The conspiracy theory that *I* believe is that Owens tried to get in on the whole "Team Good Anti-Harassment" train, instead of being welcomed with open arms, she had her stuff shut down and Randi Lee Harper bragged about shutting it down in an open post to freakin' everybody.
From there, she assumed that she'd never get into the grift via Team Good and, to her surprise, found a home on Team Evil where she managed to Thrive, thus cementing the idea that it wasn't Team Evil that was opposing her but the very people who bragged about doing so to her very face.
And Randi made the unfortunate mistake of saying "it was us" instead of "it was me" and so Zoe got swept up into it.
"No, not *THAT* conspiracy theory... *THIS* one!"
I've told you the conspiracy theory that I buy into and posted links to it.
If you'd like to explain to me that "but what they did was good, though", that's fine. Feel free.
The main thing I remember everybody screaming was "WHERE IN THE HELL HAS THIS GUY BEEN FOR THE LAST YEAR?"
Gore came across as genial, charming, genuine... not wooden at all.
The whole "messaging" thing might be superficially amusing but, honestly, Bill Clinton and Obama were both once-in-a-generation charismatic talents who were masters at, yes, messaging.
Now maybe any plan that has "we need someone as charismatic as Bill Clinton" is doomed to fail if you don't have a Bill Clinton handy.
But I absolutely understand why, after Clinton and Obama, the thought is that the problem is messaging.
Of course, that may lead you to the conclusion that you need someone good at messaging to be running for the office...
I remember the exhaustion. "Clinton Fatigue". The whiplash from the Clarence Thomas hearings just a few short years prior (and this was back when people still had attention spans).
But maybe Gore still loses Florida under those circumstances... maybe he still loses Tennessee.
I'm thinking of "real" media places that put an exclusive emphasis on free markets and personal liberties and maybe WSJ is on there... maybe the Economist... Then I get to Reason Magazine and after that we're in crazytown.
So while I might agree that the whole "free markets/personal liberties" thing is underserved, I have no idea what Bezos means when he says either of those terms and no reason to believe that he means what I mean when I say them.
But, gotta say, as platitudes go, I am 100% down with the platitudes.
"So you think that the people he's going to fire shouldn't be fired?"
"Oh, I wouldn't go *THAT* far."
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Ugh. Sony just shut down Monolith Studios. You know the guys who made The Nemesis System? The system that was freakin' amazing and only got used in two games? The system that they patented so nobody else can use it for free until 2035?!?
I’m actually kinda wondering if the GamerGate-gullible people on this site actually believe Zoe Quinn sent an army of harassment against Candace. On one had, there’s no evidence whatsoever that Zoe had anything to do with it. On the other hand, [insert conspiracy]
Randi Lee Harper bragged about getting Social Autopsy shut down. From the horse's mouth:
You blamed your Kickstarter getting shut down on trolls. You’re wrong. That was us. As long as you’re willfully harming other people by creating shitty uninformed products while kicking the shit out of anyone that tries to help you, we’re going to keep getting you shut down. You have created more work for me in the past 3 days, but I’d rather invest this time now, because if this bullshit doesn’t get nipped in the bud early, it’s just another fucking platform that I’m going to have to try to help protect people from in the future.
Randi Lee Harper may have been lying, of course. If she is, she's one of the people in on the conspiracy.
My suspicion is that Adnan Syed was guilty. As such, my framing of "true crime podcasts" are variants of "here's a sexy guy who was found guilty and is now in prison... maybe he didn't do it?"
And people line up to buy merch like they line up to cheer for Luigi.
I like the idea of podcasts looking at cold cases and solving them, though. Had I heard of Buried Bones before I heard of Serial, I may have had a different opinion imprinted on my brain.
======
There was a comedian a few years back who talked about a true crime template where a guy Joe Blow gets killed and they interview people around the town who come up with all of these different speculations of what happened and there's always this guy who just says "If Joe Blow got found in a ditch, it's because Catfish shot him. Catfish hated Joe Blow and always said that he was going to murder Joe."
