The New York Times has a fascinating collection of articles today on the fifth anniversary of the start of GamerGate, and how that media ethics crusade mob harassment campaign put in place a sort of template for the culture wars of the past several years, “jump[ing] out of the obscure fever swamps of the internet and into mainstream consciousness.”
I’m quoted in Charlie Warzel’s overview, examining the ways that GamerGate helped to channel the inchoate white male angst of 4chan and gamer culture into a reactionary political crusade that continued long after the #GamerGate hashtag itself died, and that created a whole new class of “harassment influencers” who profited off the mob.
One of the media entities that exploited the GamerGate mob most effectively was, of course. Breitbart. Wurzel writes:
Breitbart’s coverage elevated Gamergate across a growing far-right media ecosystem, which drew attention from the mainstream press, who viewed the entire conflict as an online circus with endless carnival barkers. “It didn’t help that these people are, in addition to their harassing, always embroiled in their own personal dramas,” David Futrelle, a Chicago writer who covered Gamergate extensively for his blog, We Hunted The Mammoth, told me. In other words, they weren’t just pundits, they were characters. “That outrageousness made them irresistible to media,” he said. It was this attention — from influencers and the press — that cemented the status of Gamergate.
Warzel’s piece is well worth a read, as are the other pieces in the package.
–David
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I first linked to a suspicious looking URL, but now Wikipedia links are also apparently eaten. You can look at “Fuegian dog” on Wikipedia.
Also, turns out Native South Americans did have dogs. Maybe they were never taken to Tierra del Fuego, which is an island, or they died there at some point.
Got the numbers in from our march yesterday. 12,000. Not bad.
Considering the Metro is an off-shoot of the Daily Mail, this is remarkably sympathetic.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/18/record-12000-vegan-activists-take-part-london-animal-rights-march-10591790/
@Hambeast:
I think they would be quite a handful as pets:
@Kevin:
You can probably go even further back with the cultural fossil aspect. Back in the Middle Ages when peasants weren’t allowed to go hunting, one of the duties of a feudal lord would theoretically be to protect his serfs’ chattels, so if there was a particularly bad wolf pack or savage boar or whatever, you’d call on your lord and ask him to go hunting. With the disappearance of most of the dangerous wild animals, foxes were about all that was left to justify going out on that sort of hunt (as opposed to deer hunting or whatever).
@ Maggie:
I’ve heard that Antoine de Saint-Exupery had a tame one for a while when he was living in North Africa, and also had a hallucinatory conversation with one while suffering dehydration in the desert after a crash— so when you read The Little Prince that’s probably the kind of fox you should be picturing.
@Moggie
That fox is absolutely adorable! Now I feel like I need one. The biggest issue would be it getting along with my dog, as she might not like it as much. The ears…the ears. When my dog was a puppy, she had comically large ears like that too (not as much anymore now that her head has caught up).
Plus, we could finally answer the question of “what does the fox say?”
@Alan Robertshaw
The Metro is an offshoot of the Mail? For some reason I was under the impression that the Metro was better than the Mail. It just seemed a little less, for lack of a better word, skewed.
@naglfar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMG_Media
It does seem a little bit more nuanced; and hardly a mention of house prices!
Article on Epstein in The Atlantic. It touches on many of the things commonly discussed around here, particularly women and girls being regarded as trophies rather than as people:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-and-the-myth-of-the-underage-woman/596140/
@Surplus to Requirements:
I read that article a day or so ago. Ugh, ugh, uuuuggghhh. So foul.
What I think would help with upending the ‘underage woman’ thing would be to remake some of the films mentioned in that article – Lolita, Manhattan, American Beauty, etc., but from the girls’ POV. How enticing would those relationships be to the audience if the main characters were shown being rightfully skeeved out by those dirty old men?
And an another article I saw while reading the Atlantic: an interview with an Evangelical who’s trying to get his fellows and his religion away from Trump.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/ben-howe-evangelical-christians-support-trump/596308/
Fascinating interview, at least to me.
Did someone say fennec?
So squeaky!
Want to see something which will make puppies sad? Scalzi has tweeted a picture of this year’s Hugo award winners. See if you can spot a trend here:
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1163262272497692672
(Still too white, I think, so it’s not all good)
Moggie – The only reason I know about the Fennec foxes is the Animal Planet show about the exotic animal vet. My MIL likes that show, so we watch it every week. It worries me a little that the show might encourage more people to have wild animals as pets. At least they showcase that most of these creature can be quite a handful.
