During the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp defamation trial, videos taking aim at Heard filled up Tik-Tok and YouTube. Some posted them because they genuinely hated Heard; others jumped in because they knew money could be made off the vast audience clamoring continually for more Heard content.
Linehan: “I’ve got a lot of revised feelings about Gamergate”
By David Futrelle
So Graham Linehan — the fomer comedy writer turned humorless transphobe — is having some second thoughts about Gamergate, and he wants the world to know all about them.
Hey kid, let me tell you about the Jews who, er, foreclosed on my parents
By David Futrelle
So I was poking around in the KotakuInAction ubreddit — Reddit’s self-proclaimed “hub for GamerGate” — to see how the regulars were dealing with the news that idiot YouTube megastar PewDiePie was going to donate, and then was not going to donate, a big chunk of money to the Anti-Defamation League.
Last week, game designer and Gamergate nemesis Zoe Quinn publicly accused indie game developer Alec Holowka of being abusive during, and vindictive after, a brief relationship the two had some years ago. Several others stepped forward with similar accusations.
Now the story has gotten sadder and uglier: Holowka has reportedly died by suicide. And those we might call the Eternal Gamergaters have taken to the internet en masse to accuse Quinn (and in a few cases, Holowka’s own sister) of causing his death.
UPDATE: Alec Holowka’s sister reports that he has died, apparently of suicide.
By David Futrelle
#MeToo hit the gaming industry hard this week, with an ever-growing number of women and non-binary people coming forward to accuse men in the industry — including some big names — of rape and harassment and other forms of abuse.
I recently appeared on the Australian radio show Stop Everything to talk about the poisonous legacy of Gamergate. (You can listen to the archived episode here.) So I thought I would expand a little on some of the notes I made for myself before doing the show, and get into a little more detail on some issues I wasn’t able to talk about during the show itself.
So I’m going to appear on the Australian radio show Stop Everything on ABC RN tonight from 8-9 PM Eastern, talking about Gamergate and its legacy. (For those actually living down under, that converts to 10-11 AM Friday morning, Eastern Australian time.) The segment on Gamergate will take up roughly half of the hour-long show, but I’m not sure when in the hour that will be.
You can find the show here; it will be rerun several times and also put up as a podcast.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
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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.”
In the Kotaku in Action subreddit , where GamerGate never died (it just smells that way), the regulars are getting mad that the community manager for the game Total War: Three Kingdoms objected to some “sexy mods” that horny gamers had come up with.
For your convenience, a small collection of awful tweets from some of the delightful individuals who have appeared in the virtual pages of We Hunted the Mammoth over the years, and a few who haven’t. You will be happy to learn that I have included no tweets dealing with the Mueller report in any way. [EDIT: Ok, I lied about the Mueller thing.]