Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words clearly hasn’t been looking at the artwork of #GamerGate — unless by “a thousand words” you mean the word “poop” repeated a thousand times.
Nonetheless, to honor the hard work of GamerGate’s unsung graphic heroes, and on the off chance that I might not be fully grasping the subtle meanings of these aesthetically impaired visionaries, I would like to present to you all today a series of [] incomprehensible GamerGate Cartoons, which I have collected from 8chan and Twitter and various other places I don’t even remember.
CONTENT WARNING: Cartoon violence, misogyny, raging anti-Semitism, really bad drawing.
GamerGaters claim they’re on the side of truth and righteousness, but they sure do love monologuing like cartoon villains.
They claim to be shocked by alleged evidence of journalistic collusion, yet they happily plot strategies and “operations” together both in secret and in broad daylight. They claim to be about ethics, but regularly employ not-so-subtle subterfuge to try to disguise their carefully coordinated propaganda campaigns as spontaneous uprisings.
This week, GamerGaters on 8chan launched a new “operation” to win over the hearts and minds of the masses on Tumblr. And it’s as ethically bankrupt as anything they’ve ever done.
Operation Firefly, as it’s officially known, is an attempt to take the GamerGate “fight” to a “new frontier.” Tumblr. As the originator of the initiative explains it in a somewhat less-than-stirring manifesto:
GamerGate provides a rare example of rats climbing aboard a sinking ship.
As the “movement” stews in its own conspiratorial rage, a small army of reactionary misogynists, sensing opportunity, have joined the cause. Sure, right-wingers like Adam Baldwin and Milo Yiannopoulos have long been Gaters, but it’s only in recent days that they’ve been joined by some of the better-known manospherians, from angry lawyer and juice seller Mike Cernovich to the charming Roosh V.
The latest manosphere douchebag to take up the GamerGate cause is the lovely and talented Matt Forney, who has promptly claimed for himself the mantle of GamerGate leader and hero.
Like their identical cousins the Men’s Rights Activists, GamerGaters have a bizarre fondness for terrible graphics and “memes” and collages of blurry screenshots designed – if that’s the word for it – to spread their sometimes incomprehensible propaganda.
The graphic above, found on Twitter, is my favorite GamerGate graphic so far, I think, and not only because it looks like a famous old Windows screensaver gone wrong. No, this little graphic wins my heart because it so baldly, if inadvertently, reveals the sheer ridiculous hypocrisy of GamerGaters claims of victimhood, and the intellectual bankruptcy of their #NotYourShield campaign.
[TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of rape, violent misogyny]
Today, the easy winner in my informal “Worst Thing I Saw On The Internet” contest is a horrendous little hangout for dudes with a very particular sexual fetish: they like to fantasize about raping and sexually humiliating feminists.
The Breaking Feminist Superheroines subreddit (r/breakfeminazis), with 865 subscribers, describes itself as
Congratulations, assholes! You did it! Your threats and harassment have driven game journalist/designer Jenn Frank and game designer/media critic Mattie Brice to leave the gaming world.
Frank, an award-winning writer and sometime game designer, came to the attention of the misogynist mob after writing a brief opinion piece for The Guardian decrying the widespread and vicious harassment of women in gaming. In addition to writing about the harassment she’s gotten — including someone trying to hack into her email account — she (as you might expect) also highlighted the misogynistic rage directed at feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and indie game designer Zoe Quinn.
The new rule seems to be that any woman who writes about online harassment will herself be harassed, and in this case it didn’t take long.
On Monday, Anita Sarkeesian posted the latest installment of her Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games series on YouTube, a half-hour examination of the ways in which video game makers use sexualized violence against women as a cheap way to spice up their narratives and appeal to straight male gamers.
Her tone was measured, her analysis clear and logical and supported by dozens of clips from a wide assortment of games.
Over on Chateau Heartiste, everyone’s favorite racist pickup artist gasbag Heartiste excitedly reports on the a giant leap forward in the ongoing “Sexbot Revolution” – a Japanese company has a new lifesize sex doll that looks slightly less creepy than the creepy sex dolls now on the market.
Heartiste quotes a Daily Mail article on the dramatic new development, because where else would you turn for important news in science and technology other than the Daily Mail?
Orient Industry say their new range of dolls, made from high quality silicon, are so realistic there is very little to distinguish them from a real girlfriend at first glance. …
[A]dverts in the media boast that anyone who buys one will never want a real girlfriend again.
Thoughts in my head respond that the potential girlfriends of the world will not be heartbroken at the news that dudes who can’t tell the difference between a giant rubber doll and a real woman will be leaving the dating market.
Now that he’s taken the Red Pill, the Reddittor who calls himself F9R recently announced, he’s “started seeing women as people rather than as magical beautiful goddess creatures.” That’s a good thing, right? Seeing women as actual human beings rather than some imaginary construct?
Well, not so much. Because it turns out that women are just terrible as human beings. No, it’s true! In a rambling comment in the Red Pill subreddit with more than 100 upvotes, F9R reports his scientific findings on the ladies of the world.
Now I’m disillusioned with them because women, for the most part, are boring people. 95% of them spend more time on their appearance than anything else, so as a result they never really have interesting hobbies or develop respectable skill in any particular area. This, in my opinion, could be one of the reasons that women have historically under-performed in almost every activity/industry.
Ah, that explains it! There haven’t been any women presidents, or Popes, or Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because the ladies are spending way too much time fussing with their lipstick and trying to find the exact right shade of eyeshadow.
There haven’t been more women inventors, not because women were denied education for thousands of years or because STEM fields are filled with angry manbabies who cry oppression whenever a woman comes near, but because women don’t have any fascinating, mentally stimulating hobbies like the Red Pillers of the world have. You know, like weight-lifting, or “Game,” or “saying terrible things about women online.”
Huh. So Thor — you know, that dude in the comic books based extremely loosely on Norse mythology — is going to be replaced by a woman. No, for reals. Marvel comics announced it on The View. No, that’s for real too.
I wonder what the alpha dogs over in the Red Pill subreddit might think of this?