4Channers discover that Zoe has been spying on the #IRC channels where they’ve been planning and coordinating their “raid.”
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
Ah, sweet schadenfreude! The gamebros at 4chan have been insisting publicly that the whole #GamerGate campaign — you know, the vicious attacks on game developer Zoe Quinn and other women in gaming — has been a spontaneous grassroots uprising against corruption in the world of game journalism, not a targeted campaign by misogynistic 4channers and their allies to ruin the lives of Quinn and everyone even vaguely connected with or even just aligned with her.
Well, it’s just become a lot harder to make that argument with a straight face. Last night, Quinn announced that she’s been lurking in the IRC where 4chaners have been diligently and often quite deviously planning this “spontaneous” uprising. And she’s started posting screenshots that seem to offer pretty incontrovertible evidence of just how duplicitously 4channers planned every element of #GamerGate.
You can find Quinn’s tweets of these screenshots laid out neatly on this Storify page; it’s essential reading for anyone who’s been following all this.
But I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite bits.
Here, 4channers talk about trying to hack her email:
definitely no raids ever happen because of 4chan and I definitely hacked myself mmhmmm pic.twitter.com/3309AiQk3u
— Honey Lu Bu (@TheQuinnspiracy) September 6, 2014
Here they spout bizarre conspiracy theory — while conspiring to hack another website.
this has pure insanity AND some illegal shit in it pic.twitter.com/rRo5KVFBhZ
— Honey Lu Bu (@TheQuinnspiracy) September 6, 2014
In this screenshot — you can find the whole thing here — 4channers talk candidly about how they hope to ruin her career:
More of the same:
because this is about integrity. not revenge. not harassment. not hurting people. pic.twitter.com/rSSm4ZJG4T
— Honey Lu Bu (@TheQuinnspiracy) September 6, 2014
Here some 4channers talk about #NotYourShield, a supposedly spontaneous bit of hashtag activism in which people of color — and white dudes pretending to be people of color — attack “social justice warriors” for supposedly using them as “shields” for their attack on gaming. Notice the dudes at the end talking about showing up on Twitter “as a Latino” and “in blackface” to support the campaign.
Given how damning a lot of these screenshots are, it’s hardly surprising that they freaked out when Quinn started posting her screenshots:
@TheQuinnspiracy abort abort, she's HERE pic.twitter.com/Ep7xRSZyxO
— Adriel Wallick (@MsMinotaur) September 6, 2014
Too late, dudes. Too late.
Oh man, so many classes are already called, what’s left?
I’ll take a gnomish Social Justice Rogue and go for the Giant Killer prestige class. I should be able to get all the feats by 6th level. Trolls are giants, even in Fifth Edition, although their regeneration has grown with every new edition. They started at 3 hp a round, beginning 3 rounds after first injury, and now they’re up to 10 hp at the beginning of each round, unless they were injured by fire or acid damage on the previous round.
If it’s Warriors people want, let ’em play warriors. Not my job to point out the Warrior has smaller Hit Dice and fewer feats than the Fighter.
Falconer – Shouldn’t be an issue, with duplicate party abilities yet. The joy of Social Justice Rogues is their ability to specialize after all. Just make sure you don’t sneak attack our resident Giant type Troll twincats. I don’t imagine it’d be appreciated.
I’ve just been reading Warrior as Fighter. No reason to underpower the party with NPC classes after all. Though a Social Justice Adept or Noble might actually be playable.
And sadly I notice we’re still missing a Social Justice Bard. Or would that be David?
I feel like branching out into other RPG systems. Can I be a Social Justice Geist instead? Or perhaps a Social Justice Changeling? 😉
Wouldn’t David be the Social Justice DM?
I think Bina called Social Justice Bard a few pages back.
I’m pretty sure that 4chan predated Something Awful by quite a bit.
strivingally – We do already have a Social Justice Troll which I had pictured as a Changeling: The Dreaming type troll. So sure pick a system, I’ve always been partial to Exalted and Shdowrun myself. A Social Justice Street Shaman could be a lot of fun.
Sparky – You are correct Bina did. This is why I always keep ridiculously over detailed campaign notes. I have the memory of goldfish.
Ooooo pendraegon, I hadn’t even thought about Shadowrun. Do I want to be a Social Justice Decker or a Social Justice Samurai? 😀 So many choices!
