Today is Veterans Day in the US, a day to honor those who’ve served in the armed services. That is, real soldiers, who have fought in real wars.

As one person with a silly name but a good point wrote on Reddit:

There are many examples of military-themed calls to action and propagandizing in [Kotaku in Action, the main GamerGate subreddit] used to rally their users into a virtual “battle” against ideas that they don’t agree with. …

Today, take a step back and remember that very real people fought in very real battles and answered very real calls to action for their country. Today should serve as a sobering reminder of not only those who served, but also how ridiculous [GamerGaters] sound when they pretend that this is some type of war they are nobly fighting for when there are those who actually serve bravely for their country.

GamerGaters love comparing themselves to soldiers fighting a war against, well, whatever it is they think they’re fighting a war against.

Their propaganda, much of which is made for internal consumption, is drenched in military imagery — some taken from video games, some from real life and real military propaganda. The ridiculously bombastic GamerGate video I posted here yesterday mixed game imagery with documentary footage from World War II.

It’s true that most of this military-themed GamerGate propaganda is intended, at least in part, as a joke. (At least I hope this Starship Troopers reference is meant ironically.)

But it’s also clear that a lot of GamerGaters take these “joke” memes and over-the-top rhetoric a lot more seriously than it deserves to be taken. They really think they are fighting some sort of noble battle for truth and righteousness.

Today, GamerGaters, try to have a tiny bit of perspective. You’re not fighting Hitler. You’re not breaking down the Berlin Wall. You’re not fighting for the future of civilization against the barbarian hordes.

What you’re doing is harassing women (and some men) and sending emails designed to punish online publications for daring to criticize you. It’s not a war. Hell, it’s barely even activism. It’s closer to a collective tantrum — though unfortunately, one that’s doing real harm in the real world.

When you compare what you’re doing to real war, you’re insulting those who fought in real wars.

Below, I’ve pasted in a bunch of #GamerGate graphics, found on 8chan and on Twitter. There are countless more just like these out there. And they are an embarrassment.

(Leigh Alexander, Anita Sarkeesian, Jonathan McIntosh)

Roosh V: The new face of gaming?

Worlds are colliding: Roosh Valizadeh, the reactionary, woman-hating pick-up guru, is starting a #GamerGate inspired game site, just as #GamerGate itself is descending into a morass of mutual recriminations and generalized douchebaggery.

Reaxxion – the title presumably a reference to Roosh’s neo-reactionary political views – doesn’t seem to have officially launched yet, but it is up, and looking a bit threadbare at the moment, with only a handful of articles posted yet. Billed as “a safe space for gamers who support #gamergate,” the site is an obvious attempt to cash in on #GamerGate anger. Roosh’s timing is a little less than perfect; he’s jumping aboard this money train as it seems to be derailing.

Roosh introduces the site in a post that is one of the most inadvertently ridiculous things he’s ever written. He begins by introducing himself, boasting about the page views his sites generate. And then he writes this amazing paragraph:

I have written well over one million words, but less than 2,000 of those have been taken out of context to paint me as an extremist, misogynist, and rapist, accusations that my friends, family, and women I’ve had relationships with can’t understand. I must state that I have never once committed assault against a woman or been accused of assault, but … such accusations are being used as weapons to marginalize speech.

Well, since he brings it up, I might as well quote the 311 of his words that have been, er, “taken out of context” to “paint [him]” as a rapist. In his ebook Bang Iceland, he recalls one of these. er, bangs:

While walking to my place, I realized how drunk she was. In America, having sex with her would have been rape, since she legally couldn’t give her consent. It didn’t help matters that I was relatively sober, but I can’t say I cared or even hesitated. I won’t rationalize my actions, but having sex is what I do.

The context for this passage? A book offering men advice on how best to manipulate women into bed, in Iceland.

Anyway, back to Roosh’s amazing little introduction. After some more complaints about the alleged evils of the SJWs, Roosh drops this little confession:

I’m not a gamer

I’m starting a video game site even though I haven’t played video games seriously since the year 2000 (Starcraft was my jam). I don’t even play mobile games. I won’t blow smoke up your ass by pretending I’m a gamer or have a deep commitment in furthering game technology.

Huh. A dude who couldn’t give two shits about gaming is starting a site to capitalize on #GamerGate. ETHICS, yo!

So why, aside from sheer opportunism, is Roosh starting the site? Well, as he sees it, he’s doing it to stand up for the rights of the truly oppressed.

I aim to protect the interests of heterosexual Western males, a category I’m in.

How are these poor creatures being oppressed? Well, as Roosh sees it,

The far-left is trying to censor and criminalize masculine behaviors that are normal. They want to relabel consensual sex as “rape” and relabel innocent flirting as “harassment,” and as I learned with #gamergate, they’ve successfully infected the gaming industry and gaming journalist sites by damaging the very nature of gaming development to fit their extreme political agenda. So while I don’t play video games, the idea of starting a pro-#gamergate site is compatible with my overall mission.

Apparently he wants to make video gaming safe for … date rapists? Sorry, date consensual-sex-that-has-been-relabeled-as-rape-havers?

He tells the sad story of his younger brother, an actual gamer who likes games with stories to them. If the evil SJWs get their way, Roosh warns, his poor brother will have to endure game narratives that include, you know, girls.

