Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate Available For Preorder Now!
Hooray! I wrote a book!
Basically the first few chapters are about using my experiences during GamerGate as a lens to talk about online abuse, referencing other people who’ve had to live through similar campaigns, and talking about the guts of the structures that make it super suck to live and work online sometimes. The rest of the book talks about my time as an activist, trying to work with tech, the government, and all other manners of institutions to make the internet suck less for other people. I go over what worked, what didn’t, and what surprising lessons I learned working with those giants. Then I focus more on what we as individual people can do to avoid falling for misinformation and how to make the internet a safer place for ourselves, the people we love, and total strangers before finishing on a chapter about moving beyond the abuse. I also try to be funny in places to undercut how much it can suck talking about how an abusive ex boyfriend managed to crowdsource his abuse once I finally walked away from him for good, so it’s a very personal story about things a whole lot bigger than me.
It’s due out September 5th, and I hope people like it and find it useful!
Hi buckaroos. It's Zoe. This is gonna be pretty personal, just so you know ahead of time, but I want to kinda take that risk and be really vulnerable and honest with y'all here.
Yesterday was an extremely bad day. I'm sure it was for a lot of you too. Everyone I know who works in therapy and crisis centers told me it was the longest day of their careers so far. I'm not going to pontificate on the hows and whys of what happened, it's still too rough and fresh for me to want to read any of those, much less write one.
I want to tell you that we are going to keep pushing forward on this game, and why.
The team and I had agreed to not promote this Kickstarter on Tuesday, because we didn't want to take up any time and attention that could otherwise be spent getting folks to vote.
Then Wednesday came around, and it felt like the world was on fire, and I had to entirely step away from the Kickstarter and go to work.
While I am a game developer, I've been living a kind of double life ever since my abusive ex boyfriend painted a target on me for the patchwork golem of hate groups that some folks call the "alt right" (because calling them neonazis or fascists seems too charged I guess?). Despite their best efforts, I didn't back down and continued to assert my right to exist and make games, and being the scrappy jerk I am, I took it a step further. I still make art and program and go to GDC and run kickstarters, but I've also been advocating for victims of abuse, to tech companies, law enforcement, policy makers, and anyone who could make a difference in their lives. Most of this work I do quietly, for about a million reasons not worth getting into, but I think that quietness makes people think the abuse isn't as bad, when really, it was bad before I was targeted and continues to be fairly unchecked. It doesn't help that marginalized people have been talking about these issues for years and have been dismissed. People still ask me if things have gotten better, or if the hate has stopped, and the answer has always been no, but I'm better at dealing with it. I've been trying so hard to balance these double lives, and coming back to making loving, silly, experimental games like this one made me feel like I'd finally rebuilt what I'd lost and found my way back to myself.
Tuesday night, the candidate that is the voice of the people that ruined my life and so many others was elected. If that sounds metaphorical, it isn't - some of the people are even the same. The CEO of Trump's campaign ran Breitbart, making a name for one of its biggest figureheads off my abuse and spreading lies as well as my nudes and family's dox to their fascist fanbase, just as they have done to so many other marginalized people. Trump's election was the outcome I had expected, but had hoped to be wrong about. I don't know if I can accurately convey the personal horror from my connection to all this that accompanied the horror a lot of marginalized folks felt at seeing the hate their country feels toward us (that tended to be handwaved, downplayed, or outright disbelieved) quantified and given even more power.
I've spent going on three years now fighting against the varying aspects of those movements and trying to assist those they've hurt, not just in the online trenches but by showing up and lending one more body to causes like BlackLivesMatter LA. I've ended up with a fair amount of visibility along the way, and it's a response that I take extremely seriously (and am constantly intimidated by). Tuesday night, I watched so many marginalized people responding with fear, insight, calls to action, despair, attempts to rebuild hope, and exhaustion - all of them entirely valid. I felt the same. I put on a brave face and promised people that we could get each other through this, to process their feelings but ultimately get ready for a lot of work and community healing ahead of us. I wanted to remind people that its ok to feel emotionally trashed by this, but that afterward we can also do something about it and don't have to feel powerless and not to give up on resisting and enduring.
