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Seneca Resorts and Casinos. Nothing else

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comes close. Hello and

0:31

welcome. Citation

0:53

needed? The podcast where we choose a subject,

0:56

read a single article about it

0:58

on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts.

1:00

Because this is the internet. And

1:02

that's how it works now. I'm Tom

1:05

and I'll be guarding this particular portal to

1:07

hell, but I can't do it alone. Joining

1:09

me are my favorite three heads of Cerberus

1:12

and also Eli, who is

1:14

here but insisted on being a different part.

1:17

Okay, that is the vibe of the show.

1:19

Really upsetting Voltron. I think that's it. Great.

1:22

I get to be the derpy one that thinks he threw

1:24

the thing. And when you just move your arm and I

1:27

get to chase it and it's stupid. And

1:29

I'm stuck in his third head. I feel like third head

1:31

is logically the punchline head. I'm kind of

1:34

nervous about that much responsibility. I would like

1:36

to take middle. And

1:40

since this episode is going to get us- Eli's the boss. I'm

1:42

the boss, right? We got it. We got it. Yeah. And

1:45

since this episode is going to get us

1:47

all docked and swatted 24 hours after it

1:49

goes out, we're going to need a legal

1:51

fund and relocation expenses. If you'd

1:54

like to help keep Heath out of jail, remember

1:56

what they do to tall men inside. Consider signing

1:58

up to support us over at Patreon. Seriously,

2:01

it's bad inside. There's very little cheese for heat.

2:03

Don't let that be on your conscience tonight. Wait,

2:06

what do they do? They just... There's little cheese.

2:08

No, no. What else do they do?

2:11

Go with that out of the way. Okay. Tell

2:13

us, Noah, what person, place, thing, concept,

2:15

phenomenon, or event, what we'll be talking

2:18

about today. How little? Almost

2:21

none. No. We'll

2:23

be talking about gamergate. All right. And

2:25

Eli, apparently we've had, I don't know,

2:28

too easy a time on the internet this year.

2:30

Good. Are you ready for the

2:33

comment section? Jesus Christ.

2:35

Together, old friend. Yeah,

2:38

you could have done another fucking

2:40

listicle, you know? Yeah, fair enough.

2:42

Fair enough. Cool, cool.

2:45

So tell us, Eli. Yay.

2:48

What was gamergate? All right. I'm

2:51

going to do a Tom monologue thing.

