We Hunted The MammothToday, the most pretentious, and also probably the most ridiculous GamerGate video I’ve seen so far.
Over black-and-white footage of assorted video game shooters, the YouTuber who calls himself PowerIndustry tries to provide a bit of inspiration to his comrades in the virtual trenches who have chosen, as he puts it, to “stand and fight.”
For those who can’t make it through the whole nine minutes– and there may be more than a few of you – here’s Mr. PI’s basic argument.
One favorite tool in the misogynist’s toolkit is the old “if women want to be protected from violent men it proves they need patriarchy” argument. It’s a rather silly argument, but those making it tend to do so with enormous smugness, feeling that they’ve got the ultimate “gotcha” to use against feminists.
Cast in point: A post today on Roosh V’s reliably horrendous Return of Kings blog arguing that, as its title puts it, “#TakeDownJulienBlanc Shows Feminists Need The Patriarchy To Protect Them.” Never mind that the woman-led campaign against the abusive pickup artist seems to be doing pretty well already.
“Well feminists, I’ve been waiting for this a long time, and it’s finally come,” the ROK contributor who calls himself runsonmagic writes. “I’ve been waiting for the day you’d ask us to bring back patriarchy.”
GamerGate, so depressing and destructive and … inadvertently hilarious?
Like the MRAs I write about so often here, GamerGaters have a certain fondness for the propaganda of the meme, attempting to win hearts and minds with elaborate infographics, repurposed propaganda, and basically any sort of graphic they can pull together in a few minutes with Photoshop or MSPaint.
They are, unfortunately for them, terrible at it. It’s not just that the amateur graphic designers of GamerGate lack a basic understanding of good design. They are also so completely lacking in self-awareness that they are unable to see when their graphics completely undercut the messages they are intended to convey.
So today, let’s take a look at the The Top Five Most Ridiculously Ironic #Gamergate Memes that I’ve found posted recently on 8chan and Twitter.
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.
Last night, as you may have heard, the woman known to #GamerGaters as “Literally Who 2” pulled off a bit of a media coup, appearing on The Colbert Report for a brief interview by the sympathetic Colbert, who gently satirized some of the sillier “arguments” of the Gaters with a series of deliberatly obtuse questions. You know, his regular schtick.
When Anita Sarkeesian posted the picture above (well, a non-blurry version of it) to Twitter yesterday evening, thus alerting the world to her upcoming appearance on Colbert’s show, it set off a wave of panic and despair on 8chan’s /gg/ board, one of the central organizing hubs of the GamerGate “movement.”
GamerGate provides a rare example of rats climbing aboard a sinking ship.
As the “movement” stews in its own conspiratorial rage, a small army of reactionary misogynists, sensing opportunity, have joined the cause. Sure, right-wingers like Adam Baldwin and Milo Yiannopoulos have long been Gaters, but it’s only in recent days that they’ve been joined by some of the better-known manospherians, from angry lawyer and juice seller Mike Cernovich to the charming Roosh V.
The latest manosphere douchebag to take up the GamerGate cause is the lovely and talented Matt Forney, who has promptly claimed for himself the mantle of GamerGate leader and hero.
What a surreal life Anita Sarkeesian must lead, in which virtually everything she says and does becomes grist for the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine, Sarkeesian Division.
Take the latest blowup, which followed a few comments Sarkeesian made in the wake of Friday’s school shooting in Marysville, which may have been triggered by the shooter’s angry response to a romantic breakup. On Friday, Sarkeesian posted a few thoughts on the matter on Twitter:
AN OPEN LETTER TO DAVIS AURINI AND JORDAN OWEN UPON THE RELEASE OF THEIR FIRST SARKEESIAN EFFECT TEASER
Hey guys, big fan here.
Just watched your Sarkeesian Effect teaser video. An outstanding job! Even though this is, I know, a rough and unfinished trailer using raw footage from the first couple of days of shooting, it’s clear that this film – this epic journey into journalism, if I might coin a phrase here (you can totally use it!) – will more than live up to your earlier work.
“Andy Bob” of A Voice for Men has decided that the recent threats against Anita Sarkeesian are fake because … they’re too melodramatic.
In a rather remarkable bit of logicking titled “Anonymous feminist provides Anita Sarkeesian with a potential new source of revenue,” Andy Bob quotes this line from the threat email:
Monty Python has a famous series of sketches featuring a confused Robin Hood wannabe named Dennis Moore, who ultimately (spoiler alert) ends up stealing so much from the rich that he renders them poor. Confronted by this fact, Moore (played by John Cleese) is momentarily dumbfounded. “Blimey,” he says. “This redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.”
Over in the Red Pill Subreddit one fella is having a similarly difficult time trying to understand what’s gone wrong with what he sees as the proper distribution of, well, pussy.