So who is this Milo Yiannopolous guy?
I heard he was a racist transphobic space alien. Really? Are you sure? Trust me on this: He’s a journalist.
You probably know Milo Yiannopolous as the guy who broke the ‘GameJournoPro’ scandal, proof that some of Game Journalism’s top talent were colluding. GamerGate loves him for helping them in their quest for ethical journalism.
But gamers? Milo Yiannopolous does not love you, and he is not an ethical journalist.
He thinks you’re wasting your lives, that you’re beta males, socially awkward and obsessive. He’s willing to make you a laughing stock when it suits him, and he’s willing to pretend it never happened the moment you’re willing to click his articles and read them.
On August 14 2014, a mere two months ago as I write this, Milo penned an article titled: 12-YEAR-OLD CONSOLE GAMERS ARE BEING ‘RAPED’ BY DORKY WEIRDOS ON GRAND THEFT AUTO (http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/14/Players-as-young-as-12-and-13-are-being-raped-by-dorky-weirdos-on-Grand-Theft-Auto)
In it he says:
Personally, I don’t understand grown men wasting their lives playing computer games. It seems a bit sad to me. I mean, we’ve all been sucked in to a few rounds of Candy Crush, but if you want to shoot a gun, why not go to a rifle range? I suspect most people who play these games have never held a firearm in real life.
I’m more relaxed about violent video games than most, because it seems unlikely that they alone make people act out in real life. So what if they’re the last resort of the frustrated beta male? It’s not for me to legislate what weirdos in yellowing underpants get up to in their spare time.
Previously, after Elliot Rodger shot and killed six people in the Isla Vista killings, the very next week Milo wrote:
It isn’t hard to imagine why Elliot Rodger struggled with girls. He was a pretty boy but self-conscious, theatrical and obviously disturbed. Despite his own protestations, he was an archetypal beta male: insecure, socially awkward and obsessed with the fantasy worlds of video games and science fiction movies.
It’s those movies and games that provided the contextual framework for his crimes, not the “entrenched misogyny” that feminist campaigners are now jubilantly fingering. He modelled himself — particularly his camp, affected YouTube persona — on the loner protagonists of the video games with which he was obsessed and the sci-fi movies his father directed.
and
What is remarkable, and sad, about Rodger’s response to his alienation is that he fixated on games rather than his dad’s films. His father was involved in the production of theHunger Games movie series, a film arc that represents the triumph of passionate, pacifist, wronged geek over sociopathic, athletic jock. In responding to his damage as he did, Rodger became that which he professed to hate: the anarchic, preening bully.
So it is the games we should look to for insight into his condition. It’s understandable that after a tragedy those left should seek answers — and depressingly predictable that the feminist Left should seize on his manifesto as further ammunition for their insatiable, misandristic war of attrition. But no one is served by the delusion that so-called “everyday sexism” is spilling over into murderous rampages. There is a colossal gulf between casual sexism — what some call “old-fashioned” attitudes to women’s roles in society — and what Rodger did.
To debate Rodger in terms of misogyny is to purposefully misunderstand why he killed, in furtherance of political ends, and to rob us as a society of the ability to stop other damaged individuals from committing such horrible acts. It is a self-defeating, bigoted and hateful response to a horrible tragedy.
So ignore the shoddy, opportunistic posturing from feminists about Rodger’s crimes. It’s the blurring of fantasy and reality in today’s video game-obsessed young men that’s the real enemy. If there’s a cultural milieu that contributed to the creation of Elliot Rodger, it was that of nihilistic video games, not the myth of patriarchal oppression.
Long, long before all this, back in September of 2013, Milo wrote an article expressly to bash gaming as a hobby in ‘Am I too old for video games?’ (http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/comment/column/5344/am-i-too-old-for-video-games/)
I won’t lie: Grand Theft Auto V sounds spectacularly exciting, but it’s not for me. It’s too complicated, it’s too much effort, and it’s too blood-soaked to give me any sort of vicarious thrill. In a real world of terrorism, child grooming gangs and sex changes, nothing the video game people can come up with can compete with the pages of The Sun. I can only conclude that the yellow underpants brigade – teens and man-children addicted to these immersive video games – aren’t getting enough stimulation in real life.
I understand why young people might get the odd thrill from beating up a bad guy, or catching a glimpse of a nipple or two. But there’s something a bit tragic, isn’t there, about men in their thirties hunched over a controller whacking a helmeted extraterrestrial? I’m in my late twenties, and even I find it sad. And yet there are so many of them – enough to support a multi-billion dollar video games industry. That’s an awful lot of unemployed saddos living in their parents’ basements.
Is it that these games provide a bit of macho reinforcement to the terminally beta? It is hard to escape that conclusion. Might I suggest that if you want to feel like more of a man, you should head down to the gym or the football pitch. buff up and then bang a few birds “IRL”?
And journalistic integrity? Is he a journalist with ethics?
Well, let’s see. Firstly, he founded the website ‘The Kernel’ back in December 2011. This was a tech news type website. By September 2012 the following happened:
The London-based blog about the tech startup scene, the Kernel, is being sued through an employment tribunal for non-payment of thousands of pounds by two of its former contributors, and is said to owe thousands more to other former staff.
When launched nine months ago by Milo Yiannopoulos, the founder and sole remaining director of the Kernel’s publisher, Sentinel Media, the magazine-style blog claimed that it would “fix European technology journalism” and write about the burgeoning tech startup scene with a fresh eye. But its apparently impressive roster of staff has dwindled in the past weeks as internal arguments, particularly about payment, have grown.
(http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/sep/12/the-kernel-sued-former-contributors)
So. If he’s a journalist, how does he treat his fellow journalists when he’s in an editorial position of power? From the same article:
The lack of payment has left some of the former writers furious at their treatment by Yiannopoulos. “He expected me to work seven days a week, around the clock,” said one. “And when I declined, he got extremely agitated and started calling me names.”
Another said that after repeatedly seeking payment, “I just realised there was always going to be another excuse”.
Later, in the middle of 2013, the case over these unpaid wages was moving through courts. At one point a high court order was made against Milo’s company, Sentinel Media, over it:
The £16,853 order is being enforced on behalf of Jason Hesse, who was The Kernel’s editor for several months last year before leaving in May. He won an unopposed claim for unpaid wages and unfair dismissal in January. A high court order for enforcement was made on 20 February.
Sentinel Media is said to owe at least £10,000 more to other former contributors and co-founders, and other sums to photographers who said Yiannopoulos, its editor-in-chief, used their work on The Kernel without permission or payment.
(http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/01/the-kernel)
Look at that bolded section. Look at it carefully. Because one of the hallmarks of an ethical journalist is proper attribution and payment for material like photographs. But, oh. Maybe it’s just money problems? Maybe Milo really couldn’t afford to pay these people?
Hesse’s case was not opposed at any stage, and he received no communications from lawyers representing Sentinel Media or The Kernel, despite Yiannopoulos having claimed to a Forbes blogger in December 2012 that “I’ve sunk about £50,000 into the Kernel so far, I think, most of which has gone on lawyers … I don’t know whether I should be proud of the fact that we spend double on lawyers what we do on editorial.”
Except, plainly, Milo never spent it on editorial. It gets worse:
Hesse told MediaGuardian: “Milo never paid me a penny for the work I did as editor, nor for the three months of hosting bills I paid for The Kernel, nor for the money I lent to him personally. Why he thinks he can just get away with it is beyond me. I hope that the high court’s order will help him finally understand that it isn’t his choice to decide whether or not he wants to pay me; it’s the law.”
Two other former writers, Margot Huysman and Mic Wright, say they are still waiting for a balance of about £4,000 each to be paid. Yiannopoulos paid each of them about £1,000 at the end of October and, they say, promised further payments each month – but those were not forthcoming. When Huysman complained of the non-payment on Twitter, he sent her emails saying “You’ve already made yourself permanently unemployable in London with your hysterical, brainless tweeting, by behaving like a common prostitute and after starting a war with me, as perhaps you are now discovering” and implying he had a salacious picture of her from a party that he would publish if she persisted in complaining.
Do you really think that this is the kind of thing an ethical journalist does? Really?
You know what? I don’t care if Milo has personal views about gays, or lesbians, or transgendered people. I care if he’s a principled journalist who genuinely loves gaming. And he isn’t. He doesn’t give a shit about gaming, he just wants to find stuff that makes us look bad and use it. Don’t believe me? He says as much:
So far as I can tell, the indie game scene is ruled over by a cabal of unhappy, unethical people exchanging bodily fluids and doing each other grubby, back-door favours. A series of stitch-ups, paid for in kind. Of course, it’s not for me to police who bumps uglies with whom. But it becomes a matter of public interest, and thus within a journalist’s purview, when the sexual and professional relationships of a small number of powerful people become so inextricably interlinked that allegations of corruption and conflict become commonplace.
