The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
Welcome to the first episode of MEME FAIL, a new series of posts in which I look at, well, memes that fail. It’s kind of all there in the name, huh?
Today, we look at a meme aimed at former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton, who has apparently committed the egregious sin of expressing his opinion about #GamerGate on Twitter.
The MEME. (Click for a larger version.)
How it FAILS: There’s really no way in which this meme doesn’t fail.
Let’s start with the most obvious problem: Calling #GamerGaters stupid pieces of dog poop is not actually racist or sexist. Apparently, #GamerGaters feel that because there are some people in their little movement who aren’t straight cis white dudes, any insult directed at their little movement is therefore racist and sexist (and homophobic and transphobic)?
Yeah, that’s not how it works. It almost seems like #GamerGate is trying to use women and people of color (and GLBT folks) as, well, a way to shield themselves from criticism while being complete assholes and bigots?
Then there’s the whole “Eulogy” thing. Wheaton is not actually suggesting that #GamerGate should go die, literally or figuratively. He’s actually quoting from the lyrics of a song by Tool called, well, “Eulogy.”
The song in question, as best as anyone has been able to figure out, is a snarky takedown of a self-righteous, self-appointed martyr who “had a lot of nothing to say.” Tool’s drummer has suggested that it’s aimed at L. Ron Hubbard. But, as Wheaton notes, the song very well could have been written about #GamerGaters, if #GamerGaters had been a thing when it was written.
You sure could yell.
You took a stand on every little thing
And so loud.
Standing above the crowd
So loud. So very very loud.
BONUS IRONY: I ran across this meme being mocked on r/gamerghazi, but did a reverse image search to find a larger and more readable version of it. I found one in a thread on FunnyJunk.com in which one of the commenters refers to “Wil ‘Captain Mangina’ Wheaton” as “the gayest faggot in Fagtopia” and, well, let’s just say that the commenter also suggests that Wheaton enjoys anal sex.
@phytoplanktonic:
actually it’s totally not ironic in the sense that contradictory stuff that makes no sense at all is pretty much in line with GamerGate 😀
but yeah otherwise the NotYourShield thing it’s among the most vile stuff i’ve ever seen on the internet, i can only feel sorry for the (non sockpuppet) people participating in it.
@contrapangloss, as I remember it the point of alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die was exactly that it was all about hating the character and not the actor. It was mostly a forum where people were critical about ST:TNG in the way that only truly dedicated fans can ever be, and those who tried to project Wesley onto Wheaton as a person tended to get their arses handed to them. Often in the form of pun cascades.
Mind you, I only visited it a few times in the mid-90s. It may have become more toxic since then.
Pocket Nerd:
This looks like a job for
Roosh /del> SUPERFILTH!On Twitter, aren’t you always? Very (inadvertently) punny.
@Tigtog:
I hope it was as nice as you say, and the pun cascades buried the nasties in an avalanche of good folks. I’m no expert, because we had really slow and unreliable dial up when I was a kidlet and Star Trek was my thing (but we had internet!) so I never had a chance to find the interactive fan-base community stuff back then.
I had no patience for internet. It was so slow. Dogs moved much faster and were more interesting.
That storify is bizarre. (And also super nsfw, damn.) What do they have against dyed hair? Is it just because one of the GG targets had colored hair or something?
@ignotussomnium
Two or three of their targets have had dyed hair and so clearly that means it’s a thing that signifies you’re more likely to be an SJW and not a completely incidental fashion choice.
Aaaand I just slogged through that Storify. What an edifying lesson in human idiocy that was…
I mean, these guys are so far up their own butts that they managed to auto-troll themselves. I often marvel that it’s not physically painful to be THAT FUCKING DUMB.
“GamerGate is about corruption in game journalism.”
Right, and the Tea Party was all about lower taxes and government excess.
Really grasping at some microscopic straws there, gators. If you have to jigsaw contextless quotes together like a fucking magazine cutout serial killer letter in order to make your target sound bad, you might need to find a new target.
I loved that Storify. I mean, what more proof do we need that we live in a dystopian sci-fi future – faceless masses arguing with a nonsentient bot? That’s some Neuromancer-has-a-baby-with-Ghost-in-the-Shell-set-in-Blade-Runner-level nonsense.
Message for GGers!
http://blog.piktureplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/head-up-your-ass.jpg
Falconer,
Wil Wheaton is actually fairly active in gaming media culture. For instance, he played a major character on Felicia Day’s online gaming comedy The Guild.
@kittehserf: That needs a trigger warning for keyboardicide.
And here you can see an example of gators thinking that pointing out someone’s privilege is the exact same as saying that they are 100% awful terrible people and probably literally Hitler. And that it is widely accepted by the SJWs that being trans/female/POC etc means that you are automatically an angel and right about literally everything.
So they believe that having *cough*fake*cough* oppressed groups supporting gamergate and pointing out that an anti-gator is a privileged white male will cause mass strife and loss of morale and ‘troops’ in the SJW ranks.
It’s pretty pitiful that they seem utterly incapable of distinguishing real social justice concerns with their disingenuous regurgitated mess of a thing.
That screenshot! Who thinks to themselves “I will fight the stereotypes that the media has about gamergaters, cause it’s really about ethics in journalism, by giving an interview while sitting in front of a pair of giant anime boobies in what appears to be a basement”?
GrumpyOldMan, it does rather!
“The song in question, as best as anyone has been able to figure out, is a snarky takedown of a self-righteous, self-appointed martyr who “had a lot of nothing to say.” Tool’s drummer has suggested that it’s aimed at L. Ron Hubbard.”
I didn’t know. I am suddenly a fan of Tool.
On the dyed hair obsession:
Yeah, that’s a weird thing. Reminds me of when some douchebiscuit accused Rebecca Watson of having “feminist hair”. As far as I can tell, the “logic” goes something like this:
1. It’s the duty of all women to please me.
2. I don’t like unnaturally-coloured hair.
3. Therefore women who dye their hair weird colours are doing it for themselves, not for my boner.
4. Therefore misandry!
I can’t decide if “feminist hair” would be a sensible short cut or long and hippy-ish.
Feminist Hair – Washed only in the purest man-tears, dried in the waste hot air blowing from GG-ers basements, styled by Alpha males thrashed into submission by wet spaghetti noodles, colours by Preference de Madame
Which both misses and proves our point about privilege.
The first time I saw Wheaton’s name outside of a Star Trek context was this:
So he’s another of the “been gaming longer than most GamerHaters have been alive” crowd. They will of course dismiss him because the game in question can be played on a text console and doesn’t demand twitchy reflexes.