The infiltration of SJW’s into gaming may mean that my brother will have to put up with their narrative in his games. It may mean that his entertainment options become more limited because a developer was subtly threatened unless he inserted another “empowered female” in a game where such a character simply doesn’t fit.

We wouldn’t want to limit his brother’s choices, huh? Like the choices available in Grand Theft Auto V, in which players can switch between three different protagonists, none of whom are icky females.

Roosh acknowledges that he’s got an ideology of his own, but assures readers that he won’t impose it on them like those terrible SJWs do.

[I]f you don’t don’t agree with ROK, that’s fine, because Reaxxion will not try to jam ideology down your throat like the existing gaming sites. We won’t tell you to go to the gym and live in Eastern Europe to sleep with thin women, behaviors that I currently engage in.

But dudes, you totally should go to the gym and move to Eastern Europe to sleep with thin women instead of those uppity Western fatties. Just sayin.

Heck, Roosh’s site is so committed to not shoving ideology down anyone’s throat that it has a special page setting forth a list of prescribed “Reaxxion Community Beliefs,” which include:

1. Men do not become more violent, sexist, or racist because they play video games.Gamers should not be shamed for a hobby that does not cause harm to others.

And:

7. Heterosexual men should not be shamed for enjoying things designed to appeal to heterosexual men. There is non-harmful entertainment value in traditional story lines involving masculine men and feminine women.

Gosh, nothing ideological here!

And since Roosh isn’t going to try to push his ideology on anyone, his site will presumably extend its welcome mat to everyone, huh?

Oh, wait.

Our goal is simple: create a safe space for heterosexual males who play video games. We won’t exclude homosexuals or attractive women from commenting on our articles, and we sincerely hope they find value in what we have to say, but understand that this site will be written by male gamers for male gamers.

Oh.

It aims to be a place where men can be themselves without SJW infiltration, judgement, and influence. In the year 2014, surprisingly, there are very few spaces for men online where their message isn’t attacked by white knights, man-haters, and SJW’s. I know an unmet need when I see one.

Finally, men’s voices will at last be heard!

And unlike some gaming site, Roosh’s Reaxxion will be all about ethics. Heck, he’s even got an official Ethics Policy setting forth how totes ethical his site will be. For example, he pledges that Reaxxion

won’t attempt to ruin individuals or companies. Any critical story is based on facts and properly sourced. We don’t publish articles with the intent to incite a mob.

So, no ruining or mob-inciting. I guess that’s better than the alternative.

We don’t bully, harass, threaten, SWAT, or dox anyone. Contact us if you see such activity in the comments.

Wait, what? You feel the need to announce publicly that you won’t SWAT people? That is, you won’t maliciously call 911 and report an imaginary crime in order to get a SWAT team sent to your victim’s house? Is this something that happens at other game sites? I mean, does Kotaku regularly send SWAT teams to harass makers of games they don’t like?

We will not publish clickbait with the intent to outrage. Authors will have 100% belief in what they write. Contributors who are found to be “trolling” will be blacklisted.

Yes, the dude behind Return of Kings, the publisher of pieces declaring that tattooed women are “broken” and offering “5 Reasons To Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder” is telling us that he’s not going to publish “clickbait with the intent to outrage.”

Anyway, Roosh apparently feels he’s got all he needs to run a totally kickass gaming site for cool dudes. He’s got a publisher – himself – who knows nothing about gaming. He’s got that ethics policy. He’s got a stable of expert writers … oh, wait, about that. Apparently he might be a little light on writers.

[S]end us your submissions. We want you to inject your DNA, your ideas, and your stories into Reaxxion. Instead of trying to silence you like the other sites, we want to make your voice louder, even if you are not a “professional journalist.”

Yeah, there’s no possible way Roosh’s site could turn into a complete fiasco that embarrasses everyone involved in it. Or is there?

Actual unretouched photo of Mytheos Holt, #GamerGate’s new champion

Watch out, Milo Yiannopoulos, you’ve got competition! #GamerGate has a new journalistic champion — and this one, like Milo, seems to have come straight from central casting, a virtual embodiment of every snooty reactionary preppie stereotype from every bad 80s movie.

A libertarian think tanker and erstwhile journalist with the unlikely name of Mytheos Holt, this new contender has one great advantage over young Milo: as you can see in the photo above, which I have not photoshopped in any way, he appears to be made entirely of wax — which means that unless someone accidentally sets him near a heater he will last forever.

Mytheos’ first intervention in #GamerGate comes in the form of a long opinion piece in the right-wing e-rag Daily Caller that attempts to recast the GamerGater struggle as a glorious resistance campaign to an ongoing #WaronNerds by “Far-Left Feminists And The Media.” Mytheos, who looks so much like an archetypical tormenter-of-nerds, might seem an unlikely GamerGate champion, but he’s a gamer, too, and his piece has been embraced warmly by the GG masses.

Commenters in Kotaku in Action, Reddit’s most influential GamerGate hangout, describe his piece as “excellent,” “insightful,” and “incredibly well researched.”

“Time for #WarOnNerds to start trending,” writes one enthusiastic commenter. “Welcome to the next level, Mytheos,” adds another, “we’re the only people in the history of ever to beat Social Justice, and this train has no brakes.”

