I am writing this in the midst of yet another campus active shooter. Professors and students at Delta State are huddled in classrooms, praying, hiding in the dark, covering windows as best they can. All we know is that one professor was killed, and thousands and professors and students are terrified. Tweets are circulating about gun control; most people are just spreading the word as quickly as possible and praying for a resolution. This is the world we live in. Don’t get me wrong, the world has always been violent, so I’m not being nostalgic here. What I see happening now is more akin to distributed, daily terrorism: people all over the world have decided to take away safe spaces from others, often regardless of race or gender. We should feel safe at school. We should feel safe at a movie theater. We should feel safe at church, at a parade, at our clinic, at a sports game. It’s not even the death that worries me, it’s the fear.
I’ve written about fear before, about how much fear I have as a woman who games and streams and has a somewhat public profile. Other women in academia have faced far worse than I’ve had to endure, but it doesn’t change that gut feeling I have every time I click the broadcast button on my Twitch account. On the other side of this fear is terrorism. People have called it trolling, but you will never see me call it that again. What is happening to women, people of color, and anyone who speaks up for change in the game industry is at risk of being terrorized. Two days ago we saw the face of terrorism: Joshua Ryne Goldberg.
Who is Joshua Goldberg?
While this isn’t a rabbit hole I’m particularly thrilled to go down, it is necessary. Joshua Goldberg was arrested on September 9th for distributing information on how to make a bomb, along with encouragement to use that bomb at a 9/11 celebration in Kansas City, MO. His persona at the time was the somewhat Internet famous Australi Witness; he was giving direction on how to bomb the 9/11 memorial to an undercover FBI agent. While he is not Australian, Israeli, or Islamic, he nevertheless inserted himself multiple times into movements and essentially became one of the online faces of IS. He also wrote an violent blog against Palestinians under the name of Joshua Bornstein, who is a real guy who faced internet backlash, hatred, and threats because of it. Goldberg linked to the article on his main Twitter account, railing against the piece as “disgusting” and “demented.” Remember, he wrote it.
Continuing the trend of stirring both pots, he also wrote for the famous Feministing website against GamerGate, under the assumed persona of Tanya Cohen. He wrote an article on the gaming world’s reaction to Brianna Wu’s Samas Aran article, focusing specifically on the violent, transphobic threats Wu received: “Aiming to shine a light on trans erasure and transphobia in the gaming industry, the reaction to Wu’s article – sure enough – demonstrated just how deeply transphobic gaming culture is.”
He then wrote as a neo-nazi blogger on the site The Daily Stormer, calling Tanya Cohen a “jew bitch.” I can’t link to this because The Daily Stormer has pulled all of Michael Slay’s articles, but paths on search engines still exist, and I will update this once someone inevitable finds archived material. Anyway, in case you’re keeping track, Goldberg created a persona, wrote and published articles under that name, and then he went to adversarial sites and called that persona out. But he not only calls these other personas out, he advocates hate and violence be directed at them. On occasion he would even set up two fake profiles, have a conversation with himself, and the send screenshots of the conversation to journalists.
He set up countless other fake Facebook and Twitter accounts, some under fake names, some under names of semi-prominent journalists and public figures to wreak havoc on their lives, reach out to their contacts, smear their names. His main Twitter account, however, did plenty of havoc wreaking of its own. Through Twitter handle, Moon Metropolis, he seems to be a major source of (mis)information to prominent GamerGaters, particularly Milo Yiannopoulus, famous for calling out black rights activist Shaun King for being white. Through several Twitter exchanges, we can see that Moon Metropolis appears to be the solo source Milo had for his claims (cuz journalistic integrity, right? Because ethics, right?). In case you don’t remember, Shaun King has been lambasted by Milo and Breitbart “news” for misleading the public about his race. It all started with this article, which claims to have as a source a “childhood friend” of Shaun King’s that knows King is white. This story, as juicy as it is false, was taken up by multiple news organizations, reputable and not reputable. What we now know, however, is that the only source for this story is Joshua Goldberg.
What This All Means
People will hold on to the Shaun King story, despite the fact that the only source for the story clearly made it up just to cause pain. King will probably have to defend and explain his racial background for the rest of his life. Why? Because people like Milo Yiannopoulus, GamerGaters, and those who hate are so quick to believe someone peddling information that already fits their idea of the world. The entire movement is founded on a lie: that Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist for a good review of her game. Not one part of that story makes sense, but it tapped into a deep hatred that apparently many gamers have of women. And not just women, but anyone who wants to come into “their” space and change things.
We see many gamers, who identify as GGers or not, rallying behind this banner of journalistic integrity and free speech. I just don’t get it, because the only thing that has ever been produced from movements like GG are hate, fear, and terrorism. They threaten and abuse, lie and cheat, and in the end, gloat over their moral superiority. Breitbart thinks it’s so fucking great for “exposing” SJW Shaun King. Never mind that it wasn’t true, never mind that the info came from a now suspected terrorist. GG is exactly the same. Never mind that most of the information they base their movement on is 100% false, never mind that their members have done nothing except torment women and people of color. Are people like Goldberg just disruptors? Do they just want to stir the pot because they’re fucking miserable? Is this the new face of the sociopath/psychopath? It’s so 1960s to become a serial killer, so I’ll go around and destroy people on the internet?
I just want games to be better. I want them to be more inclusive, and I want the characters they do have that are raced and sexed to be respectful. Video games have made caricatures out of people of color. They’ve made women sexual objects or the reward of a conquest. We work daily to try and make them better for the majority of people who are playing them. How can that be so threatening? How can Shaun King wanting unprovoked police violence to stop against black Americans be so threatening that an orchestrated internet conspiracy has to take him down, because of a lie? GamerGate talks of journalistic integrity. Where is the integrity here? GamerGate’s own member purposefully sewed seeds of misinformation across the internet. How does this make journalism more ethical?
I hope we all follow the case of Joshua Goldberg closely. To me, he is the face of GamerGate. Perhaps he wasn’t GG’s biggest player, but he represents the same thing in my eyes: the desire to make opponents fear for their lives; the desire to cause destruction; the desire to watch other human beings burn.
