Botond173
9hr ago
I’ve read a detailed account of this a long time ago. Recalling from memory, originally this Watson woman briefly described the elevator incident in passing during a presentation she was delivering at another atheist event which was posted online, and another woman in this atheist subculture decided to argue against her accusations in a blog post, which in turn generated a cascading feminist backlash, which in turn elicited the Dear Muslima letter you mentioned. It was this latter event that drew mainstream media attention to this whole trainwreck.
This actually isn’t that self-evident in retrospect; in fact, I’ve seen the observation on the SSC subreddit once that it’s actually difficult to pinpoint the one decisive event which propelled the Gamergate scandal to mainstream exposure. Was it one of the blog posts? One of the youtube response videos? A tweet? It’s difficult to tell, especially because most of the first-hand sources related to Gamergate have been purged from the internet.
Anyway, this is all in the past by now. I think the most important facet of Elevatorgate is that everyone involved ended up escalating the scandal instead of trying to calm it down. First of all, it was Richard Dawkins who did the most to fan the flames instead of making all those involved cool down. I think it’s fair to hold this against him.
Botond173
1d ago
I reckon that most people having rotten/missing teeth was mostly a 19th Century and 20th Century phenomenon, driven by the new availability of cheap sugar. Medieval people consumed little to no sugar, so their teeth were generally healthy.
Botond173
1d ago
I used to hang out on those sites as well and it seems to me in retrospect that the Manosphere was already losing whatever relevance it had by the time Gamergate exploded. (It also happened at a time when the man/woman question itself was being shelved as a culture war issue as it was getting overshadowed by the race question. And whatever amount of energy was still present in the Manosphere in 2015, the Trump phenomenon quickly siphoned it off.) That scandal generally bewildered them because they didn't care for the gamer subculture, were either ignorant of it or looked down on it. I remember the cringy incident when a bunch of columnists of the Return of Kings site decided to launch a parallel gaming-focused website in order to publicly take a stand in the ongoing scandal. It fizzled out after a few months or so; it should have been clear from the beginning that these guys are putting on an act, as they never saw gamers as their allies, never cared for gaming as a whole and knew scarcely anything about it.
Botond173
1d ago
It's sort of a funny subject. Women will readily admit that they do desire casual sex as long as the circumstances are right. When pressed on the issue, they, just like men, will admit that they want to casually fuck only those whom they are not planning to marry. And this truth, for completely opposite reasons, makes both men and women angry.
Botond173
1d ago
I suggest delineating GG from Atheism+, as those were scandals that took place in different timeframes, with different opposing groups. But Atheism+ and Elevatorgate, for example, can safely be put into the same bucket.
Botond173
1d ago
Indeed. For example, she lied about having to move to a different apartment as a result of the dozens of death threats she supposedly received from evil sh*thead gamers, and she claimed this while streaming from her old apartment (the background was the same). I remember reading this on the SSC subreddit, where GG was somewhat extensively discussed on multiple occasions.
Botond173
1d ago
To add to OP's reply I think it's clear in retrospect that the social factors that propelled Gamergate to mainstream visibility had been brewing for a long time up until 2014. For one, online journalism had also been in a sorry state for a long time, one consequence being that those who were picking up PC game journalism as a job were increasingly urban liberal normies who originally dreamed about working for famous mainstream publications and felt that they had to settle for something much less as they lacked other options. They usually had an antipathy for gaming and gamers, especially hardcore male gamers. and basically resented the whole subculture that was now providing them with a meagre livelihood. Also, feminist culture warriors had been aware for a long time that unlike television, movies, literature and science fiction, PC gaming was 'off the reservation', not yet subjected to feminist influence and transformation, populated by many sexist failson dudebro fans yet unaffected by the culture war. The Blue Tribe in general was increasingly characterized by radicalization, desperation and bitterness during those times. The Tea Party happened, OWS seemed promising but puttered out, Obama was increasingly seen as a disappointment and a bummer by many leftists, the Dems lost seats during the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.
Botond173
1d ago
I just want to add that the situation many newly married couples find themselves in nowadays, namely that they have nobody else in the practical sense assisting them with childcare, that this is a task the two of them need to manage on their own, day after day, is historically abnormal and definitely not sustainable as a social norm. It has not been the usual case in any society or any age in the past.
Botond173
1d ago
I think it's warranted to add context. If you're poor, don't be a man, the OP said. Fair enough, but their women's situation isn't much better in that regard.
Botond173
1d ago
It isn't exactly new or sophisticated technology if that is what you're alluding to. The Wehrmacht utilized a rather simplistic launcher system during WW2 already which produced the same devastating effect on enemy infantry.
Botond173
1d ago
I don't necessarily agree with the 'unverifiable' part as I think it's conceivable that the authorities will maybe clarify this, but otherwise this theory makes sense.
Botond173
2d ago
16 years old Muscovite Artem killed one Alexey Belyaev deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Russian media and internet censorship agency.
The poor man doesn't even have his own Wiki page.
Point taken. To be clear, I was referring to the sorts of shitty manual labor, mostly in the service sector, that underclass/prole women normally perform.
Botond173
2d ago
I'm no urbanist but the description 'a residential building near the Volokolamsk Highway (part of the Moscow Ring Road)' somehow does not sound to me like a cozy upper-middle class neighborhood. But anyway, what I am suggesting is that security appeared to be lax and the location chosen by the assassin is a bit suspicious.
Botond173
2d ago
I reckon the last time multiple talking heads were making predictions of a swift and imminent Ukrainian collapse was in the first few days of the war. To the extent that such were still being made, they were marginal and incidental until nowadays. It also wasn't until recently that the Russians were able to capture towns and not just on a one-off basis but in a sequential manner.
Botond173
2d ago
Also, such people are probably just selfish and don't care for any suggestions that would upend their existing lifestyle.
Botond173
2d ago
Fair enough. I guess this depends on one's willingness to subject oneself to trashy FAFOist Twitter feeds and comment sections of various sorts (Youtube, Reddit etc). I've seen some people confidently predict a counteroffensive that will definitely succeed the coming summer. Either way, my point is that the Atlanticist promotion of the Ukrainian nationalist cause only makes any conceivable sense if such a swift counteroffensive happens and succeeds. The other options are a war of attrition or a peace deal, and even you're the biggest cynic on the planet whose only priority in any of this is weakening Russia, I think it's probably still a bad idea to compel the Ukrainian state to eventually grind itself down to dust and thus leave the Southwestern borders of Russia without that bulwark.
Botond173
2d ago
I think it's worth pointing out that the life expectancy of underclass women is also generally rather bad, as their diet is terrible, they often abuse substances, and the tasks they normally do everyday either involve standing in one place for longer periods or bowing and lifting relatively heavy objects, which is also terrible for your health.
Yeah, I remember her supporters were denying that such a review was ever published and obviously thought that this is a clever argument, but unsurprisingly it seems the truth is more nuanced.
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