GamerGate And Why It Matters To Conservatives

Posted on | September 10, 2014 | 103 Comments

“Politics is downstream from culture.”
-Andrew Breitbart

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that with regard to entertainment, conservatives and libertarians find science fiction and videogaming to be the most attractive options offered by pop culture these days, mainly because there’s a lot of SF that doesn’t try and stuff political correctness and half-baked socialist egalitarianism up our snouts. The same goes for videogames, which are mostly about killing bad guys and/or solving puzzles.

This is, of course, intolerable to the Social Justice Warriors who insist that everything has to have a “teachable moment” or six about how horrible straight white males are and how heroic GLBTWTFBBQ persons are and what a utopia we could have if those wreckers and kulaks would quit trying to undermine kindly old Uncle Joe…oh wait, that was the 1930s pravda. Well, it hasn’t changed much over the last eighty years, as we can see in the pages of DKos and other online asylums for those afflicted with Hopeychangium overdoses. So it’s not too surprising that the SJWs have wound up running most of the legacy publishing houses and turning thumbs down on authors who don’t toe the line of correct thought and correct characterizations; as I have previously remarked in various book columns, the main holdout against this sort of tripe is Baen Books, whose interest has always been in telling a good story and only incidentally in whether the protagonist is gay, straight, or involved in a long-standing passionate affair with her slide rule, IYKWIMAITYD.

Unfortunately for gamers, there is no publisher comparable to Baen, but for the most part companies like EA, Bungie and Ubisoft are still more interested in the bottom line: what are gamers buying, and how can we sell them more of it? Questions of binary gender and other nonessential BS just don’t have much of an impact on the bottom line, and so while the publishers may pay lip service to the SJWs in the industry press, they don’t actually DO anything. Which just stokes the anger of the SJWs, who have been increasingly filling the pages of the gaming press with rants about what a misogynistic bunch of violent bigots the gaming community is made up of. Unfortunately, they’re messing with the wrong guys. For the most part, these are people who don’t take smack talk and harassment lying down – they’ll serve it right back with a side order of butthurt and rage, and they will move mountains to stick it to people who are getting up their noses. Which is how we arrive at GamerGate, the sad tale of how hypocritical “feminist” game developer Zoe Quinn literally slept her way into getting a crappy game nobody wanted to play featured on Steam, and further, got lots of positive reviews and supportive essays from game site reviewers who she also happened to be boning. Which is unfortunately a matter of public record, since her now ex-boyfriend went public with her faithlessness and hypocrisy; even more unfortunately, the game sites which should have been covering this doubled down and censored all discussion of the flap.

Much of this is going to sound familiar to conservatives and libertarians; discussion of political topics hostile to the liberal narrative has been verboten on places like Digg, Reddit, and other supposedly “neutral” online fora for quite some time, which is why there’s a thriving blog culture on the Right even without the bucks poured into the lefty blogs by people like George Soros and various foundations.I suspect that part of the fallout from GamerGate is going to be a bunch of new game review sites that have nothing to do with Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, and all the other sites that have taken to telling gamers what horrible people they are instead of telling them about games and mods and related topics of interest. Gamers may even start casting a jaundiced eye on the rest of the media; as culture critic Maddox remarked, game media are now suffering a high-speed version of the credibility collapse that the mainstream media took decades to suffer through. Or, as the eponymous boss of TheMittani.com said in a recent column, people will blow this off since the idea of “objective” game journalism is nonsense anyway.

I don’t agree; the rage of gamers at being called a bunch of racist sexist bigots for being upset with this is precisely why Ed Morrissey and Breitbart ran pieces on GamerGate. (Ace linked to Cranky T-Rex.) One of the worst features about the contemporary left is their conviction that the personal is political, and everything is personal with them. Everything, be it football, basketball, science fiction, videogames, movies or whatever, has to be relentlessly politicized and examples made of people who say Bad Things. Offensive Things That Make Somebody Feel Bad. Most conservatives don’t give a damn about any of that, and we resent the hell out of some dipshit like Bob Costas giving us a lecture on gun control when we’re trying to watch a damn football game. Conservatives and libertarians may not agree on a lot, but we can all agree that obnoxious leftist actors, authors and singers need to shut up and sing, and quit trying to force their half-baked political notions up our snouts, because that’s not what we’re paying them for.