Come on, folks… I think the very title of this post is a perfect example of an absolutely disastrous flaw that, more often than not, seems to be overlooked. Imagine if this was 2 years ago, and an article came out entitled “So you still think Occupy Wall Street is a legitimate grassroots uprising against the appallingly corrupt banking system? Well, take a look at the stoned buffoonary of this hand-picked group of dipshit hippies!”. I’m willing to bet most of you would scoff at such a transparent attempt to slander the legitimacy of a movement by making a display out of the useless, unfortunately very visible minority. So why is this sort of thing given a pass in this context? Identity politics poisons all meaningful discourse – please remember that regardless of what side you find yourself on.
The issue is that if you cut out the troublemakers there’s nothing left.
Also, stoned hippie whatevers have no bearing on whether or not OWS was a grass-roots movement one way or the other.
J, do you REALLY not get it? Do you not understand that planning to harm, kill or rape someone, or that talking about doing the same to that persons family and friends is a MUCH larger order of threat then “stoned bufoonery?!?!?”
You are probably a man, since most women (and men of conscience) viscerally respond to dire threats to safety and the hopes that one will kill oneself!
I saw a documentary made by a man – I believe from one of the Scandinavian countries – who had himself made up to look like a woman and dressed like one. He did this to see what the fuss was about. At the end of his experiment in walking around town, he said that he had never been so terrified – that the constant threats to “her” safety from total strangers who felt entitled to stalk, touch, insult, insist that “she” talk to them and grab at “her” were overwhelming. He finally said that he had no idea how the average woman was able to get through a day, if this was the kind of crap she had to go through. Try it, why don’t you, and then tell us how silly we are all being by reacting to cyber threats that can all to easily become real time.
Women grow up knowing that we are prey…that men are dangerous. We learn to handle it (somewhat) by the time we are teens. I tell you that almost 64 years of living on a world where that is considered normal and nothing to bother about is Not.Much.Fun.
Wikipedia says 4chan launched in 2003 and SA in 1999. Anecdotally, I’ve certainly been hearing about SA from an earlier date than 4chan, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate much.
Cassandrakitty – Something Awful predates 4chan, by a few years but the guy who created 4chan was also a forums goon on SA. A lot of the early posters on 4chan were also goons as well, the whole thing was originally and anime and manga discussion board that slowly mutated into the amorphous mass of awful it is today.
In the early days it was mostly just a bunch of geeks talking about cartoons though. I miss those days sometimes.
Strivingally – Go for the chrome chummer! I wouldn’t suggest decker though then you’d actually have to matrix run against channers and that just seems like a fragging nightmare.
Might be fun to go prehistoric though and be a Social Justice Earthdawner.
My memory has a tendency to remember small bits of trivia and totally forgt important things.
I kinda really want this whole Social Justice tabletop RPG to be a thing that really exists, now.
Like, for instance, how to spell “forget.”
J:
So tell me, J, if this is all some grassroots movement about ending corruption in video game journalism, why the focus on Zoe Quinn, who is not a video game journalist? Why the focus on her sexual life, on doxxing her, on posting nude pictures of her? Why isn’t anyone focusing on actually doing something about journalistic corruption? The Occupy movement had an actual focus of protesting economic policies. Where are the people protesting journalistic corruption? And if this isn’t all about harrassing a woman, then why isn’t there a huge outcry and attempt at distancing from the legitimate protestors?
RE J’s comment, see my comment about gaslighting people for fun and 4chan in the other thread.
(Aside – it’s pretty funny how poorly that strategy is working out for them so far this time.)
RE SA, the weird thing is that I had a friend who dated a guy who worked for them, and she seemed to think this was fine because he was one of the good ones (admittedly it did get less, well, awful over time), whereas I think my response to “so I work for Something Awful” would pretty much always be “bye”.
I knew some of the local Occupiers, and they’re good peeps who’ve been doing social justice things and rabble rousing for a long time.
I think Occupy may have been the start of a much longer process of needed change.
As Ben Franklin said,” What good is a human baby?” It was a lost skirmish, but the war’s not over.
I have heard NOTHING good about 4 Chan. Nothing. I call it the Mos Eisley of the net.
TL;DR fuck off, you’re excusing abusers.
