Inside Gamergate

by James Desborough

  Trolling

  “Whatever else 'troll' might mean, "Anyone who disagrees with me" cannot be a useful definition.”

  - Richard Dawkins (Twitter)

  Trolling is at least as old as Usenet. It appears to take its name in part from the mythological beasts of legend, and partly from the fishing practice in which bait is slowly dragged through the water to get a bite. When it comes to the Internet, it used to refer to the practice of making deliberately inflammatory, stupid or otherwise provocative comments to stir people up and get them to 'bite', by replying. Well crafted troll messages – often about abortion or religion – could ignite massive flame wars in newsgroups and get hundreds, even thousands of people taking it seriously and getting into arguments.

  The term is, these days, often abused to refer to people with genuine and heartfelt disagreements as a way to ignore them, or to excuse blocking them from social media. Many of the people called 'trolls' can be abusive, forceful or dogged (flaming) and many of them will leave an overwhelming number of comments (spamming), but this is distinct from trolling.

  'Troll' has become an almost meaningless term when used in the mouths or at the fingertips of many. This is especially true when it comes to the media, but it retains its old meaning to Internet veterans, who are good – if not perfect – at spotting trolls. That the term is abused doesn't, however, mean that trolls do not exist. They very much do, taking advantage of Internet anonymity and the ease of making new accounts to stir people up.

  Trolls are attracted to drama and will fake participation in all sides, turning people against each other, provoking them to react, and this is all for the perverse pleasure of culture-jamming; playing people like puppets. To the uninitiated, it can be impossible to tell trolls from genuine critics and participants. Poe's Law[1] makes this even more challenging.

  Even worse, trolls - and some aspects of media and activism - appear to have settled into a mutually beneficial arrangement. When a columnist or activist posts something controversial and draws a reaction, they can point to that trolling as some justification for their beliefs and outrageous comments. The trolls, in turn, get publicity and the satisfaction of provoking such a high profile response. Perhaps the best expression of this pointless and entirely theatrical relationship is Lewis' Law[2], which is obvious bunk. If an adverse reaction to an ideological article proves the necessity of that article, that would justify racist, sexist and other hateful articles. A white-nationalist article is obviously going to draw opposition and insults, but that doesn't validate its point of view.

  The most important thing to remember about trolls is that they are not sincere. No matter what their personal beliefs they will latch on to anything that upsets someone. If you're a loud, proud and outspoken feminist they will say 'cunt' a lot and tell you to make them a sandwich. If you're religious, they'll argue atheism. If you're an atheist, they will argue religion. If you're fat, they will attack you on that. If you're gay, it will be that. None of it is real, it's smoke and mirrors to try and upset you – and it means nothing.

  I've had my share of trolling, and I'll admit that, when younger, I may have engaged in a little of it winding up religious extremists and political nutters. Still, while it can be mean, even at its meanest trolling is mostly harmless. Words on a screen that can be instantly ignored or blocked. Some trolling can be effective, in that it can expose people's double standards, credulity, bias and ignorance but most of it is simply harmless nonsense. There's a distinct and important difference between mere trolling and actual harassment. I've also been a victim of that, and conflating the two is deeply dishonest and undermines the seriousness of genuine harassment.

  Social Justice Warriors

  By the Oxford English Dictionary, Social Justice is: “Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.” Who could be against that? How could being a 'warrior' for that be a bad thing?

  Well, like a lot of things the dictionary definition doesn't get into the substance of a thing as it occurs in practice.

  The term 'Social Justice Warrior' appears to have grown out of the older term 'Keyboard Warrior', referring to someone who was full of forceful talk and opinion online, but who never translated that into action in the real world. A 'Social Justice Warrior' is, then, a particular subset of this. They're the kind of person on the 'left' who feels it necessary to point out and attack anything that they subjectively consider to be sexist, racist or otherwise 'problematic'.

  In today's wired-in world the term 'Keyboard Warrior' is no longer quite so stinging. What you do at your keyboard can end up making a real difference. Hashtags make the news, articles spread virally around the world, millions of dollars can be raised for a good cause in a few clicks. The downside is that witch hunts can be spurred just as quickly. Panicking companies and institutions are forced to react, too quickly, often firing people or bowing to the will of Twitter mobs before details are clear, or things have been thought out.

  This online shaming and the demolition of the line between one's personal and public life has come to concern many commentators[3]. It has also become a favourite tactic of the 'Social Justice Warriors', who are now referred to by other terms as well, such as The Regressive Left[4]. This term has even expanded to define those who claim to be fighting for something but end up contradicting themselves. Social Justice Warriors, for example, might pretend to be anti-racism but you will find the most virulent racism against white people amongst their ranks, blaming them – collectively – for every ill of the world. Even worse, they will claim that – somehow – it is impossible to be racist against white people. This is the result of seeking to redefine language (the term racism) with a rather specific and limited academic redefinition (prejudice plus power, rather than only prejudice).

