Why Are You So Angry? Part 1: A Short History of Anita Sarkeesian 

Short version: even if someone *is* Wrong On The Internet, that's *not* the reason you're sending them a death threat.

"Angry Jack" honestly sounds like a brand of spicy cheese, not gonna lie

I've been revisiting a lot of the things that happened when I was a edgy, anti-feminist teenager through channels like Innuendo Studios and hbomberguy and ngl it's kinda cathartic to recognise how much I've grown as a person. Turns out, not being angry at the world 24/7 is actually quite relaxing.

I came from contrapoints to watch this video and I realized watching it halfway I had it un-liked. My political views have changed so much in 4 years and I'm a little embarrassed. I probably didn't watch the whole thing. Christ.

Do not read the comments. You've got better things to do.

It is amazing, after years in reactionary circles, how much I’ve heard about Sarkeesian and yet how little I know about her. I only watched an video directly from Sarkeesian last year, despite hating her and publicly saying that I hated her and why for years. It’s crazy, I didn’t even really hate her, I didn’t know her at all. I hated the idea I thought she represented, my problems put into a person who isn’t responsible for them at all.

Asking "why am I so angry" kinda pulled me out of the reactionary rabbit hole. I wasn't too far down, I considered myself a centrist but still. I remember thinking "wait, why on earth do I give a shit whether or not someone shares their pronouns?" and just like that I was done with the whole thing. Two years after writing this I am transgenger so that’s pretty sick also gender isn't real you're supposed to just have fun with it and do what you like

"Some authority figure is going to take the games away." Mom?

"Girl says mean things about video games, I guess we're justified in sending her death threats." In all seriousness, how come the sea of women haters out there don't get this amount of hate? I don't see this scale of attack on any misogynists online. What a shock that it's men getting their panties in a twist over nothing. And you're right, there's no way one woman could dismantle the gaming industry. Those idiots just wanted a reason to bitch and moan about feminism. I mean just look at the dislikes on this video....both sad and pathetic that they can't at least attempt to see it from a different perspective.

Remember guys, this video is not about defending or debunking her points. The point is why make such an outrage about just letting this specific woman speak

Even if you disagree with Anita, you must acknowledge that the hatred launched against her is childish and disproportionate.

Hi. This video resurfaced in my radar with Contra's video on Climate Change. And I'd just like to point out that watching this video a few years ago was what prevented me from falling into a bad rabbit hole. I had only ever seen Anita's name be mentioned by these youtube skeptics and was pretty on board with the consensus that she was bad for some reason. Until I saw this video. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks.

Just finished last of us 2 and heard her take on it. She part loved it part hated it basically. I think she made fair points even though I liked it more than her. I disagreed with her a tad bit too. As any normal human would since none of us think completely alike lol duhhh... And also managed to not send a death threat. Weird that I feel the need to say that considering...

Angry Jack was probably angry when he was in that car, in traffic, because that Beetle was probably a manual transmission. And a manual transmission, on a hill, in traffic, sucks.

It's hysterical that anyone thinks Sarkeesian is radical in any way. Her brand of feminism is bland, and overly focused on media critique in a way that feels like...criticism of a specific product, rather than criticism of the system that generated that product. Lindsay Ellis at least has a critique of capitalism in her work, but it still fails to present a specific alternative. It's...toothless.

I remember hearing about Anita for the first time. I was a young boy, completely engulfed in memes and video games. The biggest threats to my sources of joy at the time appeared to be Christian politicians and concerned parents on one side and feminists and sjws on the other. The information I had at the time was abysmal to put it lightly. The childish way you respond to criticism at that level of maturity wasn't exactly productive in any way either. Don't really know where I'm going with this.

I reeeeeeeeeeeally wish I watched a video like this back in 2015. Thankfully I have grown as a person and realized a lot of my faulty thinking stemed from addiction to 4chan and inabilities to understand conservatism =\= open minded and intellectual.

