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#MetalGate, we hardly knew ye! Despite the earnest effort of a small army of opportunists to stoke the fire – some of them #GamerGaters, others “dark enlightenment” neoreactionarires – the contrived controversy that was #MetalGate has already lost most of its steam. All you need to do is take a look at Topsy to see how quickly the hashtag burned itself out.
This is hardly surprising, given that the alleged controversy was little more than an utterly transparent attempt by ideological hacks to breathe life into the decaying corpse of #GamerGate and to drive traffic to terrible “dark enlightenment” blogs.
So before #MetalGate becomes a fading memory, I’d like to take a moment to highlight the efforts of one notable neoreactionary to turn the faux controversy into a war against “Social Justice Warriors” – and pump up the traffic to his struggling video game blog.
I’m talking, of course, about werewolf impersonator and woman-hating pickup guru Roosh Valizadeh. Roosh was late out of the gates in his attempt to capitalize on #GamerGate by launching his hilariously clueless video game blog Reaxxion. But with #MetalGate he moved more quickly, publishing three rabble-rousing posts on the subject in three days.
I mentioned one of them in my last post. But it’s the two he’s published on Reaxxion that are the real winners.
Yesterday, Reaxxion’s “ethics officer” Sam Roberts – yes, that is a thing – delivered an over-the-top rant warning metalheads that “enemies of metal are upon us.”
These alleged enemies? Social Justice Warriors, the all-purpose boogeyman that strikes terror in the hearts of #GamerGaters, Men’s Rights Activsts and neoreactionary werewolf PUAs alike. Roberts defined SJWs as
far-left weirdos with nothing going on in their life, who try to inject their toxic, tiresome political ideology into every field imaginable. They’ve taken over Atheism, Science Fiction Books, and they were poised to take over video games until #Gamergate started roundly thrashing them. Now, with what’s being called #Metalgate, we’re finding out that they want to take over heavy metal too. …
If these people get their way heavy metal will be neutered to the point where you could play it on a school bus
The horror!
After attacking two critics of metalhead douchebros – one of whom he describes as a “preening sissy” – Roberts ends with this rather comical call-to-arms:
If metalheads don’t want to end up neutralized and pussified, they’ll have to fight back. Gamergate shows the way here: if the media starts pushing a lousy band because its bassist has a vagina, mock them relentlessly. If a magazine starts hassling you like a schoolteacher for using naughty language, boycott them. Spread the word: if you’ve got twitter, use the hashtag #Metalgate. Don’t think [sic] The worst thing you can do is assume that somebody else will do your fighting for you. The enemies of metal have arisen, and it’s time to cut them down like dogs.
Appended to the article we find this embarrassing correction:
Update: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Kerry King as the frontman for Slayer. He is a guitarist. Reaxxion regrets the error.
Oops. Totally not metal, dude.
Reaxxion followed up this post with one today from irate #GamerGater Steve Alexander, who fantasized about a mythical alliance between gamers and metalheads that will defeat the SJW menace once and for all:
GamerGate is actively uniting liberals with conservatives under the umbrella of freedom of expression. But SJW’s don’t realize this, and have now attacked the metal crowd. They’ll soon find out that all their strategy will accomplish is to unite hardcore gamers and the metal crowd into a righteous mob.
We will learn from each other—gamers will bring their knowledge of leveraging social media and e-mail, and the metal crowd will bring their extreme energy and uninhibited expression. Together, marching in step, some wearing Converse while others wear steel toe boots, we will crush this censorship of our favorite mediums.
Huh. I guess gamers who are also metalheads will wear Converse on one foot and a steel-toed boot on the other?
Let me know how that goes.
They should totally get Richard Cheese on board:
No, Falconer, just giving credit where it’s due.
And, then, ya follow up with a twofer!
OMG! Moggie! How have I never heard of this before! That was freakin’ brilliant! I laughed so hard I almost woke the little grumps!
Is it the O’Reilly factor for kids? My dad had that, I think he meant to give if to my little sister. I read it once. It’s bad. It’s not just that it’s factually wrong or that it’s Bill’s nonsense foisted on kids disguised as life lessons, it’s really incompetent put together all around. The whole thing is dripping with this sort of thinly veiled contempt for its presumed target audience, and comes across as so condescending that I can’t actually imagine the teenagers it’s meant for wanting to read or follow it? O’Reilly just isn’t able to pull off the whole “cool dad” thing like he tries to.
And if I remember correctly it’s got a bunch of “duke and dimwit” style stuff. I have a personal furnace of hate in my brain reserved for the kind of “life lessons” that teach kids to think in binaries and beat themselves up for sometimes failing at things.
I can hardly wait for #jivegate, #jitterbuggate and #elvisgate.
@Falconer
Holy hell, that entire episode was misogynist, but worse than that it was canon-breaking. There was zero indication prior to that point that women weren’t allowed to be starship captains, and good evidence to the contrary: the never-named Number One, the original first officer of the Enterprise, was a woman. No military is going to make someone second-in-command of a capital ship if that person is disqualified from commanding the ship if the captain becomes incapacitated.
I was active in the FidoNET Trek echos when Voyager was in the works, and witnessed the temper tantrum that certain … gentlemen … threw when it was announced that the Voyager was going to be commanded by a female captain. I also saw all the gloating at how hard Voyager sucked, and the assertion that of course it was going to be terrible because there was a woman in command. Voyager was pretty terrible for about two seasons but became fantastic after that, and has a couple of the best episodes in the franchise.
