Wished they hadn't used the Imperial Japanese flag, but what can you expect from reactionaries?
Yeah, the whole "movement" against Pao was pretty much just motivated by Gamergate-level sexism and racism.
Still baffles me that there are nazis out there whos starting point for his descent to madness is "women in video games".
Same. Remember that flash game they made where they could click on Anita Sarkeesian's face and it blackened and blued and bulged out where you clicked? It was essentially a wife beating simulator and it was disgusting as fuck and they were rejoicing over it like they'd created art.
All because she had the temerity to point out that many videogames treated women like trophies and not like real people. Any man could have pointed that out and they'd have gotten equally mad but because a woman said it they decided to double down and be play up their misogyny as if that was anything but proving her fucking point.
Anita was one of the first bringing actual literary analysis to video games, treating them like art instead of toys, and the reaction was the most obscene backlash that's occurred since Reagan got elected. Since then a lot more people have been analyzing video games from a lot more points of view (one of my favs is Jacob Geller), but any time a boomer like Roger Ebert talks shit on video games now part of me remembers gamergate and thinks "yeah, you got a point."
Not only that, but if you've ever had the misfortune of seeing those r/offmychest r/trueforrealzoffmychest and r/changemyiew garbage subs, the nazis on reddit act like their ideology is no different than a mainstream ideology. Like we should just coexist with people who want half the country dead, as if it's the difference between me liking oranges and they liking apples. It's insane, and reddit fucking loves the debate bro shit and also act like oh we can just have a friendly discussion about this shit and agree to disagree.
And that movement was deliberately sculpted and encouraged by powerful people. Gamergate was Astro-turfed by Steve Bannon to act as a pipeline to the right.
I remember being really depressed about how extremely misogynistic the whole site got after such a small perceived "attack on free speech". Scratch a liberal...
Didn't spez coup her? Alexis fired the AMA lady and they blamed in on Pao after she had already been targeted for deleting r/fph (I would list the other 4 she banned but there would be some CW involved). They jumped on the opportunity to oust her as she had gotten on their nerves for some time.
In my more liberal moments I can't help but notice the timing. I don't know Pao's politics, if I had to guess I'd say Hillary fan. But no doubt she would have banned all the alt-right shit if she stayed. But she resigned July 2015. A year before the election and while the primaries were happening. Then spez got in and did absolutely fuck all while the site was taken over by the right. I'm not saying Russia did it or something, or that it definitely is something other than bad timing. But it's interesting to think about.
I hadn't been on reddit very long when all that went down but it was was pretty insufferable.
the subs she banned were some of those vile toxic hellholes on reddit and that—that is saying something too. I don't know the full details about the spez thing but it wouldn't at all be shocking if he planned that coup against her. Plus he is a libertarian so i bet he really fucking hated her politics on top of everything else.
Also this image fuckin' rules. They even included us g*mers in it :))
My understanding from browsing r/SRD was Pao actually supported more :freeze-peach: spez doubled-down on censorship.
I think there's a term for making unpopular moves under a woman leader and using her as a scapegoat.Apparently, she was actually against banning FPH and the other subs, so make of that what you will
imperial flag
visage of Mao
Generic Yellow Peril, my favorite! Just needs to give her a Manchu Queue and a Conical hat to make it complete.
The mascot of shitredditsays, a subreddit where people would post about the reactionary shit said all around reddit, that was very active during the Ellen Pao period. It was much less liberal than contemporary againsthatesubs type subs and properly understood that all redditors are bastards. Sadly it has declined over the years, but we in the woke left(tm) shall carry the torch and uphold the immortal tradition of silencing assorted chuds and taking their freeze peach.
They were also explicitly pro trans, which was pretty cool and also one of the only reddit spaces that were at the time.
It was still pretty liberal, but it was unironically a really important part of my path to radicalization
