Who and What is NeoGAF?

NeoGAF, or just “GAF” is the Neo Gaming Age Forum, an extremely large and influential website in the video game industry. It was a successor to the original Gaming Age forums, which shut down sometime after Gaming Age was purchased by IGN back in the early ’00s.

NeoGAF is owned by one Tyler Malka, who goes by the internet handle “Evilore.” The site was noteworthy for its huge traffic (ranked 1,729 globally per Alexa) and the fact that video game developers and journalists would sometimes post on the site.

After Gamergate happened, the site went hard-SJW and became a major nerve center for SJW political activism, with users working to get conservative Youtubers banned or conducting smear campaigns against various people speaking out about the injection of far-left politics into video games.

Most conservative and moderate liberal users on the site were either banned or learned to shut up very quickly.

The Rise of the Social Justice Warriors Began at NeoGAF

For those of you who understand how SJWs work, none of this should be very surprising.

NeoGAF was very important in promoting Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and other social justice warriors who caused Gamergate to happen and split the gaming community into permanent liberal and conservative camps.

Anita Sarkeesian, if you don’t remember, is currently sitting on Twitter’s Trust and Safety council as Feminist Frequency. She helps Twitter censor conservatives and ban dissent from the liberal group think from that social network.

NeoGAF was a critical factor in the injection of extremist, far-left politics into gaming and was noted for being a major Hillary supporting site:

By comparison, SimilarWeb data shows Hillary Clinton’s top five referrers include CNN, hillaryspeeches.com, the Drudge Report and the video gaming forum NeoGAF.

NeoGAF’s Management was Anything but Innocent

Behind the scenes, however, there was considerable corruption and rot. In June 2017, one of the moderators of the site was arrested for possession of child pornography:

A FORMER MODERATOR ON ONE OF THE INTERNET’S MOST PROMINENT GAMING FORUMS, NEOGAF, HAS BEEN ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF POSSESSING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY. THIRTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD CHRISTOPHER JOHN GOLDBERG, WHO WENT BY THE NAME “AMIR0X” ON SOCIAL MEDIA, WAS A MALE FEMINIST WHO OFTEN TOOK TO TWITTER TO EXPRESS HIS HATRED AT “SEXISTS” AND TRUMP SUPPORTERS, IN VOCAL SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN’S MARCH. HE WAS ACTIVE DURING THE GAMERGATE DEBACLE THAT TOOK THE GAMING WORLD BY STORM IN 2014, TAKING THE SIDE OF FEMINISTS. THE TOBYHANNA, PENN. MAN WAS CHARGED THIS WEDNESDAY WITH 64 COUNTS OF CHILD PORN POSSESSION AND ONE COUNT OF CRIMINALLY USING A COMPUTER TO DOWNLOAD THE ILLICIT MATERIALS. GOLDBERG TOLD POLICE THAT HE BELIEVED THE PICTURES WERE NOT ILLEGAL IF THEY DIDN’T DEPICT SEXUAL ACTS, BUT THE POLICE DIDN’T BUY HIS EXCUSE AND ISSUED THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM. ACCORDING TO THE POCONO RECORD, GOLDBERG TOLD INVESTIGATORS THAT HE “HAS MANY FETISHES” AND DOWNLOADED DIFFERENT TYPES OF PORN, INCLUDING THAT OF NUDE CHILDREN. THE MAN DID NOT CONTEST THE ALLEGATIONS, AND TOLD POLICE THAT THE MATERIALS WERE AN OUTLET FOR HIS URGES.

At the time, Malka claimed to be unfamiliar with Goldberg and even claimed not to know his real name, but it later emerged that the two were likely close friends, with Malka having donated $1,000 to a GoFundMe set up by Goldberg for himself in 2012.

Another moderator, who called himself Opiate, was outed as a likely pedophile in 2015 and Malka was forced to remove him from the site as well.

Finally, Malka himself was known to be a sexual harasser. In 2012, Malka gloated on the internet about grabbing a woman’s behind in Spain after buying her a drink. Of course, anyone who questioned Malka’s behavior on his forums was quickly banned by Malka or by his cronies on the moderation team.

