This is the final day of the We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
Every time you think they can’t go any lower, they go lower. This morning game designer and #GamerGate target Zoe Quinn discovered that someone was selling, er, “erotic fiction” about her on Amazon. Which is to say: a Kindle eBook apparently filled with explicit descriptions of her being gang-raped by five “upset” gamers trying to “teach her a lesson.”
Here’s the author’s blurb for the book:
Zada Quinby is a controversial video game designer who may have stepped the line…
When her latest game offends the nation, five upset players decide to teach her a lesson. This gang of gamers decides to give Zada of piece of their mind, and much more!
Things are about to get incredibly rough when these five men unleash their pent up anger on poor Zada. It’s an experience that she’ll never forget.
As Quinn, a rape survivor, put it:
having your trauma be fetishized and sold to people who wish they could revictimize you is not an occupational hazard I signed up for.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) December 19, 2014
Apparently I was a character in the “book” as well.
I say apparently because I haven’t read it. Few people have. In the one silver lining to all this: Amazon took it down shortly after a reporter for Raw Story called them to ask about it. But you can see an archived version of the page here.
Unfortunately, not everyone on Twitter thought the book was a bad thing. Here’s how one terrible person responded when #GamerGate opponent Ian Miles Cheong posted about the book being on Amazon.
.@stillgray @PixieJenni Hahaha, that's brilliant xD Sad, but brilliant.
— MilesVork (@MilesVork) December 19, 2014
@MilesVork has complained that this tweet was taken out of context, but that is the entirety of the exchange, and he has since refused to apologize for it. He also, for what it’s worth, claims not to be a #GamerGater, though if you scroll back through his tweets you will see a number of nasty attacks on another of #GamerGate’s main targets, whom he describes as an “absolute cumbucket” and “a bigger bucket of crazy than all the stupidity in GG combined.”
When @PixieJenni posted a screenshot of the above exchange on Twitter, this conversation ensued. Some highlights:
I think it’s safe to say that @DieHardDante is a #GamerGater, if his dozens if not hundreds of Tweets on the subject are any indication. He also seems to think anti-Semitic cartoons are hilarious.
There is no bottom to this barrel.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi for some of the links above; thanks as well to those who alerted me to this on Twitter
kirbywarp
It always baffles me how often I see this shit. Like MRAs and PUAs don’t realize that the shit they ask for isn’t that fucking easy (be attractive, don’t be fat, cater to my every desire and be entertaining, cook for me, pleasure me, take care of our kids, ect.), while the things women want are simply “basic hygiene, some basic respect for me as a person, and please don’t kill me, rape me, or beat me”
“Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them.” – Margaret Atwood
I’m not gonna lie, men exhaust me.
@grumpyoldman It also takes a special kind of narcissism to conceive of the most perfect being and have it be a mirror image of yourself, only with more power and lightning bolts and enemy-smiting abilities. It’s not a huge leap from “God is a white bearded man, worship Him” to “I am a white bearded man, worship me”.
You never hear a politician say, “I was uncertain whether running for office was the right thing to do, so I prayed about it. In response, God told me to be more humble, retire from the public eye, and start helping the poor.” Nope, it’s always God’s will that they run for office and acquire even more power.
Speaking of which, God has willed that I go have another Christmas cookie. I’d resist, but who am I to disobey orders from above?
Off topic, but I upgraded my Mac OS and my copy of Civ IV I bought for five bucks on Amazon died, so I bought Civ V and went looking for tips (I remember when Civ III–the first one I owned–came with a a thick-ass users manual. And CD-ROMs). And then I found this:
I think I’d have felt the same way about them when I was young, ParadoxicalIntention, if I’d ever been looking for a relationship with any earthsiders. For all its downsides during those years, I’m bloody glad my attention was wholly taken up elsewhere. Mr K is far from the “you have to look like/behave like” type.
It’s that time of year again. Voting is underway.
http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2014.html
I was gonna #NotAllMen, but then I remembered I’m happily single right now, so #FuckYeah.
