blue-author:

Well, the publicly promulgated mythology of gamergate says that Gjoni didn’t go to 4chan for sympathy, they found his post and he reluctantly went to them to try to curtail any abuse that it might have engendered. This is, of course, B.S., along with most of the rest of what he says. […]

Forgive me for snipping the rest of the conversation thread above and below this, but I’ve seen the “Hateful Boyfriend” article come up before and there are a number of things about it that bother me. In particular, I feel like it takes a lot of Gjoni’s statements and actions and interprets them in a very malicious way - occasionally almost to the point of being humorous. The best example, I think, is this tweet, presented as proof that Gjoni “even wanted to break [Zoe Quinn] psychologically”:

You could take this as a villainous declaration that he is trying to slowly take everything away from Zoe before finally taking her own sanity. Alternatively, though, you could take it as him genuinely believing that she is a danger to herself and others and would benefit from treatment - something much more in line with the rest of his claims. In a way, the whole Hateful Boyfriend article reminds me of this amazing Key & Peele sketch emphasizing how much communication is lost via text. Her interpretations of his words are very negative, but they are also not the only ones possible.

I don’t want to say the author’s interpretation of Gjoni is wrong, since language can be interpreted many ways and I am no more informed than she is, nor do I want to play Gjoni up as being some paragon of morality who can do no wrong, since regardless of what I say he is still a lanky hipster social justice warrior with positive feelings about San Francisco. However, below the cut I would like to look at the evidence the author brings up in her article and analyze it under the assumption that Eron is telling the truth. In particular, I want to hold it up against three claims of his:

His primary goal is to warn people about Zoe Quinn so that they cannot be harmed by her. He does not hate Zoe or want her to come to harm. His interactions with 4chan were primarily geared toward reducing the harassment Zoe would receive.

Like I implied by putting it beneath a cut, this is going to be long and detailed; I’m pretty much going to go through the Hateful Boyfriend article in chronological order and talk about the evidence presented.

Again, I don’t want this to be taken as me saying my interpretation is correct and the writer’s is wrong, but rather as a counterpoint to her negative interpretation. I’m going to literally say it again in the same paragraph because I know someone missed it: this post is not a middleground, it’s a counterpoint. I trust your ability to weigh the validity of things on your own.

The first thing she discusses is the conversations between Gjoni and Rachel M, showing that they discussed the Zoe Post at length and engineered it to get as large as an audience as possible.

It’s important to remember here: Gjoni’s first and foremost goal is purportedly to warn people about Zoe. Whether you agree that this is necessary or not, he states that as his goal, and it is something he needs an audience to accomplish. The log above shows him carefully considering his words to best achieve what he considers to be a positive outcome.

I don’t think this is wrong. I mean, I do the same thing with my posts - this tumblr post itself is probably going to fly by at least one person before I post it, preferably someone who has very different experiences than me and can tell me if I’m unknowingly doing something horribly wrong. In a way, though, I do find the above log a little sad - while the link eludes me right now, I saw an article recently about how “the sex is good” is something very commonly said by men in abusive relationships, and this shows that it wasn’t even Gjoni’s own words but rather just a suggested interjection to hold his audience.

For better or for worse, he engineered this thing to accomplish his primary goal. To his credit, he also made an effort to check it by others and try to make it no more problematic than it needed to be.

The next thing she presents is the above screenshot as evidence that Gjoni actively promoted his story on 4chan, contrary to the counterclaim that he posted it and 4chan discovered it on their own shortly thereafter.

I admit here that her explanation of the evidence just doesn’t make sense to me. Like, her claim is that this was the post’s original header, and that she “knows how this works because she owns a blog herself”. Only, the “TLDR” bit above isn’t a header - it’s a new post, appearing above all the others because it was added at a later date. And while the site itself does not display the posting time down to the hour, you can find it in the source: there are almost exactly two hours between the last Zoe Quinn post and his TL;DR addendum. If I did my math right (someone please check me), the 4chan thread she links was made almost exactly in the middle of that two hour period. The timeline seems to justify Gjoni and Rachel’s claim that 4chan found the post on their own.