2:53

No, you can't say you're going to do it. You just

2:55

do it. You just launch into the mon... Sorry. I'm not

2:58

used to it. Okay. When

3:00

you saw the title of this episode, you had

3:02

one of two reactions. You got to do it

3:04

darker. What do you say? Okay. I

3:06

don't usually always sound like that. When

3:11

you saw the title of this episode, you

3:13

had one of two reactions, right? A few

3:15

of you said, oh boy, but way more

3:17

said to yourselves, what the fuck

3:19

is a gamergate? And I don't blame

3:21

you. I said both because it was

3:23

an Eli essay. That's right. Yeah, that's

3:25

right. And statistically, a very small percentage

3:27

of the people listening to this episode

3:29

were the extremely online millennials who were

3:31

aware of this thing. But what

3:34

if I told you that some

3:36

of the worst shit of the

3:38

last decade, from the election of

3:40

Donald Trump to the widespread rejection

3:42

of the COVID vaccine, can draw

3:44

a straight line right back

3:47

to gamergate? If you've

3:49

looked around yourself in the last

3:51

10 years and wondered how our

3:54

country got so fractured, so poisoned,

3:56

so ridiculously broken, you have, at

3:59

least in part, Gammergate

4:01

today. Okay, all right,

4:03

that's good. It's nice to have a better address

4:05

book from my Kaczynski love letters, I guess. Thank

4:07

you, Eli. Yeah,

4:11

so before we start, Bill Bryson did

4:13

not write a book on Gammergate, but Ian

4:16

Danskin over at Inuendo Studios, the YouTube

4:18

channel, he has an amazing six-part series

4:20

on Gammergate called Why Are You So

4:22

Angry? That's what this essay is largely

4:24

based on. So if you'd like a

4:26

more in-depth and smarter version of this story, go check

4:28

that out. And so really angry in-cell, he

4:30

is the one that you should email. Yeah,

4:33

exactly. We

4:36

will link his email and the notes below

4:38

for sure. Email me too, I'll definitely read

4:40

it. Yeah, so look,

4:44

if you've heard my episode on bronies, you're already familiar

4:46

with the concept of leaderless resistance

4:48

and the targeting of communities of young

4:50

men by white supremacists. I'm

4:53

not going to rehash that whole history here,

4:55

but long story short, as white supremacy became

4:57

less mainstream and the

4:59

internet became more commonplace, white supremacists

5:01

changed their recruitment tactics from pamphlets

5:03

and barbecues to online message boards

5:06

and YouTube takedowns. And I

5:08

would argue no community was more

5:11

vulnerable to this tactic than gamers.

5:13

Well, they didn't leave the barbecues

5:15

completely behind. They're still really into

5:17

tiki torches. And

5:20

now I can't buy tiki torches

5:22

for all my delightful backyard gatherings. I just can't do

5:24

it. I went to Walmart, I

5:26

took a few off the shelf, a white

5:28

guy nodded at me and I was like, I

5:30

have to put this back. Nope, nope. I

5:33

can't buy them now. We're doing an under

5:35

the sea theme. Okay, yeah, the real victims

5:37

of the whole thing is me. Okay,

5:40

yeah, but he's also, every time I try to

5:42

buy a pineapple, I got winked at by the

5:44

unwashed couple standing over by the cantaloupe. So

5:47

yeah, I mean, things have got weird. If

5:49

you don't want to go shopping with Anna and I, Tom, just

5:51

say so. Just take a bath, please. Just

5:56

take the bath. No, no, that's our

5:58

must. It's

6:02

important to the lovemaking, which you would learn

6:04

if you

6:06

opened yourself up and looked

6:08

shopping. Thank you. So

6:11

you're probably asking yourself why were gamers

6:13

the most vulnerable? Well, two reasons. First,

6:16

gamers are a community defined by

6:18

expendable income. You are not a

6:20

gamer if you can't buy and

6:22

own video games, which means the

6:24

truly disaffected kids playing with their

6:27

one action figure next to the drain pipe

6:29

were not part of the conversation. Now

6:31

we're just attacking me and Cecil during

6:33

the show. We're glad that works. Bullshit.

6:36

So your dad wanted you to play

6:38

a sport. Not proud. How

6:40

about that? Exactly. So I'll

6:42

make fun of the sports. Thank

6:45

you. So this in turn

6:47

means you're already talking to like

6:49

wealthier, whiter audiences by default. But

6:51

the second reason is that gamers

6:54

had a victim complex. So

6:56

not to step too far into

6:58

the lane of our resident video

7:01

game expert, but video games have

7:03

always been mainstream entertainment, right? Computer

7:05

games started out as a nerd thing, but

7:08

video games, they got their start in bars.

7:10

The first people to play them were adults.

7:12

The first people to own them were rich

7:14

adults. They have never been

7:16

for nerds as so much

7:19

of gamer culture claims. But

7:21

the people selling these things didn't know

7:23

that or they didn't particularly care.

7:25

So they've always been marketed to

7:27

children. Well, you know, the first

7:29

rule of marketing don't know

7:31

your customer. That

7:35

is seriously the first rule of video game

7:37

marketing for some guy in a lot of

7:39

ways. Yeah. Yeah. So

7:42

as a result, by the time video

7:44

game consoles became mainstream, they are very

7:46

much considered a child's toy. So

7:49

the first generation of gamers grew up

7:51

with them. But then as

7:53

those people got older and their hobby

7:55

was still marketed to children, they felt

7:58

ousted and they grew resentful. They

8:00

told themselves that the quarter-munching games of

8:02

their youths were the real video games,

8:05

and the easier, more complex modern games

8:07

were for posers and idiots. Just

8:10

objectively true, I don't even know what

8:12

that is. Gamers

8:16

in turn took on the identity of nerds.

8:20

A nascent cultural identity defined

8:22

by both feeling smarter than

8:24

everyone else, and, most

8:26

importantly, being hated for it.