Kirbywarp
No kidding.
I’m also kinda shocked they’re not going after companies who threaten and pull nasty shit with game journalists (like forcing them to say nice things about their game in order to get an Early Access copy of the game).
Nope. They’re going after female indie developers because that’s where the REAL EVIL lies. Small, female-driven indie games that have small development teams and have to fight for every scrap of recognition they get instead of pay for it! Devious succubi!
But no. As long as GTA doesn’t get anything less than a perfect score, and people don’t like Gone Home, then it’s all fine and fucking dandy.
Speaking of, has anyone else seen stuff about the Australian Kmart and Target stores no longer selling GTA 5? Bit of an interesting deal going on. And it’s all very entertaining.
#Gators seem to think this means it’s been BANNED in Australia, rather than two stores making the choice to just not carry it anymore because their consumers signed a petition to ask them not to carry it anymore that got over 40K signatures. (But I usually purchase all my games on sale via digital download, or get them used from a game store anyways. : P) And, of course, are screeching their usual whiny “FREEZE PEACH”. [However, I do understand that Australia fought long and hard to get an 18+ rating for games, and only got it just recently. *However*, back to my comment about the fact that it’s Kmart and Target choosing not to sell it, not the government saying “you can’t have this”.]
But when they mass e-mail an advertiser to get them to take down their support from a site they don’t like, it’s the “company’s choice”, and that’s just “free market” and “capitalism”.
Also, one gator tried to get a petition together in response to demand Target to stop selling the bible.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/target-cant-ban-the-bible-because-they-dont-sell-it
But, they apparently sell some kind of straight-to-DVD “clean” bible miniseries, so some people are crying “liar!”.
Also, I’ve been listening to In The Moment’s The Fighter on repeat now. *0* Thank you so much for the rec, andiexist!
#swinggate – half the ggators think it’s about whether gates should open or not.
@moggie, that was awesome. I love covers in different styles. I’m pretty much the only person I know that liked the country version of Comfortably Numb.
Warning: this song contains twang.
Is it bad I sorta hoped for them to go completely off the deep end of ridiculous (even more so than before I mean) and start making bad Metal puns with their hashtags before it stopped? #atthegatesgate, #cemetarygatesgate, etc.
#Gategate
Oh my
Christopher Lee: all the awesome!
#fedoragate
@ Maggie
I saw what you did there
1. Metalgate still isn’t real. WTF? Do these turds do any fact checking?
2. Kids play whatever music they want on the bus. They have since Walkmans were a thing. High school students listen to whatever music they like with their head phones in during class. When was the last time Doosh rode a school bus?
3. I love how scared the bigots are. If you run their tears through a percolator, it adds a richness to your coffee. I pair mine with a chocolate drizzled biscotti. Delicious!
Anyone else humming Death Clock?
@Policy of Madness:
It was awful, but it gave us some truly classic Shatface:
http://media.tumblr.com/fa50bb78e578893950b187ff8cbf2c77/tumblr_inline_mqf6wudB5c1qz4rgp.jpg
Jazz hands!
And this little gem:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/04063e87cf15fd13fd8652ac893d81f8/tumblr_mjr6iwgesR1s67vyfo2_250.gif
Along about the middle of the second season, they stopped riding Shatner hard on his acting, and the ham came through. That’s when the … idiosyncratic delivery got noticeable. It’s there from the early days, yes, but someone clamped down on him. And then in the third season, Kirk gets copied or flat-out taken over by people given to tantrums on at least two occasions, and Shatner is just loving it, you can tell.
This is like if Twisted Sister were playing the arsehole dad in We’re not Going to Take It.
Also, it’s a shame the network made them axe Number One. We got Christine Chapel instead, who is awesome in her own right but kind of gets the lovelorn plots.
She becomes a full-fledged doctor by The Motion Picture but kind of gets shoved aside because Kirk makes McCoy un-retire.
Oh, and what little I saw of Voyager when it was airing was great (we really got into the X-Files about that time), and I’m working my way through DS9 on Netflix, so we’ll see if memory serves me right regarding Voyager (it didn’t regarding He-Man, I am sorry to say).
For people who want more Christopher Lee goodness – this time quite a beautiful piece with Rhapsody, a justifiably pretentious metal band from Italy. He was meant to just provide narration but was so enthusiastic about getting to sing on it that they produced this duet, and then they released versions with him singing it in about seventeen other languages just to show off.
Swing dancing does attract a lot of geeks, but GamerGate ideology would not go over well with the swing dance community. We are very open and inviting to all sorts of people. Actually, in the past few years, there has been a shift to use gender neutral words (leader and follower) so we are open to ALL genders and because we realize that men don’t always lead and women don’t always follow.
There was a sexist incident at an event a few years ago. The organizers were notified and addressed it pretty quickly, letting everyone know that those actions and attitudes are not acceptable. I also know someone who confronted a band leader for making sexist comments during his set. I have yet to see anyone complain that we are being taken over by SJWs.
And while we’re talking about this, DANCE INTERLUDE!
Thank you and bless you for introducing me to Christopher Lee metal.
*Christmas made*
Presumably, therefore, shuffling around in circles whenever they’re distracted, and eventually succumbing to nasty foot pain.
Could they all wear their Converses on the same foot? More aesthetically pleasing if they’re all going clockwise or all going counter-clockwise.