Writer’s Note: if more harassed women have stories they want to share – on both sides or outside of Gamergate altogether – and can provide links that are well-sourced and thorough, add them to the comments. I will try to add the best, most thorough stories to this page. Unfortunately, most pro-GG stories I could find are just a couple of tweets, and therefore lack much in the way of context or depth. Ladies, tell your stories, in longform, for the record. It’s important.
This article is about harassment. And it’s not just about attacks on anti-gamergaters. Some are #gamergaters who were harassed – either by antis or anarchistic assholes. But many of these are from events that predate #gamergate, in totally different scandals and explosions. As an aside, I’ll note that the stories coming from the pro-#Gamergate faction are much lighter and sketchier, because they aren’t capturing the experience in any sort of verifiable longform. This is probably a factor of the anti-GG side having a lot of writers on that side of the fence. Still, I encourage the harassed to tell their story in a way that can be archived in a readable format for posterity and verifiability. And I will note that #Gamergate has been saving harassment, large and small, aimed their way in this Tumblr.
But it’s pretty clear to me that most people on both sides are good people who believe harassment is wrong. It’s also pretty clear that a tiny minority of people on both sides, and probably on a third side that is ‘pro-watching-the-world-burn’, are using the outrage of these people in order to camoflauge doing some truly heinous shit, with the express intent of keeping the outrage engine going.
I’ve said from the beginning, as long as there are people harassed, and my friends and colleagues are afraid to speak freely on the topic – pro or con, then I don’t give a shit about the cause of journalistic corruption. Worrying about what an op-ed writer said a month ago, and whether some shitty independent games award was won legit means NOTHING to me because right now, bullies (on both sides) are trying to silence dissonant voices. Most frequently, that means women, especially women who don’t ‘pick the right side’.
I’ve been concerned about harassment of women online since even before gamergate – I believe the fact that Sony and Xbox won’t address that what you see on FatUglyOrSlutty is something any online gamer will tell you is all-too-normal — THAT is actually holding the games industry back from expanding our markets (and cynically, our sales and profits as well). You shouldn’t need thick skin to play a video game.
So I’m so happy that people finally want to talk about harassment.
If there is one good thing about #GamerGate, it is that it has finally given visibility to a shit ton of really nasty harassment. And by no stretch of the imagination am I happy to see any of this shit – it is all horribly, nasty stuff, and reading it is like opening the Mouth of Madness to even write this article. And that’s what I’m going to ask you to do today. Read every single link I put on here. Then imagine each one of these people was someone you knew in real life.
Imagine that each one, instead of being written by some nameless, faceless writer, dev, or twitterer across the internet, imagine the river of shit was being written aimed at your mother, your wife, your sibling or your child. Imagine that the friend was shellshocked, was in tears, was checking their email and bank accounts on a daily basis, and was thinking about quitting their career and moving.
If you’re not mad at the end of this, you’re doing it wrong.
Yes, it’s homework. Yes, it’s fucking important. If you think about the Internet as the most important medium for people to share ideas, communicate and organize in the 21st century, then it becomes quickly apparent that the ability for women, minorities and people with disparate ideas to be able to exist and communicate online is the next great civil rights movement.
And I know that some of you may be suspicious that one or some of these women may be faking, or blowing things out of proportion. If you think it’s true that most or all of these women did this for attention, then seriously, go check yourself into an asylum. The level of delusion required to think that all of these women are liars to this degree shows how a level of detachment from reality that makes you unfit to be placed in society.
Brianna Wu is no stranger to the concept of harassment of women in the games industry. Indeed, she wrote a sharp article on it earlier this year for Polygon, before #Gamergate-the-Scandal (ed: corrected from ‘Gamergate) came lumbering out its ooze pit. Yesterday, she got to experience it first-hand. Her crime was to Retweet a Meme. A #Gamergate 8chan forum then filled a 60 page thread mocking her and filling it with all sorts of awful shit. She found it, and watched in horror the moment when her personal details were shared.
“I was literally watching 8chan go after me in their specific chatroom for Gamergate,” she told Kotaku today. “They posted my address, and within moments I got that death threat.”
After getting the tweets below, she called the cops and fled for her life. For a fucking meme.
The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe. Remember, #gamergate isn’t about attacking women. pic.twitter.com/ZU6oEVxMGL
— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) October 11, 2014
6 weeks after #gamergate folks started trying to insist that #Gamergate did not condone or enable harassment, shit like this still swirls around the hashtag. The general populace of #Gamergate responded by basically denying they had anything to do with her harassment (they have some evidence that points to SomethingAwful, but whether the core individual thinks he was going #GamerGate a favor or causing mischief, who can tell?), with some claiming she did it to herself with good ol MundaneMatt leading the charge (he reportedly rescinded it the next day). If nothing else, the original 8chan thread is alone harassment. The death threat born from that toxic environment is just the cherry on top of the pie. Feel free to read her talking to reddit about this shit to see an utter lack of empathy in action.
One other thing I’ll note is that Brianna’s story is the first significant #GamerGate story to hit the gaming press in weeks. Anita’s harassment has gotten coverage. GamerGate women harassment, by and large, has not. #GamerGate is kind of pissed off by this. And they kind of have a point.
Alexandra Wuori (@JakALop044) is pro-gamergate. Apparently, this does not stop the abuse from flowing. She recieved a phone call which she claims attempted to threaten her professional employment, as well as announce some previously unannounced details of her life.
Them: “Oh, yeah! Do your family and friends know you’re trans? It looks like they don’t… Wouldn’t it be funny if someone called them up and outed you to all of them? Oh, oh! And what if they found out you’re a FUCKING LOSER who bakes cookies for an imaginary cartoon character?! I’d bet they’d reeeaaally like that one! How would your parents react if they were told just how much of a pathetic, disgusting, loser the son they raised turned out to be?! *giggles, again*”
She immediately freaked out, which caused everyone on twitter who knew her to freak out. Mission accomplished, the bees nest has been kicked over. She admits that she may have overreacted at that moment – but wouldn’t you? Believe me, if you’ve never felt this adrenaline you don’t know.
Apologies if it’s not as dramatic or drastic as my Tweets may have lead you to believe. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have freaked out as much as I did last night, so I apologize for that, as well.
No, I don’t fault her for that at all. I can say from experience in my early days working on Meridian 59, outsiders cannot possibly comprehend what sort of fight-or-flight responses your brain goes to when you get a phone call threatening your privacy, your family, your job or your way of life. Lesson: One side may have a lot more fallen soldiers than the other, but both sides are taking hits. And there’s little evidence that the instigators are belonging to any side other than Team Anarchy.
Liana Kerzner has had a relatively unique view of harassment on Gamergate – she’s gotten it both ways. Early in the experience, she counted herself as strongly pro-gamergate, but recently found herself on the outs with Gamergate.
As I write this, 8chan is tearing into my life, posting false information about me and my husband online. Some of what they’re posting is based on misinformation from a disgruntled former employee and is, unsurprisingly, totally false. I don’t care about the crap people say about me. But I never signed my family up for the abuse, so consider this my exit piece on this topic.
Liana has long been critical of overly-aggressive liberal and feminist causes, and so she was getting a fair amount of harassment from the anti-Gamergate crowd before she was turned from the GamerGate cause. But there are some telling things about her story: the SJW harassment was vicious and endurable, but Gamergate harassment is powerful enough to force her to leave, and at the same time, I saw a marked lack of support for Liana from the anti-side when her apostasy was announced. People back their own ferociously. Lesson: Ronins who refuse to embrace the party line of either side sometimes find they have to go it alone.