Weirwood,
Maybe if Owly were still around. He managed to be outraged by the trailer for a minor Swedish theater production, so it’s possible.
@Buttercup: The idea of god as a wrathful old man with a long white beard has always seemed ridiculous to me. I’m an agnostic, and I can’t really imagine god as being of one gender, but if I had to choose, I’d bet on female — she created men as a means of supplying genetic diversity to women’s daughters. On the other hand, since god is usually portrayed as a grumpy old man, maybe I AM god.
By the way, do you have some special technique for getting god to will whatever it is you want to do?
@ParadoxicalIntention: It seems to me that any man who has ever had a mother, a sister, or a steady girlfriend should be quite aware of the extent of preparation that women customarily have to perform whenever they go out on a significant social engagement. These dudes seem to be so oblivious that you almost have to assume that they were raised by wolves or in a Skinner box. (Please pardon the implied insult to wolves, but they are not known for their interest in cosmetology.) It’s almost a case of what do you believe, the rantings of another ignorant misogynist or your lying eyes.
Whenever I read their shit (please pardon the implied insult to shit) I shake my head and try to imagine what world they live in that could make them so immune to common everyday reality. It’s beyond bizarre.
When I was young, back when the earth was new, guys going out on a date expected their dates to make a reasonable effort to look nice, but they also expected to have to practice reasonable hygiene and grooming, and to dress and act according to normal standards. I cannot figure out what is with some of these guys — why they don’t seem to realize that their attitudes are a monstrous turn-off for most women.
A few days ago there was a discussion on WHTM about women who dye their hair. Apparently there are some men who take this as the equivalent of being given the finger, and some women who intend that men who tend to think that way should take it as a finger-equivalent. There is nothing wrong with deliberately attempting to repel people you despise but you need to expect that they will be repelled. What has struck me is that there apparently is a small group of men (albeit mostly young and inexperienced men) who seem to think that it is misandry most foul if any woman does anything not directly intended to please men in general and them in particular, but if they do anything that is even to the slightest extent intended to please women in general or a particular woman, it is the most degrading example of betaness possible. The complete lack of awareness of reality totally boggles my mind — what sort of experience of life could make anyone be so totally out of touch with how social behavior actually works. They remind me of a couple of guys I knew in prison who had gone from orphanage to juvie joint to prison without only very short interludes out in society and thus had a very limited comprehension of what life in the “real” world was like.
The vast majority of women I have interacted with have been pleasant almost to a fault, but then I haven’t been hitting on them in some random manner. I’m not sure how anyone gets through adolescence without learning that most women dislike being treated like nothing but a fucktoy, but apparently it is possible. One apparently has to believe that any woman who does not totally submit to every male whim is an unfuckable slut who needs to be fucked into obedience.
And now I need a very large bowl of ice cream to share with my kitty.
http://imgur.com/IYEtZWq
Only if you are in fact as in gravatar, a Siamese cat. 🙂
Your kitty’s lovely! Is he/she a torbie? I seem to see hints of ginger here and there.
I can’t speak for GrumpyOldMan, Kittehserf, but I see the same reddish brown color on Pan where the tabby meets the white patches, so I think it could be more a tabby-with-white thing, especially for the more brown tabbies. If he was a tortie, I’d expect to see patches with orange stripes.
Here is Pan showing his pretty copper highlights off:
http://i.imgur.com/nP5VLHV.jpg
Jade is a torbie, though the long hair+tipped fur hide it (check out the leg stripes and forehead M):
http://imgur.com/cHGQYQj
Also not my cats, but acting like them:
Yay, more Pan and Jade pics! 🙂
Yes, the copper/ginger/cinnamon highlights are a tabby thing, too: Katie has them and she’s a grey tabby. GrumpyOldMan’s kitty looks like Maddie, who’s torbie – you can’t see it here but she has a big ginger patch on her back, as well as the ginger tabby markings on her face.
http://i.imgur.com/1uV8ODc.jpg?1
Ah, I’ve never really cared about the various names for cat breeds and color patterns, so I really don’t know what a Torbie is. I think her color is brown not orange. Senny is just a close friend — though my daughter always refers to her as my child, as in “Your child was just sneaking into my room and I thought she might be looking for a place to pee.” Of course she (daughter) keeps kitty treats and catnip in her room, so … Senny is sort of like me, mostly good-natured but grumpy and cranky at times, so we’ve made a pretty good pair for the 13 years since I picked her up on a trip to West Virginia.
