Welcome back, my friends, to the harassment that never ends.
It’s not news that GamerGate is fading – the media hubbub has died down, and the last I checked the volume of Tweets to the #GamerGate hashtag has dropped to only about a fifth of what it was in its glory days.
But it’s too soon to say it’s over. Because while the number of Gaters has shrunk, the harassment of GamerGate’s targets goes on, and on, and on. Indeed, for the three “Literally Whos” who’ve been the central targets of #GamerGate harassment little has changed. The death threats, the rape threats, the insults, the harassing Tweets and comments and emails and phone calls all continue.
And then the Gaters accuse the “Literally Whos” of faking their harassment in a bid for sympathy and cash.
Let’s look at each in turn:
1) Anita Sarkeesian
Sarkeesian, the cultural critic whose harassment started years ago when she first announced her plans to make a video series on sexism in video games, recently posted a week’s worth of harassing and threatening Tweets directed at her; there were more than a hundred of them, including numerous death and rape threats, suggestions that she kill herself in the most painful way possible, and assorted other abusive comments bristling with hatred and misogynsitic slurs.
2) Zoe Quinn
As Sarkeesian sorts through her Twitter notifications, game developer Zoe Quinn tries to figure out how to continue her life and her career in the face of unrelenting and irrational hostility and harassment. In an eloquent meditation on the subject on her blog, she writes
I’ve been trying to take a day to just be a regular person, recenter myself, and have the energy to get back to work with the same enthusiasm I tend to have, but every attempt gets cut short by some fresh, new, horrible news about someone trying to get into my accounts, a new asinine conspiracy theory being used as an excuse to dox people I went to high school with, friends freaking out because anonymous message board people are talking about how to mail them bombs, or just another death threat. At least the death threats have become somewhat routine.
Stalked by a restless mob of haters, she’s constantly under the microscope, her every utterance picked at by her critics looking for anything they can use as fodder for their increasingly baroque and fanciful conspiracy theories; as she puts it, she’s faces, every day, “a mob of Nerd McCarthyists nipping at your heels and spinning up TMZ-style blog posts every time you fart.”
Indeed, Quinn recently found herself accused of terrorism for making a joke on Twitter suggesting she planned on “burning hollywood to the ground” if an upcoming episode of Law & Order SVU loosely based on GamerGate ends up having a victim-blaming plot twist.
Do these people honestly believe that Quinn is really planning on burning anything to the ground? I don’t know, and I don’t think it even matters to them; it’s just another “crime” to add to Quinn’s GamerGate rap sheet.
I can only assume that GamerGate will go after the imaginary Hollywood director “Alan Smithee” next; after all, he’s credited with directing the 1998 film Burn Hollywood Burn. Come to think of it, Public Enemy had a song with that name as well.
3) Brianna Wu
Meanwhile, game developer Brianna Wu is facing an even creepier threat: a disturbed and delusional “GamerGate vigilante” who bombarded Wu with a succession of threats that alarmed her enough to contact the police – then, en route to her house, he flipped the Prius he’d stolen from his mom on an icy highway. And yes, this really happened; he posted a video of himself having a screeching meltdown on the side of the road next to a wrecked Prius balanced on its side. (I’m avoiding his name because I honestly don’t want to give him any more publicity.)
He claims that he meant Wu no harm, and merely wanted to challenge her to a “street race” to which she never agreed – apparently thinking that if he scared her enough to flee her home on her motorcycle this would count as a race.
But he also apparently sent a friend to try to “disable her comms” (communications) – the friend evidently never arrived – and tried to convince an online acquaintance with a gun to accompany him for this “op.” Thankfully, the acquaintance refused, and posted what he said was their chat to a message board devoted to trolling. An excerpt:
[2:52:07 PM] [name redacted]: SHE IS WORKING WIth the National Social Justice Party to stop gamers!!!!
[2:52:35 PM] [name redacted]: I SENT ELI UP TO DISABLE HER COMMS WE DONT HAVE MUCH TIME BEFORE SHE ASKS FOR REINFORCEMENTS THOUGH AND I NEED YOU FOR BACK UP!!
[2:52:52 PM] FlyAwayNow – Matthew.N: What? You want me to bring my rifle or what?
