Today’s SavePoint panel, a discussion on the gaming community hosted by South by Southwest, almost didn’t happen. Upon learning that it had been scheduled, opponents of #Gamergate engaged in a concentrated campaign to heckle the administrators of SXSW into canceling it, and at one point, it seemed they had been successful. However, because of the conflict, SXSW had decided to cancel both the SavePoint panel and anti-Gamergate’s Harassment panel.
The Harassment pannel’s organizers successfully negotiated for reinstatement, and SXSW organized a day-long summit on the topic, to include both groups’ presentations, with Perry Jones, Mercedes Carrera, and Lynn Walsh slated to speak on the SavePoint pannel. One of the factors on which the panel’s reinstatement was contingent was that Mercedes would be involved. She took time away from work and traveled to the event at her own expense to be a part of it.
Despite efforts to kill it, the panel took place as planned. However, Mercedes Carrera was removed following her response to a series of self-censorship requests presented by SXSW director Hugh Forest, culminating in a middle of the night demand that she remove some of her own social media posts, apparently on behalf of Randi Harper.
https://twitter.com/TheMercedesXXX/status/709618404252987392
This comes as a surprise, considering that the tweets in question, while critical, were nothing but benign statements of opinion and one comment highlighting Harper’s slanderous comments about Mercedes.
Randi Harper is also the creator of the ggautoblocker, aka block together, and she has Mercedes and the rest of twitter #Gamergate’s users blocked. This raises the question of how she even encountered those tweets, especially given that she’d announced a “twitter break” on March thirteenth.
Her own twitter feed provides the answer. She returned to twitter on March fourteenth claiming to have received (but not offering any evidence of) threatening emails. She took the opportunity to blame… no, not the people supposedly sending them, but Mercedes, to whom she admits she’s never even spoken.
archived 15 Mar 2016 07:37:22 UTC
Harper’s claim to having been intimidated into silence is especially ridiculous, given that the only individual kept from speaking at anything SXSW-related as a result of anyone’s complaints or criticism was Mercedes. As Mercedes stated in her twitter feed, Harper had her panel.
It was a colossal failure, but she did have it.
Nobody attempted to keep her from speaking. Her demands for special treatment were even met, including a gag order put on Mercedes prior to the Harassment panel, and apparently a measure of control over the SavePoint panel. No word as been given as to what qualification Randi Harper has which entitles her to dictate the terms of another group’s event at a convention she’s not employed to administrate.
Her accusation relies on confusing competing ideas with censorship. She’s using the classic Social Justice Warrior formula of exploiting allegations of harassment as a tool of harassment, and complaints of being “silenced” as a tool of censorship. Notice that Social Justice Warriors seem to feel harassed into silence whenever their narrative does not dominate the arena of ideas.
Harper’s crybullying had its intended effect. In addition to the gag order barring her from countering things anti-Gamergaters were saying abou ther prior to the Harassment panel, Mercedes was asked to remove the youtube video of a stream in which she had discussed its failure. Then she was asked to censor her speech on social media, a request she has stated was going to far.
Last time I checked not only am I not getting paid for this panel and flew out on my own dime. Censorship wasn't part of the contract #sxsw
— Mercedes Carrera (@TheMercedesXXX) March 15, 2016
#GamerGate has been censored since day 1 and I came out to Austin to talk about that not be censored yet again. #sxsw
— Mercedes Carrera (@TheMercedesXXX) March 15, 2016
And I have no incentive to be amenable to #censorship when I'm brought out as a free speech advocate for #GamerGate, #sxsw.
— Mercedes Carrera (@TheMercedesXXX) March 15, 2016
As it stands unless I delete personal tweets #sxsw doesn't want me at the panel. As far as I'm concerned my convictions are more important.
— Mercedes Carrera (@TheMercedesXXX) March 15, 2016
She also tweeted screenshots of her response to the ultimatum Hugh Forest had sent her.