I like reporting on stuff like that. It’s what journalists are here to do, after all. And I’m not going to deny that I admire Margaret Thatcher, I hate most modern feminist movements and I think a lot of so-called rights campaigners play up the nasty comments they get for sympathy, and to win arguments. But I’m not here to stamp my politics onto your industry, unlike so many existing writers. And I’ve no interest in building a sinister network to take over your conferences. Perish the thought. Very frankly, I don’t care enough about video games to try.
What I do see is a huge number of people left out in the cold. So if, on occasion, I’m moved to write something about what I see in the video games industry, I hope you’ll come to it with an open mind. It’s a fascinating subject, with a lot of cronyism and dodgy connections waiting to be exposed. That’s catnip to a journalist like me. So let’s drop the childish name-calling and just see how we get on, shall we? And if I get the taste for it, who knows? I might be up for starting a new games website with someone after all.
He wants a story. He wants the story to be dirty, and ugly, and he will do anything in his power to make the story as ugly and dirty as he can, and present it that way. If he thinks you’re willing to click on his articles and give him revenue, he will be nice. And if he doesn't think you care, he will call you:
an archetypal beta male: insecure, socially awkward and obsessed with the fantasy worlds of video games and science fiction movies.
and propagate the hurtful stereotypes that have dogged gaming since day one.
Oh, and that site he writes on? Breitbart? It’s part of a larger journalistic network owned by a guy called Andrew Breitbart. And guess what? That guy’s been accused of hoaxes and fraud too:
Reporting on Andrew Breitbart’s latest bit of deceit–using a selectively edited video to paint a low-level USDA official Shirley Sherrod as a racist–has given the media a chance to resurrect one of their favorite myths: Breitbart’s triumphant takedown of the community-organizing group ACORN.
In September 2009, Breitbart’s website BigGovernment.com posted videos, made by conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, supposedly showing ACORN employees counseling the pair–ostensibly pretending to be a prostitute and a pimp–on how to avoid paying taxes and other illegal activities. The videos were later found to be completely misleading. Among other things, it was revealed that O’Keefe never dressed as a pimp in ACORN’s offices, and in many cases he pretended to be Giles concerned boyfriend protecting her from abuse.
http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/07/23/sherrod-hoax-exposed-but-breitbarts-acorn-fraud-lives-on/
Seriously. Is Milo Yiannopolous really the man you want defending GamerGate? Because he lied about the GameJournoPro list, too.
He said:
Several prominent gaming journalists across America are part of a secret mailing list on which they discuss what to cover, what to ignore, and what approach their coverage should take to breaking news, Breitbart London can reveal.
and
The GameJournoPros emails appear to confirm widely-held suspicions that video game journalists operate with one voice and collude on major issues to distort coverage of ethics violations and to support figures to whom they are politically sympathetic.
And you know what the founder of the GameJournoPro list said?
I didn’t do much to promote the group after initially sending invites to dozens of colleagues I’ve known and respected over my career, but neither was the group a secret. Indeed, GameJournoPros has grown from 52 members in that first month to 150 members today; if someone met the “professional” criteria (i.e. they made all or part of their living writing about or publicly discussing games) and asked to join, they were in, with practically no questions asked. The group has never had litmus tests, partisan slant, or other viewpoint-based membership criteria. Many group members have mentioned its existence on Twitter and other discussion forums in the past.
and
Members don’t share coordinated roadmaps for coverage or discuss how to best present a unified front for or against any product or person. Members often make suggestions of what they think “should” be done regarding some issue or another, but these are rightly taken as off-the-cuff opinions to be considered or ignored, not marching orders from some grand cabal. The group is made up of opinionated people in competition for the same scoops and the same reader eyeballs — not people usually inclined to share secret information or undercut their own independence.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/addressing-allegations-of-collusion-among-gaming-journalists/
So.
I don’t care if Milo’s a bad person because he doesn’t like transgendered people or whatever.
I care that Milo lied to me, and perpetuated negative stereotypes about me.
Do you care?
