Was Old Man Murray a precursor to Gamergate?

[David H Wong]

Also, the internet was a whole lot more compartmentalized back then.

You'd have bands of maybe a dozen edgelords and trolls, and they'd stay confined to their own channels and forums, occasionally venturing outside for brief raids on their rivals.

Then Something Awful, 4chan, and Reddit gradually unified all these disparate bands into giant conglomerates of thousands of edgelords and trolls, and with social media the whole of online bled together and suddenly everyone was at everyone's throats.

For those who don't know the history, OMM launched a network of sites called the Portal of Evil that included the brand-new Something Awful, me, Seanbaby, and several other sites that don't exist anymore. Chris Poole was a Something Awful poster who (I think) wanted a place to talk anime without SA's strict moderation and launched 4chan.

So you could make the argument that the shock humor DNA found its way down that chain over the next 15 years and morphed into what we have now, but to me that is like saying MTV's The Real World gave us Trump. MTV invents modern reality TV, which creates this cultural worship of abrasive reality show stars, which gives Trump a platform that appeals to the working class ...

To say that this is one of the outcomes they could/should have anticipated is pretty weird. At the time, they were just trying to do something new.

 

[ScientificPizza]

OMM is very much a product of it's time. It's not more offensive or hard to swallow than most internet content from that time. The connection between OMM and GG is tenuous at best, and you can basically replace OMM with any other shock humour style site from that time

Was stickdeath a precursor to gamergate
Was newgrounds a precursor to gamergate

You could write the same kind of article and use Ain't it Cool or SomethingAwful

The article also give OMM *way* more credit than it deserves as an influencer in the tone of internet humour

 

[WillyFive]

A lot of really funny stuff from the 50s/60s seemed innocuous at the time but can seem very distasteful in modern culture. This is a good thing, the culture should grow up alongside the people in it.

 

[jtb]

For those who don't know the history, OMM launched a network of sites called the Portal of Evil that included the brand-new Something Awful, me, Seanbaby, and several other sites that don't exist anymore. Chris Poole was a Something Awful poster who (I think) wanted a place to talk anime without SA's strict moderation and launched 4chan.

So you could make the argument that the shock humor DNA found its way down that chain over the next 15 years and morphed into what we have now, but to me that is like saying MTV's The Real World gave us Trump. MTV invents modern reality TV, which creates this cultural worship of abrasive reality show stars, which gives Trump a platform that appeals to the working class ...

To say that this is one of the outcomes they could/should have anticipated is pretty weird. At the time, they were just trying to do something new.

The problem with your intentionally terrible example is that Gamergate (and Reddit and 4Chan and all the rest) are the direct antecedents to Trump, certainly more than reality TV worship ever was.

Where you fit OMM into that equation is up to you, I suppose. Though whether or not they 'anticipated' this outcome is completely irrelevant.

 

[ghst]

watch some old broken pixels episodes, read some fashion SWATs, click on a dozen random YTMNDs.

00s internet culture was an arms race of smart people finding creative and insightful ways to be dumb. the mirror opposite of today.

 

[T.Slothrop]

Indeed. OMM was a comedy/satire/gaming site with C+ to A- quality content. Much like how much of Lenny Bruce's humor would not be understood or appreciated now, OMM brought that same kind of irreverence to us gamers. Polarization, politicization, and political correctness have for many of us compromised the ability to appreciate humor in its historical context.

This is the beginning and end of the argument as far as I'm concerned. The idea that an influential, though very niche, website created GG is as specious as it gets. Was OMM responsible for Rupert Murdoch and "fake news" too?

 

[BriareosGAF]

It was no Sushi-X, that's for sure.

 

[autoduelist]

Lord help us if "LOL Rememebr when jews died horribly?" jokes are put on a pedestal

Most comedians hold their right to joke about anything they want quite seriously. Limiting topics is very dangerous, and pretty much -all- of the greats push barriers - Carlin, Murphy, Pryor, etc. Drawing lines is dangerous - Lenny Bruce was charged with obscenity for using the word 'cocksucker'.

And where could we even draw the line? AIDs has killed many [including a close relative of mine]. So does that make Sarah Silverman's joke "When God gives you AIDS — and God does give you AIDS — make lemon-AIDS!" off limits? Is it funny? Unfunny? Both? Is it funny but we're not allowed to say it's funny? Do we arrest her for telling it? Yell at her? Fine her? Chastise her for pushing barriers?

Personally, I think we have to accept that some of the funniest jokes are taboo as hell. It's always been that way, it seems. Certainly long before the internet. Just because I may have laughed at Silverman's joke doesn't mean I don't take AIDs seriously, and it doesn't make me a bad person. And I certainly wouldn't want to live in a world where she felt she couldn't say exactly what she wants.

