Today is Veterans Day in the US, a day to honor those who’ve served in the armed services. That is, real soldiers, who have fought in real wars.
As one person with a silly name but a good point wrote on Reddit:
There are many examples of military-themed calls to action and propagandizing in [Kotaku in Action, the main GamerGate subreddit] used to rally their users into a virtual “battle” against ideas that they don’t agree with. …
Today, take a step back and remember that very real people fought in very real battles and answered very real calls to action for their country. Today should serve as a sobering reminder of not only those who served, but also how ridiculous [GamerGaters] sound when they pretend that this is some type of war they are nobly fighting for when there are those who actually serve bravely for their country.
GamerGaters love comparing themselves to soldiers fighting a war against, well, whatever it is they think they’re fighting a war against.
Their propaganda, much of which is made for internal consumption, is drenched in military imagery — some taken from video games, some from real life and real military propaganda. The ridiculously bombastic GamerGate video I posted here yesterday mixed game imagery with documentary footage from World War II.
It’s true that most of this military-themed GamerGate propaganda is intended, at least in part, as a joke. (At least I hope this Starship Troopers reference is meant ironically.)
But it’s also clear that a lot of GamerGaters take these “joke” memes and over-the-top rhetoric a lot more seriously than it deserves to be taken. They really think they are fighting some sort of noble battle for truth and righteousness.
Today, GamerGaters, try to have a tiny bit of perspective. You’re not fighting Hitler. You’re not breaking down the Berlin Wall. You’re not fighting for the future of civilization against the barbarian hordes.
What you’re doing is harassing women (and some men) and sending emails designed to punish online publications for daring to criticize you. It’s not a war. Hell, it’s barely even activism. It’s closer to a collective tantrum — though unfortunately, one that’s doing real harm in the real world.
When you compare what you’re doing to real war, you’re insulting those who fought in real wars.
Below, I’ve pasted in a bunch of #GamerGate graphics, found on 8chan and on Twitter. There are countless more just like these out there. And they are an embarrassment.
Oh, I can find PLENTY of issues of corruption in games journalism and games that gators don’t go after. Like how about the one PR guy (who got fired, I believe) who implicitly stated that he’d have a review blacklist after Duke Nukem Forever got bad reviews a few years ago? Or how about Medal of Honor, I believe, advertising the actual guns in-game? You know, the game that’s about shooting people. Hell, where’s the NRA there? They’re claiming that games cause violence and then there’s a game stating “Hey, you can have these cool guns you use to shoot guys in-game in REAL LIFE!”
Oh, and if we’re Orks, I was wondering: is this the Gun of Misandry: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/251/1/e/dakka_lad_by_lgliang-d2ya40k.jpg
@Intern: This has to be, this picture is too hilarious for it not to be!
It’d be especially misandrous if it fired tampons instead of bullets.
@thepestoa
First of all, PTSD is not just a disease for soldiers, and you do not have to be in combat to get it. All kinds of traumatic experiences can trigger it. 25% of children entering the foster care system have it, for example. 31% of rape victims develop it. 25% of people who are victims of crime in general develop it.
Secondly, the woman you are speaking about got much more than Twitter mean messages on Twitter. She had her home address publicized, and received large amount of hate mail and death threats . Her home and cell numbers were also found, and she received threatening phone calls as well. This is a woman who made her living as a writer online. She did not have the option of shutting down her all of her accounts and ignoring phone calls. This harassment continued for a year, and then started up again with a vengance when she had the courage to talk about her story and the fact that she had been diagnosed by a doctor with PTSD.
This is not the case of an “SJW” complaining about pretend mental problems. This is a professional writer who was targeted for a sustained harassment campaign as a result of her fair opinions, and was courageous enough to keep writing and defy her tormentors, despite the toll its taken on her mental health.
MissyL, I’m glad to hear that you’re back in one piece and doing better things.
And comparing a review page hurting fee-fees to an event that put an end to a permanent state of crisis and the dictatorships that covered most of Europe after the war? That’s an asshole thing to do indeed.
Same with Starship Troopers really, it’s spooky that some people see an over the top pisstake of fascism and think “gee, that sounds neat!”
@MissyL
I’m glad you’re home and doing better things
…now if only we could have a conversation with America about everything that led to this point
GG has been churning out the military propaganda for a while now, it never occurred to me how actual soldiers might feel about this crap outside of their few chosen e-celebrities. (RogueStar, didn’t know about Commissar)
GamerGate: Proving Jack Thompson Right Since 2014
So they’re identifying themselves with Warhammer 40k, where humanity is a fascist, incredibly close.minded dictatorial regime ready to burn you for the slightest deviation from what they hold as true? Welp, the irony is almost painful.
@Jay Elmore
It’s sad, but I think there’s some legitimate credence to your claim. I don’t like the ultra-deterministic view that a simple stimulus like video games will yield simple responses like increased violence.
But looking at the way gamergate people react to media, they seem to feel that it overtly tells them what to do and that they have no choice to obey. It’s only natural to conclude that a mindset like that existing could entirely explain scientifically observed statistical differences in aggression levels after playing games.
It’s a stretch though.
@tesforms – ” 25% of children entering the foster care system have it, for example. 31% of rape victims develop it. 25% of people who are victims of crime in general develop it.”
Those are some hard numbers and the “crime in general” one seems ridiculously high to me. Got a source for those numbers?
Then that makes the disrespect, immaturity, and lack of perspective all the more disturbing. Good to know.