Trolls like J are just so fucking adorable when they come here and try to tell us how to look at a situation. Such fail.
QFT!
We aren’t missing the forest for the trees. It is just that every fucking tree in the forest appears to be a scumbag.
Dudes, your forest sucks. It’s ugly and all the trees are rotting and it’s fully of goblins and orcs. Give up and go find a new forest.
@Stodat –
So, he just said he sown’t care about rape if the victim is crazy?
Is it my pain pills, or does thea seem wrong to you, tooo?
I think it means that he doesn’t believe the threats are real. That ZQ is just being over-dramatic.
He’s saying that if St0dad is ever diagnosed with anything (by a professional or by some random), he won’t believe a word out of their mouth and he’ll feel free to gaslight them. I’ll let you decide if that’s any better.
HE avoided the question. He dinette answer in it jusetiveid the rape thereoate. And the threats are there for anyeionw to see, so ZQ dosn’t need toe lie about them. He dien’t4e answer the “does it justify” question, because he said he doesn’t believe ZA.
Still bad, & blames the victims.
Social justice mystic adept with a side in hacking and drone control.
You may scuff at my low dice pools an very broad set of skills, but I assure you, fear is knowing that the person with a grudge can do literally everything.
(Also a barely possible build in SR5, if you really know what you’re doing.
re: J
What does this movement want?
How is it going about getting it?
A long article (like all the ones that were made) about how OWS is “bad people” for doing stuff is just what happens. “They smoke weed, so they’re completely wrong about how a concentration of wealth is fucking up the capitalist system” is easy to see doesn’t follow from each other.
I have to admit that “They’re worried about corruption in game’s journalism, so they harass and threaten and stalk female journalists and women in gamging” isn’t really… quite the same.
Fibinachi – I’m currently running an elven mystic adept with the Magicians way traits. I can’t imagine the amount of balancing necessary to fold hacking in there. Granted the inestimable Jack Random is incompetent with all computer skills, our team hacker has to open solitaire for him when he’s bored.
By the way can I just say how thrilled I am to see SR5 go back to the priority assignment creation system. SR4 took foooooorever to make a starting character in.
J,
That’s a bad analogy. The occupy movement is legit grassroots. The gamergate thing was always about attacking Zoe Quin and only used corruption as a thin pretense. Gamergate is astroturf. Not grassroots.
RE: J
So why is this sort of thing given a pass in this context?
Because you aren’t posting any evidence to the contrary, dumbass. Why should I believe YOU?
Also, last I checked, those “stoned dipshit hippies” weren’t gushing with rape and murder fantasies when asked about Occupy. Plus, I actually KNOW reputable people involved in Occupy (two medics in different states). I don’t know anyone reputable involved in THIS particular conflict on the side of 4chan.
LBT – That’s because 4chan is unable to achieve any sort of reputability by it’s very nature.
RE: pendraegon
Not only that, but Occupy and Gamergate are working at very different ends, through very different means, with very different people. J is comparing apples and oranges, if the oranges were radioactive and also on fire. He’s trying to pull legitimacy from Occupy and give it to GamerGate, which is hilarious.
It’s a bit of a pickle, yeah. And you start of being pretty fragile.
On the other hand, there’s some useful synergy beween willpower + logic traditions, adept powers body + willpower, most hacking being logic based and having just enough cash to squeeze in two cerebral boosters, a commlink and a cyberdeck in your skull at .96 essence.
You can get reflexes as an adept power if you want, or something else, but I went for reflexes (ALL OF THEM), and Loophole thinks at matrix speed. She’s nice like that. Fragile, initially, but then with a tiny bit of cash and karma you can afford a qi focus, and suddenly you can shoot, hack and deal with magic while giggling at anyone who isn’t as 1337 pwnzorzs as you.
… I, uh, don’t think all that rooting around with her brain stem has done her any good in the long term.
You’re never going to be a street samurai with that set up, but it does open up some fun random opportunities.
“So what do we do now? They locked us in here and neither of us are any good with bags over our heads. How’d they know we were mages anyhow?”
“Mhm”
“They have a god damn sentry gun outside. So I rip of these cuffs, it opens fire, we die”
“Uh-huh”
“You could at least bloody panic a little, mate”
“Did you know the standard Ares MyTurf(tm) Personal Defense Turret has a really curious OS exploit?”
