I forget how I stumbled across this, but I am reading the most unintentionally hysterical manifesto from one of the gamergate clowns:
Until recently, I had never read any of the original “gamers are dead” articles, assuming they would contain nothing but the standard leftist drivel to which we’ve become accustomed. The only likely outcome of reading them would be an increase in my blood pressure. Then, while watching a video about GamerGate, I clicked on a link to an archive of one of the original articles, “A Guide To Ending Gamers” by Devin Wilson at Gamasutra.
Full disclosure: I am far from a hardcore gamer. I play Magic The Gathering and Minecraft, and am a recovering WoW addict. As a kid, I played Wolfenstein, Doom, and Mario Brothers. In college it was Duke Nukem and Unreal Tournament. I’m a casual gamer who occasionally goes nuts with a particular game, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking or reading about games. So I hadn’t even heard of Kotaku or Gamasutra before August 2014.
I happened to be on Reddit on the day of the original Quinn event and saw the threads full of deleted comments. As I learned more about what was happening, I began to nurture the hope that what I’d been waiting for was finally happening: the men of my generation were waking up. My interest in and support of GamerGate comes primarily from two sources:
– My absolute disdain for all things Politically Correct
– My rejection of the gradual, deliberate process of feminization Western society has been undergoing since the second half of the 20th century.I want to protect gaming because of what it represents as because of the entertainment value I get out of it.
Kim du Toit, eat your heart out. His bio is priceless:
Mike is a programmer who is interested in global politics, Red Pill, and self-improvement. He was born with Craniosynostosis, and as a result was an outsider for most of his childhood despite being naturally gregarious and alpha. Red Pill has opened his eyes.
These people actually exist in our world.
Pee Cee
He misspelled “brogrammer”.
slag
Oh we know. It’s guys like these and people who paint their faces at football games that serve as perpetual reminders that we’ll never live in a civilized society.
Roger Moore
I and I thought it was all about ethics in gaming journalism.
Woodrowfan
A brief rule, anyone who has to define themselves as an “Alpha” isn’t one. Unless they mean for it to be short for “asshole” in which case, it is accurate.
Joey Maloney
Google says one of the results of Craniosynostosis is mental impairment. I never would’ve guessed.
schrodinger's cat
This guys sounds not much different than the Indian men who were upset at the documentary that held a mirror to the misogyny in their society. They had enough clout to get it banned and now are blaming the messenger. Typical.
schrodinger's cat
@slag: They also exist in abundance in the physics and engineering departments.
karen marie
His mother must be so proud.
MazeDancer
Laughed so hard.
Then thought: if only
Clarence Thomas wouldn’t be on the Supreme Court because Anita Hill would have been believed from first complaint.
No trans vaginal ultrasound laws. No Roe v Wade challenge. No domestic violence problems. And femnazi’s would be called something else, like, oh, possibly, Congress.
If they didn’t support the idea that violence=masculinity, these children who post this stuff would be just very sad. Unfortunately, equating manliness with cruelty has too many worldwide worshipers at that altar already. (But at least Vlad Pu has returned for them.)
Amir Khalid
I’m told my English is pretty good. But I have no idea what this means.
Bigby
Are you sure this isn’t a parody? “I’m an ‘alpha’ born with Craniosynostosis”?
I call shenanigans (and not just cuz it’s near St Patty’s, although dictionary.com lists it as ‘origin unknown’ ).
Tone in DC
LULz.
I get how some folks are agitated about this issue, but I cannot get worked up too much about hardcore gamers and this battle royal(e). I am much more concerned about actual non-pixelated violence and the threat of it. Last year in this small southern town, there were 105 murders. That number is still too high, but is significantly lower than back in the 80s and 90s, which were pretty much insane here.
I don’t have armed robbery or sexual assault numbers, but I have a feeling they are higher than cities of similar population. When the judicial system gets a better handle on violent crime, we’ll all be better off.
End off topic rant.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
My translation skills are a bit rusty, but I think this is idiot for:
Roger Moore
@Tone in DC:
Yeah, and the GamerGaters have been making credible threats of violence against the people they’re trying to silence. Start doxxing people and threatening to go over to their houses and rape and murder them, and shit gets really pretty damn quickly.
shortstop
Kim du Toit! I had forgotten all about him.
I wonder what he’s doing now? Last I heard he was sadly informing his kids they couldn’t go to college because Kim and Mrs. Kim had blown the entire family savings on Kim’s failed “business.” As I recall, the daughter’s plan was to gain enough additional weight (she, like the whole family, already had plenty, because DON’T TELL ME HOW TO EAT, LIBERALS) to qualify for bariatric surgery. That, the du Toits reasoned, would then enable her to lose enough weight to get into the Navy and later get college paid for by the Feds. Losing the original extra weight via self-discipline and hard work, or perhaps working her way through college with the help of student loans, was not even considered — this is a libertarian family that takes nothing from/has nothing to do with the government, you see!
Villago Delenda Est
This guy is a twit.
I’d turn him over to some drill sergeants for some major emotional event action.
The Moar You Know
You know, when I was a teenager I was a total and complete nerd introvert. I took up the electric bass, joined marching band, and went and played parties and did halftime shows and all that and ended up with an active social life, and incidentally got laid constantly because people found me interesting. Result: I both love and respect women.
These fucking emotionally stunted 12 year olds are DOING IT WRONG.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: That was a perfectly accurate translation.
Bobby B.
You can learn all you need to about “gamers” by watching “Big Bang Theory” :fear of women, fantasy lives taken way too seriously, you name it… no parody is too broad for this species.
Germy Shoemangler
@Roger Moore: Weren’t they also “swatting” people; phony 9-1-1 calls?
I don’t know, the dude sounds like a hardcore gamer to me.
Big ole hound
@Roger Moore: They sneak out their mother’s basement and do their shit at an elementary school where no one will fight back. Game guns turn into real guns very fast in these freaky minds.
