Chris Kluwe on Gamergate:
Dear #Gamergaters,
Do you know why you piss me the fuck off?
Because you’re lazy. You’re ignorant. You are a blithering collection of wannabe Wikipedia philosophers, drunk on your own buzzwords, incapable of forming an original thought. You display a lack of knowledge stunning in its scope, a fundamental disregard of history and human nature so pronounced that makes me wonder if lead paint is a key component of your diet. You think you’re making piercing arguments when, in actuality, you’re throwing a temper tantrum that would embarrass a three-year-old.
Read the whole thing. It’s a truly righteous rant. The man has a gift for invective. One more brief sample:
There’s this herd of people, mainly angsty teenage caucasian men (based on an informal survey of 99 percent of the people who feel the need to defend this nonsense to me on Twitter), who feel that somehow, their identity as “gamers” is being taken away. Like they’re all little Anne Franks, hiding in their basements from the PC Nazis and Social Justice Warrior brigades, desperately protecting the last shreds of “core gaming” in their unironically horrible Liveblog journals filled with patently obvious white privilege and poorly disguised misogyny. “First they came for our Halo 2’s, and I said nothing.”
I liked his use of the term “slackjawed pickletits” too.
You may consider this an open thread.
(PS: I know I’ve been even more conspicuous by my absence lately than my usual absent self. This is kind of a peace offering. I promise something at least a little bit more substantive (and hopefully not about Ebola) in the near future.)
Image Pieter Quast Jansz, Cellar Interior, 1636.
Gene108
Happy Diwali for those celebrating
Gin & Tonic
That linky has something wrong with it.
Do they still make chocolate cigarettes?
JR in WV
NO, no, Tom! We need more EBOLA!!… More Ebola, more brainz… wait, what?
Never mind.
Gamergait is almost as stupid as the Ebola fever. A warning poster to not drink Clorine Bleach? Really? Darwin may be ready to pounce on the most afflicted with Ebola Fear Fever.
Tom Levenson
@Gin & Tonic: Works for me (in Safari). How’s it borking for you?
scav
I’m getting Diwalier and Diwalier as the day goes by. Lakshmi, Ganesh, who else can I invite!?!
Mike in NC
@Gin & Tonic: When I was a kid you could buy two types of candy cigarettes: chocolate ones that came wrapped in paper/foil, and sugar ones that looked like miniature pieces of blackboard chalk.
scav
@Mike in NC: I was in the bubblegum zone mostly, but do remember the chalk sticks vaguely. Who was so lucky as to bag chocolate ones?
The fat pretzels as cigars was pure fantasy. I probably hadn’t even seen a non B&W celluloid cigar at the time.
JR in WV
@JR in WV:
Wow, Chris really did the GamerGate boyz properly. That’s pretty well done – putting them in their properly small and remote place, from which they can’t attempt to oppress real people any more.
Well done!
ETA correct speling.
kc
Meh.
woodyNYC
Heartily sick of the gamergate nonsense, but I want to thank you for your mention of The Machine in the Garden a while back.Finally got a copy, it’s a great read.
slag
Love it! Kluwe is certainly giving Cole a run for his money.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Those chalky-looking ones had red tips. Burn!
eldorado
i think pierce or the rude pundit would be quite proud of that little rant. bravo.
SiubhanDuinne
@scav:
I don’t remember chocolate cigarettes, just the chalky sugar ones. Every Christmas morning our stockings always included a lavish supply of candy cigarettes and chocolate coins in gold and silver foil wrappings. The little kids also got comic books. I got crossword puzzle magazines.
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: I’m in Chrome under Windows, and it gives me acres and acres of whitespace, some text, a grossly mis-sized photo with text overlaid – like it’s missing a style sheet or something. The last piece of the URL you give looks like: why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6
NonyNony
@JR in WV:
They’ll call him a bully and ignore him. In fact they’ll use the fact that he was a football player as evidence that he’s just like the guys that picked on them in high school and therefore his speaking out against them is evidence that everything they say is right and bullies are trying to shut them up.