Wednesday morning was spent putting out fires. People in my life were falling apart, so I used what crisis training I had to stabilize everyone I could. I told everyone who was worried about me that I was fine and that I've been doing this for three years anyway, the only thing that changed was the scale and the stakes, but that we could rally together and resist the way marginalized people have been doing forever. I didn't want to answer if I was ok or not, because I thought I could outrun the despair if I just kept working and pushing back by helping others who were suffering.
My team asked me if we should update or promote this kickstarter since we're in our final week, and I said I'd think about it.
I'm still recovering from a surgery I had a few hours after launching this kickstarter and have pretty limited mobility, so I had someone come over to help me move my bed against the wall so I could potentially sleep a bit more comfortably. He had basic questions - where to move the things in the way, what if we do this, where my clothes could go, since the layout of the room is awkward. I said I didn't know, and to just kind of leave it wherever, thanked him for trying, and calmly left the room and cried in the bathroom until I hit those ugly sobs where you couldn't talk anymore if you tried.
A stupid question about where to put my clothes broke the emotional dam I was hiding behind. I felt like if I couldn't answer a question like that, how could I answer any of the harder ones I had that I'd been trying to ignore to get through the day and stay strong for others. So many people asked me what they should do, and I did what I could, but nothing felt like enough. Everything ahead feels so uncertain. What is going to happen to me and the people I care about when those who have been terrorizing us were handed even more power for not even pretending to hide their bigotry? How much more power to hurt us are they going to have? How many of my friends already suffering from the worst edges of institutional oppression are going to die? Was everything I'd done the last two years for nothing?
How much stamina do I have left to keep fighting and trying to be strong for other people before my depression or PTSD wins out? What is going to happen to my team, when none of us are straight cisgendered white able-bodied men?
In light of how awful all of this is, is it even okay for me to spend time making an absurdist game about love and queerness?
I couldn't hide my fear anymore and I and broke and blubbered all of this to the first person who asked me if I was ok. As I talked, I calmed down. Turns out, I was a dingus and realized I kind had been a bit shit about practicing for myself what I had spent the last day preaching to other people.
I was too busy trying to provide care for my community that I forgot community goes both ways. I got too wrapped up in telling people that they need to take care of themselves because even refusing to die when oppression wants you gone is an act of resistance. I was too caught up in reassuring friends who couldn't go out and march in the streets due to health issues that they weren't somehow failing to do enough because everyone should be doing what they can according to their means. I spent so much of my time reminding people that they were human and not oppression-fighting robots while completely forgetting that it applied to me too until I was crying over furniture.
When powerful institutions fail you or outright hate you, it's so easy to be overwhelmed by legitimate, knot-in-your-stomach fear. It's a fear that some people are experiencing for the first time, and a fear that others have known and seen reinforced their entire lives. It's a valid fear, and there is a horrifying road ahead of us. While it's overwhelming, it's a fear so many of us share, and community care and individuals standing together to defy it *right now*, each according to whatever we have to give at the moment. Small things count. One of the first things you learn in psychological first aid is the power of small acts that make a difference. Supporting pre-existing community orgs and activists can be something you do to resist. If you're experiencing this fear and worry for the first time in your life, going and reading stuff made by marginalized folks who've been dealing with this forever and writing about it is something you can do to resist. Checking in with people who you know that are likely scared out of their minds right now is something you can do to resist. Showing up to protest or donating time to affected communities is something you can do to resist. And yeah, sometimes simply doing what you need to do to get through a really fucked up day in spite of oppression is resistance. We don't have to give up, we can stand together and work around the margins, each according to what we can do.
Community is, was, and continues to be the thing that keeps me going.
Resistance doesn't mean the entirety of your life has to be marches and protests and organizing, especially if you're a marginalized person, because that means that the only people who get to do things like make art and be silly or have fun are the people who aren't at risk to begin with. Asserting our humanity means fighting back against hatred and violence, but it also means taking care of each other and trying to heal the wounds we sustain in the process. If we're to have any hope of turning a tide, we have to live and laugh and not burn ourselves out in the process of fighting back. Another activist who has been doing this stuff way longer than me and is a god damned goddess once told me that her natural personality is basically that of a pixie, and she had to put that aside so often to go into get-shit-done-mode. Lord knows I have had to do the same, since my default personality is basically that of a sentient dad joke.
