GamerGate Critic Brianna Wu To Run For Congress (cnn.com)

"If you look at what our Congress is doing for tech, it's failing. It's putting all of us in danger," game developer Brianna Wu told CNN, adding "It's so imperative that people of my generation, native to technology, that we step up and make our voices known." An anonymous reader quotes CNN's report: Wu says she is running for Congress in 2018. The co-founder and head of development at games firm Giant Spacekat hasn't announced which district she wants to represent in the U.S. House of Representatives to prevent alerting her potential opponent while she prepares. Wu, a Massachusetts Democrat, told CNNMoney she's building up a team of advisers and figuring out campaign logistics before announcing her candidacy next month... She said the election of President-elect Donald Trump spurred her to consider entering politics...
Wu "says her extensive technical knowledge and experience fighting the alt-right and harassment and will be advantageous for a Congressional representative."

Comments

Grievance politics

[Kohath]

Will this person have anything to offer anyone other than complaining about whatever the latest grievance obsession is? People used to look for leaders who had accomplished something.

Also, some random person is talking in vague terms about running for congress somewhere, sometime? This is news?

Re:Grievance politics

[RightwingNutjob]

OK, I'll play.

"War in Iraq": bipartisan support at the time. In hindsight, insufficiently forceful. Obama pulled out unilaterally and left the door for ISIS.

"8 years of Opposition to progress in Congress during the Obama administration": well that's the point of being the opposition, isn't it. Whose fault is it that Obama tried dictating terms and refused to even try to negotiate. The man's term has been characterized by complaints, executive orders, and zero attempt at reaching across the aisle. Maybe he believed his own propaganda so much that he thought he didn't have to, maybe he's just that arrogant in general, but whatever the situation, his excuse was always to blame Congress and never take any responsibility for his failings. Remind you of any other recent candidate?

"Keystone pipeline": Oh you mean trying to build critical infrastructure instead of tying it up in red tape at every turn? What's you're argument again?

"Years of climate change denial," Yep. Eight or more years please. Back in my day we referred to that 'denial' as level-headed skepticism of extraordinary claims. The extraordinary claim here being not global warming but the assertion that the science is so settled that we should give up control of our thermostats and our living arrangements to a bunch of central planners who are definitely qualified and totally not a bunch of academics with inflated senses of self-importance.

"Under the table promotion of the KKK and racist groups in the US,": As a Jewish immigrant to the US, the only people who've ever told me I wasn't truly American are--wait for it--liberals trying to scare me into voting Democratic. And reading through the supposedly unbiased mainstream media, that's a recurring theme. Whenever some ethnic or religious or cultural group is called out as being less than American, it's coming from a leftist trying to scare up a voting bloc bound by fear. Look in the mirror dude. It won't be that hard to find a reflecting surface somewhere in that glass house of yours.

"Fox News,": HuffPo, DailyKos, MSNBC, NYT, NPR, Slate, and more

"Accusing every network except Fox News.. to be some sort of biased "Fake news",": Jayson Blair, same recurring set of names for 'man in the street' interviews in NYT articles not written by Jayson Blair, Sitting on the story of John Edwards's mistress, rumor-mongering about supposed Trump-related hate crimes against Muslims, which all turned out to be ... fake. There are more examples.

"Promoting Economic slavery": By wanting to crack down on the black market for cheap labor and refusing to inflate the minimum wage to a point where more people would become unemployed at the low end or have their hours and/or base wage cut if converted from salaried to hourly under new overtime rules? OK. Someone needs remedial arithmetic and economics, in that order.

"Allowing money to rule politics.": Like how Hillary out-spent Trump by $600M to $300M and still lost? See above, remedial arithmetic.

Re:Grievance politics

[AmiMoJo]

You can't blame Obama for not doing enough to work with the Republicans. When they didn't get their way they shut down the fucking government. You can't reach any kind of sane deal or consensus with people willing to see the country burn just to get their way.

And as for Fox News, he did actually accuse them of being biased as well. The only source Trump really trusts is Breitbart. We know this because it's the one he quotes and links to on Twitter far, far more than any other. If you want to influence POTUS, take out advertising over there. I hear they could use the business.

