Someone needs to do an Elon!twitter update of this classic GamerGate meme of Vivian James, personification of video games, leading anons into exile, in which they’re coming back out of the desert as a conquering army, Muhammad-returns-to-Mecca style
Catching side glances at this Nick Robinson thing and it’s like “he’d insistently solicit sex from everyone, but no one in the industry scene wanted to cross him because he’s so influential, his friends could make or break you.”
And I’m thinking “Wait a second, the performative-vulnerability indie dev scene works by trading sex for favor with Gawker-type video game journalists? That’s downright unethical.”
Just recently came across this from a-man-in-black, connecting hashtag gamergate to “norms of chan culture”, and I think he makes a some interesting, true points! It’s worth reading. He’s an anti-, and anti-anythings usually have understandings of their nemeses more worth reading than the anythings do of themselves.
I’m not totally in love with it - it rhetorically asks “Who do [journalists] talk to? …they can’t collectively interact with anyone”, immediately after very clearly laying out the norms and procedures for talking to a collective ‘chan style. That’s part of a general weakness whereby it accounts for norms of anonymity or variable opaque pseudonymity by reference to acculturation but takes norms of “true name” or persistent thin pseudonymity as a priori defaults, and seems to breezily assume the latter as the “real” norms and culture of twitter or even “life in general” when the very existence of ‘gaters and anons, and viability of #gg and ‘chans would seem to call that into question.
But still. And then I checked some of his other storify pieces (Seriously, though, at the point where you’re using a 3rd party site to render your longform twittering even minimally readable, maybe consider not doing your longform on twitter?) and I can tell he’s onto something in this, “The Redpill Right”, because he’s agreeing with things I’ve said.
If you believe what they believe, toe the line, reify their mythology of gaming, and so on, you *belong* in their nomos, a meaningful order.
…[a “nomos”] syntheseises meanings into a coherent system of beliefs that provides people in a given society with a common schema with which to approach the world.
(Sounds kind of like a thede, but probably sounds kind of like a lot of things. It’s probably worthwhile for intellectuals to reinvent wheels every now and then, helps escape the cruft and politics of established fields.)
[They are creating] a “fictive ethnicity.”… Culture, history, lore, philosophy, even a primitive form of religion, all predominate here… making an identity out of reactionary politics…
I will say what intrigues me more, and what could really be a prime mover in that sector, is the construction of a modern, international, English-speaking Australian-American-Polish-British-Scandanavian-Serbian-etc. white volk around a core of internet-native right-masculo-populism on the chans’ “waifus, warhammer, and white nationalism” model
things like Polandball’s (and SatW’s) western-centric resurrection of the concept of national personification, heavy metal culture and the associated Vikingism, feelsguy’s translinguistic sense of selfhood, /pol/’s kebab removal… well, just /pol/’s /pol/ness, really
Now this sounds ridiculous. I know this sounds ridiculous. This is me pointing to cultural trends particularly prominent in the dork niche circles I notice and ascribing to them world-shifting importance. I know it is.
Sure, heavy metal is not the actual historic musical tradition of any people. Sure, Norse neopaganism is not the actual historic religious tradition of any people. Sure, Tolkien-by-way-of-D&D aesthetics are not the actual historic mythology of any people.
Unless, of course, you count “2008” as being a part of history, or those then alive as counting as a people. Or, say, 1978. Or, you know, the 19th century, and the conscious, successful Wagnerian construction of Germanic identity from which these are all lineally descended.
To Golda Meir is attributed the line that there is no such thing as a Palestinian, by which was meant that the identity didn’t predate the establishment of the state of Israel. True, true. Neither was there such a thing as an Israeli. But then the state of Israel was established.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Ghost of Tsushima are good endpoints of the AAA creator maturation-driven “what does the relation of fathers and children mean?” thematic trends of the last decade
It’s funny behind the “walking simulators about depression” stuff, AAA games became pretty thematically interesting this decade. You know what was a good outlet thru the GamerGate era? GameStop’s GameInformer, which had the incentive to make you feel your vidya money is well-spent and irrevocable access of being part of GameStop.
Setting aside that GamerGate only gets a glancing mention before getting tossed into the headline for clickiness
and setting aside that Pareene already did this schtick (”fuck, if this alt- stuff is what gets young people into conservatism these days, that means this is what and who institutional conservatism is going to be for the rest of our lives”) better
Brianna Wu ran for Congress in 2018, we’ve already had GamerGate politicians
Nissan pulls ads from Gawker http://theralphretort.com/nissan-cuts-ties-gawker/
And Gawker making an article in response to it http://gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishonest-fascists-of-gamergat-1649496579 (archive.today link https://archive.today/UXA4r)
It is like they want to deliberately sink their business into the ground by showing themselves as being about the worst place to advertise in, seeing how they treat advertisers.
P.S: bonus points for saying that Renée J. James, president of Intel, is a “craven idiot”.
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Gawker, confirmed for mad. Like. Mad mad.
AND THEY CAN’T DO A THING TO STOP IT.
Looks like they’re opting for the “run ourselves into the ground” option. And here I thought they’d be smarter than that. Lol. I was wrong.
Max Read-era Gawker is a glass cannon.
The Choire/Balk/Doree Gawker could handle this shit, but then it would never have gotten itself in this position in the first place. That’s not speculation, just go over to The Awl, which is basically the Choire/Balk/Doree Gawker aged in place, and check out their Gamergate stuff. It’s still anti-, and given to celebrate their triumphs before they hatch, but that “we’ll get them in the end” stuff is the line of someone rationalizing a strategic retreat and regrouping.
Hell, even Pareene could’ve handled this. He’d be an insufferable little shit about it (I have no idea how he missed bothof the Daily Caller’s “most punchable faces in media” lists), but he at least knew that the Gawker brand voice was contempt, not hatred. I mean, look at this. Correct.
Eh. I could tell Gawker was headed nowhere good in 200…7? 9? Back when commenting was open by audition only and there was an article about some kid falling out a window and one of the commenters invoked Anal Cunt’s classic Conor Clapton ballad, “Your Kid Committed Suicide Because You Suck”, and then someone huffed that we should show more sensitivity, because a child has died and all that, and then the huffer was not included in that Friday’s round of commenter executions.
It’s funny looking at the comments, people reading ‘gaters as a new cultural development that’s ruining your arcadian internet. Nah man, that’s the traditional culture of the old internet you built yours on top of. Used to wander the plains freely, and as recently as a decade ago you intermingled, but by now you’ve pushed it back into reservations on the ‘chans, and you’re still pushing. Cet animal est très méchant; Quand on l'attaque, il se défend.
I guess my investment in all this is that I was born and raised into citizenship in the older internet, and I’ve got a bit of patriotism about it.
If GamerGate happened at the pace of the Dreyfus Affair, J’Accuse would’ve been published around last Christmas and the whole thing wouldn’t be over until 2026
I remember circa GamerGate so I guess 2014 when 4chan kicked some board off and someone drew this cartoon that was like Vivian James leading a column of her people in exile from the city into the desert
and people were shanking it for pretention left and right but not because anyone noticed to mention Palm Sunday or that “fleeing into the desert” is core iconography
and I remember thinking welp, you guys are right fucked
I remember circa GamerGate so I guess 2014 when 4chan kicked some board off and someone drew this cartoon that was like Vivian James leading a column of her people in exile from the city into the desert
and people were shanking it for pretention left and right but not because anyone noticed to mention Palm Sunday or that “fleeing into the desert” is core iconography
and I remember thinking welp, you guys are right fucked
