Zoe Quinn, sometime Boing Boing and Offworld contributor and object of pants-wetting apoplexy by Gamergate’s jerk-squad, has sold a memoir telling her tale of being targeted for one of the Internet’s most grotesque and cowardly pile-ons, and had the film-rights snapped up by Pascal Pictures, with rumors that Scarlett Johansson will play Quinn.
The memoir, “Crash Override: How To Save The Internet From Itself,” will be published in September 2016 by Simon & Schuster.
The irony is rich and delicious. A favorite claim of Gamergate is that the people they have targetted for nonstop rape and death threats had deliberately set out to be terrorized because of the riches they’d receive. This asinine claim and the inexcusable behavior it inspired has actually made the absurd prophecy come true: by behaving in such a terrible way, Gamergate has made celebrities out of its targets, building them a mainstream platform from which to tell their stories, while Gamergate continues to fester in obscurity in the Internet’s dankest sewers.
Quinn perhaps best describes the potential movie and conflict in her proposal: “Gaming and internet message boards used to be niche interests, mostly for young men. In the past few years, however, they’ve gone mainstream. Millions of people — including women and other marginalized people — have taken an interest in the platforms, image boards, and discussion forums that once belonged by default to a much smaller population. Most gamers give zero fu*ks about this. Like the rest of us, they’re just here to play games. But a vocal minority are clinging onto the brand of Cheetos-and-Mountain-Dew exclusionary identity ‘hardcore gamer,’ muttering ‘fu*kin casuals’ under their breath.”
(via The Mary Sue)
(Image:
Zoe Quinn 2014, Cgsaw, CC-BY-SA)