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Swell AI Transcript: 4chan
SPEAKER_00: It's the latest development in what has become known as Gamergate, an online culture war.
Tig: Hello and welcome to episode four of Neutral Good. I'm your host, Tig. The whole first season of Neutral Good is about hashtag Gamergate. So if you haven't gone back and listened to the earlier episodes, I highly recommend them. In the previous episode, we gave voice to Zoe Quinn and presented their side of the Gamergate story. Zoe received a lot of harassment and we heard how it impacted their life and career at the time. They were the target of multiple coordinated attacks, including hacks of their social media accounts, swatting and doxing. Nevertheless, they maintained an impressive composure and spoke confidently about their ongoing experience at various events in the following years. In this episode, we'll show how a lot of the harassment levied against Zoe Quinn and other targets of Gamergate was carefully coordinated and precisely executed. Just a polite warning that this episode may get very dark.
null: Part 1. What is 4chan?
SPEAKER_04: If Reddit is a fully functioning online democracy, then 4chan is basically Lord of the Flies. Simply put, 4chan is a collection of online forums where users can post comments and share photos. It's based on the old bulletin board systems that were big on the web in the early 2000s. There are dozens of forums, all tagged with an abbreviation like SP for sports, V for video games, and S for sexy beautiful women. The kicker? Almost everyone is anonymous.
Tig: I feel like this clip from Mashable in 2014 does not do enough justice to explain 4chan. It's so much more than just an image board. 4chan, like many chan sites, is a collection of communities whose only real unifying factor is this sort of pseudo anonymous method by which posters are identified, which is called a trip code. A trip code on 4chan is a salted hash of the password entered when you're posting. So using the same password would result in the same trip code. This gave folks a way to identify each other if they wanted while still mostly remaining anonymous. As the clip says, 4chan separated into boards like V for video games and MLP for My Little Pony. In fact, one of the better explainer videos I watched was published by a brony and directed users specifically to the MLP board. There's a place for everyone. Sounds wonderful. What's the catch? 4chan is the Wild West. Anything goes as long as it's not outright illegal and as long as it fits the theme of the board. In effect, that means you're likely to see porn, gore or hate speech sprinkled in with innocuous posts about video games, cryptocurrencies, anime or DIY crafts. My experience talking with channers who are there for a specific topic like anime or video games is they tune out the noise. But the edginess of 4chan 4chan is a huge attractor. Even the terminology used across the site is itself a test of character. And if you're willing to ignore some rough language and very edgy jokes, you'll find a dedicated, hard-working user base who are very passionate. Perhaps too passionate. Users of 4chan communities have been in the news for everything from protesting Scientology, from getting a guy arrested for abusing his cat, to murder and at least one mass shooting. Part 2. What is 4chan known for? 4chan's known for silly things like inventing the rickroll where you trick people into clicking a video of rick astley's never gonna give you up or pepe the frog originally taken from matt fury's comic book called boys club and repurposed into a million different memes that you can find today on sites like twitch.tv trollface and wojak memes were born on 4chan then workshop shopped, and perfected. In 2008, when the hacker collective Anonymous started to protest Scientology and published all those videos mocking the organization, the operation was run from, you guessed it, 4chan's responsible for both the no fap movement and the fappening. You can google those ones on your own time, at home, in private. The iceberg goes pretty deep. 4chan's also the breeding ground that brought us murderers like Brandon Andrew Clark, who senselessly ended the life of Bianca Devins, and the Christchurch shooter who killed 51 people at two mosques. Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that inspired a strange event in history where a young man drove to Comet Pizza in DC with a gun because he thought he was breaking up a secret child trafficking ring operating out of the basement, that conspiracy theory originated on 4chan's poll board. Even the QAnon conspiracy started on 4chan, with Q themselves dropping information in cryptic posts before eventually moving to 8chan. Many of these conspiracies can be traced back to a specific board poll, a.k.a. politically incorrect. Part three, how is Gamergate connected?
