Anita Sarkeesian Forced to Cancel Talk Over Shooting Threat

@rmanthorp: I've seen plenty of people condemn threats, so that tweet is just plain false. I do however think it's sad that people would associate some hashtag with an individual making a threat of that nature. As if every single person who has latched onto the Gamergate thing was hoping something like that would happen. I just don't believe that's the case. I don't think it's fair to paint with such a broad brush.

How anyone reads something like this and their first reaction is to be upset that GamerGate is mentioned in the same breath is beyond me. Don't know when all this bile directed towards Anita will stop but sincerely hope its soon.

Look at any site that requires a Facebook login to make comments on the article and you'll see that consistent harassment persists, except that there's now something like a 25 year old man carrying a baby beside it.

Makes you lose even more faith in humanity.

@tinyearl: This seems like a comment written to completely dismiss a very serious issue. In addition to that i'm tired of repeating myself but you can't prove the there was ANY "self-doxings"

No matter what your opinion of Anita Sarkesian is or what she has to say, it's video games people, damn! You don't need to escalate to such a level that you are making death threats to people. This is supposed to be about entertainment and recreation, not something you take so seriously that you resort to vicious attacks over.

You realize how that comes off when this is your response to news about threats of violence against the woman, right?

Like... priorities.

I'm not equating you with one of the anti-woman people, just... I don't know that this is the appropriate time for that discussion.

To anyone that might try to deny the link between #GamerGate and these threats: This is the problem when you try to address sensitive issues with a hashtag. You can't have a deep conversation 140 characters at a time. I'm sure there are many #GamerGate supporters who find this behavior abhorrent, but their preferred narrative has been shouted down by the controversy and so it's either time to switch tactics/venues or move on with your lives.

I do hope gamersgate hashtag gets minimized so we can realize that those crazy people won't magically vanish because some twitter posts went away.

Each time we do this song and dance they get to believe their method works. It's no wonder we're seeing this more and more. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes "the norm" for the extremists opposed to gaming feminism long after the last post tagged GG is gone.

Why wouldn't it? No consequences, large effect, and some nut gets to think he shapes the world.

The only thing that might start suppressing this is a solid FBI arrest and conviction.

But other then that why would they stop? We just keep unilaterally giving them what they want. Negative attention, evidence of our pain, affecting the gaming landscape.

@thebigaristotle: However, as much as people like to act like it doesn't. The actions of a few can represent a community. Just look at what happened with Giant Bomb and the harassment of woman around the hire. Jeff and co. had to get out in front of it and say - those people do not represent us. Who controls GG? Who has the final say. It's far to messy at this point to actually have positive outcome. Stopping GG isn't about stopping all conversation about transparency and integrity. It's just about dropping it because of how tied up in all these problems it is.

People are going to paint with a broad brush regardless - it's a massive media issue and it goes WAY beyond video games. You just have to make sure the right message get's out there. That's just unfortunately not the case with GG.

Video games are just a proxy for a larger fight about the roles of men and women (or the perception thereof) in our society that has been going on forever.

Disturbing and gross. It's fucking video games people. Video games. I love games as much as anyone else here and consider them a big part of my life and upbringing, but I still can't for the life of me figure out what would drive someone to harassment, death threats, and terrorist demands because you don't like someone's opinion on video games.

@kidikd: Source? From whatever I've seen among the discussion she's been generally regarded as not worth talking about within the scope of GamerGate. Still though, it's a big movement and some outliers exist I suppose, there might be something out there.

@spacecouncil: Have you watched any of her tropes vs. women videos? Watch the Ms. Male Character video and please point to the part where she loses her objectivity.

Hey GG, everybody knows that the harassment is linked to GamerGate. Acting bemused and asking "But where's the evidence that this is linked to every single person in GamerGate?" isn't fooling anyone. Nobody believes that your "movement" is about journalistic ethics because you have yet to find ONE example of serious unethical practices in the industry. If you don't agree with the threats and harassment against women that is being facilitated and orchestrated by people you share a banner with, then don't defend it. If you think there's some actual corruption to find then go find it (And two people in the games industry being friends doesn't count as corruption).

I remember how embarrassing it was in the 80s and early 90s to say you were a gamer. Somehow, against all odds, that embarrassment is making a comeback.

This is disgusting. This whole thing.

What an idiotic thing to do. The most basic form of terrorism.

I hope they spend their whole life ashamed of what they're doing now.

Once again, terror tactics win out. I'm no fan of Sarkeesian (especially after she doxxed others on twitter), but this is pretty extreme. Now that this has worked, what's to stop people from anonymously doing it everywhere she goes? Surely she's not going to just stop having talks at public places ever again.

However, the email mentions nothing about Gamersgate and the person sounds like a very disturbed r/redpill user who just hates feminists in general. There's no mention of videogames at all in the email but it's a convenient scapegoat to blame gamersgate that everyone's playing into (including you Patrick).

Furthermore, it's incredibly biased of Patrick to mention her "home address" being threatened when there's no evidence of it happening and no police report was filed last I read. Please stick to just the facts, they're bad enough in this case that the more questionable events that supposedly happened previously aren't necessary.

All in all, it's a terrible situation being twisted into anti-gamersgate rhetoric to diminish valid criticism.

Holy shit, it's video games. How psychotic does someone have to be to make terror threats over video games.

You know, even just a year ago, the idea that people would be acting like this over video games would have seemed like a sick, hyperbolic joke.

Of course, it's not really about video games, is it?

