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From geek masculinity to Gamergate: The technological rationality of online

abuse

Article  in  Crime Media Culture · February 2017

DOI: 10.1177/1741659017690893

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From geek masculinity to Gamergate: The technological rationality of online abuse
Michael Salter

Recommended citation: Salter, M. (2017) From geek masculinity to Gamergate: The

technological rationality of online abuse. Crime Media Culture, forthcoming.

This tweet from video game developer Zoe Quinn describes the ongoing effects of the

orchestrated abuse campaign that became known as “Gamergate”. Quinn satirically

nicknames herself “shitpost” (slang for an online comment or blog post deemed deliberately

offensive and without value) in recognition of how indelibly her name has been linked to a

defamatory article posted online by her ex-partner Eron Gjoni. Embittered by Quinn’s

decision to end their brief relationship, Gjoni, also a video game developer, circulated a long

article inferring that Quinn’s position in the video game industry was due to sexual favours.

While this allegation was demonstrably false, the article stoked outrage amongst a critical

mass of video game players who felt threatened by the growing presence and influence of

women as both players and industry participants. What followed was a semi-coordinated

campaign of online abuse and harassment of perhaps unprecedented scope. From late 2014

and throughout 2015, the topic of Gamergate dominated social media as well as the video
1

game industry, attracting attention from the international press and civil society. The lives of

those women targeted by Gamergate, as Quinn states above, were forever changed. Although

the peak of Gamergate harassment has now passed, “living differently” in its aftermath

means constant hyper-vigilance, heightened security at public appearances, and ongoing

threats against Quinn and others. The subsequent incorporation of Gamergate into the so-

called “alt right”, an online coalescence of misogynist and racist politics with links to hard-

right groups, underscores the significant role of online abuse in conflicts over public

participation and technological power.

Using the example of Gamergate, this paper emphasizes the emergence of online abuse from

within the dialectic relationship between reactionary formations of masculine identities and

computing technology. The paper begins with a brief gendered history of computing and its

links to “geek masculinity”, in which technological mastery forms the basis of masculine

esteem and status. In Gamergate, the masculine impulse to defend particular technologies,

such as video games and the internet, from perceived encroachment by women and more

diverse users illustrated the fragility of geek masculinity and its dependence on inequitable

forms of technological hegemony. However, it is not a coincidence that particular online

platforms, particularly 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and Twitter, proved so conducive to

Gamergate’s misogynist campaigns. This paper recognizes how “technological rationality”

(Marcuse, 1985), or the particular logics and values instantiated within technology, can

promote the instrumental attitudes and exploitative relations that naturalise gendered

inequalities and drive mass campaigns of online abuse. Amidst recurrent calls for law

enforcement and education in order to address misogynist online abuse, this paper suggests

that online abuse is symptomatic of the gendering of the technological base and its

amelioration requires cultural, technological and industry responses.

2

Masculinising computers

Western culture has long conflated masculinity with technology, giving rise to processes

whereby technological power accrues disproportionately to men and boys (Wajcman, 1991).

The widespread stereotype that men have a greater skill and affinity with technology than

women is so pervasive it “translates into everyday experiences of gender, historical

narratives, employment practices, education, the design of new technologies, and the

distribution of power across a global society in which technology is seen as the driving force

of progress” (Bray, 2013: 370). These stereotypes have been present since the early days of

electronic computing in the mid-20th century, albeit mediated by divisions of labour and

professional status in perhaps surprising ways. In the 1940s, one of the earliest electronic

computers, the University of Pennsylvania’s EANIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and

Computer) machine for ballistics calculation, was programmed by a group of six women

who are now recognized as the world’s first computer programmers (Light, 1999). Their

work had a significant effect on the design of EANIAC and subsequent computers, and some

went on to work at the highest level of electronic computing (Ensmenger, 2010). During the

same period, women also staffed Britain’s codebreaking Collosus computer, although their

career progression was more constrained by the secretive and highly regimented military

context of the project (Abbate, 2012).

The early recruitment of women as programmers was facilitated by a male labour shortage

during the war years, but also because (male) computer engineers underestimated the

complexity of programming, and saw it as a feminized “clerical” activity (Ensmenger, 2010).

As the intellectual sophistication and importance of programming was recognised in the

post-war period, there were concerted efforts to “masculinise” programming in order to

3

bolster its professional status and erase its origins as low-paid “women’s work”. For

instance, the promotion of the term “software engineering” from the 1960s was an attempt to

recategorise programming under the auspices of the male-dominated and more prestigious

field of engineering (Abbate, 2012). Nonetheless, the masculinisation of programming was

never complete or total. The dramatic growth of the programming workforce created a

demand for labour that included many female employees, with women constituting a quarter

of programmers in the United States in 1970, albeit with a gender distribution skewed

towards the lower end of the professional hierarchy (Abbate, 2012: 41).

During the 1980s, as computers and networked technology took center-stage as fulcrums of

globalization and macro-economic change, the conflation of masculinity with computing was

amplified. In advertising, in software design, in burgeoning fan cultures such as “hacking”

and video gaming, in pop culture, in educational and training contexts and in computing-

related professions, a singular message emanated: computers were for boys and men.

