Gawker Media has long been one of Gamergate’s favorite villains, and so it’s hardly surprising to see Gamergaters celebrating Gawker’s legal defeat at the hands of former wrestler and very large human Hulk Hogan.

It was a doozy of a defeat, with Gawker Media ordered to pay $115 million to Hogan for posting a sex tape featuring the ex-wrestler and the wife of a friend whose legal name is Bubba the Love Sponge.

On Twitter, Gamergaters cackled like the cartoon villains they are, posting schadenfreude-laden photoshops, ridiculous gifs, rape jokes, and the occasional request that Gawker employees die.

HULKAMANIA RUNNING WILD IN COURT! GAWKER SENTENCED TO PAYING 115 MILLION IN DAMAGES#GamerGate pic.twitter.com/HHDYAat3Pg — ACRA (@ArsCortica) March 18, 2016

https://twitter.com/x_schilling/status/710969380931248128

>mfw #Gawker has to pay 450 dollaridoos of punitive damages to Hulk Hogan#Gamergate pic.twitter.com/0mwp0hclAm — Empathy Gene-Defficient 🐺 Kusanagi (@KusanagiFurfag) March 20, 2016

https://twitter.com/BobDude15/status/710965368068509696

https://twitter.com/Orlando_223_/status/710993022155100160

One Tweeter brought back this familiar face.

While the celebration comes as no shock, what is a little surprising is how many Gamergaters have leapt up to claim some kind of credit for a legal victory they had absolutely nothing to do with.

https://twitter.com/Provaporous2/status/710978097135362048

Death to Gawker. #gamergate just claimed a victory against a major opponent that slandered the movement for years. — Death To Gawker (@flowerpower2025) March 19, 2016

Hulk Hogan just effectively bankrupted the sleezy clickbait site Gawker. Thats what you get for messing with #gamergate — Death To Gawker (@flowerpower2025) March 19, 2016

https://twitter.com/RedbobBackup/status/711058483248893952

One Gamergate critic summed up the situation with a handy pic:

https://twitter.com/ZombieAteMySock/status/711100188249735168

There were, to be sure, some Gamergaters who were willing to share credit with Hogan, seeing Gamergate as part of a some sort of Media Ethics tag-team.

#Gamergate hurt Gawker. Hulk Hogan finished the job. 115 million dollars fine for commercializing being hypocritical asshole and crybully. — Erik Wedin (LiberalKonservativ) (@Aktivarum) March 19, 2016

https://twitter.com/ZanbonSen/status/710989035460648961

Well, GG Gawker.

But #gamergate won, in probably the best tag team to tackle ethics in journalism. — 🔮Leonardo De Pinchy 🦀✨ (@CloudyXiongMao) March 18, 2016

#Gawker dead

Reputation of corrupt journos destroyed.

Gaming journalism changed forever.#gamergate are pretty annoying antagonists huh? — 🔮Leonardo De Pinchy 🦀✨ (@CloudyXiongMao) March 19, 2016

Demonstrating the keen sense of ethics she has evidently learned from Gamergate, Minou took a moment off from her celebration to suggest to one games journalist and longtime Gamergate target that he kill himself.

A simple solution, try bleach. @Vahn16 — 🔮Leonardo De Pinchy 🦀✨ (@CloudyXiongMao) March 18, 2016

One Gamergater and taco enthusiast offered a rather different take on the relationship between Hogan and the heroes of Gamergate.

https://twitter.com/TerrorTacos/status/711039324725374976

Obviously, there are numerous Gamergaters who are sufficiently connected with reality that they can see that, no, they had nothing whatsoever to do with Hogan’s lawsuit, or the verdict, or the massive judgement. But the victory-claimers had retorts ready for these unbelievers.

https://twitter.com/osc4x/status/711279565314891776

Don't let anyone say #GamerGate didn't help make this happen. If they didn't get rid of Gawker's ads they could brush this off. #hulkvsgawk — Artivous Ira ❌ (@ArtivousIra) March 19, 2016

But wherever they stood on the issue of just who was responsible for this glorious victory, Gamergaters seemed to agree on one thing: Gawker employees deserve to suffer for the poor decisions of their bosses.

https://twitter.com/HereticOfEthics/status/711091450763563008

I've felt a disturbance in the Force…as if Gawker employees were crying out in fear of this man https://t.co/UX0id5PF8Z #Gamergate — Hyperknight Drifter (@hyperknight4077) March 19, 2016

Other Gamergate ethicists suggested that Gawkerites just go ahead and kill themselves.

https://twitter.com/ramzaruglia/status/711026081776570369

https://twitter.com/AgoristArtist/status/711006031413837824

https://twitter.com/Bobcat665/status/711002301813510144

It’s about ethics in telling journalists to kill themselves.

I hardly need to point out some of the blatant hypocrisies here. Gamergate wants Gawker Media destroyed over a sex tape. Meanwhile, Gamergaters posted nude photos of Zoe Quinn all across the internet; they also sent them directly to Quinn’s relatives. Gamergate did much of its early organizing on 4chan, before moving on to 8chan; both sites have reputations as havens for the trading of child porn.

Reddit, which hosts gamergate hub Kotaku in Action, has also been used to distribute child porn and stolen celebrity nudes; the site’s admins were glacially slow in taking action against both problems. Yes, Gawker’s posting of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape was sleazy and wrong and damaging. But 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit have done far more damage to a much larger group of victims. If Gamergate were as concerned as they pretend to be about “revenge porn” — or any kind of porn that is made and/or distributed without the consent of those in it — why are they not trying to shut down — or radically reform — Reddit or 8chan?

That is of course a rhetorical question.

Let me leave you with the creepiest tweet I ran across while writing this post. Once again, here’s Milo:

https://twitter.com/Nero/status/710994606863872000

EDIT: I removed several tweets that turned out to be from a troll account.

EDIT 2: And one more.

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