Brianna Wu / John Flynt - Original Thread

[Picklechu]

From the Gamergate Thread, and initially related to my discussion of the Northport Arts Coalition (and my mom's encounter with Proto-SJWs) in this very thread:

Spoiler: The Chair Incident

For my money though, the biggest ownage that NAC recieved didn't come from mom, though - it came from the Secret Service. See, at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton was campaigning for Senate, and had a massive event at Crab Meadow Beach, and me, my brother, and my mother got to go. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with the off-duty Secret Service agents and listening to their tales of hilarity and woe about the myriad of hilarious shit they had seen, whilst my mom and brother were SUPER HYPE for Hillary's Q-and-A session. It was pretty awesome, and they served barbeque. It was a down-to-earth event and a good time was largely had by all.

Anyway, during this, the very same NAC chair that had screamed at me previously for DARING TO USE A PIANO WITHOUT ASKING HOW DARE YOU JAIMAS showed up, with some big, ego-pumping celebratory gift from the Northport Arts Coalition for Hillary. It was a gaudy, fugly, ridiculous-looking chair festooned with American flags and such - an absolute fucking eyesore.

Its sole purpose was to go "LOOK AT ME! I'M AN INDICTOR OF HOW IMPORTANT NAC IS!" Well, sadly, Hillary didn't agree with it being the best gift ever: after thanking said NAC member for it, it was left on the beach where it was given, only for Secret Service agents to move it behind a piece of curtain wall near the dumpster, where it was left for the entire event, and then was abandoned in said dumpster when Hillary's entourage left. The delivering NAC member was quite cross.

Lulz were had.

I was approaching another angle. There's plenty of righties looking for Wu's presence with similar results (I.E. no mention). Hence my theorizing that this is Chair Incident tier.

Her story has more holes than a piece of acoustic ceiling tile.

You know anybody that did work in Republican circles? She said s\he worked with the Bush Administration, and your connections are Democrats.

Card-carrying member of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy TM; can confirm. I haven't looked personally, mostly because I didn't give two shits about Brianna pre-Wupocalypse, but I know several people who have worked for the RNC, in the White House, on the Hill, etc, etc and none of them have ever heard of or found a record of Brianna Wu/John Flynt. I have a feeling that, if she did anything, she was stuffing envelopes somewhere as a campaign volunteer.

She's trying to hard to be offensive or elicit a response, and it's just making her come across as a dumbass.

Par for the course, really.

She's losing relevance and her game is shit. She needs to bait people into attacking/"attacking" her.

 

[Dalcon]

I'm late to the party re. the Cracked article, but here goes. I don't work in the gaming industry, but it kind of undermines the whole "women are mistreated and oppressed in the GI", when Cracked only talks to Brianna Wu for every single fucking article they write about how the industry hates women. If it were so horrible I'd imagine they'd have to use some big sticks to beat away angry women who want their story told.

The women I know in the industry don't seem to have any problems advancing, either inside their companies or moving to better pastures in bigger/better ones. This is of course anecdotal, but it's something.

Also - lol at Frank for is fanart Hugos and at the Hugos for handing them out.

 

[Peace and Harmony]

I'm late to the party re. the Cracked article, but here goes. I don't work in the gaming industry, but it kind of undermines the whole "women are mistreated and oppressed in the GI", when Cracked only talks to Brianna Wu for every single fucking article they write about how the industry hates women. If it were so horrible I'd imagine they'd have to use some big sticks to beat away angry women who want their story told.

The women I know in the industry don't seem to have any problems advancing, either inside their companies or moving to better pastures in bigger/better ones. This is of course anecdotal, but it's something.

Maybe this connection is a long shot and only in my mind, but I'm reminded of the "woman walks around New York for ten hours" video that went viral (I hate that fucking phrase) a few months ago, where all of the catcalls and harassment came from men who were clearly of a low socioeconomic class and were unemployed or underemployed. As many people pointed out in the aftermath, if a single educated, professional man had made any comments about her, it would definitely have been in the video - but none were found.

This doesn't suggest that women don't get harassed but that they have an astronomically higher chance of getting harassed by those from a certain background - what a shocking conclusion!

So while I have no doubt that women probably face tougher odds in tech-related industries, making any generalisation is all the more difficult when it's Brianna and only Brianna complaining about it (or at least she's the loudest one). And that is seriously a fucking shame because the irony is that her antics are doing nothing but helping to trivialise what probably is a genuine issue.

