So a couple of days ago, as you probably have heard, Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn testified at the United Nations about online harassment of women. The two, along with a number of other victims of/experts on online harassment also paid a visit to Google Ideas to share their thoughts on the matter.
This is, in essence, what #GamerGate has achieved over the past year: By launching an unprecedented wave of organized harassment, mostly aimed at women, the Gators have brought about a new awareness of the seriousness of online harassment. And they’ve given the women whose lives and careers they’ve tried most energetically to destroy an influence they never would have had otherwise.
Naturally, Gators have been losing their shit over all this.
And so, as a public service of sorts, I would like to share with you the 13 most ridiculously hyperbolic pronouncements from Gators I have seen thus far in response to Sarkeesian and Quinn’s recent adventures. (On Reddit, anyway; I have not (yet) ventured into the wilds of 8chan or the Twitter hashtag to collect further examples, and I’m not sure I will.) Major props to the folks in the BestOfOutrageCulture subreddit, who have been energetically and hilariously documenting the man-steria, and who found a number of the examples below.
1) “We are literally fighting to save the world from an international alliance targeting the most fundamental human rights.“
In a KotakuInAction post with more than 300 upvotes, someone called frankenmine declares:
Make no mistake, we are literally fighting to save the world from an international alliance targeting the most fundamental human rights. …
The problem is not the UN panel and report itself. The problem was not the Google Ideas meeting. The problem was not the Congressional hearing. …
The mere ability to get access to these platforms shows that McIntosh and his ilk is building up a progressively larger and more influential network fairly quickly. At the rate he’s going, he might be able to infiltrate actually influential organizations, at the corporate and/or governmental levels, fairly soon.
The McIntosh in question is Jonathan McIntosh, Sarkeesian’s video-making partner. Unable to believe that a mere woman could actually be in charge of her own life many GamerGater’s believe that McIntosh is the evil puppetmaster pulling Sarkeesian’s strings.
2) “Now GamerGate has to save the world from authoritarian, women-infantising control freaks?”
In another KotakuInAction post, this one with more than 1600 upvotes, _Mellex_ makes, well, basically the same assertion:
So now GamerGate is being mentioned in the same breath as the United Nations, and apparently KIA is at the forefront of stopping unnecessary government overhaul of internet protocol. What in the actual fuck? …
Ethics in games journalism: That’s what this was all about. And now GamerGate has to save the world from authoritarian, women-infantising control freaks?
These guys do an awful lot of world-saving for dudes whose greatest accomplishments basically consist of being belatedly banned on Twitter for harassing women.
3) “It’s amazing that it falls to gamers to play a key role in this pushback against authoritarianism.”
LEGALIZE-MARINARA gets a hundred upvotes for this comment, made in response to _Mellex_’s post:
It’s amazing that it falls to gamers to play a key role in this pushback against authoritarianism.
Not big upping myself. I ain’t even a gamer, and I’m pretty late to this whole thing, and nor do I think it’s fair that so many politicians have abandoned their responsibilities in this manner. But that’s the reality we’re faced with.
So humble, these guys.
4) “If they win, if they get what they want, they kill free speech. For good. And the foregone conclusion is THX 1138 or Demolition Man.”
Ok, I cheated a little. This is evidently a rant from 8chan, which I found reposted on TheBestOfOutrageCulture subreddit. It’s a bit tl;dr, so I’ve edited a little and bolded the best bits.
Media is a tool. And corporations like to co-opt every single format for one purpose; to sell you sub par shit that you don’t need.
And the biggest threat to that is your ability to have just as big a soapbox to criticize their product as they do to push it.
That’s why they want to take away your ability to say mean things on the internet. It isn’t about poor little Anita. It’s about poor little Pfizer. Anita is a patsy. She’s a tool. Get everyone to rush to the defense of the damsel, take away the right to criticize and now you’ve got people going to jail for saying anything but “Coke is it! Coke is the best! Disney is the greatest! Nike totally doesn’t rely on third world child labor! Apple is an ethical company!” …
SJWs are useful idiots, savvy at narrative with their communications degrees, with social access to trend setting cliques. Those SJWs are the innoculation against those in the media who might break the narrative. They got Patton Oswalt. They got Sarah Silverman. They got Louis CK. They got the video games industry under lockdown. They have everyone in Hollywood except Eli Roth. …
The final result? Draconian control of THE most valuable social tool since Guttenberg. …
Gamers are the only thing holding the line right now, and I’m telling you, we can’t stop. Because if they win, if they get what they want, they kill free speech. For good. And the foregone conclusion is THX 1138 or Demolition Man. Then we all have to live in the subways, or live like them. And we ain’t got the cash to live in the good parts.
