COLD OPEN
It was August 27th, 2014, twenty-four hours after #Gamergate appeared on Twitter.
Twenty-seven-year-old Zoe Quinn folded the last two pieces of clothing— a pair of jeans and an old sweater— and threw them into her tiny black duffle bag. She wanted to keep her mind busy to keep herself from another panic attack where the room closed in and it felt impossible to breathe.
The movement against Zoe had been picking up support with the success of her newly created video game, Depression Quest. As a female gamer, she had always felt like an outsider but the more attention Depression Quest got, the more other gamers tried tearing her down.
Then, earlier today, actor Adam Baldwin posted a tweet linking to Internet Aristocrat videos that echoed false claims from Zoes sexual history. The tweet and the video were marked with the hashtag #GamerGate.
The movement immediately exploded with nearly 50,000 reposts, and the response from Gamergate supporters was swift.
Where are you going to go? It was Zoe's friend, Fran. Zoe had actually asked Fran to stay over for a couple of weeks since she started feeling jumpy being in her apartment alone.
Zoe zippered her last suitcase with a shaking hand. I need to find somewhere to lay low, she said.
Almost immediately after the hashtag appeared, all of Zoe’s accounts were hacked, and her address was posted online; the hackers had doxed her and leaked her personal information. The threats to ruin her career had escalated into something else entirely, and her jumpiness skyrocketed to complete and total paranoia.
Fran looked concerned. Lower than you have been? Zoe, you never leave the apartment.
It was true. Ever since The Zoe Post on her ex-boyfriend's gamer blog, Zoe never left the house. She was increasingly worried that someone would recognize her and follow her home. Now, she was being run out of her place altogether.
Fran chewed at her fingernails and asked, you're going to stay with another person, though, right?
Yeah, Zoe lied, of course. Staying with another person would ease Zoe's intense anxiety, but she didn't want to risk anyone else's safety. Maybe you should stay with someone else too, Zoe added, just to be safe.
Fran's face grew darker. How bad is it, really?
It started with threats to end her career and get Depression Quest pulled off the gaming platform Steam. Ever since a portion of video game fans falsely believed that Zoe had slept with journalists to get good game reviews— an unfounded accusation that was categorically false— the threats worsened.
What began as a battle cry for breaching ethical guidelines had turned personal, vicious, and violent against Zoe. The tweets, emails, texts, phone calls, 4chan posts, and Reddit subthreads Zoe had seen over the last day were graphic and terrifying.
But she couldn't tell Fran that. Besides, she'd find out firsthand soon enough anyway; no sense in worrying her now.
I'll be okay, Zoe said. She thought about all the pain and adversity she had faced to get where she was today, and now, without merit, an angry male virgin nerd was going to try and ruin her reputation? There was no way Zoe would let that happen.
As she shut off the lights in her apartment and locked the door behind her, she knew it wasn't goodbye forever, just for now. She pulled on a baseball cap and marched out the front door without looking back like a soldier going off to war.
On this episode, harassment, misogyny and incels living in their parent’s basements. I’m Keith Korneluk and this is Modem Mischief.
INTRODUCTION
You're listening to Modem Mischief. In this series we explore the darkest reaches of the internet. We'll take you into the minds of the world's most notorious hackers and the lives affected by them. We'll also show you places you won't find on Google and what goes on down there. This is the story of #Gamergate
ACT 1
Modern gaming specializes in one type of protagonist: men—the white, grizzled, infallible, stoic, single-minded badasses. Like me. Sorry.
The new Assassins Creed added a playable female protagonist, but she doesn't sit on the center of the cover like her male counterpart. Call of Duty Black Ops III has plenty of white male leads central to the story. Fallout 4 lets you create anyone, but the demo was careful to make sure the random character was white and male.
With more diversity in video gamers than ever before, minorities in this space started speaking out against stereotypes and character tropes. After plenty of years of making noise, the industry tried to start becoming more inclusive.
The result was a severe backlash by self-proclaimed “traditional gamers” who feel they’re getting pushed out of their industry.