I remember following Antia in 2011, when she was first making her tropes vs. women videos. I've been playing video games since I was a little girl, and it made me so happy to see someone unpacking the tropes that repeatedly had made me feel oddly isolated from one of my favourite pastimes. I was excited to think that other people - mostly men - might see her videos and understand where I was coming from when I said I felt hurt by the stereotypes in gaming. Then... gamergate. :(

When I watch Lindsay Ellis or Contrapoints, I feel like I'm watching unique ideas. With Sarkisian, at least the early stuff from the time period that all the anger started in, I feel like I'm watching old second wave (1970s roughly) ideas combined with TV Tropes. It feels weird that out of all the feminist RU-vidrs, the one that attracts the most anger and attention is the one with the least new things to say.

i, for one, do want every videogame to be a walking simulator about lesbians and feelings

“feminism is hated because women are hated. anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defence of women hating.” - andrea dworkin

We all know an Angry Jack lmao. And to any Angry Jack reading this: you can change. Please don't be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.

The fact that the worst thing these people can imagine is “ruining games” says a lot about their privilege

I owe Anita Sarkeesian quite a lot. I used to be one of those anonymous trolls that posted vitriol about her. Thankfully I also read the replies. Someone go through to me. I started reading Bell Hooks, studying the beliefs of John Rawls, and actually looking at the media I consumed critically. Six years on and I have made a complete 180 politically and ethically. So thank you, and I'm sorry.

This comment section is quite possibly the most beautiful swamp of irony I have ever seen.

Thank you. I don't really have any opinion on Anita, except that she, along with everyone else, should not be treated with such unbridled rage. No one should be threatened for their opinions.

There's a sweet irony in hordes of toxic idiots causing her Kickstarter to take in 26.5x its original stated goal, and making her an overnight celebrity, all in an attempt to shut her up.

rewatching this video after being a hysterical gamergater now as a leftist and realizing how good it is

I watch this series at least once a year and every year it holds up. Despite wholeheartedly agreeing with his ideas I need a reminder every once in a while because it speaks to every new thing we are angry about.

I wish I had watched this when I was 15 and complained about "sjw's". The same "arguments" that seemed so logical to me as a kid make no sense now as an adult. Why was I so angry?

I used to be one of the idiots who hate her for her progressive opinions. One huge reason why I regret my conservative phase. I feel sorry for her and now I agree with some of her ideas.

Am I the only one with this weird, perverse hope that the OG angry Jack sees this video? I'm really just curious what'd happen.

I've seen some of Anita's videos, they're... interesting, though in some cases I felt like she was misinformed or didn't really know what she was talking about. Still, much like Phil Fish, I can't help but feel like the hate for her is incredibly overblown and mostly undeserved... but rather than argue that point, I usually just try not to mention her.

"I believe censorship of all kinds are bad! If you shut down someone from speaking, you're just trying to censor the truth!" *5 seconds later* "WHAT DO YOU MEAN GAMERS HATE WOMEN!? QUICKLY, DDOS HER WEBSITE AND VANDALIZE HER RU-vid CHANNEL! NO ONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO HEAR THIS!!!! WHAT? IRONY?! WHAT'S THAT?!"

How does this video have so many dislikes? The whole video was essentially 'Woman speaks on internet, men send death threats, that's bad, don't do that' and people don't like that messaging?

My two cents would be: 1. I watched Sarkeesian's videos when they came out, before (or without noticing) all the rage and hate, or any other background information, and found already back then that *some* of them were poorly argued, researched, and she cherry-picking examples, if not outright demonstrating she didn't even know the source material. 2. The angry mob threatening and slandering her disgusts me. I don't like her work - but no-one is forcing me or anyone else to watch it.

I recently posted your series to the documentaries subreddit... and... wow people can't read and *still* think "she's commin' fer our gaems" and completely miss the point. That's... sad, and I'm unsure how to counteract it.