But we have to be able to come out of get shit done mode too. We can't lose ourselves. We are all more than our suffering, or our struggles. We deserve not just to survive, but to thrive.
There's a lot of work ahead of me in both of my weird double lives. I will continue to try and help marginalized people survive AND thrive in both. As a game developer, I've always believed that comedy is one of the biggest tools for healing that we have as humans, and I still believe that. As an activist, I've said that supporting and investing in marginalized people's lives and work beyond the parts that center on their suffering is critical for progress, and I still believe that.
So while we as a team, community, and country have a lot of hard and emotionally devastating work to do ahead of us to resist fascism and heal those hurt by it, we have to care for each other along the way. We can't just have the struggle, we have to have room to be pixies and dad jokes and unicorn butt cops sometimes. We have to be able to laugh and take breaths and give each other the room to do the same, because burnout is extremely real. Every level of oppression is important to fight, and while we fight violence and oppression, we want to additionally heal the emotional pain and self-hatred that bigotry leaves on its targets.
We understand & support anyone who chooses to donate money elsewhere to organizations instead of funding our game (like this one, this one, and this one for starters). But we are still going forward with making this (if we get funded), and making the biggest love letter to queerness and self-love possible (if we get overfunded, by trying to loop in more folks like Dante so the message of self love can be delivered by people you may already know of and admire). At no point have our proclamations of Proving Love Is Real been ironic. None of this has been ironic. We are dedicated to working our asses off to celebrate our queerness, even more so now that next year we will have a vice president who supported the use of federal funding to "cure" children of it through abuse.
I know a political post from a game about Vampire Night Busses might seem odd, but we are a queer team and our identities have always been politicized regardless of if we want to acknowledge that or not. So I wanted to make it explicit where we stand and how we feel at such a historic moment, and to reach out to my fellow queers and tell you I love you, I'm scared too, I will continue to fight for and with you, and I want to offer some laughs and lightness along the long hard road we're stuck on. I wanna keep fighting and being strong when I can, while admitting I fall apart too. I want to keep getting better at standing with other communities staring down the same bullshit we are, and helping them resist and live and thrive too. And I want everyone to be allowed to be themselves and give themselves permission to have fun and heal even while we push to make our communities, our friends, and the family we choose whole again.
Double Game Announcement! Project Tingler and FailState!
FINALLY I can tell you what I’ve been working on all year (aside from my book & Crash Override, and one or two things that I still can’t announce yet, of course). What better way to do so with a cool documentary? Check it out here - they followed us to a few of our FMV shoots!
I’m working on two FMV games - one long, one short. The short one you might know as the Chuck Tingle game, which we’re tentatively calling Project Tingler until we come up with a title worthy of this Hugo-nominated author and my best friend. It’s an FMV comedy/erotic (eroticomedy?) dating simulator based on some of the tweets by the good doctor, the extended tingleverse, and the writing of me & my cowriter Cohen Edenfield.
The longer, totally new to everyone though is what we’re using the Tingler to prototype the tech on - FailState! An FMV love letter to passionate failure and all things camp. This is my next big game folks, and we’re already butt deep in development. There might already be ARG bits of the game out there in the universe somewhere right under all of your noses??? Maybe some of it ties into The Tingler????? So many questions that all definitely have answers. Good luck finding them, punks.
Stay tuned, and don’t forget to prove that love is real for ALL who kiss.
I’ve been a huge Topatoco fangirl for a really long time so I’m super happy to be on the site among people WAY COOLER THAN ME. Right now, I’m selling this lovely piece of shirt:
I made that sucker a few years back for myself but now I pass the terrors onto you, dear reader! Grab one if you like tormenting friends who care about fonts! I know I do!