Anyway, the next thing she brings up is one of Gjoni’s posts on 4chan, presented as evidence that he “joined the 4chan discussion to give the mob more material about his ex-girlfriend’s sex life and whereabouts”:

If you look at the full context in the thread, this post she screenshots is part of an exchange he has with a 4chan anon who thinks they might have unknowingly had sex with Zoe Quinn at a hotel. Gjoni talks it out with them, ends up making a (lie-filled - bad Gjoni!) call to the hotel in question, and ultimately suggests that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that was Zoe Quinn.

I think it is important to take a step back and consider exactly what Gjoni is doing here. In the thread, people are starting to get worked up about this possibility that they might have found a “sixth guy” by pure chance. This is probably his first encounter with 4chan’s voracious, investigative spirit and affinity for conspiracy. If he doesn’t quell it fast, it will work its way into the realm of “potentially true”. He ultimately gives the response that takes the steam out of the theory. This is more or less in line with Assumption #3: that his interactions with 4chan are aimed at reducing harassment.

There is another element to this particular part, though, that I think a lot of people overlook: we don’t actually know if Gjoni is telling the truth.

There are essentially three possibilities here. One is that he is telling the complete truth - he called the hotel, they said there was no record of Zoe Quinn staying there, and reports back. The other possibility is that he never actually called the hotel, and instead just reported back negatively. The third, and most interesting, possibility is that he called the hotel, received a positive response, and still reported back in the negative. We don’t actually know what happened with the hotel - all we know is that Gjoni gave the response that would take the wind out of 4chan’s sails.

Anyway, the next few things noted in the article are his general behaviors to maintain attention for his claims. This isn’t something that can really be denied, but it easily ties back to his core premise here: he wants to warn people. His behaviors make sense and are justified if you operate under the assumption that he is telling the truth about his intentions.

The above conversation snippet is presented as evidence that Gjoni is trying to “skirt responsibility for his actions”, which I admit is another conclusion that doesn’t entirely make sense to me. I’m not saying she's wrong, but I legitimately can’t see how she arrived at that conclusion. At least as I interpret this, Gjoni is concerned about openly speaking out on some of Zoe’s actions, since it would incriminate her and could be construed as libel if they can’t find evidence. He’s trying to subtly guide someone toward investigating on their own - and his actions here will not negatively affect Zoe unless the investigator uncovers something illegal (which he implies exists, even if he can’t say what it is).

The next few things the article brings up are examples of Gjoni answering people’s questions. The author’s claim is that “they treated this guy like a prince and were hanging off his every word, which undoubtedly stoked Eron’s ego”.

These pieces are presented as evidence that Gjoni was not making an effort to quell 4chan’s hatred, but I interpret it as kind of the opposite. A sad fact of reality is that you sometimes have to share a private truth to quell a more damaging falsehood (e.g. “I couldn’t have been at the scene of the murder! I was sleeping with my wife’s sister”). In stuff like the above snippet, you have people theorizing outlandish conclusions - e.g. Zoe Quinn leaking nude images of herself intentionally to blame it on others - and Gjoni shooting it down with facts. Though he was still the one that caused all of this by making his original Zoe Post, it is hard to deny that most of his responses are designed to shoot down misinformation that makes Zoe look bad.

And then there’s Camera Lady.

Fuck, I don’t know, there’s some double-tiered discussion to be had here about how stalkerish investigative journalists are allowed to be, as well as how socially inept an autistic person is allowed to be before we are expected to shame them. I am not informed enough on either of those topics to touch them, and I also can’t find the Camera Lady logs, so I can’t say much more than that.

The next two images, though the article doesn’t present them together, are something I want to talk about as one piece:

Before he makes the Zoe Post, Eron knows Zoe is going to get harassed. The article by Rachel M, if taken as true, confirms as much. He goes through with it anyway because A.) he wants to warn people about her and thinks it will reduce overall harm and B.) he thinks she will come out of it alright. Any losses from harassment will be regained through her supporters, and he will be actively working to mitigate things that get too bad.

I’m not saying what he did was right, but, at least if we are holding the three claims at the beginning to be true, we can say that he is at least being conscientious. The tweet above and his exchange with purported Rachel implies he would not be doing this if he thought it would leave Zoe friendless and on the street. He accepts the harassment as a consequence of his actions, but believes his actions are important enough to justify someone getting temporarily hurt.

