Written by Decado on http://www.rpgcodex.net forums

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GamerGate is, at its heart, a question of sincerity. Are game journalists sincere in their attempt to inform? Are social justice warriors sincere in their efforts to reform? Are game developers sincere in their efforts to be more inclusive? And perhaps most important: are gamers sincere, at all, or have the dual barrels of Twitter and Chan blasted all possible sincerity from the floundering corpse of gaming in general?

Sincerity is important. Without it, nobody believes you. If you don't at least appear to be sincere, every word you utter or type is automatically dismissed under a variety of waved-hands: you're a troll, you're a con-artist, you're a misogynist, you're a shill, you're an ideologue, etcetera. At the bottom of it all, these are insults meant to indict you for a lack of sincerity. This is important, because a perceived lack of sincerity is one of the only ways to dismiss someone's views without honestly engaging them . . . unless of course you are a hypocritical shithead. And we'll get to that.

GamerGate is the result of that insincerity, whether real or imagined. It doesn't really matter if a person is sincere or not. No, what matters is how they are perceived. And nothing has been more detrimental to this exercise than the use of social media. I mentioned Twitter above, and it is a great example. If GamerGate is the combined constipation of 30 years of enraged nerdism, Twitter is the laxative that has everyone spraying shit everywhere. And to continue the analogy, while you're in the bathroom spraying shit all over the walls, the real video game industry is in the parlor, sitting by the fire, sipping brandy, and counting its huge piles of money. They aren't even going to bother cleaning the bathroom when you leave. They don't use that one anyway and if they really need to, they can simply build another.

****

GamerGate ostensibly started when this guy wrote a huge, boring blogpost (http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/)about his girlfriend cheating on him. This is a completely unremarkable occurrence. People get cheated on all the time, and they find their various outlets for revenge. There is some natural recoil among normal people when a man "outs" a woman in this way, for a lot of reasons: dudes are just supposed to deal with it, and anyway it is the man's fault she cheated because he wasn't taking care of business. It is the male's secret shame, a lesson learned and seared into your skin with a blistering hot branding iron: CHUMP. She fucking cheated on you, bro. You're a goddamn loser.

Of course, we all know that if the situation were reversed, if a woman wrote a plaintive screed about how a male developer cheated on her with five other women, we'd be witnessing something altogether different. There would be much pearl clutching and YOU GO GIRL!s as she proceeded to rip his life apart, and there'd be a facebook page, and a patreon account, and maybe the NFL would mandate all their players wear some new colored gloves for the next three weeks. This, too, is an unremarkable occurrence. Culturally, we tend to hold women in higher regard than men, a documented psychological occurrence called the WAW effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%9CWomen_are_wonderful%E2%80%9D_effect). That’s fine, and the way of things, and it is probably better for our species overall. But it is something we should consider in a case like GamerGate, a case that is so charged with accusations of sexism and misogyny and all of those other Bad Things.

In this case, though, the sole extent of Gjoni's “misogyny” was saying “Hey this girl cheated on me with a bunch of people who work in the game industry. She is manipulative and nasty. Watch out!” Nerds, who prior to this could likely not give a single shit about this poor guy and his relationship woes, were immediately up in arms over the slightest whiff of corruption. It turns out, Gjoni alleged that Quinn had banged several dudes who, whether before or after said banging, were in a position to influence the popularity of her game.

****

A game that, to be honest, is pretty goddamn terrible. God help me and everyone else reading as I tread lightly around this topic, because it is entirely too easy to get sucked into shitty, worthless arguments over What Makes a Game. I will merely state my opinion, and operate from here: Depression Quest is not a game, it is interactive fiction. The technical and artistic ability required to create it -- or something like it -- could be reproduced by any 13 year old with a laptop. I made more complex games in BASIC when I was 9, and I am hardly the world’s most computer savvy individual. As a piece of writing it is dull, angsty, earnest, and plodding. It is simply a bad job. Bad.