Regarding the current discussions on “toxic fandom”
you know you’ve seen it going around (if you haven’t, god bless). The Discourse™ always is. i’m gonna go ahead and leave aside the fact that any marginalized person can tell you that online abuse is not limited to creators and has been a huge problem with being a person who exists online, and that Leigh Alexander (among other marginalized people who have been bearing the brunt of hostile enthusiasts for years) wrote about this issue two years ago and much more eloquently (and factually accurate). i don’t have any desire to rehash covered ground - and as much as i don’t want to wander into the whirlpool of thinkpieces and internet bullshit, i feel like i have to get this out. i wanna discuss the push-pull that seems to be presented, between creator and fan, and what death of the author might mean for a time when we can more easily distribute the stuff we make AND hear from the people who interface with it. this was originally a really long facebook comment, so forgive the informality but lemme get real here for a moment *turns a chair around and does a riker-sit into it*
i think most people conflate access to creators via social media and other things that typically come with being an artist and semi-public about it with actual knowledge of that person without any of the humanization that might come with *actually knowing someone*. to use a hamfisted metaphor, they see the selfies and think they know the person behind them, but they don't think about what might be hidden out of frame. it's easy to see how fan entitlement to that person's time and energy could get out of control, and frequently does. this is especially true when the creator is from a background that is constantly dehumanized (and leaving identity out of a conversation of abusive fanbases is downright ignorant).
but! but.
fans are allowed to want things in the media they consume. unless you're purely creating art just for the sake of doing it, guess what, the people that see that art matter too (to varying degrees). i don't think we adequately prepare people who make stuff and distribute that stuff for how to handle the opinions people will have about it. we don't teach anyone how to handle success, or to learn what feedback is worth listening to and what isn't, what critiques are made in good faith versus brattiness, or that everyone fails in making their intent manifest in what they've made sometimes and it's just a matter of time until you fuck up too. when you pour your heart out into making something and someone tells you you've disappointed them, it feels shitty. but that shitty feeling doesn't invalidate or mitigate the other person's feelings.
fans AREN'T allowed to abuse creators, impede on their security or privacy or dignity or other parts of their humanity, and that's where the line needs to be drawn. similarly creators can't just throw whatever they want out there for distribution and then absolve themselves of any responsibility for what happens next. the public is gonna have feelings about what you make (if you're successful), and if they don't cross the line into abuse or harassment then it's on you to deal with that appropriately, or at least commit to learning to. "appropriately" basically means "whatever you feel is in line with the kind of artist you want to be, and the kind of work you want to make, so long as you're not being an abusive dongle". you have to learn how to parse what reactions to listen to or else you're gonna get eaten alive. if you become someone who ignores all negative feedback regardless of merit, you've successfully cut yourself off from a pretty huge avenue of growth that'll allow you to bring the things you make more in line with your intentions. if you change everything to suit whoever is yelling at you the loudest this week, you risk completely destroying your voice as an artist while you chase an impossible goal of making something that every single person ever loves. you get to decide what your priorities are, if you feel like the feedback is valid and applicable you can grow and do better. similarly if you think it isn't, you can ignore it and vent or process it however helps you deal with the strain that comes with being an artist. but you can't decide how other people feel about your work or what they want from it. it sucks. but it's part of the job.
there’s a ton of ways to deal with feedback (again - feedback, not abuse, which is totally different), positive or negative. when it’s legit, for me, sometimes this means issuing apologies, fixing something, promising to do better and meaning it, or thanking the person taking the time to reach out to you about how you’ve fucked up (you’d be surprised how much simply acknowledging someone’s feelings & efforts does to diffuse a situation). sometimes it means feeling horribly guilty and figuring out where to process that guilt in a way that doesn’t make things worse, and then doing something to make sure i don’t fuck up like that again and make things right if i have the ability to do so. not all of these require responding - which is something that fans need to understand too. there are plenty of times I’ve seen (both positive and negative) feedback of something I’ve made and put out there, not responded, but quietly agreed with the person and learned from it, changing how i do things.
there are also a lot of times when i haven’t responded at all to shitty bad-faith garbage that’s been thrown my way, but still felt fucking horrible about it. defensiveness, or trying to reason someone out of a situation they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place is not generally a solution to anything. i’ve probably learned that one at an accelerated rate for what are probably obvious reasons - when every time you fart a new conspiracy theory is born, you quickly learn what is beneath you. you will also have really bad days where even if your smart brain knows someone is screaming about you in bad faith, your heart brain still feels like shit about it because “should” is the most useless word in the english language. but you have to find an outlet for those feelings that is in line with what you want to do and who you want to be. sometimes i talk to other creators (because everyone i’ve met so far has days like this), sometimes i make more stuff, sometimes when the shittiness is ridiculous enough to find the humor in it, i do dramatic readings making fun of whoever is being a turd or throw an angry bird off the roof about it.