Kathy Sierra’s abuse long predates #GamerGate, but it is one of the most horrifying examples of the depths that true assholes will go to destroy a woman. If you only read one of these stories, read hers. Her story is an amazing fall from grace – she was a one of the most important women in tech, with a leading blog, speaking gigs, book deals, and an important job at Sun. This was all pretty much destroyed by the hacker ‘weev‘, who a friend noted is such a despicable character that his overt racism is one of his least objectionable qualities. Her crime? One cited frequently is her saying that it’s okay for bloggers to moderate comments. Kathy has learned a lot from the episode, looking at it in retrospect.
I now believe the most dangerous time for a woman with online visibility is the point at which others are seen to be listening, “following”, “liking”, “favoriting”, retweeting. In other words, the point at which her readers have (in the troll’s mind) “drunk the Koolaid”. Apparently, that just can’t be allowed. From the hater’s POV, you (the Koolaid server) do not “deserve” that attention. You are “stealing” an audience.
Remember how Anita doesn’t ‘deserve’ 7000 supporters with $170000 in earnings? She must be conning them!
It begins with simple threats. You know, rape, dismemberment, the usual.
Just think about those words there: “the usual”. That’s what you sign up for if you are a woman who dares have an opinion that goes against the party line.
If you’ve already hit the Koolaid Point, you usually have just three choices: 1. leave (They Win) 2. ignore them (they escalate, make your life more miserable, DDoS, ruin your career, etc. i.e. They Win) 3. fight back (If you’ve already hit the Koolaid Point, see option #2. They Win).
Interestingly, we’re currently seeing all of these actions happening in #GamerGate now: Leigh is trying to ignore them, Liana is leaving, Zoe and Anita are fighting back. All of them are being disparaged for their choice. Incidentally, her attacker, weev, responded with a blunt rebuttal.
Kathy Sierra is the epitome of what is wrong with my community. She had something coming to her and by the standards set by her own peers in the social justice community, there was nothing wrong with what she got.
Translation: bitch had it coming.
Leigh Alexander is an excellent writer, with a long history of truly tremendous stuff out there. She’s provocative and challenging in an industry that all-too-often favors bland cookie cutter writing. She’s also written about harassment – before Gamergate. And she is not afraid of challenging people. She sometimes rubs people the wrong way, as noted by David Jaffe. She wrote one of the ‘Gamers are Over’ articles. As people are fond of pointing out, she was only one of about a dozen such articles. All those other articles and authors though have been ignored, while Leigh gets piled on like she’s Satan-incarnate Seriously, she gets hammered and harassed on a daily basis.
Despite the strength she’s gotten from Anita and others speaking out, she’s actually so far refused to write about her experiences, but as someone who watches what she sees on Twitter and Facebook, the shit she gets is just over the line, and she’s hinted at the private correspondence we’re not seeing as being far worse. She stands defiant, refuses to do anything that she thinks would label her as ‘attempting to play the victim card’, and is trying to just keep doing what she’s always done. Since that Leigh is blunt, outspoken, and occasionally crude and crass, everything she writes keeps being ludicrously overanalyzed and thrown back in her face a million times. The lesson here: shut up and be a nice little girl.
Adria Richards is best known for being the central figure of DongleGate, the scandal where her attempting to shame sexist behavior at PyCon ended up getting everyone involved (including herself) fired. Anyway, think about how great it must be to be ‘best known’ for something as stupid and horrific as this crap. Kathy Sierra’s voice gave her the courage to write about her experience. Seriously, even if you think she shouldn’t have done what she did at PyCon, read her account and tell me if it’s in any way something a reasonable person should expect.
Death threats, fake pornographic images of me and all manners of harassment against my race, gender and religion showed up in my timeline…I knew 4chan was involved and documented their discussions about things they planned to do. I let the appropriate people know their plans…Little did I realize that 4chan would take their raid and doxxing to a whole new level as a form of seemingly twisted justice
The 4channers were very upset that I was a Black, Jewish Woman…The 4channers coached each other and provided advice on their harassment of me…The 4channers began saying things that looked like Kathy Sierra’s harassment like sending escorts and prostitutes…One 4channer fantasy involved calling prostitutes and the police to my apartment…and reporting a gas leak…SFPD police were not helpful. I was told to wait until prostitutes showed up at my house or I was physically harmed, then call them
Seriously, read her whole story. Any final words?
If there is one thing I have learned in the last year when being harassed online it is: DON’T BE QUIET ABOUT IT!
Julie is pro-gamergate. I realliy have no more information about her case beyond pointing out she had one of the best responses to a harasser in the whole scandal. 
Zoe Quinn is a controversial character, to be sure. She appears to have always been part of the 4chan/SA/hacker ethos, and even her admirers admit she marches to the beat of her own drum. From the beginning, she’s attracted hatred from some that has just seem otherworldly. This first started when she first started talking about Depression Quest, but reached otherworldly respects when her subhuman ex-boyfriend posted the lurid details of their relationship’s final days in mid-August, in what I can only describe as Revenge Outrage Porn. He confesses he feels really sorry that it blew up this way, and you can tell he means it because the blog post is still up to this day. Seriously, fuck that guy.
Oh, and if you’re going to argue that he was abused by her (“gaslighting!”), then fuck off. A breakup should be a relatively private issue. If your treatment of an ex is to weaponize reddit and 4chan to torment her to the point she fears for her life and attempt to destroy her career, then I’m going to point out that I definitely know YOU’RE an abuser, and my only word that SHE is one is coming from… well, someone who would do something like that. Whether you like Zoe Quinn or hate her, her autobiographical account on Cracked of what she’s gone through since then is essential reading for understanding how bad things can get if you piss off the wrong people while daring to have a vagina.
One of the women developers I know of who has remained silent makes a salient point: one reason why more women devs aren’t speaking out is because they know they are one crazy ex- away from being Zoe Quinn. But let’s go back to Zoe Quinn’s account:
Just to reiterate — I was not terribly famous before all this. This post from my ex wasn’t like the world finding out the president participated in a Hollywood orgy and wound up giving the nuclear launch codes to Gary Busey due to an accidental pants switch. These people had never heard of me before. But they became obsessed with the tale, and in order to get more people involved they embellished the story into a bizarre wide-ranging conspiracy in which I use sex to control the entire gaming industry behind the scenes…. Recently, I had to have a very awkward phone conversation with my dad (who is recovering from a heart attack) about what 4chan is. My dad’s an old-school biker dude who types with two fingers and has me fix the settings on his cellphone every time I see him — I still don’t think he quite understands what all this has been about. He just knows now to hang up when someone calls and screams “YOUR DAUGHTER’S A WHORE” into the receiver.
You can also review the 4Chan logs where the 4Chan #burgersandfries crew discussed their plans to discredit and destroy her. We Hunted the Mammoth helpfully summarizes. (and points out that her jilted ex occasionally stopped by that chat room to help them out in their efforts) – the complete logs can be found there for those willing to wade through the muck.
The 4channers express their hatred and disgust towards her; they express their glee at the thought of ruining her career; they fantasize about her being raped and killed. They wonder if all the harassment will drive her to suicide, and only the thought of 4chan getting bad publicity convinces some of them that this isn’t something they should hope for. They gleefully distribute nude pictures of her, posting links to online archives of them and emailing them directly both to Quinn’s supporters. They dig up all sorts of information about her and her family and do their best to track down anyone and everyone with even the most tenuous links to her. One industrious researcher even manages to find a picture of Quinn at age 13; while acknowledging that it had no relevance whatsoever to issues of gaming ethics, she posts a link to it anyway. And then there is the ongoing discussion of her vagina, described variously as “wide,” large enough to “fit 12 dicks at once, and “a festering cheese-filled vagina” that leaves “a trail of cunt slime” wherever she goes. Several 4channers speculate about its smell.
Right now, #gamergaters will bend over backwards to stress that she’s no longer the story, that she’s no longer relevant, and of course, that she probably made it all up. Still, my twitter feed still includes an accusation that she’s a murderer and Reddit devoured the account of someone who went to the court date where she refreshed her restraining order against the guy who clearly harassed her by weaponizing 4chan and reddit against her. This article has a Reddit score of 655 – literally higher than anything on the first 6 pages of KotakuInAction today. The harassers using the well-meaning chorus of #Gamergate as a camoflauge for their horrible harassment of women just can’t seem to quit Zoe Quinn.
Criado Perez’ experience predates #gamergate. It was, at the start of this thing, what I used for weeks as my example of ‘you don’t understand what harassment actually looks like on the Internet. It’s still true. Remember, read this, and imagine it was being aimed at your wife, your daughter, or your mother.
But now we find that twitter has once again optimised its platform for abusers: less than a year after they started to automatically include links to abusive tweets in the report form, they have silently removed this functionality. There has been no announcement, no explanation. I discovered it last night when yet another man decided to make me the target of his misogynistic bile and found that I had to go back to the abuse, and view it again, in order to find the link to report it.
Does all of this affect her? Absolutely.
Yes, my mental health has been affected by the non-stop abuse and promises to track me down and violate me. Yes I am more fearful, less in control of my emotions. Yes I do suffer from flashbacks, yes I am easily triggered. This is before we even get to the point that at least one of the threats that was made against me is something that has happened to me already.
Lizzy F is a twitter user who considers herself strongly pro-GamerGate in Cathy Young’s article on Gamergate. She, like many women, had to hold up a picture of herself to establish herself as a bonafide women, and not a sock puppet. So instead, she’s a ‘traitor to her cause’. You know, for having an opinion about video games.
I have been told to drop dead on multiple occasions, and received a threat of “I hope your windows are secure.” The last statement was sent from someone who also threatened to release the home address of another female supporter. I have been called a gender traitor, a “token,” all off the female derogatory slurs in the book, and even had my “woman card” revoked, somehow.
Jade Raymond was the producer for the original Assassin’s Creed (well pre-GG). She was also mentioned in Cathy Young’s article, but in this case, she gets it hysterically wrong.
There have been no hate campaigns against far more prominent women in the field such as Ubisoft executive Jade Raymond, who helped create the hit game Assassin’s Creed,
What Jade Raymond encountered was blatant and utter sexism and misogyny from the press and the fans. Was it hate? I’d argue yes. I don’t think there is ANY argument that it wasn’t harassment. The introduction of Jade Raymond to the gaming world is one of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had being a member of the games industry. There was Jade porn. Kotaku did a now deleted story about how good she smells. She got a TON of total creepdom from across the whole net. I mean, it was fucking sleazy as shit. Most of it is gone now, presumably because Jade Raymond has Ubisoft’s lawyers to back her up, a privilege that Zoe Quinn lacks.
GGFeminist is a university academic who considers herself pro-Gamergate. She got some lovely mail, threatening her for … again… having an opinion on videogames. Also, someone left a nice message on her whiteboard. 
Shortly after Brianna Wu’s incident (who keep in mind, is strongly Anti-GG), GGFeminist noted that a lot of the fingerprints looked very similar, effectively suggesting a theory that a third anarchistic party is working from the shadows, poking the anthill intent on fomenting chaos.
Ok NOW I’M PISSED WEEKS ago I received EXACT same threat as this person, right down to wording. (1/4) #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/HHSQGCSYG9 — GG+Fem (@GGfeminist) October 11, 2014
Jennifer Hepler felt compelled to flee the industry after she made the off-hand comment that, as a writer, she was jealous that she couldn’t just skip the combat parts of a game so she could enjoy the story. She denied the obvious, but reading below, can you imagine wanting to stay in an industry that treated you like this?
After Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011, Hepler told Polygon, many of the people involved in the game’s development received angry emails, abusive forum posts and petitions calling for them to be fired. About that time, someone dug up an old interview Hepler participated in six years earlier. In the interview Hepler mentioned that her least favorite part of working in the game industry was playing through games and combat. Some of the interview was put in the official forums as evidence that Hepler was to blame for changes in the game’s combat. The forum post was removed and Hepler went on maternity leave. But then the following February someone created a forum post resurfacing the interview and called Hepler the “cancer” that was destroying BioWare.
She sees a real chilling effect from devs who may not want to make themselves targets by joining the games industry.
“That’s the biggest risk, in my opinion: that we will lose out on the talents of people who would make fantastic games taht we would all be better for the playing, because they legitimately don’t want to make themselves into targets.”
Anita Sarkeesian has been controversial since she started. After her kickstarter earned $160K after asking for only $6000, people have been attacking her endlessly, claiming that she’s a fraud and a hack, faulting her science, and claiming that clearly she is conning these people out of all of their money. I am willing to bet that she will happly give a refund to anyone who asks. I bet few will, because it turns out this is a topic that a lot of people care about. I’ve both criticised and praised Anita’s stuff in the past, and she’s definitely made some missteps, but there is no way that it is on par with the hate that she has had piled on. Even before #Gamergate, people were making rape porn. People threatened to bomb GDC because they were giving her an award. They made a flash game where you could punch her in the face. But nothing was even close to what happened when she had the bright idea and/or misfortune to drop her latest video (which was actually her best, IMHO) in the middle of Gamergate. The vitriol was fierce and immediate, and included death threats so vile that she fled her house and went to the FBI. Fortunately for all of us, Anita has been quite resilient in her resolve. Rather than talk about this more, I’d urge everyone to watch her video, as it describes the harassment she’s undergone very clearly. If she looks nervous, that’s probably because she’s STILL getting bomb threats. You know, for having an opinion about video games. The ones below are from last night.
Today marks the 3rd time I’ve gone on stage after specific death and bomb threats where issued to an event where I’m scheduled to speak. — Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 11, 2014
I’m safe. Extra security measures taken. Authorities notified. But the whole gaming industry must take a stand against the attacks on women.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 11, 2014
While I believe that there is a strong current of assholes using GamerGate as cover for being truly shitty human beings, the bulk of #gamergate genuinely believes that they are trying to stamp that out. As I write this, some asshole started a junk account to be a generally vile human being in Anita Sarkeesian’s direction. Some dedicated #Gamergaters, including I note one who never agreed with any of her theories, sleuthed down the problem person and got him banned. Good for them. GamerGate needs more public executions – ESPECIALLY of those who claim to speak in their name.
Because #GamerGate has a huge problem, and one that I don’t know if it’s solvable. If you don’t follow #GamerGate closely, then you know it only because of its tainted origins – Zoe and Anita, both of whom are darlings of press and devs, and both of whom went through hell and back, and both of whom STILL get threats, abuse and creepy behavior aimed their way, 6 weeks later.
If you’re not in #Gamergate, odds are this shit is the first thing that comes to mind. Is this fair? No, its not fair at all. But it IS a public perception issue of incredible proportions. #GamerGate is always going to struggle to escape its poisonous roots. The problem is really that GamerGate-the-Event has been tainted horribly, and I don’t know how GamerGate-the-cause can escape that. My best solution would be better organization, to better focus the cause on important topics, and be able to more officially denounce bad actors.
Do I think that #Gamergate has its share of creepers and harassers buried in the ranks? I absolutely do. The traffic on the Brianna Wu 8chan thread and the Zoe Quinn KiA thread pretty much makes that clear. I believe that there is a small number of Gamergaters (probably 1%) who is using #Gamergate as camoflauge to do incredibly shitty shit to further the cause. However, the more I look at it, the more that I’m convinced that the real problem are assholes who just want to watch the world burn. They probably don’t consider pro- or anti-, they just want to make people mad. And right now, the easiest way to make people mad is to dox an anti-gamergater. Because it just reinforces the existing narrative that #gamergate is about harassment. Which just forces #gamergaters to get angry, defensive and self-righteous. And so the perpetual outrage machine just keeps churning on.