[2:53:05 PM] [name redacted]: YEA JUST LIKE IN PAYDAY 2 DUDE ITLL BE SICK
[2:53:36 PM] [name redacted]: IN CASE SHE SHOOTS AT MY CAR I CANT GET BULLET HOLES IN MY MOMS CAR SHE ILL KILL ME ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I STOLE IT
[2:54:10 PM] [name redacted]: WERE GONNA STREET RACE HER SHE WONT BE ABLE TO DRIVE IN THE STORM SO WE WILL BE ABLE TO WIN EASY AND TAKE YOUR RIFLE IN CASE SHE SHOOTS US TOO
[2:54:32 PM] FlyAwayNow – Matthew.N: You’re not laying a hand on my gun.
[2:54:42 PM] [name redacted]: ILL DRIVE YOU SHOOT
And now he seems to have convinced himself that Wu somehow sabotaged his car in an attempt to “assassinate” him. From his video:
I honestly don’t quite know what to make of the threatener or the threats. His behavior is so strange and erratic and almost literally unbelievable that it would be easy to dismiss him as a troll.
But then there is that wrecked Prius. And several years worth of videos on Youtube that suggest either that he’s sincere — or that’s he’s the most dedicated troll since Andy Kaufman’s fake comedian alter ego Tony Clifton, who somehow managed to survive Kaufman’s death.
Is GamerGate responsible for his actions? On the pro-GamerGate subreddit Kotaku In Action, the regulars largely dismissed the threatener as a troll; one accused Wu of being “a disgusting human” for publicizing the threat and being “so quick to paint him a Gamergate supporter.” Never mind that in the video the threatener repeatedly describes himself a “#GamerGate vigilante,” and that he would not have chosen her as a target had she not already been subject to months of vilification from GamerGate.
GamerGate, which is quick enough to take credit for charity work done in its name, shies away from taking responsibility for any of the terrible shit anyone does in its name. And in recent months many of the remaining Gaters seem to have stopped even pretending to care about the victims of GamerGate harassment. Indeed, @_icze4r, the former head of GamerGate’s much-vaunted, now-abandoned “Harassment Patrol” was one of those who egged the threatener on with a jokey supportive Tweet.
It’s a dangerous game they’re playing. As Wu notes
Someone is going to die from your recklessness if you don't look in the mirror and understand the consequences of your choices.
— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) February 1, 2015
What any of this has to do with “ethics in video games journalism” I couldn’t tell you.
Blimey O’Reilly. I had no idea that the Brianna Wu thing had gone so far, or that anyone purporting to support ethics would be so… this time, genuinely mentally ill, as to be so violent. I’m hoping that as awful as it is, we will at least be able to thank Gamergate in the end for exposing just how appalling and irrational the Internet mob can be – and that people who care will remember that, even after the media has forgotten about it.
If this guy is actually a schizophrenic who is self medicating with marijuana instead of taking the proper psychiatric drugs, Wu pressing charges is the best thing that can happen to him. If he’s proven to be a danger to himself and others, the state can intervene and get him on the medicine he needs.
It’s like they think they are living in a real life video game. Bizarre.
I would be absolutely rolling on the floor, howling with laughter, if this guy hadn’t actually committed theft and property damage in his quest to prove Brianna Wu was making it all up by getting his Biff Tannen on.
Okay, if he’s seriously mentally ill, that’s no laughing matter.
@Fnoicby: There are people in the world who seem to think that their lives have no meaning unless there is some Great Evil for them to oppose, whether that’s the Abortion Industrial Complex or ethics in games journalism. When that Great Evil is afoot and must be actively opposed, a whole lot of radical actions can be justified, from stealing your mom’s Prius for street racing, to walking into a church and shooting a guy.
Doesn’t take being neuroatypical to buy into that.
@falconer:
Fred Clark over at Slacktivist talks a lot about that sort of thing in the religious context. From his article Fantasy Role-Playing Games:
That sort of attitude is a wonderful hook for cult leaders and mob inciters alike…
@Jenora Feuer: He’s who I got that from!
re: incitement, etc.
