In case you missed it, Zoe Quinn dropped the harassment charges against Eron Gjoni yesterday. It almost brings the long legal saga to an end for Mr. Gjoni, although my understanding is the appeal that was filed against Ms. Quinn’s gag order (Fall 2014 report) will continue. That’s good, because it’s important that we set precedent against this sort of thing happening again. There’s another problem that unfortunately won’t be settled by the courts, though, and that’s the trashy and unethical mainstream media. Honestly, I don’t mind the trashy part. It’s the lies that make my blood boil. I roll around in the dirt here fairly frequently, but I always tell you the truth as I know it at the time. That’s something that will never change. Our opponents on the other side can’t claim that with a straight face.

The mainstream media and the SJW blogosphere have no interest in the truth. They simply want to spin dishonest narratives and get paid for it. Again, there’s nothing wrong with putting your agenda out there and analyzing the news from a certain point of view. I do that every single day. The problem lies with, well, the lies. Take The Huffington Post’s reporting on Zoe’s ludicrous letter (Eron’s response is HERE) announcing the dropped charges from last night.

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Gjoni later fanned an online “hate mob” to launch thousands of profanity- and threat-laden online attacks against Quinn that resulted in a short-lived restraining order. It became so bad, she went into hiding for six months…

GamerGate continued to grow as other women were drawn into the controversy. Some, like game designer Brianna Wu, were targeted by the kinds of threats directed at Quinn. Even a panel meant to discuss the campaign at SXSW was momentarily shuttered after it garnered anonymous threats.

Despite the ugly nature of the threats, online harassment has been notoriously difficult to prosecute. Last year, the Supreme Court made it harder to prosecute people for the act, saying actual intent to commit a crime needs to be shown, not just the threat.

Social media networks have said they would do their best to clamp down on the harassers, often dubbed “trolls.” Twitter announced this week it would appoint a “trust and safety council” to ensure free, safe expression on the site. 

There’s a line in there about Mr. Gjoni refusing comment, but he had to shame them into asking him in the first place. The lying hack, Nick Visser, said he contacted him on Tumblr, where Eron had just posted a response. He never received the message and Visser didn’t print any of his response letter, either. Even here on my site, I show you what the other side says and/or link to it. The scum on the other side can’t even do that. Again, it’s not about putting out your own spin, it’s about being completely dishonest.

(Visser finally did put it in after the public shaming.)

I reached out to Eron early on Thursday morning, and received this response (also, I’m looking forward to possibly bringing you an interview from him when this is officially over):

“Nick Visser, made no discernible attempt to contact me through any medium. Nor has anyone from Huffington Post.”

Obviously, he did get into contact with him later, but that’s beside the point. Why not reach out beforehand? Or, barring that, you could drop a quote in from his response, or at least link the damn thing. I linked Zoe’s letter above, as you can see. I would talk about it myself, but I think Robert Stacy McCain just said all that needs to be said about it over on his site

Don’t let me stop you [from reading Zoe’s letter], but my eyes glazed over when she claimed to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of people saying mean things about her on the Internet. Keep in mind, this isn’t about whether Eron Gjoni is a Bad Ex-Boyfriend — obviously, he is — and it’s not about whether people should say mean things on the Internet — obviously, they shouldn’t — but rather the question is whether this has anything to do with “social justice.” And it’s also a question of whether an entire industry should be conformed to the zany whims of mentally ill ex-strippers and other such feminist crackpots. Must everything in our culture, including videogames, be banned as “misogyny” if it is judged unacceptable by the ideological standards of Gender Studies majors?

The Mary Sue had a vastly different interpretation of events, of course…

However, it’s also a mark of strength that Quinn is doing what’s best for her, rather than becoming a slave to this poorly executed legal case that’s seemingly designed for her to fail no matter what she does. But you can’t lose a game you don’t play. You also can’t win a game someone has quit. Perhaps, this is the best move, as part of what abusers get out of their abuse is being able to watch their victim suffer. Quinn is taking that possibility away.

Actually, you certainly can win a game someone stops playing, especially when the one who stopped playing was the one who started the game in the first place. She asked for the charges to be brought and she asked for them to be dropped. It’s called “loss by forfeit,” you fucking idiots. The first thing I thought after reading The Mary Sue post was: “How stupid do you have to be to write something like that?” Then, the second thing that ran through my mind was: They aren’t stupid, that was just the best spin they could come up with. Whatever the case may be, it’s asinine. Zoe lost, Eron won, and GamerGate gets the last laugh.

Still, we can’t fool ourselves completely. Ms. Quinn receives thousands of dollars a month for doing absolutely nothing. She doesn’t even pretend to make games anymore and has instead switched over to the “online abuse” racket. Thousands of phony sob stories have been written about her in the press. She probably won’t have to do an honest day’s work for the next 20 years, at least. We could sit here and blame it all on her lies, mention what a nasty piece of work she is, then talk about how she’s an abomination. All of that is undoubtedly true. Still, her fraud would not have been possible without an invaluable assist from the mainstream media.

Instead of investigating, they listened and believed (and attacked her opponents). Why did they do this, you ask? I could spend 10 columns laying it out, but it boils down to this. She had the right politics, she had the right opponents, and she had the victim narrative they were looking for. Complex storytelling isn’t the media’s specialty. They would much rather just say that misogynist gamers (a segment the media hates) were attacking a young, progressive woman. It’s easy and doesn’t take much effort. So, that’s what they did. The silver lining of all this is that they woke up a lot of people, me included. The anti-politically correct, anti-SJW forces will never be caught sleeping again. For that, we can thank Zoe Quinn and her enablers in the media.