Sam Biddle's Ass (Semi Transcript)

Here are the notes I used for my Video titled "On Sock Puppets, WoW and Sam Biddle's Ass"

Hello and welcome to the sock puppet edition of This Garden of Thorns.

So, this week I had all my comments in articles on The Guardian.co.uk removed and was banned from a forum because I am a sock puppet and they can prove it. If you are unsure what a "sock puppet" is, it means I created a whole new online identity, just to further my online activism.

Nevermind that I've been using the same twitter account since April 2007. Never mind that I have used the same handle on Steam since 2010. Nevermind that I have been active on the Blizzard Websites with the same handle since 2006.

No. Because I chose to start a new blog and youtube account instead of attaching to my old cooking blog, I'm fake.

And there was other stuff, but the abuse from the people on the forums after I was kicked off was the worst.

But some good stuff also happened this weekend. I listened to a very imformative and fun stream on Friday hosted by Oliver Campbell and if you ever have 4 and a half hours to kill please give Threedog's #Gamergate News Radio Ep 4. a listen.

While I was listening to the stream I was able to get my Rogue in WoW up to Level 86, which may not seem like a big deal (I do have a couple of 90s), but it is a HUGE deal. 

My Rogue, Shadow was the first toon I ever created on my own account back in Vanilla WoW and I've had her since 2005 and only now have I got her to L86. So I'm averaging a little over 9 levels a year on her. Because I hate playing her. I said I wanted to do lots of damage and my friends convinced me to make a Night Elf Rogue, and I hated it. I hated all the sneaking around. So I made a Warrior, spec'd Fury and never looked back. (and speccing fury in Vanilla made me VERY unpopular) And seriously, if I can survive refusing to spec prot in Vanilla and BC, then I can survive anything the Anti-GamerGates want to throw at me. Raiders can be viscious about specs.

Also on the negative side this week Valley Wag editor Sam Biddle became twitter famous for tweets that seemed to advocate bullying during National Bullying Prevention Month: Such as "Ultimately GamerGate is reaffirming what we've known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission.

He did apologize.

And then Deadspin editor Tommy Craggs replied to a memo from Jim Romenesko with this gem: But the memo and the apology - over what amounted to a few half assed jokes of the kind my site specializes in - seemed to cross some sort of editorial Rubicon. I don't think you believed a word of what you wrote, and I'm certain that Biddle didn't believe a word of his apology. And those tweets (meaning Biddle's tweets)DID get at the truth of what we've been trying to say about Gamergate: that it's an unserious and contemptible movement that deserves nothing more than half of Sam Biddle's ass. 

Which is how we all ended up talking about Sam Biddle's ass this weekend.

This weekend also brought us "Tweet Like Not Your Shield" and wow. I've never seen such a collection of racist hate speech in my life. I can't even begin to explain how much some of the tweets upset me. I've talked before about how I feel about people who try to silence me and remove my relevancy. These forces were out in streangth this weekend.

But GamerGate and NYS did have a champion in Liz who participated in a Pro vs Anti interview and showed herself to be an articulate, gracious, member of GamerGate. Her interview was very inspiring and postive and the oppositions interview was everything but. 

So, when one of the Literally Whos came out and said that all the women in Not Your Shield were afraid of the GamerGate men I had to step in and bring some love.

So, Gamergate and NotYourShield, I would like to end this week of bullying and hate speech with a message of love and support.

Please remember that we all deserve to live in a world where we aren't belittled by people for our choices of hobbies. We all deserve to live in a world where we are treated with dignity, even by those who disagree with us. We all deserve to have a gaming press, gaming bloggers, and gaming journalists who are ethical and treat us, their readers, their customers with respect.

And please remember that I love you, and together we can win this, not with hate, but with our love for our hobby and our friends.

 Stay on message and be kind.