The next bit I want to talk about is something I admit makes me a little angry personally, as someone who wants to see social justice topics not be considered a joke. The author talks about Gjoni’s attempts to “coach” GamerGate people, and accuses him of making “mealy-mouthed tracts on his blog”. She links one in particular. Look at this chunk:

There was a very large and angry internet mob going crazy with conspiracy theories and ready to lash out at anything that reeked of an attempt to suppress them. A bunch of people who had just been lashed out at banded together in a show of solidarity, and started to harass right back. There were no discussions across the groups. Both mobs were getting angrier and angrier. And no one was trying to get the two sides to understand each other. And I had an open and eager audience willing to discuss things with me, whose views were completely contrary to my own. I wasn’t powerless to prevent things from devolving. I could do something. So I did. I did the kind of thing I fell in love with Zoe for saying she would do. I did the thing Zoe is now calling me evil for doing. I did the thing that was most needed, and that no one else would do. I talked to them, like they were human. Because they are human. They are human. They are human. They are human. They are human, and they’re willing to listen to you if you’ll just let them know you’re willing to have an open and honest discussion with them. They will talk openly and honestly, and if you do it back, you’ll agree on what sorts of actions are in everyone’s (including their) best interest. They are human, and they want to listen, and they want to be listened to. And even if you don’t always come to an agreement, so long as you discuss in good faith, you will always come out of it understanding each other a little better. And you will find that sometimes, the disagreement is understandable. People in that chat would often PM me just to discuss the differences in our views. Sometimes those differences were cultural. Not the “indie hugbox” vs “internet hatebox” kind of cultural. The kind of cultural differences where the idea of “get women into games” didn’t make much sense at all. Because the users were from places where the first reaction to a female developer isn’t “holy shit a female developer!” because those cultures had just too recently gotten past a climate where the first reaction was “holy shit you can afford a computer?” Or the kind of cultural differences where things like affirmative action didn’t make any sense contextually because the racial makeup was too homogeneous for those concepts to even warrant emerging. And so things like making active efforts to increase the cultural diversity of game developers or characters didn’t have a backdrop in which their importance could be interpreted. Sometimes the parties were merely uninformed, or very well informed, but with different political leanings to bring to the table. In the case of the former, the discussions were as easy as explaining things. And in the case of the latter, they ultimately amounted to exploring the differences in our views until we found the axioms which we were unlikely to convince each other of. But we always came away from those discussions liking each other more, because that’s what happens when people spend a long time trying to understand one another. And no matter what the case, the conclusion was always clear — fighting was not the way to improve this situation for anyone. I’ve included excerpts of some of the discussions in a comment to this thread as well as a link to the full log. But the take away is that I spoke with them. And they listened.

Holy mother fuck! He is social justicing! Not only do his statements there directly corroborate everything I wrote above, but he is social justicing. He went to the reviled parts of the internet, he talked to them about SJ issues, understood the cultural and economic backgrounds that shaped their beliefs, and got them to listen!

Like holy mother fuck. He did it. Not only did he figure out how to mitigate harassment from 4chan (just ask yourself how many places outside that one thread you’ve heard the rumor Zoe Quinn slept with a stranger at a Comfort Inn), but he started teaching them feminism. Like holy fuck.

Holy fuck.

I mean, yeah, I am a little mad at the article’s author for posting stuff like the above screenshot as “proof” that Gjoni was the “leader” of GamerGate, or trying to become a “hero of men’s rights activists”. He is doing the fucking thing feminists are supposed to do. Like, you don’t become less of a feminist for talking to non-feminists. That is literally how you make more feminists. Holy fuck.

But, yes, anyway, you read that entire section under the assumption that Eron is not lying, most of what he says is justified. In fact, I don’t even really know what that section is supposed to be showing other than the fact that he can actually get people to listen to him. Apparently that makes him their “leader”? Holy fuck, it’s like feminism has literally forgotten rhetoric is a thing, and they can’t fathom any way of thinking other than listening to a leader.

But, yes yes, so here’s another piece of evidence presented, apparently showing that Gjoni was making excuses for his horrible revenge post. In this, he says he ran it by a dozen people to confirm he was doing the right thing by opening up about his interactions with Zoe. By definition I guess that is an excuse, but it is nonetheless in line with his earlier statements, Rachel M’s post, etc.

Here’s a piece of evidence that was posted with the caption “Eron Gjoni, coaching people on Reddit to talk about ‘journalism’ when confronted with criticism about the movement’s focus on Quinn”. In it, Eron tells someone that they will have an easier time talking about journalism if they shift the movement’s focus away from Quinn. If we assume Eron is telling the truth in it, then he’s… well, saying basically the opposite of what the caption claims.

Fuck, can we just talk about the feminism thing again for a minute? Like, I’m sorry, there’s this part of his post where he explains that some of the people he spoke with came from countries that were so underdeveloped that feminist issues barely seemed relevant, and the person writing the Hateful Boyfriend article refers to these people as “human”, in quotes. Fuck fuck fuck fuck I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I feel dirty, I shouldn’t be replying to this. I should be out teaching people there’s a difference between a feminist and a racist.

Fuck.

Okay, anyway, serious mode again.

So anyway, next thing up is this bit where Gjoni says Zoe Quinn isn’t Zoe’s real name, presented as evidence that he wasn’t really protecting Zoe. I don’t know, it seems more like him expressing his desire for her not to come to harm. His goal, as he states multiple times in that post, is to make himself seem credible, and any small and hopefully-unharmful truth he can drop establishes that.

Fuck, I’m thinking about the feminism thing again. You know, sometime later I want to make a nice, long post about one of my favorite games that touches on a lot of feminism/social justice issues. It’ll make me feel better, knowing that people are talking about these things and their importance, rather than trying to drive away as many would-be feminists as possible.

Here’s a screenshot that was presented with the text “it almost sounds like Eron’s jealous of Quinn for taking up so much of #gamergate’s attention; and angry that his plan to shame her out of the industry backfired”. If we assume he’s telling the truth about wanting to warn people about Zoe Quinn, we can probably reasonably assume he’s upset about being portrayed as a villain.

Here he is saying that he thought 4chan would be more careful before coming up with conspiracy theories, and once again stressing that he tried to keep these from getting out of control. The author of the article presents this as evidence that Gjoni is upset that 4chan ruined his chances of getting on the news, rather than… what Gjoni actually said, I guess.

Fuck, I want to go make a complete stranger read a bunch of feminist lit or something. But no, I'm committed at this point. I’ve been writing this tumblr post for like two hours. I’m gonna keep talking about this goddamn article.

Let’s get into the part about the restraining order.

Here, we see Gjoni talking about how Zoe has taken legal action against him. If he loses, he will purportedly never have money again. He asks for donations to fight this battle. I can’t confirm this so take it with a grain of salt, but I have heard that Zoe Quinn kind of comes from money, And even if she doesn’t she makes at least 4 grand a month on Patreon.

The article author berates him for promising a witty writeup as a reward if he wins, and for violating his restraining order by asking for donations to pay his legal fees from fighting the restraining order she filed against him. You can actually look up the restraining order online. In it she writes that Gjoni has “made multiple social media accounts to smear [her] name publicly”, has “also called hotels [plural] that he suspected me of staying at, falsifying information to give more personal info to the mob” (you know, that thing we talked about up above), “openly admits to doing so to damage my professional reputation as an independent artist” (you know, literally the point of calling out a problematic person)-

no. Fuck, no, you know what, no. I don’t get this. How the fuck did social justice end up on the side of this it did? Like this is literally a rich person, who gets paid to do nothing, filing a gag order against a poor person who purported to be emotionally abused by her and wanted to warn people. He is documented as emphasizing that he only did it because he thought she would be okay. And like half the stuff in that restraining order isn’t even true - or, at least it's half true. Fuck, actually, no, I’m going to put this in bold because it’s important and I don’t think people understand it:

A half-truth, presented as being half the truth, is completely true. A half-truth, presented as being the whole truth, is a complete lie.

Like, that is how simple it is. When you say something that is partially true and present it as being all of the facts, that is a lie. It’s like saying “I made 10,000 dollars in the last year” to make yourself sound poor, when you actually made $10,000 and an additional $120,000 you declined to mention. The statement being technically true does not make it less of a lie.

Like what am I even doing here? I started writing this blogpost all neutral-like, because I skimmed the article and it reminded me of a Key & Peele sketch I liked. I’m not even gonna go up and edit that shit, I want you to see my sanity and patience dripping away as I write this. This isn’t comparable to the K&P sketch; over the course of writing this, I have slowly become convinced that this article is written by a flagrantly racist woman trying to drive as many people as possible away from feminism. She’s not even trying at this point to misinterpret Gjoni’s statements, she’s just kind of posting pictures of stuff he wrote and then saying he means something else. I can’t do this.

