There are some who see the seemingly unlikely ideological romance between anti-bullying-activist-turned-bully-ally Candace Owens and Gamergate as a bit of a con-job.
In this view, the gullible Owens is being manipulated by cynical GGers and assorted far-right ideologues who’ve descended upon her en masse to assure her that her paranoid fantasies are true — particularly when they involve the very women that Gamergate has harassed most relentlessly. It’s a sort of cultic love-bombing, ironically based around hate.
There’s certainly an element of truth to this theory — and you can find plenty of examples of Owens’ gullibility in my previous posts on L’affaire Owens, or just by taking a look at her Twitter feed.
But Owens isn’t the only one here with starry eyes. Just as Owens has been seduced by GGers telling her exactly what she wants to hear, so GG’s True Believers have been seduced by her conspiracy theories. This isn’t, in other words, just a case of exploitation; it is also something of a folie a deux.
“This is probably THE BIG ONE!” an enthusiastic GGer called darkpowrjd gushed in a heavily-upvoted comment on the Kotaku in Action subreddit, the main GG hub on Reddit, several days ago.
Candace Owens, for all her faults, could be [the person] who vindicated GG for two YEARS of what they have been accused of doing en masse.
You’ll have to excuse darkpowrjd’s somewhat tangled language; they’re a little excited.
Yeah, this could be one of the most elaborate traps ever set up for GG to fall into, and I wouldn’t put it past any of the LWs to have THAT elaborate of a plan set up, but I don’t think Owens would seriously be that willing to be the cog in that plan.
With that little bit of butt-covering out the way, darkpowrjd explains why Owens is truly the woman of Gamergate’s dreams.
I’m still cautious, but I’m starting to think more and more that this is really a thing that’s going on, and this was the one person that we’ve been waiting for that has the pull, power, and connections to blow the entire lid off of what we have already known.
She HAS THE POWER
As darkpowrjd sees it, the evil anti-GG conspiracy has
more or less been doing this to the GG movement as a damn WHOLE for two years now. Never being opposed, always getting a free pass, and always getting sympathy by playing the feminist card. No one dared to question them because of how many people they ended up getting on their side.
But now …
Ok, ok, I’ll try to restrain myself.
But they ran into someone that they couldn’t influence, buy out, or convince that easily. They ran into someone that had connections, but also was smart enough to pick up on some things, and put two and two together when things happened that seemed too coincidental to be just a coincidence.
Forget what I just said about restraining myself.
The fact that media outlets tended to react to Gamergate with skepticism, if not outright hostility, couldn’t possibly be that it was obviously a hate crusade pushing perhaps the stupidest conspiracy theory the world has ever known. No, it must have been the fault of … the people Gamergate hates the most!
Now, think about this: how many media outlets do you think this team of Signal, Quinn, and Harper did this too? How many got this treatment, and were too scared (or just willing to play along or even agree with them on everything) to do anything or say anything? … Think about how LONG this might have been going on, or how many more people were caught up in this web, and how far along does this conspiracy actually go? How far down did this rabbit hole go?
I’m pretty sure the only holes that GGers have explored have been entirely self-dug.
All the “neutral = pro” comments, anyone who did so much as to try to get both sides of GG getting bitched at, the NeoGAF bannings that didn’t make any sense … everything that had ever happened that GG got blamed for because they EXISTED!
Or perhaps GG got blamed for a lot of things because it’s a movement made up largely of harassers and trolls that routinely does a lot of pretty awful things?
darkpowrjd accuses evil anti-GG “Journos” of an assortment of terrible misdeeds, including “continu[ing] to poke the bear every chance they got” and “gamedropping,” which Urban Dictionary defines as the sinister SJW “practice of dropping a #GamerGate mention into a totally unrelated article in an attempt to drive clicks and controversy.”
It is hard indeed to imagine a crime more horrific than the journalistic practice of occasionally paying attention to Gamergate.
ALL of that (and THEN some) could be exposed with one single person who might’ve not have even been aware of what she was about to do.
And quite the exposer Owens has been. So far her longest and most passionate “expose” involved a Washington Post story that never ran but that Owens was sure would have been full of libels against her.
Owens is saying that she isn’t a conspiracy theorist. But every theorist might be thinking they hit the damn jackpot when reading this and knowing how this has probably been going on for 2 plus years now.
In the sense that, yes, Gamergate has been energetically spinning conspiracies out of nothing for “2 plus years now” and Owens is now doing the same.
The reason Zoe’s group is running to try to get things under control is because Owens hit all 7’s here, and she wants to cash out.
Well, no. Quinn was concerned that Owens’ proposed bully-doxxing site could be easily abused by bullies.
Ironically, Gamergaters themselves were making very similar criticisms, at least until Owens started attacking some of Gamergate’s most-hated (and most-harassed) enemies.
It could be the beginning of the end for blaming Gamergate for everything.
And there’s Gamergate in a nutshell.
From the very start, even before it had a name, Gamergate has been a “movement” of gamers against criticism of games and gamers — and ultimately, of Gamergate as well.
