To those who might not be aware of my shenanigans, I’m Mark Ankucic, aka the hairy-chested GamerGater who passed as a feminist critic under the moniker “Sandy Beaches” and got published in the Mary Sue with articles accusing FFVII of sexism and Warmachine of Islamophobia.
While the time of people asking me for interviews and advice on how to achieve my superb physique have long since passed, I am still sporadically prodded for tips on how to hoax and to write in a similar style.
There’s an important disambiguation to make here – there are those who asked me how to hoax so they could pull their own Sokal’s/Sandy’s, and there were those simply interested in making a few bucks on the side writing paint-by-the-numbers outrage articles.
Remember that this is a market
I’d assume that the readers of Heat Street don’t need to be reminded that outrage media is an enormous market – but I’ll do so anyway. It is an enormous market. It is hungry, and it doesn’t give the slightest sh*t if you’re genuine. Often we’ll hear about the marketplace of ideas, which I think is an extremely apt analogy; ideas can be products, as cheap and flimsy and easy to sell as any physical object. This is why you’ll often see the same phrases and wording used ad nauseam, aka ‘gamergate is a hate movement that harasses women’. That line alone is enough to make a sale, because that line performs a few basic functions:
- It lets certain types of readers know this is a safe piece with the right views, no different than products saying ‘ORGANIC’ in huge lettering on the front of the packet.
- It enrages certain other readers who will bemoan the lack of nuance and immediately complain about it by making it as visible as possible on forums or threads.
So it naturally follows that you’ll need to:
Suit your product to your audience
It doesn’t have to be original, or well-thought out, or insightful, or further the ‘conversation’ in any way. A great example of this is one of the articles that provided inspiration for my Sandy hoax: “Why is the gaming industry still so accepting of sexual violence in games?” By the time this article was published, every point therein was a horse beyond beaten; it was swatting at the faded chalk outline of whence a horse might have once fallen.
What the author did very, very well was recycle old and well-established viewpoints. Readers of Daily Life want this kind of article. It’s safe, it’s familiar, and most importantly, it’s consumable. This is not a toy to be played with and tested and stretched and thrown and pulled apart and put back together – it’s like Maccas, completely inoffensive to the taste buds, easy to chow down and providing no actual substance or sustenance.
It satiates the craving for outrage and virtue signaling/moral superiority, and that’s about it. When writing one of these pieces, you have to remember that your audience isn’t looking for nuance or reasoning, they’re looking for more of the same.
Forgo empirical rigor
If there are unsubstantiated claims made in a piece, or there’s a link to ‘evidence’ that doesn’t quite say what the author is claiming it to, chances are it won’t be checked or questioned, and will be published regardless.
A great example of this can be found on The Conversation, which has the tagline ‘academic rigor, journalistic flair’. In one particular piece, our author cites this study, before performing the longest drawn bow of all time, trying to link increased levels of aggression after playing violent games to seeing women as sexual objects because…reasons.
Luckily, at the time I came across this article, I had access to the full study mentioned, and this was its conclusion (emphasis mine):
Although meta-analysis is a useful tool for estimating true population effect sizes and isolating trends in the literature, it is unable to establish causal relationships between variables under study. In addition, the small number of studies and the use of sub-analyses presented here enhance the possibility of capitalization on chance. Nevertheless, this analysis sheds light on important relationships and suggests paths for future, more programmatic research. Overall, the meta-analysis suggests several conclusions. First, there is a small effect of video game play on aggression, and the effect is smaller than the effect of violent television on aggression. Next, within the range of games studied, the type of violence contained in the games is a predictor of aggression, with human and fantasy violence being associated with stronger effects than sports violence. Third, there is a trend suggesting that longer playing times result in less aggression. Finally, the studies provide mixed support for various theories of aggression due to television viewing.
Unable to provide causality. Effect of video game aggression smaller than violent television aggression. Longer playing times result in less aggression.
So provided your title, your opening premise are good and pander to the liberal media doctrine, chances are an editor is likely to publish it with too much fact-checking. The more links to so-called ‘sources’ – any sources saying anything – the better.
Purposeful misunderstanding is great
We recently had a scandal in Australia where a male public figure called a female public figure ‘hysterical’ over her reaction to a different scandal. As expected, think pieces started pouring in – the crux of the argument in all of them being basically the same: “hysteria” used to refer to a completely bogus women’s medical condition and despite the passage of time and the evolution of language, we continue to use the word to degrade and demean women.
In an amusing twist, when I was probing Google news for accounts of the scandal, I had to endlessly scroll through articles containing the word ‘hysterical’, where it was used to describe Olympians reactions to winning, descriptions of funny movies, and people being frightened of things.
Keep this in mind when writing your article. Not only will people support your blatant avoidance of the subject’s reality, those who don’t have the added effort of having to argue both the point you’re making and the premise from which the point is made.
And finally – Just go for it
This is the main difference between me and the people that ask me for advice. I just went for it. The absolute worst that can happen is that they don’t believe you, and you know what? If you’re going full hog, you can start a huge amount of drama declaring that the publication that rejected you or didn’t believe you must hold (x) prejudice or so on.
That is the beauty of outrage. It is indiscriminate and all-encompassing. There is no limit to what you can be outraged by or in what way you choose to be outraged by it.
So get out there. Make people look silly, and make some cash doing it.
