1 /10

Warning: Spoilers

Big failures of this episode.



1) The girl sexually assaulted in the beginning seems to not care about what just happened to her.



One of the game developer's assistants is sexually assaulted at a game convention for the game K.O.B.S., kill or be slaughtered, (What?! Is this supposed to be the SVU version of COD...?) by two men (white men mind you) who don't want her there. When she is found by the Officer, she goes to drop some stupid one liner about how the gamers "Leveled up".



Are you kidding me? Terrible just terrible. She goes on to talk in gamer slang to the police which makes LITERALLY NO SENSE. She's just been sexually assaulted and shes casually addressing the police. How unaware are the writers? Wow.



2) The women in this episode are the only ones who make logical decisions ALL episode.



There's nothing wrong with this at face value, nothing at all. It's when you make other characters act irrational or stupid to do that is when it crosses the line. The gamers are all mindless killing machines according to this episode and the writers don't even attempt to separate the ISIS-like group of cyber terrorists from other gamers or even people who inhabit the internet. The "bad guys" really have no motivation other than the redneck logic of "we don't want none of yer' kind 'round these parts."



3) The equivalence of gamers to terrorists.



I'm sorry, but what? This plot was not too bad until we hit the second half of the episode. Where the writers decide to instead of focus on things that happen like online harassment and the advent of "Swating" (the act of false 911 calls to send a swat team to someone's house) to go straight to gamers hacking billboards and hijack cars, stealing guns, and raping this female game developer. This is unacceptable, especially since the villains are faceless and have NO motivation. Just disliking this women is not enough motivation, especially to go to the lengths that they do.



4) The Villain gamers aka gamer ISIS/Nazis



These writers. This is where they really just ruined any credibility.



For starters the guys who sexually assaulted the before mentioned assistant just walk up to her and just start harassing her, in the most unrealistic fashion. No one just walks up to a booth and starts talking crap to people. Especially knowing how conventions work, you have to pay. The writers really expect me, the informed viewer, to believe these guys paid money to mess with this woman? I'm sorry, you've stretched your suspension of disbelief. Especially when you use these characters as some form of metric to measure all gamers. I said it before as well, but the lengths they go to get this woman are just unrealistic. Making threating LITERALLY ISIS-LIKE VIDEOS throughout the episode, organizing a troll event at the launch (again making it seem like 20 WHITE dudes would pay money to harass this woman), hacking a power grid (wut?), having an inside man (The security guard who is dumb as bricks, yet somehow knows the license plate, they don't have him say the numbers but its implied and he couldn't see through these guys plan? COME ON), Hacking a billboard to live stream to it, beating this woman, tipping off the cops only to run away, Live streaming them RAPING HER (OH COME THE F*** ON), trying to trick the cops then, having some random shoot out with them on the roof. All for them to get this woman to not make games? Yeah, no. This is so unrealistic to how gamers, internet users or even haters would act. I could on for days about how stupid this is, but lets move on.



5) The Female Developer



She was the best character this whole episode and that's NOT at all a bad thing. I actually rooted for her character to do well, but they just crap all over her for trying to be brave. As if saying that she should have just backed down and influencing the popular notion of victimization that is all over our culture now-a-days. I don't understand how she was the only one who knew how to realistically deal with internet trolls yet is the most punished.



6) SVU writers have no idea how the internet works



Title says it all, they have no idea how online interaction work. Reddchanit aka reddit and 4chans unnatural love child is the website all the threats and harassment comes from. If I held any position of power are reddit especially I would be very upset by this depiction. I've been on countless subreddits and not only is harassment against the entire sites rules but moderators of subreddits do a lot of work to remove those who would harass from their site. Just a disgusting view of how people who use the internet act.



7) The fact that the bad guys in this episode are all White guys



Stereotyping at its finest by the SVU crew. I'm pretty ashamed of this choice, I've watched a lot of episodes of this series and they usually do a great job turning people's real world expectations on their head. "We found this black kid at the scene of the robbery, but it turns out he was innocent and the white kid was the thief" Which I love, I love the episodes where they turn people social expectations their heads, this episode wasn't one of them.



The fact that the gamers in this episode are all conveniently white males. Come on... not even a little diversity? Do I even need to go into this.



All in all, an awful episode that probably would make Jack Thompson himself laugh. If I could give it a zero I would.