Threats and Gamergate

Most coverage of GamerGate in the mainstream and tech/games media pushes the narrative that GamerGate is a harassment campaign directed against women and minority voices in the video game industry. Specifically, they argue that women like Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and Anita Sarkeesian are the primary victims of this campaign, and that the gaming community has deliberately attacked them in an effort to drive them and, by proxy, all women out of the video game industry.

In reality, the continued discussion of Quinn, Wu, Sarkeesian, et al is sustained by the mainstream and gaming press itself. The mainstream media focuses on these individuals because this paints an easy to digest narrative: These women are being harassed by gamers, which fits with the the outdated trope that gamers are "white heterosexual sexist young men". It preys on the perceived faults of the gamer subculture and is used as a tactic to deflect and avoid discussion which emphasizes conflicts of interest within the very press propagating this narrative.

This argument fails on two fronts: It attempts to ignore the already inclusive and tolerant nature of the gamer identity (exemplified by NotYourShield), and it also attempts to dismiss individual criticisms levied against Quinn, Wu, and Sarkeesian. At its core, this argument is a simple diversionary tactic aimed at derailing discussion by blaming the entire gaming community for the faults and actions of individuals and by blaming harassment directed against Quinn, Wu, and Sarkeesian on dubious voices within GamerGate.

GamerGate is a consumer revolt aimed at addressing the collusion, corruption, and censorship within gaming journalism. The harassment of these women is neither the point of the movement nor even tangentially related to achieving this goal.

As with any other controversy in the history of the internet, the GamerGate scandal has attracted its fair share of trolls seeking to exploit the vulnerabilities and insecurities of those who care about the issues involved. Some of these trolls are non-partisan opportunists, preying on both sides of the debate. Other trolls are partisan to one side or the other. Some of the tactics utilized by trolls often involve creating fake ‘sock puppet’ accounts which impersonate the opposition side in order to engage in behavior that damages the opposition's credibility.

Individuals from both sides and from neutral parties in the GamerGate controversy have all been aggressively targeted with threats, intimidation, and harassment. The mainstream media’s coverage of this has been glaringly one-sided, and has remained purposefully oblivious to antagonized #GamerGate supporters. Thankfully, the threats of violence aimed at #GamerGate’s opposition have thus far never materialized. However, on September 20, 2014, Milo Yiannopoulos, a journalist who has been investigating and exposing corruption within the gaming press, was sent a letter containing a syringe in the mail. Recently, a pro-GamerGate YouTuber known as KingOfPol received a knife in the mail along with a note instructing him to use it to kill himself. This was never mentioned or discussed in the gaming or mainstream press.

JRBelmont asks Jesse Singal why they aren't covering harassment of GG

We are not responsible for any harassment that happens on the internet - trolls have always existed.

Statistics

An Actual Statistical Analysis of GamerGate

Lies, Damn Lies, and GamerGate

Yeah Science! A Data Study on Harassment and #GamerGate

Gamergate Harassment Patrol

While The Media Slanders Gamers as Terrorists, GamerGate Is Hunting Trolls and Abusers

https://twitter.com/_icze4r/status/526443244419571713

Anita

The Utah death threat was declared as a "non threat" to students or staff after investigation. Anita chose to cancel because of the states gun laws

LetsSailHatan trying to get Brazilian clickbait journalists threatening Anita Sarkeesian to stop - video is down will need to have this video either mirrored or reuploaded and replaced

LetsSailHatan saying how she told Anita but got blocked, and reached out to other journalists but none of them replied [2]

#Gamergate: Journalist allegedly outed as twitter harasser sending death threats

Brianna Wu

The nature of anonymous imageboards allows anybody to post anything with no barrier for entry. A single post on 8chan with Brianna's publicly available information (a post that was both condemned by everyone else on the board and eventually removed by the moderators) is not proof that the dox is linked to GamerGate. The twitter account that subsequently appeared and threatened Brianna was a day old account that did not use the GamerGate hashtag in its threats To blame these threats on GamerGate and to declare the entire movement a hatemob, especially with the presence of third party Trolls, is indicative of faulty reasoning. Additionally, 8chan is only a fragment of the GamerGate community. Both Twitter and the subreddit /r/KotakuinAction boast far larger numbers of supporters (see our numbers).

Brianna Wu also has a history of antagonizing GamerGate:^[1][2]

https://soundcloud.com/radio_nero/series-1-episode-4-threats-and-harassment

GG reporting harasser of Brianna

Game Developer Brianna Wu is Doxxed, Blames #GamerGate

Felicia Day

(speculation):

http://imgur.com/piCSj95

https://archive.today/siC2L

Additional

https://i.imgur.com/Y5vsEyp.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/jtjinV2.jpg

http://archive.today/9wF3z

References

1. 
   

   ↑ Brianna Wu Brololz Tweet

2. 
   

   ↑ Snapshot of Brololz twitter account

last modified on 7 February 2015, at 00:10.</li>