This is also why Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Vox Day and John C. Wright (to name but a few) have been up in arms against John Scalzi and the wretched Stockholm Syndrome crew at the SFWA. Scalzi, the academic leftists who have come to dominate SFWA, and their SJW allies on Tumblr are quick to take offense at any SF or fantasy that doesn’t meet their politically correct templates, and have not scrupled to lie or misquote authors who don’t toe the line. So far the Glittery Hoo-Has are “winning” in the sense that they and their allies still dominate Hugo voting – but in a time when DragonCon and GenCon attendance exceeds Worldcon’s by an order of magnitude, what worth does a Hugo actually have? In times past, when geek culture and science fiction fandom were the same thing, the Hugo was worth serious money, but that was decades ago. Geek culture now includes anime fans, gamers, podcasters, webcomic creators, bloggers, cosplayers, comic book fans, and endless combinations of the preceding, and I’d bet money that if you went to DragonCon and asked people if they knew anything about Worldcon or the Hugos, most of the people would have (at best) a vague idea of what you were talking about.

This is not the tempest in a teapot some Hot Air commenters think it is. This is a battle for the last pieces of pop culture still friendly to conservatives and libertarians, a battle to keep some parts of society free of the Social Justice Warriors and their craziness. It’s a battle we can win. All we have to do is pitch in with a little mockery, some pointing and laughing, and buying the occasional book or videogame to support the authors and creators we like and respect. Capitalism, what a concept!

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Category: Culture, Ed Morrissey, Journalism, Progressivism, Scandal

Comments

103 Responses to “GamerGate And Why It Matters To Conservatives”

kilo6
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:19 pm

She evidently banged 5 Guys *

http://www.fiveguys.com/media/4797/home-polaroid-sample-2.jpg

Including her boss and “journalists” in the gaming biz who coincidentally gave her positive reviews (for her gaming development work that is 😉 ). I DGAF who she bangs except for the fact that she and her defenders are distracting from the issues with feminist red herrings.

She is quite possibly a user whom no one should be defending. However she’s on their team and ideology trumps everything else (see also: Bill Clinton and Juanita Broaddrick’s accusations and his using intern vagina as a humidor … no big deal because of ideology and political team)

*- 5 Guys theme borrowed from YouTube user “Internet Aristocrat”
scarymatt
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:37 pm

Great (and NSFW) summary of GamerGate here:
https://encyclopediadramatica.es/Zoe_Quinn
darthlevin
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:40 pm

The Assassin’s Creed line from Ubisoft was pretty down on the Dirty Capitalists and up on the People Ahead Of Their Time Who Espoused 21st Century Social Values.

Made the storyline damn near unwatchable at times, but it sure was fun climbing around medieval Rome, Florence, Tuscany, Constantinople, and later sailing the Caribbean.
Proof
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:45 pm

Video games are too violent., Why I was playing “Pong” just last century and my wrist still hurts!
Earl Scruggs
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:47 pm

This is the first time I have seen a non-gamer site explain what GamerGate actually is. I have seen it referenced at a couple of others, and just found the story impenetrable. I appreciate a straightforward discussion of the story.
Quartermaster
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:50 pm

Vox Day has been purged from SFWA. I’m sure the old line AF writers, such as Pournelle and others of his generation, are a bit disgusted at what their fine organization has become.
Day has also started his own publishing house. The longer Tor has Scalzi in its “stable” the greater the danger they are in. Baen is beating them to pieces at the moment.
kilo6
September 10th, 2014 @ 3:54 pm

Caution: above video has coarse language possibly NSFW depending on your job. I should have noted this earlier.
NeoWayland
September 10th, 2014 @ 4:06 pm

I’ve been reading about this one for about a week now.

Apparently that female-type person (she’s not a lady) is amazing in bed or game journalists are really that starved for sex.
JeffWeimer
September 10th, 2014 @ 4:11 pm

Eron reminds me of this guy:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkFH0KMO0G0&w=560&h=315%5D
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:09 pm

Yeah, that ED page is full of lulz and schadenfreude, but I repeat myself.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:10 pm

I’m guessing B; they sure look like what are called “betas” and “gammas” by the PUA crowd.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:12 pm

If Scalzi and SFWA think kicking him out was a good idea and the end of the fight, they’re sadly mistaken. It looks to me like they’ve made an enemy who won’t rest until SFWA has become a completely useless shell of its former self – and they seem hell-bent on doing his work for him.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:14 pm

The “Quinnspiracy” stuff, while salacious, is really just a distraction from the main issue: videogame journalism is every bit as corrupt, prejudiced and shot through with SJW nonsense as the mainstream media, and gamers aren’t taking it any more.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:15 pm

Here. let’s sit down to some multiplayer Bioshock 2 and kill a dozen or so crazed mutants. Between that and the ibuprofen you’ll be feeling better in no time.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:15 pm

I suspect a lot of people skip the cut scenes and get on with the assassinating.
Trespassers W
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

Liberals ruin everything.
Rob Crawford
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:26 pm

That’s how I played it.
Kirby McCain
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:30 pm

Dammit Wombat this is the best thing I’ve read on TOM in quite a while. I may even upload the Mario selfie! Later
Kirby McCain
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:32 pm

I loved Silent Hunter from UBI, those guys are great! Sorry I missed the AC photo op at DragonCon, dangit …
Unix-Jedi
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:37 pm

Ex-bf. Not husband.