Re:Grievance politics

[markdavis]

>"You can't blame Obama for not doing enough to work with the Republicans. When they didn't get their way they shut down the fucking government. You can't reach any kind of sane deal or consensus with people willing to see the country burn just to get their way."

Wow, it sounds a lot like the Democrats running around screaming that Trump didn't get the popular vote (even though it doesn't matter because that isn't the game) or "is not my president" (even though he will be). Or who launched a filibuster to end all filibusters, shutting down the Senate, trying to force irrational gun control down everyone's throats when it was/is clear the vast, vast majority don't want it. Who seemingly control most of the mass media and wield it as a weapon of distorted information throughout the last year and even still.

I guess when they don't get their way they spur hatred, riots, and looting and try to shut down the government. You can't reach any kind of sane deal or consensus with people willing to see the country burn just to get their way. Wow, doesn't that sound familiar?

Who? What?

[SumDog]

I have never heard of Giant Spacekat until now. Looking at their first game, it looks pretty terrible. But it is a first game, so I'll give them that.

I don't know much about this particular person's role in Gamergate, but I think the whole thing was asinine. It failed to understand market demand and the industry surrounding gaming and entertainment in general.

Also, it's interesting all these people are deciding it's now time to do something since Trump was elected. Were the eight years of predator drone bombing not enough? Was the ten plus years of warrant-less spying not enough? Was the endless war not enough? Keep in mind everything that is happening now, is happening under the Obama administration.

Clinton and Trump were equally corrupt. Basing your decision to participate in the system now shows you've totally ignored the reality of what America does on a daily basis to destroy other nations to give the west our current standard of living.

Re:Who? What?

[Kohath]

Were the eight years of predator drone bombing not enough? Was the ten plus years of warrant-less spying not enough? Was the endless war not enough?

You clearly don't understand the culture of empty, shallow virtue-signaling.

Re:Who? What?

[SuricouRaven]

I've yet to work out what Gamergate actually is. As far as I can tell it started out with an incident involving a games reviewer giving a glowing review to a game that happened to be written by his partner, even though by all other accounts the game was terrible, and from there escalated into a flamewar of epic proportions that engulfed a hundred other subjects into one big ball of confusing anger involving a lot of death threats, rape accusations, accusations of fabricated death threats and false rape accusations, ridiculously easily-offended people, people who set out to offend them for amusement, and generally all the things we love to hate about online political culture.

Re:Who? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Clinton and Trump were equally corrupt.

Not even close to being true. And that you think so is a testament to the press's idiotic belief in "balance" where they had to magnify the smallest things about clinton in order to appear to impartial when reporting on the giant dumpster fire of corruption that is trump.

Clinton's foundation has top ratings from multiple charity ratings organizations, helped millions of people and the worst excesses were that as SecState she met with a donor who was also a nobel prize winner and arranged for bill to rescue hostages from north korea.
Meanwhile Trump's foundation literally pays off his court judgments for him and donates to the election campaigns of people he needs favors from, and he brags about it on television.

Another big talking point among the lock-her-up crowd is that she gave russia 20% of the US's uranium. When in fact 8 other agencies with veto power didn't veto it either and that's because despite the russian company buying the mineral rights they didn't have the export rights, so no matter how much of the uranium they took out of the ground, none of it could leave the country anyway.

So no, they are not equally corrupt. They aren't even playing in the same leaque.

Re:Who? What?

[serviscope_minor]

Unlike you apparently who virtue signals about not virtue signaling at every opportunity.

Re: Race to the bottom

[Anonymous Coward]

She's going to encourage women to be as angsty as possible, and then berate men for asking women to be less angsty.

Let's all be real for a minute here. There are differences between the genders, and this "let's pretend we're all identical" social model is a dismal failure.

Why can't we recognise the differences and work with them, rather than pretend they don't exist?

Oh that's right, because it'll rob professional feminist whiners of their careers.

Re:Aaannd they're off

[pecosdave]

Microwave popcorn = BAD!

loads of chemicals

I'm firing up my hot-air popper.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

We sure do, but she is not intelligent.