 

[Cock of War]

00s internet culture was an arms race of smart people finding creative and insightful ways to be dumb. the mirror opposite of today.

Amen brother

 

[jstripes]

For those who don't know the history, OMM launched a network of sites called the Portal of Evil that included the brand-new Something Awful, me, Seanbaby, and several other sites that don't exist anymore. Chris Poole was a Something Awful poster who (I think) wanted a place to talk anime without SA's strict moderation and launched 4chan.

So you could make the argument that the shock humor DNA found its way down that chain over the next 15 years and morphed into what we have now, but to me that is like saying MTV's The Real World gave us Trump. MTV invents modern reality TV, which creates this cultural worship of abrasive reality show stars, which gives Trump a platform that appeals to the working class ...

To say that this is one of the outcomes they could/should have anticipated is pretty weird. At the time, they were just trying to do something new.

Where does The Stile Project (before he faked his suicide and it turned into a purely porn and gore blog) fit into all that?

The web's been fucked up forever, but fucked up is mainstream now.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

Seeing who used to get off on this kind of stuff explains a lot

 

[pigeon]

So here's the thing from my perspective.

I used to read and love OMM, like ten years ago. I also used to say things like "that guy's retarded, what the fuck."

Somewhere along the way I realized that that was offensive. So I quit saying it. It was part of the long slow character arc of becoming an SJW.

This makes it hard for me to judge OMM in the present. That was ten years ago! Lots of people change a lot in that time span. If you made the same website now I wouldn't find it funny. It's quite possible the people who made it wouldn't make it again.

This also makes me unsure of the argument that this stuff led to Gamergate. I think this represents some fundamental misunderstandings of Gamergate and the alt-right in general. The formation of aggressive in-groups devoted to promoting racism and sexism is not actually new. They've been around for centuries. They just used to be things like hunting groups and Elks Lodges and KKK chapters and fraternal orders of police, rather than child porn message boards. The internet changes the way organizations work, but it didn't really create anything that wasn't already there on the hatespreading front. It just made it more visible.

 

[Slayven]

Most comedians hold their right to joke about anything they want quite seriously. Limiting topics is very dangerous, and pretty much -all- of the greats push barriers - Carlin, Murphy, Pryor, etc. Drawing lines is dangerous - Lenny Bruce was charged with obscenity for using the word 'cocksucker'.

And where could we even draw the line? AIDs has killed many [including a close relative of mine]. So does that make Sarah Silverman's joke "When God gives you AIDS — and God does give you AIDS — make lemon-AIDS!" off limits? Is it funny? Unfunny? Both? Is it funny but we're not allowed to say it's funny? Do we arrest her for telling it? Yell at her? Fine her? Chastise her for pushing barriers?

Personally, I think we have to accept that some of the funniest jokes are taboo as hell. It's always been that way, it seems. Certainly long before the internet. Just because I may have laughed at Silverman's joke doesn't mean I don't take AIDs seriously, and it doesn't make me a bad person. And I certainly wouldn't want to live in a world where she felt she couldn't say exactly what she wants.

You can joke about anything, but if your punchline is just "Haha jews died" or "women have vaginas" you should be critique and roasted for being a hack. People have perverted comedy and satire, , the good kind usually has some thought behind it. But 97% of internet stuff is just crap, and have no respect for the craft.

Talk about anything you want, but be aware people are going to talk about you talking about shit. Folks want to say shit and be immune from criticism, can't have it both ways

 

[GoodCoffeeJoey]

00s internet culture was an arms race of smart people finding creative and insightful ways to be dumb. the mirror opposite of today.

This is so good.

 

[chrominance]

Most comedians hold their right to joke about anything they want quite seriously. Limiting topics is very dangerous, and pretty much -all- of the greats push barriers - Carlin, Murphy, Pryor, etc. Drawing lines is dangerous - Lenny Bruce was charged with obscenity for using the word 'cocksucker'.

And where could we even draw the line? AIDs has killed many [including a close relative of mine]. So does that make Sarah Silverman's joke "When God gives you AIDS — and God does give you AIDS — make lemon-AIDS!" off limits? Is it funny? Unfunny? Both? Is it funny but we're not allowed to say it's funny? Do we arrest her for telling it? Yell at her? Fine her? Chastise her for pushing barriers?

Personally, I think we have to accept that some of the funniest jokes are taboo as hell. It's always been that way, it seems. Certainly long before the internet. Just because I may have laughed at Silverman's joke doesn't mean I don't take AIDs seriously, and it doesn't make me a bad person. And I certainly wouldn't want to live in a world where she felt she couldn't say exactly what she wants.

