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GamerGate Critic Brianna Wu To Run For Congress (cnn.com) 511

"If you look at what our Congress is doing for tech, it's failing. It's putting all of us in danger," game developer Brianna Wu told CNN, adding "It's so imperative that people of my generation, native to technology, that we step up and make our voices known." An anonymous reader quotes CNN's report: Wu says she is running for Congress in 2018. The co-founder and head of development at games firm Giant Spacekat hasn't announced which district she wants to represent in the U.S. House of Representatives to prevent alerting her potential opponent while she prepares. Wu, a Massachusetts Democrat, told CNNMoney she's building up a team of advisers and figuring out campaign logistics before announcing her candidacy next month... She said the election of President-elect Donald Trump spurred her to consider entering politics...
Wu "says her extensive technical knowledge and experience fighting the alt-right and harassment and will be advantageous for a Congressional representative."
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GamerGate Critic Brianna Wu To Run For Congress

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:38AM (#53548175)

    It turns out, anti-gamergate affiliated goons from somethingawful were associated with actual hate directed at her, per the FBI. Most of the anti-gamergate crowd hate her guts, too. It's just that she takes the hate she receives from them and associates it with Gamergate, for reasons.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It seems all these women that make noise don't do anything but parade victimhood. The women I know in the field that put their head down to the grindstone (like the rest of us) don't have these persistent (manufactured) problems.

      I used to love the video game world until the Anita Sarkeesians started seeing mysogyny everywhere and made everything about themselves rather than the gaming. And fools keep on rushing to give them a platform even though they produce next-to-nothing but drama.

    • per the FBI

      My uncle works for the FBI and says that's not true.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also that feminist is a dude. 'Brianna' is as much a woman as I am 'Sheldon the turtle'. Just because you have a strong feeling about something doesn't make it real. A pox on the the evils within us all this Holiday season. May the new year ring in objective truth over teh feels.

    • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @02:49PM (#53549097)

      I'd like to know when "alt-right" became synonymous with GamerGate.

      Oh, I get it. "GamerGate" is dead news, and outside of the gaming community and tech journalists, no one knows what the hell it is. "Alt-right" is a hot topic, though. Nevermind that the two have jack-all to do with each other.

      She kinda sounds like a politician already.

  • Race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:38AM (#53548177)

    What exactly is she going to do for tech, other than force companies to hire more women and minorities, and pay them all equal regardless of talent?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      She's going to encourage women to be as angsty as possible, and then berate men for asking women to be less angsty.

      Let's all be real for a minute here. There are differences between the genders, and this "let's pretend we're all identical" social model is a dismal failure.

      Why can't we recognise the differences and work with them, rather than pretend they don't exist?

      Oh that's right, because it'll rob professional feminist whiners of their careers.

    • What exactly is she going to do for tech, other than force companies to hire more women and minorities, and pay them all equal regardless of talent?

      I guess we'll just have to wait and hear what her platform is. You, on the other had, appear to have decided what it is already.

      • Let me rephrase it for him. What exactly can she do for tech other than what he thinks she might do?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:41AM (#53548197)

    She's been mass deleting tweets

    She's done this because she's an absolutely abhorrent person, a hypocrite and a narcissist, and hopes the 99% of the population who've never heard of her remain blissfully unaware of this fact until after she's won.

    So it sounds to me like she's ideally suited to be a politician.

  • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:41AM (#53548201)

    Will this person have anything to offer anyone other than complaining about whatever the latest grievance obsession is? People used to look for leaders who had accomplished something.

    Also, some random person is talking in vague terms about running for congress somewhere, sometime? This is news?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Will this person have anything to offer anyone other than complaining about whatever the latest grievance obsession is?

      Maybe Frexit or mass Muslim deportation. I am being serious.

      Brianna Wu, and more importantly the media's promotion of her, basically move Gamergate past the point of no return and into the rolling snowball of mass online revolution against the system that became Brexit, Trump, and a general rejection of post-war media driven consensus. Never in my life could I have imagined that a scandal o

  • All about herself... (Score:3, Informative)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:43AM (#53548209)

    Scott Greenfield from simplejustice gives his take [simplejustice.us] on Ms. Wu's whole-hearted attempt to represent *HER* desires and *HER* feelz and not anyone else in her failure run for Congress.