The KotakuInAction reddit page quickly became the unofficial hub for Gamergate on Reddit. One user, lnuma, summarized the problem like this; people should realize that we’re seeing the rise of the corporate feminist, a different type of feminism.
People are focused on fighting [Social Justice Warriors], they missed the bigger story and the article… Corporate enterprise is pushing this brand of feminism to isolate countries and decimate societies for profit. They mislabel gaming to justify cultural imperialism (we’re telling you what to make for our sake) and enact corporate-friendly laws that decimate the public.
So, when video game developer Zoe Quinn released her new video game that strayed from traditional video game style— and was markedly popular for an indie game— Quinn became the perfect target.
It was September 2014 when 27-year-old Quinn logged onto her laptop to start her day. That typically meant browsing Reddit or playing video games, but recently she had lost the appetite.
When her laptop screen loaded, the site 4chan was still open in her browser, but a new thread had popped up. A new thread about Zoe.
It was titled “That Bitch Zoe” and read, next time she shows up at a conference, we … give her a crippling injury that’s never going to fully heal … a good solid injury to the knees. I’d say brain damage, but we don’t want to make it, so she ends up too retarded to fear us.
Quinn felt the hair on her arms raise and her stomach drop. The threat, although frightening, wasn’t the first or most brutal she had received. She took a screenshot of the message and added it to her folder- Just Another Day at the Office- and shut her laptop with a sigh.
The reason Quinn was targeted varies, depending on whom you ask, but most explanations lead to Depression Quest, a free interactive fiction game Zoe designed and was released on the major gaming platform called Steam.
The game, created by Quinn, the writer Patrick Lindsey, and the musician Isaac Schankler, casts its player as a young adult suffering from depression. It departed from the status quo of games that feature guns, violence, pin-up style women. The story is told through snippets of text bookended with ostensibly straightforward decisions for the player.
Quinn, who grew up in a small town in the Adirondack Mountains, has suffered from depression since she was a teenager. At the age of twelve, she attempted to commit suicide. Quinn went through most of her young life without ever getting therapy or medication that might help her with her mental health condition. Instead, Quinn turned to video games after being introduced to them her first year of high school.
After a breakup, at the age of 24, Quinn moved to Toronto to find a clean slate for herself. When Quinn saw an advertisement for a six-week course on making a video game, she figured it would be a cool way to meet people in an unfamiliar city. However, six weeks later, Quinn left with more than her first video game— she felt like she had found her calling in life.
Zoe’s game was picked up by the popular gaming platform, Steam and debuted in early August with great reviews from major players. The hate mail began to arrive less than 24 hours after the game’s release.
Yet, that tirade was nothing compared to the shit storm that began after Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, programmer Eron Gjoni, wrote a blog post exposing an alleged relationship between Zoe and a journalist who wrote about the game.
The Zoe Post was a series of allegations from Eron that Quinn had cheated on him with five other men and used them to get favorable reviews on her newly released game.
In gamer social media circles, a conspiracy immediately took root: Quinn had definitely fucked those five guys, gamers decided (they even turned it into a joke about the burger chain) and declared she'd done it to get publicity for her games.
On August 18th, a Youtube video was released by a popular creator named “Internet Aristocrat.” Internet Aristocrat was a YouTube personality known for his videos discussing gaming culture. In his initial video titled Five Guys, Internet Aristocrat spread the claim that Zoe had used sex to influence as many as five men to help her new game succeed.
Zoe immediately defended herself, claiming that the allegations were false. The man who Zoe allegedly slept with for a positive review came forward and admitted that the two had started a relationship a month after he had already reviewed her game. The website he worked for held their own investigation and found that he was telling the truth.
