Inside Gamergate

by James Desborough

  This whole set of events would leave a long scar on the psyche of the 'geekosphere' that is still felt to this day. This is like a 'race memory' of just how far this nonsense can go and how bad it can be both for business, and for the individual.

  As a teenage metal-head and RPG fan, I was up to my neck in the Satanic Panic. I made pamphlets in English class to educate about what the games were. I wrote letters to newspapers when I heard about a role-playing club being banned from meeting in a school or scout hut. The internet wasn't a thing back then, but even so, I campaigned hard on behalf of my hobbies against those who wanted to censor and control them. How could I do any different today? Unfortunately, the response of many people who lived through the same panics I had, was to buy into the new moral panic. The very people who, of anyone, should know better ended up helping perpetuate and worsen the current situation. They were also some of the leading figures to demonise Gamergate, even as it fought for their rights as creators.

  That was devastating.

  The PMRC

  In 1985 we had another moral panic, one that coincided and overlapped with some of the Satanic Panic. This one was to do with music. The PMRC (Parents' Music Resource Centre), co-founded by Tipper Gore, presaged that censorship would increasingly start to come from the left rather than the right by taking up a crusade against violent, drug-related or sexual music.

  They believed – contrary to evidence, as with previous moral panics – that music, most especially Heavy Metal and, increasingly, rap music was a source of degeneracy, with an adverse effect on 'the youth'. To this end they agitated for a rating system for music, for sexual or other controversial album covers to be hidden, for radio stations to censor certain songs and for music to be labelled if it contained 'explicit lyrics'.

  As with previous moral panics, the music industry put up a strong defence and made a few – largely meaningless – concessions to try and stave off full censorship. Artists as diverse as Dee Snyder, John Denver and Frank Zappa testified before the committee and made rousing defences of artistic free expression that were inspiring to see.

  In the end, the PMRC made little change to anything, other than the adoption of the 'Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics' label which, in the end, probably sold more albums and made those slapped with the label richer. Nonetheless, the defence that artists and the music industry made of their creativity is noteworthy for later contrast with issues around Gamergate when games were attacked – in no small part – by its own, internal quislings.

  The PMRC issue, of course, didn't much affect the UK directly. The discussion wasn't had here, and we'd already had many of the same debates in the Punk era. Our radio was already heavily redacted and censored. Heavy Metal did, however, come in for some – softened blowback. Metal, along with other things I was into (a casual interest in the occult and a love of role-playing games) were the subject of scaremongering by religious groups that came into schools. There was a video we were forced to watch in Religious Education class called 'Doorways to Danger' that went into great, panicked, detail over how terrible and Satanic all these things were. Fortunately, our RE teacher joined in our mockery and abuse of the poor guitar-wielding 'hip Christian' who presented this rubbish to us, and he was sent packing.

  Jack Thompson

  Jack Thompson is a disbarred attorney from Florida in the United States. He has a long history of riding the coattails of moral outrages from radio obscenity fines to rap music and finally, most famously, video games. He hit his stride in video games, coinciding with a growing moral panic about violence in games as they began to get more photo-realistic, three-dimensional and immersive. It can seem silly looking back at these older games, but the blood and gore of Mortal Kombat and the shift to the first-person view in games like DOOM were a sea-change – especially with the advent of widespread home consoles.

  As with many of the previous moral panics, his concerns were over the 'dangers' to the youth. He called games such as Grand Theft Auto 'murder simulators' and took part in blaming them for violence and shootings, even suggesting that their 'mind-bending' properties could constitute a defence in court. These cases and Thompson's claims coincided with a series of high-profile school shootings such as The Columbine Massacre. Looking back now, many of his claims (such as that the Playstation 2's force feedback was psychological conditioning) [16] are ridiculous, but society was looking for something to blame, and games seemed to fit the bill. More importantly, having something to blame absolved parents, teachers, schoolmates and 'the system' of any responsibility.

  As with other moral panics, the industry and its fans did not react well to attacks on their passion. Thompson became the subject of ridicule and found himself coded/patched/made into games where you could beat him up, kill him and otherwise 'burn him in effigy'. Interestingly, this passed largely without comment, unlike the 'Punch Anita' Flash game which was considered so terrible. There are also 'Punch Trump' games now that similarly pass without fuss.

  Games were even created based on his peculiar ideas of what games were, or what the worst possible game could be. Industry and fans were united against him and – yet again – there was, and there remains, no evidence that games increase violent behaviour (if anything the opposite).

  Despite this lack of scientific support games have been censored, and various degrees of state control or voluntary rating have been brought in. In the USA, since 1994, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board has applied ratings to games. While this doesn't seem to have stopped under-age kids playing games it does – at least in the USA – appear to have warded off the worst of the censorship. Other nations with less robust free speech laws have not fared as well, with Germany and Australia being particularly severe cases for game censorship.