And then the show concludes and, yep, it's Catfish.
Well, for a year, there were a bunch of places that did their best to gatekeep conversations and threads and kept locking down conversation and there became two different online universes.
1. Places where you knew you wouldn't have to worry about talking about unpleasant topics
2. Places where you were free to talk about double plus ungood thoughtcrime
Pretty much all of the respectable outlets were under #1. This includes all of the gaming sites that participated in the "Gamers are Dead" media blitz but also major sites like Reddit. (There is, to the best of my knowledge, one single subreddit on reddit where you're allowed to be pro gamergate. They police the heck out of themselves so they can pull the whole "WE'RE FOLLOWING THE SITE RULES!" thing.)
On twitter, there was a movement started by the anti-ggs to put together a blocklist of everybody who followed a handful of prominent accounts.
Mass blocking then became a thing. The argument was that the most blocked accounts should be de-boosted (or shadowbanned) in an effort to make Twitter less "toxic".
There were a handful of prominent people who were swept up in this who argued that following accounts was not an endorsement of the account and they shouldn't have been added to the blocklist and there was a *LOT* of drama over it.
(If we wanted to fast-forward a couple of years, we'd reach the point in the story where Candace Owens shows up trying to create a website called "Social Autopsy" that would help link online bullies (like the gamergate types) to offline identities so companies would know if vicious trolls were working for them. Zoe Quinn and the creator of the blocklists hounded Candace Owens off of their turf. Owens went on to greener pastures.)
And a bunch of the folks online who weren't knowledgeable enough to be pro or anti gamergate started hearing rumors and asking questions like "what's this thing we're not allowed to talk about?" and finding themselves de-boosted, shadowbanned, and so on.
The tools intended to contain Gamergate had started containing people who weren't even gamers.
I suppose it's right around here that Trump came down the escalator.
We're not to Trump yet, Slade. We're still in 2014.
Trump hasn't even headed down the escalator yet.
This smacks of “Look what you made me do.”
My goal isn't "I want you to sympathize with MAGAts."
My goal is to get you to say "wow... there were a lot of things that happened.. there was a lot more going on than just a couple of people calling Zoe Quinn names."
I mean, we haven't even gotten to Zoe Quinn speaking at the UN yet either.
Well, I'll continue with my little tale, then. As it turns out, there was an email list called "GameJournoPros". It had about 150 members of various game journalists from dozens and dozens of game sites.
The accusation was that the journalists used this group to coordinate and collude and put together narratives and, yes, say stuff like "let's all put out similar editorials over the course of a couple of weeks!"
Of course, the defense is something like "friends are allowed to talk to each other".
As if that were the criticism.
Slate's David Auerbach was enough of an outsider to look at the campaign and ask "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" and, for this, he got pilloried.
This stuff is all flying around while threads and being locked and closed for anything even *TOUCHING* on the topic.
This is happening while gaming journalism sites everywhere were making sure that people weren't talking about this.
Well, that they weren't talking about this on *THEIR* sites, anyway.
It had stopped being anything about Zoe Quinn's wandering eye but about the weird ecosystem that was preventing discussion while, at the same time, complaining about the audience.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
The conspiracy theory that *I* believe is that Owens tried to get in on the whole "Team Good Anti-Harassment" train, instead of being welcomed with open arms, she had her stuff shut down and Randi Lee Harper bragged about shutting it down in an open post to freakin' everybody.
From there, she assumed that she'd never get into the grift via Team Good and, to her surprise, found a home on Team Evil where she managed to Thrive, thus cementing the idea that it wasn't Team Evil that was opposing her but the very people who bragged about doing so to her very face.
And Randi made the unfortunate mistake of saying "it was us" instead of "it was me" and so Zoe got swept up into it.
"No, not *THAT* conspiracy theory... *THIS* one!"
I've told you the conspiracy theory that I buy into and posted links to it.
If you'd like to explain to me that "but what they did was good, though", that's fine. Feel free.
