Crash Override: How Zoë Quinn exploited vulnerable trans and queer people for fame and profit
TW: Abuse, harassment, sexual harassment, suicide, rape
There is an old saying, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. That saying unfortunately seems to apply perfectly to the “Online Anti-Harassment Task Force” Crash Override Network (CON), which has had former members coming forwards to testify and get their stories out there; stories of being exploited, manipulated, and lied to by Crash Override’s co-founder and CEO, Zoë Quinn.
There is a lot of background information and lore that could be discussed, but I will try to keep it simple as much of it is neither here nor there and the focus is solely on Crash Override Network and how and why it ironically became a tool for abuse.
Forged in Battle
As many of you are aware, GamerGate began in 2014 and was essentially an online battle in a larger culture war, with an emphasis on battle. Participants in this online fracas used every dirty trick the dark recesses of the Internet had developed, gleefully partaking in doxxing, SWATing, targeted harassment, account hacks, death threats, rape threats... there were even bomb threats called in. For them, anyone on the ‘other side’ of the conflict was fair game and no holds were barred.
It was perhaps the Internet at its worst, and the GamerGate controversy was reported on in magazines, newspapers, TV programs, and online news sites around the world. The Federal Bureau of Investigation even had a GamerGate case file, although they never made any arrests.
In 2016, a former Crash Override Network member leaked a small amount of logs dating from December 2014 and January 2015, these logs were from a secret chat group that was being used by Quinn and others as a support group and operations room to organize their battle against GamerGate. Recent revelations by another former CON member (who can be seen in the chat logs as Secret Gamer Girl) states that the group was made by people who had gotten involved in GamerGate and eventually they invited Zoë Quinn and she took over as “leader” and began inviting in anyone who publicly praised her or attacked GamerGate.
With Zoë Quinn in command, the group became even more dedicated to thwarting the GamerGate supporters and helping the woman they believed was their friend. Scrolling down this list of highlights from the chat logs gives a good sampling of how this group was operating, including doxxing, discussions about getting people fired and blacklisted, organizing attacks on specific people, going after websites they disliked, trying to ‘destroy’ people, etc.
With increased activity came increased paranoia, and members of the chat were instructed to ramp up their internet security and needed to get two-factor authentication in order to join the “serious chat” where their clandestine attack plans were discussed and Zoë let her personal demons spill forth more than usual.
Named in part as a reference to the movie Hackers, Crash Override Network was born out of that chat group and was envisioned by Zoë Quinn to be a “small guerilla group that can actually fucking fight back.” The following is excerpts from a chat log dating from January 4th, 2015 (Zoë uses the name drinternetphd) and details the three prongs that were supposed to be part of CON: a “crisis center” anonymously staffed “almost exclusively by survivors of this kind of thing,” resources and articles to help people with information security and the like, and “aftercare” and support. She also mentioned wanting to get donations for legal fees and “relocating people to safe houses while they were being swatted.”
[04/01/2015, 6:13:33 AM] drinternetphd: we were thinking of setting up 501c3 status so we could accept funds from these aformentioned benefactors [04/01/2015, 6:13:38 AM] drinternetphd: for like [04/01/2015, 6:13:51 AM] drinternetphd: legal fees and relocating people to safe houses while they were being swatted [04/01/2015, 6:14:00 AM] drinternetphd: but [04/01/2015, 6:14:05 AM] drinternetphd: maybe we could think about a lobbyist [04/01/2015, 6:14:12 AM] drinternetphd: I mean, stretch goals.
[04/01/2015, 6:14:25 AM] drinternetphd: the idea is 3 pronged [04/01/2015, 6:14:35 AM] drinternetphd: 1. crisis center for those currently being attacked [04/01/2015, 6:14:45 AM] drinternetphd: staffed almost exclusively by survivors of this kind of thing [04/01/2015, 6:14:57 AM] drinternetphd: all anon except alex and I so they can't be targetted [04/01/2015, 6:15:05 AM] drinternetphd: anon to anyone but us of course [04/01/2015, 6:15:12 AM] drinternetphd: so there's still internal accountability [04/01/2015, 6:15:16 AM] drinternetphd: and it's invite-only [04/01/2015, 6:15:23 AM] drinternetphd: and you have to like, have a skill we can use [04/01/2015, 6:15:44 AM] drinternetphd: 2. is prevention. put out resources on infosec and stuff like that [04/01/2015, 6:15:55 AM] drinternetphd: have a wing of it dedicated to writing pieces and advocacy and shit [04/01/2015, 6:16:05 AM] drinternetphd: 3 is aftercare. support and such for survivors [04/01/2015, 6:16:31 AM] drinternetphd: so small guerilla group that can actually fucking fight back
With Zoë Quinn as the CEO and her at-the-time boyfriend Alex Lifschitz as COO, Crash Override Network was officially launched in January 2015 and Quinn and the group used their connections to soon became a partner of Twitter’s Trust and Safety and become fiscally sponsored by Feminist Frequency. Depending on your thoughts about Quinn, this either stank to high heaven or was amazing, that she had been able to not only survive so much abuse but had started an organization to help others.