Femininity and computing were positioned as antithetical to one another across multiple

domains. Computer advertising depicted women’s relation to computing as primarily

administrative or as the “sex object” to be obtained by the technologically skillful man

(Ware and Stuck, 1985). The software and computer games of the 1980s were dominated by

themes of militarism and male violence, alongside highly sexualized depictions of women

(Lien, 2013). Representations of high technology in pop culture took on a fetishistic quality

as comics, movies and television depicted men overcoming obstacles and asserting their will

using sophisticated weaponry (Gibson, 1994). Computer science training and related

“hacking” subcultures idealized masculine norms of competitiveness and aggression in ways

that alienated girls and women (Turkle, 1984). From the mid-1980s, there was a significant

4

drop-off in female enrolment in computer science courses, and women’s participation in

computing industries fell around the world (Panteli et al., 2001; Wilson, 2003).

There is no single explanation for the dramatic reduction in women’s already low

participation in computing from this period. Instead, it points to the intensified gendering of

socio-technical arrangements, with significant implications for the gendering of technology

and the role of technology in gender identity. The masculinization of computing industries

and cultures has invited intense emotional investments and psychological identifications

from men and boys, to the point of generating technology-focused permutations of masculine

subjectivity and relations such as “geek masculinity” (Massanari, 2015; Taylor, 2012). Geek

masculinity describes a technologically-fused form of masculine subjectivity that requires,

for its coherence, the maintenance of gendered stereotypes about male technological skill

and female ineptitude (Murray, 1993). A need to protect the male exclusivity and control of

technology has been evident in geek spaces and activities from the “machismo” of 1980s

video arcades (Kaplan, 1983) to the male dominance of online communities of the 1990s

(Kendall, 2002) and the “griefing” and insults that characterize the online gameplay in the

new millennia (Higgin, 2015). While sometimes described as a subordinate or relatively

powerless masculine formation (Connell, 1995), geek masculinity has come to play a major

role in the design of new technologies, the formation of online communicative cultures and

the perpetration of gendered online abuse The following section examines how the

construction of masculine identities and relations grounded in technological control has

drawn geek masculinity into close affinity with organized misogyny as a method for the

perpetuation of gendered technological hegemony.

5

Geek masculinity and technological hegemony

Geek masculinity describes a formation of gendered subjectivity in which boys and men

claim technological knowledge and aptitude as an alternative basis for masculine identity

(Murray, 1993). The stereotype of the geek emerged out of early characterizations of

programmers and computer engineers as socially awkward but brilliant loners (Ensmenger,

2010) which were internalized and reclaimed by boys and men for whom technology offers

an alternative pathway to masculine identification (Bell, 2013). In geek masculinity,

masculine self-esteem and social capital are built through specialized technical knowledge

and skills, rather than through mainstream indices of masculinity such as athletic or

heterosexual prowess (Taylor, 2012: 111). Resistance to hyper-masculinity can facilitate an

appreciation of diversity and inclusivity in geek subcultures and identities, however the

“default” geek subject tends to be white, male, middle class and heterosexual (Kendall,

2011). Geek masculinity thus contains a contradictory construction, in which a victimized

“outsider” posture can obscure relations of dominance which are maintained through the

control and assertion of technological power. This power is exercised between and over

other men and boys in competitions for status and respect from which girls and women are

often excluded, or may only participate by acting like “one of the boys” (Kendall, 2002).

Kendall (2002) theorised geek masculinity as simultaneously resistant to and complicit in

gender inequality; a “not-quite hegemonic” formation of masculinity (p 272). However, as

technological skill has become recognized as a route to wealth and the kind of

“superstardom” exemplified by Bill Gates or the late Steve Jobs, much of the stigma

surrounding geeks has faded to be replaced by an enthusiasm for their purported value within

a destabilized economic landscape (Bell, 2013). The development and rolling-out of “high”

or “cutting edge” technology in the service of capital has become integral to a class of

6

internationally mobile men with prominent roles in the global economy (Connell and Wood,

2005). Dyer-Witheford (1999: 97) describes this group as follows:

Highly paid, frenetically creative, technologically compulsive, often enjoying

substantial entrepreneurial activities, this elite workforce has been the subject of

innumerable adulatory media reports, making their exploits an important part of the

information revolution romantic mythology.

The “mythology” of the information revolution is grounded in ideals of individualism,

competitiveness and aggression that have been normative in geek masculinity since the early

days of networked computing (Turkle, 1984; Turner, 2010). This ethos continues to shape

the working conditions of technology industries in ways that reinforce the conflation of

masculinity with technical competence and innovation, limiting women’s professional

opportunities but also informing how technology is conceptualized and designed (Ranga and

Etzkowitz, 2010). For instance, the design of many online and social media platforms

reflects foundational “geek” conceptualisations of the internet as a “new frontier” to be

invaded and colonized through force and bravado (Phillips, 2015). These governing ideals

have encoded combatitive modes of communication and laissez faire approaches to platform

governance, facilitating online environments that are unfriendly if not hostile to female users

in particular (Author, 2017). This has, in turn, reinforced perceptions of the internet as the

privileged domain of “geeks” and tech-savvy young men. Similar feelings of ownership have

been extended to other technological fields such as video and computer gaming, where

games are primarily designed by and marketed for the presumptive straight, white, male

“geek” consumer (Condis, 2015).

