Addressing Gamergate’s constant harassment:

stillgray:

I’ve been a target of Gamergate harassment ever since I decided to speak out against the so-called “movement”, that was spawned when an asshole named Eron Gjoni published a novella-length blog post about his ex-girlfriend Zoe Quinn, an independent game developer and maker of the interactive fiction game Depression Quest. 

Today, I submitted a video to YouTube talking about the censorship on NeoGAF, which bans the term “PC Master Race” and how it was well within their rights to do so, as the site was never, and isn’t what you’d call a free speech zone. I also talked about the banning of Hotline Miami 2 in Australia. In doing so, I attracted the likes of a few prominent GamerGaters who linked the video out to their little pals, who then took to swarming the video with a host of nasty comments. 

My issue here isn’t with the gamergaters, whose modus operandi is well known by anyone who can rub two braincells together and has seen them in action for the past five months in their non-stop harassment of Zoe Quinn and anyone who dares speak out against them. 

No, I take issue with those who disingenuously claim that the group isn’t about harassment—that it’s about “ethics in game journalism” as if that somehow excuses the harassment or that it’s a higher priority for Gamergaters when in fact they spend most of their time simply harassing people like myself on the Internet. 

I’d be kidding myself if I said they weren’t annoying, and while I have a thick skin, I worry to think about how their gnat-like swarming affects other people with less resilience—or experience to these sorts of attacks. I’ve been dealing with this shit for fifteen years now so Gaters are nothing new to me, but never has there been a shittier collection of rotten human beings collected in a single, odious hashtag.