Well, someone’s got a vivid — if somewhat derivative — imagination.
5) “Not being a cuck is harassment.”
In a r/KiA comment with more than 900 upvotes, SinisterDexter83 sarcastically suggests that Sarkeesian and her allies are trying to declare everything and the kitchen sink to be a form of harassment.
Asking for evidence of harassment is harassment.
Questioning harassment is harassment.
Criticism is harassment.
Disagreeing with the harassing tactics of radical feminists is harassment.
Holding an opinion that contradicts the dogma of radical feminism is harassment.
Voicing an opinion that contradicts the dogma of radical feminism is harassment.
Holding an opinion that contradicts the dogma of radical feminism without voicing it is an especially sinister, underground form of harassment.
Continuing to have your own opinions after you have been informed of the official radical feminist dogma is harassment.
Not being a cuck is harassment.
He continues on for some time in this manner, but, really, what can beat “not being a cuck is harassment?” It’s Peak #GamerGate.
6) “Corporate enterprise is pushing this brand of feminism to isolate countries and decimate societies for profit.”
More conspiracy-mongering from this r/KiA comment. Sarkeesian and Quinn are puppets of an evil corporate plot to “decimate the public” because apparently decimating customers is a great way to make money?
Google Ideas, a think tank in NY, allowed the harassment to get high profile…
Google changes their monetization and wants more profit…
A new narrative (which is old to us) is put before the UN to spread worldwide.
What people should realize is that we’re seeing the rise of the corporate feminist which is a different type of feminism. This thing was okayed by a think tank to influence rates of growth for corporate enterprise. …
People are focused on fighting SJWs, they missed the bigger story and the article… Corporate enterprise is pushing this brand of feminism to isolate countries and decimate societies for profit. They mislabel gaming to justify cultural imperialism (we’re telling you what to make for our sake) and enact corporate friendly laws that decimate the public.
I’m not quite sure how the evil folks at Google secretly convinced a battalion of angry gamers to send multiple death threats to Anita Sarkeesian over the course of several years, but I’m sure there’s some perfectly reasonable explanation for it.
7) “This is only the beginning. … If this … spirals out of control from here I could see a full blown revolution down the road.”
A comment in KotakuInAction, with more than two dozen upvotes, suggests that if Gamergate and other “free speech” movements like it don’t succeed, the masses might ultimately have to resort to revolution:
More and more it’s becoming evident that movements like Gamergate are necessary. If no one fought for the rights these people are trying to take away we probably would have lost them long ago.
I’m gonna make this prediction, so mark my words.
This is only the beginning. Between the authoritarian right and authoritarian left and whatever group has an agenda to push we’re going to start seeing more and more attacks on our rights.
Privacy and free speech are going to be constantly attacked and they’ll use whatever excuse they can to try and legitimize their cause. Harassment, terrorism, sexism, bigotry, criticism, you name it and they’ll use it to try and take away your rights.
Gamergate will just have been the precursor, eventually I think there’ll be more movements based around fighting for freedom of speech ethics. If this only spirals out of control from here I could see a full blown revolution down the road.
Well, of course you can. Because you clearly have no understanding of history and only a tenuous connection with reality.
8) “When the lunatic horde comes knocking, we stand up, stand strong, arms linked and spirits high, voices joined in harmony, millions of different pitches mingling into a rising crescendo of unity and strength.”
In an r/KiA comment with more than a dozen upvotes, Ferlion123 gets all inspirational:
Where do we go from here?
We go to our families and we go to our friends. We go on with our jobs and our lives. And when the lunatic horde comes knocking, we stand up, stand strong, arms linked and spirits high, voices joined in harmony, millions of different pitches mingling into a rising crescendo of unity and strength.
We will go on with our lives until the call comes, and when it does we will stand before the tide upon our shores and before our fires will they disperse. We will stand before any rush and we will not break or fall.
