which is the thing that gave Gamergate "life" IMHO regardless of the various theories on what "started" it.

Sounds like Something Awful.

Well, Something Awful was ironically a lot less awful. They had their twisted activities, but many SA members spent their time creating memes, creepypastas, and other internet viral content, in fact there were many creative contests and similar events in the SA forums, making it a lot more like /b/, Kiwi Farms is more like another those groups who organize raids and things like that, I don't remember their names.

I've only heard about Kiwi Farms maybe a week ago but heard the same story - that they were supposedly responsible for all the harassment towards Rapp and her husband. I dunno but I can understand why journalists are quick to blame GG because it's to the point that even GG supporters are confused about all this. I mean, I saw people bothering Rapp that I knew by handle - so does that make them Kiwi Farms? I have doubts all the people I saw piling on Rapp were Kiwi Farms people but then you can see what I mean that even GG supporters, sympathizers or neutrals even are having a hard time telling who-is-who apart. Hard to expect journalists to do the same.

Rapp or her husband also didn't close their Twitters, or hide themselves, whatever if someone agree or not with them, is people with GUTS, no safe spaces, no tears, no whining... people could learn something from them.

Central sources that furthered the harassment affiliate themselves with gamergate, and I'll gladly demonstrate below. But I'll say up front, it doesn't matter at all. The discussion has to be led back to the responsibility of the individual, it has to be led back to the many sources and modes of harassment, and to individual contributions. Not for the blame, not for the conviction, not for the burning on the stake, but for a new kind of self-awareness that's sorely lacking on the internet. The question is "what is my individual contribution?", not "what is the collective contribution of this loosely connected group of people that I may or may not associate/agree with?".


When I first investigated the Rapp case and her harassers three months ago, google would give me KiA, TheRalphRetort and thegg.net. All gamergate affiliated sources that explicitly created and furthered conspiracy theories about her. Also, I had this thread to go on, in which one user in particular was hurling humongous abuse at Rapp which – after Rapp had successfully been tied in with the "SJW" narrative (including especially the threat that derives from intellectualism and academic discourse), it was mostly nodded off and mirrored through rants about that enemy figure (with two rather notable exceptions). Harassment has definitely bred right here in this thread. Calls to action were made, right here, to glorious activism just like in the good ol' 2014 days when gamergate started and the roots of the movement were untainted. Ironically, the most irate user back then was eventually the one to line up 100% with Alison Rapp's actual views on child pornography and censorship. Wayyyy too late, of course. :|

I had not heard of any other source besides the gamergate movement harassing Rapp, particularly not from Rapp herself (exception being the Daily Stormer, which not surprisingly is also linking into the SJW conspiracy narrative). Then again, while this may be a big slice, it definitely was 'just' a slice of the harassing sources; I just went with the most popular sources as decided by google at the time. So if you'd like the takeaway here to be "It wasn't all gamergate" or even "not all the people from those gamergate sources are really gamergate supporters" or "it was just a few bad apples" then sure, I guess, take that away. :|


Spotlight: The RalphRetort considers itself to "be" literally gamergate. To my knowledge, it was the first to report on 'evidence' that Rapp had been an escort, and the first to report that her husband allegedly was too. Mind you, that information has surfaced only weeks ago while the harassment has been going on for more than three months. Now people here are trying to shift blame towards other sources while the tweet based conspiracies about Rapp that the harassment originated from are still tossed around without much reflection. Now suddenly the recent escort revelation was "taking it too far", while the former month long gross harassment has in retrospect not done that much harm, really, and may have been justified, I mean, c'mon, remember those "troubling views on child pornography".

*sigh*

See for yourself how a hatemongering, factually incorrect, conspiracist, harassment breeding wall of text the aptly named thegg.net website assembled about Rapp over months practically concludes with the words "It wasn't gamergate". Which of course only means: "I, the author of this pamphlet, had no part in this". And of effing course he did.

Ralph remains, of course, the #1 source for over the top conspiracy nonsense. I know the association-disassociation game that gamergate supporters often love to play, but when supporters right in this thread parrot Ralph's theories, that game is surely lost after all, right?

Ralph has recently been the one to pick up on the idea that the surfacing of a single word from Candace Owens' email to Zoe Quinn is proof that Quinn has handed Owen's email address to all her private twitter followers. All that, of course, under the continuously and dishonestly furthered and incorrect presupposition that it was Owens' "private" email account and not a personal work account that people can easily guess based on the structure of her co-workers' account names. Consequently, the situation now is that Quinn bows out of twitter for a while for sheer harassment quantity.

"Buuuut was it gamergate?"

No, certainly not. In the same way "it wasn't 4/8chan" or worst of all, "it wasn't US". It was a lot of individual people doing individual things, some of them absolutely associating with gamergate, some of them posting on KiwiFarms, some of them doing neither, some of them *gasp* doing both.

