Gawker Media has long been one of Gamergate’s favorite villains, and so it’s hardly surprising to see Gamergaters celebrating Gawker’s legal defeat at the hands of former wrestler and very large human Hulk Hogan.
It was a doozy of a defeat, with Gawker Media ordered to pay $115 million to Hogan for posting a sex tape featuring the ex-wrestler and the wife of a friend whose legal name is Bubba the Love Sponge.
On Twitter, Gamergaters cackled like the cartoon villains they are, posting schadenfreude-laden photoshops, ridiculous gifs, rape jokes, and the occasional request that Gawker employees die.
https://twitter.com/ArsCortica/status/710963609678041088
https://twitter.com/x_schilling/status/710969380931248128
>mfw #Gawker has to pay 450 dollaridoos of punitive damages to Hulk Hogan#Gamergate pic.twitter.com/0mwp0hclAm
— Suicide Vest Bear Advocate 🐺 Kusanagi (@KusanagiFurfag) March 20, 2016
RIP Gawker.#GamerGate pic.twitter.com/eUToAHsZaW
— Man of Creation (@Prototype_No_07) March 18, 2016
https://twitter.com/BobDude15/status/710965368068509696
https://twitter.com/Orlando_223_/status/710993022155100160
One Tweeter brought back this familiar face.
While the celebration comes as no shock, what is a little surprising is how many Gamergaters have leapt up to claim some kind of credit for a legal victory they had absolutely nothing to do with.
https://twitter.com/Provaporous2/status/710978097135362048
Death to Gawker. #gamergate just claimed a victory against a major opponent that slandered the movement for years.
— Death To Gawker (@flowerpower2025) March 19, 2016
Hulk Hogan just effectively bankrupted the sleezy clickbait site Gawker. Thats what you get for messing with #gamergate
— Death To Gawker (@flowerpower2025) March 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/RedbobBackup/status/711058483248893952
One Gamergate critic summed up the situation with a handy pic:
https://twitter.com/ZombieAteMySock/status/711100188249735168
There were, to be sure, some Gamergaters who were willing to share credit with Hogan, seeing Gamergate as part of a some sort of Media Ethics tag-team.
#Gamergate hurt Gawker. Hulk Hogan finished the job. 115 million dollars fine for commercializing being hypocritical asshole and crybully.
— Erik Wedin (@Aktivarum) March 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/ZanbonSen/status/710989035460648961
Well, GG Gawker.
But #gamergate won, in probably the best tag team to tackle ethics in journalism.— 🔮Leonardo De Pinchy 🦀✨ (@CloudyXiongMao) March 18, 2016
#Gawker dead
Reputation of corrupt journos destroyed.
Gaming journalism changed forever.#gamergate are pretty annoying antagonists huh?— 🔮Leonardo De Pinchy 🦀✨ (@CloudyXiongMao) March 19, 2016
Demonstrating the keen sense of ethics she has evidently learned from Gamergate, Minou took a moment off from her celebration to suggest to one games journalist and longtime Gamergate target that he kill himself.
A simple solution, try bleach. @Vahn16
— 🔮Leonardo De Pinchy 🦀✨ (@CloudyXiongMao) March 18, 2016
One Gamergater and taco enthusiast offered a rather different take on the relationship between Hogan and the heroes of Gamergate.
https://twitter.com/TerrorTacos/status/711039324725374976
Obviously, there are numerous Gamergaters who are sufficiently connected with reality that they can see that, no, they had nothing whatsoever to do with Hogan’s lawsuit, or the verdict, or the massive judgement. But the victory-claimers had retorts ready for these unbelievers.
https://twitter.com/osc4x/status/711279565314891776
https://twitter.com/ArtivousIra/status/711133741943562240
But wherever they stood on the issue of just who was responsible for this glorious victory, Gamergaters seemed to agree on one thing: Gawker employees deserve to suffer for the poor decisions of their bosses.
https://twitter.com/HereticOfEthics/status/711091450763563008
I've felt a disturbance in the Force…as if Gawker employees were crying out in fear of this man https://t.co/UX0id5PF8Z #Gamergate
— Hyperknight Drifter (@hyperknight4077) March 19, 2016
Other Gamergate ethicists suggested that Gawkerites just go ahead and kill themselves.
Are you working for Gawker et al?
Don't forget to put this on your speedial.