This fact was not lost on the multitude of reviewers who chimed in about the game; go read the Steam reviews or Metacritic. I have not seen such a universal panning of a game since the Mass Effect 3 fiasco, and that was a triple A studio. If Zoe Quinn is famous for anything, it is for making shitty games. She’s also great at drumming up publicity. This whole brouhaha has sprouted for her a score of interviews, including a pabulum-hurling schlock fest in the Goddamn New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/zoe-quinns-depression-quest). Like Mugatuu, I feel like I’m on crazy pills.

But the shittiness of the game has been given a pass by more enlightened game critics because of the subject matter it tackles: okay, sure, maybe not the best game, but it is taking on a difficult subject and so it Deserves Our Support. Support is an overriding theme here, as if her suffering with depression means that her work -- whether a game or not, whether artistic or not -- deserves to be elevated above the work of millions of other hungry game developers, both male and female, who want to get their games reviewed, or greenlit, or crowdfunded, but who refrain from cheap appeals to emotion and sentiment. You could probably go on Steam Greenlight right now, pick a fucking game at random, and you'd almost certainly get one that was better than Depression Quest.

I'm not picking on ZQ’s developer abilities. Maybe she’s a great developer and these are just growing pains. But the problem is, we can’t tell. Not only because the game "journalism" industry is filled with people who don't know how to disclose their financial ties, but because the gaming press has seemingly lost its goddamn collective mind. Go to Metacritic and look at the number of official reviews for Depression Quest. Then look at the number of user reviews. It appears that our cadre of professional critics are gracious enough to admit the game isn't that great . . . but they won’t say it officially. I have never seen a game so universally panned by users, yet manage to tally only one single goddamn review from an official outlet. Why do you think that is?

I’ll tell you why: She Needs Our Support. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Unless you are talking about gamers, because they all have neckbeards.

This guy pretty much nails Zoe Quinn (http://theflounce.com/harassment-abuse-apologism-sanitizing-abuse-social-justice-spheres/). Anyone who reads the chat logs between her and her boyfriend should -- if they have a modicum of intellectual honesty -- immediately recognize an abusive, manipulative psycho. If that’s not enough, her documented claims of telling fantastic lies ala stabbing a man in the face tell us all we need to know about her character. Anyone that has known a person with BPD or manic depression understands just how manipulative, just how sneaky and dishonest and downright nasty, these people can be. Zoe Quinn isn't the only person who grew up depressed, or who grew up with mentally ill family members. When I read those chat logs, the familiarity of her behavior sent a fucking chill up my spine. And the New Yorker went and did fucking puff piece on her. Unreal.

Did they read the chat logs? Did they not wonder for at least one nanosecond if it was a good idea to paint a sympathetic view of a woman who makes the utterly ludicrous statement that cheating on a partner is rape, and then goes and cheats on her partner? What fucking world am I living in, when such a crazy person is allowed to smugfart such condescending blather as we read in that piece:

“They’re clearly hurting,” Quinn wrote in an e-mail. “People don’t viciously attack anyone without having some deep-seeded loathing in themselves.”

They must have, indeed, you poor thing. They must have.

Should Zoe Quinn get death threats? Of course not. Nobody should. But she is a liar, a manipulator, a cheat, and a hypocrite. I don’t believe in karma, but goddamn. It should at least make you think.

So started GamerGate.

****

Gjoni’s revelations re: ZQ’s shitty personality prompted some internet losers to be nasty towards her on Twitter. This, it seems, is the impetus behind labeling GamerGate a “misogynist” movement, though recently even the hardcore idiots have backed-off (mostly thanks to #notyourshield) and have instead started saying that GG has misogynist origins. To be sure, the comments that Quinn received were certainly misogynist. But the problem here, and the problem in the larger contexts of both GamerGate and internet identity politics in general, is one of association. Twitter is the type of medium that lets any worthless idiot type whatever worthless shit he wants. It is the easiest thing in the world for any person to leave a hateful, misogynist comment and then append #GamerGate. It proves nothing, any more than me writing “Sieg Heil #GamerGate” makes the movement a Nazi tent revival. Do you get it?