What we do is EXACTLY what we’ve been doing. We stand on our own legs, allies at our side, and we finish this fight.
Is this plagiarized from somewhere? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure Ferlion123 means it all quite sincerely.
9) “Now we are the only things that stand between them and world domination.”
In an r/KiA comment with 70 upvotes, Neo_Techni seems to have a hard time telling the difference between anime and reality.
It started with censorship, and the censors won. It was inevitable that they’d get drunk on that power and try to censor the world. Now we are the only things that stand between them and world domination.
It’d make a great anime so long as funimation doesn’t get to touch 1984 it up
No, I’m not quite sure just what that last, er, “sentence” is supposed to mean either.
10) “I can imagine SJWs one day coming up with a reason to defend diseases from being cured.”
In response to a comment in which someone called deathonwingz suggests, at least half seriously, that “I get the feeling this won’t be over until we’ve cured cancer, stopped world hunger, colonized mars and done many other things,” commenter FiveThou writes
Now you say that, but I can imagine SJWs one day coming up with a reason to defend diseases from being cured. “Viruses are living things that share our planet. How dare you be so cruel to them.” “Don’t go to see the doctor – he’s only going to AIDS-shame you.”
11) “You weren’t necessarily sent to the gulags for criticizing Brezhnev, but you never worked again.”
Tigers_ suggests that the power of Sarkeesian et al is comparable to that of the Soviet authorities in the era of Brezhnev. I suppose we should give him half a point for not going with a full-blown Stalin comparison.
I’ve been wanting to find a way to address these issues in an entertaining and accessible fashion for a few years now. Real life issues hold me back, but there’s also the incessant fear of something like that destroying any hopes I have at a career of my chosing for engaging. It’s not like there isn’t a massive risk. You weren’t necessarily sent to the gulags for criticizing Brezhnev, but you never worked again.
12) “Think feminism doesn’t kill people? Fucking yes it does, Srebrinca was possible because of feminist mindset.”
Xyluz85, meanwhile, gets no points for reining in rhetorical excess with this comment, not specifically referencing Sarkeesian but made in the wake of her UN visit.
It’s not about the fear that they can win this, it’s more about how big the damage will be when the time comes feminism goes away. And it get’s more horrifing by the day. I learn more and more about this mindset, and what it does to people. Think feminism doesn’t kill people? Fucking yes it does, Srebrinca was possible because of feminist mindset, Haiti women-only food pretty sure killed some people, lynchmobs killing innocent people surley happend.
I think I’ll just end this post here.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot TREASON.
13) “Don’t listen to the leftist lies: both Zoe and Anita (assuming she is a citizen of the United States) have committed a felony by explicitly and directly lobbying foreign governments for the abolition of Net Neutrality and the “licensing” of internet content providers.
HonorableJudgeHolden provided “evidence” for this assertion in the form of a meme-enhanced “info”graphic.
This is the only Reddit comment or post I’ve quoted here, in this Gamer’s Dozen, that #GamerGaters considered too ridiculous to upvote.
If you want to see what Sarkeesian and Quinn actually said at the UN, here’s a video of their testimony, courtesy of Laughing Witch.
I don’t know about the others, but I tend to read you uncharitably because of your history of starting nitpicky arguments about Anita’s work in the middle of threads about the very worst of the harassment. Which is a complete red herring; she could be everything the #Gits claim she is, a magical man-hating con artist bending the universe to her supervillian will, and she still wouldn’t deserve the rape threats, death threats, bomb threats and mass shooting threats.
Of course, you’re not doing that here, so props for that – but you’re still freeze peaching for some fuck-knows reason. You know we mock that shit with relish.
Something about video games
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/29/video-games-not-anarchic-they-treat-us-like-naughty-children
(As for why I harp on some people who’ve said dumb shit in the past but forgive and laugh about it with others – sincere apologies and a willingness to learn from mistakes.)
Goddamn, to think a video series created by a women about how video games can be sexist made all these wankers their number one enemy. The scale of it all is crazy to think really. They are OBSESSED alright.
Gamergate…. Somebody should write a book or make a movie about this fuckfest.
I have an idea. If people crowdfund me, I’ll make a documentary about it. We’ll interview loads of #Gaters and sample some pieces from youtube. I’ve got a director lined up already; he’s really fast and knows all the keyboard shortcuts.
