On the current situation

Before you ask, there's a list of things I'm not going to do. I'm not going to tell anyone who I actually am; that's point one. I'm a blogger and I am paid for my writings, and I have cause to believe that I would legitimately be either fired or in a very very unfavourable position as a result of this. Make of that what you will. I'm not going to make a video. I'm not going to swear unconditional allegiance to some sort of movement that calls itself 'anti-SJW' because I believe that tarring anyone who vociferously campaigns for social justice with the same brush is unfair. And I should know: I've been unfair. To 4chan.



Allow me to explain. Before all of this started I was alerted by a friend (who will also remain unnamed because she is also in an awkward position) of this whole situation. The background to me AT THE TIME was thus: here is a woman, Ms Zoe Quinn, being slut shamed, having her game bombarded with troll reviews and 1/10 scores, getting doxxed, getting her private life more or less splashed all over the gaming and tech journalism district of the internet. And here's a company, TFYC, that I 'knew' to be an exploitative, nasty piece of work from the failed project in the past attempting to ride this wave to fund itself after the first attempt failed.



I was incensed. Here was 4chan, an entity that as far as I was concerned existed only to call me a slut and a cunt in the comments sections of my articles, claiming to be all pro-feminism. I took to twitter to make my opinions known. I made reactionary posts because I thought that TFYC had stone age trans policies (they don't) and that they were mansplaining feminism from a position of privilege (they aren't). I went so far as to call collusion with 4chan a form of deep corruption, compromising so-called 'feminist' values for the sake of making profit. That was until I saw that they stand to make NO money from this and will in fact be giving women with good ideas, not programmers, a portion of the profits commensurable with a producer in the entertainment industry.



And the rest goes to charity.



And then I thought: why am I against this again? Details emerged. The project was more or less killed by Zoe Quinn claiming that they were anti-trans and exploitative. This was a stance I absolutely believed, and I believed it because Ms Quinn said it. I didn't do research. Why would I? Obviously someone as awesome as her would know what she's talking about. And therein lies the problem. It's so easy to misdirect and deflect blame or scrutiny from yourself by choosing your words carefully. I came to learn that 4chan is the way it is because of anonymity, NOT because of some deep rooted ideology. A friend came to me (not disclosing - seeing a pattern here?) and told me that they browsed their lgbt board. Another explained to me that it's sort of like reddit in that the overall entity cannot be spoken for by its subdivisions, which have their own culture and often fight amongt themselves to boot.



And then I started to get headaches, and sweat, and get cravings for the cigarettes that I gave up years ago, because I just made the kind of errors I constantly lampooned people for making: I did not do my research. For that I am sorry. I am sorry I insulted 4chan and I am sorry I insulted The Fine Young Capitalists. I even gave money, for what it's worth.



Don't think this means I've 'defected' in some way. Anyone making twitter accounts solely to harass people with foul language and insults is a leech. But equally, any 'SJW' (shudders at using the term) who blindly defends Ms Quinn and thinks this is just about misogyny is WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. This wouldn't be going on for over a week if it was and there wouldn't be THOUSANDS raised for charity and there wouldn't be people demanding that Nathan Grayson resign (he should) or that Zoe Quinn should apologise for issuing false DMCA requests (she absolutely should).



And to anyone trying to take away 4chan's donations by calling them 'spiteful'...hello? Do you remember how you all threw money at Anita Sarkeesian to spite the mean trolls harassing her? That money was given out of spite, but you STILL BELIEVED IN HER CAUSE. People don't just open their wallets out of pure spite to the tune of 30 thousand dollars. If the cause of feminism in gaming was REALLLY so abhorrent to ALL of 4chan, then they wouldn't give money, period. Imagine asking me to give money to some pro-life group just because it would spite one of the cretins who posts NSFW photos on my blog posts. I'd NEVER do it and don't pretend a lot of you would either. There has to be some underlying sympathy.



And as a final point: I've begun to notice an awful lot of harassment coming from people I'd consider to be on 'my' side. SJW's throwing around words like neckbeard, virgin, misogynist pigs, even going so far as to compare them to ISIS. Sorry guys but just because 4chan is a big meanie, doesn't mean you get to be bigoted and uninformed as well. Five minutes' reading will tell you that Zoe Quinn is not an emblem of feminism in gaming, she's a rebuttal to it. She symbolises a 'straw-feminist' that I never would've thought existed had this whole situation not blown up. I'll think carefully on this last point from now on, and you all should too.



Love and kisses,

'Ariel'

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