gamergate, lessons learned, and god you are stupid but maybe we can make you better

so it's 2015, and I think it's fair to say that gamergate, barring some miracle tumblr rupture that disgorges SECRETSJWTACTICS.WPD into the hands of little timmy, is a fucking joke.

Note, I'm not saying "dead."  Internet stats don't lie; people keep inexplicably joining the movement and retweeting idiot shit, but whatever momentum this movement had is dead.  The -one- actual victory gamergate could look back on with pride, Intel's pulling of revenue from gamasutra, was reversed months ago, and since then absolutely nothing has happened.  You can log onto their dumbass subreddit for proof of this:  any pretense of DEFEATING BAD ETHICS is gone, now it's just a million upvoted topics about "oh no this sjw is attacking one of our brothers, alert alert alert."  Oh yeah and you got the FTC to UPDATE THEIR FAQ ABOUT SITE REFERRALS.  I realize mike cernovich is too busy selling juice to explain administrative law to you, but this doesn't mean shit, and for any actual enforcement to go through will require alot of time and pain and will probably be defanged by powerful lobbies (yes, there are lobbies more powerful than the gawker/polygon cartel) so nothing is going to happen.

SQUAWK ETHICS IN GAME JOURNALISM

Simply put, you guys stared into the vagina abyss, and are now bizarro world tumblr.  and while this means the idiot dance will probably continue for awhile longer since all of your moves are now basically identical to people who use "cis-garbage" unironically, nothing is going to actually happen.  You guys wanted to be the big brain confounding its opponents with a variety of devilish tactics, instead you're the stupid gargoyle whose attack pattern is bashing its head into the wall over and over.

So, what's the point of this blog?  Am I just another pathetic white dude lording it over other pathetic white dudes?  Heavens no, because I'm here to actually offer advice to you idiots on how, the next time a golden opportunity to ruin the lives of self-important people comes up, you don't drop the ball so fucking badly.

ADVICE 1: PICK A BETTER TARGET

If there's one thing you shitheads need to figure out, it's this.  What am I talking about?  Consider a comparison between the Republicans of the mid 90's and today.  In the mid-90s, despite winning an explosive mid-term election under a united banner, almost nothing of real note came out in that time aside from a long-simmering hatred towards a certain political family.  The republican part of today is a fractured fucking mess, but still managed to destroy this midterm election and seems to be well on their way to destroy this country.  Do you what the difference was?

Bill Clinton, for all his faults, was a consummate genius when it came to controlling the mindset of the American public.  The dude banged a trashy intern and literally lied under oath, and yet managed to crawl out of this as someone that moderates and non-radical liberals adore, while feared by conservatives.  Barack Obama is absolutely fucking horrible at this controlling of the narrative, and thus is just simply hated by everyone around him.

the face that launched a thousand nerd tears

I'm sure that when eron "fuccboi" gronj's manifesto came out, you guys smelled blood in the water.  finally, you thought, a real scandal we can really sink our teeth into!!!!  in hindsight, of course, you dumbasses should have pulled back after the first recon-in-force forays into attacking zoe quinn.  Not because the scandal was actually completely bunk, of course, history is built on such false pretenses.  No, because Zoe Quinn, like Bill Clinton, is extremely adept at controlling a narrative.  Her first reply to the accusations was a masterful blend of victimization, hatred, and vague language.  Oh sure, the "we do not negotiate with terrorists" line was eyerolling to people that had followed the scandal from the start, but here is the thing that you stupid fucks don't seem to understand: that response was never meant for you.

You see, while you dumbasses were high-fiving themselves over wacky doritoes videos and finding zoe's horrifying nude pictures, zoe was quickly laying the groundwork for the dominant narrative that would appear in basically every mainstream media portrayal of gamergate from then until now.  I don't want to toot my horn, but I basically called this before gamergate was even coined.  And yet, even when it was clear that whatever emotional instability zoe had gave her tremendous abilities in terms of wrangling allies and making you look like idiots, you kept portraying her as public gamer enemy number 1, which is exactly what she wanted.

At this point Fortuna Virgo must have taken pity on you, because a golden opportunity was presented in the form of Leigh Alexander, who waddled onto the scene, tripped into several open cans of gasoline, impaled herself on a gate, and gasped out ",,,gamers."  And what did you do?  Inspiration struck!  You roughly wiped the gasoline from Leigh, and proceeded to use those rags as ammunition against Zoe, because NOW WE'VE GOT A NAME BOYS.

I can't emphasize what a bonehead move it was to continue focusing on zoe quinn and her ever expanding cabal of echo boxes instead of immediately turning onto Leigh.  Leigh is an earnest person that actually seems to care about video games, which means that if you readjusted your sights and terrorized her, she might have folded and then people would have actually taken notice.  Let's remember that gamasutra was the only website shoddy enough that advertisers actually pulled out of, but instead you decided that THE REAL ENEMY was gawker and vox media, which actually have stuff like money behind them and thus didn't fucking care about your dumb protests.

Of course, I can understand why this lateral move wasn't made, because gamergate was always a bloated, slow mess that couldn't actually adapt quickly.  This totally not obvious segue segues into my second point:

ADVICE TWO: PICK COMPETENT LEADERS

I sort of blame the 4chan ethos for this.  The anonymous army shit is great for small scale terror, but is terrible at the sort of long "message is the medium" operations.  Obviously, for something as glorious as gamergate, leaders were needed.  And holy shit, was nothing delivered.

I mean okay, you have Total Biscuit.  And InternetAristocrat can be funny mostly because he obviously doesn't give a brass fuck about any of this besides ruining people's lives.  Aside from that, though, the various spokesman personalities you've formed out of clay are just about the least interesting people on the internet.  And that's fucking -killing- you.

Part of the problem is that when you went searching for organization faces, the vast majority were already established anti-feminist youtube duders.  Before you open your fool mouth, the problem isn't the anti-feminist sentiment, it's that they're all PHENOMENALLY BORING to anyone that doesn't 100 percent buy into what they're saying.

it says alot about gamergate that even its idealized avatars look incredibly bullyable

Do you know why people are always talking about Feminist Frequency videos, but don't seem to care about those mundanematt or sargon of akkad videos you always post as a reply?  It's not the entrenched control that sjws have over the american mindset, it's because anita is really good at moving from one striking image to the next while showing human expressions, while your videos are a nasal voice talking for 45 minutes over the static image of a skull or some ASSyrian diety.  Or maybe you want to show them that guy that looks like an alternative future version of anton levay that never got over his school bullying, yeah that will work, it HAS to work.

I've never understood this, since the very essence of right-wing thought lends itself to an easy, populist speaking style.  It's the reason that right-wing radio and tv always gets more viewers: people like bill o'reilly and mike levin are accomplished at creating constant tension and interest with their voices.   Even if you disagree with what they say, it creates a sort of electric thrill to argue with them over the various noise boxes.  All I get from listening to the innumerable google hangout videos gamergate loves to post is "holy shit does anyone ever shut up how can anyone normal  ever listen to this" and the answer of course is that they don't.

the original dumb nerd

Obviously this isn't as easy a problem to fix, since it requires someone that actually understands how to talk to people that aren't fucking nerds and would have the testicular fortitude to tell other figureheads "shut the fuck up im taking over this monkeyhouse, otherwise we're gonna have ourselves a night of the long fedoras."  Still, this is needed, because of the third thing you guys need to figure out.

ADVICE THREE: DEMAND MORE FROM YOUR MASTERS

Oh, don't be so coy.  Look, it's not a big secret that gamergate is, to at least some degree, sponsored by certain rightist organizations.  It's just the same as how alot of left-wing interests latched onto and sponsored the tumblr version of gamergate.

It's not actually the same, though.  MSNBC and various left-wing stations frequently feature spokesmen from the anti-gamergate faction.  Fuck, anita was on colbert or daily show or something. What has the right done for you?  There's basically been zero discussion of it on right-wing radio or tv.  Breitbart assigned as your handler an unstable gay guy that wrote prior to all this about how pathetic gamers were and obviously still doesn't respect you, but all of you still lap it up because of your fundamental lack of self-respect (id go into this more but this post is already too long).  Simply put, and get ready because this might hurt your feelings, the companies you are dogmatically supporting view you as dogs, useful as a diversionary tactic and a way to terrorize leftists, but not giving a shit if your support costs you your job, family, or sanity.

Granted, gamergate isn't in the best position to ask for some sort of legitimacy token since, as discussed above, you guys haven't done much besides making random people fearing for their lives. but jesus, is it that hard to find some photogenic nerd that doesn't have a history of explicitly supporting rape to stumble onto fox news and talk about the harassment he's suffered from angry feminists, all i wanna do is just play some video games guys *pout*.



I don't know if anything will ever happen from this blog, especially since even with an actual leader, there's likely always going to be a contingent of sadsacks that, dare i say it, actually like the victimhood lifestyle.  But, a man that hates everything can dream.

Zoe Quinn, Turf Wars, and God You Are Stupid

So you may or may not have heard about the latest BIG GAMING SCANDAL to hit the shores of hell in the past few days.  I mean, of course you have, and if you haven't well then go on one of the three websites that haven't gone into full lockdown mode and read it up.  The only new thing I can add to the debacle itself is that I'm surprised no one's mentioned this on Sad Beta Cuckold's million word epic:

i mean, COME ON DUDE.

But no, I'm not exactly interested in directly talking about this.  Who is exactly surprised that the person with extreme depression issues might also have some other emotional issues bundled in?  Or that game sites, using said person as a icon for discrimination in the game world (which is still a real thing, sorry nerds) because she was LOUD and FEISTY about that discrimination, are now slightly leery about reporting that she could be less than perfectly moral? Or that the nerd boyfriend exercised the well known axiom of "fool me twenty dozen times, better obsessively categorize all the ways I got humiliated?"  Zounds, ya fucks.  The only amusement I get from this whole ordeal is the sputtering rage that nerds have over the fact that even VIDEO GAMES are not safe from the concept of "woman using sex to acquire power."

The only truth that needs to be said about this is how boringly this is going to be resolved.  That is to say, like every other conflict in history that has involved two zealot factions, everyone loses except those who control the zealots.  Zoe Quinn isn't going to suffer.  She's already posted a vague blob thing about "not negotiating with terrorists" while everyone she's allied to get all their personal information hacked into.  No doubt she already has an exit strategy planned out with a guest column on Kotaku within a week.  It won't be a good column, but it doesn't have to be.   All that needs is the all important subtext: "you have defended me well, my disciples, but the war continues."  Zoe gets her game Steam Greenlit, and receives pity money for her vague game jam project, while her followers get angrier and less connected with any sort of reality.

Meanwhile, you have the Angry White Nerds, who are going to rail at the FEMINIST MAJORITY via hour long videos and screech about DMCA complaints that have no real relevance to their rabid viewership.  All that matters on these videos is how long you can ramble about the hypocriticality of women, no matter how possibly weird some of their theories could be.  This is the sort of community that, when someone posted on King Chublord Internet Aristocrat's video "hey i think your points are mostly good but why are you yelling about Phil Fish's dumb ass come on" the resulting reaction was almost entirely "FUCKING SJW EAT MY DICK SALT SALT SALT."  People claim that the hate and invective are for the sake of "protecting my video games and video game journalism integrity," but of course anyone with goddamned eyes could tell you those ships have sailed since fundamentally forever.  Let's be fucking clear here: social justice did not destroy the video game industry, the video game industry destroyed the video game industry.

No, the real purpose of these videos is the all-important subtext: "you have fought for me well, my disciples, but the war continues."  The alpha nerds keep getting more and more views for their videos (no doubt leading towards some sort of weird monetization scheme like the Dude Frequency Kickstarter thing) while the rest of the lonely nerds get angrier and pretty well guarantee they will never get a fuck.

Does no one else realize at this point that the most entrenched Gamergate and Anti-Gamergate folks are for all intents and purposes the same horrible shitheels?  Both sides can't exist without the other, since without the other posting scurrilous and insane gender theories, the first side can't post their own scurrilous and insane gender theories as a refutation.  We're not in hugboxes anymore, we're in a fucking inverse echo chamber that is just getting louder.  Neither side actually wants to talk, but keep eating the same stale talking points posted on 4chan/tumblr about how the other side is trying to ruin everything about anything while their own faction just wants to have fun and play some video games.  Trying to determine shit like whether Zoe made up her initial harassment charge against nerds or not is fucking impossible.  The truth is obviously somewhere out in the No Man's Land, but venture over the bunkers and you're immediately gonna get artillerized by a nonstop barrage of 75mm imgur albums, each shriller than the last, until finally you're forced to go "jesus christ all of you fucking suck."  Nothing is going to bridge the divide.  The volleys between outrage culture and apology culture are just gonna keep popping up at a faster and faster frequency, like a bad science fiction movie.  Then we finally immanentize the eschaton, and I wake up one morning and my laptop is wearing lipstick and ripping my dick off because I made a joke about how much I love big titties without appending a paragraph about how important the woman attached to big titties are.

The weirdest part of this stupid mess is that the Sad Beta Cuckold's stated purpose for looking like the biggest bitch on Frolix 8 was his hope that it would...someone bring together serious talk among game enthusiasts and social justice warriors about morality?  Are you joking?  Like either he's being disingenuous like everyone else in this fucking mess, or we've got someone whose relationship towards the internet is like Wile E. Coyote's relationship with boulders.

At any rate I'm already sick of talking about this tldr: everyone in the Zoe Quinn Saga could be loaded into a giant brazen bull and nothing of value would be lost

also im sorry there's no pictures here but GISing for anything related to this mess is a surefire ticket to madness