(not a lawyer)
It’s generally easy to prove that kind of thing in civil cases than it is in criminal ones. U.S. criminal law is absolutely terrible at dealing with those kinds of issues – generally it requires a statute specifically targeting some group for measures like that to be even remotely effective (à la RICO, or some of the anti-gang statutes in the major metropolitan areas). See how neatly O’Reilly managed to avoid any responsibility for the murder of George Tiller.
My brain locked in on this part, too, and after a bit, I even figured it out, kinda. It’s almost exactly the sort of bizarre mismatch between goal and task that you get in a lot of video games, especially older-school games. Solving puzzles to pick locks is an easy example. I could totally see a level where you ‘prove’ that someone is ‘not a gamer’ by beating them in a street-race, because of course, all gamers (including those who don’t spend a lot of time playing road-simulators) are ace drivers.
@ maistrechat
Thanks for that. Had to do a bit of Googling (not familiar with the case) but really interesting.
I suppose one could distinguish the two situations by looking at the extra info provided.
If O’RIelly had gone beyond just saying “baby killer” and added something along the lines of “who happens to live at this address. He’s usually alone on Thursday evenings” then maybe you could build a case.
Like I say, in England, you could probably build a case. We have pretty strong free speech protection (Art 10 ECHR) but the court’s do draw the line when it comes to actively inciting hate of an individual, even if there’s no actual risk of violence.
See here for example:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-trolls-isabella-sorley-and-john-nimmo-jailed-for-abusing-feminist-campaigner-caroline-criadoperez-9083829.html
Its called the Streisand effect. It occurs when an attempt to censor a message results in more people hearing it than would have been possible without the censorship attempts. When GamerGate cries “professional victims”, it just means they’ve realized that their harassment campaign has backfired horrendously.
@ freemage
There’s been some interesting speculation (can’t say it’s gone as far as research) into the idea that certain individuals enter a fugue state where they act as if they are in a video game.
It’s been suggested for instance that shouting “pause” may be a viable tactic in spree shootings.
@Falconer:
Not surprised. Both because Fred is obviously somebody who has thought about this a lot and generally seems to be one of the inside experts on how American evangelicals create their own reality bubble like that; and because there seems to be a good bit of crossover in readership communities between some of these blogs. I know this blog has come up in the comments on Slacktivist before, though I can’t find it in any articles right now.
(And I don’t read the comments on Slacktivist much anymore, because, well, Disqus.)
Same here. Maybe he thought that any gamer would have played tons of racing games, and would therefore naturally be amazing real-life drivers. And that’s how he ended up with an overturned Prius.
Things like this always remind me of my favorite Vonnegut quote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
There’s no such thing as “just trolling”. Someone else is always listening, and willing to take it to the next level.
*facepalm*
No one going to say anything about how this anti-feminist is literally raving about how his equipment “could not perform”?
I mean, this is low-hanging fruit, people! (Pun definitely intended),
Wasn’t that pretty much exactly the case with the kid at Virginia Tech?
The remaining ‘core’ of GGers reminds me of the later generations of terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction and the Weather Underground. Their increasingly brutal internal and external actions scared off any ‘moderate’ members, and the remaining core groups just slowly burned out over the ensuing decades.
I just, ok, they’re talking about taking a gun to Breanna Wu’s house. That is, I mean, is this being taken seriously by the cops? This is just not a laughing matter.
Someone is going to get hurt here.
Gamergate: because people you disagree with deserve to die or worry they might be killed
to the guys talking about ableism and why it matters I will just leave a link here:
http://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html
I think the most important part is this: “Both as individuals and as larger social and cultural groups, it is self-evident that the language we use to express all sorts of ideas, opinions, and emotions, as well as to describe ourselves and others, is simultaneously reflective of existing attitudes and influential to developing attitudes.”
I think it is just a matter of having consideration for those who are different. It is not meant to make everyone feel bad or evil, only to make people more aware of the implications our language has for people who have lived their lives under different rules from society.
Re: Joint Enterprise: From my understanding, that (at least to that stringency) doesn’t apply at the U.S. Federal level, though it does have some traction in several state courts (mostly those with more of a history of the application of British Common Law – think New England).
“think New England”
Best not, SO is a Seattle girl, and (notwithstanding my earlier comments about FoM violence being no big deal) I’d rather not get murdered.
Holy shit, that dude is effing insane. How in the hell does he think he’s going to win a race against anything using a Prius?