Gamergate’s fickle hero: The dark opportunism of Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos

[Katashi_itto]

A recurring theme of the Gamergate movement is that it's not about harassment or misogyny, and that the harassers are a minor fringe in the movement, or even false flag conspiracies by anti-Gamergate trolls.

As I wrote last month, there is a serious ethics problem in video game journalism and the industry does need reforms. The latest example of this is the paid branding for the popular "Lord of the Rings" game "Shadow of Mordor," where the publisher only allowed YouTubers who offered praise for the game to receive early review copies. Giving small-ball independent reviewers free copies of a $60 game if they offered it praise seems like a very clear and serious case of corruption.

But there were no organized boycotts or campaigns against the game's producers, Monolith Productions and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The scandal came and went. One YouTube gamer made a satirical video trying to highlight the issue. As of this writing, it has 79 views.

Which highlights a core problem with the movement: When a legitimate corruption scandal not involving women, or feminism, or any real misogynist angle arises, it's more or less ignored. It seems to be deemed not exciting enough to raise Gamergate's hackles.

It's hardly a surprise, then, that the movement has anointed some highly suspect heroes: far-right anti-feminist writers like the American Enterprise Institute's Christina Hoff Sommers and Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos. Neither has any real history with video games or deep understanding of the issues that the industry and its journalists face, but both have a very real history of taking the side against wherever the feminist movement happens to be.

https://trove.com/me/content/XenCW?chid=179957&_p=full-channel-head[2]

[Rex]

1. Somewhere, a vampire is missing his/her minion.

Milo looks like he just woke up from a graveyard slumber.

[MineralMan]

2. Googling him, he seems like a thoroughly unlikable person.

A 4Chan graduate, perhaps.

[LostInAnomie]

3. So... Did this author do any actual research at all?

I'm pretty active in gamergate and there were all kinds of debates about the Shadows of Mordor bribes. It wasn't a big issue because the the people that were bribes aren't journalists. They are YouTube clowns that are ethically bankrupt, but since there isn't any real ethical standard for YouTube content creators it wasn't worth starting a war over.

"One YouTube gamer made a satirical video trying to highlight the issue. As of this writing, it has 79 views."

What!? She needs how to learn to work a search engine then. For example, one of the big names in gamergate (InternetAristocrat) made a video about it that has almost 60k views.

&list=UUWB0dvorHvkQlgfGGJR2yxQ

The rest of it is just a basic circumstantial ad hominem (eg. This reporter is biased so nothing he says can be true). This is the guy that exposed "gamejournopro". No matter what he's said before, that's good investigative journalism.

[AverageJoe90]

4. Yeah.

As I wrote last month, there is a serious ethics problem in video game journalism and the industry does need reforms. The latest example of this is the paid branding for the popular "Lord of the Rings" game "Shadow of Mordor," where the publisher only allowed YouTubers who offered praise for the game to receive early review copies. Giving small-ball independent reviewers free copies of a $60 game if they offered it praise seems like a very clear and serious case of corruption.

But there were no organized boycotts or campaigns against the game's producers, Monolith Productions and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The scandal came and went. One YouTube gamer made a satirical video trying to highlight the issue. As of this writing, it has 79 views.

This is a huge part of the reason why I've been so skeptical of GamerGate myself(other than the doxxing, threats, etc., by some of its worst members). And I hate to say this, but from what I've seen, already, there are indeed some decent people who've been totally suckered into this whole deal without knowing the whole story. And that really does suck, especially because there are some real and valid concerns about actual incompetence and even corruption within the industry.

[LostInAnomie]

5. But that part simply isn't true.

There were long discussions about it on all the pro-gamergate websites. The whole story was broken by Totalbiscuit (probably the most famous Gamergater).

This journalist and all the other gaming journalists whining about it simply didn't do ANY research.

[AverageJoe90]

6. Well, as I said on another thread, I'm still open to evidence, either way.

You have anything in particular? Send me a DU Mail message with links, photos, etc. and I'll be glad to look thru what you show me.