What's most ironic about this is that if Zoe had apologized, taken her game off of Steam, and if the game journals had washed their hands of the people responsible (or had at the very least put them on suspension) people probably wouldn't have kept digging. They should have just cut their losses and regrouped after everyone had forgotten about it. For career liars they sure are bad at this.
All analysis is that learning from previous examples (read: things like the Anita debacle, which turned into a shitstorm
because of assholes on both sides), she realized that there truly
was no such thing as bad publicity.
At the risk of sounding mean-spirited, someone like Zoe thrives on professional victimhood. Attacking her head-on doesn't work, because, like many trolls and lolcows that use this maneuver, she knows how to exploit it. Call her out on douchebaggery, and you're a misogynist. Call her out on conflicts of interest, and you're against women. Point out how a
very fascinating interview with the creator of Bayonetta explained that the entire purpose of the game was to create an empowered female protagonist with practically
weaponized sexuality, and you're told you're for the objectivication of women.
And because there's
never a shortage of useful exploitable morons, this strategy tends to work... In the short term. You of course have assholes like
this insufferable fucking simpleton, whom being associated with is like having that uncle you don't like to talk about that was in the Klan coming to visit, because their presence does as much harm to your cause in the long term as it does good. But the professional victims don't care about this. As long as you're willing to screech for them, you're a tool in their arsenal that they can and will use like a blunt instrument. That this tactic ultimately causes more problems than it solves isn't the focus; simply that the professional victim can milk this for all it's worth. Things like self-awareness and shame need never enter the equation.
This is not a behaviorism limited to the so-called SJW community, either. It's been seen in its polar opposites in the MRA community, and things having
absolutely nothing to do with it. Indeed, you can see variations of this organism in many of our lolcows. Take CWC's community, for example - Chris isn't smart enough to use this actively, but he damned well tries to exploit "I'm a constant victim, and thus am important" angle
at all times. In the role of "useful idiot," you have Anna, who functionally screens Chris from any legitimate criticism he'd face on his Facebook for doing shit that would have gotten any lesser 'tard arrested.