“I don’t see how that helps me not be kidnapped by a gang of Halloweeners”
[roll 12 dice to hack on the fly, gain 2 marks]
“Well, the trick is…”
[Edit File]
“The RFID targetting data is easy to flip. It’s a really terrible security flaw. One minute you’re wearing a don’t shoot me badge, and the next, the sentry thinks that the RFID marks out targets for a live fire action trial! It’s odd how that bug stayed on after production”
[Sentry turrets start firing outside. Screams]
——
If only you didn’t have the strength, grace and immune system of a particularly plague-stricken underfed dog. That’s one problem with priority-gen, it doesn’t really seem to allow that much thinkering around. I liked that about karma creation in 4e.
…. Sorry for the sudden off-topic RPG mechanics blurp 😛
Fibinachi – No worries I’m always willing to break into random systems talk myself. As for rooting around in someone’s limbic system like a blind squirrel looking for an acorn, well who am I to judge. Jack actually has copyrighted the phrase “Random brand mayhem” and tags at least one wall with it every run.
I feel like representing an entire movement with the views of just a few people is just dishonest. Furthermore, representing an entire community with the already misrepresented views of an isolated movement is even more dishonest. There are lot of us on 4chan that just don’t care about the silly movement, who Zoe sleeps with, orwho is attacking her for it. We justwanna go back to discussing video games like we always do. It would be similar to saying Zoe represents all of Twitter. Have a good night, all of you.
Ok, but these are the people who actually started the “movement.” You don’t think the viewpoints of the founders of the “movement” and their reasons and motivations for starting the “movement” isn’t relevant?
People from 4chan are attacking her for it. Don’t like that kind of shot going down in your community? Do something about it. Don’t come here and scold us for taken notice of the shitty things 4channers are doing.
Yeah, but Zoe Quinn isn’t using Twitter to organize a campaign of harrassment and lies for the sole purpose of destroying one person life. If she was, damn straight people would be asking why Twitter would continue to allow someone to do that, and damn straight people would be asking why her fellow Twitterers (Tweeters? What do you call people who hang out on Twitter? Do people hang out on Twitter?) weren’t calling her out for that kind of reprehensible behavior.
I do agree with you on most of your points. However, it’s not shitty things 4channers are doing in general. It’s shitty things a few 4channers are doing. I don’t need to explain to you why judging an entire community based off of the actions of a few people that are a part of it, is a bad idea. I do feel both sides are responsible for blowing this out of proportion.
Whatever she does, whoever she sleeps with, isn’t any of my business, and I’m not particularly interested in the first place. If people are hacking her or harassing her, that bothers me, but it’s a problem for the police. Making this into some giant feud between both sides is ridiculous.
These people, other than their IRC handles are still anonymous. She didn’t have anyone else to go after, so she blames the entire community. That’d be like me blaming reddit the next time a redditor murders someone.
I wish you luck hunting down a group of people hiding behind their anonymity on a website full of nameless users.
#notall4channers We’ve been over this about a million times in various gamergate threads. Yawn.
Really? You’re going to insinuate that criticizing 4chan is the same is racism, misogyny, homophobia etc.? Seriously?
Any reason for this besides your feels? I didn’t think so.
One side is harassing someone and making threats towards her. The other side is against that. How is this remotely equivalent?
If people are harassing her? If? Are you kidding with this? And no it is not just a problem for the police. This was driven by misogyny. It’s basically a hate crime. The intended victim isn’t just Zoe Quinn. The intent is for all women to be afraid that this will happen to them if they try to work in the gaming industry or Bootsy forbid, critique it.
No. Another false equivalency. A redditor murdering someone out in meat space has nothing to do with reddit. The harassment of Quinn, on the other hand has everything to do with 4chan. The “movement” started there and the site allows the worst examples of humanity to post with impunity. And you’re part of it. Other sites manage to moderate so don’t try and tell me 4chan couldn’t possibly do it. If you or anyone else there cared you wouldn’t put up this bullshit.
With that little taunt you completely have us convinced that you’re totally innocent and opposed to harassment! Or not.
‘4chan is not your private army’
Unless you are an antifeminist neckbeard that wants to insult women for daring to have impolite dissenting opinions.
This debacle has proved that 4chan is not cancer, they are just mediocre manchildren.