Friday 29 April 2016

(SATIRE) Anti-harassment campaign groups stage inaugural war games

Groups who campaign against online harassment have tested their readiness to battle internet trolls by staging a series of war games.

Forces from three anti-bullying groups took part in the games, deploying tried and tested online harassment techniques against each other in a battle royale.

The early stages of the simulation saw Crash Override Network (CON), headed by General Zoe Quinn, form an alliance with General Randi Harper. CON is rumoured to specialise in carrying out black ops, although next to nothing is known of its activities. Harper's mercenary group has previously taken credit for destabilising the free speech platforms of her ideological opponents. The two joined forces against General Candace Owens, whose SocialAutopsy website aims to build a public database of people who are alleged to have engaged in online harassment, with the end goal of exposing their purported activities to their families and employers.

Organisers of the games told MODE5:

In the past, Generals Harper and Quinn have pitted their armies against the family of a debt collector, an isolated colony of wizards, and an organisation that works to promote opportunities for female videogame designers. The games will assess their preparedness to fight a war against online trolls and harassers, when they finally get around to doing that.”

The early stages of the skirmish saw the Harper/Quinn alliance softening their opponent with psychological warfare techniques, which included tearful phone calls and a good cop/bad cop strategy. They subsequently targeted SocialAutopsy's revenue streams and mobilized civilians into guerrilla cells to carry out “attack and fade” strikes on SA personal.

Critics remarked that SocialAutopsy did not seem to be aware of the existence of the games prior to the beginning of simulated hostilities, and were immediately forced into a defensive position from which they found it difficult to recover.

Susan Silk, who witnessed the battle while taking a short cut home across the internet, told our reporter:

My boy, Daniel, asked me: 'Mummy, who are the goodies and who are the baddies?'

I replied: 'I don't know son, I don't know.'”

Brigadier Colinbury who acted as an adjudicator for the war games noted disturbing failures of intelligence on both sides, resulting in poor decision making. One security breach in the Harper/Quinn tactical command centre saw the two panicked Generals racing to delete classified material before it could be scrutinised by the enemy.

Colinbury added:

There no winners in war, but that statement is even more true in this case. Quinn and Harper are unimaginative tacticians with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer being swung in the direction of a wall and missing. Owens' falls into the category of aspirant benign dictator, unaware of how utterly monstrous her plans for social revolution are. Mutually assured destruction has never been more well-deserved. Now, how about a nice game of chess?”  

Thursday 14 April 2016

(Satire) Problematic tumbleweeds to be expelled from NeoGAF forums

Image credit: ImperfectTommy / Edmond Meinfelder
Tumbleweeds colonising the emptying hallways and deserted echo chambers of the NeoGAF forums will be expelled from the site by moderators, and will not be allowed to re-enter.

The invasive weeds, which are thought to have been introduced to NeoGAF by junior account holders, sympathetic to GamerGate, were seen rolling against the direction of moderator-approved opinion, and therefore contravening the forum's stringent terms and conditions.

A spokesperson for NeoGAF said:

These roving diaspores are sowing the seeds of free thought across the forums. As of today I intend send a clear message that I will not be taken advantage of, or treated as a mark, by sexually assaulting any tumbleweed I encounter.” 


NeoGAF is regarded as the North Korea of gaming websites. The site's 'inclusive forum experience' eugenics program seeks to expel dissident factions, until membership comprises a community of moderators who will breed with each other to produce the next generation of social justice warrior.

Friday 1 April 2016

(BLUE PILLED) As of today, former GamerGate blog, MODE 5, will fully support social justice causes. We encourage you all to join us.


Important Announcement: As of today, MODE 5 will no longer support GamerGate. Henceforth we will dedicate these pages to signal-boosting causes and individuals who are sympathetic to the regressive tenets of social justice.

A big part of growing up is making mistakes. Part of maturing into a well-rounded adult is acknowledging these follies of youth and taking positive steps to rectify past problematic behaviour.

Since late 2014, MODE 5 has inexcusably adopted a pro-gamer stance; one that is strongly grounded in promoting ethical standards in the videogaming press, and also in the wider media.

To this end we pandered slavishly to the depraved yearnings of sub-human basement dwellers, living in their own filth and squalor, furtively masturbating into soiled Pokemon socks to pre-rendered images of Lara Croft's buttocks. These devolved, sub-specimens of humanity are so repellent, so morbidly obese, so downright male in their appearance, that when they are found dead in their early 20s, usually by their parents, they have often undergone a form of mummification resulting from the bright orange Doritos seasoning, that forms a large part of their diet, and comes to inhabit every nook and fold of their bare skin.

