Death by ‘Social Justice’: Zoe Quinn Drives Game Maker Alec Holowka to Suicide
Posted on | September 1, 2019 | 1 Comment
“Zoe Quinn” was Patient Zero of the #GamerGate controversy. A tattoo-covered, mentally ill ex-stripper whose real name is Chelsea Van Valkenburg, Quinn was the creator of a tediously dull game called “Depression Quest.” She broke up with her boyfriend, a software geek named Eron Gjoni, and allegedly became intimate with a videogame journalist named Nathan Grayson. In August 2014, Gjoni published a nearly 10,000-word article exposing Quinn’s alleged misconduct.
Every time she makes news, I get a surge of traffic because of that concise biographical summary, and this week the cause of the traffic surge was that Zoe had accused an ex-boyfriend, Alec Holowka, of abusing her when they lived together briefly in Winnipeg in 2009. As a result of her accusation, Holowka was fired from the game-development company he had co-founded and then Saturday, Holowka committed suicide:
No formal investigation was conducted, no reports were filed, no police were involved, no evidence against Holowka ever surfaced. It was basically career execution by the court of public opinion. . . .
I’m sure there will be a number of people hand-waving away the allegations against him, claiming that they had nothing to do with the suicide, but having an entire industry turn against you based on unproven and unsubstantiated claims with the intent of making sure you never have a successful career in interactive entertainment seems too big to ignore.
In any case, the public castigation of Holowka courtesy of cancel culture did more than just cancel his career, it ended his life.
Recall that the #GamerGate controversy involved social justice warriors (SJWs) trying to gain influence in the videogame industry, with the assistance of unscrupulous journalists acting as publicity agents.
This #MeToo game of using unsubstantiated rape accusations to destroy men — we saw it in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings — is “social justice,” according to Zoe Quinn and her supporters. The issue involved here is not whether Holowka was a bad boyfriend. His sister, in reporting his death, said that Holowka had psychiatric issues, and Zoe’s psychiatric issues are notorious, so that the combination of the two was like combining two highly unstable chemicals. But whatever happened between them was never reported to police, and there was no way to establish the truth, just as we can never know what (if anything) transpired between Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford in 1982.
Think back to how and why the #MeToo crusade began in 2017. Feminists were angry because Trump was president, and they decided to expiate their wrath by destroying Harvey Weinstein, a powerful Hollywood producer who was a serial abuser of women. Once the Weinstein bonfire was lit, other powerful men in Hollywood, media and politics were tossed onto the flames — Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, Al Franken — in a sort of social-justice carnival. One day, a guy was a millionaire celebrity and the next day — WHOOSH! — up in flames, his reputation destroyed and his career ended by a disgruntled ex-girlfriend. Amid the climate of witch-hunt hysteria, the distinctions were blurred between minor “offensive” behavior and serious crimes.
Weinstein had long been notorious in Hollywood, and his predatory behavior was more or less continual for decades, but some of the men incinerated by the #MeToo bonfire were never accused of anything like that. As the outrage mobs danced in the lurid light of the social-justice flames, the original reason for the bonfire was forgotten.
This was about Trump, and because feminists felt powerless in the wake of a Republican’s election, they had begun lashing out at men whose bad behavior was in some way Trump-like (“Grab ’em by the p***y”).
Now look where it has led. Whatever anyone might say about Alec Holowka, he wasn’t a powerful Hollywood mogul. He was a geek making videogames whose misfortune was that, 10 years ago, he invited Zoe Quinn to move in with him for a month. Anyone who cares to research Zoe Quinn’s biography will discover that she has a habit of causing drama and then claiming victimhood. For some reason, there’s always a “white knight” eager to rescue the tattoo-covered damsel in distress and, by reinforcing her sense of victimhood, these rescuers encourage repetition of the cycle. When other women see Zoe Quinn celebrated as a courageous heroine (there was even talk of her being played by Scarlett Johansson in a movie about #GamerGate), this inspires emulation: “Monkey see, monkey do.” Every emotionally troubled bimbo who has ever had a “bad boyfriend” situation with a guy in the videogame industry knows she can get attention by playing the heroic victim, and it’s not difficult to imagine the climate of fear this has induced.
