Reaxxion, the world’s crappiest right wing woman-hating excuse for a video game site, has now officially responded to my post revealing that a GamerGate manifesto they recently published was literally a repurposed John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents.
Whether the, er, “author” of the post was trolling, or just the world’s least subtle plagiarist, it was a giant embarrassment for Roosh and Reaxxion. And so, in the course of a nearly 1000-word post, Reaxxion “ethics officer” announces that they’ve shitcanned the author – and congratulates the site for its heroic bravery for throwing out a writer who copied his entire post from an old John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents.
That’s all well and good, because journalists aren’t supposed to copy pretty much their entire posts from a John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents. If you’re an editor and catch a writer doing this, you’re supposed to send that writer packing. (Remember Stephen Glass?)
But Roberts ignores what is really the most interesting and revealing thing about the whole incident, which is that a writer copied his entire post from an old John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents – AND NO ONE NOTICED UNTIL I POINTED IT OUT.
And why is that? Because the hysterical anti-communist rhetoric of the original ad sounds pretty much identical to the ridiculously over-the-top rhetoric that’s characterized GamerGate from the start. And it’s rooted in the same sort of reactionary politics.
Which is itself even more embarrassing than the plagiarism itself.
The John Birch Society, if you don’t already know, isn’t just a right-wing group. It’s a group so far to the right that even the National Review has denounced it. As a Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report notes that for years those on the left and on the right basically saw the Birchers as “the political equivalent of an addled uncle sent down to the basement rec room to drink, rant and hopefully pass out” before he had a chance to thoroughly embarrass the whole family by saying something truly dreadful.
I found the Bircher’s newspaper ad in a newspaper from 1966. At that time, the Birchers were fierce opponents of the civil rights movement in general and Martin Luther King Jr. in particular, labeling him a tool of the communists. As the SPLC report notes, Birchers feared that “the African-American freedom movement was being manipulated from Moscow with the goal of creating a “Soviet Negro Republic” in the Southern United States.”
Of course, the Birchers saw communists hiding behind every tree and under every bed. Indeed, the group’s founder, Robert Welch, was convinced that even President Dwight Eisenhower was a treasonous Communist puppet, and that LBJ was plotting to turn the United States over to the Communists even as he sent troops to fight against the Viet Cong.
So congratulations, GamerGaters, you’re now as officially ridiculous as the John Birch Society.
It might be a good idea to reflect a little on your life choices.
cassandrakitty wrote:
You mean the game where you spend most of the time waiting for a long solid piece to fit into a deep hole on the play area?
Lea: I see it more like this.
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m13ze9lNiG1qb5j8po1_500.gif
The NYT wouldn’t even let a piece like that through the door in the first place, because they have these things called “fact checkers” and “editors” who are trained in spotting “bullshit”.
You’re not seriously comparing Reaxxion with the NYT, are you?
Tic Tac Toe is incredibly sexist, too. All those unsolicited X’s and O’s…I get enough of that riding the subway, thanks very much.
sunnysombrera, I had that on the PC! I never understood a jot of what was going on, but it was fun nonetheless. My brother actually recently sent over a load of old files and I discovered I’d started a remake of it myself, but I never got much of anywhere with it.
If you read the article about the takedown, it’s… kind of comical how they keep on banging on about how ethical they are and compare their ethics to the ethics of other publications who presumably don’t have ethics officers to oversee their ethical ethics.
ETHICS
@ck, the Irate Lump:
But what’s worse is, then it disappears! The game is obviously about cutting penises off. It’s obviously a vile, evil, vile and way less subtle Red plot to emasculate us than the fluoridation thing.
@samantha
I’ve probably seen Dr. Strangelove at least that many times.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8ks93DgfF1rwyf7ko1_500.gif
@Bina: 8chan hosts paedophile boards.
