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

You mean something awful victim?

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out, anti-gamergate affiliated goons from somethingawful were associated with actual hate directed at her, per the FBI. Most of the anti-gamergate crowd hate her guts, too. It's just that she takes the hate she receives from them and associates it with Gamergate, for reasons.

Re:You mean something awful victim?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, have some info. You're welcome.

For some reason the media that badly covered Gamergate chose not to cover the FBI releasing its files about Gamergate.

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:You mean something awful victim?

[Raenex]

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.

First of, Brianna "Stayed Home" Wu injected themselves into the mix by making fun of GamerGaters. They then used the predictable backlash to claim they were fleeing for their lives... by going to a scheduled convention and tweeting exactly where they would be at the convention. They then gave interview after interview about how they had to flee their home... from their home.

But that's just one of the ridiculous sagas within GamerGate, and something never reported by the mainstream press, who were all too happy to present GamerGate as a harassment movement to drive women out of gaming.

Race to the bottom

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is she going to do for tech, other than force companies to hire more women and minorities, and pay them all equal regardless of talent?

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.

and in preparation

[Anonymous Coward]

She's been mass deleting tweets

She's done this because she's an absolutely abhorrent person, a hypocrite and a narcissist, and hopes the 99% of the population who've never heard of her remain blissfully unaware of this fact until after she's won.

So it sounds to me like she's ideally suited to be a politician.

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.

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?

[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]

GamerGate started when her ex-boyfriend put up a blog post making various allegations about her infidelity, including the false claim about the review

This is blatantly false. The zoepost makes no such allegation about a review, and the author clarified that he does not believe there was any conflict of interest in the comments. The post was not about conflicts of interest; it was about emotional abuse.

If you insist on claiming otherwise, please show where the author accuses Grayson(?) of writing a favourable review of Depression Quest in exchange for sex. (This is a rhetorical request, for the reader's benefit more than yours or mine; I know you won't supply any cites, because you never back up your bullshit.)

Re:Who? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies, you are correct. The allegation about a positive review was note made in the blog post by her ex. It was fabricated later by people supporting him as a way to justify the harassment.

And to be completely clear, once again, the review does not exist. The allegation is entirely false.

It wasn't a review. It was coverage. The head editor of Kotaku strawmanned the argument into "review" in order to make it more specific and false, which allowed them to deny it. Everyone knows this, except certain trolls that support Gawker's disgusting behavior intentionally muddy the waters to give themselves some cover.

Nathan Greyson absolutely COVERED Quinn's scams and "projects" without announcing he was friends and later dating her. That should have got him fired. Kotaku instead doubled down, and we got GamerGate.

Then we had the Gamers Are Dead scandal and the discovery of GameJournoPros, a secret mailing list where people like Greyson and the Kotaku editor were discussing how to break NDAs, fix review scores, and blacklist topics and people, which fanned the flames of GamerGate and ensured it wouldn't go away.

And hey, while we're speaking of harassment, wanna talk about how Quinn sent a flood of sexist and racist hate mail to Candance Owens to an email address that only Quinn knew, claiming it was by "gamers?"

Or the huge leaks of her "advocacy organization," Crash Override Network -- aka, "CON," proving that they were doxing, harassing, gaslighting, and generally being monsters to everyone who pissed Quinn off that week?

Or how Quinn openly bragged about being part of the Helldump board of SomethingAwful that was dedicated to doxing and harassing people into suicide?

No? Yeah, didn't think so. Zoe Quinn is a serial abuser, rapist, and sociopath. If there's only one more thing GamerGate could succeed at doing, it would be ensuring that nutjob never hurts another person.

twitter feed

[japaneseharold]

I noticed her Twitter feed is limited only to her latest non-violent and nice posts. I wonder why that is? During the gamergate fiasco, she posted some of the most abhorrent, violent, and childish things I've ever seen. Especially against men. I would hope her political opponents will bring this up and destroy her. She is not mentally fit or mature enough to run a small gaming company, let alone a district.

Re:twitter feed

[Golgafrinchan]

I noticed her Twitter feed is limited only to her latest non-violent and nice posts. I wonder why that is? During the gamergate fiasco, she posted some of the most abhorrent, violent, and childish things I've ever seen. Especially against men. I would hope her political opponents will bring this up and destroy her. She is not mentally fit or mature enough to run a small gaming company, let alone a district.

If only posting abhorrent and childish things on Twitter were enough to disqualify one from seeking political office...

Re:GAYmergate

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamergate started with the public outcry over game developers, companies & publishers colluding with game review magazines & sites to fix reviews in exchange for money (and sex allegedly). The review sites & magazines (along with their parent publications & owners) changed this into a "women are victimized in gaming" issue to deflect the issue.

These are two separate and serious issues but one got buried under the vitriol, attention seeking and underhandedness from most of the parties involved.

Bad place for a liberal insurgent candidate.

[hey!]

Exactly who does she intend to take down?

The place she'd have the biggest impact if she won would be Stephen Lynch's 8th, which encompasses the Boston neighborhoods of Southie Roslindale, and Dorchester, the cities of Brockton, Braintree, Norwood, and Quincy. Lynch is an old-time union Democrat. He's also the least liberal congressman from Massachusetts, which in his own analogy is like being the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon. But she'd have almost zero chance of winning the working class voters in this district especially against a longtime incumbent.

In American politics, incumbents are at there most vulnerable in their first re-election campaign. So Wu's best bet would have been to run this year against Katherine Clarke, who has just been re-elected to the relatively new 5th. But that ship has sailed, and now Clarke is fully familiar to her constituents in her sprawling suburban district.

The place where Wu's tech background and politics would be most advantageous would be long-time liberal lion Mike Capuano's 7th district, which includes Cambridge and Somerville. But he's been winning elections in those communities since he was elected Mayor of Somerville in 1990. He also made it past the first re-election benchmark in the new district boundaries this year.

So basically this is like her announcing her candidacy to become a liberal feminist for Emperor of the Moon -- if the incumbent Emperor were a popular liberal feminist. It's not likely to come to anything, and if it did win it wouldn't make much of a difference. She should move to North Carolina and run there.

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:Aaannd they're off

[Nutria]

Must inform that you are loaded with chemicals.

In fact, you're nothing but chemicals.