August 6, 2025 • 42 mins
Why is the media afraid of free speech? We continue our journey down the Twitter rabbit hole by telling the story of #GamerGate…a scandal that strangely became one of the most consequential events in the evolution of Jack Dorsey’s creation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America.
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Speaker 2 (01:13):
Now onto the show. Previously on Red Pilled America, Well,
can you tell us.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
What Twitter is?
Speaker 4 (01:19):
It's basically mini blogging.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
And at the end of that two weeks I wrote
the first tweet, which was inviting coworkers.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Jack Dorsey had a very lazy fair approach to moderation.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Twitter was being used to give first hand eyewitness accounts
of what was happening on the ground.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Journalists love the tool.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Try the questions.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Democratic Congressman Anthony Wainer is refusing to answer. I've seen
a lot of this congressman's body, So today I'm announcing
my resignation from Congress.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Conservatives were quietly becoming experts at using this new social
media tool.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
Were the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It became apparent that the media was losing its grip
on the narrative and they'd have to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm Patrick CARELCI and I'm Adriana Cortez, and.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We are all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The media marks stories about everyday Americans of the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
You could think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we've promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America. We're at the second part of our
(02:49):
series of episodes entitled Unfiltered. You've probably heard part one,
but if you haven't, stop and go back and listen
from the beginning. We're looking for the answer to the
question why is the media afraid of free speech? By
telling the story of Twitter and how it drifted away
from being the free speech platform.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So in part one, we followed the early career of
Jack Dorsey and how he became a programmer for a
new podcasting company called Odio. That task was short lived
because soon after Jack joined the team, Apple got into
the podcasting business. It destroyed Odio's business model. The company
had to make a quick pivot, and they turned to
Jack Dorsey for ideas. He came up with what eventually
(03:30):
would become Twitter, a microblogging site that turned out to
be so much more. Twitter was instantly popular with journalists
because it could give fast on the ground reporting in short,
concise messages or tweets. We then explored perhaps the first
indication that Twitter would become a powerful communication tool by
telling the story of a twenty eleven scandal known as Wienergate,
(03:52):
when Andrew Breitbart and his band of rebel journalist used
Twitter to expose the lies of a sitting Democrat Congressman
Anthony Weener. The team eventually forced Wiener to resign. The
oola fair would have massive political implications, but we'll get
to that later. By the end of Wienergate, Twitter management
had already gone through major turmoil. Jack Dorsey had been
(04:13):
forced out as CEO and was placed in the largely
figurehead position of chairman. The new CEO claimed that Twitter
was the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party,
but in the years it followed that claim would be
put to the test by a band of outcasts, a
community you'd never think could impact our free speech rights.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Gamers. It's hard to find a more maligned group. Branded
as fat, nerdy, pimple popping, virgin white males living in
their parents' basement. Gamers are perhaps the most unlikely hero
in the modern culture war, But these societal misfits became
just that, and their weapon was Twitter. In twenty fourteen,
(05:03):
building on the hashtag wiener gate, strategy gamers went toe
to toe with a woke battalion that had infiltrated their community.
The battle became known as hashtag gamer gate, and it
would oddly become one of the most consequential moments in
the life of Jack Dorsey's creation. Like many epic wars
(05:24):
throughout history, it all started with a spurned lover. It
was mid August twenty fourteen, and a young man named
Erin published a tell all story about the breakup with
his ex girlfriend, a woman that went by the moniker
Zoe Quinn. Zoe was a young, tattooed video game developer
whose hair alternated between pink, blue, purple, and bleach blonde.
(05:46):
Erin accused her of being a too timing liar who
had been canoodling with multiple men behind his back. To
the uninitiated, the blog post seemed a bit vengeful, maybe
even petty. It appeared to be just another heartbroken personal
account of a short lived love affair. According to Erin,
he and Zoe met on the dating app ok Cupid.
(06:08):
They connected over a shared interest in gaming. He helped
her develop a video game. The relationship went through twists
and turns, then ended after her alleged infidelity with at
least five different men, and he claimed to have the receipts.
Aarin posted many of their online exchanges. In one of them,
it appeared Zoe not only admitted to cheating on him
(06:29):
with her married boss, but also to raping Erin, or
at least by her definition of rape. In one screenshot
Aaron shared, Zoe allegedly exclaimed that if Erin exposed the
adulterous affair to her boss's wife, it would not only
ruin the video game she was developing, it would likely
hurt all female game developers in the male dominated industry.
(06:51):
Her argument didn't fly. Aaron posted all the dirt anyway.
By his account, he wanted to expose her betrayal to
save others from falling into her spell. Zoe would later
report or didly claim his accusations weren't true. Most of
us have seen this kind of dirty laundry aired on
social media. It wasn't unprecedented, but to hardcore gamers, this
(07:13):
simple blog post was a gift of epic proportions you
see at the time. In twenty fourteen, gamers were under siege.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Two years earlier, a radical feminists launched a campaign.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
Have you ever noticed that, with a few notable exceptions,
basically all female characters and video games fall into a
small handful of cliches and stereotypes. I'm Anita Sarkusen and
I run the video web series Feminist Frequency. As a
pop culture critic, I look at movies, TV shows, comic books,
and of course, video games.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In twenty twelve, Anita Sarkissian introduced a crowdfunding campaign asking
for donations to produce a series of videos analyzing the
alleged misogynistic storylines in video games.
Speaker 7 (08:00):
Many games tend to reinforce and amplify sexis and downright
misogynist ideas about women. In this particular project, which I'm
calling Tropes versus Women in Video Games, I'm going to
create a series of five videos that look at and
deconstruct the most common and the most stereotypical representations of
women in games. Video games are an integral and growing
(08:20):
part of our popular culture today, and as with all
paup culture media, the gaming industry is playing a role
in helping to shape our society, either by challenging or
more often, reinforcing existing values, beliefs, and behaviors.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
The woke feminists didn't like the way women were portrayed
in some video games, and she was on a mission
to reform the industry's sexist ways.
Speaker 7 (08:41):
This new video series will primarily focus on tracking five
stereotypical representations of women throughout the history of video games.
I'm going to look at the damsel in distress, the
fighting toy, the sexy sidekick, the sexy villainous, and the
most common trope in video games, women as background decoration.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Her campaign appeared intentionally provocative and it's real annoyed criticism
from gamers, but Anita was smart. She channeled their response
into her own victim narrative and claimed she was being
harassed by the sexist boys Club of gaming. Anita was
now the damsel in distress and she needed feminists everywhere
to come to her rescue by donating to her campaign.
(09:23):
Well it worked. Over the span of a month, Anita
snagged almost one hundred and sixty thousand dollars at the time,
a hefty amount for a crowdfunding project. Nine months later,
she slowly began publishing her critique videos each making the
argument that the gaming industry was plagued with misogyny.
Speaker 7 (09:41):
Welcome to our multipart video series of some to the
second episode. Welcome to the third episode in our multi
part series exploring the roles and representations of women in
video games. Let's jump right into the damsel in distress.
As a trope, the damsel in distress is a plot
device in which a female character is placed in a
perilous situation from which she cannot escape her own and
(10:03):
then must be rescued by a male character, usually providing
an incentive or motivation for the protagonists quest. The damsel
trope typically makes men the subject of narratives while relegating
women to the role of object. This is a form
of objectification because as objects, damseled women are being acted upon,
most often becoming or reduced to a prize to be won,
(10:24):
a treasure to be found, or a goal to be achieved.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
She tracked the sexism back to the nineteen eighties arcade
favorite Donkey Kong, where a King Kong like gorilla captures
Princess Peach and the hero Mario is tasked with saving her.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
I've heard it said that in the game of patriarchy,
women are not the opposing team, they are the ball. So,
for example, we can think of the Super Mario franchise
as a grand game being played between Mario and Bowser,
and Princess Peach's role is essentially that of the ball.
The two men are tossing her back and forth over
the course of the main series, each trying to keep
and take possession of the damsel ball.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Anita used a critique plucked from a university gender studies
class and applied it to the world of gaining the damsel.
Speaker 7 (11:09):
Distress is not just a synonym for weak. Instead, it
works by ripping away the power from female characters, even
helpful or seemingly capable ones. No matter what we're told
about their magical abilities, skills, or strengths, they're still ultimately
captured or otherwise incapacitated and then must wait for rescue.