HUGE TW obviously:
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/8chan-pedophiles-child-porn-gamergate/
https://medium.com/@FoldableHuman/the-mods-are-always-asleep-7f750f879fc
Gomblrgok’s response is “ubuhbuh OTHER BOARDS ON 8CHAN” and, most revoltingly, “omg telling people about CP is the same as spreading CP”, which has been Storified here:
https://storify.com/DiscordianKitty/gamergate-s-evolution-from-defending-the-child-por
and here:
https://storify.com/sadcrow/8chan-s-concerted-attack-on-dan-olson-continues-ga
Okay, I don’t know what’s up with the link to the Medium piece, but the title of it is “The Mods are Always Asleep” and I’m pretty sure it’s linked in one or both of the Storifys.
Buttercup Q I think you have forgotten the scandal when one of the NYTimes prize winning journamalists turned out to be a serial plagiarizer and a couple others were later busted for writing fiction and passing it off as news. They are still paying a price for that loss of credibility.
I’m not at all surprised they bought the Bircher bit as genuine. It reads pretty much like their community-sourced Google Doc book thing (is that still a thing? I hope so, it was GLORIOUS.)
I’m going to drop this here, because it’s rather relevant:
http://40.media.tumblr.com/a155dd1d694f99a14208be0e9026c40b/tumblr_nh03vg0ENO1u6q7ubo1_1280.png
Also, a link to the “Sexism of Pong” article:
http://www.donotlink.com/d7g7
I think it’s less of a “Sexism!” article and more of a “We’re trying and failing to spoof Anita Sarkeesian” article.
OT BUT ZOMG! I have found the absolute best thing on the internet.
I know I say that a lot, but I swear it’s true this time.
http://herhonestlife.tumblr.com/post/108041756460/when-trolls-come-knocking
Carry on.
From one of the articles PI linked to.
That’s it, I’m moving to Mars and taking all of the children with me.
That Tessa is a piece of work. Some people really do deserve to be fucked with in all caps.
… I just wish my grandfather would stop emailing me using all caps.
Shaun, that’s wonderful – how to mess with a troll!
“Where can I get these Obama government condoms. Why do I need them. Do you tie babies in them” PRICELESS!
Wow, from “colorblindness” to racist crap in 6.2 seconds, impressive. Plus “SJW”.
That was hilarious. The blossom avatar also added a nice touch of disturbing.
OTOH following links at Daily Dot also took me to this post, which wins the internet for today, at least from my perspective.
http://www.dailydot.com/lol/corgi-poses-with-disney-characters/
Dear god. The part where “Tessa” (not our dear green elephant) goes “I’m sad about babies dying, you’re not. You lose.”
http://i.imgur.com/vaYm64M.gif
Wut? Like seriously, what? This isn’t a game, and it’s not even a “debate”. You’re just being silly with your irrelevant opinions on what races other people are.
That person is literally the worst. I’m glad xie got all-caps trolled. Couldn’t have happened to a *cough* nicer person.
What does being sad about dead babies have to do with race? Do I want to know how this person would answer that question? Probably not. Back to the corgi.
Go to the corgi post before you read this. You’ll need it:
http://www.traffickedreport.com/
So basically the oil boom has turned North Dakota into a hotspot for human trafficking. Be warned–the story is long and in depth and disturbing as anything else.
It does have a (bitter)sweet section about girls rescued from trafficking taking care of rescued horses, though.
It’s a pretty common right wing talking point in the US that because black women get abortions at higher rates than white women, this means that liberals are trying to commit genocide against black people simply by being for abortion rights. They think this will actually work to win the votes of black women because they don’t understand that it’s sexist and racist to imply that black women couldn’t possibly seek abortion because they’ve decided it’s the best choice. Nope. It must be because evil liberals are ordering black women to get abortions.
I’m not even going to that North Dakota article. 🙁
But OMG that corgi! That face! “Look at me I am with Pluto and Doug I am the greatest dog ever!”
And that before and after video – love it, love it!
Black women also obviously won’t notice that the same people bleating about the “black genocide” of abortion not only oppose efforts that would lead fewer black women to have abortions (better contraceptive access, decent-paying jobs, etc.) they also couldn’t give a damn about real black children being shot in the streets.
It is like the whole Republican thing where every few months they top themselves in trying to come up with a more condescending approach to winning women’s vote, without ever considering that their policies themselves are fucking terrible for women, and a majority know it.