I’m happy with my two kitty boys though, thanks!
@Alan, Naglfar:
My experience is that the ‘Metro’ tends to end up being kind of a general brand but with a lot of the news in any local version being provided by some other local paper.
That said, I see from the Wikipedia page on Metro International that the Metro in the UK isn’t affiliated with them at all. The Canadian version eventually was bought out by TorStar (the Toronto Star parent company) and is now called ‘Star Metro’.
I think TorStar bought out Metro to compete with 24, the Sun owned free daily paper.
I’m certainly happy there is a left leaning free daily kicking about though, the language in 24 is unbelievable.
(nothing but appeals to emotion. So many.)
@Rhuu:
Pretty much. For a time there were three free dailies in Toronto:
– Metro, run by Metro International (with a green banner)
– FYI Toronto, run by Sun Media (with an orange banner)
– GTA Today, run by TorStar (with a purple banner)
(There was at least one other brief paper, but it didn’t last for more than a month or so, and I don’t remember its name.)
First Metro and GTA Today merged into Metro Today (with a bi-coloured banner), and then later on Metro International sold most of their share to TorStar. FYI Toronto folded and Sun then basically started licensing the 24H name from Quebecor to continue in the market, then sold most of them to PostMedia to run while keeping their own editorial contents.
A couple of years ago there was a swap deal of some sort where TorStar bought out the Toronto version of 24H and shut it down, and PostMedia bought out some of the Metro papers and shut them down. Lawsuits and investigations for the rather consortium-like actions are ongoing.
It’s a bit of a mess.
And I lived in the riding where Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy (she who used to call Toronto City Hall ‘Socialist Silly Hall’) ran for MPP in a by-election. So believe me, I’m familiar with her appeals to emotion. Seeing her do a column in 24H was the last time I ever picked up one of those.
I didn’t know GG even had a legacy.
@Jenora Feuer
Since the subway stopped carrying 24H, I haven’t heard much from ol’ Sue-Ann. She still up to her usual antics?
@Katamount:
I have no idea, because life’s too short to deliberately expose myself to that sort of ranting, and I’m certainly not going to pay money for the Sun.
I think something has gone wrong with this site and/or my ability to view it.
About 24 hours ago there was a new comment to this thread, brief and on the topic of fennec foxes. A while later that comment had disappeared again — does the comment-delay bug now have the capability to hide a comment after that comment had been visible for a while?
Ever since this event there have (apparently) been very few new comments at all and no new top-level articles. Either traffic to this site fell off a cliff or there’s an awful lot of content being hidden from me by the various glitches.
Is anyone else observing similar symptoms? Is anyone seeing a normal level of activity? Is anyone seeing a newer-than-this-one top-level article? Did anyone else see the appearing/disappearing fennec comment, and can anyone else still see it?
P.S. The disappearing fennec comment was right after the Rhuu comment that starts with “I think TorStar bought out Metro”.
Dunno.
Nope.
Yep.
Nope.
Yep and Yep.
Nope, I’m guessing David is either very busy or (hopefully not!!!!) feeling under the weather; comments always tend to drop off a bit when there hasn’t been a new post for a while. Don’t know about the fennec thing, though, I’m afraid.
@Surplus
It always has done this. It appears, from my limited ability to troubleshoot based on just playing around with it while the issue is happening, to be a server-side caching issue for at least one endpoint but not for others. So if you go to this link: https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/08/15/im-quoted-in-a-nyt-piece-on-gamergate-and-its-shitty-legacy-today/
You will see the latest posts. However, if you go to these links:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/08/15/im-quoted-in-a-nyt-piece-on-gamergate-and-its-shitty-legacy-today/comment-page-2/
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/08/15/im-quoted-in-a-nyt-piece-on-gamergate-and-its-shitty-legacy-today/comment-page-2/#comment-2831925
(Both are the same endpoint, one just jumps you down to the specific comment) you will get a cached version.
This has actually been explained to you before. Multiple times. People have suggested using that knowledge as a workaround to the issue. You’ve refused because you didn’t believe them.
People only have so much to say on older articles, my dude. David doesn’t post every day. As you know, sometimes he’s not feeling well, or needs some time for mental health (I mean, could *you* read this filth, in detail, every day?). When that happens, the comments tend to die down for a bit, unless we have a troll to bat around.
It’s right here:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/08/15/im-quoted-in-a-nyt-piece-on-gamergate-and-its-shitty-legacy-today/comment-page-1/#comment-2829580
Did you even try looking for it before ranting about it?