The "calls all men sexist violent bigots" " why do men harass me?" Meme really tells a lot about the people posting it

What's this? A woman doesn't like the status quo? Attack and threaten her until she goes back into her place as an opinionless (unless it supports me) sex, cleaning, and food maker/give her. What do you mean we're proving her point? Women aren't supposed to dislike what men do.

It's a shame this video got tanked back in 2015 because of the hate wave against anita and other feminists. Its genuinely a good piece on internet culture and political psychology.

I think I might be an "Angry Jack". I can't tell if it is the current times in which I live, or because I am getting older, but I am definitely becoming more of an angry person. That said, I am angry about things that you didn't mention in the video. I am angry about the rise of the alt-right, white nationalists, identitarians, or whatever Neo-Nazis call themselves now. I am angry that there are mass shooting almost every day or two, and that they are frequently done by bigoted people. I am angry about double standards, even when they exist among my fellow progressives- perhaps even more angered by that, because I expect better from people who otherwise share my values. I am angry about corporate greed, and the destruction of the environment. I am angry about so many things, that I struggle to name them all here. I was happier when I was younger, perhaps because I was unaware of these problems, but also because some of them weren't as bad as they are now. Part of me wishes that I could go back to that blissful ignorance, but most of me is glad that I am aware now, so that I able to fight for change in the ways that I can. It is still frustrating though, that I am now burdened by this awareness of just how f*cked up everything is currently. I wish that I could still be aware and fight for change, but be more Zen about it, and not let it effect my happiness.

The weird thing is that there IS a lot of parallels between geek culture and oppressed minority groups, especially ones like homosexuality where you can sometimes/sorta hide being a part of it and you worry about being "outed". It's not (usually) to the same scale but if you're in middle or high school it can feel/be just as bad. I say weird thing because most of that is now gone with geek things being openly accepted before most of these people online were old enough to experience it. Also that taste of oppression should lead them to be more empathetic about it but instead they use it as an excuse.

This is the video series that made me seriously re-think my social and political views. Thanks :)

Seeing Ian Miles Cheong's twitter feed show up in a video from 2015 is an absolute trip You could probably write a whole book about that dude's radicalisation

I have my issues with Anita and her arguments, but I absolutely agree that the sheer amount of vitriol shes received over the years has been grossly out of proportion.

Funnily enough, there’s a species of bird thy my family calls “angry jacks”. They’re actually Apostle birds, or Happy Jacks. It’s just that they seem not to much on the happy side. Hence, angry jacks. This has nothing to do with the video, but I thought it amusing nonetheless.

I feel bad for the people who didn't get to enjoy TLOU2 because of their hatred for "non-standard" protagonists and went to review bomb the game without really playing the game. It is such a nice game with deep and memorable characters tbh. Even the combat is enjoyable.

I feel so embarrassed for listening to these trolls and agreeing with them. She didn't deserve this crap.

it's been a decade and weirdos are _still_ seething over this lady. go outside, make friends, form a relationship with another actual human being.

It may have been a sign of gaming's growing cultural legitimacy (along the genuinely thought-provoking an artistically sophisticated games that have been around pretty much since the inception of the medium), but the backlash sadly demonstrated the opposite when it comes to at least a vocal minority of gamers themselves.

Bruh, I was literally thinking last night in shower how I used to hate Anita Sarkeesian but now admire her work and RU-vid just recommended this to me today. What. The. Fuck.

