The connection between "Weird Twitter," SJWs and journalism

Alright, it is time for an expose on the different connections between various groups in this GamerGate scandal.

The majority of this SJW stuff, at its core, is coming from what is known as "Weird Twitter." (inb4 >KYM http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/weird-twitter) Weird Twitter was initially formed when users of the FYAD subforum on the Something Awful forums decided that the forums were slowly dying (which is true) and took to Twitter to increase their internet presence and be able to interact with more people (largely to harass them). They had created such a hostile environment to newcomers in FYAD that essentially no new blood trickled in, and they literally had to force new people to post there through moderator bullshit, and even then the sole purpose of that was not to get new blood, but for the insular clique who have known each other for more than a decade now, to torment that person. So they needed greener pastures, which they found on Twitter, where they were joined by refugees from Laissez Faire, a FYAD-style subforum which at the end of its lifespan was filled with anime avatar hardline Marxists (think /pol/ but even more extreme, but on the left, and extremely ban-happy. It ultimately fell apart and was resurrected as various offsite forums time and again because they kept falling apart due to drama and users harassing each other).

Anyway this insular group of a few dozen or so people quickly attracted a large following on Twitter by making genuinely amusing Tweets (which had mostly nothing to do with SJW shit), and among that following were many indie creators and related SJW types, mostly because those Tweets had SJW-friendly language (the most glaring examples of this language are infantile-sounding insults like "garbagemen" or "piss baby").

However, besides making amusing Tweets, they had another purpose: Harassing people for their own amusement. The  former LF parts of Weird Twitter and their largely SJW indie dev follower (and similar people, you get the picture) crowd merely provided SJW issues as a heuristic to find targets to single out and harass. If this in-group had accumulated a following among a different demographic (which is however a rather unlikely scenario, given the initial LF element among them) they would have looked for people to harass based on whatever that demographic valued, rather than SJW issues. It's important to understand that the SJW issues they supposedly care about are merely meant to raise a Twitter mob outside of their small circle. On FYAD itself, they have no issues with throwing around racist and sexist slurs like they're going out of style. They just know how to keep that shit off Twitter, since the average FYAD post would give a true SJW a heart attack.

And make no mistake, these people have absolutely no issues with harassment up to and including death threats either. FYAD even managed to make a depressed, possibly autistic man kill himself due to their harassment, a fact that if brought up rather than denying, they will gloat and laugh about. Many of these people were active in Helldump, another Something Awful subforum which existed for the sole purpose of doxxing SA users and digging up as much embarrassing information on them as possible, which went as far as users posting nude pictures of an underaged girl, as well as making fun of users with physical disabilities.

One of the superstars of that subforum was also involved with the attempt at bullying a 10 year-old (who they also doxxed and threatened with death). I say attempt because the 10 year-old shrugged it off like a champ. The guy, btw, should be somewhere in his mid-to-late 30s. This whole episode is well-known, and 4chan has torn the parties involved a new one over it.

Zoe Quinn, by her own admission in mid-August (I believe she tweeted it on August 12th or 15th, it should still be there if she hasn't deleted it), is still an active SA forums user and has been since 2002. It is safe to assume that she is part of this in-group which is at the center of this Twitter shitstorm.

How do I know all this? Simple, I used to be part of it. I wasn't part of the FYAD in-group but one of the people who joined later on Twitter (although I had been posting and lurking on the SA forums for years beforehand, I simply didn't interact with FYAD). The 10 year-old harassment episode opened my eyes, and I used what I know to put 2 and 2 together, and here you are reading the results.

So what does this have to do with the larger SJW community?

Simple: This isn't about gamers, gaming or feminism. The SJW shit is simply a smoke-screen which an insular group of people who have known each other for over a decade use to get their truly massive amount of SJW Twitter followers who are not part of that in-group, to join in on harassment, which they get off on. I almost feel bad for legit SJWs who participate in this, they are merely useful idiots. If you are an SJW reading this: You have been tricked, rused, bamboozled. The same people who point you to targets which to attack are the very bullies you proclaim to loathe.

Anyway, how does this tie into games journalism?

When this whole thing broke loose, it got huge overnight, despite constant censorship attempts and fraudulent DMCA takedowns across the internet. Gaming journalists, both directly involved with Zoe and indirectly involved by participating in similarly seedy actions which clearly breach the ethics of journalism needed a way to make this go away or bury the larger issue, and fast. All most of them could do on their end was write articles, but that wouldn't have gotten the needed reaction fast enough.

Luckily, they had connections among this in-group (such as Zoe Quinn possibly being a part of it, as well as other indie devs and related people who follow people from the in-group and are followed back by them) which had, by now, years of experience in raising Twitter lynch mobs and who had the required number of followers among the SJW crowd. Thus, they mobilized them to turn what is a journalistic issue at heart into an SJW issue. And this they gladly did, because it meant getting to harass people.