The rest of the allegations against Zoe fell apart from there. Nothing that Eron posted could be corroborated by any facts or digital footprint anywhere. Despite the unsubstantiated claims, the Zoe Quinn scandal spread around the gamer community like wildfire. It wasn’t until the movement made it to platforms like Twitter where Gamergate became political and started gaining more attention. p
On August 28th, actor Adam Baldwin sent out a tweet that would tip the scales against Zoe even further. If you’re not familiar with Baldwin, you wouldn’t be alone. The distant cousin of the more famous Baldwin brothers starred in the short-lived sci-fi show Firefly, among a few other movies and shows.
As Adam Baldwin grew more and more open about his political views, he has worked less and less. Along the way, Baldwin’s sci-fi life intersected with video game culture. As soon as the actor caught wind of the campaign against Zoe, Baldwin tweeted out a link to the Internet Aristocrat video along with the #Gamergate.
From that single tweet, the Internet Aristocrat video racked up over 800,000 views, and the #Gamergate movement officially took off.
Traditional gaming painted the white male as the perfect hero, but after years and years of making “gamers” and “men” feel special, important, and unique, these gamers see efforts to change as a threat to their identity, claiming they are the victims.
FingerJesus posts on Reddit; Alerting you guys to the SJW journalists who should be driven out of our culture… we will emerge victorious, the SJWs will be sent running back to their Tumblr dwellings, and video games will be free again.
What does this have to do with men’s rights? The answer is EVERYTHING. Have you not notices? GAMER is a proxy word for MEN. They want to eradicate GAMER culture? The SJW won’t be happy until the male culture as we know it has vanished.
DON’T GIVE UP, WE CAN WIN THIS WAR.
These gamers felt like society has been leaving them behind, that the roles they were promised are no longer guaranteed, that their traits are no longer needed or desired. They cry foul at the “politically correct” mindset of adding diversity.
A research article written by Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kunezkoff investigated sexism among video gamers. The researchers wrote that low-status males increas e female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status resulting from underperforming when compared to their female teammates.
Not only that, but they also stated that men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.
What began as a way for video game lovers to protest unethical collusion between journalists, reporters, and minorities in video games, turned into a violent online hate group spewing a torrent of misogynistic abuse.
Zoe and her supporters became the targets of death threats, rape threats, and threats of massive bodily harm.
That’s about the time when Zoe asked Fran to move in. There were times that Zoe woke up shaking and covered in sweat, thinking about the rape she couldn’t stop from happening or imaging someone jabbing a knife into her side while at a gaming convention.
Zoe hoped the harassment campaign against her would blow over soon, but she underestimated the men coming after her. There was a growing rabble mentality. A building fury among incel video gamers combined with the intoxication of anonymity drove what happened next.
Less than a week after the Gamergate hashtag appeared on Twitter, Zoe woke up to a flurry of emails and hundreds of missed phone calls and text messages.
Zoe’s greatest fear had come to fruition. She lunged for her laptop and sent her fingers frantically tapping over the keys. Zoe would start by checking all the popular message boards. After logging onto Reddit, Zoe found out exactly what was going on.
Her address, phone number, social security number, everything down to the pictures on her laptop were blasted across the internet. It felt like Zoe got punched in the gut. She tried to take in air but felt like her lungs had stopped working.
After changing the password of all her account the grim reality of her situation sunk in. Not only was Zoe the most hated person on the internet she had been receiving brutal death threats coming in by the hundreds. Now, they could find her. She had to get the fuck out her apartment.
Zoe left with Fran, who looked at Zoe like it was the last time she’d ever see her. With stomach twisted into a knot, she turned, and the two went in opposite directions.
Choking back tears, Zoe hailed a cab. She needed to get away from her apartment, away from the city. The driver took her to a hotel twenty minutes away.
Once alone, Zoe sat on the bed and saw a notification blast across the screen: Eighty-seven missed calls. Every voicemail sounded frantic with confusion and concern. After taking a deep breath, she started calling everyone back.
Talking to everyone and rehashing the same story had drained her of all her energy. After a hot shower, Zoe started going through the emails, copying the death threats, and placing them into her folder. Then, she stumbled upon an email that made her stare in disbelief. It was like a nightmare coming true.
