Anita Sarkeesian: Not Playing With a Full Deck

From my open letter to the gaming media to my impressions of the controversial career of Phil Fish, we now bookend the core of my blogs regarding certain people attacking gamers with arguably the most despised opponent of video games since Jack Thompson. Her name is in the title and bears no introduction. We all know who Anita Sarkeesian is. We know what this woman has accomplished. She is infamous for her Tropes vs Women in Video Games series on Youtube. Believe me when I say that I do not agree with Anita's opinions and that her latest video made me feel like she was shaming me for being a straight male gamer, but what I found only makes my stance against her that much stronger. I have done a lot of research to make sure I got my facts straight about her. The bottom line to Anita Sarkeesian is that she is constantly lying through her teeth, taking content from other people without permission, and is a complete hypocrite.

I would like to add a disclaimer before I begin. Why? Well, because there seems to be a trend online where criticizing Anita Sarkeesian or disagreeing with her causes a knee-jerk reaction from her supporters in the form of verbal attacks. If you are a supporter of Anita Sarkeesian or agree with her views, please take this blog as a piece from the perspective of someone who has taken part in this industry for many years and has grown sick of the misrepresentation and cultural divide that critics like Anita cause. This is not an attack on her, but a criticism of her business and social practices.

The dubious nature surrounding her Kickstarter funds, vague history in relation to video games, and comments that come off as misandrist is also why I have come to the conclusions that I have. I will first and foremost not advocate any hate mail or threats that Anita receives either. While her work is suspicious, it doesn't warrant the kind of behavior children develop when being exposed to the internet too much. I am not a political or religious commentator as I am more so just an average Joe sharing his views. I formulate my opinion by getting as much information as I can. This is my opinion alone that I own up to.

How is Anita lying through her teeth? I'm sure many of you have seen the video that reveals her admitting that she is not a gamer. In the video, she is giving a lecture at Santa Monica College in March 2010. While she proudly states that she is a gamer to the public, she is clearly telling a different story to other groups. Anita has attempted to curb the damning reality of the video by saying that she often "took breaks" from video games and would eventually go back, but it's too late. We know the truth now.

Anita claiming to be a gamer is her trying to stay relevant. It's her attempt to be able to say, "The opinions I share are valid because I'm an active participant in the gaming community". It goes with the old adage of being able to have a genuine opinion as someone who has experience with a particular subject rather than an outsider who is trying to push an agenda or is just hating on something for no good reason. Anita is on the latter of that. She is pushing her agenda and expressing discontent as an outside party and not as an active member of the community. We never see her actually play video games or talk about any game in length about its story, gameplay, or graphics. We see pictures of her with games, but nothing showing her active involvement. She has topics to share about video games, but none of the experience that she so claims that she has.

Watching the video below will help add more understanding into the smokescreen she created. I can corroborate the information shared with this Youtube user's research into Anita's supposed experience with video games. Anita is a fraud. She is not a gamer nor does she care for them. What she merely has done is found her golden goose. She kicked the hornet's nest the second she started criticizing video games as sexist and knew she had a platform to work on. This is undeniably true given the second matter of Anita.

***Unfortunately, the original Youtube user Flying Turkeys has closed their account recently. Thankfully, the following link has all four videos I intended to share here. I encourage everyone to give it a watch.***

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Anita has taken content from other people without permission? Yes, she has. Now, she isn't outright stealing these things per some form of copyright infringement. She has taken video footage from other Youtube users' accounts of video games and uploaded them on her channel as though she actually experienced it. Again, this goes back to her being a liar in that she is not experiencing or participating in gaming. The footage she has is not her own. This is her getting footage from work other people are doing without their permission. Hell, she doesn't even give them credit for it!

Speaking of not asking permission to use other peoples' work and not citing them as the original content creators, Anita also took a fan art drawing of Princess Daphne that she uses on her logo with all of the female game characters. The original artist named Tamara Smith has come forward with damning evidence of this. There has not been any progress with Anita regarding her taking the image and not crediting Tamara. Before, you could say that it was an honest mistake and it was just something copied from Google Images; however, Tamara has proven that the drawing is something she did back in 2009. Anita has not budged or given her credit to this day still.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

http://victorsopinion.blogs...

http://cowkitty.net/post/78...

http://atomicginger.blogspo...

How is Anita Sarkeesian a hypocrite? This goes back to me saying that her last video made me feel like she was shaming me for being a straight male gamer. I have seen every video in her series just to see how convoluted her views could get. By not giving us proper material per the games she has used in her research and just declaring the games' faults for sexist themes, Anita is a hypocrite by not showing strong female characters or appropriate understanding of themes in the game. She may acknowledge those with one sentence, but she never returns to them later in the videos. It brings to question if she even really bought any of the games she has footage for. Otherwise, she would have more reasonable research.

The data she has is completely bias. Devil's advocate is absent in every video that she has. She doesn't provide viable information about the games she uses other than as examples to support her subject at hand. She doesn't delve into the gameplay mechanics, stories, or characters other than showing key moments that are cherry picked to support her thesis. It is the equivalent of a movie critic only focusing on one actor's performance to push their agenda that could be for or against the film in question.

Anita also conforms to playing the victim card a lot. Often dubbed as a "professional victim", Anita shares messages she gets from spiteful people, while claiming that it's hard to get by because of the harsh words she endures. While I detest the kinds of deplorable things people say online, this constant scenario makes me question Anita's actions. She doesn't want women in video games to be damsels in distress anymore. Okay, that's understandable. Yet the first sight of people threatening her and she is quick to run to her audience to show how vulnerable she is. It seems rather counter to what she preaches as she certainly is not practicing it. She would rather have other people pick her fights for her than stand up for herself.

All that being said, I think that Anita is simply not playing with a full deck. She is not supplying enough sufficient information or knowledge that she thinks she is. She has presentations and ideas to share without a doubt. The problems lie in the consistent fallacies people find every time she posts her work. Her attempts at being a pop culture critic are for not because she doesn't put in the work. I don't believe Anita is a gamer nor should you. There is a mountain of evidence to suggest that she doesn't care about gaming. For that matter, she doesn't care about other content creators be they Youtubers or artists. Anita will use whoever and whatever she can to get more eyes on her so she can push her agenda. This is evident with her appearance on The Colbert Report.

In the near future, I will be looking at her video series to critique it. Should she release another video soon, then I will add that to the list. Will there be an end to video games being used as a political platform for people like Anita? Will people just accept that all forms of media and art are mostly meant to be expressive and for entertainment and not as social commentary? Probably not any time soon, but hopefully in due time where this all will be a mere blip in video game history.