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: I’m a native English speaker, and these are words that literally have no meaning; they make no sense and describe a thing that did not and could not happen.
RaflW
“Red Pill” is new to me. Did a little googling. It’s helpful (but unsurprising, really) that he’s tagged himself as a fantasist idiot.
Tone in DC
@Roger Moore:
I heard there had been threats, I hadn’t heard anything else. I don’t assume these hardcore gamer guys are all toothless tigers; I simply hadn’t heard anything else.
If the FBI or local police have anything/something on these guys, I hope they are on these misogynist brain donors like white on rice.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Moar You Know:
FTFY.
You’re welcome!
nastybrutishntall
#naturally gregarious and alpha
If this does not end up a new tag, there really is no justice in the world and my whole life has been a lie.
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you. Agree that what most of these losers need is a drill sergeant to beat the bullshit out of them, since they’re so stupid they couldn’t figure out how to be winners on their own.
Violet
@Amir Khalid:
@Roger Moore:
It also means, “I can’t get girls to sleep with me and it’s their fault.”
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid:
“Women won’t agree to have sex with me simply because I desire it.”
Tenar Darell
@Amir Khalid: It means that a baby who was born with skull bones that fused prematurely would have died if our “feminized” society full of men and women fighting to surgically correct birth defects would not be able to have a normal brain and a normal life. (What a sad waste of his chances).
Gin & Tonic
@shortstop: You’re making that up, aren’t you?
raven
Betty and BJ gets a H/T from Silverman on Lang’s blog!
Iowa Old Lady
@MazeDancer: Sing it. @Roger Moore: has it exactly right.
Get back to me, bro, when there are more women than men in Congress, on the Supreme Court, and as CEOs. Then we’ll see if you have a point.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d kick in for travel funding if we could get that done. Extra if we could get video. An “alpha” begins to understand what he ain’t.
raven
Apparently people that play these dumb ass games exist too.
Villago Delenda Est
@shortstop: Isn’t the Navy part of the government?
Oh, wait…I keep forgetting that the military, Medicare, and Social Security are not part of the government.
Never mind.
shortstop
@Gin & Tonic: I absolutely am not. Scratch most “libertarians” and you’ll find white freeloaders who hate black people. Sometimes they even emigrate from South Africa to the Republic of Texas to be with their own kind.
Cervantes
What are you calling “our world,” kemo sabe?
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: That’s because it is not in English, it is in Entitled Moron.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tenar Darell: You know, I’ll be this guy idolizes 300 and doesn’t realize how the Spartans ferreted out the “weak” as newborns.
Bruuuuce
@RaflW: In case you didn’t find this, it’s an excellent intro to the idiocy that is the Redpill Right. http://boingboing.net/2015/01/28/a-beginners-guide-to-the-red.html
SatanicPanic
“Yo I’d totally be alpha except for this brain thing”
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
A minimal re-write:
Not a new idea. I presume it is familiar to you, in the sense that you’ve seen it expressed, perhaps even argued, before.
coin operated
LOLWUT? My son was born with craniosynostosis, had surgery to repair it, wore a helmet for the first six months of his life, and had naturally-occuring Kurt Cobain hair his entire life (great as a teenager…no so much during elementary and middle schools). That said, my son also had more than his share of ‘romantic interests’ before his untimely death earlier this year.
Gamergate loser needs to find a personality and a new excuse….
elmo
@shortstop:
Wait, what?
Seriously, what?
C’mon, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. You have GOT to be making that up. It’s just. Too. PERFECT.
Rugged, take-no-prisoners individualist Randian hero gobbles down Twinkies and Big Macs so as to – wait for it – QUALIFY (!!) to undergo the services of OTHER PEOPLE who will physically modify her body to KEEP HER FROM EATING SO DAMN MUCH.
My head went splodey from the perfection of it. BOOM.
sharl
@coin operated: Thank you for that input, and my condolences for your loss.
chopper
wow, he’s so alpha!
azlib
Given the level of violence in the world by mostly men, I’d say a little more feminization would be a good thing.
Villago Delenda Est
He has disdain for “all things Politically Correct” yet he’s also a “recovering WoW addict.”
WoW has one of the most “Politically Correct” atmospheres I’ve ever seen in regards to male/female roles. Male and female avatars have exactly the same inherent potential to fulfill any gameplaying role in the game. There are a number of very strong female lore characters: one of them (Jaina Proudmoore) actually criticizes the leader of the Alliance and to his face says “don’t go soft on me, Varian.” At one point on the Horde side, a female orc NPC gives a dressing down to players about male/female roles.
Stupid “alpha” is confoozeled. Film at 11.
Frankensteinbeck
@MazeDancer:
This completely took over in America in the early 80s. Go back and watch some movies from the time. The cool guys, the guys that get sex (the definition of your value as a man then), were assholes so malignant that today you’d be embarrassed to portray them as villains. Sometimes they were villains, who you could only beat by finding a weak person’s way to be an even bigger asshole. Around 1990, every child hero had to have ‘attitude’ – IE, be an obnoxious, selfish shit.
I don’t know what caused that cultural swerve, and I’m sure it’s tied to racism somehow, but we’re dealing with its results even today.
@Amir Khalid:
As hyperbolic as it may sound, the people who are telling you it means ‘women won’t have sex with me’ are correct. The MRA folks’ primary and consistent complaint is that women allowed to control their own sexuality have sex with the wrong men. They have an entire fantasy ethos created where they are the heroes, the nice guys who are good to women. They lay any number of social problems at the feet of women who won’t acknowledge this and give them lots of sex. If this sounds so deranged it’s hard to imagine, this is what a man looks like who’s so messed up he’s willing to issue rape and murder threats to a woman whose crime is making a computer game about depression. There are a lot of them.
Botsplainer
@The Moar You Know:
But they’re such nice guys, and sluts treat them like shit…
trollhattan
I can’t express how grateful I am that most of the post is gibberish to me. Except for the Mindcraft reference.
As to the complainer dude, it’s to the basement he’s drawn and in the basement he’s welcome to remain. It’s easy to imagine him yelling for mom to bring him some pie and beefy roast, in a Cartman voice of course.
MomSense
When I “gamed” we had pong, pacman, and frogger. Never went on to play any others. I was more of a play outside or in the theater type.
bemused
I had never heard of Red Pill. I laughed hard reading that one objection they have to women is that women are “emotional”. This from a bunch of guys who are hysterically emotional 5 year olds.
Emma
@Bruuuuce: Thanks muchly. Now I need a complete wipe and reboot just to rejoin the real world.
Cermet
Alpha!?(LOL) What a joke that ass-wipe is; he’d not be an alpha even at his local middle school. Only a basement loser could write such dribble.
Matt McIrvin
@coin operated: Interesting. Part of my first reaction was to think “well, craniosynostosis is no joke”… but I only studied up on it a little when my daughter was misdiagnosed as possibly having it in utero. I got the impression that some kids had to keep having multiple surgeries for it and wearing the helmet over their whole childhood.
schrodinger's cat
The most pathetic thing about RWNJ of all flavors is their sense of victimhood, something that they supposedly decry in others.
Gus
I have stayed as far away from Gamergate and MRA stories as I can. I don’t know what Red Pill is. I intend to keep it that way.
schrodinger's cat
@Gus: Unfortunately, I was not as wise, I just clicked on the link someone posted here. I need brain bleach now.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@coin operated: I’m sorry to hear of your loss.
Villago Delenda Est
@coin operated: The untimely demise of your son sucks, because he sounds like he was a most with it kid. I lost my brother some 27 years ago, and I know that my parents were just devastated by it, far more than I was, and I was pretty devastated all by myself. Not a day goes by I don’t think of him, and I’m sure that’s true for my mom (my dad passed six and a half years ago).
I think Joe Biden has some very good advice on the subject of so devastating a loss. A day will come when you smile, rather than tear up, at the thought of him. It may come sooner or later, but it will come.
Matt McIrvin
@Tone in DC:
It wouldn’t matter all that much, except that it’s just one corner of a much larger complex of problems with gender equality in nerd/technological/scientific culture, which is to some extent a gateway to power and money in the modern world. These antifeminist gamers are just the most outré manifestation of the men who are, in one way or another, trying to drive women out of the whole thing, or to let them in only if they promise not to try to make the atmosphere more welcoming to them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt McIrvin: I think a lot of the problem is that in computer programming and video gaming, physicality isn’t an issue. It’s purely a matter of the mind. Women getting into this can definitely be better than a lot of men, and that scares the pants off of some of them, revealing that they have Vienna sausages for dicks.
Gex
@Roger Moore: There’s also a fair amount of “bitches ain’t shit, where the women at?” involved. I’m not sure there are enough red pills to make him see the problem.
coin operated
@Matt McIrvin: Craniosynostosis is a fancy word for ‘no soft spots’. The repair is to remove bone along the already-fused growth lines, then use the helmet to protect and shape the skull as it’s recovering. He was out of the helmet at six months, when most children lose their soft spots anyway, and was monitored during the first few years of his life to ensure normal skull growth afterwards. Our pediatric neurologist informed us before the surgery that only in the most rare cases are they in a helmet for life.
Woodrowfan
I would so pay to see that!!! And DvD it to watch over and over again!
coin operated
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you, sir. Our last weekend together involved scotch, cigars, and a rental house overlooking the beach in Lincoln City.
We don’t do funerals in my family…we do wakes…and he had confided in his sister just days before his death that he wanted to go out in the same way his father and grandfather had talked about..scotch, cigars, and a party atmosphere. It was one hell of a party.
Those two weekends (the beach and the wake) are the memories I choose to cherish.
Bobby Thomson
If they did go reverse Lysistrata, would anyone notice?
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
They don’t have to be winners, if they’d just stop being such losers, that would be a major step.
Cermet
@coin operated: So terribly sorry for your tragic loss …
Villago Delenda Est
@Bobby Thomson: No, and that’s another one of their problems!
rea
@The Moar You Know: How did you play electric bass in a marching band? Long extension cord?
schrodinger's cat
@rea: Battery operated guitar?
MomSense
@coin operated:
I’m so sorry for your loss.
aimai
@coin operated: I’m so sorry, so very sorry about your loss.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Battery operated amp, maybe?
Ruckus
@coin operated:
After my own heart. Sorry your son didn’t have more time but it sounds like he, and you made the most of it.
A wake is to celebrate a life well lived and to celebrate it’s pitfalls lived through without bitterness. We get one chance and the dance is actually pretty short. Make the most of the living, accept that the end happens to all of us and get on with it.
John M. Burt
@coin operated: Speaking as one whose family has also seen parents mourning their children, I am holding you in the Light, although it sounds as though you can already see with great clarity.
@Mike Caputo, I see that, as is usually the case, when someone complains about something being “politically correct”, s/he actually means, “I find this to be politically incorrect.”
Also, there is no such thing as an “alpha male”, according to the scientist who originally coined the term: http://www.davemech.org/news.html
@Villago Delenda Est, I doubt that additional emotional trauma inflicted by a “drill sergeant” would benefit him. What he needs is nurturance and encouragement, and it’s really quite sad that he has alienated everyone who could have given it to him.
@Bobby Thomson, they call it MGTOW, “Men Going Their Own Way”, and seem to have no clue that if they ever actually went
GaltTheir Own Way, women would be grateful and so would men who like women.boatboy_srq
@Bobby Thomson: No, but the gene pool would be measurably improved in about a generation or so.
@coin operated: @coin operated: A) My deepest condolences and B) it sounds like you had one helluva kid, who did a lot better than the gamerstain who posted the gibberish we’re discussing. The wake sounds like the best possible way to go.
Belafon
@Bobby B.: Except the guys on Big Bang Theory can learn.