While Harper has managed the deplatforming of her critic at this venue, she has failed to prevent her from making public her points on the topics of gamergate, games journalism, and speech issues. Instead, she has given her the opportunity, through this newsworthy event, to carry the pannel’s message to media sources and their wider audience. And while Savepoint was short one panelist, the discussion for which it was created has not been prevented by removing her.
As her pinned tweet pointed out earlier today that it would, the panel went on as scheduled. For all of the effort that went into stopping it and silencing the panelists, it was a success, with attendance including media, according to Open Gaming Society’s tweets following the event.
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Mercedes how would you answer. “Well of course she support issues that affects men and boys they are the ones that pay your bills?” So would you say being a strong advocate for men, has it helped or has it hurt your business model? Success is not a crime, but it can suggest a motive.
From my point of view, I would say that you’re making a hasty generalization or false attribution. Just because Mercedes is an adult video star doesn’t mean that would be the motive for her to support issues that affect men and boys; it’s a weak correlation at best.
You seem to be misrepresenting a question as a supposition; I would ask that you do not do that. The question was very carefully worded to be neutral, and you seem to have ignored that in favour of baseless assumption.
It was a loaded question and XZ answered it with more grace than it deserved.
This question is just a diversion. It really has nothing to do with the actual arguments being presented.
Does she benefit from the spotlight? Probably. So do Harper, Wu, Yiannopoulos et al.
Does it change the validity of their arguments? No.
I don’t see the logic in this, as I imagine men and boys who are highly successful in life and don’t need the kind of help and support Mercedes advocates for have far less time to buy or watch pornography.
If you wanted this accusation to have a basis in reality it’d make more sense she’d want men to be NEETs sat in the house jacking off and pissing in coke bottles all day.
It’s an honest question, I think she is honest, but it occurred to me you could legitimately ask this question, and I wonder how she might answer it. Don’t assume someone has malicious intent simply because you don’t like the question.
And don’t assume that just because your question is ‘honest’ that doesn’t make it a stupid one.
Watching Randi Harper still wield such power is baffling.
She’s like the ultimate evil final boss from your favorite video game: the kind that you thought was destroyed but actually survives to live another day in future sequels, taking on new final forms. She rivals Sigma from the “Mega Man X” series.
She’s relentlessly persistent. She just needs to be relentlessly, persistently challenged, countered, dismissed.
“Harper’s claim to having been intimidated into silence is especially ridiculous, given that the only individual kept from speaking at anything SXSW-related as a result of anyone’s complaints or criticism was Mercedes. As Mercedes stated in her twitter feed, Harper had her panel.”
DARVO is their go-to response.
Obviously this is a stupid question, but are there statements from Mercedes condemning any and all abusive emails sent on her behalf? And if so, where…?
I’m not defending Ms Harper, I’m just wondering whether Mercedes is doing a Trump. Condoning disgusting behaviour from supporters, and then crying victim when there are consequences?
(In case anyone cares, which they won’t lol, imo anyone who takes #gamergate seriously, either pro or anti, is an idiot anyway.)
I think Mercedes should wait until Harper proves she has received abusive emails from her supporters. SJWs have a habit of labeling things abusive that aren’t, and crediting them to groups from which they didn’t originate.
If Harper is doing either or both of those, it isn’t Mercedes who is responsible for that, but Harper.
“(In case anyone cares, which they won’t lol, imo anyone who takes #gamergate seriously, either pro or anti, is an idiot anyway.)” That kind of confirms you to be the concern troll I suspected.
Sue the fuck out of SXSW
The deathray was specifically focussed on Mercedes for the same reason it was focussed on Matt Taylor: Feminism is possessed, always has been, by the Green-Eyed Monster. Granted, the two very gifted targets were targeted via slightly different methodologies, but the cause amounts to the same.
Someone was asking the other day online why it is that the women mens-rights advocates tend to be gorgeous. I can make educated guesses, but so can you; you have an imagination. The common denominator is that, if wymyn are penny-ante jealous of geniuses like Taylor, they absolutely go into meltdown over women like Mercedes.