Today, I’ve noticed the new defense of GamerGate/KiwiFarms’ part in getting Alison Rapp fired is that it was all about ethics.

See, since they found out she had a second job, and Nintendo has claimed that moonlighting is not part of their policy (or, they’ve stated it didn’t fit with their corporate culture), they’re now saying that it was an ethical imperative that they let Nintendo know.

And some are even claiming that you shouldn’t be mad about them getting a woman they didn’t like fired, you should instead consider them upstanding citizens and your anger should solely be devoted to Nintendo if you don’t like their policy.

Beyond the fallacy of “you can only care about one thing at once!” they’re deploying for the millionth time, I have to wonder:

How many of these gaters and farmers would be ok with someone digging through their online presence to find out who they work for, and report them for wasting company time by redditing/tweeting/being horrible on the internet at work?

From my experience at least, any place I’ve worked has had strict policies about internet usage while you’re on the clock, and generally consider it against policy to be using corporate assets to browse unapproved sites.

Of course, being the cowards that they are, we know that few gaters and farmers would ever be willing to put their face and employer out there, because they already know they’d get found out to be breaking corporate policy. The only ones who are willing are ones who are self-employed via YouTube and Patreon, or are lucky enough to be employed by places like Breitbart.

I just find this new narrative interesting, to say the least. It’s a logical extension of their holiest of ideas, that everyone should be anonymous and deviating from that standard means you are welcoming their abuse.

And to be clear:

Not every person who wishes to remain anonymous is a coward. Many people have real, serious reasons for needing to do so.

But the gaters and the farmers? Yeah, they’re the embodiment of cowardice. The people who have doxxed me, published a list of friends and family, and sent threats towards me are doing so behind the veil of anonymity (except for the couple of times they attempted to impersonate me with my own photos and name). And make no mistake: these are the same people who hid behind anonymity to make Rapp’s life hell.

One difference in Rapp’s case is that these cowards found a sacrifice they could use, in the form of a charity founder who was willing to step out from behind the anonymity on KiwiFarms to continue their crusade for them. This gave them legitimacy and allowed them to have a public face even if they were still too cowardly to come forward themselves.

But when nobody cares anymore about this person, where will they be? They’ll continue to thrive in their anonymity, digging up whatever they can on the next vulnerable person whose life they hope to ruin — and they do intend to ruin more lives. Searching Rapp’s name right now results in dozens of youtube videos calling her a pedophile. There’s no doubt that each one who isn’t already an established youtuber is hoping to have this incident be the groundbreaking moment which turns them into a known brand. Similarly, searching my name shows that accusations I’m a woman-abusing pedo-apologist pedophile are in the top five results.

This is the same song and dance we’ve seen with countless other people who dared to speak up about the horrible abuses of internet anonymity. Yet, when these tactics are used against the abusers, we’re told it’s unfair and nobody should be fired just for making death threats as “jokes” on the internet!

So maybe it’s not a new narrative, but it’s a narrative Nintendo just gave them a free pass to use. They’re simply upstanding citizens who were concerned for months about a Nintendo employee working a second job which might have been against Nintendo’s policies.

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