As a working title, how does “The Sarkeesian Effect” sound?
Quotemined for improved accuracy.
Oh, there’s a book all right:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/12/08/a-dramatic-reading-of-that-terrible-terrible-4changamergate-crowdsourced-book/
magnesium:
Here, let me splain feminism at you:
Radical feminist: any woman who believes some things ought to change.
Regular feminist: any woman who is content with the rights already won for women – provided she isn’t too uppity about it.
The most ironic part about all this is that I saw Liana K getting serious harassment and abuse… From gamergate.
I mean, fucking Milo alone was responsible for some atrocious shit against her. But that’s what happens when you have a movement made entirely of trolls, the over entitled, and literal Nazis.
I am a liberal socialist, or rather a Liberal socialist; I am pretty comfortable aligning myself with JS Mill and his descendants.
Mill believed that humans, overall, are happiest in a free society. A free society is basically one in which citizens are able to choose from a variety of lifestyles (or create one) that suits their values and their temperament. A free society requires free and open discourse, or a “marketplace of ideas.” This means that people have both the right and opportunity to communicate their ideas to the public. They need the right because if you’re not free to talk about being (gay/kinky/Jewish) you’re not actually free to be (gay/kinky/Jewish). They need the opportunity because the more ideas people are exposed to the more likely they are to find happiness in a lifestyle that suits them.
Democracy is necessary but not sufficient for a free society to exist. States that are not democratic are more likely to take away freedom by force or calculated neglect. Giving everyone a voice in government makes it more likely that the government will permit a diversity of lifestyles. However, the mere lack of state coercion does not make a society free. People aren’t free to choose lives which leave them unable to feed, clothe, and medicate themselves. This means that if (gay/black/unmarried) people are iced out of work and housing, then society is not really free. This also means that welfare states are more free than nations without welfare.
My liberalism is not just a political theory, it’s a moral philosophy; I believe that all else being equal, it is moral to make society more free and immoral to make it less free. Moral duties are negative (don’t fear and shun people different from us) and positive (make an effort to hear and consider new perspectives and make them accessible to the public). I tend to use “liberal” and “democratic” interchangeably, because democracy is just a system for enacting liberalism. (I couldn’t fit this in anywhere, but I think that it takes more than counting votes to have a democracy; voters need to the opportunity to educate themselves on the issues; trying to suppress access to accurate reporting is undemocratic)
—————————————————————————————————————–
What does that mean in practice? Well, for governments the answer is pretty simple: governments can’t be trusted to use censorship wisely, have no property rights, and have no personal happiness to consider, so we have an absolute prohibition on state censorship. For private actors, it’s more complicated. It’s still a moral duty to encourage free and open discussions, but that means depends on a lot of factors. It’s too complicated to make a simple rule, so these duties can’t be legislated; we rely on the goodwill of citizens to figure out and do the right things.
Different people and groups have different amounts of resources for disseminating speech. The more bandwidth you have, the more diversity you’re morally obligated to publish. If you create your own content, you needn’t publish any views but your own; if you simply transmit other people’s content, you should be very liberal in what you allow. If you endorse, curate, or package other people’s content, then you fall somewhere in the middle. Agreement and disagreement aren’t the only criteria; there’s also importance and relevance. Dedicating one space to one topic allows conversations that otherwise couldn’t happen. Ideas that have been repeatedly debunked or rejected shouldn’t take up space that could be used for new thoughts.
So when I say that a site like Twitter should be democratic, I don’t mean that it should be *managed* by popular vote. I mean that it should take actions that make it easier and not harder for voters to be informed on the issues and for people of minority opinions to network and self-promote.
It’s kind of baffling to me that any feminist would disagree with this. I am not an expert on feminist history, but my understanding is that universities have always been a major “home base” for feminism. These days it’s because many or most academics are pro-feminist, but that can’t have been true at the beginning. Feminists were teaching, speaking, and publishing at universities long before they were popular there. They were able to do that because the academic ethos demands that they disseminate unpopular opinions.
None of this means that Twitter and Reddit shouldn’t censor the worse parts of #GG would be wrong. Actually, they’re morally obligated to. Hosting hate mobs isn’t democratic, it’s undemocratic, because it chills discourse.
