The most surprising thing about Anita Sarkeesian is how funny she is.

Speaking as a guest of the State Library's Wheeler Centre in Melbourne this week, Sarkeesian gave an exhaustive account of her adventures in internet harassment. Despite the tight, serious format of her well-known YouTube series Feminist Frequency, she showed that when she is not working from a tightly-written and edited script, she draws as many laughs from her audience as she does thoughtful nods and shocked gasps.

Anita Sarkeesian was in Australia this week to discuss her experience of online harassment. Credit:The New York Times

Sarkeesian is a prominent feminist on the internet, which makes her a target of harassment by default. However, it was in 2012 when she announced her intention to make a series of Feminist Frequency videos about how common tropes in video games depict female character poorly that the constant background noise turned into a howling hurricane of abuse.

What followed was almost three years of constant abuse from mostly anonymous harassers on the internet, predating the so-called "GamerGate movement" but flowing naturally into it. Sarkeesian became one of a group of well-known women involved in video games, most notably game developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu, who had their personal details published online and received countless death and rape threats, some on private, unlisted telephone numbers.