    It's a good read. Scott is a lawyer who blogs daily... and he doesn't pull any punches. Unlike Ms. Wu he is able to view things objectively.

    E

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      That guy comes off as a real douche bro. If you don't agree with a candidates views then don't vote for them. Simple as that.

      • Scott Greenfield says as much:

        That’s the nature of politics, that anyone can run and should. And if voters agree with her, and decide she’s better than (or not as bad as) the alternative, she will be elected.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      She should be popular with Democrats on Slashdot. Supported Sanders, support net neutrality, actually understand technical issues...

      By the way, this lawyer doesn't seem very neutral or objective:

      The goal is to champion her personal self-serving cause and vindicate her personal self-serving butthurt

      Very professional. Doesn't actually explain what specifically lead him to this conclusion. He then goes off on a rant about Super Mario Run.

  • Who? What? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SumDog ( 466607 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:44AM (#53548213) Homepage Journal

    I have never heard of Giant Spacekat until now. Looking at their first game, it looks pretty terrible. But it is a first game, so I'll give them that.

    I don't know much about this particular person's role in Gamergate, but I think the whole thing was asinine. It failed to understand market demand and the industry surrounding gaming and entertainment in general.

    Also, it's interesting all these people are deciding it's now time to do something since Trump was elected. Were the eight years of predator drone bombing not enough? Was the ten plus years of warrant-less spying not enough? Was the endless war not enough? Keep in mind everything that is happening now, is happening under the Obama administration.

    Clinton and Trump were equally corrupt. Basing your decision to participate in the system now shows you've totally ignored the reality of what America does on a daily basis to destroy other nations to give the west our current standard of living.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Were the eight years of predator drone bombing not enough? Was the ten plus years of warrant-less spying not enough? Was the endless war not enough?

      You clearly don't understand the culture of empty, shallow virtue-signaling.

    • Re:Who? What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:57AM (#53548313)

      I've yet to work out what Gamergate actually is. As far as I can tell it started out with an incident involving a games reviewer giving a glowing review to a game that happened to be written by his partner, even though by all other accounts the game was terrible, and from there escalated into a flamewar of epic proportions that engulfed a hundred other subjects into one big ball of confusing anger involving a lot of death threats, rape accusations, accusations of fabricated death threats and false rape accusations, ridiculously easily-offended people, people who set out to offend them for amusement, and generally all the things we love to hate about online political culture.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Were the eight years of predator drone bombing not enough? Was the ten plus years of warrant-less spying not enough? Was the endless war not enough?

      You have to keep in mind that things were getting better in people's everyday lives during that time, and really that counts for a lot. LGBT rights advanced a lot under Obama, for example. Obamacare helped a lot of people too. Even just having a black guy in that job was a big step for a lot of people.

      So while there was criticism, people weren't thinking "my friend might die if her medical insurance is cut off" or "is my marriage going to be annulled?" It sucks that people aren't so concerned with the other

    • Also, it's interesting all these people are deciding it's now time to do something since Trump was elected. Were the eight years of predator drone bombing not enough? Was the ten plus years of warrant-less spying not enough? Was the endless war not enough?

      There's a saying, "All politics is local." In other words, people vote based on what is most relevant to them.
      For a lot of people, sexual assault is more relevant (that is, they can relate to it more easily) than drones in a distant land. So that is what makes them activists.

  • twitter feed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by japaneseharold ( 4816939 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @11:45AM (#53548225)
    I noticed her Twitter feed is limited only to her latest non-violent and nice posts. I wonder why that is? During the gamergate fiasco, she posted some of the most abhorrent, violent, and childish things I've ever seen. Especially against men. I would hope her political opponents will bring this up and destroy her. She is not mentally fit or mature enough to run a small gaming company, let alone a district.
    • by Golgafrinchan ( 777313 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @12:15PM (#53548387)

      I noticed her Twitter feed is limited only to her latest non-violent and nice posts. I wonder why that is? During the gamergate fiasco, she posted some of the most abhorrent, violent, and childish things I've ever seen. Especially against men. I would hope her political opponents will bring this up and destroy her. She is not mentally fit or mature enough to run a small gaming company, let alone a district.

      If only posting abhorrent and childish things on Twitter were enough to disqualify one from seeking political office...