For the most part, that concept for CON doesn’t sound too bad, right? Getting whisked away to a safe house and having a support group on demand for you if a target is put on your back sounds good. A little too good to be true..
No Fame, No Service
According to the extremely thick bunkum on its Wikipedia page, CON is supposed to offer victims an arsenal of support as well as “a unique plan of action for each victim,” no matter who you are or what you believe in. This is such a blatant lie and it is absurd that it is on Wikipedia.
I’m not going to be as crass as to say that Crash Override Network did nothing for anyone besides Quinn herself (who got free PR and money from it) as some people out there did get help, however it is tragically easy to find folks who came to them in their hour of need and were either given a cold shoulder or flat out ignored.
According to a former CON member, this was 100% intentional and CON would screen emails and skim them to find anyone who was famous and could offer them publicity. She also states that CON once stopped helping someone because “the client got fired and no longer had a platform to sing [Crash Override’s] praises.”
This same insider recently explained more about how CON worked and selected victims to help or ignore. According to her, it was a “bait and switch” and victims would either get the brush off with a link to the CON Tumblr or other page, or if you were a journalist or a celebrity you would be given the deluxe package and have live help from the CON chat room. In exchange, these people would then go on to praise Zoë and their experience with CON (remember that gagworthy Wikipedia entry? This is likely how those sources exist for it), which was far different from the standard link to Tumblr that the less important victims would be given.
If you poke around on social media you can find plenty of stories like poor Andrea’s in the image above. People desperately tweeting at the abandoned CON Twitter account or bitterly describing being ignored or brushed off. There was no “whisked away to a safe house“ for vulnerable folks being doxxed. Maybe - maybe - for the ‘famous’ victims who were given the full PR experience, but not for the 99%.
One transwoman who had been involved with the fight against GamerGate since 2014 has said that she heard countless horror stories about Crash Override and what an “incompetent shitshow” it was.
I’m still seeing people naively suggesting Crash Override to victims as recent as this week. The information you can find there may be useful for your situation (and I don’t think anyone will really dispute that as it is a lot of common sense info they compiled), but good luck getting what remains of the “task force,” if anyone is even still around, to give you that private support network that all the fawning articles promised. Unless maybe you’re Brad Pitt...
Crashed
TW: This chapter will look at the personal experiences of CON members, many were transwomen and on the verge of homelessness and considered suicide after being used and thrown out like garbage by Zoë Quinn.
In the years since the founding of CON, Zoë Quinn has severed ties with the majority of the chat group/CON members, only staying friendly with Katherine Cross, Randi Harper, and a few other well-known activists who were involved. While Quinn likely had no involvement, Harper would eventually add a large number of their former so-called friends to her anti-GamerGate/anti-harassment blocklists, which became a point of contention for the cast out members of CON. Especially since they had helped Quinn and Harper spread the blocklists through various industries, which they were all now effectively blacklisted from.
Throughout 2015 and 2016 you can trace the fracture of CON as Zoë Quinn stopped interacting with the folks from the chat one by one on Twitter, she even kicked them off her private “Primeape” Twitter account. One of the first to be outcast was the transwoman Regina, who was quoted and screencapped in the previous chapter. A military veteran with PTSD, hers is a sad tale that is unfortunately all too common for people, especially returning veterans. According to Regina, Quinn kicked her out of CON after learning about Regina’s PTSD. Thankfully, Regina was not scared of Quinn and has provided a lot of information about what really was going on at CON.
Zoë Quinn promised vulnerable folks compensation and more for laboring at CON - they never saw a cent
At least three former CON members that I know of have come forward and said that Zoë promised them financial compensation or more for the hours and hours of work they were doing for her.