The reality is this trope is being used in a
(11:30):
real world context, where backward sexist attitudes are already rampant.
It's a sad fact that a large percentage of the
world's population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that
women as a group need to be sheltered, protected, and
taken care of by men. The belief that women are
somehow a naturally weaker gender is a deeply ingrained, socially
constructed myth, which of course is completely false, but the
(11:52):
notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are continuously portrayed
as frail, fragile, and vulnerable creatures.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
She closed out each episode with the call to act
within the gaming community to change its sexist ways.
Speaker 7 (12:07):
Women shouldn't be mere disposable objects or symbolic pawns, and
stories about men and their own struggles with patriarchal expectations
and inadequacies. It's long past time to disrupt the established pattern,
break the cycle, and create new gender paradigm.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Anita Sarkisian's videos were a smash hit among the woke
feminist crowd. They racked up millions of views, and her
attacks began to apply a new kind of pressure within
the gaming community. The industry was no stranger to being
attacked since the nineties, conservatives and the religious right had
accused the gaming industry of inspiring violence in the real world,
(12:43):
but Anita's attack was something new. Her criticism appeared to
be coming from within the industry because Anita claimed to
be a gamer.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
I've been playing video games since I was about five
years old. This is a photo of me at age
ten playing a Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo.
So I've been playing games for quite a while. I
think games are really where we're going. So again, I've
been playing games for a while. Video games are so
interesting and engaging and interactive. I'm a gamer, and I
(13:12):
enjoy games. I love games. I'm a fan of games.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
The far left mainstream media heaped praise on the videos.
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, and others
encouraged readers to support Anita's reform effort. Gaming websites like
Kataku and Polygon, all populated by far left journalists, loved
Anita's radical feminist message, and they positioned her as the
gamer that was starting a much needed dialogue within the
(13:46):
world of gaming. Well like every other branch of entertainment,
the gaming industry fell in line with the media. At
its twenty fourteen Game Developers' Choice Awards, it bestowed her
with an honor.
Speaker 8 (14:01):
The Ambassador Award is an individual who has helped the
game industry advance to a better place. Anita Serkesian's work
has done just that. Anita saw an opportunity to create
in her awards a space where feminism was easy to
engage with in an accessible way. She loves video games.
She's so passionate about them that she feels they're worth
fighting for. It is my honor to present the Game
(14:24):
Developer's Ambassador Award to Anita Sarkesian.
Speaker 9 (14:27):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (14:29):
I'm incredibly surprised to be receiving this award and super honored.
This is the first time the GDC Ambassador Award has
been given.
Speaker 10 (14:36):
To a woman.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
I know that many of you are ready and willing
to take that challenge and make gaming a more inclusive
space for people of all genders. I'm honored to be
a small part of that change, and I'm excited to
see where we.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
Go from here.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Gamers were being branded as sexists from one of their own.
As the summer of twenty fourteen arrived, they'd had just
about enough. The Joystick soldiers wanted to mount a counter attack,
but they needed something to rally behind, and that it
would come with Aaron salacious post about his girlfriend's infidelity.
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(16:26):
to red pilled America. So by the summer of twenty fourteen,
gamers had had enough of Anita Sarkisian's feminist attack on
their beloved hobby. They wanted to mount a counter attack.
A few began posting videos analyzing the flaws and her analysis.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
If you go to places where you can discuss her videos,
which is basically anywhere where she can't delete your comments,
you'll find example after example of how she's just cherry
picked and completely misrepresented games. Two very clear examples is
why she used the game Watchdogs on the very mission
(17:03):
where you have to try and shut down a sex
trafficking ring, Well, how can you possibly portray that as
objectifying women? Well, she found a way and almost.
Speaker 7 (17:12):
Never get to be anything other than set dressing or
props in someone else's narrative. This is the essence of
what sexual objectification means.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
She takes a mission where you're trying to shut down
a sex trafficking ring and portrays that as sexist.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
These responses began racking up tens of thousands of views,
but it wasn't until Aaron aired his Dirty Laundry with
his ex girlfriend Zoe Quinn that a movement began to
take shape. You see, Zoe Quinn was part of this
feminist infiltration of the gaming community. She developed a strange
(17:48):
pseudo game called Depression Quest. The user simulated being depressed
by reading a passage, then clicking on various links that
took them down a fictional story of depression. It had
multiple endings depending on what you clicked, but it was
more like an interactive story than an actual game. Many
gamers didn't consider it a game at all, and they
(18:09):
were creeped out that Zoe chose to launch it on
the day that Robin Williams committed suicide. Adding to their
surprise was that the gaming media oddly heaped praise on
Depression Quest. Gamers began to suspect that it was simply
because she was a feminist, kind of like an affirmative
action for female game developers. But Aaron's post about Zoe's
(18:30):
alleged infidelities offered a new hypothesis. If his accusations were true,
it suggested that Zoe Quinn was shacking up with key
people within the gaming world to get ahead. To many gamers,
Aaron's post was a godsend. The entire industry was being
branded by feminists as sexist, and yet here was a
prominent gaming feminist allegedly sleeping around with the people that
(18:53):
could benefit her career. It not only showed hypocrisy, but
it showed potential corruption within gaming journalism, and that was
no small deal. At the time time, global gaming revenue
was estimated to be over eighty billion dollars. Corruption in
the gaming media had massive implications. Aside from shifting gamer's
attention to certain titles, the industry media affected gaming developers
(19:16):
pocketbooks in other ways. Many of them received bonuses on
how the media covered their work. So if a feminist
gamer was reaping financial benefits by sleeping around, what other
corruption was lurking behind the curtain. Aaron's salacious blog post
was a gift that gamers couldn't pass up on. They
now had the artillery needed to face their adversary, and
(19:38):
it was not going to be a fair fight because
the radical feminists picked the one group that was committed
to winning at all costs. It's what they did twelve
hours a day, seven days a week. So they began
sleuthing Aaron's post looking for the men. Zoe Quinn allegedly
shagged during the critical time she released Depression. Quest One
(19:59):
was a writer from a gaming site that promoted Zoe's game.
Gamers began combing through Zoe's public donors and found that
many journalists from their industry had given her donations, an
obvious conflict of interest. They also found nude modeling pictures
of Zoe, claiming the pictures underscored the possibility she'd use
her body for financial gain. Gamers began pressing the media
(20:21):
to cover this potential corruption within their industry. They were ignored.
Gamers turned to the online forums on gaming news sites
to discuss the growing controversy, but the moderators of the
forums either mock them or outright deleted their comments. Gamers
turned to Zoe's Wikipedia page and attempted to add information
highlighting the growing controversy and editing war ensued, and the
(20:43):
moderators of the site locked the page and purged it
of the gamer's criticisms. The gamers turned to chatting forums
like Reddit to discuss their frustrations with the media and
their refusal to address their corruptions in their ranks, and
the moderators of the sites deleted thousands of posts on
(21:06):
the topic. Gamer groups from opposing online chat communities, typically
arch rivals began to come together to voice their outrage
on places like Twitter and YouTube.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
Now, this entire thing started off with a sex scandal.
That's what began this all. You know, Zoe Quinn and
the Five Guys. Zoe Quinn has alleged relationships with different
people in the industry, and these people may or may
not have helped her career out. In fact, it's created
a bizarre, strange sort of alliance between websites which hate
each other, whose user bases mock and ride each other
(21:39):
on a daily basis, which have never agreed on anything
except this one thing. When you see websites like Tumblr
and Reddit, four Chan and game facts and even funny
junk all saying with one voice, we're not going to off,
We're not going to be mocked and told to go away.
We are going to talk about this. There is something
going on despite their differences, despite the hatred those user
bases have for one another. Then that should tell you
(22:00):
something about how bad game journal and game development in
the indie scene is.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
The gamers were pissed and were running out of options.
Their media wouldn't cover their own corruption, They wouldn't allow
them to discuss it in their comments section. Even third
party chat rooms were prohibiting discussions on this media corruption.
It was almost as if these sites were all colluding.
So the gamers returned to Twitter, the one online free
speech forum that wasn't censoring their discussions on the topic,
(22:28):
and that's when they finally started to get a response.
Speaker 6 (22:31):
For the past few days, we've seen multitudes of examples
of suppression and trying to prohibit people from talking about this.