Save yourself.#hulkvsgawk#GamerGate pic.twitter.com/der5sq4DWa— The Ivalician Heretic (@ramzaruglia) March 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/AgoristArtist/status/711006031413837824
https://twitter.com/Bobcat665/status/711002301813510144
It’s about ethics in telling journalists to kill themselves.
I hardly need to point out some of the blatant hypocrisies here. Gamergate wants Gawker Media destroyed over a sex tape. Meanwhile, Gamergaters posted nude photos of Zoe Quinn all across the internet; they also sent them directly to Quinn’s relatives. Gamergate did much of its early organizing on 4chan, before moving on to 8chan; both sites have reputations as havens for the trading of child porn.
Reddit, which hosts gamergate hub Kotaku in Action, has also been used to distribute child porn and stolen celebrity nudes; the site’s admins were glacially slow in taking action against both problems. Yes, Gawker’s posting of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape was sleazy and wrong and damaging. But 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit have done far more damage to a much larger group of victims. If Gamergate were as concerned as they pretend to be about “revenge porn” — or any kind of porn that is made and/or distributed without the consent of those in it — why are they not trying to shut down — or radically reform — Reddit or 8chan?
That is of course a rhetorical question.
Let me leave you with the creepiest tweet I ran across while writing this post. Once again, here’s Milo:
DADDIES pic.twitter.com/W9dW76s2Kw
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) March 19, 2016
EDIT: I removed several tweets that turned out to be from a troll account.
EDIT 2: And one more.
@katz
Me. Milo doesn’t call me Daddy. But I might be unique.
Poor Milo. He’s a (cough, cough) grown-up? And still needs to call someone Daddy? And thinks that other people over the age of 10 do too?
Tragic.
Also, unintentionally hilarious.
Icing on the terror cake made me hungry. Lucky the Hulk n Milo are around to take away my appetite… -_-
I don’t understand people who are delighted over the possibility of people killing themselves. I never did, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s such an alien sentiment to me, that I barely know what to say about, besides that this is probably the only kind of person I will not engage in any way, because I just can’t bring myself to.
On a lighter note, I’m convinced that the only difference between every statement Milo makes and Miley Cyrus twerking against Robin Thicke’s crotch is that Miley’s hair is less atrocious.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ack, the poor jury that had to watch Hogan’s sex tape. I hope they didn’t make them sit through the whole thing.
Seems like Gamergaters are spiking the ball a bit prematurely here. Gawker is planning to appeal this case to the Florida Second Court of Appeals, which has overturned a lot of this particular judge’s rulings. She sealed quite a bit of evidence that could have tipped the verdict in Gawker’s favor. Gawker’s defense relied heavily on the fact that Hogan deliberately made his sex life a matter of public record for several years running, so publishing the sex tape could arguably be protected under the First Amendment. (How you like them frozen peaches, GGers?)
In unrelated vomit news, Hulk Hogan announced back in September he’d like to be Donald Trump’s running mate. That’s probably where Milo’s “Daddies” photo op came from.
These are daddies that should not have custody of a country. Ever.
I’m pretty sure there’s a corollary to Rule 34 in that if there’s anything that exists there’s someone who wants there to be porn of it. That being said, I want to call this slash pairing Hogrump.
So as someone that doesn’t actually know what’s going on & doesn’t read Gawker (or any of it’s family of sites) will this actually cause them to close or anything? Or just cost them some money?
Also I was always under the impression that what you got awarded & what you ended up with weren’t always the same amounts what with appeals etc, or is that just on TV shows.
What the ever-loving fuck.
Ugh. Of course they want to take credit for stuff that they’ve never done.
And I find it even more disgusting that they actually want Gawker employees to kill themselves. I swear, they just have a voice that’s the equivalent of those darned vuvuzelas buzzing in tandem for like fifty hours. Criminy.
And on a petty note, about that tweet with the “Hallelujah, brother!” pic? Yeah, um… hey, Goobers? Kusanagi doesn’t care about Gawker or your little nonsense temper tantrums. Get outta here with that.
(Yes, I admit, he’s actually one of my favorite characters in KOF, so I just had to gripe. Heh.)
