Shirrako’s account was reinstated by the end of the day; his YouTube channel restored, and the video returned, although the latter-most was demonetized and given a limited state where no one can view it unless seen from a direct link. It no longer appears on his channel listing, despite some of the others that stirred in the controversy still being there. This is likely a band-aid attempt by YouTube to silence as many critics as possible while they deal with the inevitable mess they’ve brought about by choosing to take any action at all in this regard. Following reinstatement, Guardian columnist Van Badham has decided to make her voice clear on the matter, and therein lies why I came to make an article that speaks about #GamerGate.



In her article, Van speaks of a violence justified on women by the “GamerGate movements”, which allegedly, she claims, helped to “furnish the communication channels and communities of the ‘neo-fascist’ Alt-Right”. She then attempts to tie this community to the likes of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a renowned anti-identitarian whom she labels as “thoroughly creepy”. Clearly Ms. (or Mrs. I would hate to assume) Badham hasn’t noticed that Dr. Peterson and the Alt-Right have nothing good to say about one another, but as all people who engage in these muddied, surface level critiques do, she has committed the very sin that our favourite NPC has. To blame men and collectivize them into groups of people she disagrees with, while attempting to paint them all with the same brush, turning them into the object of her shame and critique.



She argues that:

“isolated, angry teenage boys (and the vaster number of their more dangerous adult counterparts) could certainly use a play-centric environment to enfranchise them in notions and skills of talking to women as people, not objects – and the rewards of pleasure and de-isolation therein.”

This after describing how the game does not oblige you to perform acts of immoral violence, while also noting that punishments can be instated to ensure that those who take such immoral measures are penalized for their attitudes.



Unsurprisingly, she calls Shirrako’s YouTube ban “heartening” and demands that such punishments “can and should go further.”



I find this call utterly reprehensible, morally and intellectually bankrupt, devoid of empathy, as well as lacking basic understanding of how the sandbox games that Rockstar produces work. As pointed out before, there is already a morality system built into the game that punishes players for immoral actions. In Grand Theft Auto, if someone sees you harm an innocent person, the police immediately take up your trail and start hunting you down. The same is true of Red Dead Redemption 2. Even in Shirrako’s video, you see the moment he harms the woman, a wanted bounty appears in the top right of his screen. It is made clear to anyone playing the game or watching it that these actions have negative consequences, much as they would in real life, but apparently this level of moral punishment isn’t enough for Van Badham.



If you read her article, you’ll notice firstly, that all of this framing is alleged towards the actions of young men, absent of the possibility that anyone else could ever do such a thing. It seems as though the idea of killing (or even harming) an NPC in a video game for their professed ideology, an ideology which the author agrees with, and sharing that to the world, is something that requires a punishment steeper than having their method of sharing things to the internet and all the hard work they’ve put in up until that point stripped from existence. Shaming actual human beings though, an entire community of disparate people, and attempting to tie them all to literal Neo-Nazis in real life, however, is perfectly permissible behavior. The clear double standard and lack of principle in this regard is frankly ridiculous, but it goes beyond just this.



Throughout the entire article, there rests an underlying assumption that this attitude or these actions lead to violence or harassment against women which the author attempts to imply. Despite this, I have yet to see a single shred of evidence that this is true, aside from the assertions made by these people. Where is the argument that any of this causes violence towards women? Where is the proof, the citations, the studies that show how this works, and without them, how can we dare speak with any degree of certainty, that simply posting a video of an NPC getting hit in a video leads to violence against women? Using actions that have already been taken, and then pointing to a YouTube video released post-hoc as proof that this is the cause is disingenuous. It’s pseudo-scientific and seeks to confirm a theory by using something unrelated as supporting evidence. How can we demand that real world punishment ought to be dealt onto a person for the crime of posting a video of them playing a video game when this is the standard of proof? The absurd lengths that these people will stretch to in order to defend pathological ideology is nothing short of astounding, especially when including authoritarian moral and social punishments of video gamers for not playing video games “the correct way”.



This amounts to nothing more than vacuous pearl clutching. Evidence suggests time and again that there is no long term compulsion to violence from playing video games, just as there is no compulsion to violence from watching violent movies. Viewing violence does not cause violence. It does not prime to violence. The worst it has shown to do is cause some minor desire to inflict violence for a short period afterwards, much as dealing with any frustrating scenario can lead to, which has nothing to do with the content displayed and more to do with the frustration of the challenges presented and their difficulty to achieve.



Why This Is Important



Many will look at the facts of this case and conclude that YouTube had every right to pull the video, and technically, they did. It’s their service, so ultimately, they get a say over what content is made available for others to watch. What people probably won’t consider, however, is why they were pressured into pulling Shirrako’s channel, by whom they were pressured, and what their arguments are for doing such a thing, and the veracity of those arguments when examined. I do not seek to contend, as some might, that there are not valid reasons to censor a video such as this, nor that there aren’t better solutions to this sort of issue arising in future. (For instance having an age content filter so that young children aren’t exposed to content not meant for their age range and auto-scanning for content containing that material to put it behind the age wall) What I would argue, however, is that those complaining blithely about video games leading to violence against women are peddling the ripest of bullshit claims, and that those claims shouldn’t blindly be believed simply to censor content one finds objectionable, especially when those making the claims are so happy to invite hatred onto the very people they’re criticizing by comparing them to Neo-Nazis.



The very fact that #GamerGate blew up in the way that it did was because of exactly this sort of disingenuous framing by journalists; lying about a hobby and painting large swathes of people within in an unflattering light. Beyond that, these “journalists” also have the temerity to demand others change their habits of enjoying their favourite medium of art, (an act which harms no one) on pain of authoritarian social or possibly legal punishments should they fail to do so. That people are still trying to tie together a conspiracy between GamerGate and the Alt-Right in order to demand that people be forced to change in such disingenuous and disgusting ways shows that they haven’t stopped, and aren’t likely to any time soon. If a discussion is to be had about these things, then let it be had, but let none come to the table with lies and deceit as the only manner with which they’re willing to engage. Those that lie for a living cannot help but fear the truth when exposed to it and attempt to destroy it and anyone who would support it. It is on the shoulders of honest people of the world to ensure that such actions aren’t allowed to happen without challenge.



We see more and more each day that journalists are increasingly willing to lie to push an ideological agenda, and that the lengths they are willing to go to in order to impose their will grow ever increasingly forceful. Let’s stop pretending that Journalism doesn’t need critique, and that #GamerGate was just about harassment. It may not have been a bundle of sunshine, but it was the start of what seems to be some clearly needed push-back against those who will use anything they can as a reason to expand their power over society.