We've seen biased narratives put forward on websites with headlines
such as the anti feminist Internet targets depression quest game
creator Zoe Quinn or the sexist crusade to destroy game
developer Zoe Quinn. We've seen websites which are wholly dedicated
to discussing gaming, to discussing the industry and all the
(22:53):
events and information that surrounds it, having threats where private
correspondences are mocked by the administrator, where dissenters are banned,
and where conversation is closed after the group think is allowed.
On Reddit, one of the larger subreddits which exist our
Gaming had a thread with over twenty five thousand comments
in it, thousands upon thousands of which were deleted outright
by a moderator who had claimed to the user base
(23:13):
that Zoe Quinn wasn't relevant, that the information wasn't important,
that there's no conspiracy going on, that they just want
to maintain order and decorum, And yet that very same
person is seen on Twitter having conversations with Zoe Quinn
while deletions are happening. It's now been seven days since
the Zoe Post blog first went up online. In the
time since then, numerous new allegations, along with pieces of evidence,
(23:34):
have come forward showing different kinds of relationships that have
existed between the gaming press and different developers. These relationships
have run the gamut from close friendships to sexual and
or romantic relationships to even financial support. There have been
allegations that have been mounting that there's favoritism shown, and
that there's bias in the coverage, and yet throughout it all,
the gaming press refuses to address any of it, instead
(23:56):
insisting to call the people that are interested in finding
out the truth misogynistic or sexist, or nutcases and idiots,
And with every single blog post that you write saying
you won't negotiate with terrorists, as if in labeling us
like that is somehow going to make us go away.
You just prove that you don't know what you're up against.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
These guys were gamers. Their hobby was about winning. It
was part of the community's DNA. They continued to press
the conversation on Twitter, and chatter got so loud that
a few of the gaming news websites implicated in the
alleged corruption addressed the issue. Polygon issued a statement stating
(24:35):
that effective immediately, they were going to require staff to
disclose donations they've made to gaming developers. On the same day,
another gaming news outlet, Kotaku, issued a statement as well,
promising transparency when a video game reviewer has a personal
relationship with the developer of the game they're reviewing. They
also adopted a policy prohibiting their writers from donating to
(24:56):
game developers, like some had done with Zoe Quinn.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's when the whole affair got a hashtag. A Twitter
user dubbed the controversy hashtag gamer gait, and a movement
was born. It became the top trend on Twitter, and
by this time Twitter was the default dashboard of journalists.
The media now had no choice but to address the issue,
and they responded with a carpet bomb of stories defending
(25:21):
Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkisian. Astonishingly, gamer media sites began
writing obituaries to the term gamer. Kataku ran with the
headline we might be witnessing the death of an identity.
Gamedeveloper dot Com was more direct. It went with the
headline gamers don't have to be your audience. Gamers are over. Unbelievably,
(25:43):
gamer journalists were turning on their own audience, but it
didn't stop the gamers. They continued their counter attack on
Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkisian. They wanted the feminists to
get the fatagainy These woke infiltrators were putting pressure on
the storytellers of the video game industry, the game developers,
(26:03):
putting pressure on them to change their stories, to make
them more inclusive, to make them more woke, and all
the gamers cared about was playing good games.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
It has now been two weeks since the Zoe Post
blog first went up online, and in the span of
fourteen days, a lot of things have happened, one of
the most striking of which would be the pushback on
the part of gamers. It is a pushback against a
corrupt gaming press. And believe me when I say they
are corrupt, that is exactly what they are. When this
first started coming to light, they originally tried silence. They
simply sought to ignore it and hope that it went away,
(26:35):
but it didn't. When that failed, they moved on to censorship.
And yet that did not work. When censorship failed, they
moved on to what they're doing now, which is mockery
and attacking, and it will fail, just like the past
two attempts at. What they are not taking into account
is people have had enough. And a prime example of
that is the fact that we're even still talking about this.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
They cited Twitter's influence in their movement.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
We are on day fourteen with a fucking hashtag gamer
gate that we are on day fourteen, with people in
the movie industry, the television industry, the fucking music industry
commenting on this. We are on day fourteen where websites
have some of the largest threads in their freaking history
dedicated to this very thing. It is not going away,
it is not diminishing, and it is not dying. And
(27:24):
that speaks volumes to what is happening. Because the Internet
is a place where things happen in quick succession. You
are lucky if you can keep the Internet's attention for
a day, let alone two entire weeks. And yet still
the gaming media, the gaming press, these supposed so called journalists,
are trying to act as if there's nothing here, that
there's no corruption, that nothing needs to be addressed, or
(27:46):
that anything that has been addressed as a result of
the sustained pressure is not a big deal, that it's
really not as big as you think. There's no conspiracy,
there's no collusion. You're all just diluding yourselves and thinking
that things are taking place and they're not really happening.
But we the game journalists, we have your best interest
in mind, so just shut the fuck up and we'll
tell you what to think. Zoe Quinn and Aaron had
(28:08):
a relationship. Zoe Quinn, like Max Tempkin, is a game developer.
Max Tempkin was accused of rape and denied the allegations.
Both Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku decided to run articles
about Max Tempkin, but you both have remained silent about
Zoe Quinn. I find that interesting because in the records
that are provided by the ex boyfriend, Zoe Quinn admits
(28:30):
to raping him. This is a screenshot from the blog post.
The Zoe Post, look at article number four. I'm going
to read this to you. Views on the ethics of infidelity,
which she maintained is inherently wrong even if the person
who was cheated on never finds out, because, aside from
willfully endangering their partner by the way of increased STD risk,
if the unfaithful party then has sex with their partner,
(28:51):
they are doing so under false pretenses and therefore without
their partner's consent. That is sex with a partner who
doesn't know you've cheated on them is sex without consent.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The game or gate movement was pissed. A month earlier,
gaming new site Kataku ran a story about an alleged
rape accusation against a male game developer to the gamer
gate crowd. This reeked of hypocrisy because the same site
refused to address the issue of a feminist game developer
involved in a potentially similar scandal.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
When they are presented with evidence that Zoe Quinn willfully
admits that she had sex without consent, that she raped someone,
they don't think that's worth talking about. They don't think
it's an ethical double standard. You don't think there's a
journalistic question of faking integrity. This goes to prove that
there is an agenda driven purpose behind editorial pieces that
are put up on these websites. They have no problem
(29:43):
doing this to a man, but they will not do
it to a woman. A man is accused of rape,
and the man denies the allegation, they run the story.
A woman admits to rape and they refuse to run
the story. And you're telling me there aren't ethical questions
involved the scandal, and that is what it is. We're
talking about a scandal related to relationships between indie developers,
Zoe Quinn and people in the gaming press. It was
(30:04):
a catalyst for what has set everything else off. You
could no more remove Zoe Quinn from corruption in game
journalism then you could remove Richard Nixon and Watergate from
corruption in politics. It is the focal point. It is
a starting point, it is a catalyst. By refusing to
address it, you're handwaving us off.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
The mainstream media such as Kataku, such as igns such
as Game Spot, so on, and so forth, glazed over
the other things that were going on behind the scenes.
The possible corruption that was going on behind the scenes,
where you have developers fratenizing with journalists, and that could
be a skewing scorers. You have, again what people do
(30:46):
in their bedrooms. I could care less about it, but
when it affects the industry, and it could affect game scores,
and it could affect how credible journalists are. That's what
people were concerned about and what people were angry at,
and why people were angry at places like Atakus. You
guys weren't talking about it, and that's what made people
angry too, is like, why are they trying to sweep
(31:07):
this under the rug. This whole thing was Zoe Quinn
and the five guys and how it could have caused
corruption in the industry.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Gamers continued to push the issue, digging through Anita Sarkisian's past,
and they found some damning footage.
Speaker 9 (31:22):
I'm going to show you a remix that I just
finished this weekend and no one else has seen. It's
a soundtrack of one song, except I'm doing video games,
so it's not exactly a fandom. I'm not a fan
of video games. I actually had to learn a lot
about video games in the process of making this. I
would love to play video games, but I don't want
to go around shooting people and ripping off their heads
and it's just gross.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Anita claimed that she was a longtime gaming enthusiast.
Speaker 7 (31:45):
I'm a gamer, and I enjoy games. I love games.
I'm a fan of games.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
It added weight to her critique that gaming was sexist
and misogynistic because it was coming from within the community.
It was something that was even cited when the gaming
industry gave her an award for her activism.
Speaker 8 (32:02):
She loves video games. She's so passionate about them that
she feels they're worth fighting for.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yet, two years before she started her feminist crusade, she
was claiming not to be a fan of video games.
