No one was more amazed than I was. I once described gamers as dorky weirdoes in yellowing underpants. And, let’s be fair, some of them are. Probably perfectly nice people. Yet here were these dorky weirdoes, taking on the fury of the leftist media-activist complex without flinching. Unpaid, undisciplined, and in some cases, yes, unhygienic—but they were winning cultural victories that eluded even million-dollar conservative PACs.
After GamerGate, never again can gamers be mocked as awkward losers. They might be awkward, but they’re definitely not losers. In a Breitbart column on the movement’s one-year anniversary, I compared them to Hobbits; unlikely heroes who just wanted to be left alone, but ended up saving the world. In retrospect, it’s perhaps not so surprising that a bunch of people who spend all their spare time conquering kingdoms, killing dragons, and racking up high scores knew how to win.
The Left didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they went after video games. This was the hobby of the millennial generation, enjoyed by millions around the world—often together. What chance did the Left have, with their usual allegations of bigotry, against such a naturally diverse hobby? The sight of the Left attacking innocent gamers as a menacing force of intolerance was laughable. Perhaps the fears of the Left weren’t so hysterical. Gamers were the first group of people to beat them in the millennial culture wars. Their tactics helped inspire a new movement of cultural libertarians, setting off a chain of events that put Trump in the White House. When The Washington Post called Donald Trump the “GamerGate of American Politics,” they weren’t entirely wrong.213
While most of the hard work was conducted by tireless, relentless, and often anonymous gamers who received no thanks for it beyond smears from the mainstream media, I was proud to be a part of the movement as well.
Gamers taught me that with humor, memes, and a little bit of autistic single-mindedness, no battle is unwinnable.
11
WHY MY COLLEGE TOURS ARE SO AWESOME
“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”
—Hannah Arendt
Iwas in the middle of a speech at Rutgers University in New Jersey, when three hysterical young ladies in the audience stood up and smeared what looked like blood on their faces, hysterically shrieking “BLACK LIVES MATTER” over and over.
None of the students, incidentally, were black.
I later discovered that the blood was fake, but that didn’t make it any less absurd, or any less troublesome for the janitors, who had to deal with the trail of red paint left by the protesters after their two minutes of fame were up. Peaceful attendees who had come to hear a speech instead found themselves splashed with fake blood, while at least one attendee was assaulted by a protester who deliberately smeared him with the stuff.
More surprising to me than the protests at Rutgers, par for the course on college campuses, was what happened the following morning. Students at Rutgers University were so traumatized by my presence that the administration held a group therapy session.
Those who attended the therapy reported that students described “feeling scared, hurt, and discriminated against,” because of my innocent lecture about the importance of free speech on campuses.
If a few comments from me about the free and open exchange of ideas are enough to put college students into therapy, what’s going to happen when they encounter someone who’s actually intolerant and bigoted?
When my tour started, I’d been in the spotlight for about a year, as a rising star of the online right, fighting battles against the whiny, spoiled social justice warriors of the internet. Having grappled with some of their more absurd web-based campaigns, like the fight against “online harassment” (which, like “hate speech,” means anything they disagree with), I was now prepared to break out of tech journalism and take the fight to them in the real world. It sure was fun triggering them on the internet, but as I’d discovered during my protest of the 2015 Los Angeles Slut Walk, it was a lot more fun to hear their banshee-like shrieks of distress in real life.
I knew my opponents were prone to emotional hysterics. I called my jaunt across college campuses the “Dangerous Faggot” tour for that very reason: to mock students who seriously believed that a flouncing queer from across the pond posed some kind of “threat” to students.
Soon after Rutgers, I arrived at Bucknell University, a small liberal arts college located in the sleepy rural town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The chaos at my previous stop brought me to the attention of the administrators there, who booted me from the on-campus guest residence over concerns that I presented a safety threat to the community. As if I might corrupt the basketball team, or something. Some generous fraternity brothers took pity on me and put me up in their house.
By Thursday evening, Bucknell administrators had decided that students wouldn’t be permitted to speak to me directly during my speech, but rather that they’d have to write their questions down on index cards, with my host Tom Ciccotta, now a Breitbart reporter, reading them aloud to me. Furthermore, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club wouldn’t be permitted to film the event. Instead, the administration would film the lecture and then release the footage to Tom if the proceedings didn’t reflect poorly upon the university.
Shortly after I left Bucknell, Tom was removed from his position as class president. They said it was because he missed a few meetings, and who knows, maybe he had. But everyone on campus knew the real reason the rules were suddenly being applied so rigidly. Social justice leftists are running modern American universities, and they’re so very, very petty.
Did Bucknell’s administrators really believe I was such a corrupting influence on young minds that I couldn’t be allowed to speak to students directly? Did they believe I really was dangerous? Nah. At best it was another pointless restriction designed to make conservatives on campus suffer. At worst, it was outright censorship.
Rutgers and Bucknell weren’t outliers. As my tour progressed, it became apparent that lunacy was the norm, not the exception, on American college campuses. At the University of Pittsburgh, protesters were in the crowd, although they were less rowdy than the ones at Rutgers. Even their placards were quiet! They used tiny signs printed on ink jet printers. I had to have them read aloud because I couldn’t see them. Really, Pittsburgh protesters, you were a disappointment.
Afterward, their Student Government Board held a meeting to discuss my appearance on campus. The student government president told college reporters that he “teared up” when he heard the stories of traumatized students. Another board member argued that my words constituted “real violence” and that left-wingers at the event felt they were in “literal physical danger.”