This is an open letter to most everyone involved in #GamerGate, #NotYourShield, and anyone who’s interested in gaming and the media in general. These are my thoughts over the past 6+ months of #GamerGate and years of shitty click-bait journalism. This is a long read, so be prepared.
Trigger Warning: I’m not going to worry about offending you. If words bother you that much, grow up.
To Games Media
How dare you be so faux-outraged over the Law & Order SVU episode. Does it suck that gamers got demonized on such a huge platform? Of course it does. Know what sucks more? When the self-appointed gate keepers to the industry spend the past years screaming about how gamers are sexist and misogynists and harassers because of the games they play. Of fucking course that’s going to be the narrative the non-gamers run with. They only know what you tell them.
You are as much to blame, if not more-so, than the gamers are. You “journalists” have to know that your “harassment” narrative is mostly false, especially in relation to #GamerGate. But, alas, you ignore those facts as they don’t generate clicks. Well, all those clicks have now led to gamers being demonized to the general public… yet again. Your faux-outrage says it wasn’t worth it, but I bet you loved the thin-lining of money those clicks put in your pockets.
And then to make matters worse, you all decide to get on your soap boxes you think you have and say “It’s not our fault, it’s our ethical duty to report the facts”. Fuck off. #GamerGate has been yelling about ethics for 6+ months and you only responded with “Ethics? Objectivity? HAH!” But now.. NOW… the ethics of reporting on the narrative you created suddenly matters? You know what it seems like to me? It seems like all that matters is your own standing within your little clique, your ego, and your wallets.
You failed your readers, your readers did not fail you.
And n
To Games Developers
Thank you. You developers make some great games that keep hundreds of thousands of people entertained, happy, off the streets and off drugs. Your games help some extremely troubled people through some of the toughest times of their lives. Your games (most of them) are amazing.
You put incredible time, effort, and energy into building games for us gamers. We understand games are hard. We understand they are a labor of love that requires countless late nights, shitty pay, and shitty deadlines. We understand you jeopardize your friendships, family, and personal lives in order to build the games you love.
Keep making the games you love and ignore the neo-reactionaries, the ones who will find any reason imaginable to be outraged. It’s your story to tell, nobody else's. Your story has to live up to your own standards, not some undefined and forever changing standard of the so called “progressives”. If you want to tell a story about brotherhood — please do. If you want to tell a story about sisterhood—please do. If a type of character doesn’t make sense for your story, don’t add them. If a type of character does make sense for your story, do add them. You don’t need to please everybody all the time.
The great thing about video games is that they are art, at least here in the United States, according to the Supreme Court. That means you have the right to offend, the right to free speech, the right to tell your story and build your art.
These “journalists” who think they’re your gate-keepers—they’re not. The only gate-keeper you have to worry about is your own ability to build the games you love. If these self appointed gate-keepers want to try and blacklist you, don’t let them. Speak up and I can promise you gamers will support you.
To New Media
Some of the new media has, sadly, already followed the trend of creating click-baity/faux-outrage writing and videos. That’s sad to see, but it’s unsurprising. It’s easy to give in to those who can so easily falsely demonize you across multiple platforms. I have little to say to those who have. You were in a position to really be a voice for the average consumer, but instead you decided to follow the clique. It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is.
To those who haven’t followed the clique — Thank you. The average consumer has needed a voice for a long time. Not just in video games, but in general. At one point, that was the media. Sadly, as we’re all aware by now, they’ve left their consumers on the sidewalk as they moved onto the greener pastures of click-bait and faux outrage.
But you, you stuck with us. You left politics where they belong and just kept talking about the things your consumers care about. You let others fight battles over gender, sexual orientation, and identity and instead focused on things like the actual video game, or the technology, or the product.
You spoke up when people attacked and demonized your audience. You gave a platform to all ideas, ideologies, and thoughts. You did what you were supposed to do—researched the facts and reported on them objectively.
This is when you take over where the old media used to stand. They’re fighting back so hard because they know this is their dying breath. They know you’re right behind them, ready to take their place. They know they’ve failed their average reader, but like a train wreck in action they are unable to stop. Those clicks are far too powerful. It’s sad, for sure. Like watching a dying cat squeal as they take their last breath of life. Heartbreaking, even. The sad reality is, though, that’s the circle of life.
In short, New Media: There is a whole host of consumers, viewers, and readers out there ready to support you. It is time.
To Radical Progressives (#SJW)
First off, I’m not entirely sure how you get away with calling yourselves progressives. Do progressives frequently call people “idiots”, “scum bags”, “dirt backs”, “worse than hitler”, “better off dead”, etc? For people who bill themselves as the paragons of acceptance and tolerance, you sure are completely intolerant to anyone who dare to think differently or challenge your precious little world view.
You’re not really progressives, but regressives. You seem to believe that women are actually damsels in distress who are too weak to help themselves, so you’re here to save them from the big evil patriarchy. You act like you believe people of color are actually powerless in this world, unable to fend for themselves, think for themselves, or make their own life choices because that scary Oppressor is always in their way.