They were gross. In the eyes of the gamergate movement,
they weren't being critiqued by a fellow gamer. Anita represented
a woke invasion of their community. The radical feminist crusaders
were looking like frauds. It was around this time that
(32:34):
the mainstream media decided to get in on the game
to defend their comrades.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Gamergates started as a hashtag on Twitter, a banner under
which people could collectively argue, vent or attack an idea
for an individual. In Gamergate's case, that individual was Zoe Quinn.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
The media began crafting the narrative that the women were
victims of a misogynistic community. They ran with the most
egregious anonymous attacks against Oequin and Anita's Arkissian attacks that
university school officials didn't deem as credible.
Speaker 11 (33:08):
Gamergate, what started as an online backlash against feminist critics
of the video game industry, has now turned into threats
of a school shooting at University in Utah. Ugly things
are being said on Twitter.
Speaker 12 (33:23):
A heated debate in the video game industry has turned
ugly and has escalated to include death threats. It's known
as gamer Gate, and it's gotten so bad that two
women have left their homes because of online threats, and
another woman, an award winning games journalist, has said she
will never report on the industry again.
Speaker 13 (33:42):
The games are fantasy, but the threat of violence all
too real. For one woman who dared to say enough
when she spoke out against these representations of women, she
received death threats in return.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Gamer Gate.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
You might have heard that term.
Speaker 14 (33:56):
It's the story that has produced threats of mass shootings.
Forced a woman to move from her home recently after rapes,
rats and made front page headlines around the country in
recent days.
Speaker 15 (34:07):
Violent depictions of women being beaten, raped, and run over
by cars. It's not the movies, it's video games, and
now the women calling for change in this multi billion
dollar virtual industry are facing a very real backlash, including
death threats.
Speaker 16 (34:22):
What I think is going on is that there's a
cultural spasm happening that nobody expected that accompanies the sort
of mainstreaming of video games and the diversification of video games.
I think the conventional audience has really shaken up. I
think in part because they're sexist, in part because they're
used to being explicitly catered to as a precious special
(34:43):
market demographic and they feel like they might get left behind.
Speaker 17 (34:48):
You asked why this is happening. I think the reason is,
you know, for thirty years now, video games has really
been perceived as a boys club. You have video games
made by men for men, and I think in twenty
fourteen where almost half of the video game players are women,
I think you're saying some very insecure guys like feeling
very threatened by that, and you know, lashing out at
(35:10):
us being in their space.
Speaker 14 (35:12):
We know you're still getting threats. We're not disclosing your
location today for that reason. How are you doing?
Speaker 18 (35:18):
I'm hanging in there. I mean, it's been an incredible
how long two months. Some of the writers who quit
have decided, you know what, this isn't worth it anymore.
I can take my skills and go to any other
field and not have to deal with this, and I
don't blame them.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
In one ABCU segment, they showed Anita being escorted to
public events by mail guards. It was an interesting juxtaposition.
The critic of Damsel and Distress games was now the
real life damsel in distress and she had men protecting her.
Speaker 13 (35:47):
For Anita sarcusian, this is the new normal, armed escorts
at public events.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
But just when it looked like the mainstream media's carpet
bomb approach could work, a relatively unknown jurjournalist entered the
scene and heed almost single handedly get the media rethinking
their support for free speech. Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, Disney Plus,
Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Showtime, Paramount, Paramount Plus, and on
(36:20):
and on. What are these streaming services have in common?
They are all storytelling platforms. Which of these platforms are
you supporting with your hard earned money? Now ask yourself
if the story is being told on those platforms truly
align with your worldview, and if they don't, ask yourself
where you go to get entertainment in the form of
storytelling that does align with your worldview. Red Pilled America
(36:43):
is that show. We are not another talk show covering
today's news. We are all about telling stories. We remain
the only show of our kind. And why aren't there
more shows like ours? Because it's expensive to create this
kind of content. That's why we need your support. Without
your support, this show doesn't survive, and more importantly, they'll
(37:03):
be zero changed to the monopolistic environment of storytelling. Please
visit Redpilled America dot com and click support in the topmenu.
Support what you love or it goes away. The choice
is yours.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So Anita Sarkisian and
Zoe Quinn went on a media blitz branding themselves as
victim of misogynist, even terroristic gamers. Instead of investigating the
relevant issues the gamer gait movement was raising about corruption
and gaming journalism, The mainstream media instead amplified the radical
(37:44):
feminist message. But just when it looked like the carpet
bomb approach could work, a relatively unknown journalist entered the scene.
His name was Milo Yanopolis, British writer who'd been making
a name for himself across the Pond by taking counterintuitive
(38:08):
positions uncontroversial issues.
Speaker 19 (38:10):
Is it right that same sex union should be allowed
to share the same honorable estatus Charles and Diana, Fred
and Rosemary West? The fifty five hours an adult Britney
Spears spent with some guy with me to discuss it.
Are Milo Milo Janapolis, sorry, writer for the Catholic Herald,
who is Catholic and gay, and Boy George, a musician
(38:33):
and singer who is also I was surprised to learn
gay should thank you both for coming. Now, Milo, you're gay,
but you don't think there should be gay marriage.
Speaker 5 (38:42):
What's what's your problem with it?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Well?
Speaker 10 (38:45):
I think that the question what we're talking about the
moment is whether we should legalize gay marriage, and the
question that really the issue is what we're talking about.
We're talking about sibyl marriage.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
Not religious marriage.
Speaker 10 (38:56):
So what we're the question we're asking is does this
provide any right, rights or benefits to gay people? They
were otherwise had. The answer is no, because this isn't
about a quality. If we're in a question of equality,
then I would be all for it. But it's not
really about quality. Its about redefining an institution that is
the cohesive glue of society in a way that may
yield consequences we have no clue about.
Speaker 16 (39:17):
Now.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Milo had been critical of gamers in the past, but
now saw something remarkable occurring in gamer Gate. Gamers were
fighting back against the feminists, and they were winning. They'd
forced gaming outlets to change their journalistic policies, effectively admitting
there was a potential for corruption in the system. This
(39:47):
was something you rarely saw in modern culture, and juw
Breitbart took on the entire legacy media and forced the
resignation of a sitting congressman. Using Twitter. Now, Milo saw
the same thing happening with gamer git. Shortly after the
gamer gait hashtag began trending on Twitter, Milo started covering
(40:08):
the story for Breitbart News. The headline of his opening
article read feminist bullies tearing the video game industry apart.
He chronicled the whole affair, then closed his article stating,
quote those of us with some critical distance from the chaos,
can only sit back and marvel at how wide ranging
and fundamental the damage to the indie games industry has
(40:28):
been these last two weeks, he continued, stating, quote there
are now two bitterly opposed factions in the industry, journalists
and activists who care more about gender politics than the
video games they are supposed to be reporting on, and
gamers mocked, derided and bullied, but unbowed. Video gamers and
video game culture will never be the same again. End quote.
(40:50):
At the time he was provocative, but he had a
rather reserved, proper British approach. However, that was all about
to change. Milo was in the process of entering the
fight with the gamers with it novel flare to communicating,
and when he did, free speech as we know it
would go through a monumental shift.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Coming up on red pilled America.
Speaker 10 (41:11):
Feminist bullies enjoy. I think that's a fair representation.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 8 (41:15):
Gamers do not hate women.
Speaker 10 (41:17):
And isn't it hilarious that it kind of spawned out
of a dispute about video games Gamagate one and it
has ignited so many fires in so many places, with
so many unexpected consequences.
Speaker 18 (41:28):
We need people to actually enforce their own terms of
service and shut down bad actors.
Speaker 7 (41:32):
I think that the online social media sites really need
to step up and change the way that their systems operate.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Red Pilled America's an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's produced by
me Adrianna Cortez and Patrick Carrelchi for Informed Ventures. Now,
our entire archive of episodes is only available to our
backstage subscribers. To subscribe, visit Redpilled America dot com and
click support in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey everybody, welcome to Red Pilled America. We've got a
great episode for you today. But before we get started,
we wanted to ask you why you have not yet
subscribed to Redpilled America dot com and become a backstage subscriber.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
We have so many listeners to this show, but we
need you, guys in our backstage audience. We need you, guys,
part of our backstage fambam because we need subscribers to
be a healthy show. We've brought you, guys, some incredible stories,
some heart wrenching, some personal stories, some that made you mad,
some that made you cry. But all in all, we
(00:39):
deliver you, guys, the truth and that's what we promise
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So please become a backstage subscriber today. It's time. You've
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you to make the jump and get involved with our community,
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(01:00):
entire back catalog of episodes. To join, just visit Redpilled
America dot com and click join in the topmenu. That's
Red Pilled America dot com and click join in the
top menu. Help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Now onto the show. Previously on Red Pilled America, Well,
can you tell us.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
What Twitter is?