  It is worth pointing out – yet again – that in the instance of Thompson and the school shooting panic, the games industry and its fans were united in the face of that panic. They fought together, games media, fans and games companies – as one – to mock and challenge the threat. This wouldn't happen with Gamergate.

  As with other panics, the fuss over violence in games only made them more appealing. I remember being desperate to play Mortal Kombat and to learn all the kill moves. Crude as they were, the fuss about them made doing so much more appealing and much more valuable. In the event of playing the game, it was a disappointment, but the challenge of finding someone who was allowed to have a copy – even at age 16 – added the thrill the game itself lacked. The Streisand Effect was a thing long before the Internet christened it in 2003.

  The Porn Panic

  Panic over pornography is nothing new; it's as old as pornography itself – at least in the modern sense. Even nations with enshrined free expression laws, such as the United States, have grappled with the issue. They have enacted laws and regulations (or tried to) that have interfered with the free production and consumption of adult material at both the state and federal level. In the United Kingdom, access to hardcore pornography was barely possible until the advent of (pirated) Satellite Television and then the Internet, back in the 1990s. The Internet made local restrictions impossible, pointless, like trying to stop beamed propaganda radio across the Iron Curtain.

  Since then there has been an increasingly harsh push-back via various nefarious means. This has not only occurred in the USA via 'Operation Choke Point'[17] (an initiative intended to target grey/black market operations but increasingly used to target pornographers) but also in the UK via a most peculiar alliance. Radical feminism (in the form of sex-negative feminist Gail Dines) and traditionalist conservatism (in the shape of David Cameron and the UK Conservative Party) cooperated. Together they laid the groundwork for the Digital Economy Bill, which has already had massive impact on the small, and ironically female-led, UK porn industry. [18]

  This has had a massively deleterious effect, especially on marginalised kink porn and feminist porn producers such as Pandora Blake. Agenda, apparently, overrides 'sisterhood' and repression overri
des progress, at least if you happen to want the 'wrong' kind of liberalisation.

  The tactics employed both sides of the Atlantic also amply demonstrate that the combinations and interactions of private and financial censorship and activist influence on government control can be almost as devastating as outright bans and government interference alone. Activists now wield an enormous amount of power, particularly in the private sphere, and often end up harming the very causes of diversity, feminism, etc. that they claim to champion. At least, they end up harming the 'wrong' kinds of diversity, feminism and progressivism from their point of view.

  If you want to learn more about pornography, society and censorship issues I recommend 'Freakonomics', 'A Billion Wicked Thoughts' and 'Porn Panic – Sex and Censorship in the UK', for further reading.

  A 'too much information' moment for you. I grew up before the porn-liberalisation that the Internet allowed. The Internet didn't became a 'proper' thing until 1995 when I was already twenty. Our sex education up until then primarily came from awkward school lessons or stumbling on someone's discarded softcore porn stash in the woods. People decry pornography as a place to learn about sex, but it is a damn sight better than the older alternatives.

  I grew up kinky, without really understanding or realising what that was. There was no Internet, no way to connect to that community. This is, in some ways, much like I imagine growing up isolated as an LGBTalphabetsoup person must be, though not as serious. I grew up without the faintest idea that there was a whole BDSM community and very confused and self-loathing about the nature of my desires. It wasn't until being gifted a set of John Norman's Gor novels that I realised that this was a thing, that I wasn't some monster and that this was a 'thing'. The Internet, later, helped, but I never really got over that. I'm glad kids growing up today have, at least for the time being, a way to self-explore their sexuality and find communities to accept them, whatever they are.

  The flipside of this, of course, is that people with genuinely horrific beliefs and practices can also form mutually supporting and reinforcing communities. Paedophiles, for example, often create rings and communities online that may worsen their behaviour and which has even led to something of a movement for 'paedophile acceptance' which is extremely worrying.

  Youtube

  As I am writing this there is a new moral panic, which I am – tangentially – caught up in. This one is an almost perfect example of the problems involved in:

  Irresponsible and unethical media.

  Commercial censorship.

  Moral panics.

  All of which are relevant to, and a legacy of, Gamergate's concerns.

  Youtube has been a fantastic platform for creators for many years. A relatively unfiltered, uncensored, meritocratic base upon which people could build careers and earn money for their commentary, art and alternative media. That seems to have – at least for now – to have somewhat come to an end. The gold-rush, at least, is over.

  The Wall Street Journal started this panic. In the wake of the 2017 USA elections (in which alternative media and problems with mainstream media played a role) they wrote a series of articles decrying Youtube's monetization of 'extreme and hateful content'[19].

  What happened, of course, is that a few minor videos and channels that were barely a blip had escaped Youtube's algorithms. As a result, they had been monetised while having 'sensitive' and non-PC content or titles, some of it legitimately hateful, much of it not. Adverts are also placed algorithmically, without human intervention, and have little or nothing to do with the content of any video they appear alongside (especially when it comes to mass market brands).

