Ah ha ha ha ha ha! The Sarkeesian Effect duo have split up again! It’s a Fourth of July Miracle!
So today, a furious Jordan Owen put out a video denouncing his now ex-partner Davis Aurini. Why? Because Aurini is demanding another $15,000 to edit the “film” and has set up a fundraiser without Owen in order to raise it.
According to Owen, Aurini has been “dicking around” with the footage for months in hopes of squeezing more money out of the project’s backers. Owen is having none of it, and is telling the backers not to give Aurini another cent, saying that he (Owen) will be editing the footage himself and putting out the film on schedule.
Also, the alleged “big reveal” that was going to come out in the “film?” According to Owen, Aurini decided based on watching one of Sarkeesian’s videos that she had been raped by her father, and was evidently shopping around to find a therapist who would agree to say as much on camera. Aurini’s completely unqualified internet diagnosis: that was their big reveal.
Just watch the video. It’s delicious.
And here, below, is Aurini’s fundraising video, which is what Owen is reacting to. Aurini’s unctuous, earnest tone is especially hilarious in the wake of Owen’s denunciations. Also his repeated references to “we,” as if Owen is on board with him.
At one point he assures would-be backers that he’s “streamlined” his life so he can work on the editing of The Sarkeesian Effect full-time. “As well as writing and doing Youtube videos, which I regularly do,” he adds. “And the podcast.”
Also he needs to do more filming.
He’s evidently hoping to keep the gravy train going until September.
Apparently he’s been so busy with the full-time editing (and writing and doing Youtube videos, which he regularly does, and the podcast) that he’s forgotten to shave his head.
And he seems to have fired his skull.
H/T — @srhbutts
Personal rambling time. Apologies for the teal deer. Ignore it if you like.
The Alexander piece, “Gamers are Over” was one of those things that touched me deeply.
I came at it from the other side. I grew up shy and nerdy, like many people here, so games and books were something I loved. I ended up describing myself as a gamer a lot, even as I got to be a grownup and moved in other circles as well. Alexander’s essay, for me, was a moment of clarity: you don’t have to be a gamer any more. Rather than using games to hide from life you can integrate them with the other parts of your life. It was something I had kind of been doing for years before that in an unconscious way, but having it clearly spelled out like that was beautiful and helped me crystallise those thoughts in my mind.
The other reason why I remember it so clearly is that a week later a dude called Thidran tried to recruit me for Gamergate. We were on a kink part of the internet where I spend a fair amount of time, and I had vaguely known him for years as another regular although I doubt we had spoken directly much in that time. I respected him as an intelligent, thoughtful guy who understood the distinction between fantasy and reality more than most. As a result, I was happy to hear his pitch. It was a very carefully thought through pitch too, starting with “you’re a gamer, right?” and establishing a sense of gamer cultural identity before trying to show how we gamers were under attack and the evil SJWs were trying to take games away from us and how we could fight back using the skills gaming had taught us. I can see why people fell for it.
He was wasting his time with me, of course, and I think he realised that when I derailed into talking about how great Depression Quest was and how much I liked Sarkeesian. Nonetheless, he invited me to come and hang out in #burgersandfries where he was, apparently, an admin. I chose not to. I’m glad I didn’t: I think that had I entered, it would have taken all of five minutes before I got disgusted with the redpillishness and left.
If anyone wants to read it, I can see if I can dig out the logs of the conversation.
At the time I didn’t know what Gamergate or #burgersandfries was, so I wasn’t as harsh as I should have been. I also didn’t know what I know now, which is that if you search through the famous #burgersandfries logs that got released, Thidran is a name which pops up, and not in a good way.
Between that and the Alexander piece, I stopped calling myself a gamer around then. My opinion is that gamers are over, and not just in the way that Alexander meant it. I play very complex strategy games with steep learning curves. I don’t play twitch shooters or platformers. Similarly, I work using spreadsheets and databases. I don’t work using a pick and shovel or a dentist’s drill. “Games” do not belong to me in a unitary way, any more than “Work” belongs to me in a unitary way, or “Exercise” or “Booze” or anything else.
I am not a gamer. I am a human being who enjoys some gaming as part of a well-rounded lifestyle. Thank you, Ms Alexander, for leading me to this realisation.
I’ve been having far too much fun trolling the fuck out of the comment section. I hope David does a top 10 comments like the last time this happened. Until then, these are some of my favorites
When someone suggested that his fear had already been realized, he was quick to say “well SJWs don’t think that far ahead”. XD I wanted to be the one to inform him of the existence of this article, but someone already mentioned it.
Yeah, we are insane tyrants! MUHAHAHA (too lazy to find a gif of evil laughter)
That one is by bjsparky, the idiot responsible for that ridiculous infographic with 100 straw feminist arguments.
Needs more skulls. Very disappoint. Would not bang.
OMGOMGOMG!! Read Davis’s comments. He thinks his “film” is going to get on Netflix!!!
BWAAAAAHAAAAHAAAHAAA!!
I saw the bit about Netflix and wondered what happened to the planned theatre release. 😉
Au contraire! David is simply sharing the hilarity with us.
“Don’t act like complete asshats in public because FUTRELLE might notice!”
That’s never stopped any of them before and never will. They can’t help themselves!
Also, speaking of people acting like complete asshats in public, I strongly recommend that if you need something to listen to for an hour while cleaning grout or something, click on that Skeptics and Believers video Mari posted on the last page of the comments; it’s Mr. Aurini being a pompous twit and talking shit about Owen and it is GOLDEN.
Well, shit, why *WOULDN’T* Netflix want this pure, solid gold? I can think of literally no reason why it would want to avoid getting involved with a duo peddling a paranoid misogyny screed, at least one of which is a naked huckster.
Note: I have no opinion on Ghost Trick and don’t know what Ghost Trick is.
Sarkeesian is the only person in the universe where everyone feels the need to begin every conversation about her by mentioning that there was one time in one of her videos where she maybe got a single detail about a single game wrong.
There are good reasons for this. 3 of them, basically. 1st: modeling good behavior for gators; 2nd: her prominence in a minority-opinion group and its unusual source; 3rd: the scope & aim of her project.
Gamergaters, the adjacent people who are upset about similar things but recognize gamergate as toxic, and frankly people in fandom generally are not good at distinguishing a work from its creators or its consumers; that’s half of why they get so defensive. You say “Game X uses some sexist tropes,” and they hear “Game X was written by a big mean sexist.” You say, “Game Y isn’t a very good game” and they hear “people who play Game Y are bad people.” Since the whole point of pushing critical dialog in the media is to break people out of the habit, she becomes a handy example case. You say to the gater, “I don’t always like her videos, but I don’t think she’s a bad person/I don’t see her as an enemy/I don’t feel personally attacked/I don’t want to shut her up.” Then you follow up: “In the same way, just because she has a negative opinion on the game you like, it doesn’t mean she wants to shut you up/wants to censor your game/wishes you ill personally.
—
Also, she’s become one of the most prominent feminist culture critics overnight. If you’re part of a minority opinion, it’s natural to want to distinguish yourself from prominent faces in your own camp so that you won’t be misperceived by outsiders. If someone agrees with 90% of what, Idunno, Captain Awkward says, they probably are comfortable discussing, citing, or recommending her without harping on that 10%, because no one assumes that Captain Awkward speaks for feminists generally or is an iconic feminist; she’s just one person who happens to be feminist. Anita Sarkeesian is in a position to actually shape people’s beliefs about what feminism is, so even someone who agrees with her 90% of the time will take pains to avoid having that last 10% mis-attributed to them.
It doesn’t help that the she became famous for reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of her work. She didn’t cause, invite, deserve, justify, fabricate, prolong, or exaggerate the harassment against her; she didn’t “scam” anyone, “play victim,” or intend this to happen. Nonetheless, she wouldn’t have the prominence she has now if GamerGate hadn’t happened. Most famous voices get famous because they have a lot of supporters, fans, and fellow-travelers boosting their signal. The mere fact of their prominence is evidence that they somewhat representative of their constituency and that they need to be taken seriously. Anita Sarkeesian became famous because she had a lot of haters boosting her signal. She didn’t have a massive feminist fan-base, so it’s to be expected that you’d hear more criticism and less acclaim for her from within feminism than for someone who became famous because feminists actually approved of them. Or to put it another way, it would be unfortunate to let right-wing trolls and redpillers decide who gets to be the face of feminism, and it’s worth trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.