7

 Emotional investments in technology as the basis for masculine identity and esteem have

always been unstable and contested, due in no small part to the ongoing participation of girls

and women in technological pursuits and interests. However this instability has grown more

apparent in recent years as the near-ubiquity of computers, mobile phones and social media

has promulgated technological literacy well beyond the confines of “geek” specialization.

The influx of female and more diverse users into social media, video gaming and other

technology-related fields have made the masculinity-technology conflation upon which geek

masculinity rests increasingly untenable. This development has been met with notable

escalations in gendered abuse and harassment originating within, but also extending beyond,

geek-dominated spaces and subcultures. Geek efforts to preserve a sense of control over their

preferred technological domains have included online threats and insults against women and

other perceived “outsiders”, including racially and sexually diverse groups (Higgin, 2015),

sexual harassment in technology industries and fan cultures (Salter and Blodgett, 2012), and,

as this paper will argue, the formation of alliances with other reactionary male identity

movements, notably anti-feminist men’s rights activists and white supremacists . These

efforts to maintain gendered technological hegemony have been met with widespread

condemnation but they are privileged, in significant ways, by the instantiation of norms and

assumptions within a range of technologies which makes those technologies differentially

available as instruments of gendered abuse and control.

The online abuse campaign Gamergate is an important illustration of the sociotechnical

congruence between geek masculinity and online abuse. Gamergate describes an

unprecedented wave of online abuse that originated from within the video game industry and

gaming subcultures, facilitated by major online platforms, notably 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and

Twitter. Gamergate is the subject of a burgeoning scholarship, including Massanari’s (2015)

8

 insightful analysis of the role of platform design, governance and culture in enabling the

formation of “toxic techno-cultures”. Braithwaite (2016) has analysed the particular narrative

dimensions of the Gamergate “techno-culture”, emphasizing how those feelings of

victimization and alienation common to geek masculinity informed the efforts of Gamergate

participants to preserve masculine technological control via online misogyny. In the analysis

presented by this paper, the cultural and technological aspects of Gamergate merge within

the “technological rationality” described by Marcuse (1985). Gamergate’s abuse campaign

became endemic because its underlying rationalities were evident in the design, governance

and communicative culture of a range of online platforms. This is no coincidence; the

architecture and administration of those online platforms emanate from the very same “geek”

cultures and related industries as Gamergate. In online abuse, this paper suggests, technology

is always already symbolically and strategically implicated in assertions of masculine

aggression.

Gamergate

The catalyst for Gamergate occurred in August 2014, when video game developer Eron Gjoni

circulated a defamatory article about his ex-partner Zoe Quinn in retaliation after she ended

their brief relationship. In the rambling 9000+ word article, Gjoni accused Quinn of multiple

infidelities, alongside the false suggestion that her modest success in the video game

industries was due to sexual favours. He initially linked to the article on the discussion boards

of geek forums such as the websites Something Awful and Penny Arcade, however his posts

were quickly removed by moderators. Instead, Gjoni turned to the imageboard1 4chan, which

provided a much more receptive audience for his claims.

1
An imageboard is a simple online discussion board format, in which users post images which can then be
commented on, usually by anonymous or pseudonymous users.

9

Since its launch in 2003, 4chan has been a major online hub for geek masculinity, drawing

millions of users each month into anarchic discussions of video games, cartoons and

pornography amongst other subjects (Phillips, 2015). Gjoni was aware that 4chan was host to

a critical mass of gamers already hostile to Quinn, since she had been the target of their

online abuse for over a year (Pless, 2014). In 2013, Quinn had become somewhat infamous in

gamer circles for her game Depression Quest, which is a relatively simple text-based game

that aimed to illustrate the experience of depression from a first-person point of view (Smith,

2013). Quinn’s game subverted the violent norms of gamers’ preferred game genres but also

articulated a female experience of depression that appeared to stir up incredulity amongst

geeks, particularly for those who blamed their own feelings of alienation and isolation on

women’s perceived sexual unavailability (Quinn identified that at least some of her abuse

originated on Wizardchan, an imageboard site for adult male virgins, see Smith 2013). Quinn

reportedly began receiving emails encouraging her to kill herself, as well as sexually

harassing phone calls and rape threats delivered to her home address (Kotzer, 2014; Smith,

2013).

This history of online victimization made Quinn particularly vulnerable to further abuse on a

geek and gamer-orientated forum such as 4chan. Throughout August 2014, Gjoni actively

participated in 4chan discussions about the online abuse of Quinn (Pless, 2014). The secretive

orchestration of hoaxes, pranks and abuse is a normal part of 4chan culture, facilitated by its

online architecture in which “old” posts are automatically deleted to make way for new posts,

giving rise to a sense of impunity and disinhibition amongst users (Auerbach, 2012). The

communicative culture of 4chan frequently crosses over from a libertarian insistence on

freedom of speech to a libertine “anything goes” ethos, such that users entering the boards are

“likely to witness a nonstop barrage of obscenity, abuse, hostility, and epithets related to race,

10

gender, and sexuality” (Auerbach, 2012). Some scholars argue that expressions of vulgarity

and prejudice on 4chan operate as “a discursively constructed border fence meant to keep the

uninitiated … far, far away” (Coleman, 2014: 40). While much of the verbiage on 4chan can

be read as a form of “anti-political correctness” and self-satire, “ironic” expression of

prejudice on 4chan can blur into organized harassment campaigns, as Gamergate would make

very clear.

