Last week, I wrote about Candace Owens, the founder of a would-be anti-bullying startup called Social Autopsy, and her strange descent into GamerGate-style conspiracy-mongering after prime GG target Zoe Quinn contacted her to point out how her startup’s strategy of doxxing alleged bullies could backfire in a big way.
As GamerGaters and assorted other shitlords whisper into her ear on Twitter, Owens seems to have concluded that the real villains in the GamerGate saga were those, like Quinn and anti-harassment activist Randi Harper, who had in fact been the targets of the GamerGate mob.
Owens has so far dropped three long posts on the subject, including one tonight — an attack on Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey that I may end up writing about tomorrow.
But much of this drama has played out on Twitter, as Owens has furiously Tweeted out a seemingly never-ending torrent of self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing and frequently delusional thoughts and accusations.
To those supporting or simply flattering her, she shows an almost childlike credulity; towards her “enemies” she displays a level of paranoia so extreme that it would make all but the most dedicated conspiracy theorists blush.
I touched on this, and quoted some of her more paranoid Tweets in my original post.
But her Twitter timeline really needs to be seen to be believed.
So here, in chronological order, are some of the more, er, enlightening of the literally hundreds of Tweets she’s graced us with since this whole mess began, starting with the Tweet where she first started to go seriously off the rails. Be aware that the Tweets here are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721195254393790465
(Hint: It is never safe to assume that anything in the Ralph Retort is true.)
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721195801779810305
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721207466168610817
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721209335309803520
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721215403494666240
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721308241947467776
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721317140360491008
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721319090015612928
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721457219267661830
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721457425082105856
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721457721095143424
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721458028273385472
This was an accusation she returned to again and again: anyone who devoted more than a few moments of their time to criticizing her startup’s possibly quite dangerous strategy was suspect, because … I’m not sure. They were being paid? They were part of some vast conspiracy? They were all the same person?
Actually, she made that last accusation more than a few times. Here she accused Twitterer @WithMetta, attacked in the Tweet above, of being Randi Harper. Or vice versa; I’m not sure.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721459981426507777
And here she accused a longtime anti-harassment activist, who could have been easily Googled, of being another possible member of, well, whatever she thinks he’s a member of.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721460797268959232
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518163830116354
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518353978888192
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518785363111936
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518941416353794
I think she means
a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.
I guess that’s more than 140 characters, though. There was no Twitter in the McCarthy era.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721533356417150976
Here, she cites Kanye West as, I guess, an inspiration? Not musically. As a Twitterer.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721574245785059329
Here she talks about herself in the third person:
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721577674280419328
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721600063542333442
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721601517636227072
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721728934455316481
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721730057811529728
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721733117673738240
When she learned that Quinn had appeared at the United Nations to talk about online harassment, it didn’t occur to Owens to stop for a moment and consider if perhaps she had gotten the wrong impression about her. Nope. The United Nations had obviously made a HUGE mistake.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721736300366147585
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721737063603642368
I have to admit that this next one puzzles me a little:
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721759375732391936
PAY ATTENTION TO THE MENTIONS!
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721776420016504832
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721776805720494085
We are THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS HERE, PEOPLE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXVE01oOTAM
This is BIGGER THAN WATERGATE!
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721787353904386048
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721787818884886529
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721831676976959488
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721836033684467713
This next one is rather comically ironic, as she’s been manipulated by GamerGaters and others of their ilk since the start of this whole embarrassing spectacle.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721853079096848384
The next morning she was back to the mentions. The sinister, sinister mentions.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722063672642838529
And then, in another deeply ironic Tweet, she suggested that anyone who Tweeted too much about a person was somehow inherently sinister.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722064134624436225
She promised a thorough “investigation.”
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722228142019125248
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722229357314510848
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722229462528565248
Not long after this, she declared that she was “going to take a Twitter break for a couple days.” She followed this with innumerable tweets in rapid succession, culminating in this weird burst of melodramatic idealism.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722293636885516288
The next day, her 3-day Twitter break evidently forgotten, she returned to posting in a decidedly less idealistic frame of mind.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451043242622976
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451161618505728
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451645595000834
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451758547615746
Zero self-awareness:
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722453126779965440
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722453526996258820
This seems an appropriate point to take a break. Stay tuned for part 2, and possibly even part 3.
I have seen this thinking before from plenty of people, so it really doesn’t surprise me. This was, after all, Thunderf00t’s super-villain origin story. That’s Dawkins. It’s what happened to Ophelia Benson.
They have a righteous cause. They fuck up. They get criticized by allies. They double down. The critics become the enemies, and they fall in with the ego-strokers, and take up their cause with the same fervor.
This is why I think Gamergate is best understood as a tantrum towards criticism. How dare you call the game I like sexist. How dare you call my buddy racist. How dare you score this game I hate highly, or this game I love with a low score. How dare you call me part of a hate mob because someone else threatened to murder you for your opinion. It’s a giant cloud of whining providing cover to the monsters at it’s core.