The thing that gives me comfort throughout this ongoing madness is the knowledge that, if insane and horrible people are starting to push back this hard and this desperately against perceived changes in our society, then it proves those changes are both starting to happen, and are indeed a good thing!

After all, any cause that sends a person like this guy into a homicidal rage must be doing something right.

Of course, one can absolutely object to and criticize a lot of the tone used to talk about and describe these changes; but in effect - and in terms of our principles as a people - they are intrinsically a Very Good Thing.

It can't be stopped, these changes! Clearly. And that's why people like this dude are panicking and crying and freaking out.

I'm of the mind that reporting on these stories creates copycats. It's scientific fact that reporting on shooting and suicides only ENCOURAGES more people to do the same. These studies are the reason why sportsnetworks don't report on streakers or news stations don't report on bridge jumpers.

These reports do not serve a purpose but encourage harassers. Trust the science.

Yet again, humanity disappoints. I just can't even begin to understand the mentality of these morons.

@billyok said:

Reporting on it just drives more people to make threats. It encourages copycats because they realize they can see stories about themselves and their actions in the media. Constant reporting on this isn't going to make the problem better, it will make it worse.

This is awful and must stop.

#gamergate people: Your revisionist history is nonsense.

#gamergate is and has always been primarily a group of people harassing women in and tangential to the gaming industry. If you don't think that is true, you were not paying attention during the creation of the hashtag. You were not paying attention to the harassment targeted at Anita and Zoe and how that ultimately led to the creation of the hashtag. You have been deluded, and you need to free yourselves from the ideology that has enveloped you.

By asserting that you have legitimate concerns about games journalism which you associate with the hashtag, you lend support to continued harassment. Disavowals of the harassment can never remove the harassment from #gamergate. The harassment has always been there. It was the primary motivating factor. The original target of harassment was Zoe Quinn, and a false claim of a breach of journalistic ethics was just one weapon the harassers tried to use against her. They were wrong, and they are still wrong, and you are supporting them.

Stop. Free yourself.

This isn't just a shooting threat, it's a terrorist threat, I think the media should start calling it by what it is.

The threats before were disturbing, but intimating that there will be a massacre is heinous. It is clear that this passionate discord of views has now spiraled into a form of indisputable hate.

Congratulations to Sarkeesian and Wu for remaining strong in their pursuits.

@angrighandi:

Anita is not the first person to recieve death threats. Jack Thompson, Brad Wardell(Stardock CEO), Max Tempkin are the ones just off the top my head. People have been getting death threats since the nineties.

Also, I think it's time for the GG folks here to accept the fact that, whatever you thought about the original meaning or intent of that label, some terrible folks have co-opted it. Time to move on from that label (but not from a careful critique of gaming journalism, which does have a number of problems that you can legitimately argue about).

Aye, I've been a sailor in these waters of the internet for quite some time, and I've seen my share of shitstorms. I called into Hal Turner's radio show myself - back when that was the worst we've ever seen, and now it seems only a gale by comparison. I thought the scientology protests would be the worst of my lifetime, but boy was I wrong.

Gentlemen, this could be the hurricane Katrina of pointless internet trolling. Prepare your buttocks.

Yet they choose video games as the battleground to wage this war on? Even if I were anti-feminist, I'd choose a topic with a little more substance or weight behind it to get my agenda across. And I thought GamerGate was supposed to be about ethics in games journalism? She's not a journalist and has nothing to do with that. So, I guess it's not about that...

I can't even imagine what kind of life one has to live so that it can be destroyed by "the feminists" especially as a college student.

Sarkeesian is just a woman making videos about games. Quinn and Wu are just women making games.

Wait what? Oh pffff how dare they

It must be nice to feel so secure that you're able to brush off a threat that promises to specifically target and murder feminists.

@wrighteous86: So I guess the objectification and murder of millions of male characters in games and movies means nothing. or that Jack Thompson also received death threats or that Anita Sarkessian handles death threats by giving what her would be attackers want. She should call the police not twitter. Her reactions fuel her message. It's completely inappropriate for real imminent danger

This year has been one that I can't wait for to be over. One of the more heinous years in recent memory.

"When the levee breaks we'll have no place to stay."

It strikes on something deeper than video games, unfortunately. Living in a red state all my life, I've known plenty of people who are deathly afraid of feminists taking away their freedom and changing everything they believe in, even though not a single one of them have had their lives compromised by these "radical females," and never will. But thanks to their overactive persecution complexes, they've gotten themselves thinking they need to fight back or lose everything they have.

I'm talking about an extreme end of this, of course. One that's thankfully few, but unfortunately loud enough to keep muddying these conversations for the foreseeable future.

The vast majority of these kids typing this shit up are angry trolls, or just attention seeking trolls. I know, I used to say horrible shit, maybe no where near as bad, but there was always sport in shock value, or sometimes it was half trollery, half just having a dark sense of humour.

I'm not really condoning this stuff, totally 1000% not, I don't blame the girl for cancelling her tour thing either, - but these people doing this probably have something at least slightly wrong with them. If you were to sit them in a room amongst people they know and actually ask them, I'd wager 7/10 of them are depressed at least, you know? Something is missing, something isn't keeping them happy. They are bored or frustrated or feel slighted or something.

They shouldn't be doing this shit or encouraged but I just thought I'd explain what it's like to do that shit, I've still got a pretty dark / sinister sense of humour but far more,.. refined. There's lines that shouldn't be crossed. I hope all this eases down soon. I thought it had begun to ease up a bit.