Anyone who lived in Maine in the 90’s knows it wasn’t truly Christmas until this ad had aired.
Bangor Savings Bank “Christmas Kittens”: http://youtu.be/v-Qua_nYduE
I am trying to figure out the point of that ad. Bank with us and you will have cute kittens?
At least it is a step up from “Buy our product and get hot chicks!”
That’s one of those ads I’d watch and probably not even remember whose it was afterward. I’d just remember the kitties. 😀
GrumpyOldMan – torbie is just tabby with random bits of tortiseshell (black or ginger) thrown in. The gingery patches on Senny’s muzzle made me wonder if she’s a torbie.
I see she has little ear-tufts like Maddie too – adorbs. 🙂
I approve of this ad strategy. In general I think I’m most susceptible to the total non-sequitur style of advertising.
So, random thing that the vet told Mr C that I did not know – apparently black fur on a cat will turn more brown if the cat grooms that particular area a lot. This explains why my tuxedo kitty has fur that’s more brownish in some areas now, but which was black in those same areas when I got her (as a formerly homeless kitten). I had been wondering how a cat’s fur could change color and if this meant she somehow wasn’t really a tuxedo despite having the typical pattern.
(Will try to find a pic that illustrates this.)
I can imagine some people here (who shall remain nameless) who would fall for an ad that said, “Three free kittens when you buy our electric glockenspiel …”
@CK: Also, our tuxedos seem to be actually brown when you look closely when the sun is shining directly on them.
She really did seem to have black fur there when she was little, but now it’s black in the bits she doesn’t groom as much and definitely brown around her fuzzy little butt.
So the Washington Post decided to publish a self-centered whine by an Objectivist for Christmas. If you need to throw something up, feel free to read it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/objecting-to-the-season-of-giving/2014/12/19/f2ecb6a4-7fdc-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html?hpid=z2
All our black kitties take on that rusty colour in the sun, too. I’d never heard of it being from washing!
Black cats should come with a label “not colour-fast, may fade with washing”.
Cassandra: I didn’t know that!
I may have received a couple of Christmas presents of the furry, mewy variety…
Wordspinner: What a trite piece of question-begging. He presents his own belief in something as evidence of it.
Okay, so the actual post is disgusting and I think everyone has already pointed that out. I’m just going to reply to a few comments here since I don’t think there’s anything I can add except angrily mashing my keyboard :/
*many comments later*
Yay, kitties! Everyone has such beautiful cats! I’d post some of my own but I really can’t be bothered messing around with my 3DS right now. Maybe I’ll post them another time.
@kittehserf
I’ve never heard the term ‘Torbie’ before. I always thought I knew all the various descriptions for cats. I am disappointed in myself.
@cassandrakitty
Is that what causes it? I’ve always wondered why my two black cats grew up to have a brown tint to parts of their fur. One of them has a brown tint to her fur (though it’s only noticeable in bright light) everywhere except her head, which I guess makes sense when I rarely see her washing her face.
@wordsp1nner
I’ll be honest, I stopped reading after the line “as an Objectivist, I’ve adopted an ethics not of altruism but of rational self-interest.” Mostly because my eyes rolled so far back into my head that I couldn’t actually read the rest. I mean, that’s a lot of words just to say ‘I’m selfish.’
I’m sure there are fair reasons to dislike certain aspects of Christmas, but ‘giving gifts is bad because it serves no benefit to me’ isn’t really a justification I can get behind.