Quick Dispatches On/From Goofytown
ITEM! Chris Mancil is an EA community director who started his gaming career as Community Manager for Shadowbane, thus implying he was somewhat familiar with full PvP. However, he wasn't ready for the full-on no-limits WRATH OF BEN KUCHERA!
Yes, Kuchera, bête noire of Gamergate ranty types, proves once again that those who are harassed online aren't necessarily innocent and pure themselves, by responding to Mancil's blog post (which, like mine, has the I'm-just-speaking-for-myself-and-not-my-employers-why-did-I-even-bother-none-of-you-are-paying-attention-and-emailing-every-email-address-on-my-work's-web-site-right-now disclaimer) with the completely reasonable retort of "Quit talking about me, or I'm telling your dad!" Dad in this case being, um, Peter Moore.
https://twitter.com/BenKuchera/status/576813412488990720
Note that normally I could link to Mancil's piece and point out that making a long post decrying how people unfriended you for speaking kindly of Milo "I Literally Have No Ethics Or Morals Or Point Or Really Anything Save Hair Gel" Yiannopolous and his current hobby of finding material for a book through writing articles that had as their eminently ethical and moral original title, "Lying, Greedy, Promiscuous Feminist Bullies Are Tearing The Video Game Industry Apart" (you will note that Yiannopolous later thought better of calling someone "promiscuous" from the same platform where he spends a non-zero amount of time talking about his personally having lots of great sex, and you will also note that Yiannopolous, being a former new media entrepreneur, doesn't know how to change the titles of blog URLs). I realize I'm starting to wade deeply into the parenthetical here; Milo does that to a person. Despite that, he's actually one of the better writers on the pro-Gamergate side (note to Gamergaters: find better writers, now) and Mancil's appreciation of his occasional flashes of wit left amongst the tidal wave of misogyny, transphobia, and really, really Vogon-bad poetry is a touch understandable, if you don't think about it very much.
At any rate, this is an interesting discussion we could be having. We can't have it, because Ben Kuchera told Chris Mancil's dad and Mancil had to take his blog down. (The original piece has been archived, but I'm not linking to it here, because I'm one of those crazy people who actually believes in respecting people's wishes when they wish to disengage in such a way.) Thanks, Kuchera. Next, maybe you can yell at confused department stores about what their employees say on Twitter or something...
https://twitter.com/BenKuchera/status/550478473454968833
Oh. Carry on proving that Gamergate has no monopoly on jerks, then.
ITEM! Mark Kern.
What. I can't just stop there? Oh, all right. But I warned you.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577612665398419456
MARK KERN CAN'T BLO...
https://twitter.com/simoncarless/status/571358491085967360
Oh. Well, MARK KERN CAN'T SPEA...
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577705395197763584
Oh. Well, MARK KERN CAN'T TWEET!
Well, more specifically, he can't tweet to you. You being someone who blocked him. You would think this would be somewhat self evident to anyone still holding enough brain power to walk from one side of the room to another.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577615538467299328
...well, then. I agree that it could possibly be a tragedy when people who go to the trouble of activating a program to block a given list of people then proceeds to not see tweets from that given list of people. That is truly very, very bad. At least, according to Mark Kern, who is one of the finest legal minds of our time...
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577678515463557120
...it is illegal in at least one English-speaking country called "England" to not listen to people when they scream #NOTYOURSHIELD in your face.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577596375552114688
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577646080877268992
How is it illegal, exactly? Well, mumble frumble data export laws mumble mutter privacy issues LOOK JUST HARASS THEM UNTIL THEY GIVE UP, OK I HEARD YOU GUYS DID THAT ONCE OR TWICE
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577647373033279488
What has mumbled Kern's frumples specifically? Well, it seems a combination of Kuchera's TOTALLY TELLING ON CHRIS MANCIL TO DAD (and sadly, since Mark Kern is totally incapable of blogging, speaking to the media, tweeting, or posting on any other social media site, he was unable to call him out on this like I did ten minutes ago) and Kern's discovering he was being blocked for talking about Gamergate a lot.
Kern does have a fragment of a point - too bad that he is, according to him, completely incapable from communicating with the outside world, so I will have to make it for him. TheBlockBot's system is, well, snarky. You can search for Twitter handles (anyone's, obviously, and find out why the person who categorized you as blockable chose to do so. Here is Mark Kern's listing. It is safe to say Kern did not agree to being listed here. It is also safe to say Kern, despite being locked in a Faraday Box in the core of the earth and thus only able to communicate with the world outside through the keening unearthly wail of mole demons that escape through an intricate system of volcano ventings, has made all of those tweets publicly accessible to all. Some people won't appreciate them. Some people may actually make fun of them! Some of them even have blogs!
That's a solvable problem, and one that may be solved if Mark Kern's massive and totally-locked-out-of-any-communication-with-Mark-Kern army follows through on his threats and starts sending the people who run TheBlockBot cease and desists. Then again, maybe not. They're apparently run by a forum of professional atheists, which may possibly be the one group on earth more annoying than Gamergate trolls. But somehow I don't think that will make his-mouth-is-being-held-shut-by-boll-weevils Mark Kern happier.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577647174554664960
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577702801964412928
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577614690970439680
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/577615538467299328
I... um...
In case you missed it from my mocking-into-the-ground, Mark Kern can speak all he wants. He has, in fact, quite a large megaphone, and is using it to great effect! There are many people who have never heard from him this month who follow him on social media, and he seems to be integrating into the Gamergate hive mind quite smoothly indeed. Possibly because they agree on this one point: being prevented from talking to someone is censorship.
Even when that person preventing you is the person themselves.
That's what this whole storm and fury about block bots represents, what Gamergaters froth about when banned from various forums, etc. They know they are perfectly free to say what they like. They want to say it, and you will be forced to listen.
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
A lack of indoctrination is not censorship. I am not obligated to turn my blog password over to Mark Kern so he can post happy pictures and complain about how he can't speak to anyone because I made fun of him. I made fun of speech that he made in public on my blog. I get to do that. It's part of civil discourse in a free society. It doesn't obligate me to do anything else. It doesn't obligate me to host a long-running comment thread full of people speaking in 4chan lingo about how I'm fat. It doesn't require me to page through dozens of pages of Twitter mentions about how my tears are salty. It doesn't require me to trudge through hundreds of Youtube comments that are so bizarrely obscene they are literally incomprehensible to anyone over the age of 12.
And if I choose not to participate in such an enlightened discourse, I can choose to use whatever tools are available to assist me in so doing. You do not have a right to my eyeballs. I may loan them to you, if you're good. But free speech is the right to speak. It is not the right to be listened to.
ITEM! It's super late and I spent way too much time getting upset over Mark Kern being totally incapable to say things yet again, so I'm just going to leave this link here and let your brain melt. Because it's a quarter to three, and we can't stop here, it's GOOFYTOWN.