You know, I think Gjoni actually follows me on Tumblr. I don’t know, thousands of people follow me on Tumblr and I don’t keep track of them all. But he is probably reading this right now, thinking something stupid like “not everyone who appreciates San Francisco is a bad person”, but he can’t reply because it would violate a restraining order that he probably can’t afford to fight, and if he asks for money then he is implicitly supporting a harassment movement and that gives his abuser more leverage in court. I am sorry, Mr. Gjoni, that I said you were bad because you were a San Francisco hipster when you are probably legally prohibited from responding to me. That goes against my ethics. I rescind it. Hipsters are okay.

But no, plow the fuck onward. We’re gonna keep talking about this Hateful Boyfriend article.

NEXT EVIDENCE. Here we have Gjoni pressuring a friend to talk about the court case, since he is legally prohibited from discussing it himself. His friend talked about it, and declared the whole thing was bullshit. It was so bullshit that Gjoni’s lawyer helped him appeal it for free. Lawyers don't do that. Fuck.

And, of course, the caption on this is that “Using 3rd parties to violate his restraining order is a common Gjoni tactic”. Since, you know, the purpose of a restraining order is apparently now to conceal public information. FUCK.

HERE WE GO, Kazerad cameo, FUCK YEAH. I checked; that’s the post where I say GamerGate should just make its own goddamn feminism, because feminists were doing a shitass job of it. And if you didn’t believe me back when I wrote that, you sure as hell probably believe me by this point in the Tumblr post! FUCK YEAH, cameo.

Anyway, the point of this image is actually just to show that Gjoni retweeted an article about the publicly available restraining order that was filed against him, an action which apparently constituted doxxing Zoe Quinn, since it had her real name on it, and violating his restraining order, since the purpose of restraining orders is apparently to keep people from referring to articles that talk about certain topics.

And while berating Gjoni for doxxing Zoe Quinn by linking an article that contained the publicly available restraining order, the author offhandedly mentions that she doxxed someone a few months ago. And you know what? I admire her. Like, she isn’t even making any pretenses of being a good person. She’s criticizing Gjoni for being a bad person much the same way I would criticize, say, Friday for being a bad song, despite not being a song myself.

The next image she posts is from that dating sim where you try to seduce pigeons. I’m not gonna talk about that. Instead I’m gonna talk about a movie I saw yesterday, Nightcrawer.

Like, I have never seen a movie with such a good depiction of sociopathy. It did a really good job of capturing that the main character seemed normal to everyone else, despite actually seeing them as nothing more than tools and fleshlights. That’s something a lot of people don’t understand about sociopaths. It’s not always readily apparent.

And like, I get that this whole article I’m supposed to be analyzing is trying to play Gjoni up like that. Everything he does has some hidden motive or whatever, and his actual goal is apparently internet fame that backfired on him or revenge on an ex or something like that. But there are better ways he could have done that; so many of his actions seem to revolve around spreading positive behavior and trying to minimize harm that you have to really stretch things to justify him as being knowingly malicious. Eventually, it reaches the point where you can’t even use him as evidence. You have to post a picture of a serial killer pigeon and use it instead.

And you know what makes it even worse? The serial killer pigeon came from an interactive fiction game, made by a female developer, featuring a female protagonist, that everyone liked. And this is being posted by one of the people who is apparently painting Gjoni and GamerGate as a bunch of monsters who are trying to stomp out any non-FPS game, drive female devs out of the industry, and keep all game protagonists as straight white men. But holy shit, everyone loved this pigeon game. Maybe the games that people don’t like are disliked because they suck.

I bet you didn’t even know Hatoful Boyfriend was made by a woman. That’s because you don’t fucking care. You’re not here to support female devs, or female protagonists, or creative games, or anything like that. You’re here to sit on your ass until there’s some big kerfluffle involving feminism, then you can jump in to defend whichever side is offering more Feminism Points. Did I mention that Eron Gjoni keeps getting called an MRA, presumably because he talks about feminism to non-feminists? That’s how far behind we have left reality.