Suppose you’re a game-developer guy in your early 30s, and you’ve had a dozen girlfriends since you graduated high school. Most of those girlfriends you’ve met through work, and how many of your ex-girlfriends might hold a grudge against you? Probably two or three, at least. All it takes is for one of your ex-girlfriends to go public with a #MeToo story, and it’s almost certain that every ex-girlfriend with a grudge is going to come out of the woodwork to add her victimhood tale to the narrative. Somewhere along the way, of course, you might have been in a situation that could be construed as “harassment” — an incident when you had a few too many cocktails at a party, or whatever — and you can bet that story’s gonna get told if you become that target of a #MeToo mob. Over the course of the past 15 years or so, then, you’ve got two or three ex-girlfriends trashing you on the Internet, plus the possible “harassment” incident, and these tales are piled up online, forming a sort of prosecutor’s brief portraying you as a serial abuser.
Your career is over. You’ve been “canceled,” as they say.
YOUTUBERS #21: Recap
– #ZoeQuinn accuses #AlecHolowka of sex assault on Twitter (0 proof)
– Her fans attack him
– He has mental issues & commits #suicide
– Zoe deletes her Twitter
– Her fans attack his sister
– Sister ? her account#ZoeQuinnBodycount
Honest TeamYouTube pic.twitter.com/GNMVl6I1K2
— Honest TeamYouTube ?????? (@HonestGoogle) September 1, 2019
It was inevitable, from the moment the first spark of the #MeToo bonfire was lit, that eventually some man would commit suicide as a result.
R.I.P., Alec Holowka. Cause of death? “Social justice.”
FMJRA 2.0: Winged Hussars
Posted on | August 31, 2019 | 1 Comment
— compiled by Wombat-socho
Fall Back To The Fortified Blogs!
Da Tech Guy
357 Magnum
Animal Magnetism
The Universal Spectator
Dark Brightness
EBL
Rule 5 Sunday: Katie Williams
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL
Democrats: No More Heterosexuals!
Bacon Time
Dark Brightness
Living In Anglo-America
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL
Hey, Kids: Communism Isn’t Cool
Tai-Chi Policy
Dark Brightness
EBL
FMJRA 2.0: But They’ll Never Take The Man Alive
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL
Feds Charge Transgender Activist With Raping 4-Year-Old on Video
Dark Brightness
EBL
In The Mailbox: 08.26.19
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL
In The Mailbox: 08.27.19
Proof Positive
EBL
The Final Frontier: Lesbian Astronaut Becomes First Criminal in Space
357 Magnum
EBL
In The Mailbox: 08.28.19
Proof Positive
EBL
The Smear Machine Fails (Again)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Do You #BelieveWomen?
A View From The Beach
EBL
IG Report Confirms Comey’s ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Against Trump
A View From The Beach
EBL
A Farewell To Analog
357 Magnum
EBL
In The Mailbox: 08.30.19 (Early Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL
In The Mailbox: 08.30.19 (Evening Edition)
Proof Positive
EBL
Top linkers for the week ending August 30:
- EBL (16)
- A View From The Beach (7)
- Proof Positive (6)
- 357 Magnum (5)
Honorable mention: Dark Brightness
Thanks to everyone for the linkagery!
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‘Mothers Tell Your Children’
Posted on | August 31, 2019 | 1 Comment
Legend has it that the original “House of the Rising Sun” was a New Orleans brothel, its name derived from a literal translation of the name of its first proprietor, Madame Marianne LeSoleil Levant. Destroyed by a fire, this notorious establishment inspired a folk song about a woman lamenting her fate, having stumbled into a life of degradation:
Oh, mothers tell your children
Not to do what I have done,
Spend your life in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun.
After that old song became a hit for the Animals in 1964, attempts to find the factual basis of the legend failed, but New Orleans certainly was (and still is) one of the most wicked cities in America, so the idea of a broken down whore lamenting what happened to her “down in New Orleans” conveys a definite sense of historical reality.
What shall we say, then, of “sex workers” in the Social Media Age? In 2015, a Netflix documentary about young porn performers, Hot Girls Wanted, was nominated for an Emmy Award. One critic called it “the most depressing documentary you’ll ever watch.”
The brutal supply-and-demand equation of what is euphemistically called “the adult entertainment industry” results in a premium for so-called “barely legal” performers — girls 18 or 19 years old — and as one of the men involved in this loathsome business says in Hot Girls Wanted: “A lot of them know it’s a trap but the money’s there in their face, right now — cash! They take it and just hope for the best.”
Being lured into a trap by the offer of quick cash produces some very sad stories. Consider the class-action lawsuit filed against the producers of the “Girls Do Porn” series. The plaintiffs claim they were misled, told that their performances would only be distributed overseas in limited-edition DVDs and, instead, the videos were all over the Internet, where the performers were identified by their real names:
On Monday, the first of these women, identified as Jane Doe 15, finished her testimony. During three days of examination, Doe 15 recounted for the court a nightmarish sequence of events, which started with a Craigslist ad in 2016 and ended in doxxing, harassment, job troubles, expulsion from her cheerleading squad, fleeing her college town, and fractured relationships with her family, classmates, and boyfriend.
