From Angst in Japan to Alt-Right Rage

I've long maintained that the rise of the alt-right, and ultimately the rise of Donald Trump, were birthed by the misogynistic Gamergate tantrum.  Put succinctly, Gamergate was a backlash against female videogame designers and critics under the ludicrous guise of a call for 'ethics in gaming journalism'.  It metastasized into a broader misogynist backlash, with added racism of course, against any female participation in 'nerd culture'.

The latest QAnon Anonymous Podcast has a great rundown of the 'chan' culture that led to the birth of the online right.  Beginning in Japan with the post-recession nihilism of youth-in-Asia, this farrago of shitposting, 'ironic' bigotry, and one-upsmanship in being outrageous, this culture infected the US in a big way with the creation of 4chan by American teenager Christopher Poole.  When 4chan banned Gamergate related content, many of its more extreme users migrated to 8chan, created by American teenager Fredrick Brennan, who became disgusted by his own creation after it became a venue for mass shooters to post their manifestos.  He features prominently in this podcast.  Also featured in the podcast is Dale Beran, author of It Came from Something Awful, which also chronicles this phenomenon.

It's a good listen, a relatively short explainer about the online radicalization that led to the election of America's first shitposter president, built in the misogynistic, cartoonish image of the internet message boards themselves.

A Woman's Place Is in the Dojo

I don't usually flaunt my blog at other people's websites, but I'm posting a link to the comment threat on Amanda Marcotte's post on the doxxing of Felicia Day. In her piece, Ms Marcotte writes about a depressing trend in all too many "fandoms":


But still, I recognize exactly the phenomenon she’s talking about and it happens to a lot of women who have interests in stuff outside the female ghettos of fashion and domestic arts. (Mine would definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, be music fandom.) The desire for camaraderie with your fellow hobbyists outweighs nagging doubts you have that many of the men in your world think you don’t belong or that you deserve to be put in a second class position, forever having to defend your right to be treated like an expert compared to men who are simply assumed to belong. You decide those men are outliers or, if they are relatively quiet about their beliefs, you convince yourself that you’re being paranoid. Hell, if you worry about it out loud, you may even be told you’re paranoid. Often by other women who, like you, are so eager to believe that men welcome your presence that you may overlook evidence that suggests otherwise.


It's infuriating and depressing, so I figured I'd put up a feel-good post to alleviate some of the frustration that many people are feeling in this era of #gamergate foolishness.

Last Saturday, we had a special guest in the dojo to teach our students:

The woman in the blue gi with the blonde ponytail is one of the top-ranked judo players in the world... she won the gold medal in her weight class in the London Olympics (while I'm not posting her name, there aren't too many Olympic gold medal winners, so a little research will show you her stellar record). I snapped a picture of her teaching a bunch of seven-and-under girls zenpo kaiten, or forward-roll breakfalls. She taught four classes for us, boys and girls ranging in age from six to fifteen. After each class, she let the kids dogpile her while touching her gold medal... it was quite a sight to see her jovial face peering out from a passel of children, her smile shining brighter than the medal.

Also in the picture, from left to right: the gent sitting on the windowsill is a good friend of our gold medalist, visiting from London. The gentleman in the white gi next to him is a dear friend I jokingly refer to as "Morocco's George Clooney"- he visited Shanghai on business and a bunch of the locals took him for the real deal. The woman in the red polo shirt is one of our soccer coaches, who hails from Argentina... her daughter is one of the rolling students. The gentleman to the left of our guest Olympian is the father of one of our students. The imposing gent to the right is a dear mentor of mine, also from Morocco ("Berber Badass" would be a good nickname for him). On the uttermost right, that cascade of hair belongs to one of the teenaged counselors who shepherd the kids from activity to activity... I have known this young woman since she was small enough to fit in a peanut shell. I know you're not supposed to play favorites, but it's hard not to, and she has always been close to our hearts. The Italian guy and the Brazilian guy aren't in the picture because they are off to the right sparring. The other Olympic gold medal winner is also off to the side, teaching an adult student. Gentle Jimmy G. from Jersey hasn't arrived yet, he comes in on his lunch break to get his fight on before returning to work.

So there you have it- an amazingly competent, dynamic woman who excels in a largely male milieu of international scope, teaching a bunch of young girls with gusto and humor. The haters can go stuff their precious game controllers up where neither Sol nor any alien sun shines. The good guys want women to be fearless.

