In case you missed it during the last couple days of drama, I wanted to bring you guys up-to-date on a pretty cool story. While we were all talking about the latest drama with the “GamerGatePros” bullshit, Allum Bokhari put out an awesome column that let members of the GamerGate community give their thoughts on the past year. I was lucky enough to be able to add my voice to that. I thank Allum for the privilege. In case you missed it, here’s what I wrote:
I think GamerGate is something very unique. Most causes would have folded when faced with the same sort of vitriol. GamerGate didn’t quit, though. In fact, we thrived. Think about all the history we made in the face of an almost entirely hostile mainstream media. They’ve smeared us at every turn. Our successes were ignored, and repeatedly, we were misrepresented. How many other endeavours would have wilted when faced with such unbridled aggression from the fourth estate? Just about all of them, I’m afraid.
That’s why I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last year. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, of course. We’ve had our disagreements, and I’ve been in the middle of many of them. But one of our strengths has always been the diversity of our supporters. Robust debate shows vitality. Plus, at the end of the day, we always circle the wagons and support the end goals: cleaning up gaming journalism, holding the media to account when it comes to ethics, and stopping the cultural advance of social justice warriors.
The first year was definitely special, and it will go down in the history books of online activism. This isn’t the end, though. In fact, we’re just getting started. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for GamerGate. If things go anything like the last twelve months, it will be incredible.
I’m also going to excerpt Ian Miles Cheong’s contribution, because it’s just so fucking good. Kudos to you for writing this, Ian:
Ask any gamer or anyone within the game industry what GamerGate means to them and you might get a variety of answers, depending on who you ask.
Over the course of the year, my stance towards the GamerGate movement has shifted. Having initially bought into the “social justice”-approved narrative that all of GamerGate was about the harassment of women, I used to be violently opposed to the movement and engaged in demonizing its supporters, who consist mainly of gamers—including women.
Most gamers don’t much care for political correctness, and the way they speak has been deliberately misinterpreted as bigotry by social justice proponents whose biggest source of angst comes from microaggressions.
The narrative is false, and it’s one I see propped up time and time again to discredit anyone who dissents against what I’d call “social authoritarianism.”
The loud-mouthed ideologue Arthur Chu recently said that I’m literally worse than a Nazi for (presumably) refusing to fall in line with the approved narrative. That alone should say much about social justice proponents and how they treat dissenters.
Question everything, and don’t let others do the thinking for you.
If you wanna read the rest of it, go check out the full column here. It’s well worth your time. Here’s today’s edition of Skull Ralph, before we get to the YouTube stream from last night:
Speaking of our stream last night, it went really well. We had about 500 views when the original copy of the stream got taken down for a ContentID violation. Why did that happen? Because I decided to show a one minute clip of Steve Austin from 1996. Well, thanks a lot, Vince McMahon. Anyway, I have the replay up now, so check it out if you have time:
After all the money I've given to your crooked family? You're a disgrace, @VinceMcMahon. pic.twitter.com/NuAkRVmqeU
— Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort) September 17, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb5yVGtn5Q8
I’ll be back later this afternoon with more. Thanks again for joining us, and I’ll see you in a bit.
