Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20170102/Interview

Interview: Niemti

Interviewed by Thibbs

This quarter we interview an editor known to the community by several names. Some readers may be familiar with the name SNAAAAKE!!, others may be familiar with the name Niemti, and the oldtimers among us may even remember the name HanzoHattori. In times past this user has utilized a variety of different ip addresses, has worked through at least a half-dozen other usernames, and has worked to achieve 6 FAs and nearly 50 GAs (earning numerous Barnstars and other awards in the process). Oh, and by the way, much if not most of this work was completed in direct defiance of community-imposed sanctions. Niemti (which is how we will refer to this user for the extent of this interview) is a repeated sockpuppeteer (or "puppetmaster" depending on your vernacular), and is currently subject to two topic bans and at least one indefinite block. As such, this interview breaks with the tradition of previous WP:VG/NEWS featured editor interviews which have been restricted solely to editors in good standing. This interview should not be regarded as an attempt to rehabilitate Niemti as an editor nor to promote sockpuppetry as a viable alternative to engaging with the community in accordance with the rules. But in publishing this interview, the newsletter is dispassionately acknowledging a practice that has been a part of the fringe of Wikipedia's culture for more than a decade, and is seeking to understand the motivations of those who engage in this kind of behavior.

NOTE: The Newsletter wishes to be explicit that the following interview represents the words, views, and opinions of a single editor (Niemti), and that our publication of it this quarter should not be construed as an endorsement of these views. Portions of some responses have been redacted in order to avoid links to personal usernames and to give a wider berth to topics that drift into areas subject to Niemti's bans.

1. When did you first start editing at Wikipedia? What kinds of articles do you prefer to edit? What drives you to edit? Which article (or set of articles) represents your best efforts at Wikipedia?
   • In 2004 or so.

   I think I started with history mainly. I recall how very early on I concentrated on the Chechen conflicts and WWII / the Holocaust in particular. These articles I'm not not going to recommend unless I came back and rewrote them relatively recently, like I did with German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war or the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi. As for others was probably also lots of unchecked vandalism and other bad edits in a meantime, when I didn't keep an eye on them, and I'm afraid to even check them so I won't get frustrated.

   Also, the United States Holocaust Museum website practically entirely copy-pasted my old article titled Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles (since then renamed "Nazi crimes against Polish nation"), complete with not just the title but even uncorrected mistakes whenever I was inadvertently exaggerating things and they should've known better as the experts. They didn't reply to my inquiry email regarding this laughably bad job (which I can only hope was an odd lazy intern's doing), but now I can't find it anymore and it might have been replaced with just this (a member of my extended family died just after the war after coming through the mentioned Stutthof, another survived Auschwitz I) and plus also that, instead.

   And here I think it might be a good time and place to write how I now deeply believe all my writing assigning various non-Jewish victims of the Reich's WWII murder operations and camp system into the 'Holocaust' label, like I did especially with my own and still incredibly misleading article Holocaust victims, has been completely wrong. I was well meaning but wrong. It was really all different things just simply happening at the same time in the same regions, the entire concept of 'Holocaust victims' should be summed up as simply "most Jews under Hitler regime" with the rest being nothing but red-herring, and I'm sincerely sorry for unconsciously helping to propagate that ahistorical myth that now probably just won't die anytime soon. (There's a whole lot of Western fundamental misunderstanding of what happened here even without it, here's a good starting point for those interested.)

   [I think I did a fine job with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising regarding various recent research and controversies (there's been a lot of legend old and new that I've had to deal with in there and try to dispel), but now I can see there's been some bad editing there in a meantime from just looking at the short lead (with its needlessly misleading oversimplification regarding Stroop's role), which is what I meant with checking and frustration. Also from being unable to have it fixed in spite of how supposedly anyone can edit. And I also see a subliminal neo-Nazi propaganda website scrapbookpages.com (you might not see this at first glance, they're much more obvious in what they really are in their blog "furtherglory") has made since some comeback on Wikipedia and so it should be all scrapped from articles again. This is pretty important.]