SPEAKER_01: So realistically, I'm done. The channel shut down. I'll pop up maybe in six or seven months. None of you are going to remember what I sound like. You're probably not going to find the channel. That's just how I'd prefer it. I didn't like a large audience. And to be frank with you, the whole Gamergate thing is depressing. It was the opportunity to finally kick the teeth in of social justice warriors and tumblerettes and draw a fucking line in the sand and push back against all these hypersensitive cunts. And for a while it was working really, really well.
Tig: The voice you hear is the Internet Aristocrat, aka Jim, aka Mr. Medeker. In Episode 2, we heard excerpts from his videos about Zoe Quinn, The Zoe Post, and Proto Gamergate. Gaming personality John Bain, aka TotalBiscuit, cited the videos of Internet Aristocrat in some of his very first public comments about Gamergate.
SPEAKER_01: All you had to do was attack. See, that's the trick. That's why I love polls so fucking much. People think you need to be a moderate or an independent or a neutral. They're wrong. You need to pick an extreme. You need to pick a side with
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a yes or a no answer. That's how you attract people to you. If you're too focused on being a moderate, if you try to approach the middle to appeal to moderates, you become indistinguishable from them, and your message becomes diluted. And as time went on, that's what happened to GamerGate. And it's too fucking painful to watch happen anymore. I was planning on shutting down the channel anyway, but over the last month, I watched this happen more and more. And don't believe me? Go look at this for yourself, Bull. Go look at the people who are prominent figures right now in GamerGate, and see how many of them have Indiegogo campaigns, how many of them have Kickstarter campaigns, how many of them have Patreons, how many have ad revenue on their fucking videos. Everybody's making a buck, and they're all making a buck doing the same shit the people we were supposed to be fighting against were doing. They're crying harassment, and then making money off of it, and it's fucking bullshit. But they don't seem to mind. And then add on top of that all the SJW language, all the SRS bullshit, where you hear them using words like toxic, and signal boost, and tone police, and all the other 13-year-old girl fucking phrases and terms that shouldn't be anywhere associated with this. You had to do just one thing. Attack, attack, attack. Keep the pressure up, and your opponent, in this case, corrupt media and the SJW cultural Marxist bullshit, they'll fold. They'll make a mistake and make themselves look stupid, like Sam Biddle did, like other people did. And you capitalize off of that. The saddest fucking thing about all of this is, it wasn't mainstream media, it wasn't multi-million dollar corporations, it wasn't corrupt journalists, and it wasn't social justice warriors that killed Gamergate. Gamergate shot itself in the foot by becoming what they're fighting, and that is just too much to fucking handle. It's just, I can't, I couldn't watch it happen anymore. They don't know what they're doing. I know now what it, I don't know how to explain it. I know what happened to Occupy Wall Street now. I know what happened to Chinology now. When you lose your edge, when you lose that chaotic element that really helps you boost something in the beginning, you're dead in the water. And that's exactly what's happening to Gamergate. I wish them the best. I don't want to see Gawker win. I don't want to see those fuckers, those smug cunts walk away like nothing happened. It feels hopeless. It really does. As for the other saying in the thread, because I'm reading through it, because I got linked to it from somebody who happened to stumble on it, that, oh, Jim is self-promoting. Pop in the fucking IRC, talk to Ahmad. They can check the IP addresses and confirm that's not me. I don't start threads here to talk about myself, and I don't trip-fag. It takes five seconds for you to look into that. But I like that you doubt that. See, that's why I like Poll. You don't fucking trust anything. That's good. But just be wary of these Gamergate fuckers. A lot of them are out to hustle money. And if you really look into it, you'll fucking see what I mean. And I can't stomach it. I wanted to fight Tumblr, not become it. And I will not ally myself with people that are just as bad as the opposition. Let them go whore themselves out for money. Let them, you know, become what they're fighting. And see how much fucking momentum they get. See how much they accomplish doing that. They lost their edge, and they forgot their principles and their values. and there's just there's no fucking excuse for it there's there's no excuse for doing that so that's that's the i don't know the explanation if that's really what you fucking wanted i don't know what to say but um yeah just just fuck it uh i think uh i don't know how to sum it up best Actually, you know what? I do. I have a quote for you that I think really sums up my thoughts on Gamergate at this point. If the war is lost, the people will also be lost, and it is not necessary to worry about their needs for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things, for the nation has proved to be weak, and the future belongs entirely to the strong people of the East. Whatever remains after this battle is, in any case, only the inadequate, because the good ones will be dead. Good luck, Paul. Keep doing what you're doing. Love the shit out of the Ferguson Threads. You glorious fucking cunts.
Tig: Oh yeah, while Gamergate was unfolding beginning in the summer of 2014, so too was the Ferguson unrest. Protests and riots that started in Ferguson, Missouri over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson on August 9th. 4chan's poll board quickly filled with racist posts describing false narratives and applauding the police for killing a black man. That's the context in which the internet aristocrat is on the record saying, I love the shit out of the Ferguson threads. Fast forward to 2022 and here he is again explaining his intentions behind Gamergate.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I was doing the tumblers and videos. They were doing fine. I was having fun doing them. The Zoe Quinn stuff happened. I did a video about that. And then the Gamergate thing grew into its own thing. And I was like, I'm checking out. I'm grabbing my parachute and jumping. And then I wiped the accounts. And then just, you know, like, I think six months or a year later, I started up the Medicare account and then started doing videos on that.
SPEAKER_02: Gamer gate was like a huge fucking deal if you were to give like the elevator pitch of what gamer gate was What would you say in your own words?
SPEAKER_01: I was getting women out of gaming No, I mean, listen, for like three or four years, right, you couldn't go onto a video game website or a video game review site and just read, like, I wanted a newswire. I know this sounds stupid, but I think a lot of people did, where,
like, I just want to hear about video game news. Like, just tell me the name of the title that's coming out. Give me a straightforward review, right? Just give me basic information. But they took that approach of just giving you basic information, and then they started preaching to you. And it started out really subtly at first. But then, as it went on, more and more and more, it became, you're terrible, gamers are horrible, if you play video games, you're shit. And it was like every outlet was doing this. And then they all became incestuous with each other, and they were all super friendly with each other. And then here comes Zoe Quinn, who has this shitty game, and all the stuff comes out from her ex, and it turns out that she knows all these different game reviewers are kissing her ass. And it looks like this just shitty, incestuous thing, and I think people were just at the point, had enough of it. They're like, I'm sick of going to, like, a gaming website and being told I'm a piece of shit because I play video games when all these people are just incestuous idiots that are trying to like boost their career and don't mean any of it. So I mean that would be like the opening pitch to it.
Tig: The wild part of Internet Aristocrat's involvement to me is how he used the Gamergate movement and ethics in gaming journalism as a vehicle to further Poll's agenda of reducing diversity, silencing SJWs and punishing media outlets for daring to use more inclusive or modern language. The harassment campaigns are never mentioned publicly by Internet Aristocrat. And in the first video, he quickly pivots to focusing on how Zoe Quinn's alleged use of sex for positive coverage warrants a serious discussion about ethics. This allowed Poll to focus on honing their message while simultaneously running cover for the harassment campaigns against Zoe. I'm going to read for you a series of screenshots taken from the Twitter thread documenting 4chan's involvement in GamerGate. Links are in the show notes. This is from August 16th, about a week after the Zoe post went live. Attention R9K, the next Anita Sarkeesian is trying to take root in video games. Also, V and B threads about it are being deleted. Us and Poll are the only guys left who can talk about it. R9K is a board where no duplicate posts are permitted, and BE Board is the random board where anything goes. The replies to this post are, as expected, awful. I'm going to read two, and I apologize in advance for the language. She'll get to win. She'll lead a fulfilling life, scraping a living off pisswater bile and hypocritical hot-button topics like feminism, all the while sitting back laughing and getting to be the hero while anyone who criticizes her behavior's opinions is invalidated in fell swoops by legions of fanboys spouting, you're just jealous and misogynist. Gaming would be better without you, smiley face. I want this cunt dead. And here's the next one. Well, you see Anon, it's like this. She is a cunt, so naturally she does not have anything to offer except access to her holes. Can a cunt create a masterpiece? Write a play? Make a game of the year? No. Therefore, it is fair to conclude that she received favorable reviews from Kotaku in exchange for use of her cum receptacle. It was legitimately hard to get through those comments, and those were considered mild enough to share on Twitter without fear of a ban. By the evening of that same day, someone posts this with an image of Alex Jones addressing the camera. This is a fun, interesting story. I've been keeping track since the beginning, but I think a lot of us are too scattered about what this should really be about. It shouldn't be about a psycho slut who fucked five guys and hurt some beta's feelings. I think the focus should be more on that this chick is using sex to climb her way through the ranks of the gaming industry. all while spewing an ideology that she does not believe nor follow. This was 4chan workshopping the operation in real time. This is the seed of the complaint that grows into ethics in gaming journalism, which Internet Aristocrat was so quick to promote to the masses. The post continues. We need to focus on the fact that she fucked journalists slash game reviewers in order to give the game she designed positive feedback. She fucked her current boss who is married. This is obviously bad. Neither her nor her boss should be allowed to keep their current job. She is a hypocrite that claims a very specific feminist ideology and then 180s and has sex with everyone to get what she wants. We need to expose her as a hypocrite and a liar. The cheating part is just a bonus. Yes, she's a slut, but there are tons of sluts out there. There is actual proof that she is getting leverage in her career by using sex, and that is a travesty and a corruption. Notice this message is similar enough to the Internet Aristocrats videos. It's less refined. It focuses too much on hating Zoe. And the channers know this message won't be well received by mainstream media. A few more tweaks and we're nearly there. Here's a reply five minutes later. Yes, it would also help if people could tweet things along the lines of this is disgusting or this is a violation of privacy and say shit that the person's character should not be judged as a result of this, but focus on the implications of the relationships between gaming press and game devs. The messages about this have to convey as if there's a serious discussion to be had while damaging her and her reputation as collateral damage. And five minutes after that post, dude, exactly. Yes. Thus far, all that's happening everywhere is we're getting our threads deleted from Giant Bomb, from Reddit, from 4chan itself. What we need to do is to bring a true discussion to the table. We need to ignore the dirty laundry between the beta and his slut girlfriend. and bring to the table a discussion of how close is too close when dealing with gaming press and game developers, as well as the relationships female game devs have with their superiors. I recommend listening to episode two of this podcast if you haven't already, where TotalBiscuit, John Bain, used this same line of questioning when interviewing Steven Totillo, the editor-in-chief of Kotaku at the time. Now that we've established that the ethics and gaming journalism cover story originated on 4chan, let's take a look at some IRC logs that reveal what else is going on. IRC is a chat service. It's it's pretty open. And on August 18th, someone posted a photo of three phone numbers belonging to Zoe Quinn's boss to a channel called Burgers and Fries, which was a play on words regarding the five guys that Zoe had allegedly slept with. Immediately someone comments, all right, Paul, let's dox. Their endgame was, as overt white supremacist user Cybercirker put so succinctly, destroying Kotaku, Boggs, and Quinn. They continued to dox Zoe and others associated with them, publishing personal information and going so far as to send Zoe's nudes to people on Twitter. They reached out to Extra Credits, Jim Sterling, and TotalBiscuit, and we know how that turned out. They rejoiced when the Internet Aristocrat's first video goes up and repeatedly posted the link. This relatively small IRC channel was effectively GamerGate's command center. The topic of the channel visible in searches on the IRC network ranged from pleas for donations to help their doxing campaign to direct links to Zoe and Joshua Boggs' personal information for anyone to see. This was obviously not about ethics in gaming journalism at all. Links to the IRC logs are available in the show notes. Thank you for listening to episode four of Neutral Good. We learned about 4chan and how 4chan's disinformation campaign about ethics in gaming journalism ran cover for a coordinated harassment campaign targeting Zoe Quinn and Zoe's peers. If you'd like to learn more about the topics discussed in this episode, please check out the show notes where I do cite all my sources. I've also launched a website for the podcast over at www.neutralgoodpodcast.com, where you can find show notes and more. I'm your host, Tig, and this has been Neutral Good.