Update: I now have real cake with real icing. And it’s delicious. Now as long as no one mention ‘daddies’ I should be able to keep it down…oh…shit…
@SJA @Huggbees
See, you gotta think about this as a gater would. Think of Jennifer Lawrence, or any other similar person, only as a successful woman who will never have sex with you. Any other qualities she has or contexts she exists in can be dismissed by repeating how she will not have sex with you. Under this thought process, she is clearly deserving of any punishment she may receive. Hulk Hogan, on the other hand, is a total bro. What punishment could a bro possibly deserve ever? Thus, it’s all internally consistent.
If you find yourself incapable of thinking like this, it’s likely you are a decent human being and not cut out for this hashtag pretending to be a “movement” or whatever the hell gaters think they’re doing.
@Michael
Should I be reading that as “hoe grump” as in a miffed farm implement or “hog rump” as in a pig’s ass? I’m leaning towards the latter given the people in question.
I’ve survived ten years of telling myself to kill myself.
These little shits are fucking adorable in comparison.
@Paradoxical Intention
So every day you reach down inside yourself and find the courage to go on living. That’s what counts.
Stay strong.
To be perfectly honest, I think that this is a great thing to happen for the internet. While it’s most certainly wrong to call this #GamerGates victory, I believe that Gawker’s possible end is something I could get behind. These guys practice the worst form of journalism and I think this is a good fight back against the tabloids.
Hacker who leaked Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrity nude photos pleads guilty
Ryan Collins, 36, faces jail time of between 18 months and five years
Read more at http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/hacker-who-leaked-jennifer-lawrence-and-other-cele/402388#ucf48ambsAVyvwGi.99
The tides are turning against people/companies that reveal private information they don’t have a right too.
‘Revenge porn’ nets Miami Beach man 30 days jail, 5 years’ probation
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article66871647.html#storylink=cpy
As for #GG appropriation, it’s understandable considering it really doesn’t have anything to claim victory for, that’s why this is so transparently weak as a position.
This is all horrific and disgusting, and like… I don’t even know what to say about any of this (except EWWW and what others have said about stopping revenge porn). But — having become numb to the scumbucket that is these people from so much time on this site — what offends me the most isn’t them (they’re just sort of in a default state of being offensive) but that they used a Fire Emblem picture for that tweet.
Get your grubby hands off Ike, you bastards! *protectively holds Fates close*
It’s true. Gawker can and will probably appeal the decision, so these clowns might very well be celebrating a little too early. Appeals processes can sometimes take a long time, so it’s not like Gawker is going to shut its doors tomorrow because of this judgment like Gaters seem to think.
I thought I’d add that I don’t know anything about how long it takes the appeals process in Florida to come to its conclusion. Most states, including Florida, have a pretty straight forward way of appealing. You basically climb the ladder from a lower court to a higher one — trial court of court of appeals to state supreme court to federal supreme court if you’re feeling lucky.
My state’s weird. If you appeal, it goes directly to the state supreme court which chooses the cases it wants to hear and sends the rest to the court of appeals. So, if your case gets chosen by the supreme court, your appeals process is going to be a bit more truncated than if your case goes to the court of appeals.
I’m seriously a bit confused here. Aren’t gators generally in favor of revenge porn and whatnot? As David pointed out, they certainly went nuts over Zoe Quinn’s nudes. Shouldn’t they be worried for themselves if this sets a legal precedent?
I absolutely love that these shitwits think Gawker and Jezebel are the epicenter of modern feminism as opposed to online rags which occasionally publish some more or less feminist leaning content.
So… a person that appears to be a gay man who is openly homophobic doesn’t have any qualms at pretending that two men are his fathers.
You see… this is exactly why I will never be able to see Milo as someone even remotely intelligent. Every single one of his attempts at trolling/appeal to GG are showing how poorly articulated and consistent his mind is.
They don’t give it any thought at all beyond “a bad thing happened to a person/organization I consider an enemy”.
Yes, sevenofmine. I think that they are quite “tribal like” black and white thinkers. But I also think that they, to a degree, know this and play on this.
Having tangled with a few Gators online, it’s unsurprising that so many would think Gawker (of all things) is somehow representative of all feminism. If it’s not Gawker or Jezebel, it’s Tumblr, the very word being shorthand for left-wing identity politics for some alt-right nimrods. They really don’t do nuance, these folks.
I’m still 100% convinced we’ll all be reading about Milo going to jail for major fraud in a few years, based on what I keep reading about his business acumen. I don’t think I’ve seen such a blatantly sleazy, transparently shifty figure in ages.