Last night was the grand premiere of The Sarkeesian Effect (Team Jordan Owen Edition), and the response from critics and audience members alike has been overwhelming!
That video of crickets has gotten more than 3,344,825 views on Youtube. That’s 371,647 times the number of people who apparently showed up at the Sarkeesian Effect premiere/#GamerGate Meetup at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema in Atlanta last night.
Yep. According to the organizer of the #GamerGate meetup, only nine people showed. Including the director.
@mundanematt @jordanowen42 But yeah, including me, Jordan, and my bf, only 9 people showed up.
— Artist Lisa M (@ArtistLisaM) August 1, 2015
Meanwhile, on Reddit’s Kotaku In Action subreddit, one of the main #GamerGate hubs, the excitement was palpable.
Even Jordan Owen — the director of this incarnation of the Sarkeesian Effect — was uncharacteristically quiet; his reports from the premiere consisted mainly of photos of the screen, evidently his attempt to prove to the critics that, yes, the film exists.
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627336679112736769
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627343425369702400
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627350752097341440
Those last two pics seem to suggest that the insidious “Sarkeesian Effect” that gave the film its title is Ms. Sarkeesian’s uncanny ability to cause her critics to wear plaid shirts vaguely similar to her own signature look.
Online, the only people excited about the event that I could find were an assortment of popcorn-munching critics of #GamerGate. And they were mostly excited about the discovery of the official Sarkeesian Effect website.
Sorry, I meant to say the discovery of ANOTHER official Sarkeesian Effect website.
You may vaguely remember the official website, unveiled several months back, an amateurish unfinished job, with crappy graphics; the links on the front page to the film’s trailer, press coverage, Sarkeesian Effect wallpapers (!), and a list of theaters showing the film (!!) all led to this page:
And they still do.
Owen says that this unfinished mess of a website is still the official Sarkeesian Effect website. But now it’s been joined by a second unfinished mess of a website that also seems to be staking a claim as the official Sarkeesian Effect website. It’s not clear if this new site is the handiwork of Davis Aurini, or if Owen hired someone to put it together and just forgot about it.
Weirdly, this last option seems the most probable. Given that the site was promoting the premiere last night — a premiere of Owen’s version of the film, which Aurini had disavowed in advance — it seems unlikely that Aurini had anything to do with it.
While a teensy bit slicker than the original, the new site isn’t quite ready for public consumption. Here, for example, are the bios of some of the famous NAMES interviewed in the film.
Yes, that’s right: Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s …
Also, Karen Straughan — the blabby FeMRA videoblogger and “Honey Badger” — is actually three women sitting next to each other.
Alas, the now-feuding “filmmakers” behind the “film” don’t fare any better themselves. In addition to giving both of them the Lorem treatment, whoever made the site also managed to misspell Aurini’s last name.
Clearly, from now on, Davis Aurini will be known as Davis-a-rooni.
Even the site’s Quick FAQs section has an impressive Lorem ratio.
And, yes, it is true that FILM starring NAME, NAME and NAME, has been featured on MEDIA.
This site, as, er, wildly optimistic about the commercial prospects of The Sarkeesian Effect as the old site, also includes a link to theaters showing the film. But instead of leading to a “Coming Soon” page, the new site links instead to … a blank page on Google Docs.
I can only hope that the film itself — presumably headed ultimately for a YouTube release — lives up to this amazing website.
Sorry. I mean BOTH films live up to BOTH websites.
H/T — @tortoiseontour, who alerted me to the website and pointed out the misspelling of Aurini’s name.
Nitram:
Exactly. They also don’t seem to understand that criticizing overly sexualized female characters is not even remotely the same thing as criticizing real-life sexy women. Real women have agency. Videogame characters do not.
Sarkeesian is criticizing the fact that (predominantly male) creators persistently choose to make their female characters sexy above all else, to the detriment of other qualities, often in contexts where things like high heels and make-up make no damn sense. And creatively, that’s worth criticizing, because inevitably developers end up sacrificing good storytelling and strong characterization for dubious titillation, i.e. “I like this game, but it makes no damn sense that my badass warrior is walking around in subzero temperatures in thigh highs and a metal bikini.” “That rape scene really felt like it was just shoe-horned in there because we haven’t seen tits in a while.”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with make-up and earrings, but women aren’t actually born with those things implanted in our bodies, so if you’re going to include them in your character design, there needs to be reason. And “we want her to look hot!” is not a compelling reason.