Their worldview is 180 degrees turned around from reality. Their attempts to silence critics via death threats and rape threats isn’t bullying – it’s a noble reaction to bullying. Criticism against them of any kind, on the other hand, is bullying to the extreme and needs to be stomped down. Probably by using death threats to shut people up.
They’re just horrible people with a vile worldview. I’m not sure you can say anything to them that will get them to self-reflect or that it would do much good if you could.
Howlin Wolfe
I haven’t followed gamergate at all, but I thoroughly enjoyed Kluwe’s rant. He really comes up with great epithets for the antisocial gamers. The fact that he is standing up for not only women, but everybody who isn’t a moronic conspiracy monger is doubly good.
Gin & Tonic
Oh, hey, it renders correctly in IE. Who’d a thunk?
NonyNony
@Gin & Tonic:
In Firefox it looks fine with that same URL. Even with noscript running and all of the scripts on the page turned off it rendered the page just fine.
Tree With Water
I’m so far removed from the gamer world that I could be living on the moon. I do remember playing pong in a pizza place I use to frequent, but that was it.
Hungry Joe
Those chalky-white candy cigs would slowly melt on your lips, so you had to keep chewing up on them. They’d last about as long as a real cigarette.
Kluwe’s rant was righteous, though I suspect that a lot of it went over my head: My gaming arc began with Pong, peaked at Ms. Pac-Man, and petered out after a few quarters squandered on Missile Command.
Belafon
@NonyNony: There are lots of people that you can’t change. All you can do is marginalize them. I think this rant does a good job of that.
Trollhattan
The hell is “Gamergate”? I see no rotating newsmax headline using the term.
Belafon
Of course their isn’t. A bunch of white guys using threats of violence and intimidation to assert their authority isn’t news.
No, sadly, it isn’t.
NonyNony
@Belafon:
I’d like to think so, but I’m old and cynical and I’ve lived among the gaming subculture pretty much all of my life (having been inducted into roleplaying in the early 80s, video games shortly after that, and wargames shortly after that). In my hope of hopes this Gamergate thing is ugly enough that younger guys in the gaming subculture look at it and say “holy shit – I don’t want to grow up to be like THAT” and isolate the noxious parts of the subculture.
My more cynical side tells me that these guys are always going to be there and will be heroes to a certain class of guys who are horrible people looking for people to tell them it’s okay to be horrible.
srv
Bryant Gumbel had a thing on yesterday about colleges starting gamer sports programs and giving out athletic scholarships.
Yes, it’s a real thing.
No word if they shower with the other teams.
srv
@Gin & Tonic:
White man browser on whte man operating system. Even the liberals of Balloon-Juice are pixel deaf.
NonyNony
@srv:
Various colleges have had essentially intramural video game teams for a while now. I know League of Legends is a big one. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that smaller colleges who have found running football and basketball teams to be too expensive might glom onto league play as an alternative.
Patrick Thompson
So, when’s Kluwe opening for Lewis Black?
dmsilev
“slopebrowed weaseldicks”
Can we have this as a new tag? Please?
Another Holocene Human
pickletits, like piss flaps, is some creative invective that could bear wider circulation
and I like ‘mouthvomit’ for the more pedestrian but also elitist ‘logorrhea’
Kluwe is kind of playing their game (although his points are extremely valid–I, too, am astounded at the assfax now circulating about “gamers are dead” although I think Kluwe missed the point that they’re angry about those articles BECAUSE smelly girls play games and they’re not speshull and the current rhetoric is a new spin on why it makes them ragey because everybody pointed and laughed four weeks ago or whenever this shitwagon got rolling) and that bothers me. The non-stop personal insults are part and parcel of the kind of macho’d up gamer culture that relies on negging opponents and thinks acting conciliatory or reasonable or even civil is weak (nouns ending -fag).
And I can see the mentality that maybe “they” aren’t getting it because “they” haven’t been punched enough … and maybe he welcomes their tears of outrage because they will double down on his twitter feed now and he knows it.
But I’m not sure these kinds of tactics and the unthinking embracing of such attitudes ever solves anything.
C.V. Danes
Epic.
Another Holocene Human
@SiubhanDuinne: The gum ones blew sugar “smoke”. And then you had gum.