The email was just a fuzzy picture. But Zoe knew what it was immediately. The picture-taker had been standing across the street aiming their camera directly into her dark bedroom window. Under the picture, there was one word: waiting.
Zoe slammed the laptop shut.
Upset, Zoe took to Twitter to confront the people trying to hurt her. She announced that she had been doxxed and nowhere was safe for her. The community that once felt like home was now a scary, unwelcoming place with threats lurking in every shadow.
Journalists following the developing story started reaching out to Zoe, asking her if she wanted to be interviewed about the ordeal. Everyone had questions, and it felt like half the world was staring at Zoe, waiting for something to happen.
The Gamergaters weren’t slowing down, and there didn’t seem to be anything that the police or the FBI could do to help protect Zoe or track down any of the thousands of people threatening her privately and publicly.
The agent took all the documentation and told her that they would be getting back to her soon with any updates. Zoe knew that they weren’t going to do a damn thing to protect her and realized that she would need to start protecting herself.
Driven from her home and frightened for her life, Zoe was more determined than ever to get her life back. She started speaking to anyone who would listen, relying on the media coverage to tell her side of the story. If GamerGaters were going to be loud, then Zoe would need to be even louder.
Hate for Zoe in the gamer community spread faster than a wildfire. In the span of two weeks, Zoe went from critically acclaimed video game creator to the most hated person on the internet and she was starting to feel the same way in real life.
The heat building against Zoe wasn’t stopping, and, in fact, Gamergate was continuing to pick up steam— and Zoe had a bad feeling. It was the feeling that there would be another victim of Gamergate very fucking soon.
ACT 2
With Zoe living underground and making herself scarce, the disgruntled gamers turned toward another target.
In a large auditorium of excited onlookers, feminist critic and public speaker Anita Sarkeensian looked up at the brightly lit stage. Her most recent body of work had centered around video games, specifically examining gender tropes applied to women in video games.
Today, she was set to announce the start of her Kickstarter campaign to fund more research and discussion on the topic.
Her warm hands trembled, but a chill crept up her spine; it always happened before a big presentation, but this would be the biggest of them all.
And our final speaker is Anite Sarkeensian. Clapping echoed around the auditorium as Anita rose from her seat and stepped onto the stage. With her hand gripping the microphone, she launched into her presentation with practiced precision.
She touched on all the ways that tropes, plot devices, and patterns are most associated with women in gaming. The days of video games depicting women with enormous breasts, tiny waists, and the damsel always in distress should be over.
Anita ended her speech just as her time was coming to a close.
Remember, you can enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic aspects. The crowd erupted in applause, and Anita smiled. My company, Feminist Frequency, is accepting donations starting today to fund a critical study of popular video games. Thank you.
Another round of applause, and Anita exited the stage. Her friend and coworker gave her a thumbs-up as she walked back to her seat and sat again.
When the presentations were all over, the banquet began. Anita was shuffled from the auditorium to the dining area, and the entire time, curious investors hovered around her. Some wanted to know more about the project, while others were content simply handing over their money on the spot.
The next day, Anita’s presentation was posted online along with the link to her Kickstarter— the online platform she was using to collect donations. This was all part of the plan to get Anita’s publicity plan to drum up some interest in her work.
When Anita logged into her email the following day, her inbox was flooded. The inbox that used to see ten emails a day suddenly had a backlog of hundreds. When she went on Twitter, she had been retweeted the same number of times.
The people sharing her information didn’t seem all that supportive of Anita and Feminist Frequency. When she looked closer, she noticed that her campaign had shared with the #Gamergate. Her work wasn’t being shared by feminist fans. It was being shared by men who wanted to tear her apart.
The hate mail started with the normal name-calling. Drink bleach. Kill Yourself. Split your throat. The harassment and taunting went on and on.
It didn’t take long for the threats to become increasingly violent. I’m going to come to your house and violently rape you in front of your family.
Anita knew the Gamergaters were using hate and fear to create a culture of silence around her work and prevent the progressive dialogue she was trying to cultivate. The realization made her even angrier.
