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

  2. Honest… shutting the door on everyone doesn’t hurt those shut out of SJW territory, it just shuts them away in their own little segregated place where they can pretend no one else exists. Do they actually think that “Whoo hooo!” they can get anyone else to care? Or care enough to add their self-important little witch hunt to an employment back ground check?

  3. Also, she has something like $40k in IRS debt. The “nonprofit” she’s starting is, as it were, problematic, but she is now completely unemployable within the industry.

  5. That’s interesting. I was wondering if she reports the money she receives through crowdfunding, to the IRS. She was also sued in GA, for walking out on her rent. With her online reputation, I don’t think she’s employable outside the industry either.

  6. [O]nline harassment is a social problem

    No it isn’t.

    (one that disproportionately affects the same folks who are marginalized offline, like minority groups, LGBT people, and women),

    No it doesn’t.

    and making the Internet a safe and equitable place to communicate requires a social solution.

    No it doesn’t.

    And amusingly, Randi Harper has effectively blackballed herself. Thanks to her very prominent far-left internet activism, drama, abusiveness, and the unpleasant facts about her personal life that came out when she made herself into a Twitter celebrity, no employer wants to hire her.

    She is utterly toxic, and that’s why her new career is based on e-begging.

  9. You should give her a call, Sarge. She obviously likes Marines, why else would she dye her hair that color?

  11. I just set up an account yesterday. So far I’m not blocked, so I’ve been adding every SJW I can think of to follow. Very strange to see Zoe Quinn immediately followed by Daddy Warpig in my timeline. Can’t imagine this is going to last much longer. I was told following @grummz was an instablock, but, alas, no such luck. At least for the present.

  14. Aaaannnnnd I think we’ve reached a crossover, with that Jerry dude from the other thread. You know, the commie (and I am not employing hyperbole here – he was practically calling for the elimination of the kulaks).

    Funny how these idealistic utopian projects always end up involving cattle cars and camps.

  15. This is insane. What she said was absolutely true. In her world, she can use this chain to keep people from being hired just for following a conversation and she’s excited about that.

  18. I see you cited Sargon of Akkad. That guy’s Youtube videos on SJW and feminism are classics. Hilarious and well-made. I was going to suggest that Mr. McCain check them out, but it looks like you might have already.

  24. When I was doing my treatments for Hep C, they gave me Trazadone as a sleep aid. I only took it a couple of times…when you woke up, felt like you had been drug behind a horse through the Sahara Desert with your mouth open.

  25. In summary, this is a blacklist.
    If applied only to social media, I would have no problem with it, just as I support the right of anyone else to NOT associate with people they don’t like.
    When it metastasizes into the area of employment, it becomes criminal.
    Much like everything else on the left, it is ultimately self-defeating as the users end up marginalizing themselves into little echo chambers.

  26. I think most people underestimate Cruz’ speaking skills. They may know in theory that he’s a debate champ, etc. but haven’t seen him in practice.
    When people are exposed to him speaking, I think he’ll make quite a few converts.

  28. I think of it maybe as the Silver Star for anti-SJW online action.
    We need the equivalent of a Congressional Medal of Honor.

  29. “Lord loves a working man. Don’t trust Whitey. See a doctor and get rid of it.”
    Never were truer words spoken.

  30. Try tweeting out #AreYouBlocked. That may get you into the GGAutoBlocker or a whole new one that Randi Harper is threatening the twitterverse with.

    If not, don’t worry. You’re still guilty of thought crimes before the court of fascism and therefore a “wrongthinker”.

  33. Trivia: pretty much everything that communicates with the Internet uses the TCP/IP stack originally developed in BSD in the early 1980s. This is why, deep inside Windows, there are U Cal Berkeley copyrights, because even Windows uses it.

  37. Ever notice how folks who are universally disliked never come to the conclusion that maybe they suck, personality wise?

    This doesn’t apply to only individuals. There are whole groups with bad reputations (they’re called stereotypes) that never ever once say; “gee maybe WE’RE the problem”.

  38. The women would complain that they the Patriarchy is oppressing them.

    Minorities would complain that they’re being discriminated against.

  43. “why else would she dye her hair that color?”
    She’s either a complete metal case or a circus clown.

  44. I think Larry Correia might be up for that. Or at least for the Distinguished Service Cross. I mean, after what he did to the SJW’s over the Hugo Awards, they know they’ve been “serviced”…

  45. No, saying I’m “practically” calling for someone’s elimination because I said NYC property owners, and upper middle gentrifiers are destroyers(they are)is hyperbole.

  47. The reason that you won’t hear “gee, maybe we’re the problem” from these types is because:
    1) being an asshole is not a group thing its an individual thing and…
    2) nobody likes to admit to personal shortcomings but…
    3) as long as they’re all together they can each prop up each others rationalization that it’s “those people” (meaning folks like you and I )who are the problem.

    It’s like the rioters in Ferguson.
    Hundreds of criminal cowards each propping up the false narrative allows them to feel good about what they were doing.
    Sort of goes back to the notion upthread that “well they did it first” so its okay for us to do it.

    My parents made it very clear to me at a very young age that that type of excuse was no excuse at all for bad behavior.
    I’m fairly certain that these loser’s, like the one in Ferguson et al. did not have a good solid upbringing where the notion of right vs wrong was sufficiently taught.

  48. In the 1950’s blacklisting Hollywood Marxists was bad, bad, baaaad.

    Now in 2015 Marxists blacklisting everyone else is doubleplus good!

  49. So it’s like golf.
    No doubt then that our host is shooting eagles and birdies on every hole.

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