The chalky ones were nasty. Rip. Off.
scav
@dmsilev: There’s something satisfying Saxon about “pickletits”. He does go to the roots and basaltic bedrock of the language but with streaks of pure Doug Addams soaring above (“wargleblargling your face into your keyboard”?!)
Patrick
@Trollhattan:
From the article:
(#Gamergate, for those unaware, is what happened a bit over a month ago, where an angry neckbeard posted demonstrably false allegations about his ex-girlfriend, claiming she slept with video game site reviewers for better scores for her games (again, demonstrably false), and then a whole bunch of other angry neckbeards on the Internet went full Denis Dyack and spitfrothed themselves into national attention by making an array of threats on numerous female game developers, including ones about their death, tried to hide behind a shield of “it’s about journalistic ethics because they said gamers are dead,” and generally proved why the Internet needs to be burned to the ground and the ashes salted.
Another Holocene Human
@srv: Why the obsession with showering?
Although back in the day when I used to frequent cons there was an open concern about whether the gamers (mostly tabletop) were showering at all.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
……………………………
Christie says GOP gubernatorial candidates need to win so they control ‘voting mechanisms’OCTOBER 21, 2014, 1:39 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014, 1:45 PM
BY MELISSA HAYES AND HERB JACKSON
Governor Christie pushed further into the contentious debate over voting rights than ever before, saying Tuesday that Republicans need to win gubernatorial races this year so that they’re the ones controlling “voting mechanisms” going into the next presidential election.
Republican governors are facing intense fights in the courts over laws they pushed that require specific identification in order to vote and that reduce early voting opportunities. Critics say those laws sharply curtail the numbers of poor and minority voters, who would likely vote for Democrats. Christie — who vetoed a bill to extend early voting in New Jersey — is campaigning for many of those governors now as he considers a run for president in 2016.
Christie stressed the need to keep Republicans in charge of states — and overseeing state-level voting regulations — ahead of the next presidential election. Christie made his push at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in Washington, D.C., where he ran down a list of states he’s spent time in recently as chairman of the Republican Governors Association questioning whether a Republican presidential nominee would rather have the incumbent GOP governor in power or the Democratic challenger.
See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie-says-gop-gubernatorial-candidates-need-to-win-so-they-control-voting-mechanisms-1.1113989#sthash.HGRGBSAa.dpuf
geg6
@scav:
Chocolate candy cigarettes were one of the great joys of my youth. Loved those. Used to be able to buy them at the penny candy counter. I stocked up on them, often blowing an entire quarter on them.
NonyNony
@Patrick:
I’m pretty sure Trollhattan was joking. And that Trollhattan gets news from more sources than the rotating Newsmax banner on the sidebar.
(Trollhattan if I have slandered you in any way and you actually DO receive all of your news from the rotating Newsmax banner on the sidebar then I apologize. And also you should really stop doing that.)
Gin & Tonic
Here’s for all you old folks.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tree With Water:
To this day, I play solitaire Scrabble. Also, QBeez :-)
kc
@Trollhattan:
A bunch of white shut-ins acting like assholes on the Internet.
Or first world problems, as some people say.
ETA: I assume the vast majority are white. But I realize that’s kind of white-centric of me. No reason why there couldn’t other races of people acting like assholes in Gamergate as well.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Are we sure that Kluwe isn’t a commenter here?
Pee Cee
@Mike in NC:
Tasted like blackboard chalk, too. I wonder if you could actually write on a blackboard with one.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): He may be a commenter, there are other Bruins here. My guess is that he’s visited and lurked.
burnspbesq
You can name that tune in two words: ignorant misogynysts.
Anything beyond that is superfluous.
kc
@NonyNony:
I’ve gotten so I rarely look at big media sites anymore, unless I want to read 3,000 articles about RENEE ZELLWEGER’S NEW FACE. There just seems to be so little separating real news from gossip and crap.
Belafon
@kc: Except when it crossed into threatening women to the point that the women didn’t feel like they could stay home.
Roger Moore
@Pee Cee:
Have you actually done a back-to-back comparison? I’ll admit they taste the way I assume chalk tastes, but I’ve never actually tried it to be sure.
beltane
@kc: I’m really amazed at how much attention the Renee Zellweger thing is getting. Even friends who should know better are all on the mean girl bandwagon with this one. People are just strange.
p.a.
@eldorado: Gilliard would’ve been proud of it.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
This. I would say that the Gamergaters’ complaints are first world problems at most, but that credible threats to rape and murder people seem like they deserve more respect than that.
pharniel
On that sad note…This little bit about the gamefication of terror hits all the right notes.
#gamergate participants (or Gaters, after bifers and trufers because of all the elaborate conspiracy theories they have) steal words and tactics from only the best.
Pee Cee
@Roger Moore:
Sadly, as a teacher I have tasted plenty of chalk. Color on the end of a piece of chalk with a red pen, and you have a (rather fat) “candy” cigarette. :)
The Moar You Know
Kluwe can write. His work on Deadspin recently was epic and this is even better.
Walker
I find this pearl-clutching over the “gamer identity” moderately amusing — when I am not being grossly offended by their actions, that is. The people who are so proud at being “core gamers” — who do not want this term diluted by those “filthy casuals” — would not have been acknowledged as gamers a generation ago.
“Video gamers? They are not real gamers. Not like us board gamers and RPG players.” And a generation before that? “Role players? They are not real gamers. Not like us war gamers.”
The “gamer” tag has always been fluid. They need to learn to accept that.
StringOnAStick
I read the whole article last night when it was linked to by a commenter here, and yep, the guy can write.
His final point was that just when gaming has become mainstream and acceptable, and thus a true cultural force, these weaseldicks were poised to screw that up by being horrible, horrible misogynists with an amazing persecution complex so vast that they believe, no demand! that all their awful behavior is excused because stupid reasons. Kluwe doesn’t want something he loves (gaming) turned into what these losers are trying to make it, so he struck back, hard. The whinging shall be epic.
Violet
I love this rant. Kluwe is tons of fun to read. Glad someone with a bit of a megaphone is out there saying stuff like this.
eldorado
@p.a.: damnit. miss that guy.
Tenar Darell
Is there something about being a football playing gamer which creates such epic Shakespearean insults? I read that rant, and one of the first things I thought of was an article from Thought Catalog last February.
I like this one: “Methinks thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon you.” Combines really well with this one: “More of your conversation would infect my brain.”
Citizen_X
@dmsilev:
I’m particularly fond of that one, too.
Pee Cee
@Citizen_X:
Although I do think that being compared to #gamergaters would be a terrible insult to both weasels and weasel reproductive organs.
bruceJ
@burnspbesq: Oh, but what shakespearian superfluousness!
Botsplainer
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/author-says-south-should-form-new-nation-without-gays-and-hispanics-called-reagan/
The finest story of the news cycle.
The new nation shall be called Reagan.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: I read that story, and I think it’s a wonderful plan.
Helen
@Botsplainer: Holly Crap that’s awesome. Thank you, thank you. Having a bad day at work – and that story just made it a bilion times better.
Amir Khalid
Woe is me. Liverpool are being thrashed at home by Real Madrid in the Champions League. They’re 3-0 down. At Anfield. And that maroon Mario Balotelli … words fail me. Woe is me, woe is me.
dmsilev
@Botsplainer:
“I am Reagan thy God and thou shalt have no other God before me”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Amir Khalid: What did Mario do now?
Pee Cee
So …
1) Someone who read the preamble to the Constitution on Wikipedia
2) A few “dishonorable discharges”
3) Two people who have eaten in a Mexican restaurant
4) Westboro Baptist Church
5) Someone who’s played Call of Duty
6) A fired bank teller
7) Someone who saw a farm once.
8) Someone who whines about potholes.
Villago Delenda Est
This explains glibertarians in general. Especially vermin like Paul pere et fils.
Pee Cee
@Pee Cee:
Oh, I forgot the “energy expert”: Someone who licked a 9-volt once.
Fred
OK, so I read the post, I read a bunch of the comments, I googled gamergate and I still don’t have a clue what the F@%K gamergate could possibly be. I don’t really care but it kinda bugs me to read a post and not know what it is I’m reading.
@anyone who read this comment: Thank you for taking the time to pay attention to my venting. I feel better now. Thanks again.
delk
Ross “I didn’t know it was an anti-gay fundraiser” Douthat
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/22/new-york-times-columnist-apologizes-for-attendi/201268
Villago Delenda Est
@delk: So, ol’ Douchehat is admitting here that he’s a fucktard.
Very good.
Amir Khalid
@Botsplainer:
From McKinnon
Where exactly do the Bible and the pre-amendments US Constitution sanctify fossil fuels?
Pee Cee
As near as I can tell, a bunch of assholes who call themselves “gamers” who like to harass women on the Internet with rape threats and death threats. When called out on it, these assholes whine that it’s not really about the rape threats and death threats but it’s about the “integrity of game journalism”.
Sorta like conservatives whine that it’s about “states rights” when confronted on their racism.
Amir Khalid
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
The usual lights on, nobody home performance.
Worse: swapping shirts at halftime with an opponent, as though the match was already over. BBC liveblog notes: “Phil Neville on @bbc5live: Van Nistelrooy exchanged shirts in a Manchester Derby. Fergie said: ‘Do that again & you’ll be out of the club.”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
So far in Champions League play, Bundesliga teams are 9-1-2 and have an aggregate goal differential of +21.
Pee Cee
@Amir Khalid:
Well, there’s some precedent:
Isaiah 6:
6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
6:6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
6:7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
… so you can apparently be sanctified with coal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: I think they should form a new nation called “Reagan”. We should grant them a land grant on the far side of the Sun and ship them there free of charge.
Tenar Darell
@Amir Khalid:
@Pee Cee: Did you ever read the MaddAddam trilogy? There’s a religion based on fossil fuels as part of the background of some of the main characters. Truth imitates fiction…
Howard Beale IV
…ahem….
WaterGirl
@Fred: The second paragraph of the linked article – I found it exceedingly helpful:
thefncrow
If you’ve been following the GG nonsense and haven’t seen the Clickhole GG article, you need to see it immediately. Holy shit.
A Summary Of The Gamergate Movement That We Will Immediately Change If Any Of Its Members Find Any Details Objectionable
The reaction from GG to that article has been fucking hilarious, because it’s had the Literally Unbelievable effect where you’ve had members of the hate group reading that article and coming out with the impression that it was a positive piece for their movement.
Gex
@delk: So he helped them raise money. Then he’s going to “make it better” by declining the honorarium and let the hate group keep even more of the profits.
Jesus Christ, what an asshole.
Kerry Reid
“Slackjawed Pickletits” is the best thing I’ve read all week. Thank you so much for this! I’m not even a gamer and I feel this guy’s pain.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Tom — A painting called “Cellar Interior” to illustrate this post? Absolutely brilliant!
Manyakitty
@Pee Cee: Ummm…maybe that WAS chalk you were eating?
The TIm Channel
Gamergate isn’t just about the gamer press and journalist integrity anymore. It’s about the knee-jerk reaction of feminists to flail about wildly at any criticism, no matter how well founded (see Thunderfoot’s Anita Sarkeesian series e.g.) as well as how the press is being manipulated by what are, in essence, feminists all too eager to abuse the notion of victimhood. The ‘Mormon Meadows Massacre II” incident in Utah just the other day highlights the extent of the nonsense. At the end of the day Anita manages to try and reclaim some shred of dignity by suddenly figuring out that Utah is an open carry state? Ferchrissakes. What is their agenda? Enjoy.
lethargytartare
@The TIm Channel:
that’s some awesome mansplaining, neckbeard.
I know you’re terrified Anita is going to steal your big-boobed Lara Croft poster, but jesus, dude, get a clue.
Jebediah, RBG
@The TIm Channel:
And why was it relevant at all that Utah is a guns-everywhere state? Here’s a hint: the answer to that makes your side look really, really bad.
one of the jasons
I love Kluwe’s stuff – it’s worth noting that GGers (at least at reddit) reacted to Kluwe by sadly noting that he’d been brainwashed (coulda been one of us!), whereas they responded to Felicia Day’s contemporaneous and much more reluctant blog post by trying to publish her personal info.