Anita shut her laptop with a shaking hand. She felt hot and cold all at once, and her stomach lurched. She knew that her work might upset some people, sure. They didn’t want their video games, the ones they grew up playing, to change. She also knew that her work was necessary.
As much hate as Anita was receiving, she was also receiving something else: donations. With every hateful line spewed in her direction, Anita found another thousand dollars donated to her project.
Anita was optimistic that her project would succeed despite the backlash from the Gamergate supporters, but she also wasn’t an idiot. She reported the tweets threatening violence, rape, and death because a threat was still a threat. These people knew her, but to Anita, any face in the crowd could belong to someone trying to maim or kill her over her gaming critiques.
While trying to lie low until the Gamergate frenzy died down, Anita got a call.
It was from the Utah State University, and they wanted her to speak at their feminist conference. She gladly accepted and marked the date on her Google calendar.
She had entertained other speaking engagements like the event at Geek Girl Con. Approaching the event, the death threats seemed to increase exponentially, but Anita refused to back down out of fear.
Weeks passed before the circled date arrived on Anita’s calendar. On October 13th, she took her scheduled flight out to Utah and met with a woman named Tina, who was both the woman who booked Anita and the Center for Women and Gender director.
Anita got to see the campus and the stage she would be speaking on. Excitement and nerves started coursing through her in anticipation. Anita was a great public speaker by this point in her career, but the pre-speaking jitters never really went away.
Have there been any… problems? Tina asked with a reserved tone.
Nothing too alarming. Anita answered. The part she didn’t say out loud was that it was just the normal death threats, not the really specific kind. More importantly, not the kind of threats that would keep her from speaking.
The women said their goodbyes, and once Anita got back to her hotel, she double-checked the agenda for the following day. After ordering herself some room service she began shifted through her notes, running through the 3-hour presentation in her head.
It was nearing eleven pm when Anita’s eyes began to get heavy. She wanted to relax and slip into a peaceful, quiet sleep when her cell phone rang. The sudden noise sent Anita shooting up from the bed as she tried to find the source of the noise.
After a furious ten seconds of scrambling, her hand closed around the cell phone, and she put it up to her ear.
Hello? Anita said, drowsy.
Anita, it’s Tina.
Anita’s mind started turning. Tina was from USU, and there wasn’t a reason for the woman to be calling Anita so late. Is everything okay?
We have a problem. Could you come down to the campus again?
Anita looked at the clock next to the bed. It was almost midnight and the request sent waves of nausea through her body. I’m on the way.
When Anita arrived, three cars were parked out front of Tina’s office. Two police cars and a black unmarked SUV. Anita refused to speculate about what might be going on and skip right to the part of the answer.
Entering Tina’s office, Anita felt the room quiet and everyone turned to stare at her. Two men in police uniforms were standing with their arms crossed next to a woman in a suit. Tina looked over at me, her face nothing but worry and dark circles.
What’s going on here? Anita asked, slowly walking toward Tina and away from the group of serious-looking people.
Tina was the first to speak. Anita, this is officer Jones and officer Pate. Over there is agent Holmes. Anita nodded to them but didn’t speak so Tina continued. It’s bad Anita. Look.
Tina spun her laptop around on the desk. Anita was looking at an email inbox with several email boxes all pulled up. She clicked through all of them, her pulse quickening with each one she read.
If Anita speaks, we will shoot her and everyone else in the fucking auditorium. This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history unless you make the right choice. At the bottom of the email instead of a signature, it read #Gamergate. There was another email threaten the same thing, with the same signature and phony email address.
Now, this was getting out of hand. Sure, Anita critiqued video games, but she wasn’t hurting anyone. Gamergate was clearly no longer about video games or Anita or journalistic ethics; it was about power. They wanted to take Anitas away.
So, what’s the solution to this? Anita asked, her head swiveling to all the people in the room.
Everyone in the room started talking all at once, and Anita took a breath. One at a time.
Agent Holmes stepped forward. We’re going to have to cancel the presentation.
