The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The #GamerGate Hate Hoax

Posted on | October 16, 2014 | 62 Comments

Anita Sarkeesian (@femfreq) and Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) are feminist critics of the videogame industry who seem to be trying to cash in on the fact that they are feminist critics of the videogame industry. This involves portraying themselves as victims of horrific harassment and criminal threats. Who is engaging in this harassment? Who is making these threats? We don’t know, because it seems to be coming from a lot of anonymous online accounts, and I strongly suspect that some of these threats are fake. But whether it’s fake or real, the harassment is being blamed on the gamers who, using the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate, have been blowing the whistle on some of the sleazy tactics by which feminists have been trying to turn gaming into a Political Correctness Zone and — oh, just by the way — cut themselves in on a slice of the multibillion-dollar videogame industry pie.

Thursday, the feminists got themselves a front-page puff-piece in the New York Times, after Sarkeesian cancelled a university speech in Utah claiming she felt unsafe because of a threat. Click here to see the threat. You tell me if that looks legit. It looks phony as hell to me, but here’s the thing: I DON’T CARE IF IT’S REAL OR FAKE.

What’s important to me is that we learn the truth. I want an all-out law-enforcement investigation of these threats, I want some arrests and prosecutions, and I want to know the names of the responsible parties, because I’m sick and tired of this bullshit about “Oh, we’re courageous feminists and people say mean things about us on the Internet! Help! Help! We’re victims!”

People say mean things about me on the Internet every day, but that’s not a front-page story in the New York Times, is it?

Either arrest some people, or else shut the hell up. But this Courageous Feminist Martyr act has become tedious and annoying.

 

Comments

62 Responses to “The #GamerGate Hate Hoax”

  1. Political Rift » The #GamerGate Hate Hoax
    October 16th, 2014 @ 11:00 pm

    […] Read more here: The #GamerGate Hate Hoax […]

  2. Daniel Freeman
    October 16th, 2014 @ 11:26 pm

    The threatening email was investigated and was found not credible, yet the university implemented maximum security anyway, out of an abundance of caution. Utah state law apparently mandates for people with a license to carry guns to be allowed to take them into public venues like that, and she used that as an excuse to back out.

    I don’t necessarily agree with the state law in question, and I might even think that we could use some better regulations of firearms — at least in terms of plugging background check loopholes — but she’s forcing me to side with you guys by acting so fearful and drama-seeking. I despise her so much right now, words fail me.

  3. David, internet troll
    October 17th, 2014 @ 12:01 am

    Actually, Stacy, it is a multiBILLION (with a “b”) dollar a year pie, currently worth like three times the total annual revenue of all Hollywood movies combines.

    Good article, but I thought I would point that out.

  4. RS
    October 17th, 2014 @ 12:58 am

    The threat is rather detailed and graphic. It’s the sort of thing which should cause a law enforcement full court press to discover who made it. If it is real, the perpetrator needs to be prosecuted. If it’s fake, the perpetrator needs to be exposed and prosecuted. Given that there really is no such thing as an “anonymous” internet trail, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find the threat’s origins and ultimately, the person responsible.

    That said, there does seem to be a “get me a disgruntled misogynist from central casting” quality about it. It’s too perfect and lacks the rambling, incoherence typical of the “manifestos” of deranged lunatics.

    Alas, those who question its authenticity will be branded haters. Unfortunately, feminists have only themselves to blame, given that there have been any number of attempts to advance the narrative by making stuff up on there part. See, e.g. that fat female person in Laramie, Wyoming whose name escapes me.

    (And yes, I shall now engage in preemptory Denunciation Onanism or Onanistic Denunciation for the “fat” part of the immediately preceding sentence.)

  5. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:22 am

    “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is it’s own virtue and requires no other justification. Without the right to bear arms the right to keep them is meaningless.

  6. Daniel Freeman
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:29 am

    If you focus too much on that part, you’ll miss the part where I would rather work with you than them.

  7. Anon
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:54 am

    More specifically, more than 100 billion dollars annually worldwide. Gaming is HUGE.

  8. TetraD20
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:57 am

    I like the fact that its another pro article, but we’ve had more newsworthy stuff recently, like we have proof of ethics problems in games journalism, or we know who does most of the harassment to anita eg,eg. @tetrad20 is my twitter.

  9. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:10 am

    Don’t care. There’s no work to be done. “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. That doesn’t mean except for some “better regulation” of firearms.

  10. Phryj
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:18 am

    Hey, he’s not here to take your gun away. We’re not even talking about that right now, we’re talking about media and radical feminists faking threats to attack a group that wants media reform.