Jack looks like Kamoshida from Persona 5

As a human being who was thoroughly bullied, why humans get so angry at other humans for innocuous things has been a subject of fascination for as long as I have had memory. I have been trying to figure out what my crime against the status quo has been since I understood that there was one, and that understanding came at 6. I realized that being the youngest child got me different treatment than my older siblings, and made the mistake of having that realization out loud and both my older siblings thought I was bragging about that fact when I was just coming to terms with it, and things got even worse at home. At school was the worst. I won't get into the details, but what is the sickness troubling the soul of humanity is kind of what I've been obsessed with for as long as people have been hurting me with it This series helped me realize why anger is important. We see it in others for the wrong things, and people try to demonize anger and violence on the whole. But those are forces of change, we get angry because we've been hurt and because change is necessary when we've been harmed. But it can't be blind If it's time to be angry, you must be angry with both eyes open, and be ready to step back if there is a third party in the blast range who had nothing to do with that rage's subject. We must be consciously, purposefully angry if we want to get anything done.

If people can go to jail for DDOS attacks against the church of Sci ent olo gee, has anyone done even been charged for this?

I still like Lindsay’s reviews a lot more. I just think she is an all around better critic than Anita and I feel like her videos are all around more informative. As a latinax Woman I can firmly say I prefer Lindsay over Anitia. Very informative video here too! People need to give more valid criticism of her work rather than just labeling her. There are tones of critics I can think of but those are pushed aside for a fake narrative and she does not deserve to be harassed.

Strange how Lindsay Ellis didn’t get nearly as much hate as Anita and they literally spoke about the same exact things

Oh yes. I remember when Sarkeesian single handledly ruined videogames back in 2012. Now it's 2018 and you can't find any white male protagonist in any videogame, not even one. Do you remember when Nintendo released a video where Princess Peach publicly executed Mario as a symbol of war against men that ended with no-male working in the videogame industry back in 2016?. Yeah, these were rough times for men...

What if they told you why they’re angry but you just dismissed them as sexist or racist?

Saw people try to blame her for The Last of Us Part 2 lol

"2009 wasn't that long ago" me checks the video release date "2015" WAIT 2015 WAS 8 YEARS AGO?!?!?

If anyone wants to get depressed put the comments in "recents first". Yikes.

I had no idea that the abuse levied at her was THAT explicit. Bloody hell, this is why 4chan needs to be fumigated.

i like how anita wasn't really that much of a big deal before some 4chan dwellers tried to take her down, those guys forgot one very basic law of exposure

I relate to the opening scene in the fact that when I'm driving I'm concentrating, and when I'm concentrating I scowl like I'm seethingly angry. But really I'm listening to something dumb like K-pop and jamming along

It begins.

Let's be honest, tropes vs. women was bullshit, but the backlash was way overproportioned.

The meme at 6:41 is especially ironic, isn’t it? Like, it’s trying to justify unjustifiable behavior by saying “she called us this. So to fight it, we’re gonna prove her right!”

man, i can't believe i was one of THOSE people once this was all going down.

I think Anita does deserve to be criticized. She has talked out her ass and has lied about a lot of games. But she did not deserve the death threats or all the other shit. She deserves to be criticized for being a genuinely shitty content creator and person. But no one deserves to be raped or killed for the content they make or the opinions they have. I'm not an anti-feminist, and I know women like Anita don't speak for all of them. We should not judge entire groups because they have extremists who make them look horrible.

I love the video, and pretty much all your content, but have you ever considered that Jack was angry because a bunch of kids were gawking and pointing at him saying "Dude! He looks like Colin!"

Fair point. Most of the internet is still misogynistic. The question is not how is Anita right or wrong but why are they so angry about her. Men who discuss similar topics (for example, Pop Culture Detective) do not get even a half of the same hatred.

Time to dust this off and start sharing it places again.

GamerGate was an absolute mess of theoretically good intentions being instantly mangled and used as weapons by ambitious sociopaths. There were no winners in that disaster, certainly not the rest of us.

I really enjoyed this video. I was one of the people who brought into it all at the time. Im so glad that i am no longer buy into that logic. Distancing myself as far away from it as I can

Haven't watched it yet, but based on the title... Oh boy. This is going to raise a bit of faff, isn't it?

