Season 1 Recap and Wrap Up

SPEAKER_01:
It's the latest development in what has become known as Gamergate, an online culture war.

Tig:
Hello and welcome to the last episode in this season of Neutral Good, episode 10. I'm your host, Tig. The first season of Neutral Good is all about hashtag Gamergate. And if you haven't gone back and listened to the earlier episodes, I highly recommend them. With the release of this episode, now's the perfect time to dive into the back catalog and binge from the start of the season. In the previous episode, we checked up on Zoe Quinn in 2024 and learned about their achievements since Gamergate 10 years ago. In that time, Zoe's written and published a book titled Crash Override, How Gamergate Nearly Destroyed My Life and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate, in which they detail the events of Gamergate from their perspective, but also include a pretty thorough guide to fighting back in order to make sure this doesn't happen again. Zoe's also pretty heavily involved in writing for comics these days, such titles as Fearless, Goddess Mode, and more. If you'd like to learn more about what Zoe Quinn's got going on in 2024, check out their website at www.unburntwitch.com. I'll be going over everything we've covered so far, from Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games in 2013, to her last day on the Feminist Frequency podcast, from Zoe Quinn's harrowing personal retellings of harassment, to their releasing a book on how to avoid this in the future. From 4chan, to Total Biscuit, to Milo Yiannopoulos, to Joe Rogan, to mainstream news websites, the highs, the lows, even the mids, we'll spend a few minutes going over each episode We'll probably touch upon a highlight from that episode, and then we'll move on. I don't want to spoil or take away from the episodes themselves, so if it sounds like I'm teasing a bit, I am. Grab a beverage or a snack, get cozy, and here we go. In the very first episode of this season, we met Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic and social commentator. Anita had been producing short video essays about the portrayal of women in media from a feminist academic perspective, and in 2012 decided to focus her lens on the portrayal of women in video games. She launched a Kickstarter campaign, hoping to crowdfund the production of these videos with more potential content and stretch goals. Let's just say the campaign was very successful. And in 2013, the video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games premiered. While this may sound all roses, in some darker corners of the internet, there were very loud opponents of Anita's work. Even before Gamergate had a name, Anita Sarkeesian had been deemed some sort of video game's antichrist by multiple internet communities. It's wild how those communities usually shared a few things in common. If you want to learn more about the struggles that Anita faced, please check out episode one of the podcast, where I include examples of the harassment she faced over and over from the worst people. Episode two of this season might have been one of the hardest to produce. I had to dig through hours of terrible people spouting terrible opinions in order to get aligned on things like the timeline, the claims being made and the people in question. In episode two, we met a bevy of media personalities who helped shape and uphold Gamergate's public narrative, namely the idea of focusing on ethics in gaming journalism. Behind the scenes, Gamer Gators were making prank phone calls, sending harassing emails and Twitter messages with hyper-sexualized threats of violence and or death, and going so far as to phone in a bomb threat to one of Anita Sarkeesian's speaking engagements. In the episode, we also explored the link between 4chan and gamers, featuring clips from the 4chan personality Internet Aristocrat, whose videos Gaming YouTuber TotalBiscuit quoted on Twitter and inspired much of his conversation with Kotaku's editor-in-chief at the time, Steven Totillo. If you'd like to hear those full interviews, I put links in Episode 2's show notes. So scroll back and take a look. I introduced Zoe Quinn in episode 3, after we'd already met their co-conspirator and their detractors. This was on purpose, though at the time it felt a little clunky. Episode 2 was about the capital G gamers, the ones who believe it's their solemn duty to uphold the video game's status quo. In order to demonstrate this properly, I wanted the people in Episode 2 to describe Zoe in their own way. I used Episode 3 to tell Zoe's story in their own words, free from the narrative woven throughout the earlier episode. We heard about the harassment and threats, we heard about creepy phone calls, the feelings of uncertainty and danger attending any public events, and the huge impact on mental health. Needless to say, none of the claims made about Zoe by GamerGators held any water, but they didn't have to. Spurious claims can be just as hurtful when your only true goal is harassing someone to the point they commit suicide. Luckily for us, Zoe is still here and managed to channel their energy into forming the Crash Override Network, an online support network for folks facing harassment and bullying. I'll include a link in the show notes, but you should really go back and listen to Zoe's own words in episode three. I know I said that episode two was one of the hardest to produce, but this one was right up there, too. Episode four was all about the controversial image board community known as 4chan. If you've never heard of 4chan, lucky you. Sometimes I wish I could use that memory wiping device from the Men in Black movies to blank out everything I know about 4chan. Suffice it to say, The site's controversial because it basically allows anyone to post just about anything on the various boards as long as they adhere to a pretty forgiving set of rules. You're equally as likely to read a thread about the historical inaccuracies present in an anime series or the birth of a phenomenon like the Rickroll as you are likely to see racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and other bigotries celebrated in plain sight. It's a tumultuous mix of cultures with little to no moderation which makes it the perfect breeding ground for things like social Oh, and it's been praised by at least one mass murderer. So there's that. The harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, the true stated objective of the inner circle of GamerGators, was organized on and managed by 4chan, on 4chan boards, and in 4chan IRC channels. This wasn't even new for