   Then I mained video games. Also did quite some work on other escapistic subjects such as movies, comics, manga/anime, cartoons, books. Especially became dedicated regarding female characters.
   
   

   "What drives you to edit?"

   Right now, nothing. Used to be sharing knowledge and doing something useful for the world instead of wasting my life while struggling with ever increasing depression, but turned out I've been wasting my life (what's worse, my youth, and my future, which is now my present) all along anyway. Also for the things and people and causes that I supported or were fan of (similar as when people do things like fan art and such), but I tried to be neutral while doing this.

   And something to be proud of for just for myself. Guess I wanted some sort of validation too. But now when I see people on the internet referencing my old articles I'm more of ashamed of my part of it, and I keep telling people to stop using Wikipedia and its usually more or less awful contents in any way. But I also learnt to mistrust and hate mass media over how they blatantly lie, and I used to trust them. Currently I'm just extremely pessimistic and apathetic about pretty much everything really, the state of information included. "Post-truth society" indeed.

   Anyway it can be quite distressing how much average people can unquestionably trust Wikipedia, not even knowing who and how and often also why writes these articles (which often means simple ignorance if not just deliberate, conscious bias). Evidently even the USHMM people thought so at one point.
   
   

   "Which article (or set of articles) represents your best efforts at Wikipedia?"

   For "a set of articles", for a top of my head I can tell I like what I've done with Darkstalkers. Before I started in like 2011, I think there was only a stub-like series/franchise article (not even about any of the individual games) and two very small character articles. Now there's 16 articles with I think an especially nice one about Morrigan Aensland. About the same time, I also did a similar thing also with the Dead or Alive series, that is multiplied it in the articles that are almost all at least fine in my opinion.

   As for very different example of set of articles, once I began working on the character article for the Queen from "Snow White" until soon it was becoming huge so I split the Disney version, which obviously is by far the most iconic. Then I started working on this new article and soon it somehow got even bigger still than the main one (as in 162 KB content and over 300 refs big, it's a GA now btw). And when I became absolutely obsessed with Morgan le Fay in 2014 (which I am still) and I completely rewrote hers into what might the best Arthurian article on Wikipedia (and I worked also on many others at that time, but it was rather cleaning up), I also split the 'in popular culture' and this new article became really large if compared to the equivalent if much less organized fiction featuring Merlin and yet it's still not definitive - all while I'm trying to read/watch through at least a part of this list I compiled.

   Out of these if I'd have to choose one, it would be probably Morgan's main as it's the most scientific article on the culturally most important of these subjects (both historically and today). Also because she's certainly most often very misunderstood due to this one stereotypical image coming from some popular but flat or caricaturish modern portrayals. I actually like some of these one-dimensional-evil Morgan(a)s too, but there's so much more to this for close to nine centuries years now, and I hope more people would get to learn of these other aspects.

   Also my single most-referenced article might be probably Mai Shiranui with 400+ different refs. It's also one of the most complete among these really big articles. Before I took over it had like 20.

2. How do you tend to regard other Wikipedians who edit at Wikipedia? Do you consider any editors to be friends? Do you generally consider others to be colleagues, interlocutors, debate partners, obstacles? Your history of sanctions at Wikipedia suggest that you have had problems with collaboration in the past. What kinds of actions/behaviors in other editors have you found to be most likely to provoke a negative reaction from you?

   I don't think many people even still do anymore.

   But here, and especially since I talked about Darkstalkers, I should note how User:Beemer69 eventually helped a lot with this later on, specifically on characters front, and also Mortal Kombat and to a lesser degree DOA, and it seems she's now taken over from me at Tekken too. I can say her work on, for example, Jedah Dohma is actually much better then mine on Demitri Maximoff, who's much bigger of a character, and really even on Hsien-Ko where I put much more effort due to my preference for female characters. I wouldn't even think Jedah could be Wikipedia-notable so this is truly amazing.

   User:Gabriel Yuji used to be also impressive but I have no idea is he's even still active. I've seen how recently his articles being summarily redirected (by (Redacted)).
   
   

   "Do you consider any editors to be friends?"

   A couple but they're mostly retired like most everyone else. The aforementioned Beemer69 is still active and from what she wrote on the top of her page I've been like a mentor for her, and if so I apparently did good job there because she's very good.
   
   

   "Do you generally consider others to be colleagues, interlocutors, debate partners, obstacles?"

   Wikipedia in 2016? Most appear to be self-important bureaucrats presiding over a bunch of ideology-driven POV warriors inserting cherrypicked half-truths if not just blatant disinformation for their propaganda efforts, while it seems barely anyone does anything else in good faith. There also seem to be also some sometimes very strange-looking people who keep asking for my donations for all this.
   
   

   "What kinds of actions/ behaviors in other editors have you found to be most likely to provoke a negative reaction from you?"

   Clique behaviour, power-tripping, partisan editing, lies, malice, ignorance, false civility, double standards, hypocrisy in general, absolutely insane levels of Byzantinelike bureaucracy. While more then once I felt for trolling and into entrapment.

3. Have you noticed any changes in the culture at Wikipedia since you first began to edit? How has it changed? Do you agree with any of the changes? Do you take issue with any of them?

   At first the changes were being positive. Even the controversial wave of deletionism from the Great Fiction Purge circa 2007/08 turned out for a better by establishing new quality standards, even if Wikia's not-so very disguised a money-making scheme. Btw I later recreated some of then deleted articles, but now properly written and sourced. Also did edit some Wikias. (Even started and wrote one whole.)

   Then something happened, which you can also obviously see at how Wikipedia began slowing down and losing editors to do the work while expanding as a multi-million dollar corporation. Bureaucracy obviously got totally out of control, complete with the constant throwing of esoteric alphabet soups instead of arguments in discussions. Cliques and power-editors ('untouchables') formed, and are by probably now too entrenched even if someone tried to do anything about it and clean then house. And the social-justice-warring, identity-religion, snowflake brigade didn't even as much as invade, but were actually invited and openly organized and actually paid for with money from Wikimedia Foundation. Just see all these 'edit-a-thons' in place of the once grassroots work.

   The deletionism today in some circles is just completely unreasonable (sometimes also ideologically or grudge driven). And yet also meanwhile, utter crap such as List of fictional witches is allowed to stay all these years (in this case, more than a decade) and nobody cares. I've found this pseudo-article just embarrassing for so long, and it's been about as long as I was there. And other similarly random, unsourced, forever vastly incomplete and thus also useless, trivia bullet-point lists.

   (Redacted)

4. When were you first blocked? When did you receive your first indefinite block? Have you ever been site-banned? Without casting aspersions, what were the circumstances surrounding your early blocks?

   I don't remember.

   I remember I used to have much trouble with what is now often called 'Putin trolls', due to my work on Chechnya-related subjects and refusing to follow Russian state propaganda and instead trying to find out and use objective truth. I was being (and still I am) privately sympathising to the cause of Chechen nationalism, even more to the plight of civilians, very much not so to the Islamism (anywhere in the world), but always strove for complete neutrality and full picture nevertheless. There's this one really stupid saying "Wikipedia is not about truth", but I tried to make it be. I've got these strong principles with this matter I still recall one guy in particular, with a username (Redacted). There were others but I've forgotten. They would gang up on me.

   [Speaking of ideologues, I once wrote a bio for one Caucasian rebel leader named Anzor Astemirov, calling him a chief ideologue of the Islamist insurgent umbrella organization he helped to create. What I meant is he was the chief ideologist. I just didn't know the difference in English. But now I checked and at least in this one instance it's got changed for a better.]
   