Speaker 4 (01:19):
It's basically mini blogging.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
And at the end of that two weeks I wrote
the first tweet, which was inviting coworkers.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Jack Dorsey had a very lazy fair approach to moderation.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Twitter was being used to give first hand eyewitness accounts
of what was happening on the ground.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Journalists love the tool.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Try the questions.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Democratic Congressman Anthony Wainer is refusing to answer. I've seen
a lot of this congressman's body, So today I'm announcing
my resignation from Congress.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Conservatives were quietly becoming experts at using this new social
media tool.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
Were the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It became apparent that the media was losing its grip
on the narrative and they'd have to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm Patrick CARELCI and I'm Adriana Cortez, and.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We are all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The media marks stories about everyday Americans of the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
You could think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we've promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America. We're at the second part of our
(02:49):
series of episodes entitled Unfiltered. You've probably heard part one,
but if you haven't, stop and go back and listen
from the beginning. We're looking for the answer to the
question why is the media afraid of free speech? By
telling the story of Twitter and how it drifted away
from being the free speech platform.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So in part one, we followed the early career of
Jack Dorsey and how he became a programmer for a
new podcasting company called Odio. That task was short lived
because soon after Jack joined the team, Apple got into
the podcasting business. It destroyed Odio's business model. The company
had to make a quick pivot, and they turned to
Jack Dorsey for ideas. He came up with what eventually
(03:30):
would become Twitter, a microblogging site that turned out to
be so much more. Twitter was instantly popular with journalists
because it could give fast on the ground reporting in short,
concise messages or tweets. We then explored perhaps the first
indication that Twitter would become a powerful communication tool by
telling the story of a twenty eleven scandal known as Wienergate,
(03:52):
when Andrew Breitbart and his band of rebel journalist used
Twitter to expose the lies of a sitting Democrat Congressman
Anthony Weener. The team eventually forced Wiener to resign. The
oola fair would have massive political implications, but we'll get
to that later. By the end of Wienergate, Twitter management
had already gone through major turmoil. Jack Dorsey had been
(04:13):
forced out as CEO and was placed in the largely
figurehead position of chairman. The new CEO claimed that Twitter
was the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party,
but in the years it followed that claim would be
put to the test by a band of outcasts, a
community you'd never think could impact our free speech rights.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Gamers. It's hard to find a more maligned group. Branded
as fat, nerdy, pimple popping, virgin white males living in
their parents' basement. Gamers are perhaps the most unlikely hero
in the modern culture war, But these societal misfits became
just that, and their weapon was Twitter. In twenty fourteen,
(05:03):
building on the hashtag wiener gate, strategy gamers went toe
to toe with a woke battalion that had infiltrated their community.
The battle became known as hashtag gamer gate, and it
would oddly become one of the most consequential moments in
the life of Jack Dorsey's creation. Like many epic wars
(05:24):
throughout history, it all started with a spurned lover. It
was mid August twenty fourteen, and a young man named
Erin published a tell all story about the breakup with
his ex girlfriend, a woman that went by the moniker
Zoe Quinn. Zoe was a young, tattooed video game developer
whose hair alternated between pink, blue, purple, and bleach blonde.
(05:46):
Erin accused her of being a too timing liar who
had been canoodling with multiple men behind his back. To
the uninitiated, the blog post seemed a bit vengeful, maybe
even petty. It appeared to be just another heartbroken personal
account of a short lived love affair. According to Erin,
he and Zoe met on the dating app ok Cupid.
(06:08):
They connected over a shared interest in gaming. He helped
her develop a video game. The relationship went through twists
and turns, then ended after her alleged infidelity with at
least five different men, and he claimed to have the receipts.
Aarin posted many of their online exchanges. In one of them,
it appeared Zoe not only admitted to cheating on him
(06:29):
with her married boss, but also to raping Erin, or
at least by her definition of rape. In one screenshot
Aaron shared, Zoe allegedly exclaimed that if Erin exposed the
adulterous affair to her boss's wife, it would not only
ruin the video game she was developing, it would likely
hurt all female game developers in the male dominated industry.
(06:51):
Her argument didn't fly. Aaron posted all the dirt anyway.
By his account, he wanted to expose her betrayal to
save others from falling into her spell. Zoe would later
report or didly claim his accusations weren't true. Most of
us have seen this kind of dirty laundry aired on
social media. It wasn't unprecedented, but to hardcore gamers, this
(07:13):
simple blog post was a gift of epic proportions you
see at the time. In twenty fourteen, gamers were under siege.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Two years earlier, a radical feminists launched a campaign.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
Have you ever noticed that, with a few notable exceptions,
basically all female characters and video games fall into a
small handful of cliches and stereotypes. I'm Anita Sarkusen and
I run the video web series Feminist Frequency. As a
pop culture critic, I look at movies, TV shows, comic books,
and of course, video games.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In twenty twelve, Anita Sarkissian introduced a crowdfunding campaign asking
for donations to produce a series of videos analyzing the
alleged misogynistic storylines in video games.
Speaker 7 (08:00):
Many games tend to reinforce and amplify sexis and downright
misogynist ideas about women. In this particular project, which I'm
calling Tropes versus Women in Video Games, I'm going to
create a series of five videos that look at and
deconstruct the most common and the most stereotypical representations of
women in games. Video games are an integral and growing
(08:20):
part of our popular culture today, and as with all
paup culture media, the gaming industry is playing a role
in helping to shape our society, either by challenging or
more often, reinforcing existing values, beliefs, and behaviors.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
The woke feminists didn't like the way women were portrayed
in some video games, and she was on a mission
to reform the industry's sexist ways.
Speaker 7 (08:41):
This new video series will primarily focus on tracking five
stereotypical representations of women throughout the history of video games.
I'm going to look at the damsel in distress, the
fighting toy, the sexy sidekick, the sexy villainous, and the
most common trope in video games, women as background decoration.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Her campaign appeared intentionally provocative and it's real annoyed criticism
from gamers, but Anita was smart. She channeled their response
into her own victim narrative and claimed she was being
harassed by the sexist boys Club of gaming. Anita was
now the damsel in distress and she needed feminists everywhere
to come to her rescue by donating to her campaign.
(09:23):
Well it worked. Over the span of a month, Anita
snagged almost one hundred and sixty thousand dollars at the time,
a hefty amount for a crowdfunding project. Nine months later,
she slowly began publishing her critique videos each making the
argument that the gaming industry was plagued with misogyny.
Speaker 7 (09:41):
Welcome to our multipart video series of some to the
second episode. Welcome to the third episode in our multi
part series exploring the roles and representations of women in
video games. Let's jump right into the damsel in distress.
As a trope, the damsel in distress is a plot
device in which a female character is placed in a
perilous situation from which she cannot escape her own and
(10:03):
then must be rescued by a male character, usually providing
an incentive or motivation for the protagonists quest. The damsel
trope typically makes men the subject of narratives while relegating
women to the role of object. This is a form
of objectification because as objects, damseled women are being acted upon,
most often becoming or reduced to a prize to be won,
(10:24):
a treasure to be found, or a goal to be achieved.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
She tracked the sexism back to the nineteen eighties arcade
favorite Donkey Kong, where a King Kong like gorilla captures
Princess Peach and the hero Mario is tasked with saving her.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
I've heard it said that in the game of patriarchy,
women are not the opposing team, they are the ball. So,
for example, we can think of the Super Mario franchise
as a grand game being played between Mario and Bowser,
and Princess Peach's role is essentially that of the ball.
The two men are tossing her back and forth over
the course of the main series, each trying to keep
and take possession of the damsel ball.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Anita used a critique plucked from a university gender studies
class and applied it to the world of gaining the damsel.
Speaker 7 (11:09):
Distress is not just a synonym for weak. Instead, it
works by ripping away the power from female characters, even
helpful or seemingly capable ones. No matter what we're told
about their magical abilities, skills, or strengths, they're still ultimately
captured or otherwise incapacitated and then must wait for rescue.
The reality is this trope is being used in a
(11:30):
real world context, where backward sexist attitudes are already rampant.
It's a sad fact that a large percentage of the
world's population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that
women as a group need to be sheltered, protected, and
taken care of by men. The belief that women are
somehow a naturally weaker gender is a deeply ingrained, socially
constructed myth, which of course is completely false, but the
(11:52):
notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are continuously portrayed
as frail, fragile, and vulnerable creatures.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
She closed out each episode with the call to act
within the gaming community to change its sexist ways.
Speaker 7 (12:07):
Women shouldn't be mere disposable objects or symbolic pawns, and
stories about men and their own struggles with patriarchal expectations
and inadequacies. It's long past time to disrupt the established pattern,
break the cycle, and create new gender paradigm.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Anita Sarkisian's videos were a smash hit among the woke
feminist crowd. They racked up millions of views, and her
attacks began to apply a new kind of pressure within
the gaming community. The industry was no stranger to being
attacked since the nineties, conservatives and the religious right had
accused the gaming industry of inspiring violence in the real world,
(12:43):
but Anita's attack was something new. Her criticism appeared to
be coming from within the industry because Anita claimed to
be a gamer.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
I've been playing video games since I was about five
years old. This is a photo of me at age
ten playing a Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo.
So I've been playing games for quite a while. I
think games are really where we're going. So again, I've
been playing games for a while. Video games are so
interesting and engaging and interactive. I'm a gamer, and I
(13:12):
enjoy games. I love games. I'm a fan of games.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
The far left mainstream media heaped praise on the videos.
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, and others
encouraged readers to support Anita's reform effort. Gaming websites like
Kataku and Polygon, all populated by far left journalists, loved
Anita's radical feminist message, and they positioned her as the
gamer that was starting a much needed dialogue within the
(13:46):
world of gaming. Well like every other branch of entertainment,
the gaming industry fell in line with the media. At
its twenty fourteen Game Developers' Choice Awards, it bestowed her
with an honor.
Speaker 8 (14:01):
The Ambassador Award is an individual who has helped the
game industry advance to a better place. Anita Serkesian's work
has done just that. Anita saw an opportunity to create
in her awards a space where feminism was easy to
engage with in an accessible way. She loves video games.
She's so passionate about them that she feels they're worth
fighting for. It is my honor to present the Game
(14:24):
Developer's Ambassador Award to Anita Sarkesian.
Speaker 9 (14:27):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (14:29):
I'm incredibly surprised to be receiving this award and super honored.
This is the first time the GDC Ambassador Award has
been given.
Speaker 10 (14:36):
To a woman.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
I know that many of you are ready and willing
to take that challenge and make gaming a more inclusive
space for people of all genders. I'm honored to be
a small part of that change, and I'm excited to
see where we.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
Go from here.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Gamers were being branded as sexists from one of their own.
As the summer of twenty fourteen arrived, they'd had just
about enough. The Joystick soldiers wanted to mount a counter attack,
but they needed something to rally behind, and that it
would come with Aaron salacious post about his girlfriend's infidelity.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Life is short. It's important to surround yourself with people
you love, do the things that make you feel happy,
and if you're me, eat delicious licorice. I've got the
latter covered thanks to fresh and delicious licorice from The
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(16:26):
to red pilled America. So by the summer of twenty fourteen,
gamers had had enough of Anita Sarkisian's feminist attack on
their beloved hobby. They wanted to mount a counter attack.
A few began posting videos analyzing the flaws and her analysis.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
If you go to places where you can discuss her videos,
which is basically anywhere where she can't delete your comments,
you'll find example after example of how she's just cherry
picked and completely misrepresented games. Two very clear examples is
why she used the game Watchdogs on the very mission
(17:03):
where you have to try and shut down a sex
trafficking ring, Well, how can you possibly portray that as
objectifying women? Well, she found a way and almost.
Speaker 7 (17:12):
Never get to be anything other than set dressing or
props in someone else's narrative. This is the essence of
what sexual objectification means.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
She takes a mission where you're trying to shut down
a sex trafficking ring and portrays that as sexist.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
These responses began racking up tens of thousands of views,
but it wasn't until Aaron aired his Dirty Laundry with
his ex girlfriend Zoe Quinn that a movement began to
take shape. You see, Zoe Quinn was part of this
feminist infiltration of the gaming community. She developed a strange
(17:48):
pseudo game called Depression Quest. The user simulated being depressed
by reading a passage, then clicking on various links that
took them down a fictional story of depression. It had
multiple endings depending on what you clicked, but it was
more like an interactive story than an actual game. Many
gamers didn't consider it a game at all, and they
(18:09):
were creeped out that Zoe chose to launch it on
the day that Robin Williams committed suicide. Adding to their
surprise was that the gaming media oddly heaped praise on
Depression Quest. Gamers began to suspect that it was simply
because she was a feminist, kind of like an affirmative
action for female game developers. But Aaron's post about Zoe's
(18:30):
alleged infidelities offered a new hypothesis. If his accusations were true,
it suggested that Zoe Quinn was shacking up with key
people within the gaming world to get ahead. To many gamers,
Aaron's post was a godsend. The entire industry was being
branded by feminists as sexist, and yet here was a
prominent gaming feminist allegedly sleeping around with the people that
(18:53):
could benefit her career. It not only showed hypocrisy, but
it showed potential corruption within gaming journalism, and that was
no small deal. At the time time, global gaming revenue
was estimated to be over eighty billion dollars. Corruption in
the gaming media had massive implications. Aside from shifting gamer's
attention to certain titles, the industry media affected gaming developers
(19:16):
pocketbooks in other ways. Many of them received bonuses on
how the media covered their work. So if a feminist
gamer was reaping financial benefits by sleeping around, what other
corruption was lurking behind the curtain. Aaron's salacious blog post
was a gift that gamers couldn't pass up on. They
now had the artillery needed to face their adversary, and
(19:38):
it was not going to be a fair fight because
the radical feminists picked the one group that was committed
to winning at all costs. It's what they did twelve
hours a day, seven days a week. So they began
sleuthing Aaron's post looking for the men. Zoe Quinn allegedly
shagged during the critical time she released Depression. Quest One
(19:59):
was a writer from a gaming site that promoted Zoe's game.
Gamers began combing through Zoe's public donors and found that
many journalists from their industry had given her donations, an
obvious conflict of interest. They also found nude modeling pictures
of Zoe, claiming the pictures underscored the possibility she'd use
her body for financial gain. Gamers began pressing the media
(20:21):
to cover this potential corruption within their industry. They were ignored.
Gamers turned to the online forums on gaming news sites
to discuss the growing controversy, but the moderators of the
forums either mock them or outright deleted their comments. Gamers
turned to Zoe's Wikipedia page and attempted to add information
highlighting the growing controversy and editing war ensued, and the
(20:43):
moderators of the site locked the page and purged it
of the gamer's criticisms. The gamers turned to chatting forums
like Reddit to discuss their frustrations with the media and
their refusal to address their corruptions in their ranks, and
the moderators of the sites deleted thousands of posts on
(21:06):
the topic. Gamer groups from opposing online chat communities, typically
arch rivals began to come together to voice their outrage
on places like Twitter and YouTube.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
Now, this entire thing started off with a sex scandal.
That's what began this all. You know, Zoe Quinn and
the Five Guys. Zoe Quinn has alleged relationships with different
people in the industry, and these people may or may
not have helped her career out. In fact, it's created
a bizarre, strange sort of alliance between websites which hate
each other, whose user bases mock and ride each other
(21:39):
on a daily basis, which have never agreed on anything
except this one thing. When you see websites like Tumblr
and Reddit, four Chan and game facts and even funny
junk all saying with one voice, we're not going to off,
We're not going to be mocked and told to go away.
We are going to talk about this. There is something
going on despite their differences, despite the hatred those user
bases have for one another. Then that should tell you
(22:00):
something about how bad game journal and game development in
the indie scene is.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
The gamers were pissed and were running out of options.
Their media wouldn't cover their own corruption, They wouldn't allow
them to discuss it in their comments section. Even third
party chat rooms were prohibiting discussions on this media corruption.
It was almost as if these sites were all colluding.
