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
WWTH:
Jeez, that IRC log is so fuckin’ damning in its long-form demonstration that #GamerGate was ginned up as a way to harass women and manipulate popular opinion. I find myself forgetting about it because I can’t believe that it exists.
And then I remember that it was released to refute Quinn’s claims that #GamerGate was ginned up as a way to harass women and manipulate popular opinion. Checkmate, SJWs!
Of course, having a 3,756-page chat log in which members reference all the major talking points of #GamerGate, self-identify as members of #GamerGate, and outline actions that were later credited to members of #GamerGate won’t be enough for TruthBomb. If he can’t spin it that they have nothing to do with #GamerGate, he’ll invoke No True Scotsman that they aren’t real members of #GamerGate, because everyone knows that #GamerGate is not about harassment and, no matter how much someone might appear to be involved in or even central to #GamerGate, they are automatically not a part of #GamerGate if they are part of a harassment campaign. Double checkmate, SJWs!
TruthBomb: You have been provided with positive proof that people claiming allegiance to #GamerGate have been heavily involved in harassment of various individuals. Your next step, if you weren’t just coming into the comments thread to yell at clouds like an old man, is to refute that proof with something supporting your claims that people claiming allegiance to #GamerGate aren’t part of #GamerGate. Otherwise, unremitting skepticism in the face of all evidence just belies your defensiveness over an untenably solipsistic position.
That’s easy to say when your definition of “criticism” is “calling anyone I don’t like an ‘attention whore’.”
“Even if they use our hashtag and follow all of our self-appointed leaders and agree with everything we have to say!”
Someone’s been watching too many TV crime dramas, methinks.
I’d listen to what other people are telling you. Either GG is a group of anonymous internet users, or you can pick and choose who is and isn’t a GGer. You can’t do both.
Because GG has insisted upon being an anonymous group of individuals, save for a handful of pro-GG people who are “well-known” in their respective circles, anyone can walk up, claim the hashtag, and do what they like with it, leaving GG to pick up the blame for the action that was committed in the group’s name.
Unless the “true members of GG” have some sort of tattoo, official roster, membership card, or what-have-you, then you can’t “FORENSICALLY” prove who is and who isn’t a member of GG, and thus anyone who says they are a part of GG (and who isn’t called out or dealt with when they do things like harassing your LWs), for better or worse, are a part of GG.
Which, ironically, helps when you’re trying to harass a bunch of people and not get caught.
Speaking of which, how much time do you think people have on their hands to make up thousands upon thousands of accounts to harass themselves? Do you really think your LWs sit around on twitter all day harassing themselves with thousands of sockpuppets? Or getting other people to do it for them?
I mean, look at that link of tweets that Anita compiled of one week of harassment, and count how many duplicate accounts there are in that one gathering alone.
Hell, click on any of them and see how many of them have full profiles and have a tweet history. Do you really think that anyone would put that much time into “harassing themselves for money”?
I know it’s hard for you GG types, but think for yourself instead of regurgitating tired old GG points!
Oh, and major eyeroll at the “Lol, I’m so fucking edgy, you just wanna ban me because I’m so edgy and dropping truths you can’t handle!” talk.
Nothing more lulz-worthy than some “Gamer warrior” type who thinks he’s fighting for truth and justice while other gamers sit around and point out how delusional he is.
@TruthBomb
If you can assume others are dishonest upfront, the same can be done with you. After all who know who you are right?
Also learn to separate emotion from content because no one will “chill out” for you. An inability to separate emotional intensity from content is a weakness and people justified in expressing intense emotion should be able to.
Not more people who can’t understand the meaning behind internet laws…
@TruthBomb
Godwin’s law is a measure of how fast emotions can raise leading to people using comparisons that can invoke strong emotions, it’s NOT an indicator that a comparison is irrational or illogical and thus rejectable. Comparisons to nazies or Hitler can still be made and still be relevant.
I like how when TB didn’t get the immediate ban he was anticipating and got his ass handed to him instead, he seems to have slithered away without so much as a flounce.
I like to think that GGer have a self-awareness Geiger Counter, and they slither down to their hellpit if it approach too much from 1. They think they will explodinate if it reach 1, while their jailor know they would just understand they could have walked away out of the pit and not be miserable at anytime.
It does seem like Owens is either a closet GamerGater or she’s looking for an audience to pander to. I doubt most celebrity GG pundits actually support GGers, they’re just making money off providing content.
Brony:
Nah, it’s totally ironclad that bringing up Nazis is the official end of any conversation in any context whatsoever. That’s why historical scholarship on the Second World War has ground to a halt since Mike Godwin coined the term in 1990: they have to cancel the conference and send everyone home if anyone references the fact that Hitler and Nazis existed, even by accident. It’s a real hindrance to good academic work…
Edit: Oh god I replied to a comment on the first page without realizing the comments were already on page 3. DISREGARD.
I know! That’s the thing that really boggles my gourd: People like Milo, Roosh, and Juicebro spent years denouncing gamers as socially maladjusted, sexually inadequate dorks, and have endorsed GamerGate only out of the most naked, grasping self-interest… but gators instantly forget all that because hey look some D-list internet celebrity agrees with us!
We all want to feel validated; I get it. But I think most people aren’t quite so eager to accept ego-massages from people who are obviously using them.
Scildfreja:
Well of course after since we now klow Gamergate is totally anti harassment Truthbomb must be a false flag third party troll. (sarcasm)
Okay, that one’s easy: A dozen squirrels would have made far more sense than any of TruthBomb’s posts. Q.E.D.
@WWTH:
Not surprising; a lot of other places tend to be much more free with the banhammer. Including a number of theirs.
Much like how anti-vaxxers complain about being banned while at the same time running some heavily moderated sites that actively memory-hole any known dissenters.
I was told Gamergate doesnt harass by gaters WHILE THEY WERE HARASSING ME.
That and, the fucking New York Times and several damn police departments, as well as HUNDREDS OF GG ACCOUNTS THEMSELVES IN THEIR OWN DAMNING WORDS & Chatlogs and all the rest of the shit.
Might as well be a flat earther. Who are you hoping to convince? Even Owens couldnt be convinced that GG doesnt harass at this point.
Or cynically use Facebook’s “don’t post people’s names” harassment rules to get pro-science people banned from Facebook, by creating a fake account with your nickname as the name, getting people to use the nickname for months (thinking they’re not pointing to a an actual account), and then mass-report them.
————–
Isn’t it lovely how the raison d’être of Social Autopsy was that Candace Owens didn’t like that people could harass on the internet and get away with it because of anonymity, and here comes TroofBomb, giddy as he can be that “You can’t prove shit! It’s the internet! Hahahahaha, stupid SJW!”
the “they harassed themselves!” conspiracy theory, like all conspiracy theories, has a classic trifecta of fatal flaws: it makes no logical sense, it contradicts actual evidence, and there is no actual evidence for it. Between the cops, the media, and all the GG people, if Anita sent herself a million tweets and emails and phone calls and comments on every video and made all those memes and the beat up Anita game and so on, there would be at least one tiny shred of evidence of this Herculean (Xenaian?) effort. & there isnt.
the “they harassed themselves!” conspiracy theory, like all conspiracy theories, has a classic trifecta of fatal flaws: it makes no logical sense, it contradicts actual evidence, and there is no actual evidence for it. Between the cops, the media, and all the GG people, if Anita sent herself a million tweets and emails and phone calls and comments on every video and made all those memes and the beat up Anita game & hundreds of avatars in numerous chatlogs and forums and so on, there would be at least one tiny shred of evidence of this Herculean (Xenaian?) effort. & there isnt. & thats just ONE LW.
sorry for the repeat
Any other Shakespeare fans want to start calling our latest troll “TruthPetard” rather than “TruthBomb”?
Love how he keeps stating he’s won with all his “facts”. He has not delivered one single fact.
@ tricyclist
The postage on delivering facts is a lot higher than the rate for assertions.
@ Truth Bomb,
I gather you’ve departed during the time I took a break to go attend to real life matters, but yes, I can show some Depression Quest reviews which attack Quinn rather than her game. I’m not going to upload screen shots so you’ll have to settle for quotes.
*Trigger warning for WHTM regulars* masses of slut shaming comments below:
I got those from scrolling through both negative and positive reviews on Steam. Thankfully they are now interspersed with more genuine reviews than they were a year ago when I first checked them out. I didn’t copy paste all the snide references to ‘Five Guys Burgers and Fries’.
Of course I realize you can simply claim that none of those comments were made by true GamerGaters; but then, if GG is anti-harassment, and you identity as GG, then how comes your reflex response to victims of harassment is to call them lying attention whores?
@Truth Bomb
Oh, you really are a Truth Bomb! Thanks, Truth Bomb, because this sentiment is definitely not something we’ve been saying on WHTM forever!
None of us has ever pointed out that Anita Sarkeesian’s very reasonable criticisms of games as sexist is not harassment!
Other things that Anita Sarkeesian’s criticisms are not:
mass murder of all gamers’ childhoods and souls
Truth Bomb? Are you there???
How paranoid do you have to be to be so offended by statements that literally no one has made. It’s like Owens running her tirade over that article that was never written. It’s like TruthBomb believes so hard in straw feminists he needs to put words in our mouths to keep up the image he has of feminists not as people, but as an easily-offended amalgam. “Sure, you made a solid argument, but I’m going to argue against a less defensible point you never made but I’m sure you probably believe because that’s all I know about feminists!”
@Kat,
Nah, TB disappeared. Amusingly, the last post was
So after suggesting that we were in such a rage that we should unplug and take some valium, they decide to unplug and take some valium.
Or more likely, head back to their kiwi farms and brag about how much they riled up their trans gender non-hetero matriarchal oppressors. Or maybe just in their head!
That’s what this sort of trolling is, really, it’s just there to make the troll(s) feel superior by way of deception. “Ha ha I made them angry by pretending to the the thing they really hate! I’m better, because I don’t care about the things that they care about!”
Ugh, humans.