Gamer hostility to Quinn was animated by an escalating sense of defensiveness amongst

gamers who objected to growing criticisms of the excesses of their subculture and preferred

games. The presence of explicitly racist, imperialist and misogynist representations and

themes in video games, and the concomitant normalization of abuse and prejudice in gamer

subculture, has come under increased scrutiny over the last ten years (Consalvo, 2012; Dyer-

Witheford and De Peuter, 2009). The counter-response from gamers has been to claim that

women and their progressive allies (known pejoratively as “social justice warriors” or SJWs,

with male critics of Gamergate widely denounced as “white knights”) are colluding with

journalists and other critics to “politicize” video games and destroy “gamer” subculture

(Author, 2016). Within this febrile atmosphere, Gjoni’s article about Quinn appeared to be

the “smoking gun” that gamers had been looking for to prove that women were using their

sexual wiles to infiltrate and destroy gaming from within. Via 4chan, large numbers of

gamers began planning and rolling out a mass abuse campaign against Quinn and a range of

other targets, primarily women, as punishment for perceived infractions against video games

and gamer culture (Johnston, 2014).

Their cause received support from existing right wing figures, such as actor Adam Baldwin,

well-known for his vocal libertarian views. On August 27 2014, on the social media platform

11

Twitter, Baldwin tweeted a link to a Youtube video containing further slanderous claims

about Quinn, and coined the hashtag #Gamergate. The suffix “–gate” reinforced the

proposition that Gjoni’s post had uncovered some kind of mass conspiracy a la Watergate,

with Baldwin subsequently linking Quinn to the “authoritarian Left” who, he claimed, are

seeking to indoctrinate young people by politicizing video games (Kaufman, 2014).

Baldwin’s intervention gave momentum to the escalating abuse campaign against Quinn and

other women in the video game industry and press. The hashtag #Gamergate became viral

phenomenon on Twitter amongst tens of thousands of gamers who used it to focus abuse and

harassment on a number of select targets, under the banner of protecting “ethics in video

game journalism”2 amongst a number of evolving and often inscrutable rationales

(Mortensen, 2016). Gamergate rhetoric took an a grandiose quality as participants imagined

themselves as “crusaders” in a war against feminists and other perceived enemies, often

inflected with anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and transphobic invective (Braithwaite,

2016).

Within the veritable tsunami of Gamergate social media activity were recurrent patterns of

serious and likely criminal abuse, including online rape and death threats, doxing (gathering

and releasing personal information online) and SWATing (sending false tips to the police to

trigger a raid on someone’s home address). By the end of 2015, Quinn’s digital records of

online abuse were reportedly in excess of 16 gigabytes (Jason, 2015). She was forced to leave

her house and stay with friends when her home address and contact details were released

2
The frequent insistence by Gamergate participants that they were primarily concerned with “journalist
ethics” draws from a number of strands of convoluted Gamergate logic, including that female games
developers were swapping sex for favourable reviews, that there was a larger journalistic conspiracy afoot to
destroy gamer subculture, and that video games journalists were not declaring “conflicts of interest” when
reviewing video games. This last criticism is arguably justified, given that the mainstream video game press has
operated essentially the marketing arm of the industry to the point where journalists can be fired for writing a
negative review (Plunket, 2010). However this has not been a major point of concern for Gamergate participants
who were more focused on uncovering personal or romantic relations between games developers and journalists.

12

online (Jason, 2015). Those video games developers and journalists who spoke up in support

of her were also hacked and doxed (Romano, 2014). Games journalists and developers who

wrote articles critical of Gamergate were subject to a barrage of online abuse and threats of

such intensity that some left the video game industry altogether (Cox, 2014). Others were

forced to cancel public talks and appearances following threats of violence (Alberty, 2014).

Gamergate was the subject of considerable controversy in the video game industry and press,

and began to attract mass media criticism. In September 2014, 4chan administrators, who

rarely intervene on the site, took the unusual step of banning discussion of Gamergate.

Gamers then migrated in large numbers to 8chan, another imageboard site in which user

activity is entirely unregulated (to the point of enabling illegal activity such as the distribution

of child abuse material), where the organization of the abuse campaign continued (Howell

O'Neill, 2014) The discussion board Reddit also played an important role in the coordination

of Gamergate activity, albeit by providing a more “respectable” face to the campaign. While

there is considerable overlap in users and interests between 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, Reddit

offers a more accessible bulletin board system in which communication is clearer and easier

to follow in comparison to the imageboard sites (Massanari, 2015: 6). Reddit’s accessibility

seems to have facilitated a sense of transparency and accountability amongst gamers. While

gamers established a Gamergate discussion board on Reddit known as KotakuInAction

(KIA),3 it has generally avoided outright incitement of abuse, instead organising email

writing campaigns and boycotts of companies deemed to be too sympathetic to “social justice

warriors”.

3
According to Massanari (2015), the name KIA mimics another subreddit called TumlrInAction, which, in
satirizing the earnest tone of identity politics on the social media site Tumblr, frequently lapses into sexist,
racist and homophobic abuse. Kotaku is a popular gaming website considered overly sympathetic to social
justice issues by gamers.