More accounts worth reading: @CPI. @kav_p. @milky_candy. Jenn Frank and Mattie Brice. @The_Goldbat.
If I find more identifiable, verifiable stories of women getting harassed, I’ll be happy to add those as well (I poked hard on the GG side, but most of what I found was usually a single tweet or screengrab – more longform written descriptions would help). I’m sure this could be made endless. The thought is depressing.
One of the thoughts that I had is “wow, imagine if Online Harassment had an Anita, the way that Women in Games does.” By that, I mean a crusader who owned the problem, became emblematic of fighting it, and worked as hard to get game companies, media companies and state, local and federal to try to get them to take it seriously and be sure that women (and men!) who find themselves subject to harassment feel like they actually have someplace to turn when life goes sideways due to an organized hit. I’m serious when I say that I think the freedom to write online without fear is a huge civil rights issue.
But I wouldn’t wish the harassment THAT person would receive on my worst enemy in the world.
But I can’t stress enough: if this happens to you, document it. You’ll want it for the cops. And more to the point, we need more people to get mad about this stuff.
I should also note that I have been harassed. My blog has been shill-bombed by 4chan, had increased hack attempts, and been DDOSed. A smattering of people have tried (unsuccessfully) to get EA to fire me, or organize boycotts of BioWare, in an attempt to silence my point of view. I’ve gotten some creepy tweets, emails asking about my bank security and Sea Lioning to the extreme, enough where a sane person would consider it harassment. And what I’m telling you is that THAT’S what some people think harassment is. THAT’S what they think Anita and Zoe are complaining about. It’s not. They’re getting harassed++. What I’ve gone through is NOTHING like what they’ve endured. And if you haven’t endured one of these campaigns either, you probably have no idea what it’s actually like in the belly of the beast.
There’s an old saying that ‘politics ain’t beanbag’. And I’m definitely dodging some rocks thrown at me. But it’s different for me. These women are dodging thrown hand grenades on a live mine field. Meanwhile, I’ve actually gained esteem from the angry mob by taking the harassment and sticking around. I’ve earned Street Cred. Nothing of that sort gets granted to Zoe, Anita, Briana, Kathy and the sort.
So what can be done? In the long run? I don’t know. In the short run – some advice I’d give to both sides.
1. Start with empathy. Start with a position of support and empathy. You think they’re lying? Fine. Investigate it later, but don’t let the words ‘she’s probably making it up’ be your default position.
2. Be aware the harassed person is freaked out and adrenalized. And why not? You would be too. Don’t immediately spoil for a fight with someone undergoing this sort of an event. Don’t pile on with immediate accusations of lying.
3. Concede that both sides repudiate harassment, and shitheads doing this stuff aren’t representative of either side. Both sides have people who are doing shitty things. Don’t deny it. But more importantly, both sides need to be aware that uninvested third parties are TRYING to stir the pot. Every time you overreact, you give them a victory.
4. Don’t blame the victim or imply that she ‘had it coming’. Nothing Zoe did was remotely proportional to the shit she’s had to endure. Briana’s forwarded meme may have blurred into tastelessness, but saying she ‘brought it upon herself’ is dickish in the extreme. And there’s nothing that Anita is doing that merits her getting bomb threats every time she is about to go on a stage.
5. Denounce but don’t be dickishly defensive. It’s tempting to go defensive – after all, the people YOU know and trust aren’t shitheads, but immediately going defensive when you’re attacked really looks like a total lack of empathy.
6. Investigate and purge. If people are doing shitty things under the banner of #GamerGate, then #Gamergate needs to do more than denounce it. They need to take care of that person fucking Mafia style. They need to raise the visibility of exposed charlatans. They need to make it clear that GamerGate is #NotYourSword for evil asshole shitheads. And this goes for the anti- side as well.
And if you’re attacked- tell your story. Give the facts as neutrally as you can, and Capture and share as much as you can feel comfortable. Document it for the historians like myself. Give details that you know to the sleuths who want to defend the integrity of their movement. Whatever your opinions are on corruption in the press, the harassment has to stop, and the only way that it stops is if enough people get mad at it.
So listen and believe, everyone. But there is one more important component. And that is for the harassed to speak.
Impressive article. Maybe there IS a chance something good can come of this.
Oh dear god, you do not tell your story when you’re harassed, that’s giving life to the trolls. They will multiply from there, that’s why the police tell you not to advocate it!
Dear GamerGate Ladies. Do you want to know why there aren’t more stories about your harassment? Because you’re listening to guys like this. It’s hard to piece together any sort of narrative based on a couple of tweets posted on a tumbler.
Absolutely false. These accounts were reported on twitter and no one batted an eye until now. It’s abhorrent that it took 20 days for something to even be reported about GG-Feminist. Seriously, these cases of harassment and doxxing have been brought up multiple times with 0 response until now.
If you want harassment to stop, stop ignoring it when it’s happening to a group you do not agree with. Sure it’s happening now, but how many weeks did it take of radio silence that was saying ‘The fact that you are being harassed is not important than these people’?
I’ve said constantly that harassment is happening on both sides. I said it last week in my Nero interview, for example. The problem is that the GG stories are not well written and well-articulated, the way that, say, Adria’s, Anita’s, and Kathy’s stories are. I literally was digging through twitter and tumblers for the ones I found, trying to find context. It was almost impossible to determine context or history.
If GG wants their side’s harassment to be taken more seriously, they need to put it on display in a more digestable format than that shitty tumbler. No joke.
Or maybe we should do the smart thing and hide it away so we don’t breathe life into the trolls.
In what way is to be suggested? It’s not like there are reputible blogs/outlets that would even touch it in fear of coming out pro GamerGate. I mean, look at GaymerX. The mention of something being remotely GamerGate put them in a cross hair and had them absolutely slammed by people against GG.
Anita’s, Zoe’s, etc are better documented because people who have outlets to post on with a level of credibility and experience interviewing were able to have some form of back and forth or covered off of someone elses’ back and forth with the ones harassed. That didn’t happen to people like GG Feminist until now. Yea, the accounts are twitter posts and tumbler blogs, but if no one is looking to come in and look further, how are these people going to know what is pertinent or not information to post?
If you are not GG-Feminist, and you already know her story, then you have absolutely nothing to gain personally from her story being told. No one directly benefits from disclosing harassment. Everyone who does so on their own behalf, gambles that shining a light on the harassment will mean that it will be less likely to happen again.
Harassment will not stop if Gamergate is dismantled and never used again, but IT WOULD BE A LOVELY START.
ALL HARASSMENT IS BAD. Quit being part of a leaderless, shrill, angry mob with no goals. These are two different statements that are related.
Plenty of outlets try to cater to this crowd. Of course, then the angry mob turns on them the moment they attempt actual impartial journalism. See the Escapist.
GG doesn’t have friendly press outlets because they shit on everyone who tries to reach out to them.
Bullshit, Real harassment was thrown out there e.g. NotYourShield creators workplace being called to get him fired to show how games medias double morals was in place. It got just as many retweets and pretty much all journalists was told about it.
I literally have no evidence of what happened to this guy. I have no idea if he was fired for this, or if he was fired for other reasons. Since my article focused on women intentionally (and was plenty long enough just with that), his coverage didn’t make time.
There is no evidence of such, they called his workplace, his boss was pissed, he tweeted, “shit I’m gonna be fired over this” and later that night there was an email from the boss saying that he was no longer needed.