(Apparently she was married at some point in time, reportedly, allegedly, perhaps, though with all the fake names, including her current one, who knows. The whining about the nudes – which were taken for pay by a paid nude site – is incredibly crazy.)
And the SJW’s tell me I’m the one who needs re-education.
Captain Obvious
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:39 pm

Small correction. Quinn never married the guy, so he is her “ex-boyfriend” not “ex-husband”
Unix-Jedi
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:41 pm

Weeeeelllllll, THANK you CAPTAIN OBVIO… Oh.
Captain Obvious
September 10th, 2014 @ 5:57 pm

There’s really 2 parts to this, there’s the integrity in journalism part, and there’s the SJW over-reach part. I think there’s a good tie in to your radical feminist series if you look at the case of Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian is a pot-stirring feminist, but also a dishonest hack, who MAY have received some threats for the latter, but claimed it was the former. Here’s a good analysis:

It’s not as clear cut a left/right issue, (as the author Thunderf00t is a raving socialist lefty in his own right), but blind squirrels and stopped clocks tend to agree that radfem attention-whores (no pun intended) are insane.
Joel Raupe
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

Hey, it worked with the Scientologists.
Quartermaster
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:10 pm

Day has had a number of posts on the matter on his main blog. Basically, he’s just going on with life and Scalzi and the SFWA, which has been taken over by the loony left, is going to tear itself down. My understanding is TOR is bleeding, perhaps it’s arterial, and if they don’t change course and become more like Baen, they’re gonna die horribly.

First they need to do is kick Scalzi to the curb. At this point SFWA needs to die a swift death so the entire genre can get back on track without the little weasels biting the real writers around the ankles.
hinckleybuzzard
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:24 pm

If “the last pieces of pop culture still friendly to conservatives and libertarians” are comic books and video games, then fuhgeddaboudit. We’re dead already.
Captain Obvious
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:25 pm

Heh, your post wasn’t up when I started typing mine. But it is reassuring I’m not the only one paying attention to the details on this, so thanks for that.
ConstantineX1
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:28 pm

This is nothing new to me. There has been an incestuous relationship between game publishers and the media since the Dinosaur Days of game magazines in the 80’s.
Captain Obvious
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:35 pm

So you’re saying because we lost the $10B/yr film industry to leftists, the $100B/yr videogame industry is inconsequential? Ironically, this mischaracterization of assuming “gamers” are an insignificant sect of white male basement dwellers by their own media is exactly the incitement that kicked off gamergate. This isn’t the early 90’s anymore… according to recent data, gamers are 45% female. We are legion.
Fail Burton
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:39 pm

You’re right on the money with elements of SFF and gamer culture, and tech too (see Shanley Kane). The bottom line is the politically correct have driven a stake into the heart of SF literature. Once big SF magazines have lost 80 to 90% of their readership since the early ’80s and that’s with 75 million more people in America. Obviously neither kids nor adults like being called colonialist racists.

Money has gone elsewhere into less literate but just as fun expressions like Potter and the Hunger Games. Tor Books must be asking themselves why big money is being gobbled up by others in a genre that is supposedly Tor’s specialty. If some of Tor’s editors didn’t spend their time Tweeting and blogging about white privilege and instead used that time to cultivate connections with new authors, agents and Hollywood producers and stop promoting and publishing radical feminist garbage, maybe the next big SFF franchise wouldn’t also slip through their fingers like the last four.

As you point out, both the SFWA and the Hugos are now nothing more than the White Privilege Conference, an upper middle-class version of the KKK but where black people joined to fight “racism.” You couldn’t ask for more insane people leading more naive people. It’s more or less a stupider less erudite and sophisticated version of Li’l Abner’s Dogpatch. PC bloggers routinely act as if slavery’s just around the corner and they’ll punched and dragged behind trucks. They can’t figure out why Jews have an anti-defamation league because no defamation exists in America unless doxy intersectionalist feminists say so.