"
Students and Faculty at Columbia have taken over a building and are chanting stuff like "Globalize the Intifada".
My main question: Does Tenure cover this?
"
I'm pretty sure that if Gore had fewer than two years, he'd have been able to run again in 2004.
"
Remember Gore's concession speech?
The main thing I remember everybody screaming was "WHERE IN THE HELL HAS THIS GUY BEEN FOR THE LAST YEAR?"
Gore came across as genial, charming, genuine... not wooden at all.
The whole "messaging" thing might be superficially amusing but, honestly, Bill Clinton and Obama were both once-in-a-generation charismatic talents who were masters at, yes, messaging.
Now maybe any plan that has "we need someone as charismatic as Bill Clinton" is doomed to fail if you don't have a Bill Clinton handy.
But I absolutely understand why, after Clinton and Obama, the thought is that the problem is messaging.
Of course, that may lead you to the conclusion that you need someone good at messaging to be running for the office...
"
I remember the exhaustion. "Clinton Fatigue". The whiplash from the Clarence Thomas hearings just a few short years prior (and this was back when people still had attention spans).
But maybe Gore still loses Florida under those circumstances... maybe he still loses Tennessee.
"
Bush does? Huh. My assumption is that Clinton has a lot of baggage that weighs Gore 2000 down and does not weigh down Incumbent Gore.
"
Well, you know the "Call Her Daddy" podcast? That's the one that interviewed Harris.
Well, in the latest "Call Her Daddy", Monica Lewinsky explains that Bill Clinton should have resigned instead of throwing her under the bus.
I mean, I'm sure she thinks that.
But can you imagine what the 21st Century would have looked like if he did?
"
I'm thinking of "real" media places that put an exclusive emphasis on free markets and personal liberties and maybe WSJ is on there... maybe the Economist... Then I get to Reason Magazine and after that we're in crazytown.
So while I might agree that the whole "free markets/personal liberties" thing is underserved, I have no idea what Bezos means when he says either of those terms and no reason to believe that he means what I mean when I say them.
But, gotta say, as platitudes go, I am 100% down with the platitudes.
"So you think that the people he's going to fire shouldn't be fired?"
"Oh, I wouldn't go *THAT* far."
"
"Free Markets" == "More H1Bs"
"Personal Liberties" == "No Unions"
"
Bezos, huh? Lemme see what he said... holy crap.
Oh, so he fired Shipley. Huh.
Huh.
"
Is there any way to punish or reprimand a judge short of recalling her?
On “97th Oscars Projections: And The Oscar Goes To…”
When are all of the votes locked?
I mean, if (GOD FORBID) Pope Francis passes overnight, I could easily see a bunch of votes switching to Conclave.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
Most? As in more than 51%?!?
Wow. Promises kept!
"
Ugh. Sony just shut down Monolith Studios. You know the guys who made The Nemesis System? The system that was freakin' amazing and only got used in two games? The system that they patented so nobody else can use it for free until 2035?!?
Yeah, well, that studio got shut down.
"
Yeah, I hope the budget is very successful.
"
I hope it's as successful as Obamacare.
Wait, is this a *BUDGET* budget? Like not a reconciliation budget?!?
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
The "using the military against US citizens" rubicon has already been crossed, sadly.
I would most certainly hope that they not be used on US soil.
I mean, unless in defense of the country.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
Randi Lee Harper bragged about getting Social Autopsy shut down. From the horse's mouth:
Randi Lee Harper may have been lying, of course. If she is, she's one of the people in on the conspiracy.
On “Em’s Top Five True Crime Podcast Recommendations”
I keep going back to Serial.
My suspicion is that Adnan Syed was guilty. As such, my framing of "true crime podcasts" are variants of "here's a sexy guy who was found guilty and is now in prison... maybe he didn't do it?"
And people line up to buy merch like they line up to cheer for Luigi.
I like the idea of podcasts looking at cold cases and solving them, though. Had I heard of Buried Bones before I heard of Serial, I may have had a different opinion imprinted on my brain.