We erroneously campaigned for those upstanding pillars of our community who work in the videogaming industry (be they journalists, games designers or publishers, or cultural commentators serving on awards panels) to provide disclosure of any conflicts of interests that might lead to the game-buying public being misled.

In doing so we called into question the integrity of honest, decent, hard-working people who had done nothing wrong, and who were just trying to make a living, and entertain us with classic titles such as Sim City (2013) and Aliens: Colonial Marines.

We now accept that, like the old school coin-op arcade, Gauntlet, the gaming community thrives on cooperation. If, as a videogames publisher, you become aware that a journalist on an independent magazine or website (one of the people who is ultimately responsible for writing the positive PR for your games) is struggling to make ends meet, then it is morally imperative that you pay them to have sex.

We unreservedly acknowledge that sometimes giving an attractive young person's career a leg up can entail your penis or your vagina becoming involved. The wheels of the gaming industry are, like any respectable industry, generously lubed with cum.

We wrongly adopted a zero-tolerance stance against those who were barely working on the fringes of videogaming, who downed tools and cried victim for financial gain, while inciting hate-fuelled mobs of their supporters to abuse and intimidate those who they claimed were their harassers.

We over-reacted to Gawker media journalist, Sam Biddle's, call for nerds who supported GamerGate to be bullied and degraded into submission. Biddle was right. Bullying builds character and helps to thin out the population. In hindsight, Gawker were right about everything.

We laughed at the broken timer on Zoe Quinn's website, when we should have just pooled our resources with others in the gaming industry and bought her a new clock as 'feel better' present.

We were active participants on a subreddit called Kotaku In Action which actively supports GamerGate. On this subreddit, MODE 5 staff, to our great shame, registered over 9000 sockpuppet accounts, grossly inflating the number of individuals who appeared to support the GamerGate movement. In fact that number is closer to 300.



So what changed?

An arrow to the knee?

A neutered translation of our website's English articles to make them more likely to gain traction and favourable coverage in foreign markets?

Actually it was none of these things.

Last week I was blue pilled.

My turquoise-haired saviour was a San Francisco girl named Taylor. We were the sole attendees at a Randi Harper-sponsored social justice themed dating seminar, at the SxSW festival in Austin, Texas.

During the eight hour lecture, I learned that my white male gaze is a weapon of rape and cultural appropriation that, unlike the heat vision of the X-Men's Cyclops, can neither be tamed, nor focused, by a visor. The best that I can do is lower my eyes and utter mumbled agreement to any suggestions made by those who are less privileged than myself, which is everyone. I learned to accept Taylor's physical blows and verbal insults with good grace. By surrendering centuries of undeservedly accumulated white, cis-gendered male privilege, I became a better person.

That evening I asked Taylor if she would do me the honour of co-editing MODE 5, as I steered the blog in a social justice oriented direction. I am assured that this will be profitable and result in a considerable boost in traffic.

She refused my offer, insisting on total editorial control.

There was something about this girl who has alienated her wealthy family, has failed to hold down a job for more than a few weeks, and whose university thesis was a deconstruction of the Twilight Saga, that made me want to agree to her demands.

The benefits aren't all one way. Taylor says that if I continue to check my privilege and acquire the second job that will be necessary if I am to keep pace with the punishing donation schedule to her PayPal account, then she may allow me to touch her breast under her T-shirt as early as 2020.

As I have mentioned above, as of April 1st, 2016, MODE 5 will no longer promote GamerGate. Henceforth this website will identify as a pro-social justice blog operating in the Victorian era, albeit with steampunk overtones, and access to contemporary Apple computer products and soy lattes.

Our preferred pronouns are:

  • Egad!”
  • Marm.”
  • Oh, crumbs!”
and
  • Ms Harriet Foster-Jones (nee Harry Foster) of Belvedere Mews, Mayfair, London.”

We would prefer readers who engage with this site to do so while dressed as characters from the BBC's Downton Abbey, but with mechanical clockwork arms and brass flight goggles.

To ensure that our future articles do not overstep the boundaries of cultural appropriation, our output will be calibrated by a newly-acquired mechanical scale of oppression. The purchase of this device has been subsidised by firing half our journalists and replacing them with wide-eyed unpaid interns and their otherkin. We now stand proudly as one of the few online publications to employ a recovering sex offender who shares their headspace with a forest of panty-sniffing Ents who were banished from Middle Earth by Gandalf The White.

In keeping with our commitment to social justice we have closed the comment section on this post and have pre-emptively blocked you all on Twitter.