    • Awww sounds like she triggered you

  • The co-founder and head of development at games firm Giant Spacekat hasn't announced which district she wants to represent in the U.S. House of Representatives to prevent alerting her potential opponent while she prepares.

    Would that district not happen to be the one where she lives? I thought it was the law in every state that you had have residence in the constituency if you run for elected office in that constituency? Or, does she intend to carpetbag, like Clinton did when she moved to New York?

  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @12:23PM (#53548409) Homepage Journal

    Exactly who does she intend to take down?

    The place she'd have the biggest impact if she won would be Stephen Lynch's 8th, which encompasses the Boston neighborhoods of Southie Roslindale, and Dorchester, the cities of Brockton, Braintree, Norwood, and Quincy. Lynch is an old-time union Democrat. He's also the least liberal congressman from Massachusetts, which in his own analogy is like being the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon. But she'd have almost zero chance of winning the working class voters in this district especially against a longtime incumbent.

    In American politics, incumbents are at there most vulnerable in their first re-election campaign. So Wu's best bet would have been to run this year against Katherine Clarke, who has just been re-elected to the relatively new 5th. But that ship has sailed, and now Clarke is fully familiar to her constituents in her sprawling suburban district.

    The place where Wu's tech background and politics would be most advantageous would be long-time liberal lion Mike Capuano's 7th district, which includes Cambridge and Somerville. But he's been winning elections in those communities since he was elected Mayor of Somerville in 1990. He also made it past the first re-election benchmark in the new district boundaries this year.

    So basically this is like her announcing her candidacy to become a liberal feminist for Emperor of the Moon -- if the incumbent Emperor were a popular liberal feminist. It's not likely to come to anything, and if it did win it wouldn't make much of a difference. She should move to North Carolina and run there.

    • by Eharley ( 214725 )

      Yeah, I don't get it. She hasn't done anything else in local politics / public service, either right?

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      She should move to North Carolina and run there.

      Because North Carolinians want to be represented by someone who doesn't care about North Carolinians? Are there districts where voters always vote for who they're told they have to vote for in North Carolina? And if there are, why would party leaders choose Brianna Wu for that office?

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Well, it's up to them, isn't it? The point is when you run you're offering people an alternative.

    • Exactly who does she intend to take down?

      I suspect it does not matter. From the summary:

      [Wu] hasn't announced which district she wants to represent in the U.S. House of Representatives to prevent alerting her potential opponent while she prepares

      Uh huh. That's what politicians say about their plan, when they don't actually have a plan. "I can't tell you my idea, because I don't want to give it to my opponent."

    • I predict she moves somewhere she thinks she can win. Worked for Hillary...

      She will be absolutely destroyed by whatever Democrat she runs against though in the primaries when they find her vast trove on online hatred.

    • She should move to North Carolina and run there.

      I saw what you did there.

      She'd have to go to the bathroom in South Carolina.

  • by ooloorie ( 4394035 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @12:34PM (#53548461)

    Wu "says her extensive technical knowledge and experience fighting the alt-right and harassment and will be advantageous for a Congressional representative."

    May she be as successful running as a Congresscritter as she has been as a game designer. And if, in a paroxysm of insanity, the good people of Massachusetts elect her to Congress, they get the representation they deserve.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      May she be as successful running as a Congresscritter as she has been as a game designer.

      If Trump can do it, so can anyone.

      By the way, Revolution 60 sold reasonably well. Well enough for a special edition.

  • Way too sensitive and reactionary.

  • "If you look at what our Congress is doing for tech, it's failing. It's putting all of us in danger,"

    As much as I hate Brianna Wu, I can't disagree with her on this. Almost every other thing she's said, yes, but not this.

    We're putting utter incompetents and creation-apologists in charge of critical administration positions dealing with technology (as well as just about everything else, for that matter) and if you think this won't come back to bite us in the ass, you're mistaken.

  • Sad! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @03:57PM (#53549397) Journal

    Brianna Wu just realized that you can make it to the highest office in the land just by being a self-promoting internet troll and she wants to get in on that action.

  • by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Sunday December 25, 2016 @01:56AM (#53550903)

    And replace everything for references to someone that actually deserve it like Roberta Williams?
    In terms of real impact on the gaming industry as a whole, a day of work of Ms.Williams was more influential than the whole life of those three combined.

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