Harper and Quinn criticized her openly. The #gamergaters stroked her ego publicly even while they were attacking her anonymously. Facts are hard, and feelings are easy.
Ah, remember this? Vox Day slipped up and said that outright, then furiously backtracked.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/04/25/vox-day-to-david-pakman-gamergate-is-about-the-right-of-gamers-and-game-developers-to-be-immune-from-criticism/
David: I do! I also remember the gamer gate manifesto (Your post on which is the top hit in google, congratulations!), and the demands for reviewers to be fans of the genres they review.
But also I see the inevitable comment rage at the Jimquisition. Jim Sterling is constantly called out whenever his number for a game is different than what it “should be”. It’s amazing how many people will disagree with a game score by calling him a “cuck” or an “sjw”, even if there’s not a single social issue called out in the review.
She may be bi polar. That can make one very paranoid and delusional.
Some how it reminds me of this artist.
http://disinfo.com/2015/10/mark-lombardi-art-and-conspiracy/
Seconding this; internet diagnoses are not ok. If you really can’t contain the urge to speculate about Candace Owens’ mental state then you can go and do it pretty much literally anywhere else on the internet. It’s not tolerated in this comments section.
Can we not.
Delusions of grandeur there. I guarantee she got nobody at the UN behind the Public Inquiries team, because they don’t care who she is or what her opinions might be.
I have to admit that I’m curious about the mentions conspiracy. Has she explained it anywhere?
Also: I’m sure Zoe Quinn is going to strongly reconsider any future urge to help out an anti-harassment newbie, and that fact makes me very sad. 🙁
Speaking of which:
If you organized a harassment campaign against someone who had already been the target of a harassment campaign, and who initially reached out to you in compassion, then maybe your “painful lessons” should be played out in public. Because Owens is not the only victim here, or the most important by far. Drawing a discreet veil over her actions does not magically erase the harassment she is causing Zoe Quinn to suffer. All it erases is your unease at knowing that it’s happening. Your unease is not the important thing about this train wreck.
We seriously need to crack down on the “she’s crazy.” I don’t care if it’s just a sneaky “she needs to see a doctor” or “well, I’m not going to comment on her mental health, but…” or whatever. It’s obvious to everyone what you’re trying to say and you need to not say it.
Would it be overstepping the line to ask David to not let through any first posts calling Owens “Crazy,” “Bipolar,” “NPD” etc? I mean, even aside from how offensive and irrelevant it is, they simply don’t give a shit about the rules (no, I won’t take “But they didn’t know” as an excuse – there’s a HUGE YELLOW BOX smack in the middle of the reply section!).
I’m willing to overstep that line and ask for that.
On the one hand, she made the choice to make this all public. On the other, her naivete and whatever else she’s got going on means she may not understand HOW public this has gotten. So I’m conflicted, and a little worried, and I hope that people that are close to her are aware of what’s going on.
I assumed it was just “people who disagree with me talked about me to other people who disagree with me.” Is there more to it?
… Yes, because that’s the interesting part of “gamedeveloperyal@animalfetishporn.us“
It’s, um…not too self-aggrandizing to apologize for my comment earlier, is it? In retrospect, you’re all right, it was totally not okay of me to compare her to a mentally ill person I met once.
@Ray of Rays
An apology is actually a great start and I appreciate you offering it. I just hope you understand why those sorts of comparisons are damaging.
We all make mistakes, and owning up to having made one makes you a better person than most.
I super appreciate it, actually.
I do. Speculating on the mental state of someone (both in general, and especially someone unknown to me) is rude and horribly dismissive towards the one in question, helps stigmatize those with legitimate mental illness, and is utterly unnecessary to boot.
Ashamed that didn’t occur to me last night while I was reading and writing it. >_>
PoM & Orion:
From the various ways that she’s phrased it, the conspiracy of mentions lies somewhere between “those mentions are a ready-made list of my enemies” and “Twitter accounts that mention, retweet, or follow each other are all sock puppets of a single user.” Considering the relative newness of the concept of “sock puppets” to Owens, I’m increasingly sure that it’s the latter. Owens is confusing communities of like-minded individuals, organized around popular figures, for networks of sock puppets controlled by her enemies. It’s almost Nixonian.
@Ray of Rays
You handled that very well. 🙂
@snork maiden Kiwi Farms isn’t GG. The “official home of GamerGate” tag is tongue in cheek. They’re more like SomethingAwful-lite, in that their interest is to watch all the the cringe happen.
@Ray of Rays
It’s okay, I had to have almost this exact conversation my first time posting too.
@Ray of Rays
Thankyou. =) Apologies if I sounded snippy before – we have this conversation a lot and I get a bit worn out by it all.
she was an assistant in finance and the most overreactive bully ever. it’s laughable that she even had the idea to stop bullying with this crap idea, not to mention entirely hypocritical.
Snakes to the left of me, jokers to the right.