No was Anita’s first thought. She wouldn’t accept that. There had to be another way. Can’t we just… I don’t know, screen for guns at the door or something?
Tina looked at the police officers, who stared at Anita like they were made of stone. Tina cleared her throat. Well, the police are saying that they don’t really have the authority to do that.
Neither does the FBI, Holmes said.
Anita wanted to push back harder, but if neither agency would screen for weapons, continuing with the presentation would be far too big of a risk. Anita sighed and relented. So, we’ll cancel then.
It was as if that’s all anyone was waiting for. The police officers left without uttering a word, and the FBI agent grabbed a thin file and told the women that her unit would look into the threats.
Just like that, Gamergate seemed to win again.
Zoe and Anita and the other “social justice warriors'' targeted by the Gamergate movement hoped that the cause would soon die out. But by December 2014, it was gaining more traction.
The mayhem was far from over.
ACT 3
On October 15th, 2014, game developer Brianna Wu opened her phone and started absently scrolling through Twitter while at her co-founded company, Giant Spacekat.
Wu noticed a red notification in her Twitter inbox and opened up the message. It was from Giant Spacekat co-founder Amanda Warner. The two had been long-time friends after meeting through and bonding over their shared love of video games.
The message from Amanda read, have you seen this? Underneath, there was an image of a Tweet that appeared to be from a made-up Twitter account. The handle was nothing but random numbers and letters with no image.
The Tweet was directed at Zoe Quinn, a name that Brianna recognized. Wu paused for a moment, trying to recall how she knew the name when a memory snapped it into focus. Quinn had created an indie game called Depression Quest that had garnered a good amount of media attention.
But the Tweet that Wu was looking at didn’t mention any of that. Instead, it called to beat Zoe Quinn to a pulp along with other social justice warriors looking to “ruin” gaming. It had a single hashtag at the end: Gamergate. In an instant, Brianna felt her face get hot, and her stomach start fluttering.
This was wrong, Brianna knew. She searched the hashtag Gamergate and was appalled by what she found. Hundreds and thousands of Tweets condemning women’s involvement in video games. As a woman in gaming herself, she felt a kinship with Quinn and Sarkeesian, who were under brutal attack.
With flames brewing in her chest, Wu started firing off Tweets defending her fellow female gamers. One tweet that Gamergate advocates were fighting an apocalyptic future where women are 8 percent of programmers and not 3 percent.
Wu’s fans started retweeting her with the hashtag NotYourSheild as a counter-protest to the violent harassment directed at mostly female gamers and their supporters.
That’s when Gamergaters took notice of Wu, and the personal threats started rolling in.
The same day that Wu posted on her Twitter about Gamergate, she was flooded with the same threats as the women before her; rape, violent beatings, and death. An active member of Reddit and 4chan, she started wearily watching the anonymous pro-gamergate message boards. Then, it happened.
The next day, October 16th, Brianna’s phone number, email address, and home address were posted on 4chan. The doxxer also posted pictures of Brianna’s car, her dog, and a detailed diagram of the inside of her home.
The conversation moved to highly specific death threats against Wu that spilled over to other platforms. One person under an anonymous Twitter account tweeted, I’ve got a K-bar, and I’m coming to your house so I can shove it up your ugly feminist cunt.
Brianna and her husband fled their home and started living under aliases that same day.
Even after the couple left their home, the violence increased. Someone tweeted Brianna quotes from her death threats, and then turned to try and ruin her career. Gamergaters started a public campaign to discredit Wu by creating fake feminist Twitter accounts and then attacking her game, Revolution 60 (a cartoonish science fiction adventure for smartphones, and containing an all-female cast), for objectifying women.
Wu wasn’t going to wait around for something horrible to happen to her or other female gamers, so she took her concerns directly to the Boston Police, FBI, and the Massachusetts cybercrime unit. They claimed there was nothing they could do to stop it, and Wu was on her own.
Instead of backing down, Wu doubled down.
