>>323202

Patrick Klepek was in on Dickwolves, too.

Writing for GiantBomb in 2013, Klepek lists "A Series of Responses to Mike Krahulik's Recent Comments," clearly referencing Dickwolves.

http://archive.is/CrLHo

Of note:

• He links to Damion Schubert's "good cop" blog entry.

• He links to Christine Love's "open letter" (http://archive.is/9NVwA). Love, as you'll remember, was dating Patricia Hernandez at the time of Hernandez's coverage of "Hate Plus" (notably, Klepek also links to coverage of the game here).

• He links to Lesley Kinzel's take (http://archive.is/zEktY). Kinzel is a lesser-known figure, but was certainly critical of GamerGate at its start, and had the attention of Critical Distance (http://archive.is/iDjYN), and IGF judge Mattie "death to gamer(s)" Brice (http://archive.is/wTX6t, and by the way, you may want to look into this post a bit more, since there are more familiar names there).

In 2017, he said that Dickwolves was "eye-opening." Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people saw GamerGate as the next Dickwolves controversy.

http://archive.is/TLzui

Also of note, Dickwolves blew up like it did because Mike Krahulik had a controversy over "transphobic" comments happen a few months beforehand. Pic related, they're the tweets in question.

REACTIONS:

>Elizabeth Sampat

>http://archive.is/0oejk

>Notably, she's also a friend of Zoe Quinn (http://archive.is/MPB3C)

>Ben Kuchera

>"I feel like a piece of shit and I'm going to step away from my computer for a bit. This isn't what we should be about and it makes me sad."

>https://web.archive.org/web/20160213012926/https://twitter.com/BenKuchera/status/347769534171729921

>This was back when he was a part of PA

>Guest-starring Jason Schreier and David S. Gallant

>Fullbright (Gone Home devs)

>http://archive.is/zqtd4

>Pulled Gone Home from PAX Prime, which in turn gave the game more coverage

>They list more grievances than just transphobia. Read them. It's typical SJW nonsense.

>Daniel Kaszor

>http://archive.is/zhFEm

>Kaszor would become an anti-GGer, but not particularly notorious. He wrote an article about GG not being about ethics (http://archive.is/82S6i), and later feigned disappointment at not being included on DeepFreeze (http://archive.is/VVuPg).

>A Matt Hartley also gets namedropped here, but he doesn't seem to be of any significance.

>Dan Seitz

>http://archive.is/g1Vbi

>Interesting comment, "The victory is not that they apologized. The victory is that finally the white male heterosexual status quo of 'gaming culture' is being finally condemned and analyzed."

>Seitz would later become an anti-GGer, penning a few articles about it. (http://archive.is/YHdQN, http://archive.is/UdQJF, http://archive.is/E08rf)

>Rachel Edidin

>http://archive.is/Ak4qG

>Transitioned to Jay Edidin sometime in (?2015), though I wasn't able to find much on them either way. I think Edidin is more active in comics, so take that as you will.

>Liana K

>https://archive.is/8qPeP

>She actually defends Krahulik.

>Read the comments for some outrage that will almost give you déjà vu.

>Others

>https://archive.is/KOBmj

http://archive.is/VEbF9

>https://web.archive.org/web/20160307030507/http://blog.ironcouncil.net/the-problem-with-mike-krahuliks-opinion-about-trans-people.html & https://web.archive.org/web/20160325134618/http://blog.ironcouncil.net/krahulik-followup.html

>This one's actually a defense of Krahulik, and also makes a correct prediction: "When conservatism/the GOP ascends again to political dominance, it will be, in part, because liberals shoot themselves in the ass by letting the far left alienate reasonable people." http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2013/06/do-you-think-women-are-female-if-so.html

I'm gonna be straight with you guys: 2013 seemed like more of a lead-up for how to respond to some event like GamerGate, at least from the journo side. So many familiar names, so much familiar language, and the year had multiple "'gamer' is bad" thinkpieces. These went a bit into 2014, as well, but still well before GamerGate.

http://archive.is/eKCuO

http://archive.is/glaDi

http://archive.is/txUNa

http://archive.is/wBQAh

http://archive.is/qhpCp

What I'm getting at here almost sounds like a conspiracy theory. But based on the evidence, it looks like game journos and other major figures were prepared for GamerGate. Hell, it almost seems like they wanted something like it to happen, like they were planning on the next major controversy to be the proof they needed on why gamer culture deserved to change, and that they could be the architects of such an evolution. It sounds silly, typing it all out, but thinking back on everything… I can sort of see it from their perspective. After all, they'd adopted an ideology that pushes them to see gamer culture as something inherently problematic, full of misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., and in need of disinfecting.

