The comment boards were absolutely horrid on this story too - not just the one you linked, with many of the commenters painting Mr. Gjoni as being a victim of abuse – literally (yes, literally) comparing his “treatment” with victims of domestic violence.
Just…wow.
Christ, what an asshole.
He still thinks it’s about him “calling out” Zoe Quinn? When every substantial element of his original screed has been discounted and proven false? And he doesn’t even care about the medium? Then there’s his self-aggrandizement as the an ongoing leader-figure for the jerks?
Then that last little bit…
Jesus fucking christ. The very least you can do, if you actually want to help, is own the fact that you helped cause the harassment. Stop pretending that you had no hand in this, that this is out of your control, that you have no choice. Yeah, you didn’t expect the fire to burn this bright, but you lit the spark. You had a hand in this. You have no claim to innocence.
If you wanted to make good on that ownership of your fuckery, you could then try to pour water on the fire rather than fanning the flames. Get rid of the hashtag. If there’s things you ACTUALLY want to discuss, change the topic to that specifically. Defend the people hurt by your actions.
Including the one you intended to hurt, the one you wrote those lies about in the first place.
He won’t change cause he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. There is a word for that I think…
Man, I often think that it is the fact that I am getting older that causes me to think people in their 20’s… well… let’s say not quite emotionally and intellectually developed… this guy isn’t doing much to prove me wrong…
Maybe I’m missing something here but I just read through the original blog that “started it all” and it seems to me that it’s a very personal, very revealing look at a really fucked up relationship on both sides. It’s the kind of thing that should never have been written. It’s a vindictive sharing of very intimate details. But what it does not seem to be is any kind of anti-women, anti-Sarkeesian or even anti game journalist rant (except that apparently Nathan whatever from Kotaku wears red pants and drinks dinky little cocktails). So while others seems to have picked up this guys personal feud with his ex-girlfriend and used it as an excuse to do all sorts of horrible things, I’m not sure I can really blame him for those horrible things or ask him to apologize to anyone for it.
I await a stern correction from the internets.
When somebody doubles down on horrible behavior like this, it’s awfully tempting to keep tabs on him and forward a link to his original rant to every employer and girlfriend and probation officer. For years and years and years.
I’m not that obsessive, and far too lazy. But it is tempting.
In the context of a breakup, it was stupid, but you can’t say he intended what came next. but the whole point of this post is that now, with the benefit of hindsight, and seeing where it has all gone, he would do it again.
it’s one thing to throw a rock, not realising it will start an avalanche. it’s something else to say “that avalanche isn’t great, and I feel bad for the people caught in it, but even if I could do it over again, I’d do the same thing”
In truth, you can make an omelet without breaking ovaries, as those are the organs that produce the eggs we see, the eggs in fact being ovules.
I mention this ONLY because I was corrected on that same mistake in high school: a teacher corrected me after I chirped in with “chicken ovaries!” in reply to a fellow student’s question about their food categorization.
This lowlife conjured up a host of self inflicted issues in order to ramshackle a coalition of sympathizers to remove himself from guilt.
The delicious irony is it didn’t work…
He’s just incoherent. The special argument style teen boys use where they drop some impressive but mostly unrelated words and things just trail off without being resolved… then go leaping off in another direction with the previous nugget being taken as QED. I do believe that reflects the actual thought process.
We had one of those people driving trollies one of the gamergate threads here previously. Saying that it’s good that Gjoni kept his post up, because it illustrated the horrible “emotional abuse” that he suffered at the hands of his ex.
Except that he originally posted his screed at a bunch of sites that were known to harbour groups of people who had previously led misogynistic online attacks against his ex. To pretend like the resultant shitstorm was unintentional is complete bullshit. The blog only came after the people running those sites shut him down and killed his forum posts.
There’s an extra bit of context, in that he actively tried to post that rant in a number of forums. It wasn’t anti-women in general, but it was very much an attempt to drum up a mob of strangers in anger against his ex-girlfriend and ruin her personal and professional reputation.
A couple things: he wasn’t just guilty of publishing a personal rant about their fucked up relationship that should have stayed private. As part of that he also attempted to professionally smear her and others with accusations that were unsubstantiated and turned out to be false (i.e. he engaged in libel). He then made sustained efforts to whip up a virtual lynch mob to go after his ex and the others he smeared. So it wasn’t just one blog post about his relationship, it was a whole pattern of bad behavior.
Edit: And looking at his Twitter posts he’s still voicing support for #gamergate, which as a movement has been nothing but harassment and misogyny. So he’s actively supporting the horrible thing he “sparked.”
Just think how his job-applications process is going to go.
Would you like to hire him, knowing what he’s likely to post when he no longer works for you?
I guess that’s the part I was missing.
Still, this whole thing is starting to feel very mob justice vs mob justice, eye for an eye. And all so very high school. Except of course the death and rape threats which are a hell of a lot more serious, and frankly a matter for the police and FBI. I say let them deal with this drama. I’d rather not hear about it any more.
Just saw this:
The Sad Parents of #Gamergate - The Awl
All around the country, parents are sitting down to have the talk with their children. Not about sex or mortality or college. They’re having the talk about Gamergate. From our own comments:
I have a 17 year old son and trying to point out the actual facts in this story is like trying to convince a rabid 70 year old FOX viewer that Obama is not a terrorist, born on Mars, here to take your guns.
“It’s about ethics, mom. Don’t you care about ETHICS?”
He’s not down with the death threats though, so I guess Yay?
This article is biased, hard. Listen, I don’t much care for the guy or for what happened either, but at the same time articles like this one are what “gamergate” is all about: unfair treatment of people in media.
Whether you’re the assholes that send death threats or the (I love you Doctorow and I’m sorry) assholes that write articles like these, you’re still an asshole.
Are you also aware that most media outlets decided not to cover the whole thing to start with, which only caused the gamergate side to escalate things because of the “conspiracy” among game journalists to not address their “legitimate concerns” (most of which were based on a lie)?
Sadly, there’s not really much of an option to just ignore the whole thing.