“Of course, you’re not doing that here, so props for that – but you’re still freeze peaching for some fuck-knows reason. You know we mock that shit with relish.”
Frozen peaches with relish sounds disgusting.
That’s all really, nothing on topic to add, just needed to get that out of my head.
@EJ
Sounds like a documentary that will go down in the anals of history!
@Mike
Well damn, that was something alright.
Orion,
I don’t at all disagree that it’s great that social media has given marginalized groups a platform they wouldn’t otherwise have. I think it’s great.
But an argument that speech should always be given a platform doesn’t tend to benefit the marginalized. It benefits the people who will harass them in order to maintain the status quo. If David didn’t ban trolls for being tedious assholes or for using bigoted language, this place would be overrun with misogynist trolls and women and our allies would never be able to have a productive conversation.
It’s kind hard for me to assume good faith on your part here because you seem to always manage to suggest that Sarkeesian has it coming somehow without coming out and saying it. There’s always a harassment is bad but …
“GamerGate… take a reasonable issue and float it out of context to justify something both unrelated and reprehensible.”
“GGers don’t actually support “1st amendment principles,””
“I do not believe that hosting your content is a good use of my resources; either (a), your speech is not an attempt to participate in discussion but actually an attempt to chill it, (b) your ideas have already been considered and set aside in this forum,”
“Banned for tweeting death threats … Not oppression.”
“trying to suppress access to accurate reporting is undemocratic”
“Ideas that have been repeatedly debunked or rejected shouldn’t take up space”
“None of this means that Twitter and Reddit shouldn’t censor the worse parts of #GG would be wrong. Actually, they’re morally obligated to.”
I honestly don’t understand what more I could say.
“I do not believe that hosting [troll] content is a good use of my resources; either (a), your speech is not an attempt to participate in discussion but actually an attempt to chill it, (b) your ideas have already been considered and set aside in this forum, (c) I am using my site to promote and showcase other ideas which I consider more valuable, (d) this website is less like an electronic town hall, newspaper, or public square, and more like an electronic cocktail party, or (e) all of the above.””
Damn, meant to replace all instances of “I” with “David”
Orion, I guess I just don’t know why this argument is even happening. Pretty sure nobody said Twitter should ban people willy nilly, but that people who harass others and act like assholes have no right to that platform. Period. I don’t really see how that goes against your many paragraphs.
@NickNameNick – yeah, I pretty much agree with you on MGS. I’m really not a big fan of the series as a whole, partly for the reasons you cite. The first 3 numbered titles are the only ones I’ve played through; 3 was definitely the best, having the most compelling story and characters and using its setting very well. 1 was certainly loaded with its share of serious flaws, but was still a pretty decent game. 2 was a hot mess with few redeeming features.
Anyway, MGS tangent aside…
Why? In what way does the simple fact of being optional demand a different critical approach? I don’t see how it’s worth more than a simple acknowledgement – “this is a part of the game that’s entirely optional, you won’t even see it unless you explore these ruins in this side quest.” Then you move on to discuss whatever it is you want to discuss about the content i.e. if it’s sexist or racist or maybe you’re just here to analyze the content’s storyline, etc… the point is, regardless of what you are saying about the content, that it’s optional changes little. The main (and really, only truly significant) thing that it being optional accomplishes, in terms of mitigating a piece of gross or objectionable content, is that an individual player can choose not to see it – though, it’s worth nothing, that’s IF AND ONLY IF that player either misses the optional content by chance, or has been warned ahead of time that if they explore the ruins fully, they’re going to see it. If they don’t know, and they are just a player who likes to explore thoroughly in games, they could just stumble on it, rendering the mitigation moot. Which is part of my point: that’s the ONLY way in which it’s mitigated, is that chance that an informed player can choose to intentionally skip it, or a less-thorough player might not see it. Which, granted, is a good thing if the content is objectionable, since it does at least allow for some people who would find it abhorrent or perhaps even be triggered by it, depending on what the content was, to avoid it.
But that really has zero impact on a critical analysis of the content itself.
Re: the question of “should Twitter be democratic” – I honestly don’t completely understand where the distinction is in your position between “they should be democratic” and “they should still ban nasty people.”