But yeah, when GG hears, all they hear is “SARKEESIAN SAYS FEMININE SIGNIFIERS ARE BAD, SARKEESIAN PRESENTS AS FEMININE, THEREFORE SHE IS A HYPOCRITE.”
Which really tells you a lot about a) their critical thinking skills and b) their view of women’s agency.
Indeed. I worry these guys, separate from their abhorrent behavior and attitude could be categorized as possibly having a mental disorder of some kind, based on the strength of their delusions of grandeur. However, since I’m not trained in mental health I can only speculate on such things, given such evidence. That’s why I personally don’t feel good about deriving pleasure from this. I’m often disgusted by their personas and beliefs, so no sympathy there but they do make me generally sad.
It’s not their failings that make me sad, it’s their doubling down and delusions about those failings that make me sad. It reminds me of that comic of the cartoon dog, sitting in a restaurant that’s clearly on fire going, “This is fine.” I look at that being personified in these two guys and it bums me out.
This, of course compounds with my general depression about the state of my life right now, so I just don’t have it in me to kick back on the couch, eat the collective popcorn and smile at these jerks and their incompetence. I could before, back when I was angrier but that gets exhausting after a while. I don’t have the energy for it these days, or for much of anything, really.
Thanks, everyone for the kind words and for giving me an opportunity to express myself. My voice is one of the few privileges I have left. I don’t mean to complain. I suppose technically, it could always be worse. The chance to ramble on like this, even if it’s just irrelevant word salad gives me some stupid sense of purpose. It’s why I became a podcaster more than nine years ago. That, and caring for my dog. Without those things in my life, it would be significantly easier to just give up so again, thanks.
I checked Aurini’s blog, “Stares at the World,” to see if he posted anything about Owen’s premiere. No, he didn’t. On the big day, he posted a poem someone had written after being inspired by his “Broken Roads” book, and he hasn’t posted anything there since. It’s not a high-activity blog: The poem was his first post since July 14, when he posted an update on his version of the Sarkeesian Effect project and the rogue fund-raising campaign he set up to shunt dollars directly into his pocket.
But in clicking around the blog, I noticed something y’all have maybe already laughed over: Like Mike Cernovich, Aurini’s shilled for a testosterone supplement company and written about his, umm, problem and how taking testosterone brought “my sex-drive and my acne” back to what they were when he was 25.
Is it pretty typical of these manliest of alpha males that they believe their nads to be inadequate?
Now, you might say what they really believe is that fleecing their insecure fapper follwers is the key to status living, but it’s interesting to me that they nonetheless fess up publicly to being feebs.
They blame it on Feminized Modern Life, of course, but there’s nothing stopping them from living the physically robust, risk-filled lives they believe their healthier, manlier ancestors lived instead of being apartment dwellers who, when they’re working at all, are tapping keyboards and dinking with video cameras instead of logging or doing construction work.
http://www.staresattheworld.com/2013/10/an-epidemic-of-low-testosterone/
@TGuerrant
No one’s testosterone levels have to do with anything anyone here wants to talk about. We mock what the misogynist shit they do, not the pills they take for any reason. Or at least I don’t.
@TGuerrant,
I second Pandapool, no one should be mocked for living in a basement or taking supplements or being insecure about their identity.
We mock these misogynistic asswipes for doing, saying and inciting horrible things.
To me, using misogyny to exploit some men’s fears to the point where they dose themselves with harmful supplements for which you get a cut, all the while denying the need for medical supervision while taking the supplements, *is* a horrible thing, but I won’t press the point.
True, that part IS exploitative.
Yeah, taking pills is not something to mock, but hawking dubious health cures on your blog for money definitely is.
@TGuerrant
Yes, that is bad, but Arooni shouldn’t be mocked for that. The concept should be mocked but the people who are victims to the concept should not.
It also feels petty to bring it up since he has done waaay worse things than fall prey to his glass masculinity through harmful supplements.
I was inspired by
this donation black holeThe Sarkeesian Effect documentary, and decided to make a documentary on the making of The Sarkeesian Effect. I’m letting everyone in on the ground floor. Give me your monies, pleez.There was no link to donate 🙁
Would be awesome 🙂
I feel bad for Jordan Owen. He put himself through hell working with an abusive creep (to the point of panic attacks, apparently), then only nine people showed up to see the result of that work? That’s gotta suck.
I know he’s a terrible person, but he seems like the least terrible of them.
I dunno, I don’t really feel bad when someone falls ass over tip into a pit of suffering they dug to trap someone else in.
