#5. This Can Happen to Anybody (but It Helps if You're Female)
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Each time they'll do it under the guise of fighting for some kind of justice (or rather, correcting the injustice feminists have perpetrated against males and/or video games). For instance, they figure the aforementioned game critic deserved the death threats because she incorrectly described a level from one of the Hitman games. Of course.
What? You mean we expect a critic talking about video games to actually play the video games she's looking at? How ridiculous!
All kidding aside, I sadly don't know enough about 4chan to make a call on how much Zoey is exaggerating the situation. It speaks volumes for what I think of her when I immediately don't believe anything she's telling us. Especially with that last sentence, there. The one referring to Sarkeesian.
This is a really blatant example of how Quinn twists facts in order to suit her agenda. She 'establishes' absolute nonsense claims about being harassed, and then links this back into one of Sarkeesian's more notable mistakes.
Like I said before, these people refuse to fess up to any mistakes on their part. They can do whatever they want, because they're women working in an industry that harasses women. Forget about all those beloved game devs around the world that just happen to be women: They don't matter!
Another cherry picked tweet. Amusingly, I don't even think this one is even that threatening, especially since Sarkeesian does deserve it. Like I said before: these people think criticizing women for poor work should be a crime.
In my case, I was at a bar with friends when I first caught a whiff of the impending shitstorm. We were having birthday drinks when someone reached out to tell me that my ex had written a screed about our relationship that had been posted to a forum I belong to. Slowly, horrifically, we discovered that he had posted it to several other popular forums (that had immediately nuked it) and created a Wordpress blog that was literally nothing but his 10,000-word rant about our failed relationship. Shortly after that, we found Wikipedia edits on my page that had altered my date of death to coincide with planned public appearances (or, in one case, simply "soon").
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We soon found threads about it on 4chan (apparently the only site willing to host a revenge-porn diatribe) and watched in horror as they dug into my past, desperate to scrape up any humiliating information that might potentially exist:
I just realized Zoey Quinn was born on the same day as me... awkward.
Anyway, reading this, I'm under the strong impression that she's referring to the incident when she and Adam Sessler went to 4chan to watch the hacking 'in real time.' You know, the time when we caught her faking all those threats against herself? And this, apparently, is no different.
This is all really funny, considering how someone on 4chan, to date, is still nuking entire threads dedicated to Gamergate. Even the people Zoey are trying to blame are defending her, to a certain extent anyway.
She says a bit more about this, but it's just describing how the situation made her feel. I don't doubt that this controversy has made her feel exceedingly anxious, but she obviously wants the reader to be sympathetic towards her. I am anything but.
#4. Internet Personalities Start Jumping on the Bandwagon
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There is a whole network out there of anti-feminists -- bloggers, YouTube personalities, subreddits, etc. -- who live for this shit. Once they got wind of the post from my ex, they rushed to milk the story for all of the traffic they could, knowing that any "evil feminist caught in the wrong" story is instant traffic from their already frothing fanbases. It quickly went viral -- the most popular YouTube video about the "scandal" has over 850,000 views, as of the writing of this article. The "Quinnspiracy" has its own KnowYourMeme page, and there's even an
entire subreddit about me, which is full of exactly the kind of misogynist bullshit you'd expect.
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... wait, what?
Just to reiterate -- I was not terribly famous before all this. This post from my ex wasn't like the world finding out the president participated in a Hollywood orgy and wound up giving the nuclear launch codes to Gary Busey due to an accidental pants switch. These people had never heard of me before. But they became obsessed with the tale, and in order to get more people involved
they embellished the story into a bizarre wide-ranging conspiracy in which I use sex to control the entire gaming industry behind the scenes.
Quinn is exaggerating here. I also like how she doesn't actually link to The Internet Aristocrat's video. I haven't checked out that subreddit, but I think I will at a later date.
Now, the most important part of this segment is how she keeps insisting that this is nothing more than a sex scandal. Which, as you all know, is not the case at all. She isn't the one controlling the industry: The entire business is corrupt. She simply gave us the key to realize exactly how.
Our rampant attacking of Quinn is nothing more than us trying to beat it into the thick skills of her defenders that there is an issue here.
There's not much more to this part of the article. She says some more questionable things, but nothing really that incriminating. Then, she posted THIS.
I... what?
This guy is doing nothing but advocating being respectful towards you! Why do you think this is disgusting?
Oh, that's right. It's because he knows you did it. I forgot that you don't want anyone to think badly of you. Because women can't do anything wrong!
She then goes on to sarcastically say that she's controlling the entire industry, which says a lot about how delusional she is. No, Zoey. No one thinks that about you.
3. Then It Spills Over Into Real Life
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Recently, I had to have a very awkward phone conversation with my dad (who is recovering from a heart attack) about what 4chan is. My dad's an old-school biker dude who types with two fingers and has me fix the settings on his cellphone every time I see him -- I still don't think he quite understands what all this has been about. He just knows now to hang up when someone calls and screams "YOUR DAUGHTER'S A WHORE" into the receiver.
See, the angry mob engaged in a hacking spree, compromising a clutch of my friends' Skype accounts and, following that, the accounts of people they had in their contacts list, sending baiting and horrific messages to everyone they knew. The friend who supported me the loudest fell the hardest: they posted everything down to his social security numbers and bank statements on his then-compromised site. Any tactic was justified, in their minds -- after all, if somebody doesn't take down these female indie developers who make games about depression and give them away for free, who knows what will happen? There could be other women out there making games and having sex, right now, dammit!
Yeah, and we're supposed to take your word on this... why, exactly?
She's clearly referring to Phil Fish when she's talking about her very vocal friend. But why wouldn't she refer to him by name? Not only is he a 'respected' indie dev, he's also a fairly successful one.
Well, there's quite a few reasons why this is the case. For one thing, Phil Fish is exceedingly controversial. People just do not like his attitude, and by extension, everything he gets involved with has a tendency to sour. Two: There is very, very, very likely possibility that Phil Fish faked the doxxings himself. That would look bad on Quinn if that ever came out, wouldn't it?
Keep in mind has seen no problem with putting links to other people who on her side, while ignoring those who she feels could be a liability to her. Phil Fish, if convicted, could quickly cast a huge shadow on the image she wants to present to the public.
And they are making progress -- multiple talented women in the industry have decided it's just not worth it, knowing that they're
one pissed-off ex away from being in my situation. Another friend who watched all of this unfold declared he was "fucking out of this" and deleted all of his game projects. And that's not even getting into whatever young girls are out there watching -- if they were hoping to break into
this overwhelmingly male industry, the message is loud and clear: "This is what happens to women who cross us. And also, literally anything counts as 'crossing us.'"
And, yes, it was about to get even weirder ...
She mentions female developers quitting, and then refers to Phil Fish again, this time much more blatantly. Um. Sure.
I find it very odd how we don't know a damn thing about these supposedly abused and downtrodden women, especially in today's world.
Indeed, this entire segment of the article was supposed to be about how this has effected her in the real world, but, if you compare this to the online centric ones, there's a lot less 'evidence' to support her case. We have her WORD that her father is being harassed, when no one I know of has even been discussing her family, hometown, her past. She SAYS female developers are leaving the industry, but no one seems to have any idea on who they are or who they worked for. She SAYS her closest friends have been doxxed and harassed, but then she lists Phil Fish as an example twice, and those were both under somewhat suspicious circumstances.
#2. ... And Suddenly, It's National News
Somewhere along the line, for reasons that are utterly beyond me, TV's Adam Baldwin
got involved. Do you know how weird it is to see an actor from a show you love repost conspiracy videos about how your sex life is somehow ruining video games?
Pretty goddamned weird, it turns out. A friend suggested that ever since his stint as Jayne on
Firefly, Baldwin is afraid of women named Zoe. That at least took the sting out of no longer being able to watch one of my favorite shows without scowling so hard I sprain my face.
Yeah, I don't know anything about what Adam Baldwin believes about all this. I'm kind of reluctant to sing his praises without understanding why he feels the way he does, but I do know that Quinn's supporters HATE him, as he's not someone they can silence or ignore. Unlike Boogie2988, Baldwin can't be threatened or blacklisted by these people, because he's not part of their field.
She has the gall to link to a Kotaku article here, when referring to how the 'conspiracy' against her was immediately debunked. Yeah. Do I really have to explain what's wrong with this? It's the one where Stephen Totilo goes on about how Nathan Grayson is innocent in all of this.
And of course, people have already debunked this article anyway.
But strangest of all, their rage is always targeted at the most inconsequential bullshit (like, say, some relationship drama between relative nobodies) instead of the stuff that matters. There is a
lot wrong with gaming and game journalism -- from
industry workers' rights issues to the fact that outlets are being paid to review and feature games. The industry is undergoing huge changes that
will affect the hobby we all love so much, but all of that stuff is boring and this story involves
people having sex! Besides, that other stuff doesn't give you a chance to
sit around and trade rape fantasies and long for the target of your hatred to commit suicide.
Again, she says nothing interesting here. She tells some more lies, posts some more cherry picked chat logs, and is generally all around infuriating me. People are believing her? I can't even wrap my head around that, at this stage.
1. Then, Finally, It Passes (Until Next Time)
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The saving grace of online harassment campaigns is that soon the trolls get bored and move on. The bad news is that often they move on to harass someone else (note that a few years ago, the target of their real-life harassment was
an 11-year-old girl who said something mean about them). And if you don't go away, maybe they'll come back around -- this isn't the first time I've been the target of a harassment campaign. It won't be the last. I'm not going anywhere.
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When you're at the center of something like this, it's easy to get overwhelmed by fear that your friends won't ever look at you the same way again. But then someone you love finds out and tells you, "Hey, jackass, I know you, and I'm not stupid enough to believe a meme-spouting Internet mob over my own personal experience." And then you think, "Oh." And you feel quite silly about ever worrying about that part in the first place.
Again, this is really nothing more than her trying to tell her audience that she's a person too, and that she deserves sympathy.
Except... no she doesn't.
In fact, I've come to realize that most sane people can see through a smear campaign -- groups who actually have a righteous cause
are usually able to express it without using the word c**t hundreds of times. It's hard to dress up petty harassment as a crusade, and the people who refuse to see it for what it is would find a reason to hate me regardless. Let's face it -- if they found any part of the campaign convincing, they clearly didn't need much convincing in the first place. Keep all of that in mind if you ever find yourself at the wrong end of something like this.
Considering how I didn't even know who she was until saw InternetAristocrat's video on her... I'm pretty sure I had to be convinced that something was off about her.
Again, you see this time and time again with all of these articles. "I did nothing wrong. The gamers are to blame." Bullshit.
Of course, that won't undo the damage to your personal life or make the crude Photoshops of you vanish. It won't stop the nightmares or the paranoia or the fear that someone will make good on those threats. But it (hopefully) won't be the end of the world for you. Eventually things will move forward, and you'll still have your friends to help you pick up the pieces. Hell, sometimes you even make new ones you wouldn't have expected.
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Boom.
We know for a fact that Tim Schafer needs people like Quinn to keep making his games. I'm starting to seriously doubt that Quinn has any real friends... everyone she seems to talk to are all involved in the industry in some way, and people like Schafer have a vested interest to defend her.