So we have a tweet or two and his word? Has he got a long piece? Did anyone on GG verify his story? This is not me snarking, I didn’t find anything from a casual search but I didn’t look very hard.
So…. care to elaborate?
By keeping harassment hidden it will magically disappear?
You think those doing it are merely doing it for attention, and not to cause distress in their target?
I’ve already explained my view on that here http://www.zenofdesign.com/the-games-press-isnt-attacking-gamergate-its-ignoring-them/#comments
Please remember: it’s the harrassed person priviledge to decide wheter to make it public, to denounce, or not.
Those attemps to silence targets, examplified here – by gamergate (and sorry, trying to keep it as neutral as I can) , http://8chan.co/gg/src/1413016072862.png , and somehow made “credible” because “that’s what the police says”, are just another subtile way to further harass and shame the victims who dare speak out.
Sure I will elaborate.
If you cave in and spread the message that you’re being harassed, you 1. increase the amount of harassment 2. increase the number of harassers 3. make yourself a target for future harassers and 4. increase the risk of the harassment evolving into something more serious.
Where have you been the last 20 years?
“Where have you been the last 20 years”
Here, on Earth.
Where every single serious campaign against harassment first message is “SPEAK OUT”.
The amount of victim blaming coming out of some people is really destabilizing
Anyhow
I guess “It’s what the police says you do” is the new “It’s got what plants crave, it’s got electrolytes!”
That is just not true. Anyone that knows about harassment knows that you get the fuck out of the way if you think there is anything close to a serious threat and if its not a serious threat then why the hell would you want to be the target of trolls in the future?
You most certainly haven’t been a part of the internet and actually tried being harassed here.
“If you cave in and spread the message that you’re being harassed, you 1. increase the amount of harassment 2. increase the number of harassers 3. make yourself a target for future harassers and 4. increase the risk of the harassment evolving into something more serious.”
Some people need a refresher in how to avoid basic victim blaming.
Please, reread what you wrote.
And try to see the similarities with “if you want to avoid being raped, avoid wearing a short skirt alone at night, and most of all avoid looking at men”
This point is of tantamount importance.
Please, please take some time and think about it
Combating and denouncing victim blaming is not some 5th-wave-feminism fluke ideology. It’s part of the basics of our justice ideology.
It’s not victim blaming to say that speaking out loud about harassment generate more trolls.
it’s logic.
Brianna Wu did more than “speak out.” She created at least one sock-puppet Twitter account, @BROLOLZ, and openly mocked GGers on a regular basis.
It didn’t mean she deserved what she got. But it was not what I would call wise.
The “don’t feed the trolls” strategy has been the default, and I’ve both practiced and advocated for it. It has one little problem: When someone does speak out, it leaves them hanging out there alone, vulnerable to accusations that they are just seeking attention.
One of the biggest reasons that most devs that aren’t sitting on the sidelines are coming down on the anti-GG side is that they do see the harassment that never gets publicized, most if not all of us have seen it happen to someone we know, and we’ve seen how what gets aimed at women is categorically and quantifiably worse.
I think it’s a mistake to dismiss GG because of the harassment issue. But it would also be a mistake for GG to dismiss the harassment. It’s a very real factor, and it can’t just be ignored.
–Dave
The trick is to not leave them out there alone, but to figure out a way for them to have a resource they can turn to that can handle and investigate things without going nutballs. I can say from even my own minor experience, being under attack is a terrifyingly lonely experience, and I for a minute forgot I *had* resources to turn to.
I think that there is a discussion to be had about the best course of action to take if you are subject to something like this. And I can say that a great deal of perpetrators are just looking for a reaction.
But I think that we should probably let a credible expert speak on the subject, instead of relying on second-hand information looked up online.
What’s more important here though? Personal safety or spreading the story.
Police routinely tell people don’t antagonize stalkers and harassers on the internet. This idea that GG made that up or that Police procedure is designed to encourage further harassment is laughably stupid.
Yes Anita and Zoe and Brianna talk about the shit they’ve gotten, but they are known names now. They are in a community. People rush to their defense
Who the fuck is GGfeminst? Are people going to remember Ivy? A lot of the #NYS people only tweet one or 2 things about GG every couple days. After that they are back to their normal lives. Is it in their best internet to put their lives on twitter to win an argument? To convince assholes that they are real women, real people and getting harassed.
Maybe if our *press* listened to them before. Maybe if they hadn’t been ignored for weeks their stories would have been told better, but now what can they do? They are pretty much fucked. It’s ridiculous that I’ve seen people getting doxxed, personal info on pastebins, public threats, calls to homes and families, ignored for weeks and now that people “kind of” care.
“Well you should have talked about it louder. Why did you call the police.”
I mean, WTF. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK!
And another thing, many women have been speaking up. GGFeminist got threats a week before Brianna and talked about it on twitter. It was commonly brought up. She did speak up. She was fucking ignored.
Here’s the thing. Brianna is now getting loads of support because she called the cops, got safe, and documented everything in a very readable and understandable format. As a result, #gamergate is able to react and police her complaint.
I searched through everything I could find for more information on GGFeminists’ claims. All i could find was on twitter. One of the tweets that was on a tumbler wasn’t there when I searched for it. She would have likely gotten more coverage, more inside and out, if her story was easier to parse and distribute.
She documented everything. You’re simply doing damage control.
Even before this conversation, I’ve contacted her for any additional documentation she has. If it’s out there, it will be added here.
This is a very impressive article, tip of the hat for cataloguing and writing it all up.
I very much agree with your calls to action but I would also add this is potentially a good opportunity to lobby Governments re: harassment and what they can do about it. It’s never been as much in “the gaming eye” as it is right now. I questioned ages ago on the escapist if GG could ultimately actually become a campaign against harassment. Is this a chance to gather momentum and push criminal cyber-harassment onto the national agenda of several countries?
Denouncing harassment is good for certain types of behaviour (people being jerks) but I’d also deffo like if criminals like the ones above were caught and *publicly convicted with extreme notice* if possible.
I’m very much naive about this stuff, I know some people are caught and prosecuted (GGFem’s was caught, as have a few of CCP’s tormentors IIRC.) But still, is there not more that can be done by public enforcement agencies?
In Kathy Sierra’s piece, she says that your odds of getting law enforcement to take you seriously is less likely than winning the lottery. I sense from what Anita’s been saying that things have been getting better. However, the only person whose actually combatted this stuff semisuccessfully is Jade. Because she had Ubisoft lawyers at her back.
I think you should also mention how cyber bullying and threats are a problem for law enforcement, as cross border threats and harrasement is something they might have no way to easily deal with. Also one needs to realize that in terms of police budget that one guy looking into low propability threats takes away one guy who could look into more serious things.
So i think most law enforcements aren’t currently up to the task, other than giving out general advice on how to behave, as they haven’t been enabled to deal with such by governments. And are therefore in some shitty situation themselves.
Damien cutting excessive noise and going for facts. Nobody has in no side has given me a clearer picture. As one pro gg gamer I thank you.
“Jennifer Hepler felt compelled to flee the industry after she made [a] comment”. From what I know, this is wrong.
http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/16/bioware-writer-quits-after-death-threats-to-family-3925970/
“Jennifer Helper has contacted us to make it clear that she did not leave BioWare as a direct result of the harassment she received at the hands of gamers.
[…]
‘I am moving on from BioWare now to pursue other opportunities […]”
No stories from The Fine Young Capitalists to share? Nothing about Quinn harassing them?
Correction: Quinn and Kramer both harassing them.
TFYC isn’t a person. It’s several people, and it’s hard to tell who’s who. If what ZQ did to them is what you consider harassment, it doesn’t meet my definition. She called them out for being shady. The result was, their Indiegogo got funded. And then they brought her name up again, as Damion pointed out in an earlier article, even after they’d declared that their search for publicity was “not about Zoe Quinn.”