  Being a Social Justice Warrior is nothing to be proud of though some accused of it have attempted to reclaim the term as something positive. To be an 'SJW' is to be an extremist, a hypocrite and part of a baying, moralising mob of bullies. It's 'Westboro Baptist' to Christian, 'Islamist' to Muslim. Admittedly, the term has been overused to the point of near-meaninglessness, providing impetus for a shift to using the term 'Regressive Left' in more serious discussion. SJW still has power and can be understood, however, as that extreme form of self-defeating 'progressivism' that attacks free speech, becomes racist, becomes sexist and beats people in the street while claiming to be for freedom.

  Internet Culture

  To understand Internet culture – such as it exists separate from our more overt, mainstream culture – you need to go back to its origins. The Internet is a series of usurpations, each built atop the other. From a military project the Internet became an academic concern and from that – via students – became an idealistic and free platform for exchanges of all kinds. That, in turn, was colonised and usurped by commercial interests and now we have various state and activist actors trying to 'put the genie back in the bottle' by controlling the Internet and the expression upon it.

  Military Network

  Academic Information Sharing

  Counterculture

  Commercialism

  State/Activist Control

  The defining moment for culture of the Internet was, however, stage 3. Now, to at least some extent, all these different stages are forced to coexist. The counter-cultural element has, however, been the one placed under the most stress by the subsequent waves.

  Commercial enterprises do not like the inherent freedom of the Internet as it makes messaging – in the advertising or propaganda sense - difficult [5]. State and activist actors seek to control the Internet for similar – and ideological – reasons [6][7]. The Internet still harbours that idealistic counter-culture and that drives so much of it, from the anarchy of the Chan boards to the lax attitude towards piracy, and the fierce anti-censorship attitude prevalent in many Internet sub-communities. It also fuels the creativity that makes the Internet so relevant and efficient as a counter-cul
tural accelerant and such a powerful resource.

  This concern about state actors online goes back a long way. That first clash, one of the defining moments of Internet culture, is perhaps best enshrined in the grand 'middle finger' that was the 'Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' [8]. The money quote from that event being:

  “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

  That has become less and less accurate over time, but whereas with state interference “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,”[9] social censorship and activist interference has been harder to combat. Even China's 'Great Firewall' can be gotten around with the right software and perseverance, but being outed, shamed and losing your job over – often a perfectly harmless comment – is not something with a technological solution. No anonymity is perfect.

  Internet culture is, then, one founded by leftover hippies, small 'l' libertarians, techno-anarchists, Silicon Valley utopians, internationalists and idealists. It does not tend to react well to control or censorship, whether enacted by the state or any other forces. It is strongest amongst groups and businesses that were early adopters – gamers, science fiction fans and porn producers.

  I've always been something of a utopian, dragged down by pragmatism from going completely la-la, but still wanting to see something good, even great. I've also tended to see technology as a way forward. A way of disseminating information, production, data, education and overcoming boundaries.

  Certainly, I saw many things change for the better as access to the Internet became ubiquitous. My country's absurd censorship laws around pornography and entertainment couldn't stand up to the Internet and became irrelevant. We could find and distribute adult material and copies of A Clockwork Orange even before high-speed Internet, and nobody could stop us. People could download university reference books without having to take out a second mortgage, and learn by themselves. People could find people like themselves – significant for an isolated, kinky goth kid living in a tiny village. It hasn't been a hundred percent brilliant, but the overall positive, liberating effect has been evident and enormous.

  Memes

  Technically a meme is described as:

  “Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.”[10]

  In practice is has come to mean those shared, silly, images that are spread around and appear across social media, such as 'Sad Cat' or 'Pepe the Frog'. Memes in this sense are more like in-jokes, called 'memes' because they spread, virally, shared, re-shared and modified by those who encounter them. Many of them become rather intensely loaded with meaning or require a lot of decoding. They also move and change quickly. Misinterpreting them, getting them wrong or taking them seriously can mean the person doing so is failing a test of comprehension and exposing themselves as an outsider, and object of ridicule.

  Pepe the Frog is, perhaps, one of the best examples of how misunderstanding a meme, failing to understand Internet irony and taking things too seriously 'outs' people as being clueless and makes them objects of ridicule. During the 2017 elections in the United States, many people used Pepe in memes to do with the election, mostly using him in conjunction with Donald Trump in one way or another. This was mainly done to 'trigger' (troll and upset) followers of Hilary Clinton. As their reactions grew, the memes only became nastier, 'spicier' and 'danker' (a term appropriated from stoner culture to indicate a meme of particularly good quality and effectiveness).

  This got so out of control that Clinton even made the huge tactical error of mentioning Pepe in a speech and the Anti-Defamation League (and others) tried to label Pepe a hate symbol [11]. Needless to say, people found this fucking hilarious and the number of offensive, 'white supremacist' and 'Nazi' Pepes multiplied exponentially to make fun of this reaction and to provoke more of it.