So the gamers returned to Twitter, the one online free
speech forum that wasn't censoring their discussions on the topic,
(22:28):
and that's when they finally started to get a response.
Speaker 6 (22:31):
For the past few days, we've seen multitudes of examples
of suppression and trying to prohibit people from talking about this.
We've seen biased narratives put forward on websites with headlines
such as the anti feminist Internet targets depression quest game
creator Zoe Quinn or the sexist crusade to destroy game
developer Zoe Quinn. We've seen websites which are wholly dedicated
to discussing gaming, to discussing the industry and all the
(22:53):
events and information that surrounds it, having threats where private
correspondences are mocked by the administrator, where dissenters are banned,
and where conversation is closed after the group think is allowed.
On Reddit, one of the larger subreddits which exist our
Gaming had a thread with over twenty five thousand comments
in it, thousands upon thousands of which were deleted outright
by a moderator who had claimed to the user base
(23:13):
that Zoe Quinn wasn't relevant, that the information wasn't important,
that there's no conspiracy going on, that they just want
to maintain order and decorum, And yet that very same
person is seen on Twitter having conversations with Zoe Quinn
while deletions are happening. It's now been seven days since
the Zoe Post blog first went up online. In the
time since then, numerous new allegations, along with pieces of evidence,
(23:34):
have come forward showing different kinds of relationships that have
existed between the gaming press and different developers. These relationships
have run the gamut from close friendships to sexual and
or romantic relationships to even financial support. There have been
allegations that have been mounting that there's favoritism shown, and
that there's bias in the coverage, and yet throughout it all,
the gaming press refuses to address any of it, instead
(23:56):
insisting to call the people that are interested in finding
out the truth misogynistic or sexist, or nutcases and idiots,
And with every single blog post that you write saying
you won't negotiate with terrorists, as if in labeling us
like that is somehow going to make us go away.
You just prove that you don't know what you're up against.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
These guys were gamers. Their hobby was about winning. It
was part of the community's DNA. They continued to press
the conversation on Twitter, and chatter got so loud that
a few of the gaming news websites implicated in the
alleged corruption addressed the issue. Polygon issued a statement stating
(24:35):
that effective immediately, they were going to require staff to
disclose donations they've made to gaming developers. On the same day,
another gaming news outlet, Kotaku, issued a statement as well,
promising transparency when a video game reviewer has a personal
relationship with the developer of the game they're reviewing. They
also adopted a policy prohibiting their writers from donating to
(24:56):
game developers, like some had done with Zoe Quinn.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's when the whole affair got a hashtag. A Twitter
user dubbed the controversy hashtag gamer gait, and a movement
was born. It became the top trend on Twitter, and
by this time Twitter was the default dashboard of journalists.
The media now had no choice but to address the issue,
and they responded with a carpet bomb of stories defending
(25:21):
Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkisian. Astonishingly, gamer media sites began
writing obituaries to the term gamer. Kataku ran with the
headline we might be witnessing the death of an identity.
Gamedeveloper dot Com was more direct. It went with the
headline gamers don't have to be your audience. Gamers are over. Unbelievably,
(25:43):
gamer journalists were turning on their own audience, but it
didn't stop the gamers. They continued their counter attack on
Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkisian. They wanted the feminists to
get the fatagainy These woke infiltrators were putting pressure on
the storytellers of the video game industry, the game developers,
(26:03):
putting pressure on them to change their stories, to make
them more inclusive, to make them more woke, and all
the gamers cared about was playing good games.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
It has now been two weeks since the Zoe Post
blog first went up online, and in the span of
fourteen days, a lot of things have happened, one of
the most striking of which would be the pushback on
the part of gamers. It is a pushback against a
corrupt gaming press. And believe me when I say they
are corrupt, that is exactly what they are. When this
first started coming to light, they originally tried silence. They
simply sought to ignore it and hope that it went away,
(26:35):
but it didn't. When that failed, they moved on to censorship.
And yet that did not work. When censorship failed, they
moved on to what they're doing now, which is mockery
and attacking, and it will fail, just like the past
two attempts at. What they are not taking into account
is people have had enough. And a prime example of
that is the fact that we're even still talking about this.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
They cited Twitter's influence in their movement.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
We are on day fourteen with a fucking hashtag gamer
gate that we are on day fourteen, with people in
the movie industry, the television industry, the fucking music industry
commenting on this. We are on day fourteen where websites
have some of the largest threads in their freaking history
dedicated to this very thing. It is not going away,
it is not diminishing, and it is not dying. And
(27:24):
that speaks volumes to what is happening. Because the Internet
is a place where things happen in quick succession. You
are lucky if you can keep the Internet's attention for
a day, let alone two entire weeks. And yet still
the gaming media, the gaming press, these supposed so called journalists,
are trying to act as if there's nothing here, that
there's no corruption, that nothing needs to be addressed, or
(27:46):
that anything that has been addressed as a result of
the sustained pressure is not a big deal, that it's
really not as big as you think. There's no conspiracy,
there's no collusion. You're all just diluding yourselves and thinking
that things are taking place and they're not really happening.
But we the game journalists, we have your best interest
in mind, so just shut the fuck up and we'll
tell you what to think. Zoe Quinn and Aaron had
(28:08):
a relationship. Zoe Quinn, like Max Tempkin, is a game developer.
Max Tempkin was accused of rape and denied the allegations.
Both Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku decided to run articles
about Max Tempkin, but you both have remained silent about
Zoe Quinn. I find that interesting because in the records
that are provided by the ex boyfriend, Zoe Quinn admits
(28:30):
to raping him. This is a screenshot from the blog post.
The Zoe Post, look at article number four. I'm going
to read this to you. Views on the ethics of infidelity,
which she maintained is inherently wrong even if the person
who was cheated on never finds out, because, aside from
willfully endangering their partner by the way of increased STD risk,
if the unfaithful party then has sex with their partner,
(28:51):
they are doing so under false pretenses and therefore without
their partner's consent. That is sex with a partner who
doesn't know you've cheated on them is sex without consent.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The game or gate movement was pissed. A month earlier,
gaming new site Kataku ran a story about an alleged
rape accusation against a male game developer to the gamer
gate crowd. This reeked of hypocrisy because the same site
refused to address the issue of a feminist game developer
involved in a potentially similar scandal.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
When they are presented with evidence that Zoe Quinn willfully
admits that she had sex without consent, that she raped someone,
they don't think that's worth talking about. They don't think
it's an ethical double standard. You don't think there's a
journalistic question of faking integrity. This goes to prove that
there is an agenda driven purpose behind editorial pieces that
are put up on these websites. They have no problem
(29:43):
doing this to a man, but they will not do
it to a woman. A man is accused of rape,
and the man denies the allegation, they run the story.
A woman admits to rape and they refuse to run
the story. And you're telling me there aren't ethical questions
involved the scandal, and that is what it is. We're
talking about a scandal related to relationships between indie developers,
Zoe Quinn and people in the gaming press. It was
(30:04):
a catalyst for what has set everything else off. You
could no more remove Zoe Quinn from corruption in game
journalism then you could remove Richard Nixon and Watergate from
corruption in politics. It is the focal point. It is
a starting point, it is a catalyst. By refusing to
address it, you're handwaving us off.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
The mainstream media such as Kataku, such as igns such
as Game Spot, so on, and so forth, glazed over
the other things that were going on behind the scenes.
The possible corruption that was going on behind the scenes,
where you have developers fratenizing with journalists, and that could
be a skewing scorers. You have, again what people do
(30:46):
in their bedrooms. I could care less about it, but
when it affects the industry, and it could affect game scores,
and it could affect how credible journalists are. That's what
people were concerned about and what people were angry at,
and why people were angry at places like Atakus. You
guys weren't talking about it, and that's what made people
angry too, is like, why are they trying to sweep
(31:07):
this under the rug. This whole thing was Zoe Quinn
and the five guys and how it could have caused
corruption in the industry.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Gamers continued to push the issue, digging through Anita Sarkisian's past,
and they found some damning footage.
Speaker 9 (31:22):
I'm going to show you a remix that I just
finished this weekend and no one else has seen. It's
a soundtrack of one song, except I'm doing video games,
so it's not exactly a fandom. I'm not a fan
of video games. I actually had to learn a lot
about video games in the process of making this. I
would love to play video games, but I don't want
to go around shooting people and ripping off their heads
and it's just gross.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Anita claimed that she was a longtime gaming enthusiast.
