The #AreYouBlocked Test: Gamers, Lesbian Feminists, the Pope and Me

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If you’re wondering what the #AreYouBlocked hashtag is about, click here to see the League of Gamers “Blocklist Checker” site.

What has happened? It’s simple: Crazy people do crazy things.

One thing crazy people do is to accuse others of “harassment.”

Randi Harper (@Freebsdgirl) decided to make herself the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) queen by creating a “blockbot” so that Twitter users could automatically block #GamerGate activists. Other SJWs have created a blockbot “that identifies Twitter’s ‘anti-feminist obsessives’ (they’re nominated for inclusion by a group of trusted, preapproved users), sorts them into categories of offensiveness ranging ‘tedious and obnoxious’ to ‘abusive bigot,’ and allows users to pick the level of vitriol they’d like to excise from their Twitter feeds.” (That Slate article was written by @AmandaHess who, of course, has me blocked on Twitter.)

Like many other feminists, Randi Harper suffers from mental illness and has discussed her prescriptions for Ativan (Lorzepam) and Trazodone, powerful drugs used to treat depression and anxiety disorders. The fact that someone under psychiatric care has appointed herself an arbiter of Twitter “harassment” should be a flashing yellow caution light about her project, for which she is using Patreon.com to raise money.

“Let’s give money to a crazy woman! What could possibly go wrong?”

Keep in mind that I have been harassed by some of the worst trolls in Internet history, including Neal Rauhauser and Bill Schmalfeldt. Unlike feminists, however, I am not an emotionally fragile basket case and, also unlike feminists, I don’t qualify as “marginalized”:

[O]nline harassment is a social problem (one that disproportionately affects the same folks who are marginalized offline, like minority groups, LGBT people, and women), and making the Internet a safe and equitable place to communicate requires a social solution.

Again, I’m quoting Amanda Hess, who has me blocked on Twitter, because I’m such a dangerous menace, you know.

Ken White describes blockbots thus:

Various cultural and political conflicts online have led some users to develop blockbots, which are lists to which you can subscribe (to oversimplify the process) to mass-block everyone on the list. Some lists are created by methodology (like automatically blocking people who follow certain Twitter users affiliated with “GamerGate”) and some, like BlockBot, are curated by individuals who choose who goes on the list and why.
Some folks don’t like how they are characterized by these lists. BlockBot targets complain of being characterized by mostly anonymous and unaccountable strangers as “racists” or “transphobes” or “rape apologists.”

Ken White says blockbots are not defamation, and I agree. However, we must consider the original dispute that gave rise to #GamerGate, i.e., the suspicion that undisclosed conflicts of interest were influencing journalism about the videogame industry.

The #GamerGate controversy subsequently involved a lot of other things, but originally it was about concerns that this multibillion-dollar industry was being corrupted by unethical practices. As I understand it, the basic allegation was that some writers were engaged in the videogame equivalent of “insider trading,” which had the effect of providing favorable publicity for certain game developers while stigmatizing other game developers. Biased journalism about politics is one thing, but biased journalism about an extremely lucrative industry? That’s something else, and potentially an illegal something else.

So, hypothetically: What if shady practitioners were using blockbots to prevent exposure of their shady practices? Wouldn’t this amount to aiding and abetting a potentially illegal activity? One might argue that it would and, while I don’t want people to become afraid of tweeting whatever they want to tweet and blocking whomever they want to block, maybe you wouldn’t want to assist a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.)

So you have a controversy involving claims of corruption in a lucrative industry and — deus ex machina — here comes an emotionally disturbed person raising money for a project that aims to silence (as “online abuse”) the people who say they are trying to expose the aforesaid corruption. Am I the only person who sees a basic problem with this?

@adambaldwin is on the ggAutoblocker’s blocklist.

@adambaldwin is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 2).

When actor Adam Baldwin called attention to the #GamerGate controversy, he became Public Enemy Number One for the SJW crowd, thus earning his spot on Randi Harper’s ggAutoblocker list.

@lizzyf620 is on the ggAutoblocker’s blocklist.

@lizzyf620 is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 2).

Wait a minute: What has videogame journalist Lizzy Finnegan done to deserve her inclusion on these lists? What does this mean?

