Within a week I had familiarized myself with the workings of the GamerGate machine. The gamers of /v/, both chan-users and strangers alike, had applied the teamwork talents of the MMORPG player to their organizing structure and there were several key events afoot:
1: The fund-raising effort for The Fine Young Capitalists all-women’s game development project. This was done as our opening salvo, and in direct retribution for the industry collusion that had blackballed TFYC from media coverage in favor of competing projects by friends of the journalists. If the games media wouldn’t help them, we would do it ourselves.
2: The systematic investigation of games media personalities and companies, and centralized collection of that data. Who knew who, who said what, when, where, and why? How far back did the associations and back-scratching really go?
3: Financial analysis of our targets: Who was being paid, and by whom, through what venues, and for what activities? Who was bankrolling our opponents, and how was money changing hands to facilitate this little media clique?
4: The analysis of the collected data for evidence of illegal acts, overt political bias, corruption, and collusion. How deep was the rabbit hole?
5: In-depth research into codes of journalistic ethics and practices, the law, advertising regulations, contract law and more. What power did we have? Who was breaking the rules and how could we use that as ammunition?
6: The Twitter Front. Hundreds of people had joined the social media platform to get word of our findings to the world, and break through the censorship imposed by games media and their allies. We made our own media with a social reach of hundreds of thousands, later to become millions as GamerGate grew.
7: The Email Campaign. Using evidence collected and approved for dissemination, it was the responsibility of every person to independently contact the advertisers of the games media outlets and voice their displeasure at both this unethical behaviour and the underhanded and outright vicious treatment of their customers. We were upset consumers, we knew what was going on behind the scenes, and we could prove it.
These proto-activists had established a machine that was starkly beautiful in its simplicity. “Diggers” went through social media and website archives by the hundreds, picking out anything that looked remotely juicy. Blogposts, tweets, friends lists, Patreon donors, personnel listings, and much more. This information was archived in case the opposition caught on and tried to cover their tracks by deleting it.
These archives were shared in the GamerGate thread which ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This information was then sifted in detail by a cast of hundreds, working together and separately. Unverifiable or spurious information was thrown aside with ruthless efficiency. Only verifiable evidence that met a considerable burden of proof was counted as legitimate and recorded in an official repository. Promising information that didn’t quite make the cut was sent to our allies in another board who specialized in hunting down political and financial connections, and who also joined us in the info gathering effort.
Once information had been verified, each accusation and its supporting evidence were compiled into a more digestible form. Posters who excelled at prose would boil down long-winded concepts into punchy and effective sound bites. Infographics detailing all relevant parts of the presented idea and its supporting evidence rolled into an attention-grabbing picture file (and an old chansite staple) were compiled. Both of the above were submitted for peer review to the thousands of eyes in the thread and subsequently tweaked and improved until they passed muster. Those talented in the making of audio/video presentations created Youtube movies and Soundcloud presentations.
When that task was finished, the compiled and packaged information bites were released to Twitter for the consumption of people all over the world. The now diamond-hard evidence of wrongdoing was also utilized by the email campaign to show the advertisers exactly what their ad contracts were backing and paying for.
And all the while the threads were alive with art and entertainment. Mockery of our opponents, general Internet humor both mild and dirty, the occasional porn, and an arsenal of inside-jokes only knowable to a native chan user filled the pages. Between all of those came the handiwork of supporters who had a talent with the tablet or brush, and GamerGate came alive with political cartoons, war propaganda, and entire galleries of art in tribute to our unofficial mascot, Vivian James. Vivian was described as /v/’s “daughter”, since she was a reward from TFYC for successfully funding their game project. Many dozens of threads and hundreds of collective votes had detailed every part of her, from hair color to personality (“low affect, grumpy, perpetually fed-up and tired” for those curious.) Vivian was as adored as any flesh and blood daughter could hope to be. Considered more a symbol of the gamers of /v/ than GamerGate specifically, she was never formally adopted as a mascot. Though she might as well be.
Around this same time, we began to gain allies from other corners of the net. Members of Reddit came to 4chan to escape the heavy censorship taking place there. Even people from Tumblr, a website whose community traditionally hates the chans, came into the GamerGate thread to ask questions and offer what aid they could. People from the Twitter audience who saw our traffic began to appear in the threads as newbies, eager to please and ready to work. Our numbers were swelling from a few thousand unbloodied activists with a few tens of thousands of followers and would eventually become more akin to tens of thousands of activists and hundreds of thousands of supporters.
As for my part, I took a day or two to gather materials and deliberate exactly how my talents would be of the best use to my tentative comrades. I settled on starting off with the email campaign – I had a nasty itch to scratch in the form of getting back at the media sites who had peed down my back only days before. After emailing one round of evidence and complaints to each of the advertisers on sites I was familiar with I developed a taste for more. Subsequently I stepped up to the Twitter front and created the account @foxceras. I hadn’t had a social media account since the days of Windows 98 and Yahoo Messenger! My very first tweet ever was a simple one:
And another one joins the fray! #GamerGate
From there I began gathering followers and doing everything I could to boost #GamerGate’s message to the world. Others were now counting on me to do my part and not just lurk and spectate. There was no turning back.
The days ahead would be filled with much more of the same activity, becoming a daily routine. At least until the middle of September, when both a fantastic victory and a crushing defeat would come shambling over our horizon…
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