Games Trolls PlayAnastasia Salter

MLA 2018

@anasalter

Zoe Quinn, Crash Override: How GamerGate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life... (2016)

In all my time as an activist, I've never seen a single instance where the people instigating abuse, even in the worst possible cases, thought they were the 'bad guys'. There is always a righteous undertone.

Dehumanization works its mental magic, and turning the target into a 'villain' provides the attacker with the chance to be a 'hero'. You can rationalize doing all kinds of things to a symbol that you would never do to a human. The campaign becomes a false battle between good and evil, and tormenting someone is seen as a struggle over something much larger than either of you. That's the key ingredient in the magic trick that, in the abusers' minds, turns screaming at a game developer's father through a telephone into defending an entire artistic medium from censorship.

Andy Baio, “72 Hours of GamerGate,” October 27, 2014https://medium.com/message/72-hours-of-gamergate-e00513f7cf5d

Adrienne Massanari, “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures.” New Media & Society Volume: 19 Issue 3 (2017)

Toxic technocultures are unique in their leveraging of sociotechnical platforms as both a channel of coordination and harassment and their seemingly leaderless, amorphous quality. Members of these communities often demonstrate technological prowess in engaging in ethically dubious actions such as aggregating public and private content about the targets of their actions (for potential doxxing purposes or simply their own enjoyment) and exploiting platform policies that often value aggregating large audiences while offering little protection from potential harassment victims. At the same time, individuals affiliated with toxic technocultures both champion the power of the community as a way to effect change or voice displeasure with others they view as being adversaries, while still distancing themselves from what they perceive as the more ethically dubious (and illegal) actions of others, suggesting they are “not really part” of whatever toxic technocultureunder which they are acting.

https://medium.com/@ashleylynch/a-final-word-on-notyourshield-628ca5876cec

Miranda Ganzer, “In Bed with Trolls,” Feminist Media Studies 14.6. (2016)

One of the questions hashtag feminism and Operation: Lollipop in particular raises is how to define ideological authenticity, which is part of the larger question of how representation and the nature of virtual reality operate in the twenty-first century. As an inherently malleable infrastructure, the Internet affords its users opportunities for anonymity and manipulation, which in this case enabled antagonists to subvert a woman of color feminist movement by inhabiting the personas, spaces, and language of that very movement. British journalist Laurie Penny humorously made this point when she tweeted:

“Sudden moment of existential dread, wondering if I am myself a 4chan creation.”

Penny’s tweet sums up the surreal sensation of a political identity insidiously co-opted in a virtual realm.

Andrew Griffin (2015) https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/technology/gamergate-tim-schafer-provokes-rage-with-not-your-shield-joke-about-online-gaming-activists-at-industry-awards-31044871.html

While making a speech, Schafer used a sock to make a joke about the movement. The sock is thought to be a representation of sockpuppets, a term used on the internet to refer to fake accounts and identities set up to give the impression that comments are coming from a third-party.

In the character of the sock, Schafer asks: “How many gamergaters does it take to make a single piece of armor?” Schafer, as himself, says that he doesn’t know.

The sock replies: “Fifty. One to do the modeling, one to do the materials, and forty-eight to tweet that it’s not your shield.”

Kishonna Gray, “Blurring the boundaries: Using GamerGate to examine ‘real’ and symbolic violence against women in contemporary game culture.” Sociology Compass Volume 11.3 (2017).

The symbolic aspects of the social practice of violence against women have had real ramifications for women in gaming. The concept of “symbolic violence,” which was to inform Bourdieu’s wider theorizing on power and domination, was developed to explain how social hierarchies and inequalities are maintained less by physical force than by forms of symbolic domination (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 2). The invisibility, isolation, and exclusion of women constitute an effective tool of silent (masculine) domination and the silencing of women (the dominated). Silence must be examined not in the physical act of hushing or not allowing someone to speak; rather, silence is a structural and systemic concern that renders groups powerless. Importantly, symbolic violence, while mostly invisible and ignored, creates the conditions of possibility for other more tangible and visible forms of violence (doxing, bomb threats, and so on)..

Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw, “A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 59.1 (2015).

Are we actually trying to dismantle hegemonic masculinity? If so what might we mean by ‘‘dismantle’’—ridding the world entirely of masculine gaming culture or simply making room for other gaming cultures and increased diversity? We intend to mean (and hope we mean) the latter. Yet, in writing this essay we have also found ourselves wrapped up in the complexities of the conspiracy logic. It is impossible to look at our own language sometimes without agreeing with the conspiracy theorists. Perhaps we are the nefarious plotters they think we are, rather than two tenure track academics just trying to make sense of culture.

Thank you!

Anastasia Salter@anasalter