@Jay Elmore
Yeah, I mean, while I think Jack Thompson is a despicable fearmonger, GG’s grasp of the difference between games and reality is disturbingly loose. Also, they seem to engage with media more broadly in an incredibly literal way – which is why so many of them interpreted the spate of “gamers are dead” articles as a coordinated attack on their identity, instead of a rash of think pieces. That, plus the overblown military rhetoric, the operations and codenames, the constant talk of “winning” as though their “movement” is a particularly hard level they want to beat…
To quote Anita Sarkeesian Voldemort You-Know-Who:
The Imperium also doesn’t actually have a real command structure or any social cohesion. It’s just a bunch of loose cannons who can on agree on nothing except “actually, it’s about the emperor.” Somehow they manage to coordinate efforts just long enough to destroy some random planet for spurious reasons.
That actually doesn’t surprise me at all. I was the victim of a very minor crime and although I didn’t quite have PTSD, I was very freaked out.
I lived on a ground floor apartment facing the parking lot. Someone pulled up to my bedroom window, pried it open and threw a liquid that smelled like a combination of urine and chewing tobacco spit on my bed.
It turns out my neighbor was set to testify in court after witnessing some gang related crime. My neighbors and I came to the conclusion that they were trying to intimidate her and got the wrong apartment. She lived in the apartment next to mine.
I had 10 months left on my lease and I was freaked out for that whole time. I never felt safe in my bed and often slept on the pullout couch instead. When I was in my bed I often had nightmares that they had come back. I was really afraid that they would break in and hurt my cat while I was away. I’ll probably never live on the ground floor again unless there’s a fence around that side of the building.
If I could be that effected by something that didn’t result in me being hurt and the only property I lost was my sheet, I don’t have any trouble believing that someone who was mugged, in a hold up, or got hit could have PTSD from it.
QFT. My father has PTSD from Vietnam that the VA is only now (50 years later, better late than never I guess) starting to take an interest in.
Growing up with a parent with PTSD is fucking hard. These little gamer snots really need to back up off the war metaphors.
@btomdarga: http://bit.ly/1ucs57q
That was mostly me being kind of a jerk.
But if you follow some of the links, you’ll see that the cited stats at least seem within the realm of published study.
Ex:
Though, in fairness, the data (at least that which is publicly available) does seem all over the place, a glaring example being this range given by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network:
But this, more than anything else, may be an issue of a lack of definitive clarity regarding scope and terms across studies.
The tl;dr version of my little impromptu lunchtime research session is that PTSD is notably prevalent among those in the general population who have experienced both direct and indirect trauma. Higher rates of expression and greater severity among those expressing symptoms are associated with being the recipient of directed violence and with multiple traumatic exposures / occurences. Controlling for those factors, higher rates are also found among women and girls vs men and boys, though the exact mechanism(s) for this disparity are unclear.
Goddamn Tau Social Justice Fire-warriors…..
Yet the diagnosis is only taken seriously when it’s given to mostly male veterans. I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.
@proxieme
Oh yes, I am aware 😐
The most commonly cited figures in multiple of those sources are:
“The National Comorbidity Survey Report provided the following information about PTSD in the general adult population: The estimated lifetime prevalence of PTSD among adult Americans is 7.8%, with women (10.4%) twice as likely as m ts asmall portion of those who have experienced at least one traumatic event; 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women reported at least one traumatic event. ”
Separate searches for rape seem to indicate ~ 33% (which I didn’t really doubt) and even “over 21%” for kids in foster care, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the total for the crime isn’t very off either (depending on which crimes are included).
PS. There is more information here
ALSO:
God Damn It!
I still have Warhammer miniatures from 1987 – ie. older than most GamerGaters. When do I get to tell these little shits that I’m the REAL Warhammer fan, it’s MY HOBBY, NOT THEIRS, and to please get THEIR DUMBASS AGENDA OUT OF MY F-ING HOBBY???!!!!!
Sorry. Had a GamerGate moment there. Please excuse me.
That one poster with the tagline “Civil! Calm! Consistent!” is disturbing. Do they actually perceive what they’ve* been doing as any of those things? Do they have a deeper level of uncivil anger from which to draw, which they are virtuously refraining from drawing upon? Reels the mind.
*Of course, all of the threats of violence, slurs, doxxing and general vileness are perpetrated by No True Gaters.
It’s no surprise that these idiots emulate and idolise the characters of the Imperium of man. Growing up, most of us wanted to be Xena, Luke Skywalker or Batman. Maybe we wanted to be John Constantine or Wolverine if we were so inclined. That’s because a lot of us have a heart, and even in our power fantasies we want to be the good guy. In our fantasies we wanted to feel powerful.
These guys, they want to feel powerful at the expense of others. It’s why they look up to fictional characters who shoot hapless footsoldiers in the back of the head and herd them into a literal meatgrinder. They can’t feel strong or imagine being strong without degrading or hurting someone else. They can’t enjoy their steak unless they know that someone else is going hungry.
I’ve talked to these people online and they literally cannot understand the concept of equality. They literally can’t picture a relationship that doesn’t involve domination. And all this ties in with their love of the Imperium of man.
Me, I’m a Tau man myself. It’s all for the greater good
Robert, unfortunately the individual responsible for that image may indeed be championing for civil discourse. However it hurts the narative to accept that Gamergate is composed of different individuals with diffirent opinions and different actions. You are stereotyping, assuming that the presence of a twitter hashtag is all you need to know about the individual and their causes.