Internet Hate Campaigns: From GamerGate to Blake
“I can’t believe we were all fooled.” That seems to be the prevailing consensus of the internet following the news that Blake Lively is suing director and co-star Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment and launching a smear campaign. For those of you blissfully unaware, this summer, among the release of the film It Ends With Us, the internet turned on Blake Lively, and they turned hard. It started with TikTokers and Redditors noticing that the vibes between Baldoni and Lively seemed off; they then realised that the entire cast of It Ends With Us had unfollowed Baldoni on Instagram, and suddenly the floodgates were open. Think-pieces and listicles about her alleged crimes were released, body language experts were talking about how awful she appeared on red carpets and in press junkets, and she clearly bullied the entire cast to unfollow Baldoni. Meanwhile, self-proclaimed male feminist Justin Baldoni came out looking golden. He gave off the impression as someone who really, really cared about the domestic violence (the topic of the film), and someone who’d been bullied into intimidation by Hollywood nepo baby bitch Blake Lively and her long-suffering husband. Isn’t it great that we have male feminists to stand up to awful “Mean Girl TM” women. Isn’t it great that the internet is banding together to show everyone what a Mean Girl Bitch she is?
Well, no actually. To the surprise of nearly everyone, turns out Baldoni was displaying predatory behaviour on set – and not just towards Lively. Full details can (and should) be read in the New York Times article, but this self-proclaimed male feminist:
Attempted to add intimacy scenes (involving sex and kissing) that weren’t in the script
Stared at her uncomfortably whilst she was breast-feeding
Called a scene where a younger actress portrayed a character as losing her virginity “hot”
Insisted that Lively be partially nude in a scene where she’s giving birth, with basically no modesty or dignity between takes
Made objectifying and insulting comments about her body
Directed her to a weight loss doctor
Confessed that he previously had sex with women without their consent
Knowingly exposed her and her newborn child to COVID
And so much more!
Lively went to the production company’s HR department. But, bad news, it was Baldoni’s production company. He was co-star, director and producer. Even though Lively is a massive A-lister with an A-list husband and A-list best friend, Baldoni felt as though he could intimidate and harass her. And when she stood up for herself on set, he prepared to go nuclear – he hired the same PR team that known abusers Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt use, and created a smear campaign for her over the summer. While promoting a film about domestic violence, Lively was getting online hate and death threats.
“I can’t believe we were all fooled.”
Well, no. I am going to go on my high horse right now. Speak for yourself, but every time the internet launches a disproportionate hate campaign towards a young woman, I’m suspicious. I lived through the Amber Heard Trial, I lived through the Anne Hathaway hate train. Reader, I lived through GamerGate…
Gamergate
For those of you too offline or too young to remember, Gamergate was a pivotal moment in Internet History that changed the landscape of social media to this day. Video game developer Zoe Quinn launched their game Depression Quest in 2013 to critical acclaim. It was heralded as a much-welcome change in tone from the typical male-gazey video games of the time, and critics praised its portrayal of depression. In August 2014, Quinn’s ex-boyfriend published ‘The Zoe Post’, a several thousand-word essay detailing his grievances with Quinn. She cheated on him! She cheated on him with video game journalists! She cheated on him without his consent!!!! And then, that bitch dared to have sex with other men after they broke up! How could such a harlot do such a thing? Several of the claims are unfounded – in particular, there is no evidence that Quinn exchanged sexual favours for positive reviews. The post is nothing more than the ramblings of an angry, bitter ex, who is furious that his ex-partner is getting some positive press. He doesn’t want to see them happy; he wants to see them as miserable as he is!
The post garnered attention on 4chan, where a growing number of users began to despise Quinn. This bitch needed to be taken down a notch! So, a coordinated and targeted campaign began; they sent rape threats, death threats, harassment from all sides. Their nudes were leaked, their address was leaked, their accounts were hacked. For months on end, certain corners of the internet were deadly committed to making their life as miserable as possible. When asked why, they had a reasonable answer. It’s not about hating Quinn, “it’s about ethics in video game journalism.” The targeted attacks would spread to other women in video games, including developer Brianna Wu and media critic Anika Sarkeesian. Notably, none of the people targeted had anything to do with video game journalism. They just made the cardinal mistake of being women in male dominated spaces – and for that, they must suffer.
Following GamerGate, doxing and harassment has been par for the course for women on the internet, especially in predominantly male spaces. The internet became unsafe. While various platforms have made efforts to prevent such hate campaigns, the message is clear; if you’re a woman who we don’t like, we can (and will) make your life a living hell, and there’s very little you can do about it.