Oh, sure, most Gamergaters don’t mind games criticism based on game mechanics, or whether or not a game is “fun” to play. But they don’t like any criticism that might in any way reflect badly on them. That’s why Anita Sarkeesian sent so many gamers into hysterics simply for noting that, yes, a lot of games are really pretty sexist — because by extension, this suggests that the gamers buying and playing these games in record numbers might just be an eensy weensy bit sexist themselves.
And that’s why the now infamous “gamers are dead” articles inspired such fury, transforming what had been a harassment campaign against “uppity” women in video games into a putative campaign for “ethics in games journalism” — with the main “ethical” failure of games journalists implicitly defined as “saying anything bad about us.”
The repellent fantasy author and sometime game developer Vox Day let the not-so-cute cat out of the bag in an interview with internet talk show host David Pakman last year, declaring that
what Gamergate is fundamentally about is the right of people to design, develop and play games that they want to design, develop and play without being criticized for it.
Vox later walked this back a little, saying he didn’t really mean that gamers and game developers should be immune from criticism. But you don’t need to be a Freudian to suspect that Vox’s slip revealed what he actually thinks.
Owens is also easily offended by criticism, and seems to think so highly of her own opinions that she assumes anyone critical of them cannot possibly be sincere, and therefore must be part of some terrible conspiracy.
It’s no wonder she and Gamergate get along so well.
H/T — r/BestOfOutrageCulture
@ David
Obviously it’s your site so your rules, but isn’t that getting into keyboard diagnosing territory?
Uh, you mean no one besides the whole harassment movement dedicated to criticizing them? I’m not sure how one could claim Quinn and friends are “never opposed” when the opposition has a name, a hashtag, and multiple websites devoted to getting together in opposition.
Every day I am reminded of olaces like the Extra Credits forums who seriously wanted aneutral ground for harassers like GG and mra’s cause apparently anti GG harasses just as much guis.
I love how we keep going ’round and ’round with these GG types about this. Newsflash: Just because you like problematic media does NOT mean you are automatically racist/sexist/misogynistic/a rutabaga all on its own. There is no 150% perfect media that offers 150% perfect representation; everything has its share of problems as far as representation, portrayal, or other things go. What’s important is not the label you lot seem to think people like Ms. Sarkeesian are slapping on you. It’s important to look at the media you’re consuming, and instead of protecting it in a knee-jerk fashion, maybe look at it and see if there might be an issue. No one wants to take it away from you.
And that’s really the heart of it, isn’t it?
Misogynist? Welcome aboard the good ship GamerGate! Flagrantly racist? Come on in, you’ll find plenty of company. Comically vain internet-self-promoter who until recently had nothing but contempt for gaming and gamers? Welcome, brother!
GG doesn’t care about anything else as long as you hate the right people.
“Why Are ‘Anti-Abuse’ Activists Zoe Quinn and Randi Harper Trying to Protect Anonymous Trolls?” – Breitbart http://j.mp/1qY5BIL
This is the hilarious take on the topic from Breitbart.
I keep hoping Owens is a troll, because it hurts my head to think that a person with such honourable original intentions (fighting online harassment) could be so misguided. I can’t conceive of a person who could be so easily fooled.
OMG… Is this what taking the red pill feels like? ?
I almost – almost find it kind of touching that ol’ darkpowrjd is so incredibly, earnestly hopeful in his comments. Like Owens is the answer to all his fervent, sweaty prayers over the past 2 years.
Oh, darkpowrjd, you are almost blundering half-assedly into near-cute territory.
What exactly is this moron saying they did to Owens? From the sounds of it, she got told her idea had some critical issues and everything since then has been entirely self-inflicted.
“Will Candace Owens show the world that we’ve been right all along?”
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines strikes again 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
“Too coincidental to be just a coincidence.”
Yes, this is amazing. I’m totally in love.
A more perfect match was never made.
One of these latest days, I was having a look at one of the main doxxing/strategy plotting thread used by gamergate, because I was curious about their reaction to Owens.
The GG people, or at least the plotters, mock her. They simply can’t believe their own lucks, and are willingly involving her in a smoke curtain. But her “help” is not enough to make them forget the initial objective of her project, her gender, and her race.
Her doxx has already been requested, and if the information there is correct, given. Her mother will apparently be bothered too. And whats worse, this will only make her deeper into the “conspiracy”. Goddamit. Poor woman.
I still dont understand what is the conspiracy they are coming up with. What are they accusing Quinn of doing to them? Manipulating them into harassing her, by doing the cruel thing of — gasp!— being a game developer WOMAN!!
STOP EVERYTHING! GAMERGATE NEVER MEANT TO DO IT! THEY WERE PROVOKED! SHE WAS A WOMAN, WHAT DID YOU EXPECTED THEM TO DO?! MOVE ALONG AND LET HER MAKE HER GAME?!?!?!?!
Also, ironic how gamergate is a movement that “wants to develop and play games etc etc etc without being criticized”, when previously to the whole asshole boyfriend thing, Quinn faced a lot of opposition by “real gamers” to getting her game on steam.