John Scalzi’s the closest thing SFF has had to Lord Haw-Haw and Tokyo Rose. If there is a notable SFF author that has ever existed who is more of an unsophisticated rube of a redneck hayseed I don’t know who that would be.
Captain Obvious
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:40 pm

Silver lining: a lot of nominal Democrats who game are experiencing first hand what it’s like for the media to unfairly savage them all as racist sexist homophobic “all-white-males”. May not affect the hardcore leftists, but the casual voters may just remember how stupid and unfair such accusations are when they hear them bandied about against conservatives again come November.
Unix-Jedi
September 10th, 2014 @ 6:42 pm

, but the casual voters may just remember

Nope. They never do.
NeoWayland
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:29 pm

There’s an obvious joke there about some guys and their joysticks, but I think I’m going to walk away now.
RS
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:32 pm

I’m not a gamer, but the story is interesting on a “meta” level. The Progressive Left, cannot allow anything to exist which does not parrot the party line. Anything with even a whiff of free expression must be suppressed. Visual arts, music, books, magazines, film, whatever. All must be controlled; practitioners must be monitored’; miscreants driven out or underground. That’s why e-publishing is so frightening. We’ve left the world the Samizdat and it scares the Left immensely.
Joel Raupe
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:34 pm

Having heard a squeak or two about this controversy, your interest and the reasoning behind your interest described above was enough for me to delve deeper into some of the exhibitions devoted to discussion of the particulars.

I now regret the price of admission.

Its possible I am, finally, simply too old to appreciate the color, and while I can allow certain kinds of graffiti are more often these days unique and expressive enough to be called art, even representative of culture, so are Point-of-Purchase displays in an adult book store.

It may be a kind of culture, but the journalism of the gaming world is pretty thin stuff, on the whole, finding a common language too similar to that of social imbecility to detect much difference.

Now it seems clear that certain fools with money, along with certain prostitutes with ambition, are conspiring – quite openly, apparently, to find a handle on jamming their way into this entertainment market. And, these days, people devoted to freedom are, of necessity, more willing to fight alongside interesting co-belligerents. I would argue also that Andrew had a point when he insisted “politics is downstream from culture,” but some levels of discourse, i.e., in the gaming development world, are more “downstream” than others.
maniakmedic
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:43 pm

I was going to point that out myself. I had to stop trying to 100% the game (after I had to take a break from even playing it) because of all the idiotic anti-capitalist/uber-pro-socialist bullshit it kept spewing. I almost wanted to yell at my tv “You’re a freaking game company that makes money from people buying your shit through CAPITALISM! WTF?”
John Bradley
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:45 pm

Did RSM see the pics at the bottom of the ED page? They might serve as clickbait for another “crazy naked feminists” post… 🙂
maniakmedic
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:46 pm

I personally enjoy TOR’s idiocy; it give Larry Correia stuff to rant about occasionally, and his rants are epic.
maniakmedic
September 10th, 2014 @ 7:50 pm

And he (Scalzi) routinely gets his ass handed to him by Larry Correia, but still insists on picking fights. The guy is a complete douchbag.
ChandlersGhost
September 10th, 2014 @ 8:42 pm

For years now the publishers have been acting like Zoe Quinn while the reviewers and journalists have acted like the dudes she screwed, leaving the gamers in the role of the cuckolded boyfriend. That’s why gamers of all political stripes outside the SJW crowd and its orbiting weenies are pissed.
richard mcenroe
September 10th, 2014 @ 8:51 pm

Can’t remember the last time I bought a TOR novel, and I used to work for Tom Doherty, to date myself.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 9:24 pm

Yes, indeed they are. All hail the International Lord of Hate!
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 9:26 pm

Well put!
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 9:27 pm

Yes, but for the most part game publishers and the media didn’t treat their customers like subhuman filth. The SJWs have changed all that.
Wombat_socho
September 10th, 2014 @ 9:29 pm

Comic books went down the SJW rabbit hole decades ago. Baen is in the business of publishing SF, which they do quite well at because they ignore all the politically-correct BS that’s killing off the other publishers.
LLC
September 10th, 2014 @ 10:21 pm

Thank you for the post, Wombat – this stuff not being publicized is how the Left managed to subvert other groups and industries. Sunshine is a great disinfectant.

(BTW, I still owe you a book – I’m buckled down trying to finish it.)
Quartermaster
September 10th, 2014 @ 10:43 pm

Yeppers! If it hurts, you need to do more of it. Get in shape, I sez.
Isa
September 10th, 2014 @ 11:37 pm

the next game’s the French Revolution. i wonder how they’ll tackle that bit of fun.
TroubleAtTheMine
September 11th, 2014 @ 4:19 am

The feminists and SJWs are trying to do to game culture what they’ve done to every other part of our society, but I think they might have met their Waterloo. Real gamers -not the fake Sarkeesian/Quinn type – are the smartest people alive. I’m rooting for them.
ConstantineX1
September 11th, 2014 @ 10:42 am

This also is nothing new. Game publishers are just like the Hollywood movie studios, they also have contempt for their customers.