Girls Do Porn, a San Diego-based adult subscription service formed in 2006 by New Zealand man Michael Pratt, trafficked in XXX videos with amateur actresses, ages 18-22. . . .
“If I had known that, not only was it going on the internet,” Doe 15 said in her testimony, “but that they were posting it on the internet, that my name would be attached to it, that it would be in the United States, and that I wouldn’t be paid $5,000, but $2,000 less, and insulted because I was pale and bruised; if I had known that it was more than 30 minutes of filming, if I had known any of that, just any one of those; if I had known that other girls had been harassed and kicked out of school for it, if I had known that I would be kicked off the cheer team; if I had known any of that, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Oh, so she wanted to be a secret whore, not a public whore, and therefore she is a victim of . . . what? Her own stupidity, I’d say. What happened, you see, was that whatever the producers were telling these girls verbally, when they signed a contract, the fine print gave the producer unlimited rights to distribute the videos. One of the porn whore lawsuit plaintiffs described the impact on her life in a court filing:
“I have contemplated suicide. I have cut myself. I became depressed, could not leave the house, and considered dropping out of school. People started to message me with video screenshots or they would send screenshots to my friends making fun of me. My mom knows of the video, which shames and humiliates me. I had to drop out of college to avoid ongoing harassment from classmates. I have been harassed at work about the video to the point that I had to quit. I am now scared to apply for new jobs. I get random requests on social media from strangers asking me to have sex with them. I live in fear every single day that I will run across someone that knows about the video. I am trying to move to another state soon.”
Oh, the unbearable shame of it all! You were whoring around and thought nobody would ever find out what a nasty whore you are? Oops.
What is happening, obviously, is that the parents of these girls have failed to warn them of the dangers, and probably most parents would not believe how common such behavior has become. Consider a criminal case that recently made headlines in Maryland:
Maryland’s law against distributing child pornography applies even when the person distributing a pornographic video is the video’s minor subject, Maryland’s highest court ruled on Wednesday in a 6-1 vote.
The girl in question, identified only as “S.K.” in court documents, was 16 years old when she performed oral sex on an unidentified male. The act was captured on video — he appears to have been holding the camera — and S.K. shared the video with two friends via a text message. She eventually became estranged from one of the friends, a 17-year-old boy, and he showed the video to a police officer at the school.
The government charged the girl as a juvenile for distributing child pornography and displaying an obscene item to a minor. . . .
It’s not clear if anyone else will be charged in the case. By the time S.K. was charged, the video of her performing oral sex had begun to circulate more widely around her high school. She says she only shared the video with her two friends, which implies one of them shared the video with others.
Well, of course, the video was circulated all over the high school — and who knows where else? The sharing of obscene photos and videos has become shockingly commonplace among young people, who don’t seem to understand the potential consequences. Parents have to warn their teenagers explicitly against this kind of behavior: No nudes, ever.
Don’t send such pictures of yourself, and don’t solicit them from others. If someone offers to send you such photos, tell them “hell, no,” block their phone number and avoid associating with them. Otherwise, you might “live your life in sin and misery,” and that’s a sad song you don’t ever want to sing. (Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
‘My Word as a Biden’
Posted on | August 31, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘My Word as a Biden’
The thing that gets me about Joe Biden’s latest spectacular gaffe — where he tried to tell a story about pinning a medal on a war hero and managed to get every fact wrong — is the part where he vouches for the truth of his story by saying, “my word as a Biden,” as if the Biden family name was synonymous with honesty. And everybody’s like, what?
Could someone go up to Joe’s hometown in Scranton and investigate whether the Biden family was considered especially trustworthy by the locals? Was the honesty of his ancestors so famous that people would say, “Well, he gave his word as a Biden, so it must be true”?
After the Washington Post called attention to Biden’s errors in this story, he defended himself by saying that the “central point” of his story — that American troops are heroically courageous — “was absolutely accurate,” as if his critics were arguing otherwise. But nobody has cast doubt on the courage of the soldier in the story, Army Staff Sgt. Chad Workman, so that Biden’s explanation is basically a straw-man argument.
In point of fact, Biden has a long history of being less than honest, but this gaffe wasn’t really a lie, it was just another example of “Sleepy Joe” becoming confused in public, as he has been doing more and more lately.