Because this is what happens when you are dealing with a communication medium that has no gatekeepers. This is the kind of open publishing, the one free of oppressive patriarchal restrictions that "unfairly" enthroned things like education and experience as markers of quality, that you assholes have been asking for. This is news and reporting without anyone at the helm. Think about that the next time you're feeling optimistic about the state of New Media.

All of this is occurring in an atmosphere of burner and parody accounts, IP blocking, false flag operations, massive thread deletions, and a million other things that destroy our ability to authenticate anything. This is Twitter, and social media in general. Everything is free, so there is no intellectual investment. Believe whatever the fuck you want, and if you don't like someone, block their feed or shadowban them. They are probably misogynist virgins anyways.

Mailing lists -- wherein games “journalists” vowed to not cover any of the recent unpleasantness because “misogyny” -- put paid to the idea that there was any meaningful separation between The Church of Reporting and the Video Game PR State, even in the supposedly unspoiled land of indie game development. But these misogynist neckbeards who don’t care about corruption -- sincerity, remember -- seemed awfully competent at eliciting real change from several video game publications. And indeed some of the very publications, who wrote these GamerGate neckbeards off as misogynists that weren't really concerned about corruption and collusion in the gaming press, seemed to pick awfully convenient times to change their reporting and disclosure policies. The mind balks at such coincidence.

This could have been the end of things. But then we learned that gamers were dead.

***

One of the most interesting things about the anti-GamerGate crowd is how little they actually contribute to the industry. Zoe Quinn makes one shitty “game,” and some thing where you stare at Jeff Goldblum (it’s ironic, trust me, you don’t get it!). Phil Fish made one decent game, but then he realized he would have to create more so he faked a temper tantrum, quit making games, and blamed it all on the toxic atmosphere. Brianna Wu made a mobile game at the cost of $12,000 dollars, and it took four years. Interestingly, she made a point of using female playtesters and having an all female design team, but for some reason all of the character models could give Dragon’s Crown a run for its money. I’m sure someone will come along and tell us how empowering this is.

These are the developers at the heart of the of all this wailing and carrying on, these threats and vulgarities and whatnot. One is forced to wonder why no notable, major league developers have received any death threats. I have a theory, want to hear it? BECAUSE THEY ARE BUSY MAKING GAMES, NOT PLAYING GRABASS ON THE INTERNET.

The folks at Gawker coined a great word: writering. Tom Cococa says this term is used “to describe the tribe of writers whose principal writerly concern is being writerly, and who spend all their time congratulating one another on their writing and promulgating correct rules for writing.” There is a very similar phenomenon in gaming, which for lack of originality I will just call “developering.” And you see it in all of this worthless social media-izing of the game industry. There is a crowd of “developers” and “critics” and “writers” who don’t want to talk about games anymore. They want to tell you what’s problematic with XYZ, how this or that reinforces gender stereotypes, how someone was mean to them when they were 12 so they’ve been fighting the videogame patriarchy ever since. They couldn’t give a flying fuck about game mechanics, or narrative quality, or difficulty levels. Game development comes in a distant second to pontificating on Twitter, as if what they wanted all along was to be able to say they were a DEVELOPER and then, finally, they could start talking about what really matters. Fuck the actual games, let’s talk identity politics and be snarky in comment sections and maybe -- praise Gaia! -- end up on HuffPo. Fuck producing anything of value, let’s argue and do our best to be outraged. These assholes want nothing more than the post-modernization of video game discourse, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Anita Sarkeesian’s videos.

I actually agree with, oh, 60% of what Ms. Sarkeesian has to say in her videos. No, seriously, I do! There is a dearth of writing talent in the game industry, mostly because major studios still believe Godfather Carmack’s quote about stories and porn. Most developers really do think game stories are irrelevant; at least, one is inclined to think this way given any cursory glance at most AAA stories. There are a shitload of tropes, and they are lazy, and a lot of them are sexist (though I do not think this kind of sexism is anything worse than barely harmful, in the grand scheme of things). Sarkeesian is taking on a severely under-appreciated task, and like Quinn, I find the death and rape threats against her to be deplorable, immature, and counterproductive.