  11. Phryj
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:19 am

    Exactly. We need to focus on the issue at hand and work together.

  12. craig henry
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:23 am

    The #Gamergate threat hoax, just another of the little Reichstag fires the Left uses to advance their agenda

  13. DeadMessenger
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:37 am

    I don’t mind being branded a hater. I’d tell her to her face, in the most lady-like possible way, that she’s a filthy carpet-munching drama-queen pants-on-fire liar.

    LE would never take this stupid “threat” seriously. They’d look at it and giggle, and ask if that was the transcription from the library-pasted cut out newspaper letters version.

    But you know, this lying “threat” should be treated the same as somebody yelling fire in a crowded theater, and the lying liar in question should be arrested, and not only have the book thrown at her, but beaten with it too, as an object lesson for future lying lesbian liars.

  14. DeadMessenger
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:42 am

    Indeed. You’ve got a ginormous bazillion dollar cash wad plummeting downhill like a runaway freight train, and a few feminists think they can stand at the bottom of the mountain shouting “halt!” and it will stop.

  15. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:48 am

    ”I don’t necessarily agree with the state law in question, and I might even think that we could use some better regulations of firearms — at least in terms of plugging background check loopholes — ”
    ”The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”

  16. Daniel Freeman
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:56 am

    Come on. We agree on lots of things. We don’t have to agree on everything, to agree that Anita Sarkeesian is a female chauvinist grifter who used the Utah law as an excuse to create drama around an email threat that the authorities had found to be not credible. And I haven’t linked all of the evidence, but it’s all available.

  17. Ned McFury
    October 17th, 2014 @ 3:05 am

    Oh for the good old days when video gamers were beneath even being spit upon by women. But now that it’s profitable, everyone’s entitled to a piece of the pie.

    That being said, the whole story is a mobius strip of asperger-ish misanthropy, and every minute one spends NOT thinking about it is a major life victory.

  18. Daniel Freeman
    October 17th, 2014 @ 3:10 am

    The story is convoluted. Asperger’s is not misanthropy-ish, you weirdo. Much like a mobius strip, there is value in spending time considering the story, as it will show truths.

  19. Daniel Freeman
    October 17th, 2014 @ 3:17 am

    Also, the cash wad is composed of individuals who are accustomed to accepting a loss and immediately trying again, over and over and over until success.

  20. Ned McFury
    October 17th, 2014 @ 3:34 am

    Honestly, dabbling in day-trading ruined video games for me, because they pale in comparison to beating the market using charting formulas with juice on the line. (Not that I ever beat the market for long).

  21. John Q. Galt
    October 17th, 2014 @ 4:17 am

    Brianna Wu aka Literally Wu? is actually a man.

  22. Nick
    October 17th, 2014 @ 5:03 am

    Ok, Adobe, message delivered. Now you can shut up.

  23. robertstacymccain
    October 17th, 2014 @ 6:34 am

    Heh. It’s like Texas Hold ‘Em. Once you start playing poker seriously. you wonder what those other idiots are doing in the casino, playing all those other stupid games.

  24. Nick Beard
    October 17th, 2014 @ 6:51 am
  25. Quartermaster
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:53 am

    Obviously the message was not received. What he said is germane.

  26. Jack
    October 17th, 2014 @ 8:02 am

    Nice one.

  27. K-Bob
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:00 am

    The term “Hollywood” causes a lot of confusion over what the industry really is.

    Most films aren’t made in or within a hundred miles of the city called Hollywood, California. Same with most Television programs. But all are included in the term Hollywood, whether made there or not.

    The fact is, the non-interactive Audio/Visual Entertainment Medium includes all of Walt Disney, all of the other movie production companies, residuals, spinoff properties, foreign films, foreign television (TV is HUGE throughout Latin America) and interestingly, a lot of the production aspects of video games.

    So in some ways the gaming industry is part of “Hollywood” and vice versa. The crossover is massive.

  28. K-Bob
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:01 am

    They are paying for your hotel room, of course!

  29. K-Bob
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:30 am

    Have a lot of luck with that line on the web?

  30. DeadMessenger
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:34 am

    HAHAHAHAHA!