if i’m not sure if feedback is legit, or if i really need to BE sure, i check with people in my life who will tell me the truth. not just people who will be blunt, but people who know what the hell they’re talking about (really helps to have a circle of friends and colleagues with a wide range of life experiences for this so you’re not in an echo chamber) and who i have the kind of relationship with where i know i’m welcome to ask for gutchecks from them. the point is, the only way i’ve been able to keep making stuff is by sorting good faith and bad faith feedback, and trying to adjust or process appropriately.
literally none of this has to with abuse, harassment, threats, or any personal violations. i think by now, you probably understand my feelings on those. if not, hey! hi! this is my blog. enjoy your stay. sorry i say “fuck” so much.
if i can oversimplify for a moment here, fandom isn’t the problem. fan abuse is half the problem. being unprepared to deal with people reacting to your work is the other half of the problem. we can't say media matters while trying to wash our hands of the impact of what we create at the same time. we also can't say our impact is irrelevant when we throw something out there into the world because that's just blatantly sticking our heads in the sand. even if it’s a superhero comic. even if it’s sci-fi. even if it’s video games.
and we sure as shit need to stop equivocating people wanting representation with assholes sending death threats, or leaving identity out of conversations surrounding abuse.
similarly, we can’t pretend that this kind of behavior is limited to geek/fan culture. my casework at crash reaaaally proves otherwise.
tl;dr - fans are passionate and that can take a lot of forms. creators are sensitive and that can take a lot of forms. what matters is not being a piece of shit to each other, and trying to make sure our actions are in line with our intentions.
Oh boy it’s another totally unedited blog post about my legal proceedings because apparently I don’t learn!
Last time I wrote about my legal entanglement with Eron Gjoni, the man who started GamerGate after I walked away from him, it was after asking the DA to drop the criminal harassment charges that the state wanted to bring against him.
I touched on the ongoing appeals process for the restraining order, and how it ironically tied me to my abuser even more, and became another tool for him to control my life and send the mob after me. The detective on my case had warned me that this might be an outcome with someone as chronically abusive as he is. While I had successfully persuaded the DA to drop criminal charges because the courts involvement was making everything worse, his appeal was still going. Despite his flat out refusal to abide by it (he actually started actively siccing people on my partner at the time immediately afterward), and despite my move to vacate my own restraining order to get him to finally fuck off, he was determined to milk it for everything he could - both the attention from GamerGate, the renewed harassment against me and my family, and the money he was soliciting.
What this meant for me is that for the last year or so, despite having relocated and completely reorganized my life to keep him and his new friends away from me, I’d have to deal with the legal proceedings. This essentially turned this man I had spent two years trying to get away from into a pop-up ad in my life. This is really bad news for someone with PTSD who has to take pills to stop having nightmares about their abuser. It constantly interrupted any kind of recovery or closure I could make for myself, and a call from a lawyer about some new bullshit he was pulling, or a flood of gross links to his diatribes on Kotaku in Action from his new best friends in my mentions would hamstring whatever I was trying to do. Just before I had to take the stage at XOXO, I had to talk with my lawyers about asinine legal moves that he was pulling. I was on the other side of the country and I still couldn’t get away from him.
I’ve been in a holding pattern since the appeals court heard oral arguments on a restraining order that had not only been destroyed, but would have already expired on it’s own months prior. My pro-bono counsel was optimistic, since the courts seemed to see that my ex was using them as a talking point since he had long since had any legal relief they could have granted him. I was told to expect a phone call, probably, in the next 3 months, though sometimes courts take longer. I’ve been holding my breath ever since.