But that other 40% is a fucking whopper of a problem. I’m not going to deconstruct her videos, except to point out that she often engages in cherry picked, or in some cases drastically misleading, commentary. She has also refused to substantially answer any of the criticisms leveled at her work, except to dismiss it all as misogyny. She repeatedly makes smarmy claims like “These boys think someone is coming to take their games away,” eyeroll, but then makes Tweets about reviewers failing to penalize a game like Bayonetta 2 because it doesn't sufficiently stifle the male gaze, or some other silly shit. Let he who has eyes, see: this is two-faced assholery. You’re not trying to take anyone’s games away, but you will attempt to excoriate anyone who plays them, or anyone who fails to review them outside of your sociological model? Well that’s alright, then.

We come back to sincerity. One of the reasons people don’t like Anita is because they doubt her honesty. In one video she claims that she has been gaming since she was a kid. In another video she says she doesn’t play games. Which is it? Zoe Quinn says cheating is rape, and then cheats. Which is it? Brianna Wu is a developer that has deplored the depiction of female bodies in gaming, then makes a game with big-titted Barbie Dolls. Which is it? Phil Fish whines about the nastiness in gamer culture, then goes on Twitter rants where he shits on everyone. Which is it? Leigh Alexander decries the current culture of nastiness in the gaming media, and then goes on to bully both men and women on Twitter, threatening to end their careers? Which is it? Jim Sterling claims to have received thousands of threats via social media, but a 10 second search reveals that he got exactly none. Which is it?

Why is it so hard to get the straight dope from these people?

Why is everyone so full of shit?

***

Leigh Alexander is probably the best example of someone who adds nothing to the medium of video gaming. Check out some of these tweets:

"it’s funny how dudes who are ‘aspiring games journalists’ tweet bullshit at me as if I cannot instantly kill all their dreams"

"maybe mean of me to burn a young female writer but, sorry, this is not gonna be a career for her"

This is a woman who writes for Time? This is the person who gets a phone call and a request to explain GamerGate to the masses? Are you fucking kidding?

****

Alexander’s “Gamers Are Dead” nonsense dragged GamerGate into the limelight, or at least the limelight that exists in the shady boundaries between gaming websites, PR, and the pocketbooks of the gaming industry. Her article -- along with several others -- made the basic argument that the existence of the traditional gamer (read: Cheeto-stained virgins hanging out in mom’s basement) was over, that game developers didn’t have to pander to this audience anymore. Aside from the insulting, condescending and patronizing tone of all of this garbage, it had the unique characteristic of being entirely untrue.

Phil Fish’s platformer sold 1 million copies in a year. For comparison, Original Sin sold half that number in two months. And for even better comparison, consider that the entire Call of Duty Franchise -- perhaps the single game series that is most associated with bros and EXTREME gaming -- has sold over 136.6 MILLION units.

Think about that for a second. 136.6 million units over the course of a decade, and gamers are dead? Go ahead, explain that. I’ll wait.

***

If there is one thing that unites all of these annoying hipsters it is their unwarranted certainty. None of them appear to have considered that they might be on the wrong side of things, but beyond that they appear unable or unwilling to engage basic facts, the most immutable being this: a few assholes tweeting threats to you does not invalidate the whole movement. And you might not even be able to call GamerGate a “movement” per se, since anyone can join, and subsequently say whatever the hell they want. If anything has been shown dead in this whole fiasco, it is the concept of solidified movements existing online. Which is probably for the best, since that means people will have to get off their fat asses.

The other interesting thing to come out of all this nonsense is the increased public scrutiny on the way some of these people choose to argue. I’ll just use Sarkessian as an example here, because really she makes the best one. Her arguments are the epitome of the post-modern critique of media, which might explain why some of them are so terrible. Here’s what I mean.

Regardless of how you personally feel about the post-modern approach to discourse, one of the worst effects it has had on science and philosophy is that it successfully confused the Critical and Quantitative/Qualitative theories, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Sarkeesian’s videos. She does not appear to respect -- or even understand -- the boundaries between these two approaches. This is why she can explain why a trope is offensive to her (Critical theory) and then go on to say it perpetuates sexism in the culture (Quantitative/Qualitative theory). Whether she likes it or not, the first one is her opinion, while the second one is a testable claim about facts in the universe that we can measure. You do not get make this claim unless you have the facts at your disposal -- which she does not.