them, as they'd already gone after Anita Sarkeesian a short while earlier. You can learn more about 4chan in episode 4 from this season, where I include links to some pretty in-depth explainer videos in the show notes. I hate that I had to make this episode, but personally I felt it was necessary. I think I covered this in the intro to episode 5, but essentially I see a lot of folks using 4chan's fictional Vivian James character as a mascot for Gamergate, putting her in YouTube thumbnails and podcast episode art, and I think it's poor form, because that character is intended to normalize a rape joke, among other things. It's a long, weird story that features 4chan, once again. Vivian was invented by 4chan's video games board as a response to the backlash they'd been receiving over the threats and harassment they'd been doling out to journalists and games media and generally towards women online during that era. Vivian James was meant to be the opposite of how normies perceived 4chan. If outsiders thought 4chaners were sex-starved cavemen, then Vivian would be plain and average to dash those perceptions. The term ham-fisted comes to mind, but it worked out well enough, apparently, because for many, she is the de facto Gamergate mascot. Vivian's sweater and clover in her hair are direct callbacks to 4chan, and while I'd love to go into more detail, I'd recommend you just listen to the full episode 5 of this season. It's fascinating in a trainwreck kind of sense. Something that stood out to me so much about Gamergate was when Milo Yiannopoulos got involved. Employed by Steve Bannon, yes, that Steve Bannon, who was running Breitbart News at the time. Breitbart is a far right news and culture website that is best described, as Rational Wiki puts it, as Buzzfeed for Nazis. Milo was an editor for the site around the time that hashtag Gamergate was trending on Twitter. and saw an opportunity to grow Breitbart's audience by writing sympathetically for the pro-gamer gay crowd. Milo would go on to crow about feminist influences on video games, which is a pretty stark about-face considering shortly before discussing misogyny and sexism in video games in articles for his own outlet, The Kernel. I guess the money's just too good sometimes, huh? Ah well. This worked out great for Milo in the end. Oh, we know it didn't. He's not writing for Breitbart anymore. To learn more about Milo's downfall, check out the full episode 6 of this season. It's been roughly 10 years now since Gamergate was trending on social media. And just the other day, I saw a headline trying to gin up Gamergate, too. If we don't learn from our mistakes, we're bound to repeat them ad nauseum. There will always be folks trying to capitalize on culture wars. And the faster you recognize them, the faster you can disengage. Gamergate was a crowdsourced harassment campaign dressed up as a movement for social change. And all it took to sell that idea was journalists not doing their homework. This past year alone, we've heard buzzwords thrown around like critical race theory, DEI or diversity hire. And as of last month, the same grifters who latched on to the original Gamergate hashtag and ran with it are back to sell you Gamergate 2 Electric Boogaloo. You'll hear that game studios are being quote unquote forced to add diversity and inclusion to their video games. And you'll be hearing it from the same crowd that sent death threats to Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. Don't fall for it. To learn more about how Gamergate changed the cultural landscape, check out episode seven. I knew when I started this season of Neutral Good that I wanted to follow up on both Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn at the end of the season, putting a bow on everything. I didn't know what that was going to look like at the time. I hadn't actually explored a lot of Anita's work outside of binging a bunch of feminist frequency videos during the early stages of my research. What I discovered this time around was that I should have been engaging with Anita's work all along. It was right up my alley. Our series on Nebula, titled That Time When, is a fun and informative look at moments in media history. The Feminist Frequency podcast featured educated hosts talking about everything from Taylor Swift to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had been missing out. Sadly, Anita recently announced that Feminist Frequency was closing up shop. but there's a few silver linings. Firstly, the Feminist Frequency website isn't going anywhere. It'll remain online to serve as educational material for future generations. The podcast is also continuing with co-host Kat Spada taking the reins. The reality is just that Anita's stepping back. And that's okay. She's inspired an entire generation with her work. To find out more about Anita Sarkeesian in 2024, scroll back to episode 8. For the follow-up episode on Zoe Quinn, I went back and rewatched a bunch of their talks and presentations. During and after Gamergate, Zoe tried very hard to document and catalog the events so that they could be analyzed and defended against in the future. As I documented in episode three, they formed the Crash Override Network to help support victims of online harassment and bullying. And as I mentioned in the introduction, in 2017, Zoe published a book about their experiences and how to avoid more Gamergates in the future. I learned from watching several minutes of Zoe Quinn speaking publicly about Gamergate was that Zoe Quinn knew exactly what was going on and that they maintained a list of actionable ways it could be addressed by government, state and federal, by the media, police, etc. To me, it was moving to see folks come up for the Q&A sessions and talk to Zoe genuinely about their own experiences facing online harassment, asking for tips when talking to law enforcement, and generally thanking Zoe for their work spreading this information. information. Zoe wasn't some monster trying to destroy video games. Zoe was right all along. Thanks for listening to the final episode of this season of Neutral Good, which has been all about hashtag Gamergate. I'm your host, Tig. Links to episodes, show notes, transcriptions and more can be found on the website at www.neutralgoodpodcast.com. I'll be changing things up for season two with new guests, co-hosts and conversations. And if you want the opportunity to have your opinion featured in a future episode of Neutral Good, drop me a voicemail on the website. Thanks for supporting this podcast with your ears. It means a lot to me and I hope you'll tune in for more.