It’s true, it’s not cool to mock anyone over medical stuff, but I think that is a “way worse thing” that Aurini’s done. He’s encouraging other men to ingest potentially harmful supplements because masculinity. That’s significantly awful, in my not-so-important opinion.
@Mieze
I’m not talking about him pushing that shit onto others but rather him taking that shit himself. You can mock him for pushing that shit on other. I don’t care about that.
@indifferentsky
Sorry I should have specified that it was just a parody. But maybe I ought to actually start a Go Fund Me campaign thingy anyway. I actually do have student loans to pay off.
Well it’s clear, I just think it would be cool. 🙂
Some of you may not listen to sports talk shows, so you may not be aware that various kinds of pills to raise testosterone or otherwise produce “male enhancement” are a modern form of snake oil, bought by men who are afraid that they have Hit The Wall sexually (i.e., they are no longer as horny as they were when they were 17). They should not be confused with medications prescribed to people with real medical conditions such as ED.
@Jpaseusmc
I don’t think you quite grasped the situation yet…
If I were the Devil, and I am, I would kindly decline your advocacy.
Sarkeesian is criticizing the fact that (predominantly male) creators persistently choose…
I wish people would stop saying this kind of thing in game-crit contexts; as far as I know, Anita Sarkeesian herself never has. The preponderance of men in the industry is relevant to conversation about limited opportunities for women in game development, or to a discussion of what might have to happen to create a more diverse media culture. But it’s irrelevant to the quality of the content itself, and it opens feminist critics up to stupid rebuttals. Aurini/Owens make this a big part of their argument. They pick out a few games that Anita commented on — Bayonetta, mainly — and point out that they had female developers. In Aurini/Owens mind that makes the female characters in that game automatically good.
There’s little reason to say “the problem is the way mostly male developers depict women” when we could say “the problem is the way developers depict women.”
Orion:
Fair enough. I think creating more opportunities for female developers would go on a long way towards rooting out entrenched sexist tropes in games, but I agree that it’s irrelevant when forming critique of the actual content.
You don’t get to appoint yourself to that role. It’s indistinguishable from “arguing in bad faith”.
Coming back out of lurking only shortly, because I’m still superstressed at work. Hi everybody! I hope to become more active again soon!
@jpageusmc
Note that your conjectures about possible bad business behaviour on the part of FF is not supported by your source, who argues:
You’re right in saying that we shouldn’t accept all FF does at face value, just because we agree with Sarkeesian; in the last years, transparency in non-profit organisations has become more and more important, and several cases have shown how social media can be exploited disingenuously.
But this is transparency: they publish breakdowns of income and expenditure as well as plans for the future. Most of your criticisms can be explained by the fact that the huge success of the Kickstarter took them by surprise, a lot of time was spent with media appearances and managing turdmountains of online abuse, and that Sarkeesian probably never planned to make FF a non-profit organisation with staff. In Q4 of a report year, you’re not going to be able to spend lots of money that come suddenly flowing in. The increase in expenditure is easily explainable by the increase in production and activism they have planned for the future.
So yes, you’re arguing in bad faith.
I feel compelled to emphasize that this sudden influx of money was far above and beyond what she asked for. She asked for money on Kickstarter. She was fully funded quickly. The proto-gaters blew up on her, and a bunch of people went, “Hey. You know what? Screw you, proto-gaters,” and gave her a bunch more money that she didn’t ask for. She had not yet made any promises to do anything with the extra. People could look at her Kickstarter and see that it was already overfunded, and they gave her more money anyway.
Now, if she had decided, “Never mind, I’m not going to make videos after all,” that would have been fraud. But she has been making videos. Good ones. On a broader range of topics than she initially planned. She has also been traveling to speaking engagements. She has been working hard towards precisely the goals she stated.
Frankly, if I were a donor, and she took all the extra funds that she neither asked nor planned for, made no extra videos, and instead used the windfall to move to an un-doxxed address and take a few weeks on a private island somewhere to detox from all the internet furor, I would happily see her off at the ship. And maybe give her another five bucks for a latte.
She did not say, “Support my non-profit for our operating expenses.” She said, “Hey, help me pay for these videos I want to make.” People gave her wayyyyyy more than she asked for, and her use of the excess was 100% at her discretion. The fact that she has been ramping up her efforts so much speaks very highly of her, but it’s important to see that she has already delivered on what she owed to her backers. What she’s doing with her support at this point is up to her, and is being transparently documented through her non-profit.
Sounds like ethics in video game criticism to me.
They have an “ariticles” section.
Holy shit, spell checkers are free!