  31. NikFromNYC
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:42 am

    Related to this indeed laughably fake long academic essay format “threat” that no determined shooter would submit to reveal his plan, Anita was suspected of faking a former threat, due to her screenshot being taken an implausable 12 SECONDS after the last in a long series of rapidly posted, perfect grammar, near full Twitter length threats:

    http://www.returnofkings.com/42602/did-anita-sarkeesian-fake-death-threats-against-herself

  32. NikFromNYC
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:53 am

    That’s why this is so exciting for me as a Ph.D. chemist who has now studied climate “science” enough to become a strong skeptic and fraud whistleblower, as skepticism is attacked and slanderously maligned by the same lefty media outfits now attacking gamers. Skeptics are mostly retired STEM majors with low testosterone, quite pacifist to a fault about calling fraud fraud. So the smear campaign, stereotyping us as maverick deniers of the basic physics of the greenhouse effect itself, works well to this day, based on a tiny minority of such crackpots.

  33. Ned McFury
    October 17th, 2014 @ 9:54 am

    Haha, I used to joke that there should be flashing lights and sirens on my computer during day-trading.

  34. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:23 pm

    Actually I’m coming to the conclusion that apparently we must not agree on all that much. At the risk of being tedious, (and when it comes to gun rights I am willing to be eternally tedious on this site until all understand or I am banned or in real life until i’m dead) I don’t think you are getting my point. So in the interest of clarity I’ll rephrase. The only ”background check loophole” is the fact that the background check system is a gun ownership registry. There are no reasonable “gun control” laws. The only way “better regulations of firearms” can be a solution is if the problem is “How do we go about setting up a successful tyranny”.
    Any one who supports gun control is a threat to MY liberty because they support tyranny. The phrase ”shall not be infringed” has the same meaning and authority as “thou shalt not” does in any of the commandments.
    “The right to keep and bear arms” isn’t merely a phrase it is a natural right and may not be negotiated. Neither you nor I may or can surrender it, we neither can or may vote to repeal it.
    If the second amendment were
    repealed using the amendment process specified in the constitution we would still have the “right to keep and bear arms”.
    If you like I can expand on this subject at some length but I suspect you now get the gist.

  35. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:37 pm

    If you are implying that you now understand, you’re welcome. If you’re simply requesting/demanding that I shut my yap….good luck with that.

  36. Eidolon
    October 17th, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

    I’ve never understood why “we got death threats” was supposed to say anything on either side.

    A writer for a gaming web site wrote an article detailing some rape accusations against a game developer, with no more evidence than her word (she was lying, as it happened). That guy subsequently got death threats, as could be expected. The writer may as well have solicited death threats against the guy, it was inevitable they would come when you intentionally write a graphically detailed article about rape. Yet it’s okay when pro-feminist people use death threats, it’s only bad when the other side does it.

    It’s kind of like the left accepts that they’re a bunch of cheaters and liars, and it’s only news when the other side sinks to their level. It’s not hard to find leaders on the left, not just anonymous trolls, who have called for the deaths or jailing of those they disagree with. But that doesn’t even discredit the people who say it, let alone their whole group.

    Even Penny Arcade sank into this fallacy the other day, saying “can we all agree that death threats are out of bounds? Huh!?” and suggesting that the fact that someone made a threat, if that even happened, discredited the whole group. As though the other side had never made death threats, as though they weren’t very easy to fake, and as though they weren’t a dime a dozen on the internet anyway. This must be some sort of willful amnesia by them, being on the internet every day as they are.

    Does anyone remember how some people made a film wherein they lovingly recreated their imagined scene of GWB being assassinated? Does anyone remember how that discredited all of the left, or Hollywood, or even the people who worked on it?

  37. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 2:34 pm

    Stacy if you’re still paying attention to the comments in this thread. Am I correct in believing that your interest in #GamerGate is mostly due to the fact that the Politically Correct Feminist Totalitarians has reared it’s ugly head (and perhaps hairy underarms) in this kerfuffle?

  38. Adam Kelm
    October 17th, 2014 @ 3:48 pm

    The gaming community is the most organized, tech savvy, and ruthless people on the internet. If this were the middle ages, they would be Charles Martel and the Franks. They are the LAST people that the liberals want to pick a fight with, because they can fight back hard……they just prefer not to. Go ahead, liberals, pick a fight with them and see what happens when they get serious about fighting back….because they will fight back.

  39. Eidolon
    October 17th, 2014 @ 4:19 pm

    I don’t agree. Before it happened, no one would’ve believed that Hollywood would become utterly dominated by a hard-left worldview. Gaming could easily go that direction. It’s not like gamers in general lean heavily to the right or anything.

    I was shocked in 2012 at the media’s continued ability to manipulate what people believed by excluding evidence and presenting slanted evidence. It still has that power. It’s unlikely that gamers will be immune to it.

