Tropes vs Women in Video Games, Episode 1: Damsel in Distress
Tropes vs Women in Video Games, Episode 1: Damsel in Distress
Here is context, via POETV contributor "American Standard."
Petulant manchildren obsessed with the male privilege they simultaneously rabidly enforce and refuse to acknowledge wet their collective Pull-Ups when a woman made 4th-rate e-famous for her feminist media criticism YT channel, Anita Sarkeesian, proposes a series wherein she picks apart video games. A Kickstarter is launched to fund it, with a goal of $6000.
4chan, reddit, and other strongholds of frustrated, sulky, testosterone-fueled wangst propose to Teach The Bitch A Lesson by flagging her YT vids as hate speech, comment-bombing rape and death threats, and filing baseless complaints with Kickstarter, trying to get the project pulled. Decent People respond by superfunding Anita to 6 figures and making her a modern feminist mini-icon, just for a taste of those delicious MRA rage tears.
Appalled that Sarkeesian didn't immediately crumble to dust under pressure like she's supposed to and the rest of the internet flipped them a collective $100,000 bird, MRAers launch their own laughable little project, "Tropes vs Men," on IndieGogo, Kickstarter's poor country relation. It makes about $3000. It dawns on a precious few of them that threatening to rape and murder a woman who publicly points out sexism just kind of makes her fucking point FOR her, and a halfhearted attempt is made to reel in the trolls. Needless to say, horse was out of the barn on that one.
In the following months, reddit and 4chan are so desperate to discredit Sarkeesian that they invent rumors of her vacationing in Barbados on the proceeds, and even go so far as to fake a Twitter screencap of Sarkeesian buying $1,000 shoes. Really. Google it.
FAST-FORWARD ONE YEAR: After a year of updates, the first episode is out, and it's pretty fucking goodm thoughfully made, and thorough. "Tropes vs. Men," meanwhile, hasn't updated in 6 months, and hasn't donated the money it received as it claimed. Criticism of Sarkeesian has shifted to the hilarious, but just as petulant and telling "That doesn't look like a six-figure video!" and "I refuse to watch this until someone makes a response video pointing out the faults."
And that's where we are now.