Whoop, there we go! “it’s not too late to avoid your destiny as a r/mensrights all-star”. This is apparently being said in response to Gjoni talking about the court battle he is being pulled into. If he cares about social justice, he apparently should not talk about the legal action brought against him by one of its well-off proponents. Who, need I remind you, by her own definitions, raped him.

I would not consider it rape, but apparently it was rape by Eron and Zoe Quinn’s agreed-upon definitions, and I have no say as to what horrible things two consenting adults do to the English language in the privacy of their own home. Rather, I think there just has to be some point where you look at the people you are defending as avatars of feminism and think to yourself “you know, maybe we should not consider these people feminists”. Or like, at the very least, pressure them to give some kind of reply on whether or not what they did was rape, because just speaking personally, someone is feminist-dead to me the moment they call something rape and then do it.

Next up, we have the author describe Gjoni’s “increasingly psychotic blog posts” where he blames everyone but himself for his current situation. The tumblr post she links features Gjoni, having just been fired due to all the media heat on him, getting smashed and ranting about it. Woe of woes, someone venting on Tumblr. I bet if I wrote an essay about how people should be held responsible for horrible or bigoted things they say while venting, everyone on Tumblr would appreciate and agree with it, and not accuse me of being a terrible person like the time I actually did that.



Whatever. In the time since then, I have come to accept that most venting is forgivable, especially coming from people who are under heavy societal pressure to behave a certain way. Let’s see what sort of horrible things drunk-Gjoni says. According to the article’s author, he “wishes death on SJWs via surgical accidents”:

You wanted to get to me by firing me from a job I was doing for free? Well congratulations. You’ve succeeded in getting to me. And you’ve done that by potentially killing a bunch of people because you couldn’t get your head out of your asshole for ten seconds to realize there are bigger fucking issues in the world than your opinion of my motivations for outing a shithead, you god damned fucking sociopath. Here’s a tip though. next time you go to the ER, make really fucking sure the surgeon has grey hairs. Or better yet. Don’t do that, and let that surgeon go work on someone who actually deserves to live. In the meantime, if you don’t like me, fine. Boycott the shit I make. Spread a ton of bullshit to convince your friends to boycott the shit I make. Express outrage if ever a news outlet should ever say anything remotely representative of or sympathetic to my motivations. But do not fuck with critical medical research over your idiotic god damned opinion of the relative significance of some people being mean on the internet.

HMM. It looks like things are worse than I thought. In his drunken rage, Gjoni has suggested that the people who actively inhibited his job with a medical research team should voluntarily leave the most experienced surgeons to operate on people who did not actively inhibit a medical research team. I can think of literally no worse threat than suggesting that someone voluntarily leave the more experienced surgeons for others. I am especialy appalled by the way he attacks Social Justice Warriors specifically, like the article’s author said.

You know, after I originally skimmed this article, I had a more detailed response planned for this bit. Like, I wanted to criticize Gjoni a little for saying that some people were more deserving of life than others, but then use a variant of the Trolley Problem to display that many of us would place a greater value on the life of someone who does not endanger others. But you know what? We don’t need that. At this point, we have reached a critical juncture. By now, half of the readers have realized that this article has divorced itself from reality entirely, and half of the readers sit there convinced I have been secretly manipulated by 4chan or something, and are only reading so they can see me say something incriminating they can use as evidence all GamerGate supporters are bad.

Fuck, why am I even considered a GamerGate supporter? Like, I stress again and again, I want to switch sides. I want to be given some reason, any reason, to side with Zoe Quinn and all the cool people who are getting nice media coverage, and nobody is delivering. Like, I’m being given what, this article about how Eron Gjoni is a hateful boyfriend, as evidenced by these incriminating photos of him spreading feminist ideologies to people who don’t deserve it? Like, make a fucking sell already. If GamerGate could ostracize KingOfPol when he spread misinformation, you guys can ostracize the author of this article. She is not accomplishing her purpose. I literally support Eron Gjoni more than I did at the beginning of writing this. And that is just from the evidence she presented me.

Like… holy fuck, that is not how you rhetoric. You want to make the people you dislike look bad. Like, we could improve this article by cutting all the pictures of Gjoni teaching people about feminism and standing against bigotry. Or, heck, keep those pictures in and remove the snippy captions beneath them that berate the very idea of doing these things.

