The attacks grew way beyond Zoe. Friends in the indie games industry who stepped up to defend her started receiving the same treatment. Verbally harassed. Doxxed (where someone hacks personal information like phone number, address, credit cards, social security number and posts it online for the whole world to see and misuse, super awesome experience). At the same time, a prominent vlogger named Anita Sarkeesian released an installment of her video series examining feminist issues in gaming. Hatred of her in a certain demographic of the internet, I’m pretty sure a one-to-one with the worst of the attackers, only fed the “You’re trying to ruin my gaming!” frenzy. More and more people in gaming who started speaking up, especially women, were mobbed for it. A journalist named Jenn Frank wrote a piece about the attacks on Zoe and was so badly swarmed with hate that she decided to quit the industry. I dipped my toe in the water once and sent one subtle @ tweet to Jenn in support and received so many hateful comments I had to log offline for two days. Great “ethical” achievements there, guys!
Ironically, the #GamerGate movement never focused on some of the big game companies who actually ARE unethical, bribing vloggers and censoring bad reviews on their products. The movement tended to target smaller journalists and independent gaming sites. Mostly the ones who were criticizing THEM. It was mind-boggling, but at the same time, they did create the biggest movement in gaming history. And it seemed like it would never stop growing.
At the end of October, I flew to Vancouver to work on the TV show Supernatural. It was more than two months after the initial blog post (a decade in real-life time), and the gaming world was STILL drowning in #GamerGate. I was walking down the street on one of my days off and saw two gamer guys walking toward me in classic, black crew-neck gaming T-shirts. One Call of Duty, the other Halo.
Now, in the past, whenever I saw another gamer in public, I would feel heartened, because we belonged no matter if we stopped to chat or not. I would go out of my way to exchange a knowing glance, a supportive smile signaling, Yeah, dude. It’s cool that you game. I do, too! We were automatically compatriots in our love for something we both knew was awesome.
But as those two gamers walked toward me, for the first time in my life I didn’t have the impulse to say hello. Or smile. For some reason as I approached the corner . . . I crossed the street instead.
I sat down a few blocks later, because I couldn’t understand what I’d just done. Then I realized that because of the recent situation with #GamerGate, subconsciously I no longer assumed that a random gamer and I would be on the same page, or would connect just because of our love of gaming. There was a wedge in my world where there had been none before.
And for the first time in months . . . I got angry. I WANTED TO WRITE SOME SHIT DOWN, SON!
I pounded five espresso shots, ran back to my hotel room, and wrote a Tumblr post about my experience titled, “Crossing the Street.” And I tried to make it different from the tone of other writing on the subject. I tried to frame my argument in an empathetic way. Not condemn, but make people understand what I was feeling. How I was upset and ashamed at my impulse to avoid those anonymous gamers. How sad I was that the actions of #GamerGate had created that feeling in me, to separate myself from people whom I would have assumed were comrades before. And how the whole situation was creating the outside impression of a culture driven by misogyny and hatred, which I KNEW wasn’t true. I appealed to our mutual love of gaming, on both sides, to bring us back together, for the sake of what we all loved. (The essay was eloquent, promise. Legal drugs fuel good words!)
I emphasized my fear of speaking out, because of the possibility that someone would doxx me. I had taken out too many restraining orders against stalkers to not be concerned about my home address leaking. I thought sharing that fear would be the “Relatable!” part to both sides. I mean, anyone would be afraid if it was easy for a whackadoodle to pull up into their driveway when they got angry at one of your tweets, right? “I’m the owner of that taco place you just dissed. WATCH OUT, I’M ON YOUR DOORSTEP, BITCH!”
I posted my essay on Tumblr minutes before I had to hop in the car to go to the movie studio that night, and as I hit Send, I felt dizzy with hubris. I’m not brave in general—mousey doesn’t just describe my real hair color—but speaking out felt RIGHT. It was something that I should have done weeks before. By overcoming my fear, I had finally redeemed myself TO myself. No matter if anyone paid attention or not.
I got in the car to be driven to set for work (they do that on TV shows, so fancy). Twenty minutes later I got a call. I looked at the caller ID. “Wil Wheaton.” That was weird. We’re super-close friends, we’ve acted together, we produce a web show together, but it was odd he was calling me. Email/text/IM/Twitter/Snapchat? Yes. Primitive old-school telephoning? Nope.
“Hello?”
“Dude, you need to disable comments on your Tumblr post.” He sounded panicked.
“What?”
“Several people have posted your home address in the comments. You need to disable comments right now.”
“Oh my God.”
I was silent for a second. Then I learned that “bathed in horror” is an actual feeling, not a colorful writing metaphor.
“But . . . I . . . don’t know . . . I don’t know my password.”
I had just changed everything to forty-character twelve-step identification the week before because of the celebrity hacking thing, and I hadn’t reentered any of my passwords onto my phone yet. It was one of those “That sucks!” coincidences.
“Do you want me to reset it for you? I’m not home but I can find some Wi-Fi.”