Your Fave is Problematic
As evidenced with GamerGate, it’s worryingly easy to radicalise men into harassing women “for a cause”. Even if the cause is bullshit, they’ll do it gladly! The vast majority of GamerGaters were men; they saw women entering a space that they believed to be sacrosanct, and violently retaliated. These retaliation tactics have been seen with recent celebrity hate campaigns, but this time, it’s not just men. Women are gleefully and self-righteously taking part. Not (just) because they enjoy piling on people, but because they think it’s the right thing to do.
In the early-mid 2010s, there was a Tumblr blog known as Your Fave is Problematic (YFIP). It would (anonymously of course) list various transgressions and -isms by celebrities – some of which were valid, but several of which were out of context. Sins included out-of-context jokes, unsavoury photoshoots (which they were probably contracted to do), and saying lines in TV shows and movies which they probably didn’t write. Genuine infractions like sexual assault were given the same gravity as slightly weird photoshoots, or out of context slips-of-the-tongue
In 2021, Liat Kaplan, the founder of YFIP, wrote about her experience in starting the blog during a particularly turbulent time in her life.
“My most popular posts tended to be about women — which makes sense, because the celebrity press tends to be more critical of them… Stuck at home, I devoted myself to Tumblr. What was I trying to accomplish? Mostly, I was interested in knocking people off their pedestals. I also enjoyed being popular, controversial, discussed. When a comedian I had posted about name-checked my blog on Twitter, I was giddy… In the years since, I’ve looked back on my blog with shame and regret — about my pettiness, my motivating rage, my hard-and-fast assumptions that people were either good or bad. Who was I to lump together known misogynists with people who got tattoos in languages they didn’t speak? I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who’d hurt me ever had.”
Kaplan admits that she felt she was making a difference in calling out these various behaviours. She wasn’t interested in nuance; she was only interested in the schadenfreude. Whilst the blog hasn’t been active in eight years, the behaviour has spread through the internet, particularly with those on the political Left. There are regular viral tweet threads about the alleged misbehaviours of female celebrities, including the likes of Hailey Beiber. (These threads would be so successful, that in correspondence between Baldoni’s PR team, they admitted that they needed a similar thread).
When publications write listicles about celebrities' various transgressions, it doesn’t matter how founded these claims are. What matters is that people now have an excuse to dogpile on women. Two years ago, a targeted hate campaign against Amber Heard (which I’ve previously written about) was disgusting to see. Countless women were convinced that they were doing the right thing and sticking up for male abuse victims. Thus, the internet became a breeding ground of hate and harassment towards a domestic violence victim. People were bringing up body language and calling her rude, claiming that she defecated on Johnny Depp’s bed. It got so out of hand that they were accusing her of doing cocaine on the stand. But, in their mind, it was the right thing to do. It was time to take down the bitch! (And also stand up for victims of male abuse).
The Cyclical Hate Campaigns
There is always a backlash to progressive campaigns, and so far, the backlash to #MeToo has been brutal. Right after women felt safe speaking out against abuse and violence, the internet has reminded them that this isn’t the case. Using GamerGate tactics, PR firms have used the language of social justice to tear down women who just wanted to feel safe at work. They’ve torn down Amber Heard, a woman who spoke up against domestic violence, to the point where she had to leave the country. Because they aren’t ‘perfect victims’, they apparently deserve the dogpiles and hatred that they’re getting, in the same way that Zoe Quinn deserved all the death threats and rape threats. It was never about “Mean Girl TM” behaviour. It was never about standing up for male abuse victims. It was never about ethics in video game journalism. It was always about finding any excuse to gleefully hate on a woman. You didn’t need to be fooled by the PR campaign, you just wanted to attack.
Blake Lively and Amber Heard aren’t the only celebrity women who have been the target of hate campaigns. In the past year, Rachel Zegler got harassed for saying that Snow White was dated (it is) and JLo got piled on for getting divorced. Meghan Markle, Angelina Jolie, Megan Thee Stallion, Brie Larson, Evan Rachel Wood, Olivia Wilde. The list of Public Enemies is endless, and the hate campaigns are wildly disproportionate. Going forward, internet users need to recognise these attacks for what they are – a thinly veiled excuse to attack women.
NB: Zoe Quinn uses they/them pronouns – this had not been announced during the peak of GamerGate.