Regina has been the most vocal about this and has been calling out Quinn for profiting off their labor for years.
SecretGamerGirl says that Quinn promised them safety, steady pay, housing, and psychiatric care, promises Quinn obviously did not honor, to the chagrin of the desperate, destitute transwomen who were doing work for her with the promises keeping them hopeful that their lives would get better. This was particularly cruel of Quinn to have done to a bunch of transwomen in poverty and at risk of houselessness, and another former CON member SFtheWolf (SF in the chat) corroborates that compensation was offered.
SecretGamerGirl also says that Quinn got bored of CON and decided to shut it down in early 2016. Quinn promised them once again that she would start paying those who were not “too risky to deal with” a steady salary. Hmm, why would anyone involved with an anti-abuse support group be “too risky to deal with”? Needless to say, SecretGamerGirl and the others did not get paid for giving over a year of their life to Zoë’s CON.
CON was concocted as a PR scheme for Zoë Quinn and her Crash Override book
This was touched upon in some of the screencaps in the section above, but Quinn had convinced CON that they should work on her book for her. If you remember, the book was delayed and had to switch publisher, according to SecretGamerGirl the delay was caused by Quinn having to remove all their contributions.
According to Regina, CON was always a, well, con and had been devised as a scheme to get free PR and labor by tricking abuse victims into thinking they had volunteered for a support group and could do some good for the world.
These claims and others are backed up by yet another CON insider who anonymously leaked an early draft copy of Zoë Quinn’s book. The draft. which I guesstimate to have been (at least in part) from around April 2015 based on one of the paragraphs, contains cringe-worthy praising of the infant Crash Override Network but also of Randi Harper’s Online Abuse Prevention Institute, the latter praise seems to have been cut for the final product from what I recall. The draft is actually a pretty interesting look into the behind the scenes mindscape of Quinn, and includes more cringe such as Zoë misgendering and deadnaming an infamously harassed transwoman (Christine Weston Chandler) while trying to name drop and pretend that she cares about her (Zoë cares so much about her she couldn’t even get the name in the right order... This also did not appear in the final copy).
A Short introduction: I am a victim of online abuse, but I am a victim of lies. At one time, Zoe Quinn and Crash Override Network gave me a sense of agency and made me feel like I had a way to fight back against my harassers. When I worked together with her, Zoe promised to protect and suppport people like me. But, eventually, I realized how ruthless Zoe is, and how deeply she exploited the vulnerable trans and queer people around her to achieve her goals. This has been eating at me for a very long time, but I can't remain silent any longer. It is time for me to speak truth to power.
Despite the promises that Zoe made, we were exploited for the thousands of hours of work we put in behind the scenes to get her exposure. The longer I was involved with CON, the more I realized that if anyone got in Zoe's way, they quickly found themselves alienated from their in-group and on the receiving end of even more harassment. It took me too long to figure out what the a lot of people already knew. The chatroom logs that were leaked from CON last year are real (you can read them here: http://archive.is/eBVCb ). They reflect what I experienced: Little is done to help actual victims of internet abuse, depending on how much Zoe thinks that she can benefit from it. Most of the time, the chatroom discussion was focused on attacking people that Zoe didn't like, including former allies that had earned Zoe's ire. Which brings me to why I am writing this: Below you will find an early draft of Zoe's book. Unlike the book Zoe is publishing this fall, this rough draft was mostly written by Zoe herself. The notes that Zoe has left to herself on each unfinished page ooze with cynicism, and show how Zoe really feels about the half-truths and tall tales she weaves about herself. If you care about addressing actual issues of online harassment, please don't support this person or her group. While tons of folks have lifted her up as a paragon of good in the very real and very important fight against abuse, Zoe is actually an abuser and exploiter of vulnerable people.
CON engaged in targeted harassment, attacked and gas lit ex-members
Regina states that CON was not only engaging in targeted harassment under orders of Zoë Quinn and Lifschitz when she was still with them, when she was exiled CON began attempting to harass her while Quinn sat by and did nothing.
Regina also says that CON stores personal info on victims who come to them and has released that info to harm people they don’t like.
SecretGamerGirl says that she became the subject of a bizarre gas lighting campaign after she earned Zoë’s ire. This gas lighting resulted in multiple suicide attempts.
“I contacted Quinn/Crash Override for help, expressing that I was afraid for my family, and frankly considering suicide as a means of protecting them.