   

   "Have you ever been site-banned?"

   No. But the Polish Wikipedia is just really awkward. And with such a limited reach, when it could be rather a potential audience of billions of English speakers, it feels simply pointless. (It's useful for locally-important things nobody in the wider world actually cares for, I guess.)

   And speaking of things being awkward, Niemti was/is a nickname of that girl I used to know. I'm not sure why typed this in as my username, but it sure was stupid, of course it was, and I understand it can be seen as creepy too but I wasn't stalking her or anything and I'm sure it was supposed to be just another temporary account. I don't think she even knows, it's not like it's an absolutely unique name. So anyway I don't feel comfortable with using it and this is why.

5. When did you create, and what made you decide to create your first sock-puppet account? Approximately how many have you had in the past? Are you currently editing Wikipedia using an unidentified account?

   I don't remember.

   Would be something like a dozen or two, I think. Not including various unlogged (IP) edits.
   
   

   "Are you currently editing Wikipedia using an unidentified account?"

   No.

6. Considering that your use of alternative accounts to evade blocks has been used against you in past administrative proceedings, do you in retrospect consider your history of sockpuppeting to have been a mistake? If you could go back in time would you have done things differently?

   I'd live most of my life differently. Like maybe becoming an employee of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

7. In reviewing user behavior, some community members are more likely to consider the simple act of evading sanctions to be more significant than good editorial work that may result from these violations. How much of a factor has your evasion of the indefinite blocks placed on your various accounts been? Can you understand why other editors (some who may never have interacted with you) might focus on the evasion of your sanctions to the exclusion of the good editorial work you may have performed?

   I would if it was about using alt accounts for the purpose of something like abuse/vandalism or vote-stuffing, or just even edit-warring.

8. How difficult is it for you to operate as an editor with all of the sanction-related baggage you have accumulated? What is the biggest problem for you when your sockpuppet accounts are recognized? Has anyone ever tried to coerce or blackmail you by threatening to reveal the true nature of a sockpuppet account?

   Actually the treatment I received when I asked for being unblocked few months ago not only totally burned me out, but it was one of the several straws that once accumulated entirely took me into a new level of anxiety and shame and depression (some would call it despair, but really just mostly resigned apathy), in addition to my general situation including being poor and socially isolated, with ailing health, few marketable skills (and still unable getting them to use), no career to show off, and no future. Around the same time I also quit my cosplay photography after too over a decade, and previously I've stopped doing fan art as well, and had left YouTube even earlier. Nowadays I'm kinda a wreck, emotionally and otherwise. At least passive escapism still exists for me. For now. I really dread ending up homeless.

   I'm not going to say something like 'Wikipedia was all I had' but I sure was addicted. At times I'd stay working on Wikipedia all day, and then all night without sleeping, and then in daze as it's day again. I'd be there in school or at work. It's also kinda weird but out I'm still collecting sources for articles out of habit.
   
   

   "What is the biggest problem for you when your sockpuppet accounts are recognized?"

   Technically, losing current watchlist and it's again typing captchas for refs.

   Morally (as in morale), it's hitting to be again reminded of how I've been still wasting a big chunk of my life working free in exchange for getting open hatred and being referred to as an 'infamous troublemaker' if not openly called names (and it's always okay to mock and abuse me verbally and otherwise on-Wkipedia) while WMF people are financially profiting from this. It's been all wearing me down for years.
   
   

   "Has anyone ever tried to coerce or blackmail you by threatening to reveal the true nature of a sockpuppet account?"

   Sort of, but it was more like general doxing attempt. I didn't care and ignored it.

9. As you are aware, Wikipedia operates in large part through the application of community consensus. Administrators uphold consensus-based rules and may impose sanctions on those deemed to be violating them. These sanctions are appealable and indeed you have appealed your sanctions in the past. But you have not stopped editing. Why is this? Should editors that have difficulty working alongside others be given infinite numbers of chances? Should the community make special allowances for and stay out of the way of such editors? Should your very real interest in editing Wikipedia come before the interests of others who disagree with your editorial decisions?