Speaker 7 (31:45):
I'm a gamer, and I enjoy games. I love games.
I'm a fan of games.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
It added weight to her critique that gaming was sexist
and misogynistic because it was coming from within the community.
It was something that was even cited when the gaming
industry gave her an award for her activism.
Speaker 8 (32:02):
She loves video games. She's so passionate about them that
she feels they're worth fighting for.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yet, two years before she started her feminist crusade, she
was claiming not to be a fan of video games.
They were gross. In the eyes of the gamergate movement,
they weren't being critiqued by a fellow gamer. Anita represented
a woke invasion of their community. The radical feminist crusaders
were looking like frauds. It was around this time that
(32:34):
the mainstream media decided to get in on the game
to defend their comrades.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Gamergates started as a hashtag on Twitter, a banner under
which people could collectively argue, vent or attack an idea
for an individual. In Gamergate's case, that individual was Zoe Quinn.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
The media began crafting the narrative that the women were
victims of a misogynistic community. They ran with the most
egregious anonymous attacks against Oequin and Anita's Arkissian attacks that
university school officials didn't deem as credible.
Speaker 11 (33:08):
Gamergate, what started as an online backlash against feminist critics
of the video game industry, has now turned into threats
of a school shooting at University in Utah. Ugly things
are being said on Twitter.
Speaker 12 (33:23):
A heated debate in the video game industry has turned
ugly and has escalated to include death threats. It's known
as gamer Gate, and it's gotten so bad that two
women have left their homes because of online threats, and
another woman, an award winning games journalist, has said she
will never report on the industry again.
Speaker 13 (33:42):
The games are fantasy, but the threat of violence all
too real. For one woman who dared to say enough
when she spoke out against these representations of women, she
received death threats in return.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Gamer Gate.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
You might have heard that term.
Speaker 14 (33:56):
It's the story that has produced threats of mass shootings.
Forced a woman to move from her home recently after rapes,
rats and made front page headlines around the country in
recent days.
Speaker 15 (34:07):
Violent depictions of women being beaten, raped, and run over
by cars. It's not the movies, it's video games, and
now the women calling for change in this multi billion
dollar virtual industry are facing a very real backlash, including
death threats.
Speaker 16 (34:22):
What I think is going on is that there's a
cultural spasm happening that nobody expected that accompanies the sort
of mainstreaming of video games and the diversification of video games.
I think the conventional audience has really shaken up. I
think in part because they're sexist, in part because they're
used to being explicitly catered to as a precious special
(34:43):
market demographic and they feel like they might get left behind.
Speaker 17 (34:48):
You asked why this is happening. I think the reason is,
you know, for thirty years now, video games has really
been perceived as a boys club. You have video games
made by men for men, and I think in twenty
fourteen where almost half of the video game players are women,
I think you're saying some very insecure guys like feeling
very threatened by that, and you know, lashing out at
(35:10):
us being in their space.
Speaker 14 (35:12):
We know you're still getting threats. We're not disclosing your
location today for that reason. How are you doing?
Speaker 18 (35:18):
I'm hanging in there. I mean, it's been an incredible
how long two months. Some of the writers who quit
have decided, you know what, this isn't worth it anymore.
I can take my skills and go to any other
field and not have to deal with this, and I
don't blame them.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
In one ABCU segment, they showed Anita being escorted to
public events by mail guards. It was an interesting juxtaposition.
The critic of Damsel and Distress games was now the
real life damsel in distress and she had men protecting her.
Speaker 13 (35:47):
For Anita sarcusian, this is the new normal, armed escorts
at public events.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
But just when it looked like the mainstream media's carpet
bomb approach could work, a relatively unknown jurjournalist entered the
scene and heed almost single handedly get the media rethinking
their support for free speech. Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, Disney Plus,
Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Showtime, Paramount, Paramount Plus, and on
(36:20):
and on. What are these streaming services have in common?
They are all storytelling platforms. Which of these platforms are
you supporting with your hard earned money? Now ask yourself
if the story is being told on those platforms truly
align with your worldview, and if they don't, ask yourself
where you go to get entertainment in the form of
storytelling that does align with your worldview. Red Pilled America
(36:43):
is that show. We are not another talk show covering
today's news. We are all about telling stories. We remain
the only show of our kind. And why aren't there
more shows like ours? Because it's expensive to create this
kind of content. That's why we need your support. Without
your support, this show doesn't survive, and more importantly, they'll
(37:03):
be zero changed to the monopolistic environment of storytelling. Please
visit Redpilled America dot com and click support in the topmenu.
Support what you love or it goes away. The choice
is yours.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So Anita Sarkisian and
Zoe Quinn went on a media blitz branding themselves as
victim of misogynist, even terroristic gamers. Instead of investigating the
relevant issues the gamer gait movement was raising about corruption
and gaming journalism, The mainstream media instead amplified the radical
(37:44):
feminist message. But just when it looked like the carpet
bomb approach could work, a relatively unknown journalist entered the scene.
His name was Milo Yanopolis, British writer who'd been making
a name for himself across the Pond by taking counterintuitive
(38:08):
positions uncontroversial issues.
Speaker 19 (38:10):
Is it right that same sex union should be allowed
to share the same honorable estatus Charles and Diana, Fred
and Rosemary West? The fifty five hours an adult Britney
Spears spent with some guy with me to discuss it.
Are Milo Milo Janapolis, sorry, writer for the Catholic Herald,
who is Catholic and gay, and Boy George, a musician
(38:33):
and singer who is also I was surprised to learn
gay should thank you both for coming. Now, Milo, you're gay,
but you don't think there should be gay marriage.
Speaker 5 (38:42):
What's what's your problem with it?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Well?
Speaker 10 (38:45):
I think that the question what we're talking about the
moment is whether we should legalize gay marriage, and the
question that really the issue is what we're talking about.
We're talking about sibyl marriage.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
Not religious marriage.
Speaker 10 (38:56):
So what we're the question we're asking is does this
provide any right, rights or benefits to gay people? They
were otherwise had. The answer is no, because this isn't
about a quality. If we're in a question of equality,
then I would be all for it. But it's not
really about quality. Its about redefining an institution that is
the cohesive glue of society in a way that may
yield consequences we have no clue about.
Speaker 16 (39:17):
Now.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Milo had been critical of gamers in the past, but
now saw something remarkable occurring in gamer Gate. Gamers were
fighting back against the feminists, and they were winning. They'd
forced gaming outlets to change their journalistic policies, effectively admitting
there was a potential for corruption in the system. This
(39:47):
was something you rarely saw in modern culture, and juw
Breitbart took on the entire legacy media and forced the
resignation of a sitting congressman. Using Twitter. Now, Milo saw
the same thing happening with gamer git. Shortly after the
gamer gait hashtag began trending on Twitter, Milo started covering
(40:08):
the story for Breitbart News. The headline of his opening
article read feminist bullies tearing the video game industry apart.
He chronicled the whole affair, then closed his article stating,
quote those of us with some critical distance from the chaos,
can only sit back and marvel at how wide ranging
and fundamental the damage to the indie games industry has
(40:28):
been these last two weeks, he continued, stating, quote there
are now two bitterly opposed factions in the industry, journalists
and activists who care more about gender politics than the
video games they are supposed to be reporting on, and
gamers mocked, derided and bullied, but unbowed. Video gamers and
video game culture will never be the same again. End quote.
(40:50):
At the time he was provocative, but he had a
rather reserved, proper British approach. However, that was all about
to change. Milo was in the process of entering the
fight with the gamers with it novel flare to communicating,
and when he did, free speech as we know it
would go through a monumental shift.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Coming up on red pilled America.
Speaker 10 (41:11):
Feminist bullies enjoy. I think that's a fair representation.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 8 (41:15):
Gamers do not hate women.
Speaker 10 (41:17):
And isn't it hilarious that it kind of spawned out
of a dispute about video games Gamagate one and it
has ignited so many fires in so many places, with
so many unexpected consequences.
Speaker 18 (41:28):
We need people to actually enforce their own terms of
service and shut down bad actors.
Speaker 7 (41:32):
I think that the online social media sites really need
to step up and change the way that their systems operate.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Red Pilled America's an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's produced by
me Adrianna Cortez and Patrick Carrelchi for Informed Ventures. Now,
our entire archive of episodes is only available to our
backstage subscribers. To subscribe, visit Redpilled America dot com and
click support in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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