But I reckon it doesn't matter too much if other women are being oppressed. Or don't have $200k to wipe their ass with.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

Card-carrying member of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy TM; can confirm. I haven't looked personally, mostly because I didn't give two shits about Brianna pre-Wupocalypse, but I know several people who have worked for the RNC, in the White House, on the Hill, etc, etc and none of them have ever heard of or found a record of Brianna Wu/John Flynt. I have a feeling that, if she did anything, she was stuffing envelopes somewhere as a campaign volunteer.

To follow up on that, I also spoke with some people over the weekend who were around during the Bush administration and got nothing. So, I decided to ask some people I know who work at the campaign fundraising companies around here and still got nothing. I do have one last possibility I can explore but I highly doubt anyone would remember John Flynt even if he did work there.

 

[Jaimas]

I'm late to the party re. the Cracked article, but here goes. I don't work in the gaming industry, but it kind of undermines the whole "women are mistreated and oppressed in the GI", when Cracked only talks to Brianna Wu for every single fucking article they write about how the industry hates women. If it were so horrible I'd imagine they'd have to use some big sticks to beat away angry women who want their story told.

The women I know in the industry don't seem to have any problems advancing, either inside their companies or moving to better pastures in bigger/better ones. This is of course anecdotal, but it's something.

Also - lol at Frank for is fanart Hugos and at the Hugos for handing them out.

In today's issue of "Wu Can't Do Anything Without Help," I looked into this article, which Dalcon was nice enough to mention.

It's another article done entirely by acquaintances of Wu, as was the case for Rev60's review by iMore and similar reviews by friendly sites like Kotaku and friends. Brianna Wu and Amanda Warner are both from Giant SpaceKat. Katie Williams is a long-time friend of Brianna Wu's with a well-known Anti-GG bias and is largely accredited with, after Gamergate had fist-fucked the credibility of almost every mainstream journalistic site but IGN (and this is a bizarre prospect to anyone familiar with Vidya) attempting to get IGN to be another angle of attack for Brianna and friends. It didn't work and IGN remains, hilariously, one of the only original sites to defy the trend, with comparitively little Anti-GG shitposting. Lastly, we have Mark Hill. Hill is a serial clickbaiter whose articles have toneshifted to stay relevant as Cracked went from reasonably interesting articles to full-on SJW articles. The guy is a relic from a bygone age, and doesn't give a shit about Wu or her her associates; the article itself he didn't even post on his Twitter. It's very clear from the guy's own tweets that he had essentially nothing to do with the article beyond acting as a rubber stamp; literally every link cited in the article is a link to Brianna, Warner, or Williams provided and is relevant to them or the other usual suspects in the Anti-GG camp.

 

[Cynical]

To follow up on that, I also spoke with some people over the weekend who were around during the Bush administration and got nothing. So, I decided to ask some people I know who work at the campaign fundraising companies around here and still got nothing. I do have one last possibility I can explore but I highly doubt anyone would remember John Flynt even if he did work there.

You've put more effort into discovering the truth behind John Flynt's life than he's chosen to lie about it.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

You've put more effort into discovering the truth behind John Flynt's life than he's chosen to lie about it.

Undoubtedly true. But any effort beats no effort. Part of what makes Wu a shitty liar is that she doesn't bother thinking about how her current lie fits with the rest of the lies.

 

[Slowboat to China]

You know, judging by Brianna's approach to game design and storytelling, she might be happier just writing a novel. The Hugos have devolved into the kind of circlejerk that would welcome her with an open spot in the wank brigade. Why on earth doesn't she do that? Is it because there's already too many women in sci-fi? Hard to get oppression points when you're just one of a crowd.

 

[plautistic]

Why on earth doesn't she do that?

holiday@briannawu ~ $ sjw --field=lit --options=original,special,twitter,unique --disable=mansplain --format=pdf
Hello, Brianna. I'm not sure you have enough talent for that.
> MY HUSBAND HAS 4 HUGOS, AND I HAVE THOUGHTS
If you say so. May I offer a suggestion?
> THIS IS MY CULTURE NOT YOURS.
As you wish.
Attempting to output to file "RLC v2.pdf"
segfault

 

[Kosher Dill]

You know, judging by Brianna's approach to game design and storytelling, she might be happier just writing a novel. The Hugos have devolved into the kind of circlejerk that would welcome her with an open spot in the wank brigade. Why on earth doesn't she do that?

In games, you can be the "idea man" and hire minimum-wage flunkies to do all the work, but the literary scene frowns on that for some reason. It probably stems from the Romantic-era lionization of the author as a lone genius, because those 19th-century white heterosexual cislord misogynerds had no idea what it was like to be Brianna Wu.