That's fine and all, and I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that OMM shouldn't be allowed to make those jokes legally. But just as Sarah Silverman has the right to tell AIDS jokes, other people have the right to talk about why they think AIDS jokes are supremely unfunny.

Another angle that's worth talking about (and weirdly isn't getting nearly ass much traction as the comments about Roberta Williams): the OMM post about Stevie Case posing for Playboy is the kind of thing you'd see posted as unironic commentary now about women. The Mic article mentions Jade Raymond being photoshopped into pornographic comics around the time of Assassin's Creed, which is a more explicit form of what OMM did to Case.

Is that OMM's fault? Should they be held responsible for their shitty jokes about Case evolving through the years into actual misogynist tactics used against people like Jade Raymond? Assuming you even want to give them the credit of that post being some kind of satire, as opposed to an exaggerated version of their actual take on the subject. (If it is satire, what does it even satirize?) Assume for the moment that the answer is no, it's not their fault. Then who is to blame for that specific tactic being popularized? Would the internet have come up with it anyways? Did OMM have any influence there? Do OMM's humour and the later attacks from Gamergate and like-minded people instead spring from the same rotten source? On some level, does it really matter? Isn't it worth calling out shitty humour that demeans people, even if we don't necessarily think they should be outlawed from saying it?

 

[Fat4all]

And where could we even draw the line? AIDs has killed many [including a close relative of mine]. So does that make Sarah Silverman's joke "When God gives you AIDS — and God does give you AIDS — make lemon-AIDS!" off limits? Is it funny? Unfunny? Both? Is it funny but we're not allowed to say it's funny? Do we arrest her for telling it? Yell at her? Fine her? Chastise her for pushing barriers?

That's not a joke about people with aids, though. It's not making fun of the afflicted, it's just word play to make the audience uncomfortable.

 

[Eusis]

There's a cynicism to pinning the hurt and violence of Gamergate on Old Man Murray just to re-litigate the debate on whether or not later Sierra games were good that must be addressed at some point.

The true monsters would argue that it makes perfect sense making cat hair mustaches to impersonate someone without a mustache. Getting the hair with tape and putting it on with syrup, at that!

 

[hidys]

The true monsters would argue that it makes perfect sense making cat hair mustaches to impersonate someone without a mustache. Getting the hair with tape and putting it on with syrup, at that!

It makes perfect sense when you consider that the man you're impersonating doesn't even have a mustache.

 

[ghst]

Seeing who used to get off on this kind of stuff explains a lot

giving it a read now and apparently i still do mate. can I have a fusicha "most risk" entry in your excel sheet?

 

[David H Wong]

OMM is very much a product of it's time. It's not more offensive or hard to swallow than most internet content from that time. The connection between OMM and GG is tenuous at best, and you can basically replace OMM with any other shock humour style site from that time

Was stickdeath a precursor to gamergate
Was newgrounds a precursor to gamergate

You could write the same kind of article and use Ain't it Cool or SomethingAwful

The article also give OMM *way* more credit than it deserves as an influencer in the tone of internet humour

Well Gamergate was definitely born from that era's forum war culture - I don't think that started with SomethingAwful but it was definitely there, the idea of using your message board to invade and destroy someone else's in some organized way. 4chan obviously took it to new (criminal) levels and so this atmosphere of, "This person is being weird on the internet, let's bomb them with gross images until they delete their account" started there. So Gamergate uses a lot of the same techniques, but at the time it just seemed like one big game between groups of nerds.

But just in general, if you weren't on the internet in the late 90s it really is hard to grasp the context. It seemed like everyone you ran into was a 22 year old white male atheist nerd, and there was this INTENSE anti-corporate vibe, because everyone felt like this new frontier was going to be taken over by big companies at any moment. So you had (for example) these game review sites that either A) spinoffs of slick corporate magazines writing "reviews" that sounded like press releases or B) amateur sites writing clumsy, tepid things that read like book reports.

So there was a real zealotry about keeping this amazing new space from getting boring and corporate, that's why people latched onto OMM so hard. The idea of somebody reviewing video games in the voice of an angry fictional character is the most standard template there is - at the time it was brand new and amazing. So much of this was just them saying, "Our guiding principle is going to be whatever is the opposite of what THEY would publish." It's kind of an immature attitude but the web itself was brand new - the culture itself was immature. You have to judge people by whether or not they've chosen to grow up.