Her videos are filled with this shit. Everytime she correctly identifies a trope (which, as I said earlier, I have about a 60% chance of agreeing with, so I know she’s not half-cocked) it seems she is unable to keep herself from going that one step further and making a claim about causality, a claim that she is eminently unqualified to make because she does not have any data. She has nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

What Anita Sarkeesian has successfully done is borrow the credibility of Qualitative Analysis and used it to shield her Critical Analysis from criticism. And the hell of it is, so many of her readers are too dumb to understand that she is doing this, because most of them probably don’t know what Critical Theory is, and why you can’t make claims about the state of the universe with it. This is why, in fields like Communication or Political Science, Critical theories are always lambasted way more than Quantitative or Qualitative ones. Anyone who has been to grad school in the social science disciplines can tell you which theses get more respect: it is always the latter two, because they require the actual gathering of data, as opposed to a Critical thesis, in which you can basically just make shit up provided you use terms like “problematic” and “dialectical.” If you don’t believe me, read Alan Sokal’s hilarious hoax, or the all-too-real and hilariously awful Bad Writing Contest from yesteryear (http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm).

These are symptoms of a larger problem, really, and Anita Sarkeesian isn't even the worst offender. Take a look at some tweets from this idiot John McIntosh:

"You know something has gone terribly wrong when acts of violence are framed as 'badass' rather than to elicit feelings of disgust or sadness."

"Brutal violence has been normalized, glamorized and celebrated in gaming for so long that to even question it now is considered blasphemy."

"Scientific consensus is that playing violent video games increases aggression and aggressive behaviors. Amazing that so many are still in denial."

Let’s just look at the last one, and consider how wrong this moron is. Links between video game violence and aggression are so far from being solidified -- or even agreed upon -- it is almost impossible for me to overstate it. Read anything by Christopher Ferguson to see how badly the science around this issue has been abused, or better yet, any of the recent takedowns (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-j-ferguson/manufacturing-a-false-con_b_5956510.html) of Brad Bushman’s hilariously inept, possibly dishonest, attempts to paint the picture that a consensus exists.

What’s great about this idiot and his idiotic tweets is that he so clearly doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about, but so many people are nodding their heads in agreement anyway. Media effects as a theory has been a contentious, hot-button issue since the Payne Fund Studies. Every decade or two, we see exactly this type of upheaval, and the field is full of scientists acting as activists who end up embarrassing themselves. Look up Wertham to see how well this has historically worked out.

All of this -- the lack of awareness, the emotional histrionics, the confusion of critical and quantitative theories, the attempts at bullying, the double-speak, the bullshittery -- are at their core silent concessions by these people that they don’t know what the fuck they are doing. To call them out of their depth is to insult depth.

***

The pro-GamerGate side has also occasionally failed to comport itself as collection of reasonable individuals -- or at least, people who associate themselves with it have. We could sit here and go back and forth about who doxxed who, who threatened who, etc, and we’d likely come up even. Milo was mailed a fucking syringe. Jay3D Fox took her videos down because she was reportedly threatened by a Sarkeesian fan. Other pro-GG folks have received death and rape threats, or been doxxed, or otherwise fucked with.

The only difference between these two groups is that the pro-GG side has generally refrained from making a goddamn production out of it. Anita and Brianna were quick to take to Twitter and let everyone know they were safe (!) and gosh this kind of stuff just has to stop. Of course it has to stop, but look at the language being employed by these people, and the mainstream media trying to report on this: they are invariably “forced to flee!” their homes, as if a horde of on-fire zombies was smashing down their door frames. Zoey Quinn is now living a nomadic, couch-surfing existence. But wait, wasn’t she doing that already? Oh. It is all so rushed and panicked and filled with urgent language, but never panicked or urgent enough to forego a quick social media update to let everyone know everything is fine! Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali what it is like to fear for your life, to really fucking fear for it, and see if she was keeping her waiting public informed with helpful twitter updates, and oh by the way here is my Patreon account!