 

[AnOminous]

To follow up on that, I also spoke with some people over the weekend who were around during the Bush administration and got nothing. So, I decided to ask some people I know who work at the campaign fundraising companies around here and still got nothing. I do have one last possibility I can explore but I highly doubt anyone would remember John Flynt even if he did work there.

I agree Wu is probably lying, but disagree that nobody would remember Flynt, who from all accounts, has been a garish weirdo who would stand out in any social circle because of extreme, obnoxious behavior up to and including the illegal. E.g. accounts of Flynt's behavior at Ole Miss as a notorious campus whacko.

 

[Henry Bemis]

In games, you can be the "idea man" and hire minimum-wage flunkies to do all the work, but the literary scene frowns on that for some reason. It probably stems from the Romantic-era lionization of the author as a lone genius, because those 19th-century white heterosexual cislord misogynerds had no idea what it was like to be Brianna Wu.

TL;DR: Involves work.

 

[j.peikko]

Spoiler: Be sure to tell them, Brianna Wu sent you!

 

[Francis York Morgan]

I agree Wu is probably lying, but disagree that nobody would remember Flynt, who from all accounts, has been a garish weirdo who would stand out in any social circle because of extreme, obnoxious behavior up to and including the illegal. E.g. accounts of Flynt's behavior at Ole Miss as a notorious campus whacko.

I should probably clarify what I meant by nobody remembering her at the last possible option I'm checking. See, I'm starting to think that John Flynt could have been a canvasser for one of the (many) interest groups in the DC area. It would be a gross exaggeration of her importance, but it would be a job where she'd technically work on fundraising and it could be an interest of importance during Bush II's presidency. As for why nobody would remember him there, it's because groups like Fund for the Public Interest hire literally thousands of canvassers for a very short period of time and they don't really interact with main office officials often. Most of them are volunteers or college kids looking for credit/experience and the paid ones don't last long because:

• The pay and benefits are bad.
• Few reasons to keep a canvasser on payroll during a non-election year. You usually hope by then to have transitioned into a more official position within the organization or moved on because of the first point.

So yeah. That's what I'm beginning to believe Wu was doing in DC. It fits what little information we know and it also would make sense why Wu has done their best to not actually give details about it.

 

[Giovanni]

"THIS IS OUR CULTURE, NOT YOURS!"

Wu, I've been choosing to play as the female characters in video games for longer than you've been a female.

 

[ChuckSlaughter]

I just feel confused because you don't view it as terrible, which implies that it has redeeming points to all the glaring flaws in its gameplay and storytelling. Saying it has good animations is nice and all, but it doesn't really explain the leap from an awful game to a pedestrian game. It was an absolutely joyless experience for me, so I'm just quite baffled to hear that someone actually got some enjoyment out of it.

I wanted to give this thing a fair go, and it looked fairly cool at the start. I got very put-off when I realised that the characters would probably be getting on just fine if I wasn't actually playing. So I'd say I had some measure of enjoyment for about 15 minutes. That dropped very quickly when I realised this was going to be about drawing circles and tapping while the characters actually did stuff way cooler than what I was doing. It was a bit "special needs". I'll go draw circles and click the clown face button while you go shoot people. Yay!

I have not played but my impression id;
I think it would have amused me as someone who only plays a few games a year I could see downloading it on a train and watching the dbz style attacks winding up the qtes to the best of my ability until I encountered a qte that didn't matter how well I did or until I got the feeling proper execution didn't amount to much. Or maybe after fighting thr same guy too many times. If I don't really know I'm not driving I'm amused and happy that I'm already good at it. Just my impression from playthroughs as a non core gamer eho has been more into them in the past.

 

[wheat pasta]

"THIS IS OUR CULTURE, NOT YOURS!"

Wu, I've been choosing to play as the female characters in video games for longer than you've been a female.

Which brings me to realize I've been female longer than she has, yet I'm younger. Delicious 'mansplaining,' Banana Wu.

 

[StallChaser]

"This is our culture, not yours!"
Oh god she's turning into the Steven Universe fandom.

"Go home gamer boy!"

 

[_blank_]

Remind me again, which group of people were all up in arms not too long ago when we had all the neckbeards and MRAs and other assorted losers were freaking out about women playing video games?

 

[tepid]

So while I have no doubt that women probably face tougher odds in tech-related industries, making any generalisation is all the more difficult when it's Brianna and only Brianna complaining about it (or at least she's the loudest one).

Brianna on the gaming industry: "Women have it so hard, it's such a sexist industry and just bros helping bros"

Brianna on a student asking to network with her on linkedin: "LOL I have a job, I don't use Linkedin because it's for jobless losers"

I hope the student was some MANSPLAINING DAMN MAN-AJERK and not a good honest woman.