 

[Oblivion]

I think we have distinguish between the edgy/shock type of humor that seemed to be rampant in the 00s with what's going on today. I remember places like SA using bigoted and racial slurs all the time back in the day, both on their front page and in the forums. But it was usually done in a way that wasn't necessarily attacking specific groups directly. It's just the way people talked in those days, and made a lot of people think they were being cool. I'm not saying it was a good thing, mind you, but even at its most awful (lol, get it?), SA never was advocating bigotry, racism or misogyny. Furthermore, people (for the most part) grew out of it. And I think OMM is part of that same breed. Kinda embarrassing to look back on, but not emblematic of something sinister per se.

It's completely different from the type of shit that you see in alt-right messageboards and online outlets. When they use slurs like "faggot", "nigger", "cunt" and the like, they're not just saying shit to be funny, they actually mean those things and direct that shit specifically for those particular groups.

 

[capitalCORN]

It's completely different from the type of shit that you see in alt-right messageboards and online outlets. When they use slurs like "faggot", "nigger", "cunt" and the like, they're not just saying shit to be funny, they actually mean those things and direct that shit specifically for those particular groups.

Exactly. ITT, people who think hate is a new thing. Wanna go back to the foundation of the eugenics movement? Or even the creation of 'race'? It's a lot older than the internet, but it's the same ol' song an' dance.

 

[Mael]

I think we have distinguish between the edgy/shock type of humor that seemed to be rampant in the 00s with what's going on today. I remember places like SA using bigoted and racial slurs all the time back in the day, both on their front page and in the forums. But it was usually done in a way that wasn't necessarily attacking specific groups directly. It's just the way people talked in those days, and made a lot of people think they were being cool. I'm not saying it was a good thing, mind you, but even at its most awful (lol, get it?), SA never was advocating bigotry, racism or misogyny. Furthermore, people (for the most part) grew out of it. And I think OMM is part of that same breed. Kinda embarrassing to look back on, but not emblematic of something sinister per se.

It's completely different from the type of shit that you see in alt-right messageboards and online outlets. When they use slurs like "faggot", "nigger", "cunt" and the like, they're not just saying shit to be funny, they actually mean those things and direct that shit specifically for those particular groups.

On that part specifically you're basically arguing that even back in the day someone saying "gay" as an expletive wasn't indicative of homophobia from the person using that swear word. I don't really think it work that way.
And is there really a meaningful difference between someone saying offensive shit to be offensive and someone saying the same thing with the full intent to hurt?
Heck peope can claim satire but if the satire is almost entirely played straighted and no one understand the satire, is it really worthwhile?

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Before today, OMM stood for Old Man Markley. I don't know how I missed Old Man Murray, as I was at the right age at the time. Finding out my favorite games writer (Wolpaw) was an edgelord shitbag is disheartening. I went through my own phase of being a asshole shitbag on the internet when I was younger so it would be immensely hypocritical of me to just outright judge him. I would hope he's matured since then.

Has he posted any reflections on his work at the time? I am going to have a hard time separating the art from the artist on this one.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

Wonder why Old Man Murray gets singled out when sites like Fatbabies, BitchX, and Planet Crap were as bad at times?

 

[capitalCORN]

On that part specifically you're basically arguing that even back in the day someone saying "gay" as an expletive wasn't indicative of homophobia from the person using that swear word. I don't really think it work that way.
And is there really a meaningful difference between someone saying offensive shit to be offensive and someone saying the same thing with the full intent to hurt?
Heck peope can claim satire but if the satire is almost entirely played straighted and no one understand the satire, is it really worthwhile?

How about culture changes, and all that that entails. SA didn't have all those purges for nothing.

 

[Oblivion]

On that part specifically you're basically arguing that even back in the day someone saying "gay" as an expletive wasn't indicative of homophobia from the person using that swear word. I don't really think it work that way.
And is there really a meaningful difference between someone saying offensive shit to be offensive and someone saying the same thing with the full intent to hurt?
Heck peope can claim satire but if the satire is almost entirely played straighted and no one understand the satire, is it really worthwhile?

Well, like I said, it wasn't something to be proud and looking back, it's pretty embarrassing. Still, context matters, and the internet culture was completely different back then. Hell, even this place still used the word "tranny" as a meme up until a few years ago.

 

[Mael]

How about culture changes, and all that that entails. SA didn't have all those purges for nothing.

That doesn't mean we can't look back and assess what happens with our current standards.
We know that some pretty fucked up things were pretty well justified before that doesn't make them right even at the time.

Well, like I said, it wasn't something to be proud and looking back, it's pretty embarrassing. Still, context matters, and the internet culture was completely different back then. Hell, even this place still used the word "tranny" as a meme up until a few years ago.

Context absolutely matter but that still doesn't mean we can't look back with a critical eye.
Some people are pretty fond of Napoleon for what he did and other revile him for other reasons.
We can look back and not erase the good or the bad.