The annual Consumer Electronics Show is an electronics and technology trade show tailored for the largest and most influential consumer technology companies around the world. Closed to the public in a secure area of the Las Vegas Convention Center, it is an event where the industry leaders can meet, rub elbows, and compare their wares and insights into the modern culture of technology. Taking place in January, the CES tends to set the notes by which the major consumer electronics industry will play for the remainder of the year.

Unfortunately at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6, 2015 there came another of those unpleasant incidents of “truthiness” from those media conglomerates who choose to position themselves opposed to GamerGate. In a particularly disappointing turn, Intel corporation allowed themselves to be pressed into the position of a media patsy for that side through abuse of their efforts to promote a more diverse hiring practice for their company.

http://live.cnet.com/Event/Intel_CES_2015_keynote_with_CEO_Brian_Krzanich

Intel made a general statement against online harassment. Indeed, a statement supported by a keystone point of GamerGate’s statement of purpose. Almost immediately, anti-GamerGate news outlets began trumpeting this statement with a variety of clever headlines and interpretations as sampled below.

>”Nick Statt 8:42 PM Wow, Krzanich dropped a reference to GamerGate as he switched gears to a call for action on diversity and inclusion.”

VentureBeat: https://archive.today/kvoUF

Vox Media via The Verge: “Intel opposes Gamergate as part of $300 million effort to fix diversity in tech” https://archive.today/AWrpK

Vox Media via Polygon.com: “Intel pledges $300M to bolster women, minority workforce in wake of GamerGate” https://archive.today/wCCtD#selection-1163.0-1163.77

The astute reader will notice from the keynote video an absence of a certain word. A word that quite literally reveals, in all of its nine letters and optional pound sign, an immediate deception on the part of Vox Media. #GamerGate. The keynote delivered by Intel at CES did not refer to GamerGate. Rather it seems that the writers at Vox’s various child publications took it upon themselves to make reference to the motley Rebel Alliance and to use Intel’s perfectly reasonable statements against online harassment to provide their narrative a boost. Unfortunately the problematic deceptions do not end there.

It is no surprise to activists that media outlets continue parading the harassment narrative against GamerGate. It has long been their most consistent weapon against them, however ineffective they have demonstrated it to be. Vox is engaging in that woeful sort of cerebral tomfoolery where they try to stimulate a reader’s impression of a thing rather than providing them accurate information. A hallmark of so-called “click-bait journalism” and GamerGate opponents’ modus operandi dating clear back to August – and, I might add, a classical example of propaganda.

But the deception runs deeper, as there is greater meaning behind the articles’ common source: Vox Media. A few days prior to CES 2015, GamerGate activists discovered that Vox Media had altered their ethics policy in such a way that the placement of their disclaimers for native advertisers was violating FTC regulations. Regulations that were adopted due to pressure from GamerGate activists contacting the FTC about selfsame dishonest practices on the part of Vox and other media companies. GamerGate then did what GamerGate does, and launched a “front” against Vox Media on social media and in realspace by contacting the FTC concerning their impropriety.

It does not stretch the imagination to believe that Vox was finding themselves with a sudden, vested interest in trying to discredit GamerGate in the public eye. And they used Intel to help them do it.

Furthering the tragedy, Intel stood at the event side-by-side with the IGDA, who themselves were recently in some very hot water for professionally advocating a blacklist of over 10,000 Twitter accounts. One so broad and so damning that it labelled the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken and even their own director of operation for IGDA Puerto Rico as “the worst of the worst harassers.” The latter was an especially tragic case, as his labeling resulted in someone releasing his personal address information online, and he was forced to withdraw from social media when that avenue was used to directly threaten the lives of his children.

Seeing these developments, GamerGate’s online hubs fired into a flurry of action as information was generated, compiled, tagged, and disseminated across social media with their now-typical blistering speed. While Intel is regarded very favorably by GamerGate in general as an honest company who put its customers first, it remains to be seen how the fallout from Vox Media’s plotting and their partnership with the dangerous ideologues running the IGDA will pan out in the coming days.

-Acid Man