Her family made a public announcement that they would pay $11,000 to anyone who could lead them to the people threatening Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu’s lives. In early 2015, Wu also started a legal defense fund for women targeted by Gamergate. Wu only went to gaming events if she had a personal security detail with her.
Wu knew she was playing the long game here. There may not be any way to help her, but she didn’t want Gamergate to be the norm for women in gaming who were already scared, intimidated, and now, thinking about exiting the industry entirely.
It took time and patience, but Brianna reached out to her state senator, Elizabeth Warren, for national policy-level support. To her surprise, Warren didn’t respond to Wu’s request. Instead, Democrat Congress representative Katherine Clark from Massachusetts took an interest in the case.
All of Katherine Clark’s personal heroes she considers social justice warriors. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolores Huerta, and the like are the women she looks up to. When she heard about the harassment, hate, and violence that Brianna Wu and the other gamergate targets were facing, she knew she needed to take action.
After a disappointing meeting in February 2015 with FBI agents working the case, Clark realized that she needed to do something more. She needed to push for change at a policy level, just as Wu had hoped.
On March 10th, 2015, Clark took her concerns to Congress in a published letter to the House of Appropriations Committee stating, While many perpetrators may not actually intend to carry out their threats of violence, it is clear that the threats themselves have real-world consequences, which have been highlighted by the ongoing 'Gamergate' intimidation campaign.
It wasn’t a call for completely new legislation, but it was a push for stronger enforcement of the legislation already on the books.
What Clark didn’t realize is that by calling out Gamergate in her letter, she had also put a target on her back.
It had been a quiet Sunday evening in January 2016 when Katherine Clark noticed police lights streaming in through her window. She wondered if a neighbor was in trouble or if someone needed help. Rushing to the window, she looked outside to see police cars flying down her quiet street with no signs of alarm anywhere.
The street was dark, quiet, and the homes seemingly undisturbed. That’s when one police car turned into two. Then three, and then four, and before she knew it, there were six police vehicles and two big black SUVs parked outside Clark’s house. On her lawn.
Fear started running through her like ice in her veins as police got out of the car and trained big and small guns at the windows of her house. Police lights illuminated the front of her property, and a voice came over a loudspeaker, Come out with your hands up.
Clark couldn’t piece together what was happening, but she knew what could happen if she didn’t oblige. Last December, officers shot and killed an unarmed 28-year-old man on his front doorstep after receiving a call that he’d shot his father in the head and was holding his mother and two siblings as hostages. He’d done nothing of the sort; the police were given the wrong address by a gamer that the man had argued with.
Clark yelled for her children and husband to come downstairs and leave the house with their hands above their heads. Her husband exited first, followed by Clark and her two young kids. They laid face down on the cool grass while swat stormed the family and the house.
After what felt like hours of lying on the ground, Clark and her family were allowed to get up and were questioned by police, who believed there was an active shooter in Clark’s home. There was no one there but the family.
The police apologized for the mistake, but Clark knew that the police coming to her doorstep wasn’t a mistake at all. The congresswoman had just been “swatted.” Being “swatted” is when a person hides their identity, then calls the cops and reports a violent crime at the address of the person they’re targeting.
Clark and her family survived the swatting without deadly incident, but to Clark, the matter was personal, and she wouldn’t back down. The following day, Clark gave a statement about the events from the night before and again pushed her legislation back into the limelight.
ACT 4
The lingering impact of Gamergate as one of the first grass-root online harassment campaigns had no real consequences for the thousands of people who perpetrated it but a lot of real consequences for the people who were targeted.
Depression, lingering fear, and PTSD are only some of the symptoms that Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu experienced. Their careers, integrity, and everything they worked for hung in the balance until the movement lost momentum and a new target, eventually forcing proponents to die down.
The women impacted by Gamergate have since banded together to condemn the harassment campaign against them and call on reasonable people to pull out of the harmful movement.
To the women’s surprise, toward the end of 2015, some of the former Gamergater did turn over a new leaf. Brianna Wu believes it’s time to talk about redemption.