13

While 4chan and 8chan provided the main “staging grounds” for the abuse campaign,

Gamergate primarily “played out” on social media, and Twitter in particular (Mortensen,

2016). Twitter is an influential “micro-blogging” social media site that recorded 304 million

monthly active users in 2015.4 Users can “follow” one another, and post or read “tweets”

containing short 140-character messages. Drawing on a range of sources, Mortensen (2016)

estimates that, at its peak, up to 10 000 Twitter users actively involved or linked to

Gamergate in some way. The hashtag #Gamergate was being tweeted hundreds of thousands

of times per month, with the majority in support of the abuse campaign (Baio, 2014). The

hashtag was closely policed by gamers, and Twitter users who included the hashtag in

“tweets” that criticized Gamergate were flooded with abusive and threatening responses. This

effectively shut down any potential dialogue between Gamergate and its critics, or proper

scrutiny of the movement on Twitter. As technology designer Caroline Sinders (2015) noted

Using the hashtag in a tweet became akin to saying “Bloody Mary” three times in a

mirror, except Bloody Mary actually showed up and she brought a bunch of friends.

People, particularly women in games, couldn’t talk about Gamergate publicly without

getting harassed, so they just stopped talking about it on Twitter.

Twitter proved highly conducive to the Gamergate movement for reasons that are pertinent to

both the cultural and technological dimensions of the platform. The culture of Twitter is

orientated towards a more public, broadcasting, “town hall” style of social media debate

between strangers, in contrast to other large platforms like Facebook that are more inwardly-

focused on networks of family, friends and acquaintances (Van Dijck, 2013). This culture is

underpinned by the platform design of Twitter, where the default setting of “tweets” is public

4
http://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/

14

and accessible to anyone. Unlike other social media platforms, users cannot remove or delete

other user’s response to their tweets, which empowers users to directly contest (or abuse and

ridicule, a fine line on Twitter) each other in the knowledge that this contestation is highly

visible and unlikely to be censored or regulated in any way. This has, at times, enabled users

to confront and name injustices that might otherwise have gone unnoticed (Author, 2013)

although it has also promoted a culture in which individual users can be subject to mass

targeting and abuse on the platform in a way highly damaging to their reputation,

employment and psychological health.

Another tier of complexity was added to the Gamergate saga as individuals began

capitalizing upon the controversy for profit and professional advantage. For example, Milo

Yiannopolous, journalist for the far-right website Brietbart, was an obscure figure until he

began championing the cause of Gamergate. After disavowing his previous disparaging

remarks about gamers, he built a online following amongst Gamergate participants that he

has parlayed into a significant media presence (Author, 2017). Phil Mason (known online as

“thunderf00t”) was a modestly successful blogger who rose to prominence with a series of

Youtube videos insulting Anita Sarkeesian, video game critic and Gamergate target (Allen,

2015). Mason’s videos have become core Gamergate texts, and explicitly justified the online

abuse of Sarkeesian as “part of the public marketplace of ideas” (Allen, 2015). Some of these

videos have been watched hundreds of thousands of times, and since Youtube video creators

receive a portion of the revenue raised from advertising on their videos, they are likely to

have raised considerable sums of money for Mason (Pless, 2015). Mason also has a Patreon

crowdfunding account, in which individual “patrons” pledge typically small amounts of

money in exchange for content from their preferred creator. This enabled gamers to pledge

sums of money to Mason in order to finance further anti-feminist, pro-Gamergate videos.

15

From 2013 – 2015, Mason’s Patreon income varied from between a couple of thousand

dollars to almost seven thousand dollars (US) a month (Pless, 2015).

Mason is just one of a number of Gamergate figures who use Patreon to “crowdfund” their

ongoing participation in the abuse campaign. This included Gjoni, who used Patreon and

other crowdfunding options in order to fund his appeal against the restraining order that

Quinn filed against him, raising over US$50 000 (Romano, 2016). Quinn has complained

about Gjoni’s use of crowdfunding to counteract her legal efforts to prevent further abuse and

harassment, noting “every time something happened or the case was updated, he’d run back

to the mob and make promises and jokes and pleas for more money” (Quinn quoted in

Romano, 2016). Problematically, it was not only Gamergate instigators who generated

income from the abuse campaign. Since social media and crowdfunding sites also receive a

share of income from user activity, they profit directly from the major spikes in traffic

associated with controversies such as Gamergate (Massanari, 2015). This implicates

platforms financially in online abuse in disconcerting ways, raising unanswered questions

about their business model and their duty of care to users.