The enthusiasm for the article might at first seem a little strange, given that Mytheos starts out by comparing GamerGaters to …  a British teenager who earlier this year stabbed some girls in the face:

On February 11, 2014, the Daily Mail reported on the case of 19-year-old Ryan Walker, a thin, bespectacled “wimp” by reputation who, upon being bullied one too many times by some neighborhood girls, attacked them furiously, stabbing one in the face and bashing the other’s head against the pavement. …

And so it was that half a year before it began, #Gamergate was explained.

But the rest of Mytheos’ post reaffirms most of the GamerGate mythos: that it is a fight against corruption, not a campaign terrorizing outspoken women in gaming, and that it actively roots out the harassers in its midst. Above all, Mytheos argues that GamerGate, however rough it might be around the edges, is a justified rebellion against the Social Justice Warrior oppressors.

Mytheos’ indictment of the (alleged) evil leftist nerd-tormenters is as histrionic, and as utterly divorced from reality, as any GamerGate manifesto pasted into a bad infographic:

Along with their furious denunciations of the gaming press, the movement also appears to be fighting a new culture war — one against a new, radical and dangerously illiberal left which marinates in a hideous quagmire of resentment, smugness, vacuousness and contempt for free discussion. This movement prefers the vile ochlocracy of the Twitter mob … celebrates the Maoist public shaming of doxxing, and seems incapable of distinguishing between a .gif and an argument.

In case you’re wondering, ochlocracy means “government by mob.” It pays to increase your word power!

Make no mistake, when it comes to #Gamergate, both the SJWs and the gaming press are facing a backlash that is not only thoroughly warranted, but of their own making. …

America’s nerds are fighting back against what they rightly see as ages of persecution and dismissal by an extreme left wing fringe that they believe has co-opted the very press they used to trust and used it as a weapon of oppression despite claiming to speak for the oppressed. …

Their case is historically next-to-impossible to dispute.

Well, at least until Mytheos actually tries to make such a case. His alleged proof of the ongoing oppression of nerds by the SJW?

1. TotalBiscuit, YouTube blabber and “moderate” GamerGater, has been “flamed” by GamerGate critics
2. Sam Biddle of Gawker made a couple of joking Tweets declaring that “Nerds should be constantly degraded and shamed into submission.”
3. Aaron Sorkin once described the dudes of Silicon Valley as “a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80′s.”
4. The Nice Guys of OKCupid blog

Mytheos leans pretty hard on #4,  devoting more time and energy to railing against the “feminist cruelty” of the Nice Guys of OkCupid blog (and those who were amused by it) than he does to the alleged “journalistic corruption” that is supposedly the real reason for GamerGate.

Indeed, aside from mentioning Biddle’s Tweets and taking a few swipes at Valleywag, the Silicon Valley blog that Biddle used to work at, Mytheos offers no real critique of journalistic corruption at all. NiceGuys of OkCupid, by contrast, gets more than 600 words, as Mytheos stands up (sort of) for the honor of a group he describes as

dumpy, white, awkward looking men whose primary crime in their profiles was expressing either insufficiently feminist viewpoints … or simply of being sad or angry about their lack of romantic options.

Yep. Mytheos does indeed seems to be suggesting that GamerGate is fundamentally driven by the resentment of “dumpy” white dudes who can’t get a date.

In a lot of ways, his argument is a cruder, and crueller, version of an argument I made about Men’s Rights Activists a few weeks back. In my post, I asked if

the rage that drives so many MRAs come from the same dark place in the psyche as the rage that so many romantically and sexually rejected feel towards their exes? …

Think of the fury many divorced MRAs feel towards their exes and women at large. Think of the self-pitying rage of “nice guys” MRAs in their teens and twenties who feel they’ve been unfairly “friendzoned” by stuck-up women. …

The self-righteous rage of the rejected is a dangerous thing. It’s dangerous when it’s directed at individual women. And it’s dangerous when it’s directed at women at large.

The continuing debacle that is GamerGate, which after all was called into existence by one dude’s long diatribe against the alleged evils of his ex-girlfriend, seems to reinforce this point every single day.

It’s just strange to see a supporter of GamerGate making a similar, if more simplistic, case — and being applauded for it by the very guys he describes so patronizingly as angry dateless “losers.”

NOTE: Make your own Mytheos Holt #NotYourShield memes here! And post them in the comments below!

Graph tracking the decline of #GamerGate, and the surge of #Shirtstorm, posted by GGer @Eggkin “thanking #shirtstorm & the femloons for keeping the spark alive.”

By all rights, the furor over rocket scientist Matt Taylor’s cheesecake shirt should have died down by now. After being chided earlier this week for marring the celebration over the landing of a space probe ON A GODDAMNED COMET by doing interviews in a tacky shirt covered with half-naked ladies, Taylor offered a brief but heartfelt apology. You would have thought we’d all be able to move on.

Not so fast. Because these days apparently no controversy can ever be over as long as it serves someone’s interest to keep it going. And so a loose but very familiar coalition of reactionaries and antifeminists and angry techies have started flogging an amorphous cause they call #Shirtgate or, more popularly, #Shirtstorm, purporting to be outraged that Taylor was “humiliated” into apologizing.

