http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/zoe-quinn-surviving-gamergate.html.
25Ibid.
26Kyle Wagner, “The Future of the Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate,” Deadspin,
published October 14, 2014, https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-
wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844.
Data versus Democracy
57
female gamer from the LGBTQ community, was bound to be fodder for
thinkpieces, and that naturally led to some negative (as well as positive)
responses. But in August 2014, something else happened.
Quinn and her boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, broke up. It didn’t go well. Others,
including Quinn herself, have written about the details,27 so I won’t bother
with most of them. The key outcome was that Gjoni, in a bout of premeditated
rage, published a blog post accusing Quinn of sleeping with a journalist at the
gaming news web site, Kotaku, in exchange for a positive review of her game.
That review never existed. Nonetheless, the combination of years of pent up
resentment about the diversification of gaming and a blog post crafted
specifically to take advantage of that rage led to an online explosion. Discussion
of “the Zoë post” spawned its own subreddit,28 quinnspiracy, and dominated 4chan—a site for super-nerds that birthed memes, rickrolling, “epic fail,” and
the Trump Train, as well as copious sexism, racism, and, occasionally, the
coordinated online harassment campaign—and 8chan—a site for people who
think 4chan is too “politically correct.” (In the words of Ben Schreckinger,
8chan is the ISIS to 4chan’s Al Qaeda. 29)
Antisocial Media: When Domestic Psychological
Abuse Tactics Scale Up
The discussion didn’t just stop at discussion. Things quickly turned violent.
When Gjoni’s post went live, Quinn recounts receiving a message from a
friend, “you just got helldumped something fierce.” 30 Shortly thereafter, old
text messages, intimate photos, and flat-out fabrications were all over the
darker corners of the internet. She was doxxed—her personal information,
or private “docs,” were published online—and complete strangers were calling
her at all hours of the day and night. Family members were doxxed, and
compromising, intimate, and/or threatening media were sent to her family,
including via the mail. Accounts she forgot she had were hacked. And while
this kind of thing has happened to people—especially women—before, 31 this
time it just wasn’t stopping. Months later, in January 2015, Quinn wrote a blog
27Ibid.; “Zoë and the Trolls”; “Zoë Quinn’s Depression Quest”; Zoë Quinn, Crash Override (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017).
28Reddit’s name for a specific Reddit community, usually organized around a discussion
topic or group identifier.
29Ben Schreckinger , “World War Meme,” Politico Magazine, March/April 2017, www.
politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/memes-4chan-trump-supporters-
trolls-internet-214856.
30 Crash Override, p. 10.
31Kathy Sierra, “Why the Trolls Will Always Win,” WIRED, published October 8, 2014,
www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/.
58
Chapter 4 | Domestic Disturbance
post about the ongoing attacks entitled “August Never Ends.” 32 And in the
introduction to her 2017 book, Crash Override, Quinn wrote, “Most
relationships end in a breakup. Sometimes that breakup is so crazy that it
becomes a horror story you tell your friends, family, and therapist. … My
breakup required the intervention of the United Nations.” 33
In retrospect, and even as it was unfolding, it was clear that this was bigger
than Depression Quest or Zoë Quinn. GamerGate, as Adam Baldwin dubbed it,
was an outburst aimed at Quinn—and game developer Brianna Wu and
feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian34 and pretty much anyone who spoke up
publicly on their behalf—but it had been festering for some time. It’s no
coincidence that GamerGate rose at the same time that the indie gaming
industry was really taking off—a time when the stereotypical game and gamer
were being “pushed out” by an increasingly diverse market of games developed
with an increasingly diverse group of gamers in mind.35
As fascinating—and truly gut-wrenching—as the sociology of GamerGate is,
it’s the tactics and the follow-up that are important for a book like this. Several
key tactical trends emerged during GamerGate and continued on into
subsequent campaigns, threatening public discourse in the United States and
elsewhere, and even the integrity of our elections.
Just as the Ferguson activists organized online, GamerGaters organized
online. But there was a key difference. They weren’t using a popular platform
like Twitter to organize and recruit for an event that was primarily taking
place on the streets. Instead, they used less well-known platforms like 4chan,
8chan, and the seedier subreddits to organize and recruit for operations
that took place on more public social media, like Twitter. In other words,
Twitter wasn’t the organizing platform, it was the theater of battle. It was
where they fired up their sockpuppets and bots to spread doxxes and lies
about their targets, propaganda about their mission, and attacks directed
specifically at their targets.