SatanicPanic
@John M. Burt: MGTOW is my favorite thing they’ve ever come up with and I am fully behind them in their project, but it’s hard to imagine a more idle threat.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@coin operated: I admire your wise choice of memories to cherish, and again, my condolences on your untimely loss. It makes recalling my father’s (in his home, timely, after a good long run) departure on St. Pat’s day a less fraught event. For that I thank you.
Seanly
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, yes, you’re correct that the male & female avatars are essentially just window dressing for your toon. However, the chats in game are some of the most racist, homophobic & glibertarian discussions I’ve ever seen. It’s been a while since I played so forget the proper term for the chat channels, but it’s pretty bad.
I game quite a bit. I didn’t understand the gamergate stuff other than the antagonists are all a bunch of major assholes and the portion of the gamer culture that I hate. While the coziness between gaming journalist and companies is an issue, the gamergaters were using that as a smokescreen just to vent the worst sort of garbage.
I’d like to see better female characters. Blizzard has a new game coming out called Overwatch. When it was revealed that all of the female avatars were skinny, there was a well-deserved big outcry. Then they added in one “plus-sized” female, but she’s a cliche – the big dikey 1985 Russian Olympian.
Another issue I have with gamergate is the stupidity of their fears. Violent games aren’t going away – they sell and will continue to sell. Therefore, they will get made. We’ll still get the chance to collectively shoot billions of rounds at aliens, terrorists, zombies, etc. Asking for a little more diversity isn’t that big of deal. Asking that the female characters not always be tropes or princesses to be rescued is good.
Society is changing for the better, but there will always be those in power or who identify with the powerful and look to avoid the change. While minorities, LGBT, and women are making some small improvements in their rights & freedoms, the dominant white male culture is in no danger of being subsumed.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’ve noticed this in re the change in movie scenery. What I find interesting is that the switch to a far more bloody, gory, intense, “realistic” genre happened in the eighties – the time when there was no draft, Vietnam was beginning to be far back enough that we could start mythologizing it, and more generally, civilian society was just starting to distance itself from the military – and that genre has been snowballing ever since. Ditto the general “cruelty is manliness” attitude in society. I mention the military since 1) that’s what most people seem to consider the paragon of that kind of “manliness” in real life, and 2) the service is also one of the places you’d be most likely to see what shootouts and explosions do in real life. It’s as if the more we distance ourselves from that stuff in real life, the hungrier we are to see it reproduced on our TV screens.
It’s John Wayne Syndrome (the person who doesn’t serve, feels unmanly and inadequate and guilty because he hasn’t served, and overcompensates for his insecurities by adopting the public persona of a rugged swaggering cowboy) gone viral.
Ruckus
@John M. Burt:
I’m not one to want to give the hard line drill sergeant routine to anyone but I’ve seen it work on some when done extremely well. But that qualifier is the killer, most are just abusive and that doesn’t help.
Bobby B.
Here’s a comment from one “Wild Cat” (from the manifesto linked to above):
“OMFG! The effete communists at Balloon Juice are attacking you guys. Why don’t you show them what Gamer Jism is all about!”
Calouste
@SatanicPanic: “Grown-up boys who never were involved with women pledge to never get involved with women”. Well, it would stop the harassment, so there’s that.
mrburns
@Pee Cee: “brogrammer” is in fact spelled just that way; b r o g r a m m e r . Maybe you meant to say something else ? Or perhaps you just naturally express yourself as poorly as the other supercilious twits on this site.
El Caganer
@shortstop: Also, he was unable to work because of his fierce attacks of GOUT!
Gout can be painful as hell – I’ve got it myself – but IIRC he made his living sitting at a desk, not on his feet breaking rocks.
Epicurus
Someone needs to interview this little shit, and then bring Shatner out from behind a curtain. “Have you ever even been with a woman??” Clearly the deranged ravings of a virgin brain. How can a person be alive and be this wrong/stupid? Must be his congenital condition, or maybe he’s just another asshole.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Bobby B.: Cool! My day is now made; I always wanted to be effete on a Monday.
scav
It’s also rather sweet that they think the whole traditional “white male inherent privilege” setup would really apply to them in practice. They’d not be a part of the easy-circumstanced in-crowd, they’d float at about the level they occupy now. They just don’t want the effort of having to work at being better than their peers — the comfort of automatic, Laz-E-Boy remote-ready people to look down upon (but who simultaneously serve them drinks, do their laundry, etc.) about covers their desires.
Ruckus
@Bobby B.:
That almost sounds like satire, a stab at the absurdity if you will.
brantl
@Woodrowfan: “Army of One” doesn’t mean what the guy thinks it does, when he runs around in an army helmet, yelling “Follow me!” to himself.
Wild Cat
@Bobby B.: What? Millipede didn’t get you all tingly?
Pogonip
@coin operated: So sorry about your son.
Cervantes
@coin operated:
Sad to hear of your young son’s death. It’s obvious he did not lack courage. Glad he had the send-off he wanted.
Villago Delenda Est
@Seanly: Trade chat (which is the current manifestation of the old Barrens chat) is an absolute sewer of misogyny, racism, homophobia, and plenty of glibertarian garbage. And, yes, female avatars tend to be supermodel types but with bigger breasts. But it’s all cartoony, which apparently is enough to distract the MRA types from the underlying PC-ness of it all. Not that they’re terribly bright in the first place.
WoW has an absolutely terrible community, compared to some other MMOs I’ve played. One manifestation of this is that the looking for group feature makes it so that building a community is not needed to do group things, and there is an appalling lack of anyone doing anything remotely social in the groups. I try to avoid that and group with guild members where the true strengths of the genre can be seen…building a team, helping one another, subsuming your individual wants and desires for the betterment of the group. This of course is anathema to MRA types who are precious little islands.
The Pale Scot
Obviously this guy is an Indigo Child, bow to our future spiritually superior overlords.
Pogonip
These are probably silly questions that only an Old would ask, but:
1). Don’t these games involve the player being a character, sort of like a computerized Dungeons and Dragons? If so, how do other players know who or what you really are, unless you tell them?