======
There was a comedian a few years back who talked about a true crime template where a guy Joe Blow gets killed and they interview people around the town who come up with all of these different speculations of what happened and there's always this guy who just says "If Joe Blow got found in a ditch, it's because Catfish shot him. Catfish hated Joe Blow and always said that he was going to murder Joe."
And then the show concludes and, yep, it's Catfish.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
Well, for a year, there were a bunch of places that did their best to gatekeep conversations and threads and kept locking down conversation and there became two different online universes.
1. Places where you knew you wouldn't have to worry about talking about unpleasant topics
2. Places where you were free to talk about double plus ungood thoughtcrime
Pretty much all of the respectable outlets were under #1. This includes all of the gaming sites that participated in the "Gamers are Dead" media blitz but also major sites like Reddit. (There is, to the best of my knowledge, one single subreddit on reddit where you're allowed to be pro gamergate. They police the heck out of themselves so they can pull the whole "WE'RE FOLLOWING THE SITE RULES!" thing.)
On twitter, there was a movement started by the anti-ggs to put together a blocklist of everybody who followed a handful of prominent accounts.
Mass blocking then became a thing. The argument was that the most blocked accounts should be de-boosted (or shadowbanned) in an effort to make Twitter less "toxic".
There were a handful of prominent people who were swept up in this who argued that following accounts was not an endorsement of the account and they shouldn't have been added to the blocklist and there was a *LOT* of drama over it.
(If we wanted to fast-forward a couple of years, we'd reach the point in the story where Candace Owens shows up trying to create a website called "Social Autopsy" that would help link online bullies (like the gamergate types) to offline identities so companies would know if vicious trolls were working for them. Zoe Quinn and the creator of the blocklists hounded Candace Owens off of their turf. Owens went on to greener pastures.)
And a bunch of the folks online who weren't knowledgeable enough to be pro or anti gamergate started hearing rumors and asking questions like "what's this thing we're not allowed to talk about?" and finding themselves de-boosted, shadowbanned, and so on.
The tools intended to contain Gamergate had started containing people who weren't even gamers.
I suppose it's right around here that Trump came down the escalator.
"
There are a handful of places that closed forums entirely to avoid discussions of such topics.
Bioware is the one that comes quickest to mind.
"
We're not to Trump yet, Slade. We're still in 2014.
Trump hasn't even headed down the escalator yet.
This smacks of “Look what you made me do.”
My goal isn't "I want you to sympathize with MAGAts."
My goal is to get you to say "wow... there were a lot of things that happened.. there was a lot more going on than just a couple of people calling Zoe Quinn names."
I mean, we haven't even gotten to Zoe Quinn speaking at the UN yet either.
"
xenophobic immigration policy
"What does 'xenophobia' mean?"
"You know open borders?"
"Yeah."
"It's being opposed to those."
"Oh. I guess I'm xenophobic."
"Yeah, most people are."
"
Well, I'll continue with my little tale, then. As it turns out, there was an email list called "GameJournoPros". It had about 150 members of various game journalists from dozens and dozens of game sites.
The accusation was that the journalists used this group to coordinate and collude and put together narratives and, yes, say stuff like "let's all put out similar editorials over the course of a couple of weeks!"
Of course, the defense is something like "friends are allowed to talk to each other".
As if that were the criticism.
Slate's David Auerbach was enough of an outsider to look at the campaign and ask "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" and, for this, he got pilloried.
This stuff is all flying around while threads and being locked and closed for anything even *TOUCHING* on the topic.
This is happening while gaming journalism sites everywhere were making sure that people weren't talking about this.
Well, that they weren't talking about this on *THEIR* sites, anyway.
It had stopped being anything about Zoe Quinn's wandering eye but about the weird ecosystem that was preventing discussion while, at the same time, complaining about the audience.
Still with me?
"
I know that I preferred when classical liberals were still around.
They were polite, well-read, used proper punctuation, and lost graciously.