NeoGAF was widely hated by Gamergate both for being a center of extreme left wing activism, but also because the entire moderation team who had imposed this hard-line feminist stance and boasted of protecting women were actually themselves obvious sexual deviants, assaulters, and pedophiles.

Unfortunately, it was very difficult for Gamergate to get this story heard outside their small corner of the gaming community, partly because most games journalists (who are also fanatic leftists) understood how valuable NeoGAF was to promote their preferred brand of extremist leftism.

It also was difficult in part because Tyler Malka had significant power to harm the careers of those in the gaming industry, given how much political muscle his forum had developed. No one wanted to be the next victim of an SJW Twitter hate mob.

One of my favorite game journalists, Bill Usher, has spent some time documenting the continued discovery of pedophiles, rapists, and mentally disturbed people in the SJW activist community:

Goldberg’s behavior as an anti-#GamerGate critic and labeling other people as “harassers”, fits a trend of other anti-#GamerGate individuals who have a history of sexual abuse… and even rape. This includes former Forbes contributor and male feminist Matt Hickey, who was arrested for multiple counts of rape; and Devin Faraci, former editor-in-chief at Birth.Movies.Death, who resigned amid a flurry of controversy surrounding multiple claims of sexual assault. Other anti-#GamerGate critics such as Sun Patel also lost book deals following claims of misconduct with peers; and anti-#GamerGate critic and Citizen Radio co-host, Jamie Kilstein, had to resign following claims of sexual misconduct. In a more high profile case, anti-#GamerGate journalist Juan Thompson was arrested by the FBI for cyberstalking, harassing and sending death threats to his ex-girlfriend. It’s become a troubling trend among the anti-#GamerGate journalists, critics, and pundits to have some sort of criminal or sexually deviant behavior exposed painting them as harassers, stalkers, pedophiles or rapists.

NeoGAF Shuts Down Suddenly… After One of Tyler Malka’s Victims Says He Sexually Assaulted Her

The end came for NeoGAF yesterday when one of Malka’s victims made a Facebook post saying that in New Orleans, he climbed in the shower when the victim was drunk and attempted to force himself on her, though apparently he did not go through with it when she protested.

She remained silent after this happened because of his influence on the internet and ready access to an army of crazies and trolls.

This changed when the news about Harvey Weinstein broke, and Malka’s victim joined the #MeToo hashtag trend.

When the news broke, most of NeoGAF’s moderators and administrators left the site. A twitter account documents the drama as it happened.

Malka initially said he would release a statement, but has so far failed to do so. Several journalists have tried to contact him since the incident was revealed, but he has not responded to any attempts at outreach.

The story has received increasing levels of media scrutiny and attention, with the largest outlet so far being RollingStone.

The increasing level of media scrutiny makes it likely that the social justice activist community will be forced to abandon NeoGAF and Malka.

At some point on Sunday morning, Tyler Malka shut down NeoGAF entirely. Attempting to access the site right now gives a “503 service unavailable” error.

4Chan has been going nuts with joy since the news broke, with thread after thread mocking and highlighting the angry and despairing GAF users. The gloating has been particularly intense on the /pol/ subforum.

Various images show bitter GAF users trying to blame Malka’s misbehavior on Gamergate just before the site went down

The typical response by NeoGAF mods when stories like broke in the past was to ban everyone talking about it until the story died, but they appear to have taken a markedly different stance this time around.

The #MeToo hashtag campaign and the media coverage of Harvey Weinstein has made it difficult for leftist rapists and pedophiles to cover up their usual behavior by a genuflection to the altars of Marxism and social justice.

Did Malka have other skeletons in his closet, or did the moderation team have their own skeletons they feared being exposed? We may never know.

This whole episode raises questions about the seeming overwhelming abundance of the mentally ill, criminals, pedophiles, and rapists in the social justice movement, especially as it pertains to Gamergate. I have long believed that many social justice warriors use social justice as a way to cover up for and excuse their own crimes.

Update (10/23): Kotaku in Action, which is the closest thing the web has to a main Gamergate hub, believes Malka may be planning to relaunch his site. I wish him the best of luck with most of the SJW userbase gone and the mod team gone.