There used to be a guy that was a pretty big name in GamerGate. He went by the moniker “KingOfPol,” and was quite good at doing interview streams. I appeared on his show many times, and considered him a friend. One day, he got something sensational leaked to him. It was a screen that purportedly showed Nick Denton, the HNIC of Gawker Media, admitting to all sorts of things…like paying infiltrators to fuck up GamerGate. In case you don’t remember, or came onto the scene late, here’s the post itself:
Now, everyone should have known this was fake off top, me included. But, we didn’t. One reason for that was, KoP, after staking his reputation on this being a legitimate leak, further compounded the lie by telling Fredrick Brennan, then the owner of 8chan, that Stephen Totilo was his source. Totilo runs Kotaku, in case you don’t know. It was so fucking stupid, and I don’t know why Hotwheels Brennan bought it…but he did. After finding out it was fake, he wrote this column:
…I trusted @Kingofpol. Trust online works in networks because everything online can be forged. The #bitcoin-otc Web of Trust project is an excellent example of how we can trust things in a very untrustworthy world.
However, sometimes the people we trust aren’t really trustworthy. In fact, sometimes even people high up on the Web of Trust lie…
I will explain why I trusted it, and then you can draw your own conclusions. I am releasing this information because I believe that it is more important that people know that this is a fraud than my own personal trustworthiness.
@Kingofpol told me about the leak on Skype. He showed it to me, and told me that it was Stephen Totilo, editor and chief at Kotaku who was the source. He told me that he had been speaking to Totilo for weeks, and that this was a confirmed leak from Denton. He told me how hard he worked for this leak, and I decided to help him out with a confirmation. He said that he was passing the information off to Milo, and that there would soon be a Breitbart story…
Then, Kingofpol admitted he lied to me in a call, and the source was in fact an email. He had a fifteen minute Skype call in which he and his girlfriend @cindianimation ranted incoherently to me about a shill conspiracy to create a “round table” of GamerGate and to create “secret leaders” via Skype groups, saying that the owners of r/KotakuInAction were behind it. Something like that wouldn’t surprise me, since Reddit is inherently cancerous and based on identity and unbearable faggots attempt to ruin everything good, but it’s completely unrelated to the fact that Kingofpol lied about his source.
Kingofpol eventually did send me the email of his source: it’s fake. The email doesn’t exist and returns an SMTP error.
Hotwheels and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but this lie was unconscionable. However, I cut my friend some slack. In the column I wrote about his subsequent “retirement” from GamerGate, I went soft on him. It was an editorial judgement, but my friendship also came into play. I can see now what a mistake that was. Yesterday, the KingOfSpaghetti put out some videos challenging me to a charity fight for GG, and called me various names. For one, KoP has quit the movement several times, making his desire to stage a GG charity fight somewhat questionable. Also, even though he said he quit, he still pathetically tags everything with the GamerGate time and time again. Why? Because his relevance is down to almost nothing. In fact, me writing about him here is the biggest shine he’s gotten since last fall.
Still, he’s got just enough influence to have made my overnight exercise worthwhile. Seattle4Truth and I decided to play a little game. We would mock up a fake reveal on Skype and see if the idiot lapped it up. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to tell you that KingOfPol did not lap it up. He drank the whole goddamn jug and then asked for more. In other words, he verified it once again (don’t forget about Steve Tom Sawyer, by the way. He also vouched for that). Here’s some screens for you guys:
https://twitter.com/TheRalphRetort/status/647323221314940929
The logs are in fact “real.” As for truthful? Well, that’s a different question, isn’t it? 😉
I could go on, since there’s a whole lot more. But I think you get the general idea of things. Basically, KingOfSpaghetti acted just like we thought he would. Instead of sitting back and evaluating the situation, he once again flew off the handle like the loose cannon he is. It wasn’t even hard to get him to buy in, because he already wanted to believe. He started going at MundaneMatt, even though he said the two had made up a couple weeks back. The man lost all control of himself, to be honest with you. I guess I shouldn’t expect more from a guy who goes around challenging other grown men to fistfights. Also, maybe next time you’ll learn to keep your big trap shut, and stop fucking with me. Or at least you could consider buying a clue, you fucking idiot.
Regardless of your decision, I hope you enjoyed your Ralph article, Pol.
The video proof. Yes, it was really this easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSktgrb93R4