And like, look at this. After I wrote that, I read on to her next line and it’s like:

The stuff I’m publishing now is just the tip of the iceberg; I could probably write five more articles with the material I’m sitting on.

Please please please please please please PLEASE, share that stuff! If you have good arguments, or evidence that doesn’t make your smear-target look better than you, share it. Like, I’m literally on the opposite side of this that you are, asking you to please do a better job at making my side look bad. If you have evidence more incriminating than the stuff you shared, you need to share it. Your current evidence is not cutting it, at least for me. I want to see the gold stuff. I want to question my choice of who to support, not feel reaffirmed.

And finally, we get into Gjoni's horrible sexual harassment of others. In the below picture, we have him taunting a Reddit moderator with things like “see you’re still keeping that hate boner”, and “that’s the Greendutch I know and love. So, wanna go on a date?”

Now, I don’t want to take a stance on what should or shouldn’t be considered sexual harassment. That is not really my place to decide. But, at least the way I see it, it is relatively common and accepted to taunt a recurring rival as though they are romantically interested in you. Like, this is a joke so tame that they literally made it on My Little Pony.

Fuck, it’s just… I don’t even know. The above taunting is mentioned again in the summary, tactfully worded as “Gjoni sexually harasses women critical of him; especially when caught in a lie or backed into a corner logically”. Like she doesn’t even show the context of him purportedly being “backed into a corner logically”. We are just told this occurred.

Like, I get it, I’m a writer. I know that you have to stretch the truth a little sometimes. When I say “multiple individuals”, I usually mean “two people”. I think readers understand this.

But like, you can't pluralize a single individual. Like, if he sexually harassed you, you can’t expand this into him sexually harassing women. If it occurred, that’s powerful - people hate sexual harassment and it will work as decent character assassination against him. But it weakens the argument to expand it into a more dubious generalization, especially when the evidence provided is a toned-down version of a My Little Pony quote. I mean, fuck, you don’t get it, the claim would’ve been stronger if you left the evidence out. This whole fucking article would’ve been a thousand times more effective if you did not include any actual references or pictures.

I mean, yeah, it would’ve been most effective if it was accompanied with damning evidence. But if you’re going to lie, the least you can do is not provide counterevidence. Or maybe it's not a lie - maybe what you said is true, and this behavior is only the “tip of the iceberg” and you are sitting on a whole bunch of super-incriminating evidence that proves Eron Gjoni is a terrible person. But if that’s the case, that’s what you should have shared! People expect writers to exaggerate the truth as much as they can without lying, and when you consciously choose to exhibit a joke lifted from My Little Pony as evidence of harassment, readers assume that is the most damning evidence you have.

And just… fuck.

I don’t know what to say. Four hours ago, after skimming an article Blue-Author linked, I started writing a Tumblr post with the intent of politely providing a counterpoint to an article’s interpretations of Gjoni’s statements. After four hours of writing, the article was literally so problematic it made me a feminist.

Like, I don’t even know if you understand how amazing this feat was. I didn’t even like Eron Gjoni before writing this. Somehow, he redpilled me on the importance of feminism through quotes specifically selected to make him look like a bad person. The article’s author has successfully convinced me not only that the person she was trying to defame is a respectable individual who cares about the wellbeing of others, but that she herself is a terrible person who needs to be opposed. To call her writing ineffective does it a disservice, as it would imply it accomplishes nothing. I have never in my life seen a piece so brilliantly accomplish the exact opposite of what it set out to do.

Blue-Author, I sincerely apologize. I wanted this to be a very polite counterpoint to the article you linked. It ended up becoming an incoherent 30-page rant as I slowly lost all respect for the writer. I know that you probably see the article in a much more favorable light than I ended up seeing it, and I am okay with that. I don’t even care anymore. I don’t want to convince you that you’re wrong, I just want to be something better. I want there to be people out there who stand up for the things feminism and social justice purport to stand for, and if I have to be reviled to do it, so be it. I don’t even care. I want to be the one who draws attention to the games and art that would go overlooked because they’re made by some minority who doesn’t fit the narrative, or who talks about feminist theory with someone who barely knows what it means or sees its importance. I want to defeat you and the people like you by being more loving and accepting, and teaching others to be the same. And I think I can do it. I think I can win.

This Tumblr post went weird places that I did not fully intend.