Its funny to see how the like/dislike ratio improves over the series. Almost like people who disagree with you dont have the courage to listen to more than 1/6 of your point. This is actually really sad, because i actually think most of them would agree with a lot you say in 3-6.

Nowadays, you see a social commentary with alot of dislikes it's probably insightful.

In my experience I’ve found most of Anita’s hate club haven’t actually watched her videos at all. But rather have watched out of context clips from other dumb right wing RU-vidrs. “She claimed overwatch doesn’t have diverse body types!” No. She said the marketing only showed the slim attractive ones. She actually gives the game itself credit for including the other character. Watch the vids yourself, in their entirety, with an open mind, then draw a conclusion.

Fun fact: cut off anyone who still says feminazi unironically

I disagree with her big time. But I am against harrassing her. She can have her opinion and I'll have mine.

Yeah, I have my critiques of Anita Sarkeesian's work, but only because I think she's generally implying the intents of game developers and assuming the effects on their audience. This bullshit with people sending her death threats and saying they would rape her is simply wrong, and nowhere near the correct course of action to reasonably debunk these things.

I remember when I used to hate anita during my reactionary years. But then I grow out of that phase and realized that she is not really radical as mysognists make her to be. That was a dark time for me and I'm glad in finally out of it. I'm still dotn agree with anita about everything but I stopped thinking she was hitler incarnated.

Aw, what would be so bad about a game about lesbians and feelings?

I do not agree with Anitas opinions or how she puts them out there, but there is absolutely no good reason to send her death threats or try to make her feel threatened.

I don’t agree with Anita on a lot of things but what happened to her was completely unjustifiable. It doesn’t matter how many lukewarm takes someone has, they don’t deserve this level of harassment.

So... I think, at least for me, that the issue I have with Anita compared with other feminist video essayists like Lindsey Ellis is that she's just not... intellectually honest enough. Using Lindsey as the example, whenever she makes a mistake and misattributes a narrative device or idea, she typically corrects herself in some capacity, whether through tumblr, another video, twitter, or any of her blog posts. When she erroneously described certain aspects of the five act structure in one of her videos, she corrected herself later and admitted error, citing that it had literally been years since even needing to work with these ideas. This is fine, and demonstrates an openness to positive critique and a willingness to grow as a person. Anita just seems to only ever double down on her mistakes. If someone calls out her errors, even in a positive critique, she doesn't adjust course or correct herself. Does this mean she deserves the vitriol and death threats? Of course not. But I'm just describing why I'm angry with her. I think why MOST people are angry with her is honestly just a format issue. She's demonstrably wrong about data points (and that's fine by itself) but she's formatted and pitches her body of work as an educational piece compared to the philosophical/opinion piece it actually is.

I disagree with Sarkeesian most of the time and she’s said some pretty stupid shit, but damn these people harassing her are disgusting

Too be fair, Anita doesn't fucking deserve this. Fuck the internet sometimes...

the amount of dislikes on these videos is shameful

Who is to say Jack was angry at you lmao, I get your analogy but the actual guy might have been going through stuff that had nothing to do with you, esp considering he was nice in person, I just wonder if you wanted him to be angry at you, when actually was just going about his day not focusing on you at all

Much like “angry jack” a lot of her alleged tormentors were completely imaginary. I can’t be the only one who figured that out right away at the beginning of this video, no?

I'm so angry because I sneezed all over my cereal :(

I can provide an answer. Downward economic pressure. We live in a society that is highly stratified into hierarchies of wealth. For a couple of generations there has been uoward economic mobility for a large swath of (mostly) white people (what we generally call the middle class today). However that has changed recently. Gen x is the first of generation of white middle class people to face downward economic pressure since 1929. The group you are talking to primarily is this generation, they are more economically disadvantaged then their parents, they work longer hours for less pay than their parents and vastly fewer will ever own a home than their parents. And they know it. This is why they are angry.

