Pecked to Death by Ducks

I’ve spent far too much time in recent weeks following the depressing saga of Gamergate, a collective outburst that should really have lasted no more than a day but thanks to Twitter has dragged on for months, making life miserable for numerous female gamers, developers and critics. As someone who was a nerdy, shy teenaged male obsessed with computers and games, my sympathies are naturally with... the people who haven’t been waging a misogynistic hate campaign. I mean, Jesus.

The details, if you haven’t heard them, are too grim to relate here, but you can get the gist from these links.

Background: Deadspin, The future of the culture wars is here; New York Times, Feminist critics of video games facing threats.

72 hours of #Gamergate.

Arthur Chu: Of gamers, gates, and disco demolition: the roots of reactionary rage and How Gamergate gave the geek community a bad name.

Film Crit Hulk: On despair, Gamergate and quitting the Hulk.

Clickhole: A summary of the Gamergate movement that we will immediately change if any of its members find any details objectionable.

A measured response.

My conclusions in multiple-choice test form.

Because as we all know, moviegoers stopped watching movies after feminist critiques of ’80s action films forced Hollywood to start churning out rom-coms instead. NOW came for their copies of Commando and swapped them for Sleepless in Seattle, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.

9 November 2014 · Net Culture