“Cultural Marxism” – the alleged conspiracy of alleged secret Marxists allegedly trying to destroy Western Civilization through Political Correctness and feminism and racial equality – is a favorite boogeyman of the far right.
Unser Kampf (Our Struggle): Actual proposed title and cover for the crowdsourced GamerGate collective autobiography
Lovers of literary catastrophes rejoice! Some GamerGaters are crowdsourcing a book about what they see as the death of 4chan and the rise of GamerGate, and so far the results have been even more amazingly awful than that even sounds.
So far all the Gaters have managed to produce have been some rough drafts of a lyrical prologue written almost entirely in mixed metaphor, a somewhat plodding first chapter, and a rough outline of the rest of the book. But there is much comedy gold in these rough pages.
And so I would like to present to you The Nine Most Ridiculous Quotes from The Crowdsourced GamerGate Book That Were Actually Written by Real Human Beings Who Thought What They Were Writing Was Awesome.
#GamerGaters have been spending a lot of time lately trying to convince the world that they’re really quite reasonable people, actually, and that the “movement’s” reputation as a hotbed of hateful bullying is undeserved.
Today on 8Chan’s /gg/ board, for example, one enterprising anon announced the start of “OP FIREHEART,” a combination of “Operation Firefly + Operation Lonely Hearts.”
Some people should probably not try to draw cartoons
Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words clearly hasn’t been looking at the artwork of #GamerGate — unless by “a thousand words” you mean the word “poop” repeated a thousand times.
Nonetheless, to honor the hard work of GamerGate’s unsung graphic heroes, and on the off chance that I might not be fully grasping the subtle meanings of these aesthetically impaired visionaries, I would like to present to you all today a series of [] incomprehensible GamerGate Cartoons, which I have collected from 8chan and Twitter and various other places I don’t even remember.
CONTENT WARNING: Cartoon violence, misogyny, raging anti-Semitism, really bad drawing.
Do you remember when #GamerGate was young? You know, back before #NotYourShield and Vivian James and bizarrely complicated conspiracy theories involving Gawker, Weird Twitter and some sort of international Jewish conspiracy?
Remember when #GamerGate was still called #BurgersAndFries, and the angry gamebro army was focused on the real enemy of all that is good and true – a young game designer by the name of Zoe Quinn?
If you’ve been feeling nostalgic for those good old days, you’re in luck. A sprawling blog post by a female friend of Quinn’s obsessive, accusatory ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni takes us back to the dog days of August when his even more sprawling thezoepost was unleashed upon the world.
The other day, I posted a screenshot of an 8chan comment featuring the drawing above, a crude caricature of Anita Sarkeesian that’s a not-very-subtle variation on a racist and anti-Semitic cartoon that originally ran in a neo-Nazi newspaper.
Yesterday, fed up with the equivocating bullshit that’s constantly being said in the media and within gaming circles about #GamerGate, and pissed off at all those who think of themselves as good people but still refuse to see the hatred and misogyny and harassment and doxxing that has been central to GG since the start, Quinn posted a series of (justifiably) angry tweets calling out the cowards in the profession who know that what’s going on is deeply evil but won’t say anything, and documenting the unending harassment she and her boyfriend, and her family, and his family are still getting.
Was that even a sentence? I don’t know. The point is she’s STILL getting harassed. She’s STILL getting “prank” calls. She’s STILL getting death threats. People are STILL digging around in her personal life and the personal life of everyone connected to her.
So it’s official: the Emma You Are Next web site, which was threatening to release nude pictures of Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, is a hoax. The site now redirects traffic to the home page of something called Rantic, a mysterious supposed “social media marketing enterprise” with a reputation for hoaxes.
Rantic is now claiming that the real agenda behind its website was a noble one: to expose the evils of leaked celebrity nudes – and, by painting 4channers as the evil hackers behind it all, to get 4chan itself taken down.
Emma Watson, U.N. Women Global Goodwill Ambassador
UPDATE 2: See here for my updated take on the hoax.
UPDATE: It appears the Emma You Are Next site is indeed a hoax, put online not by a 4chan hacker but by a sleazy internet “marketing” company known for similar hoaxes in the past. That said, it was a hoax designed to take advantage of two disturbing trends — not only the widespread public demand for leaked celebrity nudes but also the antifeminist backlash culture of the internet. Emma Watson was already being denounced and derided by internet misogynists even before the Emma You Are Next Site went online. I have made some changes in my original post below; strikeouts indicate the original text. I have also rewritten the conclusion, and taken down the video version of this post.
You already know the basic facts, I imagine: This past weekend, actress Emma Watson gave an eloquent speech at the United Nations about the necessity of feminism, and how the fight for gender equality can benefit both women and men.
Then some asshole or assholes apparently associated with 4chan a sleazy internet “marketing” firm decided to punish her for her opinions exploit the widespread desire for stolen nudes of female celebrities and the antifeminist backlash that was already developing in the wake of Watson’s speech by threatening to release stolen nude pictures of her, setting up a page entitled Emma You Are Next featuring a photo of Watson alongside an ominous countdown clock, presumably highlighting just when she can look forward to her privacy being egregiously violated.
There’s been a lot of debate over whether or not this threat is a real one or a “hoax.” [It appears that it is a hoax.] Business Insider declares that