It’s not like he hasn’t written about them before.
http://www.zenofdesign.com/heres-why-no-one-believes-the-its-not-about-her-angle/
TFYC weren’t harassed, ZQ just told some lies about them because that’s kind of her schtick.
Lame thing to do for sure, but harassment? I would say no.
Another thing there were hacks and leaked info Ilegaly got but still damming who was selectively overlooked because how it started and who it condened. The overlooking is bad and e no matter what and fed the fires more, dead gamers, feminism,sjw, censure and we have epic pile up.
This is a bad movie all around. A lot of victims, a few villains and no true heroes because everyone pointed fingers at people thy should not have.
Great article. However, one thing I think there should be a caveat to the point about asking harassment victims to speak. Yes, they should save their story and tell other people about it, but not immediately. If you talk to the FBI, they’ll tell you that if you receive an online threat, then you should not respond to it. The vast majority of online threats and harassment are solely intended to provoke a reaction from the victim, so they would only be giving the attacker what they want. And if the threat is credible, then the last thing you want to do is give out information about where you are or what you are doing.
http://www.haltabuse.org/help/threats.shtml
So yes, they should tell their story, but after they’re sure that they are safe.
Never mind. Please delete this. I realize this isn’t the best time to talk about it.
I’m not necessarily saying ‘speak immediately’. However, numerous people have gotten strength from what Anita, Kathy and Adria had to say this week, mostly much after the fact.
Yes, safety should always come first.
Rapidly going through this site you linked (excellent btw), nowhere is it to be read to keep it silent.
Make sure you are safe, don’t contact the abuser. Don’t tell people where you are. That’s it.
How this became to be twisted as “don’t talk about it on social media” is beyond me.
This was a mostly good and fair article, but I’ll beg to disagree with one thing in particular: when you said that the first thing that comes to the mind of people who are not familiar with GamerGate is the harassment, you argue that it is caused by its origins and the harassment that keeps going on.
But I’ll counter-argue that the main reason that outsiders only see harassment in GamerGate is because it is how the mainstream media has painted it. If you yourself said that you believe only 1% of the people who use the hashtag use it for harassment; then how come that 1% gets 99% of the mainstream coverage on the subject? If an outsider reads on several mainstream websites that GamerGate is a horrible misogynistic organized movement for harassing people, and then goes on to read some tweets of random people they have never heard about saying that GamerGate is not harassment, I don’t see why they’d believe in the latter rather than the former.
I think GamerGate has been “tainted” a lot more by the clearly biased coverage of mainstream media attributing to them everything that is wrong in the world than by their own (sometimes misguided) actions. Had the mainstream media coverage been fair since the beginning instead of shining its selective spotlight only on the worst parts of the “movement”, we could already be having the important discussions we should be having instead of just mindlessly hating at each other.
If you read my article, you’ll note that I pointed out that the media isn’t covering just the harassment over the last month. Until Brianna, they weren’t covering Gamergate at all. What this means is that what people who read most of the games press knew is (a) what blew up on twitter and (b) what the origins of the event are. The origins are harassment.
What blows up on twitter is the most egregiously awful shit of the day. For example, last week my twitter feed was talking about Brianna, about Anita getting bomb threats (again!) and about Zoe getting stalked at her restraining order hearing. If you’re not paying close attention to #gamergate but that’s what the tag is associated with, then #gamergate is DEFINITELY going to be associated with that crap, even if the people behind #Gamergate disavow it until the ends of the earth.
It would help if GG had leadership that could make such disavowments official. But instead, the outside world just sees an angry mob that occasionally does some really shitty stuff. Gamergate looks ENTIRELY different from the outside than the inside.
“Until Brianna, they weren’t covering Gamergate at all.”
Really? Let’s take a look, shall we? Starting by August 28th, which was the day of the fateful “Gamers are Dead” articles (and discounting those articles themselves), we have:
Sep 5th, Independent: “But the man-baby jamboree wants more blood, and now they’ve somehow managed to make their orchestrated campaign of harassment about “ethics”.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/zoe-quinn-and-the-orchestrated-campaign-of-harassment-from-some-gamers-9715427.html
Sep 6th, Vox: “So long as these misogynistic bullies are part of #GamerGate, it will be hard to take the movement’s other concerns seriously.”
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/6/6111065/gamergate-explained-everybody-fighting
Sep 7th, TechCrunch: “This stance has allowed them to rationalize almost any harassment and to engage in a wide variety of victim blaming.”
http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/07/the-gamergate-question/
Sep 10th, The Telegraph: “a vile hate-filled online campaign”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11082629/Gamergate-Misogyny-death-threats-and-a-mob-of-angry-trolls-Inside-the-dark-world-of-video-games.html
Sep 11th, The Telegraph: “Their livid arguments and the vitriolic online abuse, all gathered on the internet under the hashtag “gamergate””
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/11087308/Women-strike-back-in-the-video-games-sex-war.html
Sep 12th? (can’t pinpoint the date), Bustle: “it’s best described as a long-simmering pot of male privilege, misogyny, and slut-shaming in the gamer community boiling over”
http://www.bustle.com/articles/38742-what-is-gamer-gate-its-misogyny-under-the-banner-of-journalistic-integrity
Sep 24th, NPR: “Online trolls have long attacked women in the video game industry. But during #Gamergate, it’s gotten so bad that two women left their homes”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/09/24/349835297/-gamergate-controversy-fuels-debate-on-women-and-video-games
Oct 2nd, Slate: “The Benghazi of the video game world, the GamerGate movement is a baffling mess of accusations and anger” / “GamerGate never was and never will be about corruption in journalism, but is simply a loosely organized collective that wants to bully women out of the gaming world.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/10/02/gamergate_strikes_again_pressures_intel_into_pulling_its_ads_from_gamasutra.html?wpisrc=obnetwork
Oct 2nd, The Verge: “#GamerGate supporters try to silence calls for video game equality”
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/2/6886747/intel-buckles-to-anti-feminist-campaign-by-pulling-ads-from-gaming
Oct 3rd, CNN: “Intel pulls ads over sexism in video game drama”
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/03/tech/gaming-gadgets/intel-ad-gamasutra/index.html
Oct 3rd, GamesIndustry.biz: “describing Intel’s decision “as a result of pressure from the vile slanderers of the Gater community.””
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-03-game-devs-urge-you-to-write-intel-in-response-to-gamergate
Oct 7th, The Week: “Intel’s awful capitulation to #gamergate’s sexist thugs”
http://theweek.com/article/index/269377/intels-awful-capitulation-to-gamergates-sexist-thugs
Oct 8th, The Verge: “in practice it’s a months-long campaign of harassment against women and progressive voices”
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/8/6919179/stop-supporting-gamergate
Oct 10th, Gawker: “#Gamergate has never really been about ethics” / “[Intel] had been duped by gamers—and fake gamers—into supporting a misogynist movement.”
http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for-non-geeks-1642909080
That’s what I found looking over here for a bit (mainly following the Wikipedia article’s references).
But even if you discount all that, there is still the fact that people are quite aggressively attacking GamerGate on Twitter itself. It holds to the same I said above: if @RespectableGameJournalist or @IndieGameDeveloper say that “#GamerGate are all a bunch of misogynists and they’re harassing everyone!” and @RandomGamerGuy says “We are not misogynists! We are against harassment!”, it’s clear who the uninformed people would side with.
My point was that no games journalists were. And I linked many of the same articles you linked in my article yesterday.
And some of that media DID in fact cover harassment of Gamergaters. RCP and Breitbart in particular.
Ok, sorry. I took a look at your last article and now I have a clearer idea of what you’re saying. And yeah, seems like I’ve misunderstood some things.
