Matt Forney
Matt Forney is the editor of Reaxxion and a Chicago-based author, journalist and entrepreneur. He blogs at MattForney.com and is also on Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube and Patreon. He is the author of Confessions of an Online Hustler and many other books, available here. Matt's work has also been featured at Reaxxion's sister site Return of Kings, Taki's Magazine, Alternative Right, and other sites.
Alisha Grauso, the L.A. editor-in-chief of Moviepilot, recently published an article on #GamerGate titled “The War for the Soul of Geek Culture.” Her piece is largely a rehash of debunked or overblown arguments against #GamerGate, such as outlining the purported death threats that Revolution 60 developer Brianna Wu gets, the claim that Zoe Quinn slept with Nathan Grayson to get a positive review of Depression Quest published on Kotaku, and whatnot.
However, Grauso’s piece introduces a new claim that #GamerGate supporters have been flooding LGBT suicide hotlines in an attempt to keep people who actually need them from using them:
Most recently, Gamergaters have turned to flooding gay and trans suicide hotlines, hoping to jam up the lines for someone at a low point, desperate to reach out. While the main origin of these threats have come from 8chan, there is more than enough overlap between the two to understand they are not mutually exclusive. Understanding the Gamergate hashtag has earned itself a negative connotation on Twitter, they’ve turned their attention to Tumblr with “Operation Firefly”, dropping the hashtag in an attempt to spread the word on other platforms. Of course, it has devolved into organized attacks targeted at Tumblr users who are gay, trans, and depressed, encouraging the user to commit suicide, piling on in the hopes that the person will snap and kill him- or herself.
Grauso’s source for this claim is an article from the blog We Hunted the Mammoth, run by feminist freelance writer David Futrelle, well known for his obsessive and factually challenged coverage of the “manosphere” and the men’s rights’ movement. Futrelle’s sole evidence for his article is a single thread from 8chan’s /gg/ board. Grauso also cites a post on the GamerGhazi subreddit that links to the same 8chan thread.
Not only is there zero evidence of this supposed brigading of suicide hotlines beyond the aforementioned 8chan thread, both that thread and Futrelle’s post were published last November. Even if some supposed #GamerGate supporters wanted to jam LGBT suicide hotlines with bogus calls, calling it a “recent” endeavor is beyond dishonest. This kind of mendacity is par for the course for #GamerGate’s opponents, but Grauso’s next move was even more ridiculous.
Piling It Higher And Deeper
If this weren’t bad enough, after #GamerGate supporters started calling Grauso out on her article, she edited it to include a Tweet by prominent #GamerGate figure @_icze4r that supposedly backed up her claims that #GamerGate was flooding suicide hotlines:
HOLY SHIT! @_icze4r It seems @AlishaGrauso added to her atricle and made it WORSE #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/YcGf38cgND
— █▌S̷c̕r͟umpmo̶͍͓nkey (@Scrumpmonkey) February 16, 2015
To Grauso’s credit, she realized her mistake and retracted the addition after realizing that @_icze4r’s Tweet was meant in earnest.
Shoddy Journalism, Once Again
As commenters on the KotakuInAction subreddit have pointed out, Grauso’s misconduct is yet another example of how unethical and downright mendacious journalists have become. Grauso’s original article, repeating long-debunked and unsubstantiated claims about #GamerGate, was bad enough. Her inclusion of @_icze4r’s Tweet as supposed evidence of the LGBT suicide hotline brigading—interpreting it as a sarcastic rejoinder instead of an earnest attempt to help those considering killing themselves—is the icing on the cake.
The mainstream media’s reaction to #GamerGate is a prime example of how SJWs interpret reality. Even when confronted with a statement as simple and direct as @_icze4r’s Tweet, they can’t help but try and ascertain the “real” motive behind it, which is always malicious and evil. SJWs look for conspiracies where none exist, taking even the flimsiest evidence—in this case, a single three-month old 8chan thread—and blowing it out of proportion to justify their smear campaigns.
Again, Grauso deserves some credit for retracting her smear against @_icze4r. However, her article continues to show that SJWs don’t care about facts, and indeed don’t even seem to be on the same plane of reality as the rest of us. Where normal people see an innocuous Tweet about suicide hotlines, they imagine sinister plots to drive LGBT individuals to end their own lives.
Read More: The Death By Suicide Of Console Gaming