When a woman, or person of color, makes a living for themselves, and forms their own thoughts and opinions that are different from yours, you’re very quick to downplay their achievements. You tell them that they’ve just internalized their misogyny/racism, that they’re just trying to fit into the “boys/white club”, or that they only got to where they are because of you, the angelic progressive.
If being a progressive means you believe anyone who’s not a white male is not good enough to succeed in this world, or not smart enough to make their own ideological choices, then that movement has gone extremely astray.
Privilege
“But, they’re not privileged like the white man is!” you’ll say. Fuck you. I’m a white male and my privilege comes from bringing myself back from the brink of self-destruction, overcoming drug addiction, homelessness and many other hosts of problems. My “privilege” comes from the incredibly hard work of putting the pieces of my life back together, finding a phenomenal woman to support me and help me through my tough times, and working my ass off to succeed in this world.
What makes you think you can sit there in your ivory tower and yell at people you don’t know about their “invisible privilege” based solely on their gender and skin color? What makes you think you know anything about a life that you haven’t lived? Most importantly, what makes you think you’re better than someone else just because you recognize the “invisible privilege” that they’re apparently too privileged (or stupid?) to realize they have?
None of that helps. In fact, all it does is show you for who you truly are: A bigot, a sexist, and a racist. And, you’re right—reverse sexism and reverse racism don’t exist. It’s just called sexism and racism.
So I ask you, progressive, how much have you truly struggled in life? Have you lived on the streets? Have you grown up in a home where you didn’t know when then next meal was coming, or where it was coming from? Have you struggled to keep your head above water, balancing student loans, insurance, mortgage, life expenses, etc?
Or have you lived in a cushy home, never wanting for nothing, driving a new car to school when you were 16, running around with Mommy’s and Daddy’s credit card, and vacationing on a private island?
Where can those who struggle cash their privilege check? I’m sure they could use the help paying their bills.
To Professional Victims
You’re not a victim. Words by meanie-heads on the internet does not a victim make. You see, you have this wonderful thing called internet privilege. Unlike the privilege you speak about, this one is visible. It’s usually a little red X in either the upper left-hand or upper right-hand corner of your internet browser. It’ll make all those meanies go away. Think of it as meanie-spray.
What’s most “problematic”, though, isn’t your desire to be a victim in every situation, no.. it’s your complete lack of empathy for actual victims if they so happen to think differently then you. You so easily avoid real, actual, fucking victims because.. I don’t know.. I really don’t.
For people who claim to be about protecting women and people of color from the big bad white man, you sure do have a funny way of ignoring those in actual need when it won’t help to promote your own selfish endeavors. It’s fucking sickening.
To Gender/Identity Politicians
It’s not always about your penis, vagina, sexual preference, kin-type, or whatever fucking else you think it’s about. Usually it’s just about calling someone (you) out on their shitty behavior, or for being a shitty person, or whatever.
Get the fuck over yourself. Your reproduction organ isn’t so important that everyone fucking focuses on it, all the time.
And no, mayonnaise is not a gender.
Arthur Chu
You’re a fucking terrible person. There’s no other way to slice it. How fucking dare you say a charity for a fucking assault and rape victim is “stupid”. Here you have a family that’s the victim of a terrible crime, and a woman the victim of assault and rape, and that’s how you chose to respond? Fuck you.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as you’re the one who’s “known something was happening” and didn’t report it. You’re also the one who took a hash tag to show support to victims of a senseless murder and said it should be “#JeSuisZoe” instead. The sooner you stop talking, the sooner you’ll stop showing yourself to be a truly fucking terrible person.
To Anti-#GamerGate
Your movement is tainted, it’s time to move on. When you have people supporting the notion that #GamerGate “flooded a suicide hotline” because they dared to suggest that those who need help should go get help, there’s something seriously fucking wrong.
When you support people who call a charity for a rape victim “stupid”, there’s something seriously fucking wrong. When you support people who mock a hashtag used to show support for the innocent lives lost at Charlie Hebdo by saying it should be “#JeSuisZoe” instead, there’s something seriously fucking wrong.
When you support someone who calls for the genocide of innocent people who tweet a hashtag, there’s something seriously fucking wrong. When you put someone who thinks Bin Laden was just swell, but Christopher Hitchens deserved to die, on a pedestal—there’s something seriously fucking wrong. When that same person uses the Charlie Hebdo murders as a way to further his ideology, and none of y’all bat an eye, there’s something seriously fucking wrong.
When your loudest voices believe women and people of color are just damsels in distress who need saving, there’s something seriously fucking wrong.
When the data shows the complete opposite but you continue to push the narrative that #GamerGate is all about harassing women, and gamers are misogynistic sexist pigs, because it serves you best—there’s something seriously fucking wrong.
Most of y’all appear to be rather selfish, only caring about what serves you best, regardless of what the facts might say. Something is seriously fucking wrong—it’s your inability to put your ego aside.
To Gamers and #GamerGate
You people are fucking awesome. Rather than rehash this, yet again, I’m just going to point y’all to something I wrote a while ago. Here you go!