   Because there were ever still things to write while at the time I still believed in Wikipedia nevertheless.

   Also addiction.

   For something like 2 last years I think I've been never blocked for anything except evading being blocked in first place.

   (Redacted)

   Speaking of double standards, and of "and welcome to Wikipedia" indeed. And if we speak about bans, I've never broke the 'feminism broadly constructed' ban to this day because it was a community based decision, and not summary decision from (Redacted).

10. The current system at Wikipedia makes a significant difference between blocks and bans. Sanctioned users may be allowed to return from a block (including an indef. block) under certain circumstances according to custom. Sockpuppetry has obviously never been considered to be a valid path toward rehabilitation, but paths such as a "Clean Start", The Standard Offer, and various appeals processes (including direct appeal to Jimbo Wales) are available. Have you researched the options available to you, and have you tried any paths apart from appeal? What suggestions would you make to improve this process for editors like you? Should the whole system be repealed and replaced?

    My Wikipedia misadventures actually finished with this. My long-delayed unblock requests (the first one linking just to what I've written back in 2014 during the initial abortive unblock attempt when angry on the injustice of blatant double standards) with explanations and evidence and some updates and concerns got summarily rejected as "nonsense" and just earned me more taunting, including for me finally opening up and offering honesty. In the end I was barred from using talk pages at all and sent off to the alphabet soup "WP:UTRS", which turned out to be something called the Unblock Ticket Request System. But I sat down and wrote what I recall as a very long final post explaining everything in detail and sent it not excepting anything anymore, and of course there seemed to never be any sort of response. I don't think anyone did even read it and I could only stand it for only this long (which have been much longer than it should've been). Maybe they should've actually just openly banned me instead of this charade.

11. It's apparent that you have made efforts to avoid confrontation with your more recent accounts. Is your plan to use these accounts to demonstrate your value to the community? What, if anything, is the impression you would like the community to have of you?

    I guess these questions have been covered already.

    Well, I've got this crippling fear of rejection and mockery and people including supposed 'friends' turning on me from some traumas I've experienced through my life, and it's not even paranoid as it repeats again and again and I get ever more low esteem if it's even possible now. Lately I've just given up on even trying with pretty much everything and everyone in my life, I'm only waiting for people to approach or invite or visit me first, which doesn't happen often. I'm now genuinely afraid of people in general. Became pretty damn asocial.

12. There is concern in some quarters of Wikipedia that the rate of content contribution at Wikipedia is falling. Fewer new accounts are being created, and the community is growing more insular. How much of an impact on content do you think Wikipedia sees from editors like you (blocked or banned editors who return in violation of their sanctions)?

    I don't know, perhaps even more paid 'edit-a-thrones' or gender studies courses doing graded classes with inserting even more bias into Wikipedia. Certainly not breaking cliques and dismantling most of the Kafkaesque, Brazil-like bureaucracy.

    And, in all seriousness, starting to pay people for actually good content might work. It's not like Wikipedia has no spare money (while pretending so in order to get even more each year), and there is a plenty of paid editing going on anyway. Such actual-award professional work to would have to be absolutely neutral and 100% factually accurate (including lack of important omissions), unlike much of the 'black' paid editing that exists as we speak.

    Maybe I should have worked with that paid PR editing. Nothing good comes from being incorruptable on Wikipedia. It's a one unfortunate lesson.
    
    

    "How much of an impact on content do you think Wikipedia sees from editors like you (blocked or banned editors who return in violation of their sanctions)?"

    How could I even know this?

