What's your opinion of the whole Zoe Quinn issue? Not even the gaming industry ramifications, but specifically, why is she being defended by SJWs when, despite her own statement, "Sex without telling your partner you cheated on them is sex without informed consent, and sex without informed consent is rape?"

Hi, thanks for the question!



I’d also like to thank the people who reached out to me during my absence to see if I was okay, I just had a run-in with a friend who saw these posts, worked out it was me, and confronted me about them (she is on the anti-tumblr bs side though, so, no worries) - but at any rate she warned me that for anyone who knew me, that this account was me was fairly obvious and I should tone it down a little. I did and then life called and I never really got back into it… until now!



Anyway, I haven’t been keeping up with #GamerGate so much. I saw a bit at the beginning, a little in the first few months, some of their victories (like Intel, before I presume they went back to advertising on Gamasutra) - and I don’t know much of late. I have a friend who follows it a bit and he mainly just updates me on the hypocrisy of what the opponents do sometimes (particularly when a pro-gamergate person is severely harassed and for some reason nobody on the anti-gamergate side seems to step back and say “hold on that shouldn’t happen”. They never seem to really critically think about their position - though, I could hypothetically see the same being said about GamerGate - I don’t know who has been hurt, and how, etc.

On Domestic Abuse

From what I know of Zoey Quinn and The Zoey Post, she is an abuser and a self-admitted rapist (as you stated in your question). The Zoey Post I don’t think was intended to really highlight ethical problems in game journalism - and was more intended to (and I’m quoting the blog here) “warn you to be cautious of Zoe.” It is a victim speaking out about their abuser.



You can also check out this video series (youtube link), it is a thorough look at the way Zoey abused Eron and it’s sad that unfortunately this abuse story has been drowned by a big gaming controversy - but I don’t really blame anyone for that. (Will explain in a paragraph coming up).

It has also come to my attention that Zoey used a restraining order to stop Eron from talking about her. This is again, completely fucked. It stops an abuse victim from speaking out about his abuser. No-one who gives a shit about domestic abuse should ever support this, and should always question this extremely critically.

Also this is a big deal:

Zoey Quinn seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to find ways of making it seem as if Eron is the abuser. Trying to make the abused seem like the real villain is a common technique in the abuser’s playbook.

It also demonstrates a huge issue in how we look at domestic abuse, particularly from a “soc jus” “feminist” perspective. If it was a male abuser, people would be infuriated at the circumstances, calling for Toby Quinn’s head, and if he tried to get a restraining order to shut Erin Gjoni up? Holy shit.

It shows that the current social justice crowd cannot be trusted with real issues such as domestic violence and abuse - as they are clearly far too prejudiced to approach it correctly.

So how did this become #GamerGate?

Anyway I said I’d talk about how I’m sad this all got rolled into GamerGate. I’m sure to some extent they regret its connection (makes it far too easy to spin into ‘zomg misogyny!’), but unfortunately it was the spark that lit the fire.

I’ll explain that GamerGate has been going on for 5 or more years now. “What?” you say? People have been upset with the state of gaming journalism for years. People have hated Kotaku, Polygon, and the constant attacks on gamers (calling them “whiny”, “entitled”, “man-children”, “toxic”) for years. I remember wanting to check up on an upcoming Pokemon game, going to Kotaku and noticing that on nearly every article I could see some random user was going and just posting a bunch of issues he (or she? I’m not sure) had with the articles, such as biases, hidden politics, factual issues, etc. I assume Kotaku ignored this. I assume Kotaku (and co) let their negative perception build up over time and ultimately when a company does that, at some point it will explode.

People had been badmouthing these journalist sites for years, calling them a joke.

Like, I can’t get over that.

So what happens? The second one of them is caught in what seems to be objectively unethical behavior (though, whether Grayson was actually in a relationship with Zoey while he promoted (not reviewed) her games is something that cannot really be substantiated, so we should give him the benefit of the doubt here) - the whole situation blows up.

Now imagine if Kotaku was actually an extremely trustworthy site at the point of this whole issue blowing up - imagine that people really liked and trusted them… they probably would have been able to walk away with no controversy. When you constantly build up this debt of goodwill - it means any spark can be the one that sets off the inferno. And when it happens, it’s going to be big.

Part of the reason GamerGate has been so large is because as mentioned, the anger has been building up for a long time. Another reason is because people jump on a controversy. When a controversy starts, all those others who have felt hurt by Kotaku, and have been angry jump on as, when you’re alone, you’re powerless. When you start a mob with pitchforks, you have enough power to confront the bug guys.



The third aspect that helped it grow was that journalists decided to go on the offensive and effectively double down on their previous mistakes. They thought that they could make a few quick clicks by spinning this into another “angry gamers are shit” narrative, and ultimately it threw them all into a constant siege of boycotts. Dumb move.

Anyway, to sum up: