In Response to The Hollywood Reporter

Ah, fuck. Here we go again.

I promised I wouldn't do another article about this sort of stuff. Ever since the ol' gamerampage-Battlefront scandal a few months back I had finally decided to throw in the badge and retire from this rage inducing, cherry-picked outrage garbage. Gamergate sucks -- it has and always will. Like, really? Gamergate? Are videogames that important to you? Why does this movement against radical feminism even have the word "gamer" in it in the first place? Didn't you all agree that the word "gamer" sucked anyway?

Anyway, the point is that I quit. However, I guess the old idiom(?) rings true -- a good content cop never stays away for too long.

What brought me back was an article that was published by apparently an actual notable website. Hollywood Reporter, a website whose major viewerbase is made up of what I can only assume to be underpaid soccer moms and college students with those special vibrant color hair dyes, recently released an article discussing the fact that the new trailer for Ghostbusters had now become the most disliked youtube video of all time. And yes, their case is just that (as of this moment) 674,142 people (myself included) just happened to really hate women.

Now, its 10 o clock on May 3rd, 2016 when I'm writing this. That being said, I'm not even going to bother going to the effort to make a deeply worded response to this dumb article. Instead, I'm going to use other people's opinions -- those who posted on the youtube comments -- and just pick out the ones I feel like generally respond to my feelings on the trailer itself:

(click the images to expand them if they're too small)

Alright, so that's the general stuff out of the way. Let's get to the article -- but, before I do, I want to address an obvious point I've never really addressed in one of these before: the fact is that 99% of people recognize this is bullshit and thing the "misogyny" argument is retarded. Let's be real with ourselves -- this isn't some giant threat to society that we've cracked it up to be. It is simply some extremely vocal minority that the media has been utilizing to get a few quick views while spreading fear of a "censored society" to the masses. In a few years, it's very likely that the movements will die out, and the colleges and universities that have decided to follow through with the stupid demands of these movements will finally concede and remove them. I'm sure some aspects will always be the same and continued to be argued about in the years to come, but I think the main reason I hated shit like Gamergate was because it picked very underground, specialized, and possibly even fake articles of "the atrocities committed by radfems" in order to seem like its a bigger deal than it is. This is the same strategy many anti-muslim forums have been making as well, focusing exclusively on the violent acts of islam and completely blocking away any possibility of something positive. Anyway, that mini-rant over, that doesn't change the fact that this is still a stupid article, and I'm still replying to it.

Oh, come on dude. I haven't even gotten to read the article yet and I'm already being bombarded by dumb shit.

Now, I feel like the "film is a victim" argument was addressed by the youtube comments above, so instead I'm going to focus on something else: nerd culture? Nerd culture? What in the god damn fuck is a nerd culture? Is it culture as in like, Mexican culture? Is there nerd festivals? Do nerds come together to commit rituals and sacrifice to their holy nerd god? Is there a some subgenre of music called nerdwave? I admit, I get pretty mad when the word "fandom" is used, but "culture" sounds even worse to the point where its borderline offensive. I still can't help myself from laughing everytime I read a post that says "gamer culture". Like nigga, how you even type that shit and be serious? How does that word come out of your mouth and your first thought is "Oh yeah, that fits perfectly towards the situation." I mean, then again, this woman is saying that bad trailers = sexism so I guess word choice is the least of our worries.

Secondly, what the fuck is a nerd in this context? Ghostbusters is like, a pretty damn popular movie. Like, its a classic. A serious classic. Everyone has seen Ghostbusters. This movie isn't like, some underground classic that has only been seen by a small Tumblr minority. This is a pretty well hyped release. Also, it has nothing to do with comic books, or Star Wars, or any of that shit. Hell, what does the word "nerd" even mean? What constitutes a "nerd" over a "normal human being"? What makes you special for being a "nerd"? For now, I'll just assume that by nerd culture she means Star Wars, Marvel, and the like. Here's a few points on that:

• The female version of Thor was criticized primarily for the writing of the comic, not for its depiction of a female Thor. 
• Much of the problems people have had that involve these changes are mostly due to censorship, the most popular example being the Batgirl cover that was recently banned as some saw it as "implied rape" (what?)
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which featured a main female character and a main black character, was criticized by primarily Rush Limbaugh and the rad conservative krew, not by the majority of people much like this trailer is. The trailer which first featured John Bodega (? idk the british dude from attack the block just google it) had very little dislikes in comparison to likes, and the main outcry at that time was for lore reasons, not problems of race.

Beyond that, I feel like most of the "vicious misogyny and racism" described in the "nerd culture scene" is literally just made up. You can tell how done I am already, and I haven't even read the article. I've made a terrible mistake.

The first problem I'd like to deal with in this statement is the formatting. Like, good lord. It's real easy to fix this problem. It took like like 30 seconds to find where this continues off of in the actual piece, since in that its surrounded by all the other garbage. Secondly, don't both these statements mean pretty much the same thing? Can't "looking dire" still fall into the category of "something strange"? Anyway, I'm assuming the first part is supposed to be the right answer, but unfortunately for us, the author of this opinion chose wrong.

It's because the trailers themselves weren't bad. Both the Fantastic Four and Batman v. Superman trailers opened up the possibility to new interesting ways of telling the stories in their respective franchises, and although the both ended up failing horribly, the trailers themselves aren't bad. Unlike this one.

90% positive? Last time I checked, Facebook only had a like button -- no, scratch that, three like buttons. Where are you getting this 10% negative from? Are you just reading the comments and are going "Hmm yes, by my calculations it seems that relatively 90% of these comments are positive"? I literally just saw an embedded Facebook video like a few minutes before writing this. Unless its some secret hidden Facebook Gold membership feature, I'm pretty sure you're making this shit up. I would also like to point out how straight up conspiracy theory this article is getting, which apexes in the next point.

I think there's an assignment you do in late elementary school here in America where they show you a graph of the popularity of one thing and a graph of the popularity of another thing, and you're asked if that means that graph A caused graph B. It turns out that is false, and that is your introduction to faulty causation.

I feel like this statement is yet another example of faulty causation. The author is implying that amount of largely dislike videos starring females is the direct cause of a large increase in sexism, when that isn't necessarily the case. Still, let's take a look at the videos in the playlist she mentions.

Huh, well, would you look at that. She's right. There is a female majority. However, there is one thing she failed to notice.

THEY'RE ALL MADE BY THE SAME THREE FUCKING PEOPLE

You can't just say it's all females when there's only three god damn females on the list and its just multiple of their videos. I'm pretty sure you need more diversity in order to make that point anything but moot. If you do continue down the line of disliked videos, an interesting pattern develops -- all of the downvoted female videos are critically and popularly panned songs made by popular contemporary female artists who have a history of being critically and popularly panned. In fact, its not just women, either -- most widely despised male artists are also on this list. Hell, I don't even think there is a female majority in these videos. It seems pretty split between males, females, and viewbotted childrens videos.

Anyway, I've now spent an hour on this post, which passes my "actually putting hard work in" time limit. I promised I wouldn't spend too much time on this, so it looks like I'm outie for now.

In case (for some terrible reason) you want to read my gamergate trilogy, you can read it here, here, and here.



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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

GamerGate -- A Trilogy Ends

Part 1
Part 2

This post is special for a multitude of reasons.

Number one: we're getting closer and closer to 10k! I'll probably do another roundup like I did for 1k, except this time not make all the images puush so they don't get deleted after like a week.

Number two: this is our 100th post! Pretty interesting, speaking that when we hit 1k we were at 50. I'm just going to assume this means exponential growth for eternity and it never actually plateaus.

And lastly, number three: as you can tell by the title of this post, this is my last address to GamerGate as a whole. If something else happens in GamerGate, I'll talk about the event in specific -- but as for generally, this is the last one.

This movement has slowly degraded into a cat-fight, mostly due to the help of trolls (yes, I used the word trolls) who think sending death threats to people are absolutely hilarious. This has turned both sides spinning out of control: anti-GamerGaters have used it as an excuse that "Look, they really are trying to attack us! See!" whereas GamerGaters have gone ahead and shut their ears, automatically assuming that they are actually just alts made by the anti party in an effort to make the pro party look bad and not thinking anything else of it again. Of course, both of these are wrong, but both sides seem eager in staying with their side of the story.

I take from the wise words of TotalBiscuit when I say that it makes no sense to stereotype a group of people as one person, and that also applies to both parties. There are people in pro party who believe in journalistic ethics, however there may also be a few who are just radical anti-feminists. There are people anti-GamerGate who believe all games that come even close to their definition of sexism should be panned, but there are also some who just want to have a few of their own games that promote diversity on the side that aren't panned. However, people like to stereotype and therefore both sides are often mislead about the other side, Most people on the side of the pro-party who just came probably think all anti-GamerGaters are crazy feminist bitches. Most people on the side of the anti-party who just came probably think GamerGate is a purely misogynistic movement created by that hacker 4chan. You see how this doesn't work?

So, with my last address to this is a notion of truce, by accepting both the sins and the saints that have happened on both sides. The reason I gave the introduction above is, to make things more simple, I may make it seem like the entire group has done it, but as all you smart folks now know the truth, and I can make things less complicated while still telling things clearly. So, here we go.

• GamerGate started over a blogpost made by an ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn (the creator of Depression Quest). He stated that Zoe had relations with five other men besides him at the time, all people in the gaming journalism. This created the movements first name (the Quinnspiracy), however it was not that great of an idea from the get go to trust some guy on the internet. As far as I know to this day there has never been any proof that the man even knew Zoe Quinn. 
• In response to the mass amounts of talk of the Quinnspiracy, various websites decided to censor any content about it as well as complete radio silence over it. Didn't really help them much at all, did it?
• Time had past, and the movement had changed from Quinnspiracy to GamerGate. In an effort to prove their worth, the pro-party funded a game done by a group of women who were also pro-GamerGate
• ...and in response, the group was harrassed and their fundraiser not given any media attention. Brilliant move, once again.
• The website to Polytron Corporation, Phil Fish's game studio, was apparently hacked shortly after this. The pro-party dismissed this as the first of many "false flags", or fakes done by the opposite party, and was probably not the best decision.
• However, the anti-party used this as traction, as well as the first time GamerGate news actually showed up on the media. This made it seem the connection to the anti-party and the media was closer than it seemed, and multiple independent journalists took at this moment to side with the pro-party.
• And with the increasing size of the pro-party, the games media took this as a clear disruption and the end of morality and humanity in the gaming community, creating the infamous "Gamers are dead" articles that alienated the viewers of these websites. This caused a mass boycott, taking down viewcounts by the thousands, most notably gamasutra whose total viewcount went down by almost 80%
• Independent journalist Milo Yiannopoulos (spelling my memory, give me a break) revealed during his snooping that there was a secret emailing group among both game journalists and game developers called "GamingJournoPros", a name I try will refrain from making any more jokes about. The group seemed reminiscent of a big conspiracy in the political journalism community which resulted in the firing of multiple members of the group. But this is game journalism, so that didn't happen.
• To add even more salt on the wound, a member of Kotaku made a comment on his twitter insulting members of the GamerGate movement. GamerGaters used this to their advantage, messaging multiple advertisers on Gawker media about this attack. Multiple advertisers, including Mercedes-Benz and Adobe, dropped their advertising due to these claims. Despite even THIS, the CEO of Gawker Media refused to fire the person who did it.
• After a long standstill in the conflict, a group of trolls sent death threats to multiple members of the anti-GamerGate party, including Anita Sarkeesian, who by this point had actually surprisingly been on the sidelines. For the first time ever GamerGate would hit national news, and it was not on the side of the pro-party.