The ferocity of Gamergate has largely abated however it has left behind a legacy of fear

within gaming and social media. As game developer Elizabeth Sampat noted, “the truth about

Zoe Quinn is that every woman in the industry is one unhinged ex-partner away from being

Zoe Quinn” (quoted in Allen, 2015a). While media attention to Gamergate promoted

increased awareness of the seriousness of online abuse, the cultural and technological

conditions that gave rise to Gamergate remain intact. Gamergate’s core narrative that

treasured symbols of techno-masculinity, such as video games or the internet, are being

destroyed in a “culture war” waged by feminists and progressives has merged with other

16

reactionary masculine identity movements and taken on unexpectedly virulent forms. 4chan

and associated forms of geek masculinity have been prominent in mobilization for the

American president Donald Trump in ways that have blurred the boundaries between

mainstream politics, organised misogyny and white supremacy (Wilson, 2016). Gamergate’s

journalistic champion Milo Yiannopolous has become a significant figure in the resurgent

far-right politics of reactionary racist and misogynist sentiment known as the “alt right”. So

too has his former employer, Steve Bannon, who was the executive chair of Breitbart before

his appointment as chief strategist to President Donald Trump. Geek themes have been

opportunistically integrated into white supremacist recruitment strategies5 while the

Gamergate rhetoric of “social justice warriors” is now a regular part of the vocabulary of

right-wing politicians and pundits. Far from being a niche issue, the disproportionate role of

geek masculinity in online abuse and hate campaigns has become a matter of international

attention and concern.

The technological rationality of online abuse

Marcuse’s (1964) notion of “technological rationality” offers a way of understanding the

intersections of the cultural and the technological in online abuse. Technological rationality

describes those forms of reason that are embedded within technological design and practices.

Marcuse (1985) denies the independence of material technology from human beings “[f]or

they are themselves an integral part and factor of technology, not only as the men [sic] who

invent or attend to machinery but also as the social groups which direct its application and

utilization” (p 138). His conceptualization of technology extends beyond particular devices

and instruments to encompass technology as “a mode of production … a mode of organizing

5
For instance, advertising for the white supremacist website the Daily Stormer includes an image of Pokemon
(popular Japanese cartoon animals who feature in the global smash hit mobile phone game Pokemon Go)
cavorting in a field with Hitler, see https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/778743888940929025

17

and perpetuating (or changing) social relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and

behavior patterns, an instrument of control and domination” (p 139 – 139). In short, the

material aspects of technology embody and reproduce social relations and hierarchies to the

point of being inseparable from them, particularly in contemporary settings where

sophisticated technology has become central to social, political and economic relations. This

technological rationality is fundamentally individualistic, instrumental and competitive.

Marcuse (1985, p 139) explained that:

In the course of the technological process a new rationality and new standards of

individuality have spread over society … These changes are not the (direct or

derivative) effect of machinery on its users or of mass production on its consumers;

they are rather themselves determining factors in the development of machinery and

mass production.

The theory of technological rationality suggests that neither technology nor users are the sole

origin of online abuse, but rather their interaction is mediated by the dominative and

instrumental rationality that characterizes the technological base; a rationality that is

gendered and deeply entrenched in technological cultures, industries and associated

subcultures. In this regard, the differential availability of platforms such as 4chan, 8chan,

Reddit and Twitter for mass abuse and harassment speaks to the underlying rationales that

informed their design and shaped their governance. Indeed, the sheer pandemic force of

Gamergate as it spread virally across these platforms suggests a fundamental alignment

between the structural design and administration of these platforms and the claims and

abusive conduct of gamers. The aggressive and competitive qualities of geek masculinity

emerge in this analysis as not only a mode of gendered subjectivity but also as a worldview

18

that is simultaneously encoded into, and privileged by, online platforms. This produces an

enclosed set of social and technical arrangements that mirror the other to normalize and

amplify online abuse and harassment.

It is not that geek masculinity is inherently abusive but rather than it draws together specific

configurations of masculine identification and technological practice that reproduces itself

through exclusionary and sexist tendencies. Combativeness, aggression and competition are

pronounced dimensions of masculine identity in gamer subculture (Consalvo, 2012) albeit

actively encouraged and facilitated by video game marketing and advertising (Der Derian,

2009). Hence misogyny has been a particular and long-standing challenge in the video game

industry and the fan cultures that it nurtures (Thornham, 2008). However the encoding of

these gender norms into online platforms has given these misogynist strands of geek culture a

position of technological hegemony. The communicative culture and interactive mechanics of

4chan, 8chan, Reddit and Twitter interact in ways that tend towards abusive or heated

exchanges while providing few, if any, mechanisms for users to protect themselves or others

from abuse. Male dominance on the imageboards and Reddit perhaps explains why they

featured so prominently in the orchestration phases of Gamergate, after which gamers then

shifted to the more gender-equal terrain of Twitter to launch attacks on women and other

“SJWs”. However, despite its more diverse user base, Twitter’s combative mechanics and

lack of content moderation contributed significantly to the success of these attacks. Indeed,

Twitter’s metrics of “likes” and “retweets” acted as a kind of “scorecard” in the

“gamification” of online abuse, and arguably encouraged gamers to accelerate the abuse

campaign as it accrued them “followers” and other indicators of popularity on the platform

(Author, 2017). The active commodification of Gamergate by some users through Youtube

advertising revenue and crowdfunding, and indeed the generation of profit from abuse and

19

harassment by various platforms, only underscores the congruence of the abuse campaign

with the underlying logics of online architecture and governance.