These threats are nasty, and uncalled for, and anyone making them should be arrested. But do let us not pretend that certain people haven’t taken this ball and fucking run with it, in order to garner the maximum amount of sympathy (read: cash). Add to this the proclivities of a known liar like Quinn, and it is supremely reasonable to wonder if these threats are even real. Once again, we just don’t know. And you’ve already been caught lying. So why should we believe you?

****

Most of the people involved in GamerGate are, I would guess, normal people who believe in the egalitarian ideal. They would certainly not condone death threats or abuse, but at the same time, this kind of behavior extends far beyond the world of video gaming and its hordes of willing internet losers. There is a problem with abuse and death threats in general, online. Gaming is not unique in this regard, and if you don’t believe me, go to a Washington Redskins forum and tell them their team name is racist. They’ll fucking cut you.

The difference is that the gaming subculture seems to be represented (unfairly, I would add) by wilting violets who, though they paint themselves as tech savvy hardcore gamers, act genuinely shocked when someone is mean to them in 140 characters or less. Whoopty fucking doo, guys, welcome to the fucking internet. Are you still connecting with America Online?

Of course, only a fool would believe that this shock is genuine, or at least genuine for long. How can a person like Leigh Alexander claim to be totally upset at online abuse, and then go on to make tweets where she threatens to ruin someone’s life? Or write a piece where she denigrates a few million people? I have a feeling that, a year from now, everyone is going to look back on this mess and wonder what they hell they were thinking in giving these lunatics a platform from which to speak.

I started this screed on the concept of sincerity, and I will end on the same note. I believe that Sarkeesian et al are sincere in their desire for social justice. To a point. I also believe that GamerGate is sincere in its desire for journalistic integrity. To a point. I also think both groups have exploited other, less savory aims under cover of a righteous fight, and those aims are as varied as they are personally uninteresting to this author. I find the treatment of women in the game industry to leave much to be desired, but I also find the antics of Alexander, Quinn, Fish, and Sterling to be so ridiculous and scummy that I cannot side with them. Fuck, I can’t even believe their versions of events.

What I can say is that from where I am sitting, they appear to be manipulative assholes; perhaps for different personal reasons, but manipulative all the same. They don’t strike me as sincere individuals. For example, I don’t believe Sarkeesian when she says she doesn't want to take anyone’s games away. I believe that, if she had it within her power, she’d censor the media she doesn't like. This article (http://gamesided.com/2014/09/08/sarkeesian-truth-part-1-straw-feminist-trojan-horse-censorship/3/) does a great job of describing her motives, but let me go right to the transcript (http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/05/damsel-in-distress-part-2-tropes-vs-women/):

"Given the reality of that larger cultural context, it should go without saying that it’s dangerously irresponsible to be creating games in which players are encouraged and even required to perform violence against women in order to 'save them'."

Whenever someone says something “goes without saying,” and then goes to say it? Assume it didn't go without saying.

Read the whole thing, if you haven’t already, and you will no doubt pick up on all the cues. She never outright calls for censorship, because she knows that wouldn't fly. That’s one step too far for most of her viewers. But social pressure? Shaming people into thinking they are creating a hostile environment, or a dangerous one? Fuck yeah. Perfectly allowed. She creates an imaginary problematic narrative -- that someone would actually be influenced by this idea that you need to hurt women to save them -- and then indicts the game for providing it. It is absurd, and the only possible reason for it to exist (besides genuine stupidity) is to help push an agenda. She displays the same lack of scientific thought as MacIntosh, and the end result of this line of “reasoning” is censorship, whether she realizes it or not.

Ultimately that’s what his whole GamerGate brouhaha is about -- what games will be made, and who will make them? Recent statistics show us that the gaming public is evenly split between men and women, but most people understand that the inclusion of mobile gaming into these numbers heavily skews the results. Nobody seriously believes that half of all CoD players are female. But at the same time, violent action games do have a substantial number of female fans and players, which if anything signifies the major game developers are at least getting something right.

