According to Rankowsky/Connors, he ad-libbed the screeching meltdown next to his wrecked car, and also the subsequent interview he did with #gamergate talking heads King of Pol and The Ralph Retort; and also anything else he said or did which could be perceived as a threat to Wu's life.

We're actually supposed to believe that Rankowsky was was doing some kind of comedy long con, like an episode of "Punk'd", except that instead of misleading someone for an hour you do it for two years running, without Ashton Kutcher ever letting the audience in on the joke.

Essentially, Rankowsky pretended to be a mentally-ill gamer dude, and it was up to the audience to discern that he was an over-the-top troll whose weapons were Airsoft and whose knives were "plastic-looking". Joseph Bernstein, reporting for Buzzfeed, basically gave Rankowsky a pass with regards to his 'comedy'; spending about half his article length tsk-tsking anyone who took this fellow seriously.



It was as if every shitty thing on the internet — every crummy and déclassé opinion, hobby, and identity — converged on one man. It was almost too bad to be true.

And of course, in our age of the viral hoax, it was.

Connors/Rankowsky claimed to Buzzfeed that this sociopathic game of his stopped being funny when real #gamergate vigilantes from 8chan and Kiwi Farm traced the Jace Connors "character" back to his actual identity and started sending pizzas to his house and calling his high school (i.e. the standard baphomet treatment.)

Joesph Bernstein, ate Rankowski's story up uncritically.

However, I can't find any evidence that Rankowski/Connors/"The Commander" worked for Million Dollar Extreme. He doesn't seem to appear in any of their 100+ uploads or appear on their Facebook or Youtube About pages under any name. They've linked to Rankowsky's live stream since the story broke on Buzzfeed, but never explictly state Rankoswky was working for them or take responsibility for this project/prank/long con of his. Since MDE has no contact email I tweeted them for a clarification. At press time, MDE wrote back:

@idlediletante mind your own business fuck face — MDE (@mde_never_dies) February 25, 2015

Buzzfeed, The Verge, Ars Technica and several other sites have picked up the story, seemingly agreeing Rankowski is a "gamergate troll", "parody character", or "trolling sketch comedian", whose actions amounted to nothing more than a "terrible hoax." The Portland Press Herald simply called it a "controversial gamergate video", before sympathetically seguing to Rankowski's history of Asperger's Syndrome and childhood desire to be a filmmaker.

4/5 of the articles I just mentioned were written by men, by the way. The Sams, Josephs, Chrises, and Rays of the world seem eager to tell me that this Jan Rankowski guy is just not a big deal.

Brianna Wu, the means to the end of Rankowski's alleged "prank" on #gamergate, commented to Jezebel yesterday:

"If this person thinks they can throw up their hands and say, 'Woah, woah this is just a joke, people, I'm sorry,' this isn't Grand Theft Auto. You can't threaten to murder people and think there are no consequences and you can take it back. My suggestion to him is to lawyer up."

Edit 2: The good folks on Reddit have found MDE videos in which Jan appears (skip to 4:28) and mentions of him on the MDE Facebook. How this legitimizes Jace as some kind of troll prankster is still unclear.