But still, as I said, even if they aren’t talking about GamerGate on the “press”, they are still quite vocal about it on Twitter itself. A good part of the angriest GG detractors have pretty large audiences.
It’s just that… Every time someone asks on twitter “What is #GamerGate?”, the overwhelming response is “misogynist assholes”. And then those people in turn go tell everybody else the same thing. All this misrepresentation is frustrating. I don’t even agree with most of the “GamerGate goals”, I just want people to be rational, and this kind of thing isn’t helping at all.
Gustavo, I tried to explain this – this is the price to pay for having an origin built in the asshattery that was the ‘five guys’ stuff, and being so leadership that bad actors cannot be convincingly disowned.
Gustavo, you should seriously consider just saying what you feel separate from GG. There ought to be no sides. The accusations are not entirely baseless.
Imagine for a second that you are someone testifying in a criminal trial. Imagine you receive a threat where the person says they’re going to kill you if you testify, they know where you live, and they post your address to prove it. You know, something that happens in the real world.
Now you are actually afraid for your personal safety. Do you:
1. Get the hell out of there, get to somewhere safe, call the police, and under their direction, lay low while they investigate the situation.
2. Go onto Twitter, tell everyone in the entire world where you’re going, do not contact the police, taunt the people who threatened you, and then have your buddies post a link to some product you sell.
The behavior of the people involved tell you exactly how credible these “threats” are. Random people who intend to rape or kill you do not warn you before they do so!
Over the past two months we’ve probably had the most doxxings/day in the history of the internet. And yet, there has been not ONE assault in real life as a result of all these horrible threats. Not. One. Does that make them ok? Nope, they’re criminal. Does it make them credible? Not in the slightest.
Brad Wardell got doxxed. Someone even took pictures of his house. Did he “flee for his life”? Was he “forced out of his home”? Nope, he didn’t do anything except contact the police, who told him not to say anything about it, like the police will do when you actually GO TO THEM TO REPORT SOMETHING LIKE THIS. It’s hard to take this harassment seriously when there is no evidence of danger, and the people involved act so laughably.
Nice, argument to moderation. Those “SJW”s are just as bad, right?
Not so far as I’ve seen, to be honest. Most SJW abuse seems to be closer to whispering campaign type shit. I’m fairly certain that what happened to GGFeminist and Alexandra was from a third-party bombthrower trying just to stir up shit. But so far, the damage done the other way – to Zoe, Anita, Briana, Jenn, Mattie, Leigh, etc – has been much more substantial. But that’s just my two cents. If the GG harassed did a better job of documenting and investigating their abuse, I might sing a different tale. Them working hard to catch the Anita spammer was a good model for them to emulate in the future.
I was being sarcastic, by the way. The first TotalBiscuit post regarding this was written in that manner(both sides are equally guilty!) an I’ve hated it ever since.
Now regarding the harassment: Yes, the threats etc are bad, but there is another side to this. Imagine being someone on the “SJW” side, you know that these guys talk shit constantly and plan to purge you, but you also know that they have this thing passed around about “seeming and acting polite” etc. Then you see people come to you with the most loaded questions and conspiracy theories. When you tell them to fuck off, you get an answer like “I’ve been nothing but polite, how mature and Professional of you.”. If you don’t, you probably are going to be answering the same old refuted questions and not get anywhere because you won’t be believed. It’s exhausting at best and near-psychological warfare at worst. And they are winning, because check the “SJW” sites in question. After this shit started how many critiques have they done from a feminist angle?
Anyway, I am someone who can be called a feminist and a SJW(Fun fact, I was a redpiller two years ago.) I simply cannot be arsed to care about the harrasment that Gamergate side has gotten. Most of all, Liana K., who decided to go all chill-girl, but to cry when she got bitten. It’s pretty much the same as The Escapist being declared the enemy after the last day’s article situation.
And funny thing, even the harassment they got was made into a rhetoric of either “See, I didn’t make a big deal of it.” or “See, we get harassed too, why are you guys not paying equal attention to us”. Another funny thing would be when the “SJW” side gets harassed, people go “Proof of it ever happening? Proof that they didn’t do it to themselves?” but when GG gets harassed, crickets.
I’ve göne on too long, but I’m pretty pissed at this situation.
So basically nobody should make any attempt to show both sides of the story? If people you care about are getting harassed, who cares if people you disagree with are? That’s exactly the kind of hypocrisy GamerGate is fed up with.
Ummm, the Escapist and Liana K. got branded “enemy” by GG, so wth are you talking about?
Also, again, false equivalency. People I care about are getting much much worse treatment (I wonder by who?) and I just don’t have the time nor mental power to care about the abusers and their sycophants. Not really sorry if that inconveniences you.
Shadow_Nirvana is arguing that people on the GG side deserve harassment because they are “sycophants.” What a swell person!
I don’t think anyone deserves to be threatened with death, rape, or subjected to torrents of abusive language, regardless of their personal beliefs. I have no doubt that at least some harassment has flowed both ways, because that’s the nature of the beast — but I’ve seen no evidence of an *orchestrated* campaign against any pro-GG person or group. And as hard as GamerGate has been working to demonstrate a lack of ethics from various persons, you’d think they’d be able to point to one.
That doesn’t mean abuse hasn’t happened, and where it’s happened, I still condemn it — but I don’t see any reason to think there’s two equally mobilized networks at war here.
How are you certain that harassment comes from a third party?
When you say you’re “fairly certain” don’t you mean “this is what I want to believe because it better fits my narrative, even though there’s no evidence that it’s true”?
“If the GG harassed did a better job of documenting and investigating their abuse”
You keep harping on this, claiming that GG tales of harassment are not well written enough. They are saying they’re being harassed, not writing the next great American novel. These people aren’t professional writers, unlike many of the anti-GG people.
What happened to “listen and believe”? Who gives a shit if their accounts aren’t well-written? Not everyone has an MFA.
I appreciate you writing these stories, I’m going to have two points to make.
1 – Saying Eron is an abuser, frankly, to me, is ridiculous. You may think he’s an asshole for airing it all in public but as someone who took the time to read the logs of the conversations he had with her, it’s pretty obvious she’s a really shitty person overall.
I don’t condone the harassment but to call Eron subhuman when the logs showed he was a victim of emotional abuse, to me, is beyond stupid. But he’s not a woman, so people don’t care.
2 – I would have liked for you to note down the men that have been doxxed as well. I feel to focus only on the women is kind of implying they’re the only ones targeted. I recall a simultaneous doxxing of Milo, Eron’s parents, boogie, totalbiscuit, Adam Balwdin & jontron for example. (plus shoe0nhead but she’s a woman)
Most high-profile males have also been targetted for doxxing. In fact, I’d rather say, most high-profile persons since the women who were doxxed were generally the most popular ones with lots of followers.
There’s this banner floating around – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BzzdxBfCQAAy9dd.png:large – Still has a female slant but at least, it’s a more accurate representation of what’s been going on. (Plus Phil Fish on the anti-GG side)
The logs of the private converstaions are extremely one-sided, because we see just one person behaving naturally. It’s pretty much the same thing as the guy who posted a video of his wife acting immaturely in their trip to the lake, because he knew that he was going to divorce but she didn’t. He kept egging her on and making her get madder very subtlely. Same situation here. From the way the Eron douche continues to pile on despite the abuse, one can see that he is abusive and vindictive. Also needy as hell, but that’s completely another topic.
I have no problem believing that Zoe isn’t perfect. No one is. I also try not to hold against anyone what they do during the wreckage of a flaming relationship. People do horrible shot to themselves and to others during that time. You are not normal you. I can forgive a lot.