And if you people know Steam, it has a *lot* of very, very poorly designed games that get free pass. Yet this particular game, that dared to be made by a woman and be about depression, wasn’t”real enough” to be there.
If there is something GamerGate never fails to do, is to be hypocrite.
It would be “folie à deux”.
In french, “folie” isn’t only used for actual madness, but for all impulsive things that you will regret later.
I wish them all joy in each other. Go be awful in one another’s company.
I do worry that Owens is going to be targeted with a hurricane of sexist and racist abuse if she ever steps a foot wrong by GG standards.
Edit: Typed this up before I saw Chiomara’s comment. :-/ Bad times. Nobody deserves that.
So, Chiomara, chances are she will be harrassed and abused by GamerGaters, and they will simultaneously pat her in the back and say its all Quinn doing it?
God, this woman will have her life made a living hell, and will be drowning in lies.
I honestly pity her. I truly do.
Of course, dorkpow. This is it. Everyone who has ever criticized the holy goobergarble will soon be exposed as the no-good, very-bad, corrupt, grredy harrassing, child-molesting filthy heretics that they are. No one will ever be able to criticize anything problematic in games ever again. Objective reviews shall rule the land and you shall all be hailed as heroes. Any day now./s
Right? This is just like when MRAs claim that we live in a gynocracy because rape victims are always believed. What world are they living in?
I think what they really mean is that it’s horrible that anyone ever would listen to or believe a woman at all. What they really want is for women to accept harassment, abuse, and rape as the penalty for being a woman and suffer in silence.
This is the most vague conspiracy theory ever. I think I’ve read all the blog posts and many of the tweets from Owens, and I still can’t figure out WHAT it is that she claims is happening. Jeff Bezos something something WaPo something NYMag something Zoe Quinn something something Randi Harper something gamergate something JOURNALGATE. Seriously, just reading this shit is so frustrating.
Vindicated HOW? Doing WHAT?
WHAT trap?
WHAT plan?
Plan about WHAT?
WHAT is a thing that’s going on?
WHAT IS IT that you have already known?
Been doing WHAT?
Opposed in WHAT?
Free pass to do WHAT?
Question WHAT?
Convince of WHAT?
WHAT THINGS? FFS WHAT THINGS?
WHAT THINGS?
Did WHAT? Oh god just tell me what they DID!
WHAT treatment?
Play along with WHAT? What would they have done or said? Aghhhh
WHAT is it that has been going on?
WHAT web? A web of WHAT?
WHAT conspiracy? My fucking god why won’t they just SAY what the conspiracy IS?
WHAT DOES THIS SENTENCE MEAN?
All of WHAT?
WHAT was she about to do? Has she done it yet? What was it? TELL ME!
WHAT has been going on for 2 years?
Hit all 7’s as to WHAT? Zoe is trying to get WHAT under control?
Blaming for WHAT?
Fucking hell, these people are more vague than Birdman.
If I am correct, they think they were “provoked” by Quinn and the Illuminati (or some other group) to harrass them. The usual victim blaming, completely failing to see that, even if indeed it was a trap, they were the ones who chose to harrass and doxx. I suppose they are offended their misogyny got exposed in the most truthful way.
Definitely. I mean, her data was given and the GGs theirselves were saying things like “go away, Zoey”, so some of them may go after her…. And actually think it WAS Zoey who asked them to. Hell, maybe they will even impersonate Zoey defenders to punish Zoey for doxxing Owens. I don’t even know, this all makes sense in their minds. They are some weird, scary bunch at that thread, doing violence for the sake of violence.
I make your words mine. I hope the data in the doxx is wrong.
As best I can tell, the conspiracy is that Jeff Bezos, Zoe Quinn, and a Washington Post writer whose name I’m too lazy to check by scrolling back up have combined their vast media powers to silence GamerGate and Candace Owens specifically. Why? Reasons.
My favorite part is this “Now, think about this: how many media outlets do you think this team of Signal, Quinn, and Harper did this too? How many got this treatment, and were too scared (or just willing to play along or even agree with them on everything) to do anything or say anything? ”
Yeah its the enemy’s of the huge harassment movement are the ones who have been using fear as a silencing tactic.
Yeah, Owens has been claiming that Zoe Quinn is the mastermind behind GamerGate, while simultaneously being friendly with the most prominent actual proponents of GamerGate. And now it seems even some GamerGaters are latching on to the idea that really Zoe is to blame for GG. I suppose some of them have realized that GG is a sinking ship, and now they’re desperately trying to get out while pinning the whole tragedy on their favorite scapegoat.
Somewhat unrelated question: That Nora Reed woman who snagged the @socialautopsy Twitter account seems severely obsessed with Randi Harper, over alleged transphobia. The only evidence I’ve seen so far is Reed claiming Harper tried to “sic a hate mob on trans people” by simply disagreeing with Reed, who I gather is a trans woman. Does anyone happen to know if it’s true that Harper “has a long history of throwing trans people under the bus”, as claimed by Reed? Anyone got links?