Another professional victim like Zoe Quinn?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems all these women that make noise don't do anything but parade victimhood. The women I know in the field that put their head down to the grindstone (like the rest of us) don't have these persistent (manufactured) problems.

I used to love the video game world until the Anita Sarkeesians started seeing mysogyny everywhere and made everything about themselves rather than the gaming. And fools keep on rushing to give them a platform even though they produce next-to-nothing but drama.

Re:Another professional victim like Zoe Quinn?

[Sartr]

Lifetime Professional Victimhod actually makes them perfectly suited for life as a Democrat politician.

Re: Another professional victim like Zoe Quinn?

[Opportunist]

This woman is simply doing what religious leaders have been doing for centuries: Milking the "outrage" of people to get rich. Why do you hate capitalism?

Re: Race to the bottom

[William Baric]

Here's a tip. men also respond better when you take their concerns seriously, rather than assuming they are just being angsty because clearly they have nothing to complain about.

Re:GAYmergate

[Dogtanian]

I refuse to read your petty articles if you're going to write them like a bunch of proud, cocky seventh graders.

Says the person whose comment is headed "GAYmergate".

Re:You mean something awful victim?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also that feminist is a dude. 'Brianna' is as much a woman as I am 'Sheldon the turtle'. Just because you have a strong feeling about something doesn't make it real. A pox on the the evils within us all this Holiday season. May the new year ring in objective truth over teh feels.

Re: Race to the bottom

[ezdiy]

I assume the point is that caricaturing men is funny, while caricaturing women is berating. I never really quite understood why people obsess about it so much anyway, there are thousands such double standards in life. Rationalizations of unjust world such as "feminazis", "internalized patriarchy" and "microaggresions" sounds like hearing children who never learned to cope with being adults.

Re:You mean something awful victim?

[Dutch Gun]

I'd like to know when "alt-right" became synonymous with GamerGate.

Oh, I get it. "GamerGate" is dead news, and outside of the gaming community and tech journalists, no one knows what the hell it is. "Alt-right" is a hot topic, though. Nevermind that the two have jack-all to do with each other.

She kinda sounds like a politician already.

Re:and in preparation

[bluegutang]

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu

I think it's perfectly expected for any potential candidate to minimize the amount of material that can be dug up and used, fairly or unfairly, against them.

Sad!

[PopeRatzo]

Brianna Wu just realized that you can make it to the highest office in the land just by being a self-promoting internet troll and she wants to get in on that action.

Re: Race to the bottom

[serviscope_minor]

Do you understand the difference between caricaturing a group you're part of versus pointing the finger at a group you are not part of?

Re:Turning point

[BarbaraHudson]

Looking back at the original article where the questions were asked, I asked 3 times that it be addressed. Those questions have been deleted. So were others.

I have skin in the game, and wanted to know why anyone would continue to deny the truth when it's so well documented, right down to the voter registration card name change. I also asked why her characters were hypersexualized on her revolution60 pages, right down to camels toe. Why draw characters that are an early adolescent male's wet dreams and then criticize other games for objectifying women?

Being a transsexual is nothing to be ashamed of. I was outed here a decade ago, no big deal. Acting like you're ashamed of it, and expecting it to stay hidden while running for office, when the truth is so easily found, is whacko.

Re:You mean something awful victim?

[Dutch Gun]

You can't possibly subscribe to that logic. Fact: there happen to be many felons that vote Democrat. Therefore, I'm going to substitute Democrats wherever I see the world felons from now on, because Democrats are currently more news-worthy. You see how silly and dishonest that is, right?

GamerGate was an unholy mess that encompassed gaming media, personal vengeance, sexism, and feminism in ways that I still don't pretend to understand (there are two VERY different accounts, with no solid proof of either). At the very least, no matter what else, I've felt that Wu and others like Sarkeesian didn't deserve the nasty harassment they got. I mean, damn, it's only videogames, and this is me as a gamer and game developer saying this. But I haven't heard of anyone politicizing it before now.

Well, I suppose it's my bad for thinking GamerGate couldn't get any uglier. Just remember who dragged politics into this festering fail-stew.