Well it finally happened. The pro-#Gamergate documentary/hit piece The Sarkeesian Effect premiered at the Gamergate in Atlanta event yesterday — that is, the Jordan Owen version anyway.
Last I checked, Mr. Davis “White-Nationalist-on-Paper” Aurini was accusing Owen of having “grenaded” the project by sabatoging Davis’ latest fundraising attempt. Among other things, Aurini stated that Owen would “release a big, steaming, heap of smelly garbage” and then blame him for the fallout. While I’m sure it was a steaming heap of garbage, I thought there at least might be a sizable audience of #Gamergaters willing to sit through it. Oh how wrong I was.
In fact, if you guessed that fifty people showed up to watch this cinematic abortion, you’d be wrong. If you said thirty, you’d be incorrect as well. Twenty? Nope, still too high. Fifteen? Ten?
Well, according to someone who actually attended the premiere, the total number of people in attendance was nine. Yes, nine. Nine people including Jordan Owen. Here’s MundaneMatt — a #Gamergate supporter whose work has been promoted on the likes of A Voice for Men — asking how successful the premiere was:
Well I suppose I can’t fault MundaneMatt for being a glass-half-full kind of guy, now can I? Still, I’m shocked at such a pitiful turnout, especially considering the marketing that went into it and the big names attached. In fact, here’s some of the promotional images from the official Sarkeesian Effect website:
Hmmm, let’s see. We have Phil Mason, also known as “Thunderf00t”, and Name. It also seems both of them have the same bio:
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Boy, those are some interesting facts about Thunderf00t and Name. I wonder who else made an appearance?
Alright, so we have anti-video game crusader and disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson (kind of ironic that he’s appearing in a pro-video game flick, but I digress), MRA Karen Straughan, and two other people named, er, Name. It also appears that they all have the same bio. What are the odds? How about the bios of Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini, the brains behind the project?
So they also both have the same bio:
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.
Well then. It appears that their website has nothing to teach me about The Sarkeesian Effect, its cast, its crew, #Gamergate, Social Justice Warriors, or Anita Sarkeesian. On the plus side, however, it has given me a deep appreciation for a rather underused and underappreciated font filler text. Kudos to Mr. Owen and Mr. Aurini for making that possible.
Update: I neglected to mention the fact that Davis Aurini’s name is spelled wrong on the website. Or maybe Jordan Owen had Davis Aurini replaced with someone named Davis Aruni after the last falling out. Either way, I regret the omission.
Update 2: I incorrectly referred to Lorem Ipsum as a font, for whatever reason, even though the definition was right there. Probably a side effect of doing such a quick write-up. Or something. Just wanted to clarify since this is actually about ethics in dummy text.
Angry White Men 