GamersGate: Intel lets spoiled manchildren think they’re important

So GamersGate. A bunch of petulant man children from the open sewer of the internet got roped into some creep’s crusade against his ex-girlfriend under the banner of “objective gaming journalism”, spewed the usual mix of rape and death threats against her, but Zoe Quinn, their intended victim, turned out to be smarter than the lot of them and had infiltrated their main planning channel for weeks. These losers are still sputtering on, the 101st chairborne brigade fighting a losing war against the forces of social justice on blogs and Twitter, a tweet too far.

What kind of lame company would let themselves be roped into their campaign and feel pressured to withdraw advertising from a gaming site just because they say so? Intell, that’s who:

GamerGate’s ballyhooed success with Intel reveals them to be a movement for “journalistic integrity” that is willing to use major corporate sponsors to dictate the editorial content of a website for no reason other than the fact that they disagree with it. As a “consumer revolt,” it has shown itself to be a neoliberal nightmare wherein large corporations are the heroes and plucky independent journalists are the “elite” villains who need to be toppled.

(Incidently, the habit of Feministing here to blank out the Twitter accounts sending death threats in their screenshots but not those of the victims of said threats is mildly annoying.)

By giving in to blackmail, Intel has enabled the most whining, dumbest and aggressive part of videogaming “culture” to terrorise more women and the websites that publish them, in exchange for much more negative p.r. than it would’ve had, had it refused to play ball. The LoserGaters are a noisy and obnoxious part of gaming, but they’re only a minority. Normal people, sane people, want nothing to do with them.

2 Comments

  • Menno

    October 7, 2014 at 1:58 am

    So Intel make a lot of their profits from selling computers to the masses for the purpose of home entertainment. To, not to put too fine a point on it: gamers.

    And here is this website happily pontificating that “gamers” are dead, and those that still call themselves gamers are arseholes. And that GamerGate is a movement started by arseholes, for other arseholes, and if you fail to properly condemn them, YOU are an arsehole.

    I think I can guess why Intel might think that their interest and those of Gamasutra might differ a bit.

  • Martin Wisse

    October 10, 2014 at 1:43 pm

    But that’s just not true on any level. Nobody has been attacking gamers, some griefers out of the sewers of the internet, enabled by the ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn set out to harass and threaten her as well as any other woman that crossed their path. Once the inevitable backlash against this assholery started, that’s when they suddenly discovered gamers pride and outrage about games journalism, but nobody is fooled by that.

    If you support gamersgate you are an asshole, or incredibly ignorant.

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