By this point both groups have done bad, and I'm eager to just avoid this discussion now entirely and wait to see if anything actually comes of it besides some trifle between the journalists and the people who view their content. But as of now, this blog will no longer showcase it. 

So, what can YOU do in the meantime? Well, wonderful question! First, you can check out my twitter, which is essentially a feed that provides updates for both this and Codex of Aegis, my fiction-writing blog you should probably check out next. Right now, I should probably get back to writing my b- I mean, more stories for the Codex of Aegis!

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

GamerGate Part II: The Quest for the Uncensored News Site

A few weeks ago I made a blog post here discussing the Quinnspiracy. In it I apologized for being late to the party.

Boy, could I have been more wrong.

A lot has happened in these few weeks, and since then it has gone to expand beyond Zoe Quinn herself and even gaming in general. However, for the sake of being careful I'll use this next paragraph to summarize what has developed since then, assuming that the last Quinnspiracy/GamerGate article was the one I made.

It turns out that the alleged internet censorship is real, and it is worse than we thought. This brilliant article by Milo Yiannopoulos shows exposes an emailing list used by many top ranking game journalists, website founders, and indie developers called “GameJournoPros”; a name which leads me to believe that my backseat journalism may be more professional than I give it credit for.

Here is a list of these emails, with important information in highlight, courtesy of Breitbart.com. (images need to be opened in separate tab to be read)

Ah, yes, Journalism ethics sure are bullshit. Besides, I've been meaning to review her game... *wink wink*

People are using your platform to harass a developer. Though more of these people are concerned with censorship, we should really just make that our excuse.

No. This is simply not true. I don't believe it. Shut up.

If we censor their thread about internet censorship, it plays DIRECTLY into their narrative! God, why does making responsible decisions on community content have to be such a pain in the ass!

It's not just popular tech and gaming websites, however. The following image is a screenshot from a reddit AMA with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. In it he's asked his opinion on GamerGate.

And on this, the Darwin Award committee struck gold.

Think it's fake? Here's the permalink. In other news, Reddit's moderation team braving through worst intelligence drought in decades.

And I'm not even done. The bastion of anonymity on the internet, 4chan, has been revealed as to be censoring it's threads as well. 

Now this may be not as bad like the last time, however also like last time that's only in proportion to the other current events. We know have feasible proof that censorship is going on in most major discussion areas of the web.

The main defense game journalism has given up to this point is that the GamerGate movement is a thinly veiled misogynistic scheme that insists it's about censorship, but is really just trying to remove women from the industry. What we have proof is that that allegation is the farthest thing from true.

Sworn opponents of censorship and active members of GamerGate, this is your fuel. Use it to create a wildfire so wide that not even major websites can control it. The two greatest inventions in humankind were writing and the internet, because they allowed the common man to speak his mind. Use these gifts. There have been entire country-wide revolts by use of social media alone. Utilize it, and there will be change.

But before we change others, we must change ourselves. Recently I have watched the InternetArtistocrat's GamerGate stream in which he discusses current events and inspires people to raise their flags for better, unbiased journalism. I have decided that if there is interest, I'll use this site – small though it is – to give the unbiased gaming news people have asked for. And that means not just in GamerGate discussion, but all of gaming in general, whether it be reviews or announcements. If I stir up even the slightest interest in this, I will heavily consider trying to do this.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

The Quinnspiracy, also known as generic internet drama

I was really hoping I'd not have to make something about this, but seeing that it's the only thing I've been able to see on the internet recently I figured I might as well chime in.

For those of you who are uninformed on what exactly armchair internet sleuths are dubbing "The Quinnspiracy", the story goes as follows:

Recently, a game by the name of Depression Quest was greenlit on Steam, made by a Zoe Quinn. This game was, as it turns out, not a game at all -- rather a shitty visual novel. This is a fact.