2). Is there some reason the feminists and the anti-feminists can’t each play their own games and ignore the other side, with whom they will never agree?
NonyNony
@Epicurus:
Eh – I know guys who are assholes like this who still manage to date and have something approaching relationships with women.
Mostly that’s what they’re so angry about – that they have to “put on an act” to “get some” from the women they date. They actually don’t like women but they have to pretend they like women to have sex with women. It angers them, and makes them hate women even more. They are not good people, but don’t mistake them for drooling mouthbreathers who live in their parents basement. They’re just as likely to be in the board room or the corner office as stuck on their mom’s couch.
SatanicPanic
@Ruckus:
my first thought is- ok BJers, who did that?
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
Because reviewers will occasionally review- even review favorably- the kind of games the anti-feminists don’t like. That’s what kicked off the whole GamerGate business in the first place, and why they claim the whole thing is a about ethics in gaming journalism. Just knowing there are games out there that they don’t personally approve of is enough to set these assholes off.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@SatanicPanic: Doug J, troll extraordinaire, perhaps?
moderateindy
The whole being alarmed by the feminization of whatever is just an extension of being afraid of women period.
I hate to generalize, but most hardcore gamers I know are very awkward when it comes to women. Back in the day they retreated to the comfortable confines of D & D, and such things, where they didn’t have to deal with the fact that they were socially awkward. But at least they were able to have a small but close core of friends. It seems like now, although they have the potential to interact with more people via the internet they only do it within the confines of a game, and actual one on one interpersonal contact is missing, which makes them more isolated, and angrier. That anger presents as misogyny. Most people want a mate, but their lifestyle, itself, eliminates much of their opportunity to engage with women. Instead of identifying themselves, and their own choices as the real problem, it is easier to see themselves as victims of women.
One thing I have found to be true over the years is that very few people think they are a bad person, or stupid, or a crappy worker. So they see themselves as “good guys” and can’t comprehend why women don’t want to be with them. The sad truth is that for most of them they are alone because they simply don’t have the stones to ask a woman out. Being able to engage in conversation with strangers that don’t have shared interests with you is a skill, and one that needs to be developed through practice. It’s not something you acquire by sitting around on your computer playing games.
I do believe that there are many instances in today’s society when we over reach when it comes to trying to keep anyone from ever getting hurt or being offended. If that is feminization I’m more than happy to live with that philosophy over the I got mine screw you ideal that is libertarianism.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
The smart money is on DougJ.
dmsilev
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I always thought it was a major faux-pas to be effete before Memorial Day.
Pogonip
@dmsilev: Or to wear a silly hat!
Doug r
I suspect the Venn diagram of these idiots and the guys who are in the men’s rights movement would be very tight diagram.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bobby B.:
Real weak sauce there. Will never result in a pregnancy, at least.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip:
Yup, and its fully anonymous, too. So people can say things that they probably wouldn’t ever dream of doing in a face to face situation because they’d be swallowing their teeth as a result.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’ve played a lot of MMOs. Only three of them stood out as having good communities of helpful, friendly, accepting people.
City of Heroes got one by having a character customization system a hundred times more flexible than any other. It encouraged people to roleplay and interact and view their character as something other than a tool to be maximized for returns. Almost no PvP in that game. They put some PvP zones in towards the end, but they were mostly ignored.
Earth and Beyond got one by having a crafting system unlike any I’ve ever seen, where vendor equipment was always inferior to player made, and loot drops were almost always inferior. It didn’t have the omnipresent PvP system that turns EVE into a libertarian pirate hellhole, so you got a community where some people focused their whole game on finding the coolest recipes and giving free stuff to lower level players, while the combat focused people would go ‘Awww, that’s so nice’ and give money and recipes to the builders… you get the idea. It snowballed. Again, almost no PvP.
The third example was created because of PvP. Waaaay back in the original Everquest, I played in the evil lizard man city of Kunark on a PvP-always RP server. The whole world was a mess of griefing banditry, famously so, except around Kunark. It turns out, people who like to RP villains care about order and shepherding newbies, and built a cooperative militia anti-bandit force. It was the only place on the server you could step out of a guard’s sight and not get stabbed in the face. If someone did jump you, they would be killed a dozen times for every victim they claimed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
The thing about PvP centered MMOs is that those newbies are your content. You need to foster your content. Griefing asshats don’t get this. They’re frankly not clever enough to realize that for PvP to be good, you can’t scare people away. They will get frustrated and quit, and then you won’t have any content!
Star Wars Galaxies had a great community, but it was undermined by the asshats at SOE who cared only about market share, and when WoW came along and expanded the MMO pie, SOE could only see it’s share of the expanded pie being smaller, even though in raw numbers it was probably better. The idiotic MBA mindset undermines a business, again.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Yeah, it looks like Doug J has struck again.
Vanya
@Tone in DC:
Americans just get numb to horrific murder levels, don’t they? Do you realize Sweden had 77 murders in 2012? The entire country? Elsewhere in Europe even that violent, immigrant infested, crime ridden, heavy drinking hell hole they call London couldn’t scrape together 100 homicides in 2014. Your town is actually insanely violent.
Ruckus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Sure does look like his fingerprints. Can there be more than one satire troll? If there is an FSM it would seem like an imperative.
different-church-lady
The fact that “Gamer-gate” is even a thing proves our empire is long, long past the fall date.
different-church-lady
@Bobby B.: I’m not sure offhanded mockery is something they’re psychologically prepared to deal with.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore:
It’s more like, “Men still control 100% of the world, but now women push back against our bullshit!”
Bubblegum Tate
@Woodrowfan:
That was my first reaction upon first learning about all this “alpha/betas” drivel. It’s as plain as day, yet the Gators don’t seem to realize it. The other obvious one: “RedPiller” is synonymous with “loser.”
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’ve pretty much never played video games in my life… and this stuff is making me think that I really didn’t miss out on much.
Gravenstone
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh lord, EQ PvP. The online group I was then affiliated with decided that they wanted to establish a guild on a PvP server (Rallos Zek) so that you could “punch someone in the nose” if they deserved it. Nice idea, absolutely sucked in execution. The server was overrun with griefer guilds, whose sole purpose within the game was to torment and terrorize players who weren’t as adept at PvP as they were. EQ tried to keep things sort of fair by only allowing engagement of other players within a few levels of your own. However, SOE also allowed buffing from high level players onto lower levels at full effect. So the common move was to have the wee little PK bastards loaded to the gills with high end druid buffs (regen, SOW, thornskin) and then turn them lose. The whole experience so soured my view of PvP that I refuse to engage it in most games these days.
Bubblegum Tate
@shortstop:
Holy shit, that is amazing.
Pogonip
@Gravenstone: Can you translate this?
Pogonip
@Chris: You missed out on Duck Hunt and Pong. Also Ms. PacMan. Those were great.
Mike E
@Roger Moore: Now we know what ‘J’ stands for in DougJ!
Pogonip
@Bubblegum Tate: There are whole sites devoted to helping a guy figure out whether he’s Alpha, Gamma, Delta, or the dreaded Beta. If your man displays any familiarity with this nuttiness, find a new one. (A new man, not a new nuttiness.)
Bubblegum Tate
@Pogonip:
Wait, Beta is worse than Gamma and Delta?
Gravenstone
@Pogonip: Give people an environment where they can be abusive assholes in complete anonymity and safety, and they’ll jump at the chance.
Tiny Tim
I read the local subreddit for my city and I’m constantly amazed at the number of young men who post things like “Hey, new in town, looking to meet people, interests include Playstation 4…” or similar. It isn’t a dating site, and they might also be looking for bros, too, but they’re obviously also putting out feelers for the wimmin.
I have nothing against video games. I play them myself. But as an “interest” they aren’t, well, interesting.
Annamal
@Pogonip:
Ironically this all comes about mostly because decades of gamers finally got what they wanted…games considered as art.
Unfortunately as soon as you begin looking at art you begin thinking about it critically, which can sometimes mean pointing to the number of dead strippers and women in refrigerators and suggesting that that games might be able to do better representing women.
That apparently mild observation was enough to unleash a flood of death threats and creepiness.
As someone who has played games for a very long time, I’m happy that there are people willing to debate and critique them and I think anyone worrying about “feminization” might want to look at the later games in the Saints Row franchise, where not only do you have multiple diverse female characters, but you can play as a woman and yet your ability to go around hitting people with your large purple wobbly bat is completely undiminished.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Bubblegum Tate:
Yes, because a Beta could be an Alpha but for one fatal, glaring flaw – he doesn’t give a shit about being an Alpha.
Pogonip
@Bubblegum Tate: Yes, Beta’s the worst of the four. No reader of these sites wants to be a Beta. Either Gamma or Delta, I forget which, are Spock-like observant outsiders. Betas are good husbands, fathers, and workers, the people who keep society humming along in the background. Alphas are the guys readers of these sites want to be; when they say Jump, their wives and kids and employees ask “How high?”. (Alphas never work for anyone else.). It’s another of those silly All-Explaining Theories of Everything.
Seanly
@Pogonip:
#1 – The MMO’s like WoW, etc. and lots of other role playing games such as the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises are essentially computerized D&D. There are many single & multiplayer games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny (which is a little of both), etc. etc where the goal is mostly to shoot stuff. The multiplayer aspect of those games has no story value. The avatars you play in most shooters are almost exclusively male. A few games like Titanfall do have the ability to be a female, but it has no bearing on the game.
#2 – There aren’t really any feminist games (though I wouldn’t call the others anti-feminist – you don’t go around shooting Gloria Steinem or Andrea Dworkin). Some people call for realistic & non-sexist female characters – for a shooter this might be female commando who isn’t running around in yoga pants & a bikini top while the men wear body armor, for an RPG, her armor isn’t limited to a plate mail bikini & her personality isn’t a helpless damsel. Some people call for the violence to be toned down.
Others call for the villains to not be exclusively male (in almost every game, including the old pen-n-paper RPGs), the bad guys are always exclusively male except for a handful of specials like a female assassin or lieutenant to the main bad guy.
Gaming culture has gone mainstream in the last few years. It still has a long way to grow up though. I would like to see better female characters in the games – like why can’t one of the playable protagonist in CoD be a female? Our own military is close to letting women into active combat roles. And why shouldn’t the villains be better equal opportunity employers?
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: You and me both. I spend enough time on the computer as it is, why spend my leisure staring at a screen?
Matt McIrvin
I see myself as having come perilously close to falling into this particular vortex of stupidity in my late teens/early twenties. If I hadn’t been raised somewhat feminist to begin with I might have succumbed. I’ve seen it happen to people.
Part of it is that our society still, to some extent, equates sexual conquest of women with masculine adulthood. If anything it was even worse back in the Eighties. Lots of stupid comedy movies and things saying that any male who was a virgin at age 18 or 20 or 25 was a loser, so you were working under this deadline, and even if you didn’t entirely believe it, you believed that other people believed it.
So if you’re an awkward male nerd who has difficulty meeting women to begin with, you may just want to get away from all this, and one possible reaction is to create nerdy little boy-clubs revolving around your favorite things that girls aren’t allowed in, so you don’t have to think about it.
A slightly later reaction, if you’re trying desperately to evolve beyond that, is to try to figure out some way that you can parlay the things that actually make you feel comfortable into a way to attract women. So women are allowed into the boys’ club… but only if it’s understood that they’re sexually available, or at least open-minded about the possibility, and that they’re not going to do anything to make you uncomfortable.
And when they react negatively to being hit on in offices or convention halls, or start objecting to idiotic fantasy imagery in your favorite media, or generally rock the boat… well, geez, it’s like every deck is stacked against you and you can’t win! And some of these boys just go completely around the bend into full-blown misogyny, the idea that women are all conspiring against them. Get them together with some angry divorced guys and you have a real toxic brew. A lot of it is that on some level they don’t understand what’s actually bothering them.