    Besides, most gamers are almost certainly in the millenial left-wing-but-don’t-know-it, thinks-Jon-Stewart-and-Vox-and-BuzzFeed-are-in-the-middle category. They’re quite susceptible to feminist/general left-wing attacks like this. You can see this in the flailing responses; GamerGaters know the SJW types are wrong but they have a hard time articulating why. They don’t want to reject feminism wholesale because they don’t think it’s all bad, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of “I’m a feminist but…” and “I’m a woman but…” on the GamerGate side. You can’t beat the SJW types that way. You can’t be more “sensitive” than them, you can’t be “better feminists” than them. You have to reject their premises and reframe the debate, otherwise they’ll eventually win, like they always do.

    I won’t be surprised if gaming is conquered, even if it takes 10 or 15 years. It’s probably better than 50/50 that’ll happen.

  40. Wombat_socho
    October 17th, 2014 @ 4:51 pm

    That’s certainly why I originally posted about it some weeks ago.

  41. Wombat_socho
    October 17th, 2014 @ 4:52 pm

    Disagree. Too many minorities and women telling Sarkeesian, Quinn and their SJW comrades to f*ck off and die. #notyourshield.

  42. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 5:53 pm

    The GamerGaters appear to be catching on and fighting back. Even worse for the Politically Correct Totalitarians many of these gamers are of the 20 something cohort that the PCTs in particular and the left in general think they have in their pockets. Most people will realize that their liberty is in danger when they’re told they are scum for the way they exercise it. Sooner or later young white males will come to understand that when the left says all white men are misogynist racists, the left is talking about them too.

    http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/gamergate-an-un-pc-rebellion/16029#.VEFqEPnF_NJ

  43. Anti-Heterosexual #Feminism : The Other McCain
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:05 pm

    […] My #GamerGate coverage had only just begun when @streever — who obviously doesn’t know me from Adam’s housecat — made the mistake of disputing my authority to describe feminism as “anti-male and anti-heterosexual.” This is not necessarily @streever‘s fault. […]

  44. Matt_SE
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:07 pm

    This reminds me of the Rick Perry indictment. The TRUE purpose is not the STATED purpose: instead of a serious inquiry, the indictment is a smear campaign meant to be dragged out as long as possible. Because if a qualified judge ever heard the complaints, he would throw the case out of court in 5 minutes.
    By the same token, the threats against Sar-skeeze-ian will never be pursued because she doesn’t want them to be pursued. That’s not their purpose.
    G’damned leftists ruin everything.

  45. Matt_SE
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:11 pm

    I agree that they are sloppy thinkers, so their defense won’t be as pointed as it could be.
    But intellectual heft isn’t necessary to fight an emotional battle, just equally strong emotions.

  46. From Around the Blogroll | The First Street Journal.
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:24 pm

    […] The Other McCain: The #GamerGate Hate Hoax […]

  47. Julie Pascal
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

    There’s a lot of meanings to the word “better”. I’d like “better” gun laws, too. The “background check loopholes” issue could be addressed “better” but most of the push related to it is not “better” at all, but clearly an infringement.

    Unless you know what a person actually would like to see happen, you can’t assume what a general statement of “we could do this *better*” actually means.

    (I support gun control… and my last 2 inch group for 10 rounds at 10 yds with my pistol shows that I really mean it.)

  48. Anti-Heterosexual #Feminism by The Other McCain | Living in Anglo-America
    October 17th, 2014 @ 7:54 pm

    […] My #GamerGate coverage had only just begun when @streever — who obviously doesn’t know me from Adam’s housecat — made the mistake of disputing my authority to describe feminism as “anti-male and anti-heterosexual.” This is not necessarily @streever‘s fault. […]

  49. Adobe_Walls
    October 17th, 2014 @ 8:26 pm

    The background check loophole as that term is generally used is a myth. The purpose of background checks is to deny gun rights to as many as the govt. can get away with. For those who are allowed to buy guns the system serves as a registry. For the purposes of gun control “better” always means “more stringent”, *better* to me means not doing it at all.
    Kudos to your shooting prowess you’re a far better shot than I.

  50. Daniel Freeman
    October 17th, 2014 @ 11:29 pm

    Can a natural right be infringed by common sense? Can we deny gun rights to felons, delusionals, and blind people? Or do we have to let them wield what firearms please them, and sort it out in the aftermath?

    The well of reasoned debate between reasonable people has been so thoroughly poisoned in this country, and your rhetoric is so absolutist, I am forced to ask that as a serious question.