Even thought Biden continues to lead the Democratic nomination contest by double digits according to the Real Clear Politics average, his front-runner status is unlikely to endure if he continues to be a babbling idiot every time he speaks in public. The very fact that the Washington Post was willing to report on this incident shows that the pro-Democrat media are unwilling to play defense for the front-runner. Now that the Democrat debate field has been narrowed enough that the candidates can debate on a single stage, what happens when Biden finds himself on national TV flanked by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg also joining the “Get Joe” mob?
My hunch is that Biden will have a rough night in next month’s debate, and if the front-runner loses his front-runner status, what then?
In The Mailbox: 08.30.19 (Evening Edition)
Posted on | August 31, 2019 | 1 Comment
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
A View From The Beach: The Lion Has Died
357 Magnum: A Media Outlet Talking About Responsibility?
EBL: Residents Of Florida, Flee!
Twitchy: Bret Stephens Under Fire For New Column On “Jews As Bedbugs”
Louder With Crowder: These Lesbians Are Also Non-Binary And Desperately Want You To Care
According To Hoyt: Remove The Pants On Fire From Your Head!
Monster Hunter Nation: This Week On The Internet
Vox Popoli: Science Fiction Is Dead, also, Boris Drops A Bomb On Parliament
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: The Political Class Is “Exhausted”
American Power: “I’ve Never Before Heard Of This ‘Eve Fairbanks’ Creature”
American Thinker: The Character Assassination Of Amy Wax And Her Response
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Cato’s Letters Friday
Babalu Blog: Cubans Whose Artwork Was Stolen By The Castro Regime Now Have A Path To Restitution
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For August 30
Camp of the Saints: Williamson, The Democrats, & The Narcissistic Impulse
CDR Salamander: The Moran Defenestration IG Report Is Out, also, Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: The Biggest Danger To A Christian’s Soul
Don Surber: Prosecute Comey
Dustbury: Left Hanging
First Street Journal: Real ID & Voting
The Geller Report: Second Elderly NYC Jew Stoned By Black Youths, also, Ilhan Omar Runs Away When Reporter Confronts Her With Affair Rumors
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, One Can Hope
Hollywood In Toto: Will & Grace Star Won’t Work With Trump Supporters
Joe For America: Trump’s Personal Assistant Fired For Leaking To Press
JustOneMinute: Taxing Wealth One Way Or The Other
Legal Insurrection: James Comey Was The Bad Guy In The “Russia Collusion” Story, also, University of Kansas Faculty Wants “Bastion of Bigotry” Chick-Fil-A Booted From Campus
The PanAm Post: FARC Returns To Doing What It Does Best – Terrorizing The Colombian People
Power Line: Biden Has No Chance, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shot In The Dark: Eggs
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Wealth & Poverty
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, How The Army Tried To Avoid Telling The Truth About Women In Ranger Training
Victory Girls: Former Canadian PM Hopes Hurricane Dorian Destroys Mar-El-Lago
Volokh Conspiracy: Federal Court Rules State Judges Can’t Profit From Fines & Fees Imposed On Defendants In Cases Before Them
Weasel Zippers: Trump Drops A Message (And Maybe More) On Iran, also, Aussie University To Lower Engineering Entry Standard For Women
Megan McArdle: Chicago Kept Saying It Would Pay For Pensions Later. Well, It’s Later
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet, also, Non-Playmate Of The Month
In The Mailbox: 08.30.19 (Early Edition)
Posted on | August 30, 2019 | 1 Comment
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Aren’t Cops Trained To Ask For ID?
EBL: Jessi Combs, RIP
Twitchy: Notice Anything Familiar About Occasional Cortex’ New Green Deal Art?
Louder With Crowder: Feminist Blames “Whiteness” For Friends Abandoning Her. That’s Not It.
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: #MeToo – The Left’s Ultimate Plan For Relationships
American Greatness: Dan Crenshaw, The “Principled Conservative” Who Wasn’t
American Power: Kim Strassel, Resistance
American Thinker: Michael Mann’s Tree-Ring Circus
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Random Notes News
Babalu Blog: With Hurricane Dorian Heading For Florida, Here’s What They’re Saying In Miami
BattleSwarm: Leftists Lie About (Spins Dial) Tea Party Racism
Camp of the Saints: “A Major Watershed In History”
CDR Salamander: A Breach of Faith – The Navy Must Fix The Way It Pays Mobilized Reservists
Da Tech Guy: Collective Guilt Is An Alien Concept In Our Constitutional System, also, Could The Luck-Less Colts Pursue Brady After This Season?