The Internet's Augean Stables

Ah, 8Chan, how does one describe it? It's a festering heap of child pornography, Gamergate misogyny, racism, anti-semitism, conspiracy mongering, and exchanges between mass shooters, wannabe mass shooters, and fans of mass shooters... you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. 8Chan is the Augean Stables of the internet, the shittiest of shitposting shitholes... it is also the subject of a recent search warrant:

lmaooooooo 8chan just got search warranted pic.twitter.com/Rhi6g2OWKo

— shoshanot at cannes, pls stop asking 🛸 (@swodinsky) June 14, 2019

It will be interesting to see how the Chan Klan handles the prospect of being outed after having assumed anonymity on the imageboard... how many anime-Nazis are sweating over the prospect of their employer finding out that they are egging on potential mass shooters? What is 8Chan's biggest 'celebrity', the anonymous hoaxer(s) known as "Q" going to do if anonymity is compromised? Ben Collins of NBC speculated about this as well...

Reading over this post, I realize that I need to step away from the internet for a bit- it's a beautiful summer night, with an almost full moon... that beats a shitstorm anytime.

Perfect Response to a Racist Gamerboy

Ah, 'gamers'... I don't write about the scumbags who pushed Gamergate very often, but I must note that these angry nerdy boys pretty much ushered in the 'alt-right' that vexes the 'normies' so. I have been known to play computer games, but these assholes have forever caused me to eschew the title of 'gamer'. The new kerfuffle among these chuds is anger that actress Zoë Kravitz has been cast as 'Catwoman' in an upcoming 'Batman' movie. One particular manchild calling himself 'One Angry Gamer' is enraged that an African-American woman has been cast in this role.

The asshole is getting it in the neck in the responses, mainly from people who note that Eartha Kitt was an iconic Catwoman in the greatest iteration of the whole franchise. Ms Kitt perfectly combined the playful sex appeal and over-the-top camp that best serves the source material:





To me, the worst sin of 'One Angry Gamer' isn't his (you know he's gotta be a d00d) racism or sexism, but his complete lack of humor... 'Batman' is supposed to be sorta ridiculous, just look at the debut of Catwoman in the comic books. He's also a crashing bore, he keeps repeating the mantra that 'Eartha Kitt's Catwoman isn't the Selina Kyle of the movie', as if this Selina Kyle character (invented in the 80s by the execrable Frank Miller, who made the character a former sex worker because of course he did) even existed when the West 'Batman', the best 'Batman', was broadcast 'in color'. He also complains that Frank Miller's Selina Kyle shouldn't be played by a black woman because she was described as Irish and Cuban, as if Phil Lynott and Celia Cruz didn't exist.

The angry manchild gives the game away when he complains that SJWs have 'stolen' his entertainment from him, entertainment that he has had no hand in producing. This sets up the best response I've ever seen to one of these anti-feminist whiners:

I don’t think gaming is a particularly masculine activity. It’s sitting on a couch pressing buttons.

— Aaron Abernethy (@theronster) October 20, 2019

I believe that gamers have a term for the beating this asshole received.

This Is Actually About Ethics in Video Gaming Journalism Culture

Another day in these here United States, another mass shooting, this time, at a video gaming tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. The shooter, who killed himself, was a competitor who lost a match, then returned to the venue and shot up the place. I imagine that the horrible people at 4chan, 8chan, and the various incel forums are already proclaiming him 'an hero'.

As exposed in the whole Gamergate fiasco, nerd culture is a cesspool of misogyny, racism, and general nastiness. The abuse, including rape and death threats, that women gamers face is horrific. The usual shit-talk that accompanies gaming has occasionally metastasized into something more sinister, including terroristic acts as 'SWATting', which have ended in fatalities.

I'm shocked, but not surprised, that toxic gamer culture has claimed its first mass shooting directly related to video gaming... though I in no way subscribe to the Conservative trope that violent video games 'cause' mass shootings- it's a distraction from the real issue of regulating access to firearms, and in this particular case, the video game the shooter played was a football simulation, not a First-Person Shooter. The culture of casual cruelty and entitlement that prevents a lot of these angry young nerds from handling setbacks in an emotionally appropriate fashion is the problem. Was it inevitable that this toxicity would lead to a case of mass lead poisoning? More importantly, will this mass-shooting be the start of a larger movement to defuse dangerous nerdrage?