Bubblegum Tate
@Pogonip:
Gotcha. I just assumed that because Delta and Gamma are later in Greek alphabet than Beta, they would be worse. I guess I was applying the wrong kind of logic to it, which is to say, logic.
PIGL
@Pee Cee:Red Pill: flaming misogynist assholes who blame women for the consequences of their
personality disordersactions.scav
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Better still, we may have attained the Too Left Effete rating.
Pogonip
@Seanly: Maybe there’s an untapped market for what you want. If you get rich the Balloon Juice animal charity gets 10%.
Me, I’m sticking with Duck Hunt.
Pogonip
@Bubblegum Tate: Gamma’s bad too, but not as bad as Beta.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
I think it’s also the fact that they don’t want to have to retreat into a special, anti-feminist group. There shouldn’t be a “no bitchez allowed” restriction on the group, because there shouldn’t have to be; they should be able to just start playing any game they want and have it assumed that any racist, sexist, homophobic or glibertarian comment will be tolerated and accepted as common wisdom.
So basically “I want to be a bigot but I don’t want to have to acknowledge that I’m a bigot.”
gorram
Some of y’all on here at talking about not caring to learn more about Red Pill. I’ve known about him for a while, and let me tell you, you need to keep your eyes on this clown. He’s thick as all hell, but his “Dark Enlightenment” theories and such are gaining a scary amount of traction in certain circles and are basically a rehashing of fascism.
Visceral
@Frankensteinbeck:
Almost. MRAs believe that feminism has worked hard for decades to free women to act on their feelings and instincts and be incompetent, entitled, trashy, and above all promiscuous with dumb thugs who appeal on a purely physical level … while smart, sensitive, honorable, and hardworking men like themselves who would have been a great catch 50 years ago are now not only rejected out of hand, but still forced to support trashy women and their illegitimate children through taxation and welfare. The results are just as bad for women, but that becomes a convenient excuse for more feminism.
Racism is only a part of it to the extent that MRAs believe that the stereotypical black male – impulsive, self-absorbed, mindlessly sexual, and bone idle except for violence and status display – is now being diligently promoted as the new model of masculinity, but this has less to do with feminism than with other aspects of the vast left-wing conspiracy.
Jay C
@scav:
But can you dance to it…..?
coin operated
@Frankensteinbeck:
There was a book I read some years back called “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, where he describes the “Nice Guy” as the most deceitful, misogynistic critter in the social universe. The author had an interesting social history behind the “nice guy” syndrome, but in the end laid the blame on men themselves for not being attractive to today’s women. I’m certain that the Red Pill society would reject it out of hand.
InternetDragons
After seeing a few comments here, I have to say I kinda hope that non-gamer readers don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the gaming world is awful/gaming is dumb/gamers are icky.
Like many of you, I garden, I do some pretty serious cooking, I help out with animal rescue and spend quality time with my own pets, love good books and movies, have a demanding and satisfying career, and enjoy my friends.
I am also a lifelong gamer, currently playing WoW and Diablo III.
As a woman (and feminist, thanks!), I’ve been around plenty of idiots in games. But – I love much of the gaming community. I love gaming. Playing an MMO with a group of people I enjoy is way more satisfying and relaxing than vegetating in front of a TV screen,.
Gaming has brought me friends from all over the world. The WoW guild I’m in is international, and includes those whose “real” life roles range from physicians, attorneys, architects, and physicists to students, stay-at-home moms and dads, and those looking for work or in transition between jobs (or country of residence!). Thanks to these guys, I’ve learned a little Mandarin, have gotten some amazing recipes for S. African style barbecue, visited Alberta, and participated remotely in a wedding party in India.
Slaying internet monsters together as a team has been, and continues to be, a great experience and one I look forward to every week.
Yeah, the toxic and crazy stuff is out there – just as it is everywhere. But please don’t decide, based on ‘gamergate’ or the moronic Red Pill crew, that gaming or gamers are A Bad Thing or something you’d not want to be involved with. Just sayin.
coin operated
@InternetDragons:
Understand your concern, but don’t see that happening here. We’re picking on a specific subculture of the gaming community…and they deserve having a little light shined on their ugly little clique.
sm*t cl*de
“I feel like a helpless outsider, but I can imagine a society in which other people are in total control, and I derive vicarious satisfaction from sharing a Y-chromosome with those other people.”
If the guy wants to opt out of society, this is a win-win situation.
mtraven
Oooh, you’ve discovered the world of #nrx aka neoreactionarysphere. Have fun!
Just Some Fuckhead
I still don’t understand gamergate. Is there a shorthand version of events? Nevermind, I don’t care enough.
RSA
@coin operated:
This is the best thing I’ve read tonight. Thanks for sharing your memories.
Brett
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Basically, a female game designer named Zoe Quinn was getting shit over a game she designed called Depression Quest from asshole “hardcore” gamer types who didn’t think it was a “real game”. Then her stalker-ish, possessive, asshole ex-boyfriend published a gigantic angry screed claiming she’d slept with games journalists to get good coverage for it (a claim that was proven bullshit) and helped stir up shit against her on reddit and elsewhere. This led to a gigantic misogynistic hate-fest against her, which got even worse when some minor celebrities (like Adam Baldwin) got involved and started stirring the pot, claiming that there was a giant conspiracy to destroy games with feminism, anti-racism, etc – it’s where the epithet “Social Justice Warrior” came from.
This fused with the giant misogynistic hate-fest against Anita Sarkeesian when she came out with her next set of “Tropes vs Women in Video Games” videos, and spread to Brianna Wu (a game designer) when she criticized Gamergate.
Ah, Internet Fascists. These are the type of guys who think that Rapture in the game Bioshock would have worked if Andrew Ryan had been more racist.