13. Some of your detractors have pointed out that many of the articles you have edited fall in line with the more traditionally gendered aspects of gaming (hero saves princess, scantily clad warrior women, etc.) You are also currently banned from the topic of Anita Sarkeesian (who describes these gender stereotypes as harmful). To what extent do political considerations enter into your editing? Should Wikipedia be wary of editors accused of falling into political categories such as the Men's Rights Activists, GamerGaters, or the AltRight? Would you say that Wikipedia is currently a hostile environment for editors holding these views? Should it be?

    I'm actually rather into 'badass' or just plain bad (evil in fiction can be cool, in reality not so much) and powerful female characters. I think the only exception I made for this was to write one for Princess Daphne.

    Yet the other gaming-princess characters whose articles I wrote are more like Kitana rebelling against her stepfather to avenge her parents and then fighting to save the man she loves (and the world), or Tyris Flare also fighting to also avenge her parents (and too to save the world), or Yuffie Kisaragi rebelling against her father to liberate her homeland (and also to save the world in the end, and more than once), or Kasumi rebelling against her clan to save her brother (and perhaps to save the world eventually). Or the Darkstalkers Morrigan once again, for the most time not really very interesting in saving much of anything or anyone, at least in her own series (and unknowingly being herself a very danger to the world). The truth about video games is not what certain influential people claim it is. Don't believe them.

    And my favourite Morgan's also a princess (usually), yet for hundreds of years she's been almost always rather saving (or damning) herself. Even at most "traditionally" she's been always independent, strong-minded, wielding incredible powers, and so forth. One of my main sources for her main article was a book titled Shapeshifter which "re-examines Morgan le Fay in early medieval and contemporary Arthurian sources, arguing that she embodies the concerns of each era even as she defies social and gender expectations [and] uses le Fay as a lens to explore traditional ideas of femininity, monstrousness, resistance, identity, and social expectations for women and men alike." In close to a thousand years she's got a thousand faces, often completely different, and she's going to be forevermore reshaped into something very new in the future yet to come. In many stories she's indeed a shapeshifter and also being ages-old immortal and in a way she actually is, too, and I find it just fascinating.
    
    

    "You are also currently banned from the topic of Anita Sarkeesian (who describes these gender stereotypes as harmful). To what extent do political considerations enter into your editing?"

    I actually always tried to be both factual and neutral. Also avoided 'feminism, broadly constructed' even since the topic ban. But I'm active with GamerGate on reddit a lot and on Twitter a bit. It's giving me some sense of purpose to go on, in the absence of Wikipedia and the other stuff.

    [This is where I come back to add something, as I just realized I've actually did write something about 'feminism, broadly constructed' on a few occasions, including when I wrote about feminist perspectives on Morgan in her article at the end with 'in modern culture'. I still love The Mists of Avalon as a book even if the book's (now-dead) author was shockingly outed by own children as a child abuser and molester together with her husband (who were being enabled and protected by the emerging 'progressive' clique in the SF fandom), which I just separate from her work as far as much possible (the passages about the child-Morgaine and her mother can be really cringe-uncomfortable, can't help much there). And so I didn't skip over her very feminist book's great and if you ask me positive influence on much of the most modern perception of Morgan despite her (Bradley) having been personally this just horrible woman, an incestuous rapist pedophile.

    As for Sarkeesian, and her kind, they can and do find things 'harmful' and 'sexist' everywhere. (Except in Islam, of course.)
    
    

    "Should Wikipedia be wary of editors accused of falling into political categories such as the Men's Rights Activists, GamerGaters, or the AltRight? Would you say that Wikipedia is currently a hostile environment for editors holding these views? Should it be?"

    I know nothing about Wikipedia's Alt-Right situation, but for the men's rights you should just check Portal talk:Men's rights movement (especially the final one of all these 6 sections since 2008) and compare it to how intersectional-feminist and 'socially just' editing is even organized and financially sponsored by WMF.