The use of automated accounts, or bots, to spread disinformation was also a
distinctive hallmark of GamerGate. I remember the first time I tweeted about
GamerGate, using the term itself. I almost immediately received several
replies from accounts with no credible personally identifiable information.
32Zoë Quinn, “August Never Ends,” Zoë Quinn (blog), January 11, 2015, http://ohdear-
godbees.tumblr.com/post/107838639074/august-never-ends.
33 Crash Override, p. 1
34Nick Wingfield, “Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’
Campaign,” The New York Times, published October 15, 2014, www.nytimes.com/
2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women-video-game-threats-anita-
sarkeesian.html.
35“Zoë and the Trolls.”
Data versus Democracy
59
One was a post containing the farcical GamerGate catch phrase, “actually,
GamerGate is about ethics in gaming journalism.” Another was a link to a
YouTube video critiquing the ethics of Kotaku. None were at all a response to
the content of my tweet, rather they were clearly a scare tactic meant to
intimidate any outsiders to the movement who dare speak up about it.
These bots would respond to a variety of kinds of tweets. Several times,
including once as late as 2017, if I posted a tweet containing the word
“doxxed,” a bot with an oil painting of an orthodox Jewish man as a profile
picture and an anti-Semitic slur as a profile name would immediately reply to
tell me that “doxxed” was a misspelling of “doxed.” (The past tense of dox is
acceptable both with one or two Xs, and I happen to prefer two.) This
automated intimidation was a technologically cheap but socially powerful way
to silence some voices and exert disproportionate control over the public
discourse around the movement.
Unprepared
: How Platforms, Police,
and the Courts (Failed to) Respond
Despite the lies, the targeted harassment, and the physical threats of violence,
it was difficult for the victims of GamerGate to receive help, both from
platforms and from law enforcement. Law enforcement didn’t know what to
do with Quinn’s police reports.36 Brianna Wu unsuccessfully called for the
federal government to investigate and prosecute the owner of 8chan. 37 Citing
“free speech,” Twitter was exceedingly hesitant to shut down accounts. And
a judge in a criminal harassment case (the accused was acquitted) suggested
that if Quinn wanted to avoid harassment, perhaps she should stay off the
internet. When she reminded him that her work as an independent game
developer required not only an online presence, but a public social media
presence, he responded, “You’re a smart kid. … Find a different career.” 38
While the attacks have never completely stopped, Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu
have braved the fight and emerged as strong voices for change both in the
gaming industry and at the social media platforms. Quinn and Sarkeesian
spoke to the United Nations about online abuse and harassment.39 Quinn
founded a company called the Crash Override Network that helps individuals
36“August Never Ends.”
37Briana Wu, “I’m Brianna Wu, And I’m Risking My Life Standing Up To Gamergate,”
Bustle, published February 11, 2015, www.bustle.com/articles/63466-im-brianna-wu-
and-im-risking-my-life-standing-up-to-gamergate.
38“Zoë and the Trolls.”
39 Crash Override, p. 115.
60
Chapter 4 | Domestic Disturbance
targeted by coordinated online abuse work with the platforms to shut down
those who break the law and the Terms of Service in the course of their
attacks.40 Wu even ran for U.S. Congress.41 And all three of them continue to work in gaming, despite GamerGate’s efforts to push them—and many other
women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community—out.
But in addition to the public awareness that Quinn, Sarkeesian, Wu, and
others have brought to the social problems at the root of GamerGate—and
the ways that platforms like 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and Twitter have enabled
their campaigns—other key figures and movements emerged during
GamerGate. GamerGaters themselves also discovered their power.
GamerGaters weren’t just jerks on the internet. They were a group of tech-
fluent individuals, many of whom had spent significant portions of their lives
online, particularly on image boards like 4chan. The affordances and limitations
of those forums, and the community practices that emerged in light of those
platform structures, facilitated certain tactical strengths within the GamerGate
community that they used beyond GamerGate itself. For instance, 4chan is a
platform where threads of content are deleted relatively quickly. Similarly,
Reddit’s system of upvotes and downvotes, coupled with its highlighting of
high-engagement content on the front page of the site, motivates and rewards
the creation of viral content. 4chan veterans, in particular, often have a keen
sense of what will go viral, or at the very least, evidence of what did and didn’t
go viral on their platform. This awareness of patterns of virality, often
combined with an obsession over detail—what some 4chan users reprehensibly
call “weaponized autism”42—and skills in Twitter automation, gives them an
advantage when it comes to creating and spreading memes and other
potentially viral content.
GamerGate also allowed several key figures to emerge as leaders of the
movement, whose leadership persisted beyond the bounds of GamerGate
itself. Two key figures in that regard are former Breitbart editor, Milo
Yiannopoulos, and independent pundit/provocateur, Mike Cernovich.43 Both
used their social media prowess to keep the movement going (Yiannopoulos,
was later banned from Twitter for his role in mobilizing a harassment campaign
against Ghostbusters star, Leslie Jones,44 and Mike Cernovich played a key role 40www.crashoverridenetwork.com.
41www.briannawuforcongress.com.
42“World War Meme.”
43“Zoë and the Trolls.”
44Joseph Bernstein, “Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate,”
BuzzFeed News, Published October 5, 2017, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/joseph-
bernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism.
Data versus Democracy
61
in spreading the #pizzagate conspiracy theory45). And both were able to use
their credibility inside and outside the GamerGate community to build bridges
between a variety of tech-fluent, antifeminist, far-right, and even extremist
communities. Much like Twitter enabled bridges to be built between Ferguson
protesters, the emerging Black Lives Matter movement, and a variety of other
existing organizations and sympathizers, Twitter also enabled various
antifeminist, and in some cases blatantly white nationalist, groups to coalesce
into a loose, but connected, movement that has been dubbed the alt-right.
The Emergence of the Alt-Right
There were several key social strands to #GamerGate. First was the
opposition to feminism, specifically, and diversity, generally, in the world of
darker corners of the web for “ops” that took place on the more open web.
There was also an uneasy juxtaposition of libertarian and far-right politics
alongside a “seriously, who CARES?!?!” mentality. The former rallied around
an ideology of “free speech” and antipolitical correctness, the latter joined in
these ops “for the lulz” (i.e., LOLs).46
These trends didn’t go away, even as GamerGate finally started to die down.
Though in a very real sense, GamerGate never died down. It just shifted its
focus from games to politics.
Several journalists and new media scholars have written about this transition.
Author Dale Beran writes of 4chan in general that their “only real political
statement” is that “all information was free now that we had the internet.” 47
Regarding GamerGate in particular, social justice warriors were encroaching
on that freedom by “adding unwanted elements into their video games, namely
things that promoted gender equality,” and that this was part of “a grand
conspiracy perpetrated by a few activists to change video games.” Some took
it upon themselves to dig for information online that would uncover this
conspiracy, and since “all information [is] free,” it was perfectly acceptable—
nay, it was their duty as citizens—to share and expose the information they
uncovered.
45“Mike Cernovich,” Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/
extremist-files/individual/mike-cernovich.
46“Why the Trolls Will Always Win.”
47Dale Beran, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump,” Dale Beran (blog),
published February 14, 2017, https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-
key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb.
62
Chapter 4 | Domestic Disturbance
This should sound familiar. The idea of a deep conspiracy carried out by a
silent but powerful minority, directed at taking away the freedom of the
majority under the banner of social justice—that is messaging that resonated
with many during the 2016 presidential election in the United States (among
other political contexts around the globe, some of which we will explore in
the chapters to follow). And this “Deep State” conspiracy perpetrated by the
“globalists” of the Democratic Party and their cronies throughout the world
was one of the key underlying political theories of the movement that became
known as the alt-right, as well as the foundational belief system for President
Trump’s first chief of staff, Steve Bannon.48
But the similarities between GamerGate and the alt-right are not simply
ideological. The alt-right is made up of many of the same people as GamerGate.
In a landmark piece of investigative journalism, Joe Bernstein’s article “Alt-
White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate” chronicles many
of the specific connections between these movements. 49 Specifically, Milo
Yiannopoulos, who rose to prominence during GamerGate, worked closely
with Steve Bannon and the Mercer family (major right-wing political donors
who, among other things, substantially funded UK’s Vote Leave campaign in
2016) while an editor at Breitbart and helped Bannon bring “the 4chan savants
and GamerGate vets” into the fold. Bernstein’s deep dive into a trove of
Breitbart emails and other previously secret documents reveals connections
fanning out from Yiannopoulos not just to Bannon and the Mercers, but white
nationalist Richard Spencer, Devin Saucier (of American Renaissance,
categorized as a hate web site by the Southern Poverty Law Center), Andrew
“Weev” Auernheimer (administrator of neo-Nazi hate site, The Daily
Stormer), indicted and ousted former Trump staffers Sebastian Gorka and
Michael Flynn (through his son Michael Flynn, Jr.), and even Duck Dynasty’s Phil
Robertson. While the top brass at Breitbart presented a less explicitly racist
version of the alt-right, Bernstein’s investigation makes it clear that actual
neo-Nazis—like those who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,