CanadaGoose
@Bobby Thomson: That’s one of their “threats.” They’re going to refuse to have sex wih feminists.
Feminists everywhere ….. didn’t notice.
Jamey
His head looks funny.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yet another programer so utterly socially inept he has to take medication for it. I for one am shocked.
Shocked.
machine
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Here:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate?ref=trending-entries
Mike Caputo
@Villago Delenda Est:
There is where, in your typical liberal arrogant presumption, you’re incorrect. I’m quite well aware of the fact that I’d have been disposed of by the Spartans. I’m also aware, however, that I wasn’t born in that time, and have to make the best of my life as it is now. And I have no desire to live in a world in which my every utterance is scrutinized for the proper amount of pandering to the delicate emotions of weak-minded zombies.
If you ever decide to retrieve your nutsack and look around at the world, you’ll see things like a feminist conference going on where a motion to work with politicians on banning urinals was just passed. You’ll see a law in California requiring “affirmative consent” for sexual activity on college campuses. You’ll see the bit-by-bit undermining of due process and the presumption of innocence with respect to crimes where men are the usual perpetrators.
Mike Caputo
I haven’t read through all of the comments yet, but I have to say I find the general tone interesting. Of particular note is the willingness of so many commentators to use my affliction against me in ad hominem attacks. For the record, I did not suffer brain damage, as the condition was discovered early enough to prevent that outcome. Which is not to say that I haven’t suffered from other challenges, including lack of binocular vision, headaches throughout most of my life, and of course, the unwanted attention of my peers based on my appearance. I imagine that were I to have spent my childhood in the company of the commenters here, that situation would not have been improved in the slightest.
I mentioned my birth defect in the bio to provide context for my life and because it’s something I’ve spent a long time working on not being ashamed of. Although I expect and ask for no one’s pity, on such a “liberal” site as this – no doubt chock full of people who trumpet their own “compassion” and “empathy” – I do find it interesting that there is very little to distinguish the general attitude from the one I encountered on a daily basis throughout most of my childhood.
All of which is fine by me, as it serves only to affirm my conclusion that modern liberalism has long since lost any character of genuine concern for humanity. Its sole collective pursuit is maintaining and expanding the statist mollycoddling that allows pseudointellectual mediocrities such as those who populate universities and left-wing comment sections to go on living their safe, prosperous lives on the efforts of those who create the wealth that sustains the State.
Mike Caputo
@coin operated:
I’m sorry for the loss of your son.
I take it, however, that you never bothered to learn about the different varieties of Craniosynostosis. I underwent 5 different surgeries between the ages of 2 and 6 to correct various issues with my skull and eyes. The remaining visible effects, while noticeable, are not severe, but they were enough for my classmates. There were also less visible effects, including but not limited to breathing difficulties and chronic headaches.
Despite your clever and nuanced employment of convincing arguments such as “LOLWUT”, I have to disagree with your characterization of me. I don’t use my birth defect as an “excuse”; rather, it’s an unfortunate circumstance – one that has created serious challenges for me, including, yes, in my social confidence in particular with respect to women. Red Pill and associated ideas have helped me to overcome many of those challenges.
Even so, most of my insight comes from my lifelong status as an “outside insider”. I’m just enough on the periphery of the social forest to be able to see trees that most people – including, in rather resounding fashion, yourself – can’t. So spare me your advice and condescension.
Mike Caputo
@coin operated:
You do have a talent for being wrong. That book was what got me started on the path that wound up at Red Pill. If you had the courage to look outside your comfortable world, you would in fact see that the primary focus of Red Pill is on self-improvement, and one of its central tenets is that men are responsible for making ourselves attractive to the kind of women we want to date. Not by pandering to what feminists say women want, but by becoming men as men are built by evolution to be.
So you’re not just wrong; you came up with the answer that was the precise opposite of the truth.
Mike Caputo
@John M. Burt:
This is the height of entertainment. First, you know next to nothing about my life other than the high-level summary in the bio. I’ve had plenty of “nurturance” and “encouragement” from a mother who I don’t doubt exemplifies to a far greater degree the kind of empathy that people like you only adopt as a social accessory.
Second, for you to jump straight to this as your “solution” only proves my point about feminization. Based on your username, I assume you’re male, and yet what you think I need is more mothering. Give me a break. What I need is a society that doesn’t presume me to be an oppressor of women and minorities based on the two facts that I am male and of European descent.
Mike Caputo
@Frankensteinbeck:
It does sound hyperbolic, because it’s emotionalist BS. First off, Red Pill, MRA, and MGTOW are not the same thing. MRAs are simply the mirror image of feminists: they believe that by working within the existing feminized framework, they can get enough laws passed to protect beta males from the worst of feminist excesses. Red Pill posits that the only way for men to hold onto a male identity in a world that despises masculinity is to refuse to accept its frame. In short, it says that men should pursue their own interests and hobbies while maximizing physical health, productivity, and financial and material independence.
There is nothing in Red Pill about being a nice guy. What we believe is that the kind of women we want to have sex and/or relationships with respond best to traditional masculinity. Of course, I understand why this wouldn’t resonate with a simpering beta used to subsisting on whatever sexual table scraps his entitled narcissist wife is willing to toss him.
Either you’re an anti-Gamergate activist feeding the victimization narrative, or you’ve swallowed that narrative whole and are regurgitating bits of it here. There are over 30,000 subscribers to the Subreddit which is one of the central hubs of Gamergate-related communication. Not even the frothiest man-hater in the Sarkeesian camp claims that any significant fraction of that number has engaged in threatening behavior, and they only represent one part of the movement. The entire narrative is built on the actions of a few overzealous assholes, a bunch of trolls, and any number of false flag sockpuppets making use of the liberal media’s credulity and sympathy to create a picture of damsels in distress that draws pathetic white knights such as yourself in droves.
Some men focus on self-improvement and understanding human nature to get our sexual and relationship needs met; others, on transparent displays of faux-identification with a female-supremacist worldview. Good luck with that.