glad GG lost someone, and I’ll take it. I’m not saying he’s a horrible person who should die in a fire or anything. But I’m pretty sick of being asked to set the bar for human decency so low for men. It gets a little tiring being expected to baby men and cheer them on for the slightest little glimmer of goodness. Especially since our culture sets the human decency bar very high for women.
This whole thing reminds me of those men that don’t see the need for feminism until they have a daughter. Better late than never I guess but it’s still problematic that they can’t see women as humans until one emerges from their loins. It’s still wrong that they’re only women in relation to themselves.