Evil and Banality

As I am sure you have been, I have been following, appalled, the news of the mass shooting at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques that resulted in the deaths of 49 innocent individuals. Much of the coverage post-attack, has concentrated on the manifesto that the terrorist posted online, that odd blend of actual right-wing conspiracy, 'dank memes', and red herrings that is the hallmark of 'chan' culture. The manifesto was calculated to baffle.

The thing that strikes me is that this is the first 'Gamergate/4Chan/8Chan' mass shooting... it was announced on 8chan, livestreamed like a 'Call of Duty' tournament, and accompanied by a hard-to-penetrate metanarrative meant to obscure what is pretty much a bog-standard white supremacist campaign of terror. It's the metastasis of the path of radicalization of many alt-righties... 'ironic' 4chan racism and misogyny leads to earnest racism and then action, which most of them keep limited to putting up racist flyers in multicultural neighborhoods and an occasional street brawl. Predictably, the very right-wingers who push the 'invasion' narrative which helped to radicalize the shooter are backpedaling as quickly as they can, with a lot of them pushing the idea that talking about the shooter's radicalization is somehow 'what the shooter wants'. Weird, I didn't hear any of them questioning media outlets' attempts to suss out the radicalization of Western-born people who ran off and joined ISIS.

The important thing here is that forty-nine people are dead, and forty-eight more people grievously injured. This sort of tragedy is unprecedented in New Zealand, which is the home of several of my bloggerhood friends. To the people of New Zealand, Kia Kaha.

Weird Alt Gay Porn Purveyors to the Rescue

I have to confess that I have been paying a lot of attention to the disruptive convoys in Canada for over a week.  In my post about the convoy, I mentioned that the theme song of the pushback, used to disrupt communications on convoy Zello channels, was Ram Ranch, a salacious song about gay cowboys at the eponymous estancia.  Now, Rolling Stone has covered the 'porno-metal' anthem of the resistance, with a shout-out to Noellenarwhal, one of the principal chroniclers of the convoys.  Today, the big reveal was that the chat-stream of the Windsor, Ontario bridge blockers was taken over by trolls:

"How does it feel to have the #RamRanchResistance controlling your communications?"

Heck yeah!!!

— Noelle - Reporting Live from The Ram Ranch🐓🍷 (@Noellenarwhal) February 11, 2022

Good job demoralizing and confusing these horrible people, all while monitoring their plans for further disruptions.  You trolls worked hard, now it's time to hit the showers like eighteen naked cowboys.

This use of an outré gay alt-porn creation to troll and undermine a right-wing campaign of fuckery reminds me of the time that gay dinosaur/bigfoot/whatever porn author Chuck Tingle nuked the Gamergaters from orbit when they tried to game the Hugo awards in order to make fun of women and people of color writing science fiction.  When Space Raptor Butt Invasion was nominated for a Hugo, Chuck Tingle made a public statement that Gamergate's primary victim Zoë Quinn would accept his award should he win.  It was a masterstroke that made the right-wing trolls look ridiculous, much like the constant interruptions of Ram Ranch makes the Canadian Convoy Clan sound ridiculous.

We might not get the heroes we are expecting, but we get the heroes we deserve, and it looks like weirdos who write unconventional gay porn are the ones who are... heh... rising to the occasion.

The 'Rosetta Stone' for Decoding Much of the Current Culture

At Roy's place, commenter M.Krebs linked to a blog post about the role that the 4chan message board played in the ascent of Donald Trump. This post is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the political career of a boorish, idiotic authoritarian.

4chan is the wellspring of much of internet culture, having originated such ubiquitous internet memes as LOLcats, Rickrolling... indeed the typical 'internet meme' with the black-bordered white lettering. The 'no rule' random board /b/, whose users styled themselves as /b/tards, was the place where the channers tried to one-up each other with disturbing images, extreme porn, scatalogical content, Nazi allusions. I've never been a 4chan denizen, being too old and too averse to bad grammar and spelling, but I internet-know a decent fellow who was a 4channer, and he characterized the trolling culture there as 'pissing in an ocean of piss'.