So many of the angriest voices in this, er, conversation are #GamerGaters it looks a lot like a sequel. Call it GamerGate Part Two: The Straw Graspening. And it’s not just me making the connection: #GamerGaters and #Shirtstormers, often one and the same, are making the connection:

Heck, our old friend Milo is making the connection:

Oh, it’s a veritable #GamerGate Old Home Week! GG mainstays Thunderf00t and Mundane Matt have rushed out videos about The Shirt.

People are making graphics covered with hard-to-read text:

There are giant complicated conspiracy theory graphics covered with red lines and angry red text. This one notes that Chris Plante, who wrote an article criticizing Taylor’s shirt, also wrote one of the now-notorious “Gamers are Dead” pieces.

Apparently there were a few dudes who were none too pleased with Plante’s story on The Shirt:

#Shirtstormers wrote angry “letters” in too-small-type. (Click here for larger, more readable version and here for one with angry graphics, too.)

While others tried to draw a parallel between Taylor’s alleged “humiliation” and … rape.

Neo-reactionaries and “Dark Enlightenment” types see opportunity in the #Shirtstorm hashtag.

As do MRAs:

As does this familiar name:

They’re all there, all hoping to turn a debate over a shirt into another endless internet Benghazi.

Brianna Wu — game developer, #GamerGate target #3 — got a Tweet sent to her yesterday announcing that “respects is earn not shrilly demanded.”

Mangled grammar aside, this is an “argument” we hear a lot from misogynistic men as a way of explaining away their lack of respect for women as a gender. Wu thought this inadvertantly lollcatty version of this cliche was too good to let vanish in the internet ether, and suggested that the phrase “respects is earn” be immortalized in a meme.

And so it was. The cat above is @RobIsAWriter’s interpretation; here (after the bump) are a few more.

.@Spacekatgal I did it. http://t.co/3QHU9jV2d6—
DIEcube (@chaicube) November 17, 2014

Obviously, Aretha Franklin needed to be a part of this:

Even if we set aside the misogyny for a moment, it seems to me that “respect is earned” is a rather backward way of looking at it. Shouldn’t the default be respect instead of not respect? That is, shouldn’t we treat everyone with a basic level of respect to begin with, downgrading this only if the person in question says or does something that makes them less worthy of respect? And even then give them at least a minimal amount of respect for simply being human?

Oh, and before any #GGers get indignant about it, the @GGer who Tweeted “respects is earn” is clearly a native speaker of English; go through his timeline to see.(In some of his Tweets since this meme got going he’s deliberately using lolspeak.)

H/T — r/GamerGhazi

I don’t think you’re going to make it, dude

Pity poor Paul Elam! The Men’s Rights elder has spent, by his estimation, nearly half of his life ranting and raving against the supposed evils of feminism, and for what?

The movement he claims to lead has had no tangible victories in the real world beyond sullying its own name; traffic at his website has stalled out; and his latest publicity stunt – appropriating the name of the White Ribbon antiviolence campaign for his own dubious ends – has put him and/or his allies at legal risk without garnering him much of the attention he clearly craves.

And now a bunch of video gaming whippersnappers are generating more buzz than he ever has by launching their own misbegotten campaign against the so-called Social Justice Warriors they think are trying to take their hobby away from them.

The straw that broke Elam the Camel’s back? Some GamerGater on Twitter — perhaps this fellow? — telling those who’ve worked themselves into a rage about feminists criticizing rocket scientist Matt Taylor’s shirt that “this is what GamerGate has been fighting all along.”

That was enough to send Elam through the roof of his condo — and then to his keyboard, to pound out one of his angrier rants.

What. The. Fuck. Since when did people who never noticed jack shit was happening (and still don’t notice most of it) until their hobby websites went south a few months ago, come up with the words “all along”? For that matter, “we.” …

Perhaps there are a few in the gaming community that need to hear that “all along” for some people means decades. And they would do just as well to remember that we have been dealing with flak, and a lot more than flak, working in a filthy swamp of social indifference and hostility trying to prevent there ever having been a GamerGate or Matt Taylor fiasco to begin with.

As they say, respects is earn. And Elam, an old hand at the fine art of making a great deal out of nothing, thinks he’s earn a lot more respects than he’s getting from these vidya gaming upstarts.

I am just a guy who has been doing battle with these sociopathic fucks in one form or another for the better part of a quarter century.

Translation: PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEE!

Well, Paul, I just did. Hope this helps!

GamerGate may have to retire this bit of propaganda.

Today, a quick quiz to see how closely you’ve been following controversies in the world of video gaming.  Well, a quiz that’s sort of been shoehorned into a poll. The correct answer(s) come after the bump. Enjoy!

ANSWER: The only quote from Sarkeesian was the final one. The rest of the quotes come from disbarred attorney Jack Thompson, the infamous anti-videogame crusader who, in one of the more headsmackingly ironic twists in the whole #GamerGate saga, is garnering plaudits from #GamerGaters because he said a few negative things about Sarkeesian in an interview with Jordan Owen for the allegedly forthcoming alleged documentary The Sarkeesian Effect.

Here are a few Tweets I’ve borrowed from a Storify collection put together by the indefatigable @a_man_in_black.