You can dislike Anita Sarkeesian without hating her. I was overall very disappointed in her work. I started with her videos about games, long after the project was funded. She made some excellent points that really impressed me. For example, she pointed out in her Ms. Pac Man episode how, in Thomas Was Alone, the character of Clare was a blue square as opposed to a pink shape. She also credited the ending of the first Monkey Island game as putting the female NPC Elaine Marley, in a position where she was not objectified. I think it was in the damsel in distress episode. Most of her comments ewer about the types of games I don't play, mostly action adventure. She explained how the camera is always positioned in such a way to objectify women in third-person games. More importantly (even though I don't play those games, I was impressed by that point), how most female characters were just a male character reskinned. She showed the female avater watching a female stripper in game I've never played. I think a Mass Effect. I think my disappointment came when I started getting into her comments about TV. She seemed outraged at how pregnancy was exploited in science fiction, even though it's a difficult moment for women. She took examples from Star Trek. First of all, each Star Trek series was trying to make 22 episodes a year and they were using any concept they could think of. Also, Star Trek tends to be an allegory of real problems. Would avoiding that problem been better? In general she seems to consider, with no justification whatsoever, that ideas that most likely came out of necessity actually came out of malice. The last video I saw with her was her first video about the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who, the one played by Jodie Whittaker. (I personally was braced for the worst because I had mostly seen her in roles where she was a weeping housewife and I was blown away by her as the Doctor. Unfortunately, her showrunner, Chris Chibnall, did, according to me, an awful job with both of his seasons. It was a terrible waste of her incredible performance.) Sarkeesian criticized the episode that portrayed Rosa Parks as a topic that was out of bounds for British producers. The Doctor travels through time and space, met Nixon a couple of years earlier, lost track of Amy in New York, but Rosa Parks was, according to Sarkeesian, an forbidden topic. Also, she complained about American characters portrayed by British actors. This confirmed my impression that her opinions are overall pretty biased and not, or maybe no longer, that constructive. While her observations were undeniably astute, she definitely seemed to add motivations to those observations that came out of nowhere. I'm not a fan. That being said, she clearly is a great contribution to her field and other people may have a better opinion of her work that I do. (Does this make me a hater?)

Why is everyone talking about Sarkeesian's critics? Of course you have a right to share an opinion, but if this woman faced this much shit she's already on guard for more. That's why she probably fends off any criticism that seems to target her aggressively, because she expects it to become something much worse.

I just find it funny how feminist who come on the internet are completely taken aback and surprised at shitposters and shitposting.

I like this video but my name is also Jack so it feels a little awkward. Hmmm.

In this comment, I aim to lay out a definitional criticism of this video. This isn't criticism of the video's whole message, but criticism about a specific focal point of the video: I want to be clear that I oppose the sexism, misogyny, racism, and general hate-mongering that these men from gamer culture show. I think it's awful. That being said, there is a danger in this way of thinking, "why are you so angry?" The danger, of course, is gaslighting, intentional or otherwise. Questioning a person's character, motivations, or background because of their expression of anger is a common technique used by authoritarian groups, abusers, and tribalistic political movements to control, gaslight, and delegitimize critics. I want to be adamant, in no way am I saying this is you or that you're even close to that. The point I am making is of the importance of legitimizing people's feelings. This is why many psychologists, and indeed, many therapeutic techniques, have at their core, a baseline of validating feelings. In this instance, it would be that anger is valid. Even if it's really intense, and you express it intensely, anger is valid. The differentiating factor here would be found in how you express your anger. That is, it's valid to have anger and to express it, with the condition that you care about the person's feelings you are expressing anger to. These men are angry for various reasons, but the biggest problem is that they show a profound lack of empathy. Therefore, I believe the more accurate question for these men perpetuating this abuse, is "why do you feel it's okay to disregard someone else's feelings?" Rather than "why are you so angry?"

Lol I so want the actual angry jack to see this video

I’m just learning about gamergate today and Jesus I really wish I never knew anything about this 😭