  The media, however, starting with the Wall Street Journal – and including others – presented this as though Youtube and the advertisers involved were endorsing or funding hate speech and extremist views. In a knee-jerk response, many advertisers pulled their funding from Youtube sucking money out of the platform and causing Youtube – in turn – to make a panicked, knee-jerk response of their own.

  Many Youtubers were doubly hit by this panic. The removal of a great deal of advertising revenue from the platform hit their income (by as much as ~95%). Then they were hit as Youtube's panicked doubling of control and censorship meant that many more of their videos – especially in terms of commentary on news and politics – were denied any advertising revenue at all. For people who had built this into a career and were creating content on Youtube full time, this was devastating.

  With similar irony to that found in the feminist motivated censorship of pornography in the UK, these tightened constrictions hit liberal outlets hard. Channels like The David Pakman Show[20], which reported the news and right-wing views in order to criticise them. Even LGBT channels were hit, the panic allowing advertisers to dictate to the platform about anything 'socially uncomfortable. This went well beyond the demanded degree of censorship, but this is what always happens[21].

  This attack, in itself, came in the wake of attacks on prominent Youtuber Pewdiepie (not the only target) over off-colour jokes and comedic and ironic references to Nazism in their videos. This, similarly, was an example of media irresponsibility and narrative framing to present the situation in a far different light to its actual nature[22].

  Speaking for myself, I have a Youtube channel where I talk about many things, including political and social commentary. In the wake of these controversies, I have found that many more of my videos – especially about current affairs – have been demonetised and my advertising rate has declined. I doubled the size of my channel over the past year, my traffic is up proportionately, but my Youtube income has decreased slightly. Whenever I comment on something like the recent Islamist terror attacks in London they are inevitably demonetised and get a fraction of the hits that they would have before. This is hugely discouraging to many channels which, entirely respectfully, talk about and examine current affairs.

  I think that's a dangerous discouragement to the provision of multiple sources and points of view and it continues to rip the guts out of alternative media and to force them to shift their business models in unpredictable ways.

  The New Moral Panic

  Gamergate itself is only one part of an extensive and ongoing moral panic that dates back at least to 2012 in some forms, and likely stretches back much further. It is reminiscent of the height of the previous Political Correctness overreach in the 1990s, which far outstripped sensible concerns and accommodations and began to interfere with language, expression and conduct before being rebuffed and defeated.

  It's hard to describe this new moral panic efficiently and simply other than, perhaps 'Political Correctness Gone Mad' which, unfortunately, is something of a dismissive trope or meme when phrased that way. Perhaps another way to describe it would be the 'Curse of Intersectionality'. What its root appears to be, is that large numbers of well-meaning but unthinking people, empowered by social media, heads filled with peculiar and self-contradicting ideology have self-selected themselves to be the moral arbiters and censors of all culture. They demand an absolute adherence to an ever-shifting and never-satisfied moral purity in language, expression, politics, art, teaching and more. They form online (and increasingly offline) mobs to enforce this moral orthodoxy.

  They claim to be liberal, while being starkly (small 'c') conservative, especially around sex and art.

  They claim to be critics while being censors.

  They claim to be for free speech while shutting down and censoring speech and expression.

  They claim speech is violence, and that this is unacceptable - while using violence to shut down speech.

  They claim to be feminist while supporting genuinely patriarchal Islamic religion against criticism and invoking 'Islamophobia'.

  “Everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic and you have to point it all out.” - Anita Sarkeesian [23]

  This phenomenon, these people, have come to be known as 'Social Justice Warriors', or – for the more academically
inclined – The Regressive Left (which better describes the inherent hypocrisy of the position).

  You could call this an 'intersectional moral panic'. It has remarkable endurance, and an almost amorphous quality, sharing many of the same actors, even as it strays from topic to topic.

  I've been on the receiving end of it, and as such a victim of many of the things the Social Justice Warriors complain about or play themselves up as victims of. Threats of violence, blacklisting, dis-invitations, rape threats, hatemail, boycotts, hacking attempts. You name it.

  Oh, but it's OK when they do it.

  A Quick Side Note About Censorship

  American readers may object to the usage of the term 'censorship' when referring to social censure or private companies controlling content. It's important to recognise that this is a rather parochial, insular, legalistic and narrow definition of the principle of free expression.

  Anything that suppresses and controls speech or expression is censorship.

  It doesn't have to be governmental.

  The real question is whether you think such suppression is justified or excusable. Few of us would probably argue that photographic child pornography shouldn't be controlled or banned. Some of us may change our minds when it comes to 'lolicon' or 'shota' artwork (Japanese underage pornographic comics) which has been protected by the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund in the past. Our position will also be informed by the ages of consent in our home cultures. Different standards, different contexts, different lines drawn for censorship.