February 11, 2017

Nora Reed is the creator of multiple bot accounts on twitter, who came to the attention of lolcow watching communities after taking part in the controversy surround the anti-harassment website Social Autopsy, and it’s creator Candice Owens. When Candice abandoned her original Social Autopsy twitter handle, the name was picked up by Nora, who used the account to go on rant that lasted for several hours about various people related to that controversy and several previous ones (most notably GamerGate)

The initial reaction from the “Almost Official GamerGate Subreddit”, KotakuInAction was to blame the Feminist Activist Randi Lee Harper, who had been arguing with Candice over twitter that her website was a bad idea that could be easily abused by malicious trolls. However, Randi Harper went onto the subreddit to clear her name, and dropped a cryptic hint about “someone less privileged than me that hates me” being behind the hi-jacking of the account.

In the immediate aftermath Nora confessed to having down it, and claimed that Harper had stirred up a “hate mob” by posting on the forum, despite Harper never naming Nora as the culprit. After this, several people jumped in to take Nora’s side.many of whom were lolcows in their own right. Such as Jennifer “MagicNanners” Boyd, David Simon Gallant, Alex “desertfox899″ Leal, and Timothy “Aguyuno” Craig.

The initial incident leading to Nora’s discovery became the prime example of a cycle that hallmarks all of their behaviour.

1) Start up drama with someone

2) DARVO, claim the victim status despite being the aggressor

3) Rant for pages on end about “hate mobs”

4) Retreat into the safety of the echo-chamber where no-one will criticize what Nora just did

I saw it

its pretty decent but still aggressively one sided. Were you aware that “anti-GG” manipulated people into joining it as well by effectively enshrining all 3rd party harassment as Certainly Gamergate Affiliated even though there was no evidence to support it? Or how media and supposedly anti-harassment minded people against GG were conveniently blind and deaf to the harassment and abuse committed in its name while at least GG tried to clean its act up?

But i digress

most of the internal disinfo within gamergate were like, assholes on /pol/ doing play pretend PSYOP games that had very little impact on the actual outcome of the event. Famously, Zoe Quinn unearthed one of these in the form of an IRC chat (see: she followed a spammed link in a public 4chan thread into the irc chat full of armchair commander attention whores and considered this infiltration into the deepest, realest core of the gamergate conspiracy). this disinfo was made into a bigger deal than it was actually was by anti-gg zealots eager to find anything to discredit THE WHOLE FUCKING POPULIST DEAL OUTRIGHT. Most of gamergate’s particular explosion in popularity came from how it touched on an already RRRRAW nerve shared by most dedicated consumers of games and game media as well as generally apathetic people toward the whole affair being incensed by game media’s universal clampdown reaction, blatant show of groupthink and the sanitation of abuse in social justice.

Although the latter was critically under-spoken of because the entire fucking ordeal could be summarized as one side trying to discredit and intimidate the other rather than actually like fucking think critically about any of it at all.

You will notice that most people who were firmly anti-gg havent read or listened to much if anything of what GG raised, yet wouldnt hesitate to intimidate those who do support it or speak out of their staunch opposition to it. It’s particularly interesting that people who profess to uphold social justice would typically refuse to read “The Zoe Post” itself and its obvious and damning testimony of psychological, emotional abuse and manipulation gjoni experienced - then loudly declare eran gjoni as a “spurned exboyfriend who hates women having sex”

like. lmfao. It’s how, you know, they say, “kinda fucked up and ignorant” and in itself a shining example of where social justice politics absolutely fucking fails to protect the vulnerable by being prone to enshrining abusive people as it’s leaders and role models. On a regular basis basis. If you are an SJA and reading this right now, remember how “callout culture” crashed and burned rather terribly? Yeah, I’m talking about what spawned that.

And likewise, to the GG camp itself, because many people who espoused GG treated and saw it as part of a forever war against progressivism and social justice rather than, you know, exposing journalism ethnics or social justice hypocrisy or whatever. So these aforementioned EXPOSED ISSUES were not taken seriously and just used to beat down ideological opponents on the left (le sjws xDD) while pretending to actually care about the issues they are holding up. like. facetious as fuck. So that’s why, even though gamergate “won,” they actually accomplished very little in reforming what they were supposedly ass annihilated about.

It’s a pretty acute case studio of polarization and failure of discourse. It raised alot of IMPORTANT CONCERNS that were almost totally and resoundingly ignored because it just boiled down to “US VERSUS THOSE FUCKERS”.

I was constantly threatened throughout the course of it for even bothering to lend it credence, especially from peoplewho absolutely knew very little of it besides the stark reality, appearance and subsequent rhetoric of women being harassed off the internet, which was in itself fearmongering disinformation to bury the whole thing rather than confront it rationally.

My lasting thoughts about gamergate is “totally exhausting”