One of the many strange things about Breitbart’s alleged “tech editor” Milo Yiannopoulos is how much he cares about convincing people he doesn’t care.
The self-described “provocateur” even dressed up as a literal clown for his recent profile in Out Magazine.
You’ve no doubt heard about the Out piece already; it’s been a teensy bit controversial. But what you probably didn’t know is that Salon sent a camera crew to his photoshoot with photographer Jill Greenberg. And that along with the camera crew they sent writer (and friend of We Hunted the Mammoth) Amanda Marcotte.
“Perhaps I got a bit caught up in his self-mythologizing,” she writes in her account of what followed, “which is why I thought he would have some fun answering provocative questions while he was getting his picture taken.”
Turns out Milo did not have much fun with her questions:
I never did get good answers to my questions, though I did learn that Yiannopoulos likes to reduce feminism to “angry lesbians” supposedly tricking naive young women into getting too fat to get boyfriends.
But I did learn one important fact: Milo Yiannopoulos is not playing around. He is utterly sincere about his far right views.
He is sincere enough that he lectured me for about 15 minutes, and got so caught up in the moment that he seemingly forgot that he was half-naked while wearing a wig and make-up. He was sincere enough to get genuinely wound up during this time.
Ultimately, he was having so little fun with her questions that he — perhaps channeling his idol Donald Trump — threw a fit and demanded she leave the premises.
He was so sincere that, when the Salon team shut off the cameras in order to move into another vantage point, he demanded that I leave the room, refused to answer any more questions, and called me a “bitch.”
The best part of all this? You can watch some of these testy exchanges on video over on Salon. There are two different versions of the video posted there; the one at the top has more Milo in it.
Turns out Milo is not so much a sad clown as a mad clown.
@Troubelle Stop listening to Gawker and the rest of the radical left media…… they are lying to you. Do your own research. Think for yourself. GamerGate is a consumer revolt against corrupt journalism. It’s expected certain news blogs and journalistic outlets would have harsh reactions to it. Very few of these sites seem interested in reaching out to prominent GamerGate figures for their side of the story…
I love how “Do your own research” has been stripped of all meaning these days. It’s pretty much the equivalent of “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?”
@ Richard
I’m not into computer games, so I only learned of gamergate from this site. That did however lead me to the ‘source material’ as it were (i.e. the stuff the gamergaters produce themselves)
And it just confirmed every allegation against them. In fact they were actually worse than the sanitised posts here suggested. They quite literally condemned themselves from their own mouths (well, keyboards).
If the only way you can rebut claims that you’re just a bunch of misogynsts is to create a cartoon girl to agree with you (then post porn and rape fantasies about her) it’s perhaps unsurprising you lost that particular debate.
@ Richard Rollin’ etc.
It was never about “ethics in games journalism.” It was about a jealous ex-boyfriend lying about his ex, saying that she’d slept with a reporter to get good reviews on her game, and people like you using that claim, however spurious, to incite hate against her. And it spread like a weed. Look at the people who were made to fear for their lives because of the alleged consumer revolt. Check the gender ratio. There is a divide.
And perhaps they didn’t “seem interested in reaching out to prominent GamerGate figures” because said figures already posted everything they had to say online, a, and b, they likely didn’t want to talk to such founts of bile.
Maybe you should do something of your own. Go outside. Paint a picture of a dandelion. Explore your hometown and find a nice little place you’ve never been to before. Splash around in a public fountain. Eat a nectarine. Just….have a little fun, apart from a screen and the anonymity it brings.
Never said it had anything to do with differing opinions. Gonna be straight with you here, it was obvious from the start that you were a troll here to provoke anger. Give me a good reason why we should keep you around. You haven’t said anything we haven’t heard before. Up until you showed up again no one was asking for bans even though we were having a serious disagreement.
@Troubelle STOP LISTENING TO THE LIES OF THE BIASED MEDIA. the zoepost had very little to do with GamerGate. At best it was yet another example of collaboration and collusion within games journalism. Depression Quest like Gone Home and many many others was a terrible NON-GAME that got favorable reviews because it had the “CORRECT” politics and was made by the “CORRECT” people…. And Quinn LITERALLY WHORED HERSELF to ensure reviews were good.
Game journalism is corrupt. it is the tool of agenda driven people who wish to control the entire industry. DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK!!!
@ Richard rollin’ etc.
We’re all just waiting until you use the term “sheeple.”
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wake_up_sheeple.png
Also, just out of curiosity: what gender do you assume I am?
“Now we’re just waiting for the judges score”
“Ooh, likes like 2.5 out of 10 from the judges. The use of caps were a nice touch, but the routine was way too derivative. As you know, the Mammoth Olympics prize creativity and novelty in the Trolling Event, and Richard Roller had neither. But wait…what’s this? A shocking score of 8.5 from our Russian Judge! Perhaps Roller has a shot at a medal after all!”
I’m not going to touch the previous conversation at all, so let’s just swat some trolls.
Ooooh, that’s a new one! “You post on tumblr!” Such insult. Much burn.
Are you sure you’re not one of Milo’s interns? Or are you just a garden-variety fanboi who wishes Milo-senpai will notice him?
Really? Care to explain how Quinn or Wu’s egos are in need of “bursting”? Why do you think that they deserve to be “burst”? What did they do that you personally find so egregious? (And no, none of GG’s repeatedly disproven talking points please. Though I know you’re going to use them anyways because “ethics”.)
How very interesting.
Emphasis mine.
So, no, it’s not “censorship”. Freedom of speech doesn’t imply that you get your very own soapbox and bullhorn to shout. It only implies you can’t be arrested/persecuted by the government for what you say.
Publications can refuse to speak to people. Twitter can ban people. You’re still not being “censored”.
And we “Ess-Jay-Dubbyas” aren’t the government, no matter how many red-line ridden diagrams on KiA say we are.
Besides, it’s not like Milo doesn’t have the entirety of the internet to spout his bullshit. Except twitter, of course.
Or, maybe Milo running around in drag is very disrespectful of trans people and actual drag queens because Milo doesn’t give a shit about them and will throw them under the bus to get attention.
Last I checked, dressing as the opposite gender isn’t a form of “expressing sexual orientation”, but rather a form of gender expression. The way you “express your sexual orientation” is by being sexually attracted to people who your sexual orientation covers. I would think a self-described gay man would understand this, but then again, we are discussing Milo, so maybe not.
In Milo’s case, he can express his sexual orientation by being sexually attracted to men, instead of abusing bullshit stereotypes and throwing trans people, among others, under the bus so he can be “edgy”.
Mick Dash is another troll we had yapping in other threads.
And I’m going to add ad hominem to the list of things you don’t understand. Though, that’s typical for trolls.
We are addressing your arguments. It’s not our fault you’re not listening. “You can lead a horse to water”, and all that.
Except no one’s “drowning” out Milo (let alone “dozens” or “hundreds” of people compared to the, what, thousands he’s got in his pulpit?) He’s still very capable of being heard. He’s still got plenty of platforms to speak and his voice is being heard.
Also, disagreement =/= shame. No one here is trying to “shame” Milo. We’re vocally disagreeing with him because we feel like he’s an asshole.
Is that not allowed now?
Please. GG is as much about “games journalism” as a lump of mozarella. It started as a harassment campaign, it’ll always be a harassment campaign.
Though, I’d like to leave this Storify here.
Oh, and speaking of coordinated hate campaigns, how are Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and Anita Sarkeesian doing?
Lookit the martyrdom on this one. You’re trying so hard to convince us that we’re the bad guys and we’re trying to “silence” Milo.
Then how come he’s still talking?
If we SJWs are so big and bad and powerful, why is Milo still allowed to speak? Why is he still famous?
Really? Where’s the documentation? I’d like to see some of these DEATH THREATS as he received them.
Because Anita’s posted a week of hers. And Zoe’s posted some of hers on her twitter. And so has Brianna.
Not to mention all three of these women have actually been stalked by members of GG.
Oh, or is Milo not “a professional victim” and all that?
Or can I pull a GG and claim “false flag” or “No real member of the LGBT+ community would do that! They’re pretending to make us look bad!” or “Milo made all those up! He’s making fake accounts to harass himself!”
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/2/20/Fluttershy_can't_hold_in_her_laughter_S5E7.png
Oh gosh. Right! From the top them. Mr. Rich Roller. I’ll be brief. I’ll even enumerate my points!
1) I didn’t use any ad hominems! You will notice this by the fact that I actually addressed your points, instead of just being mean and calling you a doody-head or something! Other people on this board are good at that, that’s not really my style.
(If I decide that I want to insult someone, I tend to do it long form, so you’ll know if it happens.)
2) The Heckler’s Veto happens when the government uses mockery and ridicule to deny someones’ freedom of speech. That did not happen here!
3) Your position on no-platforming (that it is censorship) is misinformed! Do you think that, for example, medical conferences need to give time and space to crystal healers, or that psychology conferences need to give a platform to astrologers?
Milo has his own platform in a number of places – he can start his own blog, he can use twitter (it works even if you don’t have a checkmark, as it turns out!), or any other mediums that we can all use. No one is obligated to give him space on their own forums, but he’s free to carve out his own. The fact that you know who he is and have heard his opinions is a pretty strong indicator of this!
4) I learned about GamerGate from a number of sources. Like Alan said, the strongest evidence I ran across were the text logs from #BurgersAndFries from around when GamerGate was actually happening. GamerGate is about harassing women, which is why the only noteworthy things it’s even done has been the harassment of women.
There’s more to say but I doubt it’d be worthwhile to say it! So I’ll leave you with that. Now, the open question is – is he gonna elide past to a new topic, or is he gonna double down? I’m takin bets people!
It’s almost touching that RickRoller is still out there beating the bloated, stinking equine corpse that is GamerGate. He’s like a modern day Don Quixote or something.
@Never gonna give you up
My article about trans people being mind-controlled by aliens from Nibiru has yet to be published in the National Geographic magazine. Those no-platforming assholes!
Censorship!
CENSORSHIP!!!!!
http://triadmomsonmain.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/crybaby.png
@Scildfreja
I’ll put down two smackers and a butterscotch candy on “will vaguely address you and PI’s posts before slobbering over me and doing something silly.”
Gosh, I was slow, and more has happened. Welp! Waiting for the coffee to percolate here. I’m just going to address this, since Paradoxy’s doing her usual bang-up job.
Can you, pray tell, point us to this review that she WHORED HERSELF for? This review that is the spark for the GamerGate ‘movement’? Could you let us see where it is, so that we can read the bias bubbling out of the glowing lines of praise? Maybe?
(Oh, right, it doesn’t exist, because her ex-boyfriend made that up. The guy that she hooked up with never wrote a review of her game, and if memory serves me, wasn’t even a games journalist at the time.)
Grab us a link of that, if you could! Since we’re all so embedded in the twisty radical librul media, and all, it’s hard for us to find, but I’m sure a truth-seeker like you can dig it up in a moment, right?
Thus Spake ZaraLindsayIrene:
He certainly seemed eager to turn the discussion to the GrottyGoobers, which makes me suspect that was his intention all along.
@ makroth
Well, it did go downhill a bit when Fox Media bought it.
“THINK FOR YOURSELF!” Shouts the internet citizen who uncritically swallows all of GamerGate’s talking points.
See, here’s the thing: I actually do, as a gamer, think that there are problems with gaming journalism.
I think we have problems with companies blackmailing and harming reviewers to get good scores, I think we have problems with games being expected to get certain scores, and if they don’t then the reviewer responsible for the “travesty” gets harassed by their readers, and possibly penalized by their publications, usually by losing their job, I feel like we have problems with the military complex using video games to promote themselves and try to coerce people into joining the military.
I don’t think the problem is “This one game I didn’t like got a better score than I think it deserved.”
Confirmation bias in action. “Of course they wouldn’t like what we’re doing! We’re in the right, they’re evil!”
Most likely because, by GG’s own admission, there aren’t that many figures who GG can all agree are their actual “prominent figures”.
Or do you not remember Airplay?
Except it didn’t happen. Kotaku never reviewed her game. The journalist she was supposedly sleeping with never wrote about her game.
But, who can let facts stand in the way of “ethics”, right?
“STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE!!!!”
This is literally what you sound like right now. You don’t like Gone Home or Depression Quest, and you’re entitled to that and I’m not going to take that away from you, but people are having opinions that don’t mirror yours, and this is apparently an egregious, heinous, crime to you.
You sound like the assholes who complain that [insert minority here] got into college instead of you, and instead of thinking that maybe they were the better canidate, you just huff and holler about how it must have been because they were [minority], and not because, you know, they worked just as hard as you, or they filled out the paperwork faster, or they had extracurricular activities on their record you didn’t bother to get.
This is the thing that always gets me: GG claims it wants “objective reviews”, but that’s fucking impossible to do when reviewing a piece of media.
You can have objective points in a review, but even those are going to be tainted by the opinion of the person writing the review.
At the end of the day, people read reviews to hear if a game is good from a writer. And that writer, despite all of their experience and in-depth looks, can only look at you and say “I liked it”, or “I didn’t like it”. The rest is just reasoning.
Can you prove that she slept with journalists for reviews of her game?
Because in all the years GG has been shrieking, I’ve yet to see any goddamned proof.
Here’s the other thing that gets me about GG: WE’VE ALREADY DONE OUR FUCKING HOMEWORK.
You know what our homework told us? You’re full of shit.
I’ve been a gamer ever since I was old enough to hold a GameBoy in my hands. This is important to me. So, I did my fucking research.
You know what my research showed me? GG is nothing more than a group of angry, awful people who spend their time bemoaning the fact that people like games that they don’t like, and harass and intimidate anyone who doesn’t agree with them, sometimes into silence. Not only that, but they’ll side with anyone who gives them the slightest bit of positive attention, even if those people treated gamers like shit before.
Milo, Roosh, Jack fucking Thompson.
They have set us back a decade, easily. Game archival is now seen as a joke. Gamers are seen as angry, rabid jerks who spend too much time in their mother’s basement. People who aren’t gamers aren’t seeing games as a form of art anymore, and won’t even consider it.
GG fucked games. GG fucked gamers.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is simply “misinformed”, Richard. And perhaps, if enough people say you’re wrong, you should maybe do some more homework of your own.
Thank you, Paradoxical Intention. Thank you very much. I doubt he’ll listen, but someone will.
Still waiting for an answer, Rollin’.
“I wish we didn’t have to discuss things like this and people could just be happy with who they are.”
How my racist coworkers sound when talking about black oppression.
My days of not taking Rick Roll seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
@WWTH
We’re no strangers to love
You know the rules, and so do I
A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of
You wouldn’t get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling
Gotta make you understand
…Huh. It’s just the tinest bit fitting, though far better in Rick Astley’s intended context.
Thus Spake ZaraParadoxical Intention – Resident Cheeseburger Slut (boy howdy, that’s a mouthful — yes, pun intended):
Jim Sterling (who is rad, partly because he’s one of the very few visibly non-heterosexual men working in games journalism) has mentioned nothing gets him more hate mail than liking games other people don’t like. Frex, he still gets foaming-at-the-mouth mad emails raging at him for his positive review of the Devil May Cry reboot a few years back.
Having official Stuff To Hate seems very important to gamerbro tribalism.
I’ve been a gamer ever since I was old enough to hold a GameBoy in my hands.
Pfft. Noob. I was exposed to Pong in utero. I win all the old school cred. 😉
I left yesterday to go to dinner and visit with friends. Stuff with Kafka went downhill over night. Now I’m sorry for having engaged her yesterday and contributing to making this thread into a bad time. Y’all did a great job of trying to educate Kafka, I hope she can get something out of it.
Creepyastley is the best Astley