Opening GamerGate

Yesterday was very interesting for me on Twitter.

Anne Wheaton said something on her blog that many trolls and pro-GamerGate guys did not like. She started receiving a lot of harassment on Twitter and decided to turn it into a positive. For everyone negative or harassing tweet she received, she’d donate adollar to Feminist Frequency up to $1,000. John Scalzi said he’d match those donations.

I thought this was great. I tweeted something to Anne Wheaton about how I thought it was magical that she found a way to turn a negative into a positive. I had at least 4 people come out of the woodwork to say something negative or antagonistic to me.

One of my personal favorites was one guy who insulted my intelligence on the grounds of his own faulty logical. GamerGate can’t be harassing Anne Wheaton because then a feminist cause would be getting money therefore she must be making it all up.

When I dared to tweet about the harassment I received, I got it back tenfold. I posted a snarky tweet with this picture with the hashtags troll and GamerGate. Someone actually jumped on me about how it was wrong to call all pro-GamerGate guys trolls. When I pointed out I was merely calling this person affiliated with that cause a troll, I got no response.

One brave soul was a jerk and immediately blocked me so I couldn’t respond. What a BAMF.

Another person asked what was going on. One of his buddies said Anne Wheaton’s wife “trolled GG and pretended to get “attacked” (you know the drill)” [sic]

A couple of guys weren’t as bad as the rest. We wound up have a very long conversation about several things. They were reasonable at times like admitting the GG crowd had a hair trigger that night. But they could also be antagonistic at times.

When I said I was a feminist one of them said he could show me decades of feminists behaving badly. Should he judge me on it? His friend said, maybe they should. If I reacted the same way, it would have merited an attack.

Someone else jumped in the conversation with a list about the illusion of “male privilege.” That merits it’s own post but I knew better than to get mad or truly engage. The same guy who apologized for the hair trigger response of his community also insisted feminist was a portmanteau of 'feminine' and 'supremacist' and challenged me refute the MRA list since they were "just facts.".

I told him his tone indicated he was more interested in refuting what I had to say rather than listening and I wouldn’t change his mine in 140 characters. He readily agreed this was the wrong format for this kind of conversation. I was impressed that we were at least able to agree on at least some points.

It did shed some insight on to why so many trolls came out from under the bridge to aggravate me. According to them, by posting something supportive to Anne Wheaton, I was issuing a challenge. I was going into battle picking a side.

I completely disagree. Saying one supportive thing to someone does not mean you’re taking up arms. If that’s the case, these trolls were looking for a fight.

It also defeats a big part of their argument. If Anne Wheaton is making up all this harassment, why are trolls coming after me? I did even less to provoke them than she did.

When I asked what the point of starting an argument with someone on the Internet was, I got a decent response. “Same thing as fights everywhere solved. One feels righteous, the other cowed.” Basically, it doesn’t solve anything. It just makes the trolls feel big and bad.

These guys were better than their counterparts but not by as much as I’d like. They were receptive to what I had to say and I felt more heard by them than most of the other bridge-dwellers. I also pointed out their list of MRA facts don’t exist in a vacuum. We have to look at the society around them to appreciate what they truly mean.

The whole time I was receiving hate, I was worried someone would track down my information and use it to hurt me or call in reinforcements to attack me. Not all GamerGate guys are pure evil but they’ve generated enough horror stories that they’ll never be seen as a neutral party.

I was pleased I could have a conversation with some of these guys rather than just the usual vitriol.  I bet not everyone can say that.