Hell, read through that "Pratfall of Penny Arcade" archive, and see how many names come up. Sarkeesian is there. Lifschitz is there. Fucking Ian Miles Cheong is even there. And sure, this may all be coincidental, because just about everyone involved in gaming would talk about a massive controversy like Dickwolves, and then go on to talk about the even bigger GamerGate. But Sarkeesian made herself a central figure in GG. Lifschitz was dating Literally Who when GG broke. IMC was a part of LW's inner circle. Something's just not adding up here. The overlap of names and arguments just seems… too coincidental.

Or maybe I'm just rambling, and I need to get to sleep.

I know my digging's a bit all over the place here, but each item I look into leads me somewhere else, and I've just got a lot of interconnected stuff that I didn't think would show up in the capacity that it did. I'd suggest that people use this more as a starting point for their own research. As such, I've tried to compile my ideas in a way that they're somewhat comprehensible, but… your mileage may vary.

Went back to look at a source article from the initial Dickwolves Debacle.

https://archive.fo/q14M2

>Corvus Elrod

• Interviewed, primarily.

• He later came out as trans, taking the name Branwen Zakariasen. There's a blog about their transition (https://bhaloidam.wordpress.com/), but I found little else in the way of gaming.

>Dierdra "Squinky" Kiai

• Noted as boycotting PAX 2011 over Dickwolves.

• None other than Nathan Grayson wrote a puff piece on her in 2014 (http://archive.is/SivEC)

• Has ties to Maya "Legobutts"

Felix Kramer and Mattie Brice,

as well as Silverstring Media (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1075&v=X0EZl2Aq-8o)

>Courtney Stanton

• Previously covered in >>323202, but there's some things missing

• Did a "troll data analysis" of comments received in the wake of her response to Dickwolves (http://web.archive.org/web/20110211193546/http://kirbybits.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/here-is-a-project-troll-data-analysis/)

• Stanton, for a time, became a symbol of a woman confronting "toxic gamer culture," before Anita Sarkeesian effectively took the crown during GamerGate. Most interesting was a piece in Ada (a publication that also published a piece by Adrienne Shaw) that namedropped her, written by Mia Consalvo of DiGRA (http://archive.is/qywv6).

• Unrelated but interesting: Stanton wrote a Storify about a guy who made a dumb joke about Leigh Alexander not following him on Twitter, after going at him for being "creepy," of course. Look at the context, it's fucking retarded. (http://archive.is/nK11t)

Also, on a hunch, I took a second look at all the names who were thanked in the credits for Depression Quest:

Tom Smith

Sos Sosowski

Andy Moore

Patrick Dawson

Cameron Kunzelman

Kyle Baker

Edmund Lewry

Terry Cavanagh

Jonathan Wright

Martin Pilkington

Torbjørn G. Dahle

Ben Johnston

Michael Kwan

Gregory Kinneman

Nathan Grayson

Mary Augstkains

Scott Madin

Ichiro Lambe

Michel McBride-Charpentier

Cheryl Trooskin-Zoller

Phoebe Seiders

Caitlin Blank

Amanda Cosmos

Graham Davis

Ben Abraham

Tam Toucan

Johnicholas Hines

Ashton Raze (real name Olivia White)

Brendan Keogh

Alan Williamson

Alex Androski (he died just a few months ago, RIP)

Matthew Duhamel

Deirdra Kiai

Danny O'Dwyer

Tom Whitaker

Jason Bakker

Ross Fowkes

Cha Holland

Ghostworks

Mitchell Sutton

Ryan S. Casey

George Shirai

Chris "Leddybear" Leddy

Edmund Adderly

David Carlton

Alex May

Cale Bradbury

Christine Love

Robin Ward

Rachel Helps

Kevin Slackie

Jon 'Meroka' Biggin

K. Adam White

Jason R. Nally

Amanda Williams

Gary Szuslik Jr.