Boy, it seems like only yesterday that Sarkeesian’s enemies were comparing her to Jack Thompson in order to make her look bad. Oops, my bad. It was the day before yesterday.

For the sources of all the Thompson quotes, see here. Sarkeesian’s quote is from here.

Goodbye, and thanks for nothing!

Here’s an interesting post by someone claiming to be a former GamerGater on Reddit explaining why they left the, er, movement and helpfully summing up a lot of what’s wrong with it. At least when it comes to GG’s rampant hypocrisy.  Take it away, turbonerdsupreme!

Internet Aristocrat: Fighting “corruption” with targeted abuse

YouTube garbage blabber Internet Aristocrat — you know, the guy that helped to kick off #GamerGate with the first video attacking Zoe Quinn but who’s since broken from the “movement” for reasons — has been working himself into a lather over Women, Action & the Media’s Twitter reporting initiative.

So he’s decided to take a principled stance against this terrible threat to free speech — or at least free speech that includes targeted abuse and bigoted slurs — by posting a series of detailed, logical essays elucidating the dange …

Nah, who am I kidding. He responded by posting a series of inane photoshopped images on Twitter and calling WAM! Executive Director Jaclyn Friedman a, well, it starts with a c.

Here’s his photoshopped pic of one of WAM!’s webpages, with testimonials from assorted feminists turned into jokes about poop and patriarchy:

Click for larger version. Not an actual page on WAM!’s website.

Here’s his photoshopped picture of Anna Holmes, a member of WAM!’s board of directors, sitting on a toilet:

And here he’s combined an attack on WAM! with a weird misogynistic attack on … Anita Sarkeesian’s partner Jonathon McIntosh, a frequent target of IA’s abuse.

This little bit of photoshop wizardry inspired one of IA’s followers to concoct an even worse photoshop disaster featuring McIntosh, working some extra racism and homophobia into the mix.

While IA continues his, er, protest — his Twitter timeline is currently filled with puerile, slur-filled personal attacks — there are other more heartening reponses to WAM!’s program. Here one concerned #GamerGater warns his comrades not to let evil SJW’s “trap” them by … luring GGers into abusing them.

The logic here is a bit absurd. If you’re abusive on Twitter, or anywhere, that’s your fault, not the fault of someone “provoking” you through the devious strategy of asking you questions. But the effect of warnings like this may be that GGers will think twice before abusing people. Thus cutting down on abuse on Twitter.

Hey, I’ll take it.

FULL DISCLOSURE: WAM! is awesome. Jaclyn Friedman is awesome. Fuck you.

This somewhat alarming video was recently posted in Reddit’s GamerGhazi subreddit. It features Sarkeesian Effect co-creator Jordan Owen explaining, at some length, his disagreements with antiporn feminist Gail Dines over the book Fifty Shades of Grey. (Dines, you see, was Owen’s previous obsession, before he discovered Anita Sarkeesian; this video is a couple of years old.) Alas, the sound cuts out about halfway through the nearly hour-long video, so you won’t get to hear the whole thing.

You might also be slightly distracted by the fact that Owen delivers this lengthy critique while sitting naked in a bathtub.

Some people should probably not try to draw cartoons

Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words clearly hasn’t been looking at the artwork of #GamerGate — unless by “a thousand words” you mean the word “poop” repeated a thousand times.

Nonetheless, to honor the hard work of GamerGate’s unsung graphic heroes, and on the off chance that I might not be fully grasping the subtle meanings of these aesthetically impaired visionaries, I would like to present to you all today a series of [] incomprehensible GamerGate Cartoons, which I have collected from 8chan and Twitter and various other places I don’t even remember.

CONTENT WARNING: Cartoon violence, misogyny, raging anti-Semitism, really bad drawing.

1) Zoe Quinn Vomits Vivian James

In this lovely comic, #GamerGate nemesis Zoe Quinn projectile vomits #GamerGate’s imaginary girlfriend Vivian James after being punched in the stomach by 4Chan’s vidya board. But #GamerGate isn’t about Zoe Quinn, we don’t even know who she is, right guys?

2) Damsel in Dis Dress

In this cartoon, #GamerGate nemesis #2, Anita Sarkeesian, responds to gentle criticism from Mr. 4chan vidya board by putting on a very peculiar outfit and crying for help. But #GamerGate isn’t about Anita Sarkeesian, that is, Anita WHO?

3) Fickle Female

In this exquisitely drawn miniature masterpiece, a fickle female demands that games be made to suit her, but then refuses to buy these games since she, as a female, does not actually play games. But #GamerGate isn’t about defining games as a male thing, where would you even get that idea, wow, I think you’re the real misogynist here.

4) Anita Refund!

In this somewhat perplexing entry, Anita Sarkeesian — rendered as a crude stereotype of an evil avaricious Jew — warns her followers about evil video games, then happily walks off with a giant bag of cash as “logic” and … a Nazi? attack them. The video game characters stand by innocently. But #GamerGate isn’t anti-Semitic, I mean, that’s just a caricature of Anita, she’s not Jewish, you must be the anti-Semite for even thinking that was anti-Semitic.