To understand online harassment, you'll have to e.g. understand what happens when you pry into people's private lives with a series of ludicrous accusations and pledges to hunt down the witch by any necessary means. It's something Candace Owens hopefully eventually understands as well on her longest journey to grok online harassment that has only just begun.

I don't particularly care about shifting blame to anyone, any one particular person, any loosely connected group of people with diverging ideologies, any movement that happened to start out as a clear cut harassment campaign. If we untie the whole thing from the gamergate label, what happens here still is that the same individual people who spew abuse, further conspiracy theories and honest to god harassment are, days later or, heck, in the same post, disassociating "gamergate" from the bad things that are happening and therewith themselves and their forum friends.

I disagree that pinpointing causal responsibility should be divorced from apportioning just deserts. The problem is, it goes both ways, and "you" started it (link to what I mean). The horse is well out of the barn and running, and it took the processes that could apportion guilt, blame or responsibility objectively with it. Now it's all subjective, facts don't matter if the lies are repeated enough, if someone believes them. The other side learned to play the Alinsky game, and I'm frankly surprised how long it took.

Even if you (literaly you now) disagree who started it and whether it goes both ways, I'm sure you agree that there is no way in hell any of the sides will suddenly make nice and become friends.

So I would suggest the best way to get back to civilized behavior eventually, is through disengagement. But disengagement would imply the social activism should cease and leave gamers alone, to be whatever they wish in their "safe spaces" - which is politically impossible for several of the involved parties, desirous that gaming be culturally commited to the progressive march through the insititutions. Or to get rid of the impure element in what they consider their turf - they are also gamers afterall. How many people in GOG have you seen advocate explicitly this thread should be purged? Anyway, whatever motives hardly matters, the actions speak louder. Although on the social justice side, the personal is explicitly political - too much personal commitment, too much pathos. Logos is, like, an oppressive tool of the patriarchy. (I rem when the enemy concept was The Man).

So side A will continue to benefit from the GG enemy concept. Side B will continue to benefit from the SJW enemy concept. And war never changes. The neutral middle is more and more favoring a sort of apolitical misantrophy - a pox on both their houses - which is fine as survival mechanism in the short term, but only contributes to the decadence and apathy that is a broader societal issue.

Mars colonization anyone?

Indeed, it's been a long time since we all could have come to an amicable arrangement. Being part of greater community doesn't seem to be what AGG/regressives wanted they seem to want to want to be the community. They bred resentment into an all-inclusive group. it's like they're feminists finding the men playing poker in the shed, "THE SHED MUST GO!". but the difference is the gamer's clubhouse wasn't the "He-man woman-haters club". not when most women seemed to think it was beneath them to play vidya.

Now that's one hell of a one sided perspective here. To exemplify this 'progressive march through the institutions', you may have the removal of a single console game from the store shelves of a single Australian supermarket chain (yet not its online store) one and a half years after release following a form of public outcry. And that still doesn't include legal/state institutions as part of that march. The activism I'm seeing hasn't got anything to do with that.

Gamers have harassed and scapegoated Alison Rapp and put her out of two jobs, her husband has just left his as a result, and all that because Nintendo of America is too American to properly localise games. Gamers have imported DoaX3 at horrific prices, a game with sub par mechanics, because someone suggested it was not released in Western territorries due to suspected future "SJW" criticism. Gamers have review bombed Siege of Dragonspear for (actual quote and worse exist) "shoehorning a progressive ideology that doesn't even fit the game's lore" while the actual original author of the Forgotten Realms thinks otherwise. Gamers have produced a 50+ page outrage thread on the Overwatch forums following a calm and reasoned post arguing for a certain character pose being OOC, and especially following the agreement of the developer.

Precisely that is the social activism that is NOT leaving me as a fellow gamer alone.

And don't even get me started on the social outrage activism that's not leaving me as a connoisseur of science fiction alone.

Concerning simple feminist criticism of video games as an example of the 'progressive march through the institutions', ahem, .

Isn't that a huge paradigm change? For almost two years, I've seen gamergate supporters painting their clear cut own ideologues as "actually neutral" people, and the critics of those ideologues were seen as forcing someone "actually neutral" on a certain side. Now, particularly after Emob's 'buttflap" quote and your evaluations, rains seem far tighter, ousting quicker, ideological opposition declared sooner.

I suggest once more to consult the recent writings and teachings of Zoe Quinn, e.g. starting with the video I linked to above. The key to change is the humanization of the perceived enemy – a key concept that e. g. Candace Owens simply doesn't want to understand (and in fact aims to misunderstand). Time and again, Quinn has said that had gamergate started a few years ago and had it not been personally directed against her, she would have had exactly that mindset and that anger. She would have been with gamergate, including the activism.

My feelz are with you. I'd be very sad too if I believed all that. But I try to look for flaws in things I agree with, which you clearly don't.

while some gamers may have helped others to see Alison Rapp for what she was (a PR rep that broke company rules) wasn't it the Wayne Foundation that ultimately contacted NOA

Gamers did learn that outrage can Change devs minds by watching others do it (I actually do not feel we should be using this tactic) and in a world where one can literally become the other sex with just a spell why even be trans? And culturely appropriate sounds for a name?

TIL that logic & reason was an ideology.

"writings and teachings of Zoe Quinn" she's not a prophet, she wants to profit.

So blasting someone's inbox with slurs (racial & otherwise) is key to Quinn's humanization efforts? Some sort of de-sentization strategy? I don't think Candace approved.

SJW's & GG alike did not like Candace Owens' kickstarter idea but as a person I see GG members helping her with advice while SJW's continue to do they can to hurt her & GG is supposed to be the woman-haters?

From the bottom then.

What do ZQ opinions have to do with what I said? Maybe you can clarify... to me, the accidents of history as they relate to one specific individual and their position in zeitgeist A or B are irrelevant. I think a key disagreement is where you say the key to change is humanization. Really? How very idealistic. Here in reality you don't (normally) get from war to peace via love (read: humanization): Make love not war is prima facie ridiculous except as a catchy slogan. You get from war to peace via cease fire, truces and de-escalation. Or alternatively via destruction of the enemy's will or capacity to fight, and that's the thing: be revealed preferences Social Justice wants total victory, and wants it now. That was my point: The bakers must bake, the bathrooms must change, the apologies must be voiced, etc... etc... That is not a truce, or a cease fire. That is continuing of an insurgency. And that is very explicit in all the language and attitudes of revolutionary zeal that are prevalent in "your" circles.

On the paradigm change. No, I see it only as the continuation of the broader apathy trend I mentioned, which is a much more epochal trend. GG was the paradigm change. Compare to 9/11 - that was the shift from post-ColdWar interregnum to the muddled geopolitical model we have currently. Just because the fervor of intervention that was directly associated with 9/11 died down (somewhat) and the USA are reverting to isolationist modes does not change the fact that the post-Cold War period is not coming back. Likewise with GG, just because GG is "over" (and the reality of that is debatable and irrelevant to my point) does not change the fact that Social Justice will never spread unopposed anymore. The "good days" of SJ subversion are over, and the signs of growing pushback are everywhere. That said, in this broader cultural perspective I don't think GG is so significant. As with most insurgencies shifting into conventional mode, pinpointing an exact conflagration as The One is kind of hard. I'd maybe consider the title IX overreach as the critical one when we look back in 25 years - certainly academia seems to be the beating heart of the kind of zeitgeist I oppose. But I say that from my perspective of seeing the new methodologies applied in the name of A specific brand of justice as ridiculously negative, problematic, counterproductive, and totalitarian.

Which leads to my last point, in answer to your first. Of course my perspective is one sided. Or rather, my opinions are. They are formed and made explicit and they are not hedges of fake neutrality. I come to my side despite (or rather because of) my trying to understand and see other sides' perspectives and be aware of all the related facts. Some truths can't co-exist basically, and I try to be brave and choose a commitment. The fundamental disconnect I see with the kind of SJ liberalism that I see you as representing is precisely how unaware of your own bias you all are, and how smug (per the link I posted) you then are that your way is the obvious only way. SJ folks are incredibly dogmatic without even being aware that dogmas can be secular, are incredibly intolerant without being aware of their dehumanizing crusading. It's infuriating, but they see the fury as existing independently of their own causing it. In fact they see it as the reason justifying action, without hate or malice justifying almost coercive action becomes kind of iffy. I mean, did you read the Vox article I posted? It comes from a fellow traveller of sorts, so I would hope you might be more receptive to its message. You guys simply cannot be that oblivious that your moral certainty is partially responsible for the pushback. But considering how you react to the pushback, either:

1 - you want war, and will keep getting it.
2 - you are more insecure about that moral (un)certainty than you let on, and you should admit it.

But of course, the personal is political, so those personal doubts should not get in the way of The Cause. So war it is. Well then, sorry, but I hope my side wins. And I won't apologize for that. It would be ridiulously hypocritical.

Gamergate didn't harass her out of her job at Nintendo. Nintendo canned her on their own, and for good reason.

True, but Nintendo was tipped off by people who didn't like her. Maybe they would have eventually found out. Maybe not.

But it's what happened afterwards that bothers me more. The fact that plenty of people, whether they claim to be Gamergate or not, went after her after she was fired and when it was discovered it was because of escort service. And then going after her husband.

Welcome to the internet. You may be surprised to know all of the internet isn't gamergate or vice versa.