Stephen Colbert Takes On (And Takes Down) Gamergate With Anita Sarkeesian
Last night The Colbert Report welcomed Anita Sarkeesian on the show, creator of Tropes vs Women in Video Games which is a feminist critique of the representation of women in popular games. She was on the show to discuss Gamergate, which basically started when some gamers questioned the ethics of video game journalists who were too close to the game developers they were supposed to be critiquing.
But it wasn't really about that, instead it descended into a nasty tirade of abuse from some gamers who saw it as an opportunity to harass certain women who work in the gaming industry, threatening them with violence and other nastiness because they didn't like them encroaching on or criticising their video games.
Because of her video series and being quite a public figure Sarkeesian had a lot of hate directed at her, with bomb threats and even someone threatening to commit a shooting massacre at a university she was due to talk at. All way out of order and totally unnecessary.
Colbert does a great recap of the movement in the video above, peppering his explanation with hilarious takedowns of the arguments coming from the Gamergate community. Arguments that he perfectly spoofs in the below tweet.
Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet is feminist iconography, symbolizing the idea that jets are hard to draw.
To get an idea of how the Gamergate community reacted to Colbert's segment with Sarkeesian just check out some of the comments in the screengrab below, taken from Comedy Central's Facebook post of the video. Surprise, surprise they're not too happy.
Oh dear. If want to read more about it all, Clickhole have done a spoof roundup of the whole story, which actually works really well as an explanation as well as a satirical put down.