5) Weapons of Mass Distraction

In this cartoon, a little easier to understand, an evil Jewish puppetmaster distracts 4Channers — represented by the old Nazi dude — with Vivian James. While Mr. 4Chan gives generously to the Vivian James video game project, Zoe Quinn and the other real enemies are ignored. But #GamerGate isn’t anti… oh, ok, I guess this cartoon is pretty massively anti-Semitic. But it’s, er, for the lulz. The lelz? Top kek?

6) Muh Shekels Muh Diversity

What the hell, did I wander onto Stormfront or something? In this cartoon, Vivian James beats up a Jewish Reddit alien for betraying the cause of vidya games. I don’t know why she has the face of George Costanza.

Ok, I’ve got to be able to find a cartoon that’s not filled with vicious bigotry, right? I mean, #GamerGate is about ethics in journalism, right? Ah, I’ve got it:

7) Games Media, Take My Hand!

In this one, #GamerGate just wants to keep gaming media from drowning, but snobby gaming media considers this help to be harassment? Apparently threats and doxxing and boycotts and slander are just #GamerGate’s way of helping? Huh. I’m thinking this cartoon is nearly as offensive, in its way, and the ones preceding it.

But I have to admit that the draftsmanship is excellent.

8) Vivian Just Wants to Play Video Games Send Emails

In this cartoon, evil ghosts, representing who the fuck knows what, try to distract Vivian James from her appointed task: sending emails to advertisers. Vivian shakes them off and KEEPS SENDING EMAILS.

I’m kind of worried about Vivian. She doesn’t seem to have much joy in her life. Her friend Gilda, with the hat, at least seems to enjoy her job delivering mail.

Vox Day: Defending video gaming against icky girls

Leave it to Vox Day, the proudly reactionary sci-fi author and game developer, to say what most of his #GamerGate comrades spend so much energy denying: that their little movement is at least in part a backlash against women in gaming. At least against real women, with their own opinions.

As Vox writes in a post on his Alpha Game blog,

Games have long been an escape from women and social pressure for many young men, so it should surprise no one that they aren’t particularly keen on seeing their retreat invaded by the very things from which they are escaping.

So why exactly do guys want an escape from women? Well, as Vox once explained in an interview with “Dr. Helen” for her book Men On Stike,

Women can be entertaining, but they’re expensive, inaccessible for most men, and from the male perspective, shockingly unreliable.

What makes it worse, Vox suggests on his blog, is that the kind of guys who play a lot of video games aren’t exactly the guys scoring the top quality women.

When people ask a gamma or an omega if he wouldn’t rather be out and about “with a real girl” instead of playing games, they should first keep in mind what sort of “real girl” is probably on offer for him. And considering the alternatives, who can truly blame him if he looks at his choices and decides that games and porn are genuinely the better option.

Huh. Aren’t you a game developer, Vox? I thought the first rule of GamerGate is that journalists and developers shouldn’t insult their customers.

But GamerGaters were quick to pardon Mytheos Holt for calling them all a bunch of dateless losers, and I suspect they’ll do the same with Vox, because no matter how pathetic he thinks most gamers are, it’s clear he thinks women are worse.

GamerGaters: You’re not fooling anyone.

#GamerGaters have been spending a lot of time lately trying to convince the world that they’re really quite reasonable people, actually, and that the “movement’s” reputation as a hotbed of hateful bullying is undeserved.

Today on 8Chan’s /gg/ board, for example, one enterprising anon announced the start of “OP FIREHEART,” a combination of “Operation Firefly + Operation Lonely Hearts.”

Operation Firefly, you may recall, is GamerGate’s attempt to flood Tumblr with Tumblr-fied versions of their standard propaganda. Operation Lonely Hearts is a more recent “op,” an attempt to hijack a new meme started and spread by people critical of GamerGate, in which Twitterers and others replace their avatars with heart-shaped icons to indicate their support of a diverse gaming world open to all. GamerGaters have appropriated these heart-shaped icons and are using them to spread their own terrible message.

Op FireHeart aims to take these GamerGated hearts to Tumblr.

The weheart.io heartpix we made are amazing and powerful. But we can take them one step further, and use OP Firefly to help them spread on Tumblr and Social Media. They are the type of post that Tumblr can’t get enough of. They’re artsy, fun and minimalistic.

Here’s the plan- we make a lot more of those memes, but we use popular anime and vidya characters along with people from superwholock /homestuck /mlp etc. Include hot guys and gals and load up on those pop culture references.

See guys we like anime so therefore we can’t be all bad right? NO ONE WILL SEE THROUGH THIS CLEVER RUSE.

Really, anything can be made into a fireheart meme. Pictures of food, alcohol, parties- make it fun and spreadable.

We post the images in those tags (where the character came from), with one simple message underneath: #Gamergate loves you. It’s a show of support and outreach, nothing else- but it will make a lot of neutrals curious.

Even aside from the fact that this propaganda campaign is, you know, transparently cynical and obvious – if you’re going to try to dupe the world it’s generally a bad idea to let the world know about it first – there’s one giant problem with Operation FireHeart and the RebuildInitiative and all of GamerGate’s attempts to win the PR war by pretending to be nice, and that is: WE CAN SEE YOU.

Evidence of your bad faith and bigotry is everywhere; you can’t wash it away with a letter-writing campaign or heart-shaped anime avatars.