My gut feeling is that much of the anger that led to Gamergate, the 'alt-right', and the Trump election stems from the 4chan 'internet nerd' crowd's anger at having their culture 'co-opted' by normies. When Katy Perry referenced 'their' cartoon frog in a tweet, it caused a lot of outrage among the alt-cognitive. The spite that led to the Trump election is similar- the wholesale rejection of societal norms as a backlash to the 'liberal elite', or 'politically correct' culture. The 'chan' base, the 'anime Nazis', backed Trump because they saw the election of this 'pussy grabber in chief' as a rebuke to the Anita Sarkeesians of the world.

The tragedy of this particular political backlash is that it is rooted in an ephemeral internet culture, but its dire effects will be long-term. The standing of the United States is in jeopardy, as are the civil rights of its residents. Most alarmingly, the planet's ecology is reaching a tipping point while the administration is doubling down on denial. By the time the 'chan klan' grows up and realizes that their actions have real consequences, it will probably be too damn late, but hey, at least they showed those uppity bitches and meme-stealing normies an thing or two.

The Predictive Power of Science Fiction

Exactly five years ago, I wrote about the role of women in Science Fiction and 'Gaming Culture'. Sadly, about a year after that, the whole 'Gamergate' crapfest occurred... and things just don't seem to get better in nerddom. That being said, my purpose in this post isn't to lament the state of the fandom, but to mention an author whose works I have only recently discovered.

Doris Piserchia published her first short story in 1966, and her novel publishing career lasted from 1973 to 1983, when her daughter died, leaving her to care for her granddaughter. While in Virginia visiting mom, I stopped by a used book store (tragically, these are as rare as hen' teeth in NYC these days, largely due to economic factors) and picked up a couple of Ms Piserchia's books.

A Billion Days of Earth, published in 1976, is a darkly comic tale of the far-future, when the descendants of Homo sapiens have developed psychic powers which allow them to live as extremely powerful yet effete 'gods', while the descendants of rats and dogs have formed 'human' societies. Into the society of the rat-people, a frightful, predatory alien inexplicably comes to be, a quicksilver nonesuch which seeks to absorb the egos of other lifeforms. This horror comes to a society already rotting from within due to class inequality (Chapter 3):


A few centuries before, the rich of the world were philanthropic. Their descendants monopolized wealth, eliminated all but the very elite, took the family name of Filly, stopped giving money away and knew no fear of anyone but the Gods. They needn't have worried. The Gods didn't care what rat-men did, rich or poor.

If looking over that electrified fence at the estate made an observer sick because he suddenly began to think about a hundred piles of money as high as a hundred hills, and that those Fillys in their manors were sitting on more dollars than he could count in his lifetime- if this was what the observer thought- he looked over his shoulder to make sure he was alone, after which he let it out in one loud, crazy scream and then he went home and tried to forget he had those thoughts.

It would be unendurable to live in a world where ninety-nine percent of it were serfs, while the remaining one percent silently manipulated them. The philosophy of the sacrifice of the one for the many wasn't perfect, but it had served man for all of his existence. Hadn't it? Philosophies were suspect and humanity must be cautious in his choices. For instance, consider the philosophy of the sacrifice of the many for the one: that was just too goddamn...


Leaving aside the hard science-fiction stories which predicted cell phones, microcomputers, and the like, this particular passage, written forty years ago, perfectly encapsulates the principle malaise affecting societies all around the globe. Later in the book, one of the characters watches a young boy pass by, and contemplates the possible fate of the kid:


Redo began to brood. Would that the fate of the world hung upon the decisions of smiling boys. Even now, war drums were beginning to mutter. The sounds would grow in volume. The thunder would increase to a crescendo before the year was out. Madness was coming upon the children of men because the Fillys in the Eastern Hemisphere didn't like what they read on their ticker tapes. The time had come to stir men from lethargy. If they wouldn't buy refrigerators with a little coaxing, they would be forced to buy guns and bombs. One way or another- it was all the same to the Fillys. There would be war. The sweet boy who had passed the table would gurgle out his life in some muddy hole in the hinterlands of Chin.


The novel is a bit hit-and-miss, throwing out numerous subplots in its 210 pages- there are atavistic mutations in rat-people's bloodlines, there are battles between the protagonist and dangerous genetically-engineered creatures, there are internecine struggles within the Filly clan, and skulking through the narrative like a silvery devil is the will-destroying alien. The novel could easily have been expanded into one of those 'fantasy doorstoper' blocks of paper, with all of the various narrative threads. It's an odd book, but the two passages I've cited in this post made it a worthwhile read in and of themselves.