@rsmccain is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 1).

Yeah, so what? This doesn’t bother me at all. It’s an honor.

@VABVOX is on The Block Bot’s blocklist (Level 1).

Wait a minute: They’re blocking lesbian feminist Victoria Brownworth? Can you imagine what a weird worldview must be involved here, for both Brownworth and I to qualify as “Level 1” offenders? At one point, I’m told, the SJWs blocked Pope Francis for his alleged “transphobia.”

Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason magazine discusses the blockbot mentality. And, at Breitbart.com, Allum Bokhair explains:

The Block Bot . . . rose to prominence during the online trolling panic of 2013. It claims to be a one-stop shop for blocking trolls and abusers. In practice, the people added to its lists tended to be activists, academics, bloggers, and ordinary Twitter users who fell on the wrong side of political schisms within Atheism. Richard Dawkins, for example, was added to the list as a ‘rapeapologist’ and a ‘transphobe’, despite being neither of those things. Some have accused the Block Bot of engaging in defamation.
The GG Autoblocker is arguably even worse than the blockbot. Whereas the Block Bot decides who to block based on individual reports, GG Autoblocker uses guilt by association. The autoblocker maintains a list of several blacklisted users, including Breitbart London associate editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and at one point, the feminist academic Christina Hoff Sommers. If other Twitter users follow too many of these individuals, they will be automatically added to the autoblocker. You don’t have to do anything or even say anything to become a target. If you follow the wrong people, you’ll be blocked.
Twitter users targeted by the two blocklists have had enough, and are taking to the #AreYouBlocked hashtag in large numbers to demand that the company takes action. Urged on by academic Christina Hoff Sommers and game developer Mark Kern, both popular targets for autoblockers, users have caused the #AreYouBlocked hashtag to trend globally. Using the League for Gamers’ blockchecker as well as the Block Bot’s own search function, they have also uncovered an astonishing range of accounts targeted by the blocklists.

Whether or not this is illegal, we certainly see what feeble minds and cowardly souls must be behind this. SJWs are totalitarians who think they can “win” a debate by preventing debate.

Please thank @League4Gamers, and support freedom!





 

136 comments

  1. Gee … it *almost* makes me want to waste some of my time to set up a Twitter account, just so I can be blocked by some insane SJW.

  2. I bet Ativan and Trazodone, are for a panic disorder. Trazodone, is given for agitated depression and is sometimes is use as a sleeping aid. It really knocks someone out.

  3. LOL You know you are really in someones head when they block you then follow all your posts.

  4. I pity Randi Harper. She somehow got the mistaken idea that the value of a person is judged by their looks and not their character. She doesn’t have supermodel looks and never bothered to develop a character, and now everyone must pay.

    And to Amanda Hess, Court Jester of the Idiotocracy, who wrote this – “[O]nline harassment is a social problem (one that disproportionately affects the same folks who are marginalized offline, like minority groups, LGBT people, and women), and making the Internet a safe and equitable place to communicate requires a social solution.” – I would ask, how would anyone online know to marginalize these supposedly marginalized groups without knowing or seeing them?

    It’s because, Mandy, they marginalize themselves by saying the same jackassified things online as they say offline. Crazy is as crazy does.

  5. I’ve carefully avoided Twitter. It’s tailor-made for brevity and wit, but I’m politically incorrect. Either I wouldn’t be as good at it as I expect, or I could be doxxed and harassed. Kind of a lose-lose.

  7. More to the point, the internet is full of assholes, so the statement isn’t even true — unless by “disproportionately affects the … marginalized” she means that they’re more fragile. And that would be a negative prejudice.

  12. […] No charges for Harvey NYPD says not enough evidence to convict him  Harvey and his wife  Harvey Girls? He has been having a mid life crisis for a while now… Boy it is a good thing Harvey is not a fraternity member at UVA… and it probably helps he is a Democrat TOM: If you are a conservative, don’t you dare let your family send a rude email… and the #AreYouBlocked Test: Gamers, Lesbian Feminist, the Pope, and Me […]

  14. I find it insulting that anyone of her feeble intellect is associating herself with the perfectly good operating system FreeBSD in any way. She can go fuck herself; I’ve been using BSD for longer than she’s been alive.

