We Hunted The Mammoth
Leave it to Vox Day, the proudly reactionary sci-fi author and game developer, to say what most of his #GamerGate comrades spend so much energy denying: that their little movement is at least in part a backlash against women in gaming. At least against real women, with their own opinions.
As Vox writes in a post on his Alpha Game blog,
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.
Here’s an interesting post by someone claiming to be a former GamerGater on Reddit explaining why they left the, er, movement and helpfully summing up a lot of what’s wrong with it. At least when it comes to GG’s rampant hypocrisy. Take it away, turbonerdsupreme!
Worlds are colliding: Roosh Valizadeh, the reactionary, woman-hating pick-up guru, is starting a #GamerGate inspired game site, just as #GamerGate itself is descending into a morass of mutual recriminations and generalized douchebaggery.
Reaxxion – the title presumably a reference to Roosh’s neo-reactionary political views – doesn’t seem to have officially launched yet, but it is up, and looking a bit threadbare at the moment, with only a handful of articles posted yet. Billed as “a safe space for gamers who support #gamergate,” the site is an obvious attempt to cash in on #GamerGate anger. Roosh’s timing is a little less than perfect; he’s jumping aboard this money train as it seems to be derailing.
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.
Today, 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.
GamerGaters claim they’re on the side of truth and righteousness, but they sure do love monologuing like cartoon villains.
They claim to be shocked by alleged evidence of journalistic collusion, yet they happily plot strategies and “operations” together both in secret and in broad daylight. They claim to be about ethics, but regularly employ not-so-subtle subterfuge to try to disguise their carefully coordinated propaganda campaigns as spontaneous uprisings.
This week, GamerGaters on 8chan launched a new “operation” to win over the hearts and minds of the masses on Tumblr. And it’s as ethically bankrupt as anything they’ve ever done.
Operation Firefly, as it’s officially known, is an attempt to take the GamerGate “fight” to a “new frontier.” Tumblr. As the originator of the initiative explains it in a somewhat less-than-stirring manifesto:
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.
"we're inclusive and accepting!" says #gamergate, before drawing racist caricatures of women they dislike. pic.twitter.com/zbFnWBOmdn
— Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts) November 1, 2014
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.
Here’s the original, in all its crapitude:
