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Interviews: Ask Brianna Wu a Question
Brianna Wu is the head of development at Giant Spacekat, a company specializing in cinematic experiences using the Unreal engine. She’s also a frequent speaker on women-in-tech issues and was one of several women subjected to a campaign of attacks in Gamergate. Wu has worked as a journalist and politico. She currently has a patreon campaign which helps to offset the costs of doing speaking engagements and work to further the goals of feminism and women in tech. Brianna has agreed to give us some of her time and answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
> boy's club
Incredibly ironic, since briana wu aka john walker flynt is actually a man.
Is what a friend of yours says in this article true?
But one of Wu's friends in the gaming industry has suggested that her story may be more complicated than she lets on--that as bad as the situation has been for Wu, she "wasn't dragged" into it. "She taunted Gamergate for weeks," this woman continued, who asked that her name be withheld. "She baited them, and then they finally came after her, which is exactly what she wanted them to do."
Yea, they're called Goons. They really want you to think that certain people are a hate movement.
She's been caught several times posting harassment to herself. For example, on her steam greenlight page she forgot to log out of her developer account and posted a message attacking herself.
She's probably here, seeding this right now.
Representative Katherine Clark (D-Mass) along with the National organization of women tried to rally the house to demand better enforcement of existing cyber stalking laws. She then herself became a target for online harassment. Has anything come of the congresswoman's efforts and did she reach out to you after becoming a target herself?
Wu is not a woman. and their birth name is John Flynt.
That's not why we change gender. Anyone seeking approval for a sex change on that basis would be denied. This is not to say that I approve of ms Wu's antics - to the contrary, she's been an attention whore and drama queen with dubious motives. Most of us are not like her.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
SoylentNews is a Slashdot-knockoff which appeared during the protest against the "beta" interface. The site runs on a fork of slashcode and has a very similar moderation system. Predictably, the community consists largely of former and current Slashdotters and the overall culture is very similar.
No kidding. When I read the summary of her wonderful achievements all I could think was DUH. Is this stuff that matters? Really Slashdot?
I am sure there are plenty of other women you could interview who actually did something that matters in the tech world.
No need, Ralph already explained it himself:
I surreptitiously took few pictures, and decided to tweet one of them out. Now, Iâ(TM)m not a stupid man when not blind drunk, so I knew there was a chance someone would see this on Twitter. But, I did that shit anyway. Why? Well, I knew that they would look terrible for kicking me out over taking a picture of a panel speaker at a public convention. How big of a fucking baby do you have to be to kick out an adversary?
(from his blog at http://theralphretort.com/full...)
Note that the organizers asked people not to take photos. It was clearly stated, and in the events leading up to this they tweeted the rules to him twice during their conversation. It appears that's where he got the idea from, in fact.
His goal was to get kicked out by breaking the rules. That's why he "surreptitiously" took the photos, because he knew that the organizers had asked him not to. His scheme, which some people apparently fell for, was to make out he was the victim when he in fact went out of his way to be booted out.
It's their convention, they make the rules, he knew them and broke them deliberately.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's not creepy at all.
That's not creepy! It's all about ethics in gaming journalism, you see...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Oh boy probably one of my favorite tweets and was quoted directly to her feed...by her. Funny how there was never any investigation about it right? Never mind they've been caught attempting to victimize themselves, or lie about pretty much anything. Not even hitting the tip of the iceberg here.
Om, nomnomnom...
Related question: Despite everything, can some good come from GamerGate?
Plenty of good has come from Gamergate. The literal salt mine from deepfreeze.it alone shows what good has come from it, not since the 1990's have I seen so much whining and complaining from the press when direct conflicts of interest, and shilling are exposed.
It has certainly drawn attention to the topic of harassment of women online, and campaigns like "Disrespectful Nod" actually seem to have backfired and pushed some of the companies targeted to very clearly state their opposition to the movement.
Citation required, because many companies including game sites have created ethical policies, some have also come out saying that Gamergate was right like Ian Miles Cheong(Gameranx). Some others have even openly come to GG to ask them to give their opinion on their existing, or re-write of their policies. So if you wonder where we would be without it, we'd be back in July of last year and people still getting pissed off at 'games journalism' for being unethical and still trotting down the road that it had been waiting for an even larger explosion.
I'm guessing you either don't play video games, or are pretty young. Otherwise you'd know that a backlash against the gaming press has been building for over twenty years, when you still got your information from magazines.
Om, nomnomnom...
Who's taking about harassment? I'm clearly talking exclusively about the wacky claim made by the AC inexplicably modded +5, which seems to only be supported by a few crazy fringe sites.
By analogy, the AC is claiming we faked the moon landings, and you're talking about monuments on Mars.
And I was pointing out that your being skeptical of her faking her harassment is doubtful due to the comments in here doesn't mesh, as I haven't seen any harassment going on. Perhaps I jumped the gun.
It might also to have a bit of background: Ms. Wu specializes in antagonizing people, especially over social media, and then crying harassment whenever anyone takes the bait. She has been doing this for as long as I've been aware of her.
Given that this is the internet and it's trivial to make a twitter account, this usually invariably results in Ms. Wu getting some troll upset with her who will attempt to hurt her feelings based on any number of perceived weaknesses - doing so is not sexism. Indeed it would be the very definition of sexism to put on kid gloves just because of Wu's gender.
Ms. Wu has also admitted to creating twitter accounts to troll herself with, and some of the screenshots she has taken of this harassment are suspect -- for example, taking a screenshot within seconds of a tweet being posted, which is unlikely unless you are aware the tweet is about to be posted.
She then complains about this harassment publicly, links to her patreon page, and goes back to antagonizing people online. Pity farming or professional victimhood in a nuthsell. Granted, Ms. Wu is hardly alone, several of these fake feminist trolls have infested the Third Wave Feminism movement as of late, and are pushing a narrative of women being poor widdle fragile things that must be coddled and protected at all times because they're just so fragile.
To be absolutely clear, the convention place is not a public place. It is a private establishment, hired out to the conference organizers. The organizers can set whatever rules they like within their private conference hall, unless those limits are discriminatory.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The only reference to this event I can find is the Lolcow Wiki, hardly a reliable source of information. It appears to be fabricated.
Would you care to provide solid evidence, or withdraw your accusation?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And then Dice will ignore them and shoehorn in what ever the most profitable agenda is at that time.
Right now they're banking on SJWs being profitable. It's a short term solution that is going to alienate a lot of people, especially when the SJW house of cards comes down
For those of you that want to know how Wu plays into this:
So...how did Brianna get involved anyway? All I remember is she just appeared one day making accusations and that whole house thing.
She involved herself. No one knew about her until she tweeted some ridiculous crap, got called out on her bullshit and instantly cried harassment.
How is the criminal investigation into harassment going?
Last I heard, that Mass. prosecutors office isn't too happy with Wu lying about filing court documents about the people harassing her. I always find it funny that people lie about things that are public records.
Do you find law enforcement generally believes you, or do they accept the other side's claims that you ran an elaborate false flag operation against yourself? What kind of evidence is most effective, most likely to be understood and accepted? Can you recommend the best way to report criminal harassment?
Oh, this stuff. The best way to report harassment? Actually go down to a court house and file paperwork. The only problem is that you can't file harassment reports when you are harassing yourself or when people disagree with you on the internet.