Oh, you want evidence? Well, look no further than this thread from yesterday on 8chan. After one anon posted screenshots of an actual polite Twitter conversation they had with a woman GamerGaters have been going after lately, the thread quickly degenerated into a transphobic nightmare after one anon declared that the woman in question was “a man, baby.”

Some, er, highlights of what followed. Oh, and Trigger Warning for some really horrible transphobic crap.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that heart-shaped anime avatars aren’t going to dig you out of the hole your’re continually digging for yourself.

Oh, but there’s more.

That last comment is what passes for a “moderate” voice in this thread. It helped to inspire this, er, debate.

There’s not enough perfume in the world to make this shit smell sweet.

For more on this thread, and on “reasonable” GamerGaters, see “Polite” GGers – A Case Study, an excellent Storify of some recent Tweets from @alexlifschitz, which is what alerted me to this toxic thread.

And in other depressing news, some 4channers — remember them? — are launching a new “op” of their own … designed to drive trans folks to suicide. See here and here for more details. (Neither is a link to 4chan.) I can’t even.

Unser Kampf (Our Struggle): Actual proposed title and cover for the crowdsourced GamerGate collective autobiography

Lovers of literary catastrophes rejoice! Some GamerGaters are crowdsourcing a book about what they see as the death of 4chan and the rise of GamerGate, and so far the results have been even more amazingly awful than that even sounds.

So far all the Gaters have managed to produce have been some rough drafts of a lyrical prologue written almost entirely in mixed metaphor, a somewhat plodding first chapter, and a rough outline of the rest of the book. But there is much comedy gold in these rough pages.

And so I would like to present to you The Nine Most Ridiculous Quotes from The Crowdsourced GamerGate Book That Were Actually Written by Real Human Beings Who Thought What They Were Writing Was Awesome.

1) The endless sea of ones and zeroes

We would not be forgotten in the endless sea of ones and zeroes that many other events have been dissolved by, but drowned by liars who could only just grasp the lowest bars of the social ladder.

2) The Steps We Took To Pull Back the Curtain

Let’s take a walk through no man’s land. What you will find here among the ash piles are evidence of lies, deception, ill-gotten gains, facades, and false morality. You will also find the mark of our footprints; the steps we took to pull back the curtain and expose the corruption around us.

3) Never Stop Riding

Hold on to your seat. The ride never ends.

4) Like Terminator or Something

I’m writing in nostalgia of a now lost past, and fear of an uncertain future. You know, like Terminator or something.

5) Fighting in a Maelstrom of Pettiness

The ugliness on both sides, and the villains, and heroes, all fighting in a maelstrom of pettiness for a future that doesn’t care for them.

6) Something Larger in the Vacuum

While on the surface it just seems like trolls feeding trolls, death threats, and angry nerds on the surface, the picture painted is of something larger moving through the cultural vacuum that is the modern west.

7) Calculated and Painful

We were scattered by a well calculated and painful defeat.

8) Like Many a Writers Have Commented

4chan is probably, and like many a writers have commented before us, one of the most important websites of its type in the English world; known even to have affected how other unrelated websites published content and worked.

9) Not Technically Illegal

Despite being a minor, a majority of Poole’s early updates to 4chan were adding explicit boards. Many critics claimed the content of these boards were of borderline legality. Originally in /b/, and later /h/ (hentai) and /d/ (hentai/alternative), anime pornography of children (lolikon) and anime pornography depicting extreme fetishes such as necrophilia (guro). Poole responded to these complaints, by reminding them that this type of pornography is not technically illegal, and the content would not be removed.

So what will this new masterpiece be called? Well, there have been many suggestions so far. A few of my favorites:

1984Chan – The Rise and Fall of 4Chan

The point is MOOT (moot does not mean what you think it means) -40 keks

Our Kampf

So whats the deal with 4chan?

To Reign in Hell: The Fall from Grace

The Willing Executioners

Poole’s Closed

404 – (Chronicle of the Executioners), (4chan Not Found), (Freedom Failed to  `  Load), (Freedom Not Found)

The Caliphate of the Internet

To Kill |Crush| a |Mocking| Cloverleaf

Ooh, someone took high school English!

The heroes who rose from the pariahs

Tales of the struggles of modern-day Huckleberry Finns

Oh, yet another High School graduate!

How we tried and slew Leviathan

How to win friends and crash your community, by MOOT

We are piss babies who like to suck diaper farts

I don’t think that last one was meant completely  seriously.

(I am also aware that the bit about the Terminator was probably added by a troll.)

H/T — To Literally Who herself for pointing me to this literary masterpiece. She is also organizing a crowdsourced dramatic reading of the book’s prologue.

BONUS: Here are a few more of the proposed book covers.

Panning for poop on 8chan

Yesterday, I noted some of the nasty transphobia that had shown up in a recent /gg/ thread on 8chan, undercutting somewhat the claims to respectability we’ve been hearing a lot of from GamerGaters recently. Well, 8channers noticed my post, and weren’t exactly pleased about it.

But their responses to my post, well, they didn’t exactly suggest that the transphobia I saw in the earlier thread was some sort of fluke.

Oh, sure, some of the commenters complained, as my critics often do, that I had “quote mined” the earlier thread.

