An Exercise in Games Journalism

Update/Apology: In my haste to break these compelling stories, I accidentally posted this piece on a regular website. Please excuse this trespass. I have reposted this article to Medium.com, where you can read it the way it’s meant to be read: with sleek, clean, minimalist, indie formatting.


Here at PushToShout, we would never make unfounded claims about any person or company we cover. After all, we adhere strictly to the standards of integrity and would never want to mislead our faithful readership. Indeed, the time honored tradition of journalistic excellence includes a stalwart devotion to the public good: we ask the tough questions few others are brave enough to pose.

Is Hideo Kojima a Neo-Nazi sympathizer? Is Ben Kuchera a pedophile? Is Totalbiscuit a sleeper agent for the Islamic State? In the following piece, I will ask the hard-hitting, technically non-libelous questions our readers are dying to know the answers to or–at the very least–can’t resist clicking on.

Alleged Terrorist: Brianna Wu

Merely smiling? Or reveling in the slaughter to come?

“Detonate explosives at PAX…”

Brianna Wu, creator of the critically acclaimed Revolution 60, appears to be instructing terrorists to carry out an unspeakable act of terror at a gaming convention.

Space is at a premium in web journalism, so quoting and addressing the entirety of what Ms. “Wu” said (if that is her real name) would be too costly. If you take issue with this, please leave a comment explaining your position so that I may mark it as “spam” and block your IP. 

Alleged Murderer: Errant Signal

The face of a killer? You decide!

“I had to punch him to death…”

Errant Signal, a.k.a Chris Franklin, a.k.a Campster, appears to have confessed to murdering a human being in real life on his Twitter page.  There were a few more words in that tweet, but in my  sincere judgement it doesn’t add any important context.

It’s time to stop letting white men control context. In our fast-paced 21st century world, we build our own context–our own values. In my objective opinion as a journalist: marginalized groups should cast off the yoke of oppression and build a new world order from the ashes of the old.

Objectively speaking.

Alleged Rapey Pervert: Patricia Hernandez

pat

Could her gaze be fixed on a defenseless woman’s chest?

“Often we see breast physics…”

Again, I’ll spare you the rest. Here it appears as if Patricia Hernandez spends hours on end watching breasts jiggle in video games. She explicitly stated that “we” see them “often.” Does she have an accomplice? A partner in objectification?

An anonymous source alleges that Ms. Hernandez “spends literally all day looking at boobs, pausing only to shout at pigeons and castrate men.” For our source’s protection, I am unable to identify this credible informant, but he’s the same upstanding fellow who contributed the rest of this article’s information: so you know his word is solid.

Confirmed Doxxing Harrasser: SkippySigmatic

The face of the #GamerGate hate mob

“We are a bunch of harrassers and doxxers…”

This time I don’t need to hedge my journalism with words like “alleged.” The proof is in the pudding. SkippySigmatic, long time commander of the #GamerGate movement (a jihad against gamers), admitted clear as day that he is a harasser and doxxer.

You might say: “But it was clearly a joke! He was being ironic.” Get real. We’ve heard this argument a million times here at PushToShout: it’s too outlandish to begin to refute. It’s a proven fact: GamerGate is beyond satire. If I’ve learned anything from my years of experience in this industry, as well as my alleged time at journalism school, it’s that human communication is always meant to be interpreted literally.

The insinuation that people could use “humor” to wrestle with complicated subjects is The Big Lie of our age. Know this: anyone who makes claims to “satire” is the lowest of the low. They will stop at nothing to lead you astray.

We’re better than that in this industry. Here in games journalism, we’re about facts. We’re about verbatim quotes. We believe in these values, and we know you do too. Close your eyes and rest easy. Have faith, and we will guide you to the truth.

About the Author

brutalcumpowder

Firebrand shitter.

10 Comments

Dean

Solid work Bru. Different opinions have always scared me and I’ve always felt that saying icky and problematic words immediately invadlidates any aspect of criticism and puts you in the same camp that sends people COMPLETELY LIKELY TO HAPPEN death threats. It’s almost like things like tone, context and intention are hard to judge through written text online. Perhaps cases of extreamly harsh reactions are what happens when relatively normal human beings are given a giant soapbox to a wide audience with very little means of consequence with the benefit to hide behind a different name? Maybe they like the idea of a psedonym as it means they can say reprehensible stuff they don’t even believe in so they can garner internet points for their new persona?…Maybe?…Nah I guess they all just jealous haters and are merely raining on my amazing and completly flawless work. Not to worry though because I am a proud transfat pansexual formaly christian vore reviewer who is unfortunetly white (but coloured on the inside) with a 2nd dan black belt in gonzo journalism. Tomorrow I’m going to blog so hard about how trolls are icky and smelly. That’ll show them that I’m not responding to juvenile behaviour, and it’ll just prove how much I’m not mad or don’t care about them, which is why I’ll write a 50000 word post about this to prove how much I’m not mad….at all.
It’s also imperitive in my blog that I try to cut down on things like references from sources outside my website and in depth examinations of multiple viewpoints and instead rigourously circle jerk and fawn over people who just so happen to share exactly the same viewpoint as I do.

Last week I covered my 150th opinion piece on art and media arguing that since media influences peoples behaviour it’s important to take all responsabilty for the wrongdoers actions and place the blame mainly on the artist’s work instead. Just like the way Charles Manson said his killings were inspired by the Beatles, so it’s only natural that the Beatles should take full responsibility for his actions. They should have known better than to have such horrible suggestive song names such as ‘Helter Skelter’ ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Piggies’ which clearly suggest a coded prophecy of an apocalyptic war in which racist and non-racist whites will be manoeuvered into virtually exterminating each other over the treatment of blacks. They should have made a public service announcemnt every 30 minitues to remind people that killing is bad and makes people sad as having a campaign based solely on public figures saying ‘That’s bad’ has shown to stop such crimes completely in their tracks forever.

Just to clarify further, audiences turn to artists to appreiciate a piece of work that display creativity and technical skill in fantastical settings and even though things might not line up accurately with reality they try to judge it within it’s context and understand what the artist was trying to show. This is why it’s important to hound them and shame them with hashtag activism when they don’t line up accurately with reality or when minority characters are treated as nuanced human beings with individual flaws and not the Positive Role Models™ they should be for the glory and goodwill of their entire race. By contrast, people turn to news networks for an accurate and balanced viewpoint of recent events and social issues and are looking for a viewpoint that is blunt and is not coloured by the writers individual politics. That’s why it’s important for us to use as many dishonest and broad generalizations as possible; use passive aggressive implications; sensationalize and encourage group think and black and white knee jerk thinking and pump out as much low quality easy to click headlines as possible so we can make rent this month and hopefully have a standard of living that is slightly better than sub par. I don’t know what congnitive dissonence means because the definition didn’t show up in any of my updates from Buzzfeed.

Reply
Dean

Reported. Bocked. Real name and address blacklisted. Place of work called and suggested they fire you. Holed myself up in my nuclear bunker to protect myself against your driveby streetrace that will probably certainly maybe happen with a 99% percent margin of error.

SkippySigmatic

I have contacted The Office of the President of the United States. They should be taking action against the author of this slanderous article soon.

Reply
Ithenos

“long time commander of the #GamerGate movement ”
Fucking lost it.
Great article. I really like how objective you were. The quotes prove that.

Reply
Richard Johnson

Oh you gosh darned sodomite, what have you done to these sides o mine

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