    Wikipedia's GamerGate situation ('broadly constructed') is a real travesty since a clique of ideological warriors absolutely hijacked the article as an instrument to create the narrative in the way not very much unlike that 'Brazilian aardvark' hoax that became mass media 'truth' via Wikipedia. Since then, countless of so-called 'reliable source' articles including hyperlinks to Wikipedia in more circular reporting, and countless others can be seen trying to make a sense from Wikipedia's nonsensical attack-article 'Gamergate controversy' (where even the very hashtag is being intentionally misspelled, in the same website where there's an article 'bell hooks' with all uncapitalized letters even when everything else has the first letter capitalized title including 'Letter' and 'Capitalization', and where's also for example 'Black Lives Matter' instead of some 'Black lives matter controversy' despite all the actual and even deadly violence and other well, controversy) to write somehow even more absurd things in what is a never ending game of telephone. Now it's done as there are thousands of 'reliable sources' spouting a fake-news mass hysteria about GG being literally terrorist fascist misogynists attacking all the women everywhere with their “grizzly violence” (a quote, one of many of its kind) and today also being some omnipotent omnipresent dark force routinely blamed for being behind everything some self-professed journalists (often rather activists/propagandists) see as the devil of the moment, from the non-existing yet so-sexist 'Bernie Bros', to the widely shilled Ghostbusters remake flopping, to America supposedly electing Literally Hitler. These articles are written practically every day, for years now, and very little even neutral reporting without hyperbole and with factual information.

    But if I was there instead, trying to be neutral despite my deep personal engagement, at least a language of citing obviously biased and/or sensationalist (clickbait) journalists and bloggers attacking GG (with it being a revolt against these very same journalists and bloggers) would be the properly described as 'alleged' and 'claimed' and 'accused' and 'rumored' for their unproven (and since then often proven wrong) allegations and claims and accusations and rumors. (Redacted) The starting point is and should be: it's a Twitter hashtag, it was coined up by one person an exact date for specific reason, this person happened to be the actor Adam Baldwin (Redacted). I can see that the fake news regarding the "Bernie Bros" media hoax are being treated correctly as in indicating it's been just a lie from corrupt journalists doubling as propagandists, which as it happens only helped their politically-aligned side actually lose an election (not unlike the ugly pseudo-journalistic campaign promoting the remake of Ghostbusters, including a shockingly unprovoked and massive attack on the character of James 'Angry Video Game Nerd' Rolfe, singled out as a target for merely stating he's not going to review a movie, only helped to sink this film). As for GG today, which still exists unlike the Bernie Bros who never did, actually it's about ethics in all journalism.

    And meanwhile at Wikipedia, these handful few very dedicated fearless social justice warriors who with their backup in high places managed to hound away a great number of other editors through their connections, and who nevertheless eventually mostly still got themselves kicked out since (Redacted). Those were the now-disgraced people who have been instrumental in this great mass media (but with politicians getting into action too, including the UN) scaremongering on the scale not seen in the entertainment industry since the film/game violence panic of the 1980s/1990s (and the vast Satanic panic, partially interconnected with the gaming via Dungeons & Dragons). And here anti-GG including a number of admins and/or WMF employees would also attack the high-profile 'GamerGaters' like Christina Hoff Sommers or Brad Wardell ((Redacted)) through their own WP:OMGBLP articles. The rest of the administration and Jimbo Wales personally knew about all this, but let most of it happen, and now this already is too late regarding most. So congratulations, Wikipedia. It was perhaps your biggest failing in your history, or at least the biggest that I know about.

    So it seems these were all the questions. (There was some more I skipped as that would be just more "I don't remember".) It was actually surprising someone even approached and asked me them considering the treatment I've been long given and got used to. I didn't try to be purposely edgy as much as just being sincere about everything. I then gave it a rewrite with a total honesty because I don't give a damn about anything anymore. Much of this was probably quite a cautionary story of what to not do in life to not lose it all, figuratively and literally.

    I kinda feel a little better now.

    Happy New Year you guys.

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