Sitting cheek by jowl next to these comments were comments of a rather different sort. Trigger Warning for threats, transphobia, homophobia, etc.

So, yeah, there’s really no need to posit vast conspiracies sending paid shills to shitpost on 8chan when it’s pretty clear a sizeable portion of their userbase is happy to post crap like this for free.

And there’s no need to mine for quotes like these when there are so many of them just sitting right there on the surface.

Not a video game

If you grit your teeth and do a search for #GamerGate and #Ferguson together on Twitter, you will find Tweet after Tweet from worried #GamerGaters earnestly imploring their comrades not to make any connections between the two hashtags. Why? Because they know that those who cross the streams are likely to Tweet things like the following.

This what happens when #GamerGaters try to make sense of what is happening in Ferguson.

Oh, and yes, these are all genuine #GamerGaters; check out their timelines for proof, and you’ll also see some of the terrible racist crap some of them have been tweeting and retweeting.

These are some actual Tweets posted yesterday by @FartToContinue, a fairly prominent #GamerGater.

https://twitter.com/FartToContinue/status/537391103100858368

A few minutes with Google image search reveals that two of the images are photoshopped versions of photos documenting or depicting racial segregation in the Jim Crow era in the United States; one of the signs was originally directed at … hippies.

The originals:

H/T — @PixelGoth on Twitter

Since today is Thanksgiving — also known as Thursday, to those not in the US — I thought I would take a break from all the negativity and celebrate some of the true heroes of video gaming.

Make sure to scroll down all the way for a video of cats and dogs and lizards legitimately for real playing iPad games. Enjoy!

This kitten, meanwhile, just likes to watch.

Consider this a no-trolls, no-MRAs, no-GamerGaters open thread, not for personal stuff. I’ll be opening a new thread for personal stuff in a little bit. Happy Thanksgiving and/or Thursday!

No, weightifting in Grand Theft Auto doesn’t count.

Before he decided to attach himself to the #GamerGate “movement,” Breitbart writer and all-around douchebag Milo Yiannopoulos took a certain pleasure in baiting gamer “nerds,” a demographic he once described as a bunch of “pungent beta-male bollock-scratchers and twelve-year olds.”

He’s not the only self-appointed #GamerGate savior who doesn’t seem to have much respect for the group he’s ostensibly championing. Over on Reaxxion — the atrociously written pro-GamerGate game site run by pickup guru and non-gamer Roosh — one writer implores fellow gamers to quite literally put down their controllers and pick up weights.

In 5 Reasons Why Gamers Should Life Weights, Alexander Anderson urges gamer nerds to become gamer jocks, and not just because regular exercise is good for your health. In Anderson’s mind, weightlifting nerds can also challenge the stereotype of gamers as “socially awkward, passive, uncool, and physically unappealing” nerds by not, you know, embodying the stereotypes so completely themselves.

Go to a gaming gathering event and pay attention to the other people around you. Look at how they dress and how they communicate with each other. Pay attention to their body language, tone of voice, mannerism, and what they talk about. Then go to a sporting event and repeat the process. Which group of people would an average person prefer to be around?

HINT: You’re supposed to pick the sports fans.

The solution? Lifting, bro!

If all gamers start lifting weights, it will help combat the public perception of gamers as unsociable cave dwellers.

And even if Anderson can’t convince every World of Warcrafter to hit the gym, at least those who do lift will have “an edge over other gamers.”

Humans subconsciously prefer the company of those who are bigger, stronger, and smarter than the rest. You will stand out among your gamer friends if you are the only one in the room with muscles. Your social standing will increase, your health will improve and you will gain more confidence from regularly exercising.

Huh. I thought GamerGaters wanted gaming to be a “safe space” for nerds, not another arena in which jocks get to lord it over them.

She’s not the messiah’s mom

GamerGaters sure do love their Based Mom! Christina Hoff Sommers, as you may or may not know, is a libertarian think-tanker who’s been grinding away at feminism for two decades, while still, rather perversely, claiming to be feminist. Though not a video gamer herself, she’s jumped aboard the GamerGate train, and GamerGaters have repaid her interest in their little crusade with interest, anointing her their “Based Mom” and talking about her with weird reverence.

That is, when they’re not making creepy fan art about her. Today, five of the most disturbing examples I’ve found so far.

1) Virgin Based Mom, in which an old publicity shot of Sommers is pasted onto a picture of the Virgin Mary to very creepy effect.

2) Based Waifu, in which Sommers is reinvented as an anime character.

3) Mass Effect Mom, in which Sommers becomes a Space Marine.

4) Whatever the hell this is.

5) Perfect Mom. And last but certainly not least, this tweet. No image manipulation here, just a guy expressing his opinion about a women. His really, really creepy opinion.

BONUS: The world’s most annoying Christina Hoff Sommers animated gif.  Sommers finishes her ironically titled “Factual Feminist” YouTube videos, which are neither factual nor feminist, with an annoyingly contrived tagline: “Check your facts, not your privilege.” Now you can watch her smugly repeat this phrase over and over without end. Which is, I think, the very definition of hell.

Warning: Excessive viewing of this gif may give you nightmares; its smugness is that powerful.

H/T — GamerGhazi, for pointing out the Virgin Mom