***

The dumbest thing these people have done is alienate other believers in equality. They have created battle lines where none existed before, and they have monopolized both the idea and the practice of social justice. It is impossible, according to these crazy assholes, to care about real egalitarianism, but also support GamerGate. Rebellion against this paternalistic horseshit is the main drive behind the #notyourshield campaign, as many minority gamers finally got tired of being co-opted for this ridiculous campaign; one can only hope that minority gamers don’t stop here.

I am a progressive liberal, at least in the American sense. I believe in many leftist ideals, from the critical examination of gender roles, to the concepts of income equality, to the idea that government can be a helpful force for good in people’s lives. I believe in equality, but I believe in real equality, and for some reason, I don’t think Alexander et al understand what that means. Their behavior indicates they do not, and I shudder to think of what their version of utopia looks like. Do they want to live in a hermetically sealed bag, where personal offence is the greatest crime, and the freedom of expression (and here I speak of the freedom to make games, not the freedom to threaten) is enslaved to the whim of others' feelings? I would help aliens burn the earth to cinders before I’d see such a thing come to pass.

In a very real sense, I don’t understand Anita Sarkeesian when she talks about a video game and the Male Gaze. It makes no sense to me, not because I am stupid -- I've likely read the same gender theory materials that she has -- but because I cannot fathom the contents of her worldview. I cannot picture a human brain that operates on such vapid whininess. I cannot picture how a human brain is so threatened by male sexuality that big boobies in a video game makes her angry. It is like watching someone fill a car with water instead of gasoline, and then watching it accelerate anyway. It is fucking confounding to me, how these delicate flowers live in the big bad world and are not (yet) crushed by it.

GameGate is about a lot of things, really, but it has all come to a head because nobody believes anyone else. I’m guilty of that, too, but in my defense the other side has pathological liars. I suppose it doesn't matter anyway, and in my experience I can tell you that the publishers are listening. And they’re not listening to Anita, because Anita doesn't buy their games. Neither does Alexander, or Quinn, or Fish, or any of those other annoying hipsters who want to make ironic 8 bit pixelated text adventures with MIDI music in RGB because, like, man, it’s deconstructing the essence of the game, man, into, like, its discrete parts. Nobody but the tiny cloister of indy/hipster designers/”journalists” who “make games” from their local cupcake/coffee/artisan couscous shop while subsisting on Patreon dollars and Arcade Fire tracks from their Sony Walkmans gives these games anything more than a passing glance. I’m glad they exist, because I like variety. And I appreciate the competition with the big game studios because it never hurts for them to stay on their toes. But honest to god, if these people think they are changing gaming, they are fucking deluding themselves.

As I finish this, Anita Sarkeesian has just canceled a speech at Utah because of a threatened school shooting. I won't say that I don't believe it -- yet -- but according to one outlet, the email threat contained a reference to the Montreal Massacre. Now as an American, I'm pretty well-versed in mass shootings. I can likely name all of the big ones. But some reason, I've never heard of the Montreal Massacre . . .

"The 'Montreal Massacre' mentioned in the email refers to the crimes of Marc Lépine, who killed 14 women, injured 10 and also killed four men in order to 'fight feminism' in 1989 before committing suicide."

Wow. A deranged shooter just happens to know about some feminist-hating asshole's massacre from 25 fucking years ago, when literally there are a dozen other more recent school shootings that he could have mentioned to elicit the feelings he wanted? Why do I feel like this is exactly the kind of thing a fake threat, perhaps made by someone on "the other side," would make? I'm sure Anita or her compatriots know all about the Montreal Massacre, because they've studied it ad naseum, given the subject (violence against feminism.) But why the hell am I reading about it? In America?

You see what I mean? I sincerely wish I didn't feel this way. I feel genuinely terrible that I cannot believe this woman lock, stock, and barrel. But there is a knot in my stomach, some vague kind of warning in the back of my head, and I can't put my finger on it. Everyone is lying all the goddamn time, about everything. I don't trust anyone's motives, and misogyny has nothing to do with it. I simply don't believe these peoples' motives. I don't. And I can't act like I do.