Don Surber: Clinton’s China Expert Says Trump Won
Dustbury: Unwanted Garment
First Street Journal: Treating Their Employees Like Dogs
The Geller Report: Iranian Womens’ Activist, 20, Gets 15 Years In Prison For “Spreading Prostitution” By Taking Off Hijab, also, Judge Orders Release Of Records That May Prove Saudi Royals’ Ties To 9/11 Hijackers
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day (With Johnny Atsign!), also, Don’t Know Much About History
Hollywood In Toto: Tone-Deaf Offers A Rare Break From Horror Tropes, also, Here’s How Liberal Celebrities Can Regain Our Trust
Joe For America: Biden Family Corruption Scandal Explodes
Legal Insurrection: US Navy Sinks Obama’s Climate Change Task Force, also, DOJ IG Slams Comey For Violation of Justice, FBI Policies On Memo Dissemination, Handling, & Retention
The PanAm Post: Cuba & The Latin American Left
Power Line: Ilhan Omar – The Deep Meaning of “No Comment”, also, Identity Politics As A Substitute For Family Ties
Protein Wisdom: Financial Status Update
Shark Tank: Florida’s Political Weathermen Are Out In Full Swing
Shot In The Dark: As If On Cue
This Ain’t Hell: Iran Fails Again, also, Coasties To The Rescue!
Victory Girls: Kirsten Gillibrand Sneaks Out The Back Door In Defeat
Volokh Conspiracy: “A Narrative Summary Describing…How The Taxpayer Shares California’s Values With Regard To Womens’ Reproductive Rights”
Weasel Zippers: Gidley Says Schumer Flat Out Lying On Diverted FEMA Money, also, Rep. Omar Calls For UN To Intervene In US Southern Border Crisis
Mark Steyn: A Human Right To Babysit, also, The Return Of Biden’s Mojo
A Farewell To Analog
Posted on | August 29, 2019 | 1 Comment
— by Wombat-socho
I grew up with Astounding/Analog SF, which for many years was the science fiction magazine, and am old enough to remember the end of John W. Campbell’s tenure as editor there. ASF and Campbell (and to a lesser extent, his successor Ben Bova) shaped my tastes in SF, as they did for so many other readers, and Campbell’s imprint on the genre as a whole is undeniable.
For the magazine he rescued from obscurity and built into the best SF magazine of the Golden Age to take a public shit on his memory like this is cowardly and vile. It is, perhaps, understandable in the wake of this year’s winner’s ignorant yawp about what a horrible person Campbell was by [CURRENT YEAR] standards, and the wretched soyboy Trevor Quachri’s desire to please people who cannot be pleased, but that makes it no less cowardly and vile. No, John W. Campbell Jr. probably wouldn’t be welcome in SFWA or at Worldcon these days, but I doubt Mary Kowal would have been welcome in the field back in the 1930s and 40s either, not least because her writing is terrible and not worth a penny a word on publication.
I have not had a subscription to Analog since the 1980s, shortly after Stanley Schmidt replaced Bova, and I needed the money more for other things (like a family). I wasn’t impressed by the few issues I saw, and I gather from the declining publication frequency and subscription numbers that I’m not the only one. There are still some good authors being published there, but most of the fiction is the kind of depressing crap I turned to SF to get away from. After this, I’m not touching anything having to do with Analog. The magazine and its current editor can die in a fire as far as I’m concerned.
On a happier note, Hans Schantz informs me that a number of conservative and libertarian authors have books for sale this weekend for 99 cents in honor of Dragon*Con. Your irascible neighborhood wombat says check it out!
As for me, I’ve been rereading some of the older Monster Hunter International novels: Monster Hunter Vendetta, wherein Owen Pitt is targeted for kidnapping and sacrifice by a bunch of necromancers working for the Old Ones, and Julie’s childhood playmate Mr. Trash Bags saves the day, and Monster Hunter Alpha, where Earl Harbinger goes to meet an ancient enemy in Copper Lake, Wisconsin, only to find himself having to team up with said enemy to prevent an outbreak of werewolves – and worse – from taking the little mining town as a springboard to apocalypse. Not going to lie, I enjoyed these a lot more the second time around, because some of the characters in them play much bigger roles in subsequent MHI books. Also reread Sharpe’s Rifles, Sharpe’s Eagle, and Sharpe’s Company by Bernard Cornwell, which are great adventure stories set in the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon’s armies, and chock-full of historical goodness as well. Pity they didn’t stick with the Sean Bean-inspired covers.