  18. wow – but Brittney Cooper would be another badge of honor.
    Someone ought to create a club – get a Merit Badge and 1000 points for getting blocked by twits at Salon and Alternet and MoveOn and ThinkProgress .
    But Marcotte takes the cake. Good work.

  20. never been on twitter, and have no desire to
    but why not just do what they do – right back to them ?
    you know – just to annoy them.

  21. I’ve heard it put as follows:

    Linux is for people who hate Windows.
    BSD is for people who love Unix.

  23. Because we are not delicate flowers that need to be sheltered from opposing points of view, and our ideas are strong enough that we expect to be able to influence people. It would only hurt us to build an echo chamber like theirs.

  24. Besides…and I’ve been saying this for the last two days…consider what kind of people throughout history have maintained blocklists, blacklists and enemies lists.

    We’re not the bad guys. They are.

  26. Must be a flaw in the algorithm. I have followed RSM since 2011 (I think) and I am currently unblocked. It also must be based on the number of tweets since I tweet very little. I have the code, BTW. There must be some way to reverse engineer its effects. You’d think Twitter would forbid automation of one of its core features.

  31. It’s because, Mandy, they marginalize themselves by saying the same jackassified things online as they say offline.

    Yes.

    I got into it with an SJW-type, an international adoptee. She complained that she’d been banned from various adoption blogs. When I read some of her writing, I could see why: parents don’t particularly like being told that they are wicked people for adopting their children. “Wow. You go on to other people’s sites and bulletin boards and do nothing but insult them in the worst possible ways, then act indignant when they ‘marginalized’ you and ‘silenced your voice’ by kicking you out. I’m think that the problem isn’t them, sunshine.”

    And you’ll never guess: I was eventually asked to (ahem) not return to her blog.

  34. I was going to say that I’ll have to get active and troll somewhere so I can get this valuable accreditation as being worthy of being blocked by the insane, the inept and the insignificant.

    Also: The internet is becoming a grade school playground.

    Everyone’s acting like so immature, man.

  39. One day the crazies may eventually realize that they can switch it off or look away if their fragile psych’s can’t handle a bit of robust discussion. What is it with all of this censorship all of a sudden? Have we totally lost all of our coping skills?

  42. OT: I’m warming up to Ted Cruz. In this video, he gave a pitch-perfect answer to the criticism that he not only is the smartest guy in the room, but knows it; that he talks down to people. That’s a difficult assertion to counter without confirming it, but he didn’t get defensive. He just pointed out that if it were true, he wouldn’t have had success with grass-roots campaigning.

  44. This is typical of statists and totalitarians. The guilt by association sort of thing. You know where the NKVD or the Secret Police would show up to an apartment block, take away the guilty person. Then as they go through the rest of the apartment, anyone who said they were friendly with said guilty person (usually guilty for fostering revolution against the state or some other high crime), then all of a sudden the others are taken away. Heck, if you want to go really bad; some totalitarian leaders have gassed, bombed or assaulted a whole village all under the idea that the guilty will have to be punished as the innocent. However, there are no innocent that come from a village with a guilty person in it, since it takes a village to raise people.

  45. Accusations of meth, a fake swatting, and a real mugshot close are all over the internet. She used to go by the name Sektie. Google it. There’s a lot more.. Plus she seems to have a relationship with some exec at twitter, by the name of Del Harvey. There’s a story on a site called.reaxxion that shows this nutjob has an in concerning bans. And she recently was fired from Kixeye. That’s probably why she;s on the internet begging for money. It’s just a matter of time before someone sues her, and takes everything she has.

  46. What a tragedy, Jim, that this totally unexpected thing happened to you (heh). I’m sure you’re missing out on a lot at that blog (double heh).

  47. These guys totally misled you, Z. “Bsd” is bondage and sadistic discipline. “Bsdm” is the same, but with some masochism thrown in.

    At least, that’s what I think of unix. (I freakin’ hate cron jobs.)

  49. Well, tell your fellow Oregonians to put their bongs down sooner. =)

    Jokes the woman from Florida.

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