In this context, isn’t it similar to what we are saying the government should not do? How is saying that Twitter should be “democratic” (especially if you are saying that being banned from Twitter could, in any circumstance, seriously be called oppression) different than saying that it should, in fact, be beholden to the same standards of free speech and hands-off moderation as the government? Consider that there are PLENTY of tweets and forum posts and what have you – on Twitter, on Reddit, right here on this site if it weren’t for the fact that David exercises his “not the government” right to shut gross or abusive people up and ban them – that would NOT qualify as legally actionable by the government. Not hate speech in the legal sense, not harassment in the legal sense. Untouchable by the government, no matter how abhorrent, but able to be squelched or banned by Twitter or here. A LOT of the online abuse that gets brought up whenever we discuss anti-feminists or GamerGate falls into that middle area. Saying that Twitter should be held to the standards of free speech and democracy, yet can and should ban such middle area speech, seems contradictory to me.
Good on Sarkeesian and Quinn for speaking out in the face of threats of violence and ridicule.
I looked up Eli Roth to see why one of those commenters liked him. Turns out he’s anti-SJWs and made a racist film about Indigenous people. No wonder Redditors and Gamergaters love him.
I’m watching this cultural war from the outside, i think both sides have positives and negatives (and they are kinda alike like Michael Koretsky said)
After reading the article i draw two conclusions trying to see the positive side of Gamergate and its similitude with AGG:
1) they have good intentions (we can agree/disagree with them but its clear that they think they are doing the right thing) same with the so-called “SJW”
2)They are against left or right extremism, or saying it in another way, they aren’t part of the right or the left extremists. I read some post from Yiannopoulos and most replies from GG identified with the left (obviously non-radical left). They posted Bill Maher and Jon Stewart vids and memes showing they like those guys. I have the impression SJW tend to be more loaded to radical left progressive ideology but i’m sure most part of both sides share a political spectrum (moderate left).
3)They are more pro-ethics/against censorship than against Sarkeesian et al.
I’m against dehumanization. That’s my ideology, and i think in both sides people have good intentions. Maybe they should discuss more. I think the SPJ panel was a missed oportunity from the AGG side. C’mon people should be able to discuss openly and with respect. Also it gave strenght to the GG idea of AGG supporting the censorship/not free flow of discussion/ideas.
Sorry bad english!
@saitonexus
I don’t think that’s the kind of optional that Orion meant.
I think they’re talking about games that offer you explicit ‘good’ and ‘evil’ options in game. In the Fallout games for example, you can murder almost any NPC in the game. It’s an option, and you don’t need be warned that murdering a good NPC will result in you seeing a good NPC being murdered. Some of the quests can be completed by murdering the correct good NPCs. Some of the quests allow you to join the villains and kill and/or enslave people. No-one is tricked or forced into seeing or doing it, but the options do exist. Should the game be criticized the same way as movies (or games) that force the objectionable content on you?
i want to add that polite discussion will decrease radicals from both sides. I think both sides tend to dehumanize the other. We are all humanity at the end, i believe in love as a changing force for good an dehumanization as the “sin” that made people on the past to abuse another like Nazi Germany.
Peace!
pkayden,
I’m a big horror fan, but have never been an Eli Roth fan. Cabin Fever was the only movie of his I liked and even that hasn’t held up as well as I would have thought when I first saw it. Contracted, Starry Eyes, and various Cronenberg movies are far better examples of body horror.
That ggers like Roth only makes me feel more vindicated in my dislike.
Yes, they should be critiqued the same way: By looking at the way the game treats it and the context within which it occurs, the same way you would with any other media. Lots of books and movies have the protagonists do morally questionable things, just as games do. We evaluate them by how those actions are treated (see also: the Lolita discussion).
If it’s optional, but then you get an achievement (eg, tying a woman to the tracks in Red Dead Redemption)? That’s gross and creepy, and it’s not less gross and creepy because you don’t have to do it. Meanwhile, something in the main narrative that’s morally questionable but treated appropriately (eg, other characters are horrified by what you did) might not be a problem at all.
“Optional” is just a total smokescreen. If a book had something really gross in an appendix or a movie had a really gross stinger, would they be less responsible because some people don’t read/watch that stuff? Of course not; it’s still part of the text. Same with games: Any programmed content in the game is part of the text and should be evaluated as such.