Posted by: ahamer 8 years, 6 months ago

(0 comments)

Okay, so - a couple of Paper Mario screenshots from a recent Nintendo event have been floating around. They were carefully juxtaposed in a way that strongly suggests a reference to the vile abuse Zoe Quinn suffered at the hands of gamergate (a controversy where a lying bitter ex managed to channel all the impotent white male rage at a lady and the gaming industry before Donald Trump began gorging himself on their ignorance).

what the fuck did I ever do to you, Nintendo, that y'all had to make my suffering into a fucking joke 

— teënage shirtbag (@UnburntWitch) June 22, 2016

Did Nintendo attack Zoe Quinn? Probably not. I don't even know that I think Nintendo is in the wrong, here. They could have been more in the right, though. Anyone in the gaming industry should know that the first -gate people around gaming will think of is gamergate, and making light of that is a terrible idea. This is a place where they should have been more vigilant, although I tend to believe that this was unintentional.

The important thing to note here is that Zoe Quinn did not put those screenshots together herself. Gamergaters did several days before she saw it, and put it in front of enough people that it got back to her.

That is - gamergaters took stuff out of context to make it look like Nintendo was making light of Zoe Quinn's experience at the center of the most intense, sustained harassment anyone's ever had to face.

Gamergaters twisted Nintendo's media to convince someone else that Nintendo was attacking them.

If you're upset that anyone would believe Nintendo would attack someone like that, well, you should be more upset that someone would try to use Nintendo to hurt others, at Nintendo's expense. If you can't be bothered to be empathetic towards the person who has dealt with the most sustained harassment anyone's ever faced, at least get enough of the facts so that you defend Nintendo from the right people. That would be the gamergaters that are trying to drag them into the mud they live in, not their targeted victims.

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