Five days after a troubled young woman, Bianca Devins, was brutally murdered by one of her “boyfriends” Vice reporter Tess Owens tried to connect the tragedy to GamerGate by way of the term E-Girl. Journalist Ian Miles Cheong was quick to point out on Twitter that the term E-Girl had not originated from the GamerGate movement.

The incel community predates GamerGate by several years and have their roots in a violent reaction to the Pick Up Artist (PUA) movement in the mid to late-2000s via the forums PUAHate and Sluthate. Elliot Rodger (May 2014, GamerGate was August 2014) became a posterboy for incels. pic.twitter.com/gHRRrsZY2e — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 19, 2019

Ian, having been against GamerGate during its inception only to later become pro GamerGate, informed Owens that the term actually came from the Call of Duty community. Tess, being a typical SJW cunt nugget, admitted to being wrong but wanting to connect the death to GamerGate anyways because it was better known than Call of Duty. This is funny not only because Call of Duty is one of the biggest mainstream video game franchises but because Vice ran an article in 2015 about Call of Duty and used the term E-Girl. That said, I applaud Ian for pointing out that E-Girl did not spawn from GamerGate I have to inform him and you all that the term E-Girl was being tossed around in the early nineteen-nineties.

I am ancient by internet standards but I still remember the rules from the before times. One of the most important rules of the internet was, and should still be, “There are no girls on the internet”. That is to say, most women on the internet in male spaces are likely to be men pretending to be women for attention, leniency, or free game items, which even managed to make it into an entry on Urban Dictionary. It is this phenomenon of men pretending to be women that the term E-Girl actually originates, as recounted on Definithing and KnowYourMeme.

Much like email is electronic, not “real”, mail so to E-Girls were electronic, not real, girls. Eventually actual women started to show up on the internet and the usage of E-Girl was dramatically reduced in favor of more colorful language. Recently the term has been co-opted by emo lite teens who are looking for attention on Instagram, as detailed on sites like StayHipp. Simultaneously the term is also used in the Call of Duty community as Ian pointed out.

This whole incident highlights the two big problems with modern journalism. Tess Owens is your typical activist pretending to be a journalist. She writes not to inform the public, thus allowing them to form their own opinions based on the facts presented, but rather she tries tries to shape opinions with her writing. People like her thrive on hate clicks and victim status. Ian Miles Cheong meanwhile is a reactionary writer who is quick to publicly call out the mistakes of others while barely having the slightest idea what the truth might be. Like Owens, Cheong also tries to shape the opinions of the public with his writing. People like Ian also thrive on hate clicks and victim status, although the victimhood they claim is of a person “just telling the truth”. I will be overjoyed when both of these types of “journalist” have left my profession and we can finally have a well informed public.