In this sense, online abuse is illustrative of the intersections of gender inequality with

capitalist values within technological rationality. Marcuse (1964) described how

technological rationality “predefines” the experience of the subject according to capitalist

imperatives and values, so that objects and people appear within an “a world of

instrumentalities” (p 218) to be assessed according to their utility within competitions for

status and accumulation. Technological systems structured according to such commodifying

and alienating logics reveal and reinforce specific forms of masculine aggression and

competition, often embodied in the ideal of the liberal “entrepreneur’: the competitive “self-

made” individual achieving success in an aggressive marketplace (Garlick, 2013: 235). This

subject position is not only idealized in the technology industries but evident in the extraction

of value from social media platforms by companies who treat their users as free-floating,

atomized and largely interchangeable agents to whom the platforms do not owe any particular

duty of care. Concerns about the corporate and social (ir)responsibility of social media

platforms have been heightened recently with revelations that “fake news” (that is,

deliberately misleading stories) are being promoted via Facebook and other sites in ways that

are directly impacting on political dialogue and democratic processes, notably the 2016

American election (see Lewis, 2016). However communication on social media platforms is

envisaged by their owners as an exchange within the “marketplace of ideas” rather than a

situated interaction vitiated by underlying inequalities or manipulated by vested interests.

Where communication is framed in such individualistic and competitive terms, the

aggression, prejudice and misinformation that animated Gamergate did not appear out of the

ordinary to many users. Despite the significant impact it was having on the lives of those

20

targeted, and the potential implications for video gaming as both a hobby and industry,

Gamergate could be rationalized on Twitter as just another heated disagreement rather than

an orchestrated hate campaign.

Indeed, this appeared to be the attitude of Twitter administrators as Gamergate gathered

steam. Users found that the platform’s safety team did not view explicit threats of rape, death

or blackmail as a violation of their terms of service (West, 2014). This mentality has, until

quite recently, been a point of pride for many online platforms, including Twitter. In 2012,

Tony Wang, then UK general manager of Twitter, described the company as the “free speech

wing of the free speech party” (Halliday, 2012). However Jeong (2015) suggests that this

libertarian ethos occludes the strong commercial interests of online platforms in insisting on

user self-regulation since it exculpates them from the costly responsibility of paying for

moderation and content regulation. User and content regulation is expensive and runs

contrary to the “Web 2.0” business models underpinning social media services in which

income is generated by encouraging and commodifying, rather than restricting, user

engagement and activity (Author, 2017). There are genuine practical and financial challenges

to content regulation on mass platforms. However the laissez faire approach of online

platforms to abuse and harassment to date, legitimized by appeals to the principles of

decentralization and user autonomy and responsibility, has largely ignored the active role of

platform design and administration in creating the conditions in which abuse can flourish.

The theory of technological rationality contradicts the oft-cited vanity of online platforms

such as Twitter that they aspire to be nothing more than neutral “utilities” (McCarthy, 2009).

Instead, this paper suggests that some platforms are effectively occupied by a gendered form

of technological domination which is enabled by platform design and administration. This

21

enabling process has included a high level of tolerance for online misogynist abuse, as

technology is shaped within a techno-masculine imaginary that has proven intolerant of

heterogeneity. For Murray (1993: 7), male resistance to women’s technological participation:

springs not just from a protection of power and privilege. I would suggest that it also

comes from a deeper motive to protect a masculine reality that has secured itself in

the symbolic and processual significance of science and technology.

Precisely how much was at stake in Gamergate – namely, the right of women to participate in

cultures and industries to which technology has become central – only came to be recognised

due to the active resistance of Quinn and other targets such as Sarkeesian. The women

targeted by Gamergate documented and publicised the intensity of the abuse and harassment,

circulating evidence on social media as well as engaging mass media journalists to cover the

abuse campaign. They have made active contributions to civil society, driving calls for the

criminalization of online threats and harassment (Merlan, 2015), as well as generating new

social infrastructure for responding to online abuse and supporting victims. Frustrated with

the inaction of online platforms and law enforcement, Quinn has founded the Crash Override

Network, a pro bono support, advice and referral service for victims of large-scale online

abuse.6 American software designer Randi Lee Harper, who has also been the target of mass

harassment, founded the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative to support research and advocacy

for victims of online abuse.7 Sarkeesian has been particularly outspoken about the ferocity of

online abuse and its impacts, and in recognition of her work was named as one of Time

Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2015.8 Women’s resistance to Gamergate also

6
http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/
7
http://onlineabuseprevention.org/
8
http://time.com/3822727/anita-sarkeesian-2015-time-100/

22

appears to be leveraging change within the gaming industry, including improvements in

female representation in video games (Kubas-Meyer, 2015) and increased awareness about

sexism and misogyny in the gaming industry and fan cultures e (Mortensen, 2016). These

developments suggest that online platforms, technological industries and cultures are not

captured or predetermined by technological rationality, and that opportunities for critical

discourse exist in the very cultures and networks that facilitate abuse and harassment.

Conclusion

By any reasonable measure, Gjoni’s publication of a defamatory article about Quinn online

can be understood in terms of domestic violence. A woman’s decision to end a relationship is

a major risk period for the initiation or escalation of violence and abuse, increasingly

facilitated by online technologies as boys and men seek to publicise personal

(mis)information to humiliate and punish an ex-partner (Author, 2015). However

explanations for online abuse that take for granted the availability of online platforms and

websites for such conduct are arguably structured by the same technological rationality from

which the propensity for online abuse arises. The possibility of online abuse only appears

natural if it is seen as inevitable: the product of male aggression and the particular qualities

and capabilities of online technology. However, without the underlying misogyny of geek

masculinity and the technological rationality that sustains it, Gjoni’s article would likely have

been another obscure, if hurtful, blog post. It was the lifeworld of geek masculinity and its

correspondence with online technological architecture and administration that formed the

condition of possibility for the abuse campaign that followed. This suggests that assuring

women’s safety from online abuse and equality of access to technological power requires

more than cultural change or law reform, but a degendering of the technological base and

23

increased scrutiny of the gendered assumptions and worldviews embedded within, and

reproduced by, technology.