Where things tend to get a bit shady is where the conspiracy part of this quinnspiracy lies. Apparently, the creator of the aforementioned game, aforementioned herself, allegedly was having "special relationships" with five men, some of which were married, and even more shockingly some of which worked for the games journalism industry.

Now, AS FAR AS I KNOW, there is no SOLID proof that Zoe Quinn was sleeping with any of the alleged five guys, besides a large blog post made by her ex-boyfriend. If anyone has any information on this part that is TRUE and SOLID, please send it to me at the email or twitter that I'll provide at the end of this post. As for now, I'm not going to bother getting into this part, but rather a section with a considerable amount of proof which seems to trouble me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equc1QnQ9rw

What I've linked above is a video made by a man with the charming internet mask "Mundane Matt". The content of this video however, is not important. What is important is the story behind it.

Figure A -- MM video claim

A few days ago, when this conspiracy first began (also forgive me for bringing this up on this event's wind down; as you know with me I tend to think late and write later) Mundane Matt released this video, only to have it removed via copyright claim by "Zoe Quinn". I put that in quotes because, as we all know, anyone can take down content with practically any reason. This "no reason" is the fact that the Quinnmystery claimed that the video contained screenshots from the game that were not available "for public use" -- a thing that turned out to be absolute bullshit, as it was later shown that the screenshots were directly from the game's store page on Steam. However, there is one more thing we shouldn't overlook, and its the "anyone". Just because this person is Zoe Quinn, doesn't mean she's actually Zoe Quinn right? Right?

Figure B -- Censorship on Steam Discussion Boards

Figure C -- Extremely probable censorship by /r/gaming moderator (may need to open in separate window to see)

Figure D -- Deletion of correct content on Wikipedia

Figure E -- Censorship by 4chan moderator (though some may say it is irrelevant)

Figure F -- Censorship on the website GamesNosh, likely by Zoe Quinn herself.

Figure G -- Censorship on 4chan -- content posted features information related to video game journalism, a subsidiary of video game discussion.

What I have posted above are 6 images that I believe are the closest to resembling actual censorship by Zoe Quinn and her compatriots. I got all these images from a compilation made by an anonymous /v/ user, and it is available here. Feel free to check all the content in it at your own pace.

Now as a writer I have a soft spot for censorship of any kind, because I believe it is more destructive than it can ever be creative. The censorship revolving Zoe Quinn is an excellent example of that; in the end, it doesn't even MATTER if the rumors surrounding her are true. At the end of the day, what we do have is exemplary evidence of wide censorship.  Surely, you'd say, you shouldn't send death threats to her, and you're right -- but deleting ALL of the negative content associated with a person is without a doubt censorship, and there's no way to retort against that fact besides sugarcoating it yourself. The internet gives us, all of us, one basic right -- to start discussion about whatever topics we want as long as they follow a set of country laws. You can't say video game journalism discussion isn't relevant to 4chan's /v/ board. You can't say discussion of a video game personality's view of an active video game related event isn't relevant to reddit's /r/gaming. And you certainly can't say that an entire website deserves to be taken down for it's non-threatening opinions on another person, no matter if its negative or positive.

If you wish to discuss this article with me directly, or have any content that can help bolster the quality of this article, please contact me at my email  or at my twitter, @JohnMcGroover. And no, I'm not taking it down. Ever.

- Jacob Robinson, writer of the Codex of Aegis

Edit 8/20/14 8:31 PM
An anonymous emailer sent me a link to this Kotaku article. In short, the editor in chief of Kotaku Stephen Totilo states that "he [Nathan Grayson] was in a romantic relationship" with Zoe Quinn, but that during his time at Kotaku had not written anything about Zoe Quinn during there relationship with the exception about an article concerning the Game Jam situation. While this is true, it also explains the fact that Zoe Quinn did indeed cheat with at least one of the five men rumors have explained, and it does leave the additionals up for some more serious consideration. I continue to encourage all of you to send me any solid information you may have on this, as well as critique on any factual errors I may have made in the article.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis