The Ugly New Front In The Neverending Video Game Culture War
Gaming’s culture war hasn’t ended. It’s still roiling, with new fights, new targets, new depths of ugliness, but also many of the same tactics.
Feminist Frequency and Crash Override Team Up to Increase Services for Victims of Online Abuse
On Thursday, Anita Sarkeesian’s web series and non-profit organization Feminist Frequency announced it had entered into a partnership with Crash Override, a crisis helpline and resource center for those experiencing online abuse.
Congresswoman Critical of Gamergate Says She Was Targeted at Home by Active Shooter Hoax
Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, who’s called for better enforcement of laws against online harassment, says someone called police Sunday night to falsely report an active shooter at her home. Clark told the Boston Globe that officers descended on her front lawn, some armed with long guns.
Senator Claire McCaskill Begs Men to Consider Shutting Up More
On the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, Senator Claire McCaskill dropped by to make an instructive video about all the subjects on which men should “shut the hell up.” We’re listening. We’re right here with you.
Panelist Says SXSW Ignored Security Suggestions, SXSW Apologetically Announces Summit
Last week, South by Southwest abruptly cancelled two panels planned for March: one discussing how to counter online harassment, and another about “ethics in journalism” stocked with Gamergate supporters. Today, one of the organizers of the online harassment panel says SXSW ignored her security suggestions, right up…
Citing 'Violent Threats,' SXSW Cancels Both Pro- and Anti-Gamergate Panels
A South by Southwest Interactive panel scheduled for March 2016 called “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games” has been canceled, with the panelists saying they were told by SXSW organizers it was due to “numerous threats of violence.” A panel featuring pro-Gamergate speakers has also disappeared from the schedule.…
No One Wants to Admit It, but Reddit Can't Be Saved
It’s looking more and more like Ellen Pao was, in some sense, set up to fail by her male board of directors. Her predecessor Yishan Wong says it. A top Reddit engineer said it right after quitting. It might sound conspiratorial if it weren’t about this particular site.http://gawker.com/top-reddit-eng...
Gamergate Shits Pants Over John Oliver Segment on Online Harassment
John Oliver delivered a righteously satisfying segment last night about online threats and harassment against women. Here is a word he did not use, once, at all, ever: Gamergate. And yet for some unfathomable reason, many Gamergate fans are unhappy about the segment, believing it to be unfair and one-sided and…
House Tells DOJ to Take Gamergate-Style Online Threats Seriously
In March of this year, Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts started agitating very publicly for the Department of Justice to quit ignoring online threats against women, asking them specifically to devote more resources to investigating things like the threats and abuse heaped upon game developer Zoe Quinn…
'I Will Slit Your Throat': Brianna Wu Shares Recording of Death Threat
In an op-ed for The Mary Sue, video game developer Brianna Wu wrote on Wednesday about the latest terrifying death threats she’s receiving, these from a man who’s repeatedly called her house and described, both to her and her husband, his plans to murder her. She also included a recording of him promising, “I’m going…
Rep. Katherine Clark: The FBI Needs to Make Gamergate 'A Priority'
Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts is not particularly happy about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice have responded—or not—to online threats against women, particularly the ones we've been seeing this year from the very devoted fans of Gamergate. Today, she launched a…
Man Who Terrorized Brianna Wu For Months Says He Was Just Kiddin Around
"Jace Connors," the man who made several bizarre and threatening videos about game developer Brianna Wu, has revealed to BuzzFeed news that he's actually Jan Rankowski, the member of a "provocative," as BuzzFeed puts it, cult comedy group. And he says — wait for it — that he's now being harassed by Gamergate and…
Gamergate and Its Victims Hated the Law & Order Gamergate Episode
The Year of Our Lord 2015 is a strange place: last night, Law and Order: SVU aired their hotly anticipated Gamergate episode, in which a Brianna Wu/Zoe Quinn mashup is terrorized by faceless gamers and the police actually do something about it. Surprise: everybody — Wu, Quinn, the people who've been viciously trolling…
A Man Is Making Bizarre, Terrifying YouTube Videos About Brianna Wu
Game developer and frequent Gamergate target Brianna Wu says she fears for her safety due to a bizarre and threatening YouTube video posted by a Massachusetts man this weekend. The man has posted several videos accusing Wu of trying to assassinate him; the newest video shows him standing next to his wrecked car, which…
Someone Wrote 'Erotica' About a Video Game Designer Getting Gang-Raped
A self-published erotica author who goes by Valeria O. has written a thinly-veiled work of fiction about Gamergate, in which a video game designer gets gang-raped by a group of men offended by her latest game. Holy shit, Valeria. Holy shit.
The Birth of the Internet Troll
Trolls are shitting all over our internet. You can hardly search for something as innocuous as "dog" on Google without coming across inflammatory attacks on every possible dog-related opinion under the sun. All horrible things have to crawl before they can walk/crush spirits, though. Even trolls.
Anita Sarkeesian on Colbert: Gamergate Is 'Terrorizing Women'
On Wednesday night, the Colbert Report became the first late-night show to really tackle the soupy pile of weeks-old vomit that is Gamergate, when Colbert hosted feminist video game critic and conquering badass Anita Sarkeesian. She talked briefly about the most recent death threat she received, and, more broadly,…
How We Got Rolled by the Dishonest Fascists of Gamergate
On October 1, the computing giant Intel pulled its ads from Gamasutra, a trade website for game developers, over an essay called "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over" by a journalist named Leigh Alexander. Intel had been successfully harassed by a small, contemptible crusade called "Gamergate"—a…
Thousands Rally Online Against Gamergate
It's been six weeks since the Gamergate campaign first started. Now, for the first time, thousands of people are uniting under a single banner to call for it to stop.
Anita Sarkeesian Cancels Speaking Event in Light of Shooting Threat
Video game critic, blogger, and founder of Feminist Frequency Anita Sarkeesian was supposed to give a speech about the role of women in video games Utah State University today. However, Sarkeesian, one of the prominent targets of #Gamergate, chose to cancel the event after the school received a threat of a mass…