The good news is that it’s finally over. The courts ruled that I acted within my rights, and dismissed his appeal as moot. I had gone into this asking that the court drop this and let me move on with my life, and they reassured my legal right to do so. My ex wanted to use me to set first amendment case law - what happened was a ruling that reassured the rights of domestic violence survivors to modify and terminate their restraining orders if they’re causing more harm than good. This was the outcome I wanted - not just for myself, but for anyone else that’s tried whatever they could to get away from their abuser without fully realizing how the legal system might make everything worse.
Quoth the court:
“We agree with Quinn's argument that this rule does not apply in the sui generis context of c. 209A abuse prevention orders. Pursuant to statute, an abuse prevention order that has been issued can be modified "at any subsequent time." ... This provision serves to protect victims of abuse by allowing them to tailor the terms of abuse prevention orders as (often rapidly) developing circumstances may warrant... "A victim of [domestic] abuse is in the best position to decide what course of action will provide more safety. At a given time, an abuse prevention order might exacerbate the plaintiff's danger”. With the parties having a recognized statutory right to seek modification of existing orders, it follows that a pending appeal of a 209A order does not deprive the trial court of its ability to modify the order.”
The courts found the “deluge of harassment” to be “uncontested”, that despite my ex’s constant bullshit claims “nothing in the record suggests that Quinn committed a fraud on the court”, and that my ex still has to obey court orders even if he doesn’t agree with them.
I’ve uploaded the court’s opinion here. It’s not too heavy on the legalese, and has a pretty good tl;dr of this last of the legal battles.
Naturally, his fan club is trying to spin this as a win because of a single footnote that lower courts should generally care about free speech, despite the court stating that the entire appeal is moot. I find my ex and his ilk clinging to a single footnote as a victory in a 12 page document detailing his complete failure to be nothing more an apt metaphor for his role in the last two years.
They’re trying to claim it a a loss because I’m choosing to walk away from a legal battle that hasn’t protected me, but an end to this is all I’ve ever wanted from the beginning.
I cut contact with Eron because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he launched GamerGate. I didn’t retaliate against him because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he invaded every digital space that I occupied to spread his hate & yell at my friends and fans. I got a restraining order because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he used it to solicit funds from GamerGate while promising them more nonsense about me while “joking” in their raid IRCs about breaking into my house while I couldn’t go home. I dropped charges and gave up on having to see or hear him ever again because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, and he doubled down in spite of that.
Now that the courts have said “no thank you”, I’m hoping that this is finally the end, and that maybe we *both* can move on with our lives. I’m hoping that I finally have the abusive creep out of my life, even if it won’t undox my friends and family, cure my ptsd, undo the harm caused to my friends and the industry, or fix the fact that to this day, strangers still claim that I fucked a writer at a press outlet that I *already had written for* simply to obtain coverage (that never existed) of a free game about mental health.
But it’s a pretty fuckin big milestone in the healing process.
By all signs, this marks the end of nearly two years of having to bag and tag my ex’s abuse against me for courts, judges, and law enforcement officers who have a loose understanding (at best) of what they’d even be looking at, and a seeming lack of resources to obtain any of that themselves. I don’t have to plan my life around court dates anymore, or get calls about what new stunt the man who ruined my life is pulling this time that I absolutely have to respond to or face legal repercussions. That alone is a tremendous weight off my shoulders. The Abusive Ex Popup Ad feature on my life is hopefully disabled - or at least this aspect of it is. His abuse is still a perpetual motion machine, and the threats and harassment is still the background noise of my life and likely always will be. I still have a way to go before I’m what I’d consider out of the woods, both in terms of unfucking my personal situation, healing the mental and emotional scars the last two years have left, and fully being able to talk about GamerGate in a past tense way. Creep Throat can still file for additional appeals, and after the last two years I’m not going to assume anything is impossible.
I can’t unfuck the last two years, not for me or anyone else he’s hurt. But this is at least one win. This is regaining control over my life and being able to finally ignore bargain bin Kilgrave. This is me being able to joke about how shitty my ex is without being afraid of how his lawyers will use it to justify what he’s done to me as they have previously. This is reaffirming the rights of domestic violence victims to walk the fuck away when they choose to. This means more energy for Crash Override and my ridiculous comedy games and the people I love.
Finally, I can move on from this ridiculous legal battle and focus on my energy on my ridiculous unicorn smut games.