The analysis presented in this paper indicates that the efforts of women and others to

participate more equitably in technological cultures and industries faces an uphill battle due

to the masculinization of the technological base, which privileges male efforts to defend

gendered hegemonies. This should not be read as a functionalist account of the motives of

gamers and other perpetrators of online abuse. The notion that technology is being deployed

en masse in the maintenance of the status quo assumes an unlikely degree of intentionality

and collective coordination (Feenberg, 2002). Instead a more complex albeit powerful set of

socio-technical relations is at work, informed by the anxieties and fantasies that animate

gender identity against a shifting economic and technological backdrop. The consolations of

geekdom, such as technological mastery and obsessive knowledge of “lowbrow’” culture

such as video games, comics and cartoons, can become emotionally vital, if somewhat

fragile, props for masculine pride. Video games, in particular, produce spectacles that channel

and fulfill the sexual and aggressive drives of individuals, such that experiences of

psychological distress, social dislocation and relative deprivation are obscured within faux-

conflicts. The desperate attempts of gamers to drive women and other users from gaming and

social media can be understood, paradoxically, as a defence of their defence mechanisms,

demonstrating both the inherent fragility of geek masculinity in its fetishisation of technology

and the opportunism of gaming and marketing industries in tapping into and nurturing such

fetishism. This is suggestive of the complex co-imbrication of gender inequality with

capitalist alienation, and the displacement of inchoate masculine frustrations onto girls and

women within the phenomena of online abuse. As the so-called “alt right” becomes a force of

24

international significance, the role of technology in mediating and mobilizing sentiments of

masculine entitlement and aggression is an important area of future research.

While it is certainly true that technology can be misappropriated and misused, it is also the

case that the possible scope of technological use is predetermined, to a large degree, by the

assumptions embedded in their design. This is particularly the case with online technologies

and social media, in which the very possibility of interaction and communication must be

encoded and administered. There is increased attention being paid to the role of platform

architecture and governance in social media and internet research (Gillespie, 2015). However

the notion of technological rationality reaches beyond platform design and policy to question

underlying ideologies of socio-technical relations. It suggests that gendered capitalist values

are instantiated within online architecture in a way that promotes styles of communication

and interaction that naturalise treating others as instrumental means for the accumulation of

social, cultural and economic capital. Through this specific permutation of technological

rationality, the imperatives of gender inequality are expressed through online abuse. The

specific danger of leaving these logics unchallenged is that, as technology becomes integral

to cultural as well as material production, “it circumscribes an entire culture; it projects a

historical totality – a ‘world’” (Marcuse, 1964: 154). Internet and social media platforms

dominated by this technological rationality project a horizon within which masculine

technological control and aggression is normalized and expected, which in turn corresponds

with and reinforces broader structures and cultures of gender inequality. Demystifying the

dominant logics of technological rationality is integral to the transformation of

technologically-rationalised inequalities and domination (Marcuse, 1964).

25

Solutions to online abuse have generally focused on law reform and enforcement, and

education and social marketing programs, however by leaving technological rationality

unchanged these measures overlook how deeply gender inequality is intertwined with

technological power. Existing online mechanics and metrics tend to characterize

communication in certain ways: in effect, as a competition between users adjudicated by a

larger audience. The role of bystanders online is largely limited to “liking”, ignoring or

registering dislike for the content of other users, while the possibility of protective

intervention (which is now recognised as a central component of the prevention of abuse and

harassment, see Banyard et al., 2007) is almost entirely disenabled. Such rationalities are not

inherent to technology but rather, as this paper has shown, they are historically contingent;

other more liberatory forms of technological rationality are possible. There are examples of

interactive mechanics that facilitate bystander intervention in abuse and the formation of

protective communicative cultures as well as algorithmic detection and prevention of

harassment (Hess, 2014). The generation of safe and supportive online platforms is possible

but requires a broader view of communication as a socially situated accomplishment shaped

by underlying cultural or structural forces.

The generation of alternative technological rationalities cannot be accomplished in a vacuum.

Almost inevitably, they reflect the conditions of their emergence. This calls attention to

ongoing gender inequalities in women’s cultural and structural position vis a vis technology.

The representation of women’s engagement with technology in advertising, consumer culture

and the mass media offer opportunities for the disruption of simplistic gender binaries in

relation to technological skill and aptitude. Perhaps more crucially, the technology sector and

computer industries, and the gendered distribution of decision-making power in relation to

technological development more broadly, are key sites in the projection of technological

26

gender inequality and thus major fulcrum points of potential transformation. Assigning

appropriate culpability to perpetrators of online abuse and pursuing educative efforts to

prevent abuse should not detract from the need for cultural renewal and change within the

technological sectors and fan cultures from which much of the force of online abuse arises.

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