8:28

Stop radicalizing me! I don't like what's

8:31

happening. To

8:33

give you an idea, by the way, how pervasive

8:35

this tendency that Eli's talking about is, I've been

8:37

playing a game called See How Long It Takes

8:40

for This Online Retro Gaming Community to Re-reveal Itself

8:42

to Be Racist, Sexist, or Homophobic for like nine

8:44

years now. The current record holder is 11 days.

8:50

Longer than it would have guessed. Yeah, it must have

8:53

been Christmas break or something. Then,

8:57

in 2006, along comes the

9:00

ultimate betrayal. A moment in video

9:02

game history that truly deserves its

9:04

own essay. The Nintendo...

9:08

The two competing machines, when the Wii

9:10

debuted, were the Xbox 360 and the

9:13

PlayStation 3. Sleek, expensive,

9:15

high-priced machines meant for hardcore

9:17

gamers who wanted to see every

9:19

pixel of blood splatter in

9:21

as high a definition as possible.

9:24

Their graphics and hardware were so advanced

9:27

they wouldn't be replaced by the PS4

9:29

and Xbox One until seven years later.

9:32

Or by PC users two years earlier.

9:34

I'm going to get so much email

9:36

from that comment, it's going to be

9:38

insane. You're right. You're right. And

9:43

then, in November of 2006,

9:45

along comes this blocky, chunky

9:47

console with graphics barely above

9:50

the Nintendo 64 and

9:52

of all things, motion

9:54

controls. And that little

9:56

console? Piled drives

9:58

the competition. into the ground.

10:01

Yeah, if you want to know how bad

10:03

it was, the Wii is the seventh best-selling

10:05

console of all time. The PS3 and Xbox

10:07

360 are a distant eighth

10:10

and ninth. That was what it took to

10:12

provoke the ire of gamers. Well,

10:17

to put the Wii into further context, I

10:19

will admit even I once owned a Wii.

10:22

Of course you did. Me. I own a

10:24

Wii. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got him. Worse

10:28

still, they did it with

10:30

sports. Wii sports, to be exact, which

10:33

came bundled with most Wii consoles and

10:35

was a tremendous hit. Kids loved it,

10:37

adults loved it. Hell, for the first

10:40

time, old age homes started bringing video

10:42

games in for older folks to play

10:44

as a part of their physical therapy.

10:46

Awesome. Everyone loved the Wii. Everyone, except

10:50

for self-identified gamers. Okay, when senior

10:52

homes and 20-something keg parties are

10:54

having the same bowling party, you

10:57

have the perfect system. You really

10:59

do. A lot of marriages

11:02

there. But for gamers

11:04

and their newfound identity, the Wii

11:06

represented everything wrong with gaming, right?

11:09

Easy games made for little kids

11:11

and old folkies, bad graphics, and

11:14

admittedly bizarre game called Wii Fit

11:16

that called you fat and permanently

11:19

made your avatar fat when you stepped on

11:21

the scale that came with the game. So

11:23

mean. I feel a lot of personal angst

11:25

radiating off that previous comment there, Eli. You

11:27

can do that to all of us, Eli.

11:29

Some of us do. Like

11:32

me, Avatar looked like Mr. Potato Head, no

11:34

matter what I did. It's

11:36

true. You really can't fathom how

11:38

horrifying it was. It was so

11:41

awful. I am not over it.

11:43

I'm okay. It's okay. But like

11:45

it or not, even with a November

11:47

debut, the Wii destroyed PlayStation and Xbox

11:49

sales that year, almost doubling the sales

11:52

of the PS3 that came out around

11:54

the same time. By the end of

11:56

the seventh generation of consoles, the Wii

11:58

would outsell both the PlayStation and

12:00

the Xbox by 20 million

12:03

units. And, sorry for

12:05

this way too nerdy insertion, unlike

12:07

Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo wasn't selling

12:10

their console at a loss. That's

12:12

just fucking unheard of. Yeah, exactly.

12:14

But perhaps the Wii's most

12:16

egregious sin is that it let

12:18

fucking girls into the clubhouse. Now,

12:21

I want to say at the outset that this

12:23

is factually not true, right? But when in

12:25

fact, there are stopped white men from feeling oppressed, am

12:28

I right? According to

12:30

the Entertainment Software Association, then we'll remember,

12:33

right? There were actually less girls playing games

12:35

in 2008 than there were in 2005. But

12:37

importantly, the

12:39

marketing for the Wii and Nintendo executives

12:41

were saying different. The commercials for the

12:43

Wii had girls in them and hit

12:45

games like Just Dance had the audacity

12:47

to be marketed to girls. And like

12:49

all things that men used to do

12:52

that women are suddenly included in, they

12:54

were ruining it. Well,

12:57

all right, Eli, you have yet to mention a game

13:00

or a gate. Think not getting to

13:02

the topic of your essay in the first half is the new best for

13:04

you. So congrats, I

13:06

think. It's just, yeah. Thank

13:09

you, Tom. But now that our stage is set,

13:11

when we come back from the break, we can

13:13

talk about the actual shit of this

13:15

shitstorm. Promises, promises. Well, I'll see you, Sal

13:17

and I tie Eli to a chair and

13:19

explain that question. What we'll be

13:21

talking about today is not to be taken

13:23

lightly. We'll take

13:26

a

13:28

break

13:30

for

13:32

a

13:34

little

13:36

apropos

13:38

of

13:40

nothing.

13:42

Hi, I'm Faceless Evil. Do you

13:45

have a political ideology or personal grudge

13:47

you just can't seem to get off

13:49

the ground? Yeah, I do.

13:51

Well, then why not try a brand

13:53

new energy source that will get America

13:55

moving again? The anger of young

13:57

white men. The anger of young white men.

14:00

What's that? The anger of young

14:02

white men is a clean burning,

14:04

infinitely renewable resource perfect for energizing

14:06

anything from a candidate for Senate

14:08

to a serial boycott. Wow!

14:11

So versatile! But

14:13

the best part is, like Cold Fusion,

14:15

the anger of white men is self-replicating.

14:18

As you can see on this chart, the

14:20

angrier a young white man becomes, the

14:22

more his life sucks. And the more

14:25

his life sucks, the angrier he becomes.

14:27

The possibilities are truly endless. Thanks to

14:29

angry young white men, my

14:31

personal dislike of a piece of

14:33

media turned into a full-blown PR

14:36

crisis. That's right it did. The

14:38

anger of young white men, as

14:40

long as we're never outnumbered, it's totally fine for

14:42

us to use it. Wait, what? Don't

14:45

worry about it. Your journey

14:47

to justice is just a phone

14:49

call or click away at 1-800-NJ-LEGAL

14:52

or 1-800-nj-legal.com, powered by the Hadad

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to champion your capes. Connect with

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them today at 1-800-NJ-LEGAL or visit

15:13

1-800-nj-legal.com. And

15:33

we're back. When we left off, Eli was

15:35

doing video game history. He

15:38

keeps it up. I'm going to have frequent diarrhea from my

15:40

next essay and show him how it feels. So tell

15:42

us, Eli. What happened next? All

15:46

right. So the year is 2013 and

15:49

as the audience for video games grew

15:51

and broadened, so did its subject matter.

15:53

Yes, the top games of 2013 were

15:56

literally Mortal Kombat 9, FIFA 14 and

15:58

Grand Theft Auto 5. but

16:00

there were also thoughtful interesting games

16:03

like the Stanley Parable and Papers

16:05

Please, all of which true

16:07

gamers now gathered on forums like

16:09

4chan and 8chan, which I've spoken

16:11

about before, despised as an attack

16:13

on their hobby and adopted identity.

16:16

But the greatest attack of all came

16:18

from developer Zoe Quinn's Depression

16:21

Quest, a text adventure based

16:23

on Quinn's own experience of

16:25

depression. I like that

16:28

people were threatened by a morose zork,

16:30

right? And why was it

16:32

this game for the very first

16:34

time that they were mad about

16:36

it? They were never like fucking

16:39

scrabble, other people are spelling stuff that I

16:41

can't spell because I'm a fucking idiot. Never

16:44

said anything like that. All of a sudden this? And

16:47

look man, I'm not shitting on anyone's hobbies

16:49

truly, but if your hobby is

16:51

your adopted identity, you should

16:54

consider in fact if you have any identity

16:56

at all, spoiler you don't. You

16:58

do not have any identity. You do not. Now

17:01

there's been a lot of conjecture about why

17:03

Depression Quest rubbed so many people the wrong

17:05

way. Mainstream media usually

17:07

boils it down to its subject matter

17:09

and the rejection of traditional game formats,

17:12

and to be fair those are definitely

17:14

factors, right? You can't rip off anyone's

17:16

head in Depression Quest no matter how

17:18

hard you try. And who

17:20

makes a text based game where you can't

17:22

choose all the options? But other

17:25

games took on wilder subjects in weirder

17:27

ways. I mean hell, the Stanley parable

17:29

is about arguing with a voiceover until

17:31

you admit that duality is an illusion.

17:34

Okay, that's hard. Still

17:37

way easier than Battletoad. Fair. Yeah,

17:40

so much easier. It is. Yeah. Let's

17:43

do one hand clapping. I don't care, it's so hard. Yeah, no.

17:45

Depression Quest rubbed people the

17:48

wrong way because its creator, Zoe

17:50

Quinn, rubbed people the wrong way.

17:52

Quinn, who currently uses they

17:54

them pronouns, was attractive, brilliant,

17:56

but more than anything, Quinn

17:58

was outspoken. spoken. Now,

18:01

rape and death threats were just part

18:03

of being a woman in games in 2013. Sexual harassment

18:06

was expected and occasionally aired

18:08

on live TV during fighting

18:10

game tournaments. And I know

18:12

what you're thinking, Eli, those are still parts

18:15

of being a woman in gaming, also

18:18

in everything. And that's true, but

18:20

Zoe Quinn was talking about it

18:22

and standing up against it. When

18:25

Quinn got rape threats, Quinn called

18:27

them out. When Quinn got harassed,

18:29

names were motherfucking named

18:31

and that put a target

18:34

on their back. So Zoe

18:36

Quinn also had an

18:38

ex, Iran Bajongi. Now,

18:40

I might be pronouncing that name wrong. Maybe. I

18:43

don't care. Good. I hope

18:45

I pronounce it wrong. I hope I pronounce it

18:47

so wrong he gets sucked back into his own

18:49

dimension and stops bothering Superman. When

18:52

the mainstream media talk about Iran, if they

18:55

mention him at all, they say something

18:57

like Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend posted a

18:59

blog accusing Zoe Quinn of acts. And

19:02

we'll get to what he accused Zoe Quinn of in a

19:04

moment. But before we do, I want

19:06

to be clear. The Joji workshop

19:09

that blog around the tech community

19:11

and his friends for months. It

19:13

was a smear reviewed paper. Yeah.

19:16

He workshopped it online on message

19:21

boards. You can still fucking see

19:23

he workshopped it with his mom,

19:25

who is an HR professional and

19:27

who urged him not to post

19:29

it, but didn't fucking stop him.

19:32

Right. The purpose of the accusatory blog

19:34

in the words of a friend who

19:36

helped him create it was to quote,

19:38

create the maximum amount of damage

19:41

and quote, right. This wasn't

19:43

an angry post fired off at

19:45

the last minute by a rejected

19:48

lover. It was a planned and

19:50

deployed site op, which he then

19:52

posted two forums, which were already

19:54

dedicated to attacking and harassing his

19:56

ex girlfriend. People like to

19:58

pretend that gamer gates. villain is

20:00

a faceless mob. And in many ways, it

20:03

is. But it's also Iran,

20:06

Gajongi, who knew exactly what the fuck

20:08

he was doing with that post and

20:10

has expressed absolutely no remorse

20:13

for what happened as a result. He is

20:16

a bad person, and

20:18

anything bad that ever

20:20

happens to him is a net good

20:22

in the universe. Yeah. So like,

20:24

you know how like the media pretends that the villain

20:26

on January 6th was a mob

20:28

of people attacking Congress? It's

20:30

like that. It's like, it's kind

20:32

of like that. Oh, you mean

20:35

the mob of freedom, patriots, citizen

20:37

heroes defending America's election integrity, Noah?

20:39

It's about integrity in

20:41

politics. We need to

20:43

sue all the machines. Right.

20:46

Exactly. Something. So

20:48

let's get to the post. Modern gamer

20:50

gators, what little remain, and hey, everybody,

20:52

check the iTunes reviews because they're there.

20:55

Those people have retreated to Gajongi's claims

20:57

about emotional abuse and infidelity in the

20:59

post. And I'm not going to get

21:01

into those, right? Because he's a lying

21:04

liar who lies. So there's absolutely no

21:06

reason to believe anything he says is

21:08

true. The claim we know

21:10

unquestioningly without a doubt is 100% untrue is

21:12

the one that gamer gate

21:17

was based on. Namely, that while

21:19

they were dating, Zoe Quinn slept

21:21

with a reporter named Nathan Grayson

21:24

in exchange for a positive review

21:26

of depression quest on the video

21:28

game website Kotaku. Now let me be

21:30

clear. Not only did Grayson never

21:33

review depression quest, Kotaku didn't

21:35

even mention depression quest on

21:37

their site until well after

21:39

Gajongi and Quinn were broken

21:41

up and Grayson and Quinn

21:43

had started dating. There is

21:46

nothing. There is less than

21:48

nothing to the central

21:50

instigating claim of gamer

21:52

gate. And it did not

21:55

fucking matter. Because

21:58

the internet. To

22:02

say that Quinn was harassed, stalked,

22:04

and threatened is such a

22:06

wild understatement to list the terrible

22:08

life-changing things that happened to them

22:10

would not only double the length

22:12

of this essay, but would also

22:14

make it a real bummer. So

22:17

suffice it to say, in my extremely online

22:19

and leftist opinion, literally nobody in

22:21

the history of the internet has undergone

22:24

more harassment and abuse than Zoe

22:26

Quinn and the other targets of

22:28

Gamergate. Well, you can quibble with

22:30

that superlative, but they're definitely in

22:32

the conversation, which is saying

22:34

a lot. Yeah. And

22:37

look, I dealt with a teeny tiny

22:39

fraction of the abuse they put up with

22:41

for the short time I thought people on

22:43

Twitter were reachable. And the fact that Zoe

22:45

Quinn is alive, let alone creating

22:47

on the internet and undefeated

22:49

and unbowed is a testament to their strength.

22:52

And if you take anything away from this story,

22:55

I want it to be Zoe Quinn's

22:57

bravery, not the evil of the mob.

22:59

Okay? They were not beaten and

23:02

long after nobody remembers what the fuck I'm

23:04

talking about when I mumbled Gamergate like one

23:06

of the guys in the Prison and Minority

23:08

Report, Zoe Quinn will be

23:10

remembered for standing up when it

23:12

was hard and winning. If

23:16

you remember at the beginning of the essay, I told

23:19

you this story is about more than Zoe and it's

23:21

about more than video game because Gamergate

23:23

was a model that gave

23:25

birth to the poison internet we now

23:27

swim in. It birthed

23:30

the careers of right wing pundits like

23:32

Milo Yiannopoulos and Sargon of Akkad, Thunderfoot

23:35

and Breitbart News, which rose to

23:37

prominence exclusively because of their pro-Gamergate

23:39

coverage under the stewardship of, that's

23:42

right, future Trump advisor, Steve Bannon.

23:44

People don't know who Sargon Akkad

23:46

is. Sargon of Akkad is the

23:49

guy who tried to intimidate Tom

23:51

by shoulder checking him and Sargon

23:53

almost knocked himself out. Like

24:00

it's not readily apparent to you how stupid that

24:02

is if I had the choice of trying to

24:04

intimidate Tom or like Fucking

24:07

wall. I Through

24:14

Well, and then they called the cops to throw

24:16

me out of the event because Sargon got scared

24:18

of me because I calmly Argued with him while

24:20

he freaked the fuck Every

24:24

universe but this one you hit him and I like

24:27

them all better. I'm just saying me too So

24:29

I just wish you tried to shoulder-check Haley it

24:32

would have been so much Wrist

24:35

in his head off there'd be a shoe

24:37

in his eye right now. He'd

24:40

be talking at school So

24:44

look the tactics used in gamergate right

24:46

fake bot accounts for harassment review bombing

24:48

Doxing right they weren't created with gamergate

24:50

But gamergate is where they became the

24:53

method du jour right in fact many

24:55

news media outlets have pointed out that

24:57

not only did Many foreign agents use

25:00

the same tactics against Hillary Clinton about

25:02

her private email server They

25:04

use the same accounts that they'd

25:06

used during gamergate to do it

25:09

Okay, here's a real

25:11

sentence that happened in my life

25:14

I said to my friend who's

25:16

normally a politically progressive person. I

25:18

said either Hillary Clinton

25:20

is a lizard alien serial killer who

25:23

eats babies or Some

25:26

people lied on the internet you decide On

25:29

the former Millions

25:32

of other people Look

25:35

every bad thing that has swept the internet

25:37

to your horror and confusion in the last

25:39

10 years has gamergate in

25:42

its DNA right relatively obscure meat

25:44

coma enthusiasts Jordan Peterson lies about

25:46

a Canadian bill and propels himself

25:48

to the top of the bestseller

25:50

list Tweets about the code

25:53

vaccine our auto replied to by dozens

25:55

of bots spreading misinformation Gamergate

25:57

isn't just a bad thing that did.

26:00

It is a way of

26:03

doing bad things. Yeah

26:05

and really the thing to remember is

26:07

that these guys are every day very

26:09

busily not having sex with women and that

26:12

gives them way more time to game out this kind

26:14

of fun. So

26:17

how did... That's not what I do with my time though. I

26:19

just like why... You

26:21

could though. You could. I guess I could. I

26:24

have sex with a woman. Let's

26:28

keep it this week. I know he says it

26:30

every week but let's keep it this week. It's

26:32

important to be on record. So

26:35

how did Gamergate end? How do

26:37

you fight this stuff? Well you sell

26:39

the grown-ups because the thing about

26:42

campaigns like this is they don't stand up to

26:44

scrutiny. They thrive in the

26:46

dark corners of the internet but Noah

26:48

tells Eli he should probably take a

26:50

break from because contrary to popular belief

26:52

they don't thrive on attention. They thrive

26:55

on a specific kind of attention. An

26:57

attention that takes them seriously. Right which

26:59

given the facts of the cases a

27:01

hard thing to do.

27:04

Right. Exactly. Enter

27:06

Stephen Colbert. So Stephen

27:08

had another journalist who was a huge

27:11

target of Gamergate's harassment, Anita Sarkeesian, on

27:13

his show for an interview and in

27:15

that interview he made fun of Gamergate.

27:19

Right. As the Colbert character he whined about

27:21

diversity in games. He accused her of personally

27:24

trying to erase all the boobs off the

27:26

internet. In short he

27:28

showed a much much larger

27:30

audience than Gamergate had. What

27:32

Gamergate actually was. Feels

27:34

like the real cell phone for Gamergate

27:36

is thinking Jordan Peterson is deep. Right.

27:41

Okay but Jordan Peterson was right about

27:43

the diet of nothing but steak and

27:45

fucking pocket sauce. That part was real.

27:48

Game regulators should get on board.

27:50

Get on board. Absolutely. Check the

27:52

med schedule. Draw a line. Establish dominance.

27:54

Do it. Absolutely. And look this is

27:56

not a one-off. This ending. Right. Showing

27:59

a larger group of people, what

28:01

this small group of people already

28:03

know's tactic, it's worked against internet

28:06

trolls over and over and over

28:08

again, right? Milo Yiannopoulos, flamboyant, undefeated

28:10

king of the internet trolls was

28:12

undone and deplatformed when his pro-pedophilia

28:14

comments were brought to the mainstream

28:16

attention. Right? Alex

28:18

Jones was, at least in part, exposed for his

28:20

contribution to the harassment of the Sandy Hook families

28:23

by a lucky little podcast called Knowledge Fight. And

28:25

now, he owes those families a

28:27

trillion dollars. So I guess what

28:30

you're saying is that this episode

28:32

of Citation Needed just might save

28:34

the world. Wow. I

28:36

mean, when you put it that way in the script I wrote down

28:38

for you. And look, I

28:40

guess that's at least in part why

28:43

I wanted to do this essay. Like Lord knows

28:45

I can't have been easy to write jokes into this

28:48

for the last couple of paragraphs from my co-host, but

28:50

now everyone who listened to this

28:52

show, like it or not, is aware of

28:55

what Gamergate is. And hopefully, if you

28:57

ever hear someone speak out in favor

28:59

of it, you'll know how seriously

29:01

to take it. Not

29:03

at all, then. Yes. All

29:06

right. And Eli, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one

29:08

sentence, what would it be? I

29:10

should have got off Twitter when Noah told me

29:12

to. Yep, absolutely. Yes. All

29:14

right. Are you ready for the quiz? I am ready.

29:17

All right, Eli, which of the following

29:20

is the best video game for neo-Nazis?

29:22

Okay, Lord. Animal

29:25

Crossing. B. Reichband. Oh,

29:27

Reichband is so good. President

29:32

Evil. B.

29:34

Baldur's Gamer Gate, obviously. Or

29:37

E. Anything with the white

29:39

power glove. Got

29:42

to go with E, anything with the white power

29:44

glove. Correct. Well done.

29:47

All right. I have an ever so slightly different

29:49

question for you. What's the best game system for

29:51

gamer gators? A,

29:54

Xbox 3.60. That

29:57

one doesn't make sense. That's okay. I'm going to

29:59

reveal it with B. B. the Wii U-Net

30:01

of C, the Sega Omega

30:04

Drive, or D, in

30:06

cellular phones. Yeah,

30:09

there it is. I'm gonna go with in cellular

30:11

phones for sure. It is in cellular phones, as

30:13

it turns out. All right, Eli, I know I

30:15

joked about it earlier, but why is it a

30:17

bad thing to build an identity around any single

30:19

hobby or interest? A,

30:22

if you are in fact the sum of your parts,

30:24

at least try to add up

30:26

to be more than one. That's

30:28

it. Oh, that's it. Yeah, it

30:30

is A. I'm

30:33

not trying to startle anyone here, just

30:35

a little life. Okay, Eli, I would

30:37

like to also have a very slightly

30:39

similar question that I clearly wrote first

30:42

in the notes. What is

30:44

the most toxically masculine video game?

30:49

A, Max Pain

30:51

Triarchy. B, Obsessive

30:54

X-Com. C, Mega

30:57

Mansplaining. Or D, Mine Cramped.

31:03

Oh, fantastic. Gotta

31:06

go with Mine Cramped. No,

31:09

I'm sorry, it is Max

31:11

Pain Triarchy. It was Max Pain Triarchy. All

31:14

right, when that means that Cecil is the

31:16

winner. Okay, well, while they

31:18

fight, I'll pick Noah. Noah is the winner.

31:20

All right, well, for Heath, Noah, Eli, and

31:22

Cecil, I'm Tom, thanking you for hanging out

31:24

with us today. We'll be back next week,

31:27

and by then, Noah will have read another

31:29

Bill Bryson book. Stay tuned for that.

31:32

Between now and then, there are at least as many

31:34

hours between episodes for you to start listening to some

31:36

of our other shows. So go ahead and try to

31:38

download this stuff. And if you'd like to help keep

31:40

this show going, you can make a per episode donation

31:42

at patreon.com slash citation pod,

31:44

or leave us a five star review everywhere

31:46

you can. And if you'd like to get

31:49

in touch with us, check out past episodes,

31:51

connect with us on social media or check

31:53

the show notes. Be sure to check out

31:55

citation pod.com. So

32:00

how do you think people are going to take this essay?

32:02

I don't know. I mean, I hope I

32:04

educated some people, we'll deal with some

32:07

iTunes B.S., but, you know, hopefully overall

32:09

it's useful. Sure, sure. You

32:11

know that fatty R-Buckle essay is done. I

32:13

mean, please, I will destroy your computer. Fair.

32:17

That's fair. Your journey

32:19

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