I can’t forgive someone who weaponizes some of the most hateful, misogynistic assholes on the internet in an attempt to harass her and destroy her credibility and her career. It’s way outside the pale. It is abuse and harassment. The fact he thinks he’s being noble for doing it shows that he is completely unmoored from reason and human decency. Because NOTHING he wrote about even comes close to the hell on earth he tried to pile on in return.
He’s an asshole. Period.
Good, asshole, I’m fine with that. Subhuman, I’m not. That was my point.
I agree with you, if only because “subhuman” is a word we try to use to distance ourselves from the terrible shit people do.
We like to call people “subhuman.” They aren’t. That’s sort of the problem.
That said, Eron lied. He lied deliberately with full intent to attempt to destroy her *life.* The fact that the utter torrent of insanity he unleashed may have actually exceeded his own goals is beside the point.
Nothing Zoe Quinn did to him deserved what he unleashed on her. Does that mean that the doxxing and death threats received by pro-GG people are therefore somehow acceptable? It does not. But the side that moved first in this debacle moved with utter bad faith and intent to do personal harm to someone’s career and life.
That’s abusive. That’s as crystal clear a case of abusive as I can *conceive* of. There’s a reason that we don’t just recognize physical abuse as the only kind of abuse someone can endure. He wrote lies, slander, and factually incorrect statements about his former GF and used this information to kick off a campaign of bullshit spewing that has legendarily assaulted people in the journalism, game development, and gaming communities to the point that people who played absolutely no prior part in any of its actions have been hit with DEATH THREATS for daring to say a frickin’ word on the topic.
No, Eron didn’t personally write each and every threat or make each and every comment — but it was his abusive statements and stances that kickstarted the clusterfsck.
“Eron lied” – lol, what? Did you bother to even read the zoepost with the crapload of logs on it and a video showing said logs briefly on his computer?
The wife of the married guy in that rant went to twitter to call out Zoe. Kotaku/Nathan Grayson had to admit the relationship.
Your “He lies” is based on absolutely nothing, nothing at all.
You can call him out for airing his grievances in public, that’s a fair criticism. It sparked into something obscenely big and got her abuse, yes. He should get flak for that.
But lying? Bull-fucking-shit! Not with all the logs proving he’s not.
You really want to take advice from someone who gleefully retweeted a doxxed kid’s information? A developer of a game about depression who took 2 mean posts from a forum of adult virgins she didn’t visit and who are chronically depressed and used it to falsely claim harassment and literally sicked out a mob on a depressed forum?
Someone who does shit like that:
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2fvt9n/zoe_links_a_doxx_to_wikipedia_editors_who_tried/
http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx
https://38.media.tumblr.com/4777445c5f14857ac29dee07e6ee87cf/tumblr_navrp3vWso1s7vcw5o1_1280.jpg
Like, goddammit, are you for fucking real?
I can’t respond to you below, so I’m dropping it here.
I never said Zoe Quinn was a nice person. I’ve never claimed to agree with her views on any topic. My point (and this bit is critical) is that NO ONE deserves the shitstorm of abuse she, AS, and a number of others have been hit with.
I have also said, in numerous places, that death threats and intimidation against pro-GG people are just as inexcusable. This is not predicated on whether or not I agree with them.
“The wife of the married guy in that rant went to twitter to call out Zoe. Kotaku/Nathan Grayson had to admit the relationship.”
If you mean the allegations that she slept around for good reviews, it’s been totally disproven. If you mean the idea that she cheated on her boyfriend, I don’t have an opinion on that — because whether or not ZQ is or isn’t a fine upstanding person is *completely* irrelevant to the question of whether she deserves death, rape, and abusive threats.
The idea that ZQ has to reach some sort of “good enough” bar for him not to have lied and misrepresented the facts or to not deserve the shitstorm that ignited as a result is bullshit. And yes, if the situation was reversed, and she’d ignited the same attacks and abuse on him through posting false information and slanderous attacks, I’d view the situation in precisely the same terms.
Damien in a attenpented to diminish harassesment and show support to victims I posted this on Zoes AMA. AT this point is it worth anything to try to defuse the situation.? Is everyone so polarized that they cant let go of anything? Im very aware how radical some in gg are .I do feel I did little good.
Hi Ama Hello Zoe im a gg not here to do any harm hopefuly. Bear with never used this. I think what was done to you was horrid , despecicable and criminal. The greater part of gamers on GG did not do it nor would condone it. I belive everyone has been played made mistakes and too many added to the fire. And some people have been timing things to see them burn. one the anita death threathers chain spamming bull against Anita. Has been found it somewhat easily the anita jesus, is Mateus Prado Sousa from Brazil, who has a facebbok and linkdin account same name and New York education. Everything is fake. But go check it out if any can track anything please do so. But bear in mind everything is troll bait. If anyone can track that or help chain report it evenmore please do so. Im brazilian thats why im kinda sure, a lot of things dont add up. But one thing stands out his linkidin profile saying gaming journalist. Hes been tailored you see to troll everyone gg and anti gg and just pour fire on everything thats its from my country famed by people who troll is just icing. I belive you are rigth someone or someones wants everybody at each others throath. I was on at the time of Wu, I felt it was timed but im biased and defensive at time as were anyone at gg so who do we think did it? She and anyone outside is biased who do they think did it?Even the meme thing to much of it 60 pages its a bit much no? scalated quickly? This thing is a compiracy nut (which i hope im not) wet dream. Anyone who can do more digging, just a gamer not a programer. In all this madness if anything good comes out we need to have more consideration for everyone. And find better ways to defend harassament specially women who have been the harassaded on any side. The women of gg arent idiots, hate other women,or any other hateful thing. They are just gamers who think diferentely. No victim should be chain discredited , harrased or hurt more its criminal and should be punished or even better prevented. This is my appeal to everyone for SANITY. and less HATE. More TOLERANCE. Should not be so hard. This post is pro victims.
But Zoe if you see this another way I get it. Get better get stronger. I belive you will.
“Still, my twitter feed still includes an accusation that she’s a murderer”
Did you actually read that article? If not, I think you should. It was posted by somebody who doesn’t have much connection to GamerGate, but has some past interaction with Zoe Quinn. I think it’s relevant to the debate, even though I agree, the debate shouldn’t be at all focused on Zoe Quinn.
If you’d read the article, it does not claim that she’s a murderer. What it does claim is that, several years ago at least, she was prone to casually bragging to near-strangers that she had carried out a homicide in self-defense against rape. I think it’s likely a bullshit story, but it’s an incredibly weird thing to blurt out to strangers and makes me seriously question her veracity.
“in what I can only describe as Revenge Outrage Porn.”
The article also made me aware of a distortion in the Zoe Quinn story, notably, that she was targeted with “revenge porn”. Now as I understand the definition of “revenge porn”, it means the sharing of nude/sexual photos that were given to someone in confidence. In Quinn’s case, her nudes were not private, but date back to her days as an alt porn model. (The SkepticInk article was written by the photographer of those images, who states that her shoots with Zoe Quinn and the bullshit around them were the single worst professional experience she’s had as a photographer. Make of that what you will.) The images in question are still sold via a couple of still-running alt porn sites, and in some cases posted openly as advertizing. In other words, these are not private images.
Now if you want to posting of these images in the context of Gamergate is off topic and slut-shaming, then I’m absolutely with you. However, that’s a rather different thing than “revenge porn”
Why harp on this distinction? I think it’s pretty symptomatic about how many claims made for and against Gamergate are prone to huge rhetoric inflation. There seem to be far to many people who define ‘misogyny’ as “not agreeing with feminism” or even “not agreeing with MY feminism”, and “harassment” as “publicly disagreeing with me”. That shit has got to stop.
Didn’t mean to put the second and third paragraphs in italic. Darn lack-of-preview!