Since 2015, hundreds of Gamergaters have reached out to Wu to apologize for their abysmal behavior. Once a week, a reformed Gamergater who once ridiculed and harassed Wu, messages her to apologize.
With each apology, former Gatergaters shared their own stories of trauma, abuse, and depression with Wu, who realized that these were just under-socialized, lonely people; not monsters.
But accepting an apology isn’t the same as absolving someone of their guilt.
In early 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) closed its investigation. The FBI identified four men who sent threats and obtained confessions from two suspects.
One of the men arrested was Joshua Goldberg, who posed as an Islamic radical, a white supremacist, and impersonated a Jewish lawyer online. Among his fictitious online personas, the FBI also found tweets that used the hashtag gamergate to mock and taunt women he designated as “social justice warriors.”
Another man arrested was Ethan Ralph. Ralph was a well-known player in the online Gamergate community running the website, The Ralph Retort. He was allegedly the man who doxxed Brianna Wu, and his personal Twitter was linked to multiple threats against the women but denied any wrongdoing.
One of the unnamed men stated he had sent the threat as a "joke" despite knowing it was a crime, and he promised not to do it again.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts declined to prosecute any of the assailants. The FBI report says, USAO Boston declined prosecution without giving any explanation. In the reports conclusion, the unnamed FBI agent on the case wrote, It is requested that this investigation be administratively closed due to lack of leads.
Katherine Clark’s legislation never even made it to a vote. Clark released a written statement afterward, stating the federal government is not responsible for policing the internet, but it is responsible for protecting the women who are being threatened with rape and murder in violation of existing federal law. Anti-gamergate allies agreed with Clark’s sentiment and were disheartened by the lack of political support.
Since Gamergate, Quinn has continued to develop games and has launched an organization called Crash Override to help victims of online abuse. She wants people to know the steps they can take to protect themselves online and ways they can help others who are being targeted.
Sarkeesian has continued her work with the Feminist Frequency, which has more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, and works hard to encourage readers to think critically about the representation of race, gender, and sexuality in pop culture through her critical analysis of media.
As of May 2019, Wu and her husband were still living under aliases. Diagnosed with PSTD, Wu continues to struggle in her daily life as the harassment hasn’t completely stopped.
Gamergate supporters didn’t entirely disappear and have since moved into other geek communities. Marvel and DC were criticized by Gamergaters for progressive storylines and decisions. They moved to science fiction art awards and cinema with the revolting kickback against the all-female Ghostbusters reboot.
If Gamergaters were legitimately lobbying for stricter ethics in gaming journalism, the message has been long-lost. Although Gamergate “isn’t about” feminists or so-called “social justice warriors,” the main targets of the movement were women lobbying for progressivism in gaming.
As long as there is online media, there will always be a subset of people looking to punish minorities for infiltrating their world since they see the culture they considered theirs being ripped away from them.
Hopefully, the next generation of gamers can create an industry in which people can question practices and conventions, but also where all are welcome and safe. For a start, however, gamers need to create an industry in which, whatever you think of their views, Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu can go home and live in peace.
I’m Keith Korneluk and you’re listening to Modem Mischief
CREDITS
Thanks for listening to Modem Mischief. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe or follow button in your favorite podcast app right now so you don’t miss an episode. This show is an independent production and is wholly supported by you, our listeners and the best way to support the show is to share it. Tell your friends, your enemies, harass your neighbors to listen too. And another way to support us is on Patreon or a paid subscription on Apple Podcasts. For as little as $5 a month you’ll receive an ad-free version of the show plus monthly bonus episodes exclusive to subscribers. Modem Mischief is brought to you by Mad Dragon Productions and is created, produced and hosted by me: Keith Korneluk. This episode is written and researched by Lauren Minkoff. Mixed and mastered by Greg Bernhard aka Delectable Doxxing Daddy. The theme song “You Are Digital” is composed by Computerbandit. Sources for this episode are available on our website at modemmischief.com. And don’t forget to follow us on social media at @modemmischief. Thanks for listening!