Quinn personally messaged me in response, the first conversation we'd had in months, explicitly denying me even any help in locking down my stuff, and making some cryptic statement about not wanting to get involved.”
Nobody at CON was vetted, a sexual predator likely got access to victims through CON
If I remember correctly the first big scandal that rocked CON was the outing of one of their founding members and chat room comrades as a sexual harasser. UnseenPerfidy (Rob in the chat logs) sexually harassed over 20 - TWENTY - women, and those were just the victims that came forward. There is speculation that Rob may have used his position with CON to obtain contact info of vulnerable women which he then sexually harassed. Rob would use threats of suicide and self harm to try and coerce the women.
CON/Zoë’s response was to deny that Rob had anything to do with them, despite that clearly not being the case (the logs proving he was complicit with CON would be leaked later in the month). When another chat/CON alumni called Izzy Galvez was caught in a sting operation after trying to doxx a woman, CON once again denied he had anything to do with them (Galvez was used for PR, with CON claiming they had stopped a SWAT attempt against him, somehow)
Remember, nearly everyone at CON was just some random person who caught Zoë’s eye during the height of GamerGate. There was likely no training, no screening - nothing that an organization like that should have. She may not have even known who they really were.
Zoë Quinn put wolves in sheeps’ clothing, and women may have been sexually harassed because of it.
Zoë Quinn emotionally manipulated the folks she had convinced to become CON, told them she trusted them, she loved them
This is really not surprising at all, whether it was with malicious intent or not, Zoë Quinn knew just what to say to convince a bunch of abuse victims to get wrapped around her finger. She made them think they meant something to her, I’ve seen some say they thought she was their best friend, but she twisted the knife into their backs all the same.
According to SecretGamerGirl, dozens of her friends were driven into suicide attempts thanks to the Zoë.
I am absolutely done defending someone who took my career, my support, and my safety from me, and driven dozens of friends to suicide attempts, and I am done with everyone else who knew about all this and keeps pretending otherwise.
Epilogue
This week, Zoë Quinn retweeted a tweet from Randi Harper which showed herself and Quinn playing Overwatch together. I saw some of the reactions to this unfolding in real time, it was heartbreaking. So many of Zoë’s former friends at least were mildly content in the thought that Zoë had thrown Harper out into the cold just like them, especially with Harper’s blacklisting of them all, but they were wrong. They were livid.
I have seen so many people who were snubbed by Crash Override and Zoë Quinn come forward to tell their stories, to bond with and support each other. SecretGamerGirl planned to take her story to the grave but seeing her friends be hurt by Zoë yet again let her finally tell her side of the years of manipulation and abuse she had endured at the hands of Zoë Quinn. Other victims have been able to share their frustrations with Crash Override.
Crash Override is effectively dead. Done. Finished. Kaput. Most of the volunteers have been cast aside by Zoë, her promises to pay them as empty as their old Skype chat room where it all began.
The Crash Override Network “crisis helpline” has been officially dead since December 2016, despite promises that they would be “working fiercely to keep the downtime as short as possible.” They didn’t even bother announcing this on CON’s social media, that’s all lying dusty and dormant as well.
The Crash Override Network Twitter account has been abandoned, with its last activity in April 2016, well over a year ago.
Their Facebook group was also left to rot with no updates since March 2016.
Their subreddit is also dead and whomever was running it doesn’t even use reddit with that account anymore.
Last but not least, their Tumblr is also abandoned, with their last post in March 2016.
Zoë got what she wanted out of CON a long time ago as evidenced by it (and by extension, the victims hoping to be helped by it) being abandoned, and the book it existed to give PR to and a namesake for is finally out. A family friend and her own mother both admitted Zoë lied about her childhood in the book, which makes everything else suspect, and matches with pretty much every other horror story you hear from people who have personally dealt with Zoë Quinn and her endless lies and false promises.
Crash Override Network was a con at worst, at best it was a toy for Zoë to play around with and milk for attention until she got bored with it. Please stop telling people to give their sensitive information to an organization that was inept in its heyday and even downright malicious, let alone an organization whose founder(s) clearly got bored of and left it to rot. Link to their guides if you must (after all, a small army of transwomen put their hearts and souls into compiling the info for Zoë), but please stop giving people false hope that Zoë is going to help them and give them more than just a link to a Tumblr or PDF file.
Thank you for your time, and a big thank you to all the former Crash Override members who have been brave enough to get their stories out there and let us know the sad truth. /)