  While the US Democratic Party and anti-hate groups were proudly displaying how out of touch they were, trying to redefine ironic memes as hate speech, meme-posters were re-appropriating (or perhaps 'reeeeeee' appropriating) a genuinely offensive meme and disarming it.

  'Dindu nuffin'[12], an abbreviation of 'Didn't do nothing' emerged in 2014 alongside the Ferguson riots and the rise of Black Lives Matter. It refers to the typical – if inarticulate – defences made of the victims of police shootings and racists often post this in cartoon form, alongside other phrases like 'He a good boy' and so forth. While in some – even many – cases 'Dindu nuffin' turns out to have been 'something' after all, it was mostly promulgated by racists.

  Until memesters got hold of it.

  'Dindu nuffin' is now used everywhere, wherever anyone makes a less than convincing excuse for something they've done, or where someone is obviously guilty. You can find it being used about political shenanigans, protest groups, terrorism – you name it.

  The Internet makes fun of everything and everyone, often without an agenda. Even when there is an agenda, it won't last long. While being accused of making memes racist and bigoted, the 'memesters' have rather, been doing the opposite. They've re-appropriated, reused, remixed and remodeled racist propaganda and created new and powerful memes via subversion. Agendas and political positions tend to have to be projected onto what is pure, nihilistic, 'South-Parkian' cynical humour.

  Memes are more useful and more intelligent than many people think. Consider a Shakespearean quote that you can remember, maybe: 'Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!' The quote itself isn't necessarily the point in and of itself that it's Shakespeare carries meaning, the places it has turned up in other forms of culture (say Star Trek) has meaning. If you attach the quote to a particular actor or performance or image you produce more meaning too.

  Internet culture moves fast and accumulates meaning quickly. The meaning and effect of a lot of it requires understanding that history and accumulated culture to discern what is meant. Using a meme can be a way of packing a lot of information into a single image and text combination – this is what makes it so perfect for use, and spreading, in forums and on social media.

  I haven't done too well, spawning memes, but I did manage to give anti-Gamergate people one of their most persistent nicknames – 'AGGro'.

  This most obviously stems from Anti-GamerGate but is also a reference to Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games where to 'draw aggro' is to get an enemy to attack you. Various attacks and abilities can pull monsters to attack you or cause them to shift who is the target of their attacks within your group. Tough characters may want to get 'aggro'; weaker characters may want to avoid it. Aggro also became slang for enemy creatures and for unexpectedly getting attacking ('training' or 'drawing' aggro). As such it was an almost perfect term for Gamergate's enemies, low tier, easily trolled, easily manipulated creatures that didn't seem to have human intelligence much of the time.

  Doxxing and Anonymity

  Relative anonymity was the usual state of the Internet, really up until the advent of social media. People used online handles and personas much the way CB Radio operators came up with their handles. You could be a dozen different people on a dozen different forums. You could be anyone or anything, and this was liberating in many ways and a part of the foundational philosophy of the 'Chan' boards. When stripped of identity, ideas can sink or swim by themselves, on their merits – or so is the intention.

  Anonymity, as well as freeing people of identity or allowing them to explore it, can also bring out the worst in people. It makes them free to say the most terrible things, share the most repugnant material – such as child pornography – and to scream their untrammelled id into the void. Only it's not a void; it's full of other people. Without anonymity trolling is harder to do. Abuse and piracy become harder to get away with. This is a dark side to
the anonymity that the Internet can provide, and we have to admit that it exists.

  Then again, besides the meritocratic philosophy of stripping away identity and prejudice, there is value to anonymity and even piracy. With that anonymity it is possible for whistle-blowers to expose corruption, it is possible for LGBT people in difficult home circumstances to find community and fellowship. In theocratic countries, non-believers and freethinkers can make friends and plan to escape, reform or seek asylum. Dissidents can organise without so much fear of reprisal for their thought-crimes. When it comes to piracy, expensive technical books required for University education can be downloaded for free, creating a more egalitarian distribution of education. This also avoids a small amount of extra debt. Copies of rare books, songs and other material can similarly be copied, distributed and safeguarded against being entirely lost.

  Online anonymity is, then, a two-edged sword. It has great value, but that comes with a cost in terms of trolling, civil (and uncivil) disobedience and criminality.

  Still, that anonymity is valuable and a shield. It is uniquely valuable in the online space, and so threats to that anonymity are incredibly serious and a potential violation of privacy. Exposing someone's real life persona and connecting it to their online activity is known as 'doxxing' (there's some debate over whether it has one or two 'x's). The term comes from 'documents', so to 'dox' is to expose someone's personal information, their address, phone number, identity and so on. This exposes them to contact and confrontation can be used to prank or threaten them (pizza and SWAT teams). Depending on their online activity it can also expose them to arrest and, in some countries, to death at the hands of the mob or state actors.