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(long post is long so I’m not gonna bother with my third claim right now; it was my weakest point and slightly less anchored to this conversation)
BTW as a side note to the gaming discussions, anyone else in here played “Her Story” yet?
Bit tricky to talk about in anything but the most superficial way without risking spoilers but I found it a genuinely amazing piece of work and worthy of all the praise it’s been getting.
Random jabs at Derrida are more pretentious than Derrida.
Thanks to all for the comments about the ‘gamer’ identity. It sort of makes sense now. Well, insofar as I can understand what the ‘issues’ are; some of the underlying arguments seem a bit daft to me. It’s like saying “How can you call yourself a bookworm? You haven’t even read any Sven Hassel.” or “If Jane Austen is allowed to write books that’ll be the end of literature.”
On a related note, I’ve just been reading a study from the Youth Sports Trust here in the UK. Rather worryingly 1 in 4 kids think playing video games counts as exercise 🙁
That’s a particular concern when currently only 7% of girls and 14% of boys are meeting the targets for even the minimum level of activity recommended to keep healthy.
http://www.classof2035.com/
Ahahaha that Skeptics and Believers video is hilarious! I especially liked the bit where Aurini is babbling something about beauty, love and mathematics and manages to sound like some random dumbass trying to be all clever, edgy and philosophical. 😀
Maybe because that’s exactly what he is.
the “random dumbass” part. Aurini very obviously isn’t clever, edgy or philosophical.
@Alan Robertshaw – Games can be exercise if you use a Wii or Kinect! (Yes, it’s a very low defense, but all I’ve got)
I’m not quite sure what you’re going for here. You’re saying these are reasons otherwise reasonable people should constantly bring up random, irrelevant nitpicks whenever she is mentioned? Because that’s what people do, and there’s no possible justification for it, because it’s irrelevant.
This is like watching two guys punching themselves in the face and calling what’s going on a war.
Argh, blockquote monster!
Hahahaha, loving the ‘we interviewed specific people we knew would say specific things’ part… I bet they’re also trying to present this as a balanced or fair overview as well, aren’t they?
I followed the IMDB links and found Anita Sarkeesian listed in another crowd funded documentary other then the Sarkeesian Effect. It’s called GTFU and is by Shannon Sun-Higginson. It is about the harassment of women in gaming.
GTFO plot: “Sparked by a public display of sexual harassment in 2012, GTFO pries open the video game world to explore a 20 billion dollar industry that is riddled with discrimination and misogyny. In recent years, the gaming community has grown more diverse than ever. This has led to a massive clash of values and women receive the brunt of the consequences every day, with acts of harassment ranging from name calling to cyber vandalism and death threats. Through interviews with video game developers, journalists, and academics, GTFO paints a complex picture of the video game industry, while revealing the systemic and human motivations behind acts of harassment. GTFO is the beginning of a larger conversation that will shape the future of the video game world.”
http://gtfothemovie.com/
It seems the SJWs came out with a documentary in March. It seems to be worth viewing despot being in production since 2012 without the drama and hilarity or even a skull.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTFO_(film)
dammit, I missed aurini’s comments. Can anyone quote them here? I need a good laugh.
EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Bath Master and White Skull call each other super villains!
So someone being a rape victim is supposed to make people dislike them …?!
I’ve been following Owen’s channel since 2008 (or something) and he’s a decent person. I feel like he doesn’t deserve all this ridicule and hate from you guys.
Decent people don’t gang up with white nationalist rape apologists to encourage the continued hate and harassment of a person whose only crime is making videos that criticize sexist storytelling tropes in video games. He’s merely being judged on his actions. He brought this on himself.