Dustin Astarita

Alex Koti

Lew Civ

Aaron Michael Kearns

Ian Cheong

Joakim Sandberg

Kylie Szymesko

Christopher Juriansz

Terence Wiggins

Barton Mothersill

The names that were bolded had involvement in Dickwolves, be it writing hitpieces or contributing to them in some form. Also, these were just links that I could find, based on research posted here, and my own findings. More names could be marked off as we look deeper into this, but as of now, this is the list.

>>331560

lol, I fucked up my formatting. I can't into 8chan.

For posterity's sake, I'm gonna recommend these future topics to look into (if I don't get around to posting about them later), because I think they're relevant:

• #1reasonwhy (START: https://archive.is/Er4wa)

• #1reasontobe (START: http://archive.is/quYCD, https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1018080/)

• The "Why So Serious?" panel at PAX Aus 2013

Going through this, and having had more sleep since my last dig post, I'm seeing that the ideological conversion of the gaming press was a gradual thing. It was attempted back in 2007 when SA made the comic about Jade Raymond promoting Ass Creed, with some in the press trying to blow it up (notably, people have largely forgotten about it, because it was a non-issue). Dickwolves (the first time) was probably the origin point of when these ideologies got injected. Hell, I remember that was the first time I'd ever seen the term "rape culture." Then came the Jennifer Hepler incident (https://archive.is/xB32b), which added to the pile. And a few months later, Anita Sarkeesian's Kickstarter happened (of note, Sarkeesian already had some media connections, through promotion of her OG Tropes vs. Women series by outlets like Feministing [https://archive.fo/1fcoc] and LA Weekly [http://archive.is/6lVPh]).

The way the press closed ranks around Anita, was something that we wouldn't see again until Dickwolves came back up, and in the aftermath of that, we saw PAX make some changes, like the addition of the Diversity Lounge, and the more bullshit panels about "inclusion tactics" and "Jesus God, being a woman in the industry is literally the worst thing ever." Which is kind of funny, because the press blasted PAX for being "tone-deaf" after it was first announced, and they see it as essential to PAX today. But there was a clear consensus at that point: the gaming community was "toxic," and it needed to be browbeaten a few more times until it respected women more. And then GamerGate came, and once again, we saw the press circle the wagons, and by that time, it was over. "Gamer culture" was beyond saving, and needed to die.

And probably the most important part? Almost always, you only saw one perspective in the press throughout these incidents. No dissenting viewpoints, hell, any dissenting views were harassment. Hell, Stephen Totilo said of Sarkeesian critics:

>And, yes, we have not given prominent exposure on Kotaku to her critics, some of whom just attack her outright and invite being ignored but others who do find exceptions or flaws in her argument. The latter is something we intend to get to on the site.

(http://archive.is/BzBcU)

Of course, that never came to pass. Because, I think, an agreement was made to moralize and monopolize the views that were presented by the games press. This is why we saw politics start to make their way into what would otherwise be neutral coverage of stories—because a narrative had to be established and maintained.

Look at what Patrick Klepek wrote in 2012 after saying that he didn't consider himself to be a feminist: http://archive.is/cn9ql Just saying "I'm not a feminist" was enough for people to react, and him to write the post. And now… well, I think you know how he turned out.

Here's another interesting Totilo moment from there:

>It’s odd to even be talking about this in the open, since one of the things Kotaku (then MTV) editor Stephen Totilo asked me to do was keep my political beliefs out of my writing and reporting.

If this was said before his Kotaku days, this would put the comment some time prior to April 2009. My, how things have changed.

Something also worth mentioning:

The Dickwolves comic was published on August 11, 2010.

GameJournoPros was created on August 31, 2010.

Just a quick thing.

Remember Scott Madin?

He was actually a mod for Shakesville the whole time: http://archive.is/W4Hrq

Not only that, but he was also, at one point, Facebook friends with Jerry Holkins (AKA Tycho Brahe), and tipped him (and presumably Mike Krahulik) off to the Shakesville post. Pic related.

Not a bombshell, but it's still incredibly interesting.