#NotYourShield

About

#NotYourShield is a hashtag campaign launched by advocates of the GamerGate movement to highlight women and minority groups in the video game community who share their views, while seeking to expose those who claim to speak on behalf of the said groups as a way to deflect criticism against the anti-GamerGate camp.

Origin

On September 3rd, 2014, an anonymous 4chan user suggested that the hashtag #NotYourShield be used in response to social justice warrior Twitter users who claimed to be acting on behalf of women and minorities by opposing GamerGate.^[2]

Spread

That same day, Twitter user @Ninough90^[3] posted the hashtag in a tweet which asked anti-GamerGaters to stop using minority groups to push their political agenda (shown below). In six months, the post gained over 220 favorites and the hashtag gathered upwards of 622,000 mentions. Also on September 3rd, 2014, the "#NotYourShield" Tumblr^[14] blog was launched, highlighting various examples of tweets using the hashtag.

On September 7th, the Shield Project YouTube channel uploaded a video titled "#NotYourShield – We Are Gamers," which contained video testimonials by GamerGate supporters who identified themselves as being part of various minority groups (shown below). On November 12th, author Oliver Campbell uploaded a video titled "Giving Voice to the Voiceless: The #NotYourShield Project," featuring additional testimonial videos by GamerGate supporters (shown below, right). On October 22nd, a page titled "NotYourShield" was created on the GamerGate Wiki.^[13]

NotYourShield Google+ Livestreams

As a result of the creation of #NotYourShield, many livestreams were created on Google+ for women and minorities who support GamerGate, including "Girls of #GamerGate" ^[5], "Women of #GamerGate" ^[6], "LGBT #GamerGate supporters" ^[7] and "GamerGate: Ethnic Edition."^[8]

Criticism

On September 4th, 2014, game developer Zoe Quinn posted a tweet accusing 4chan users of creating #NotYourShield as a “jamming hashtag," along with a screenshot of a 4chan discussion (shown below).^[9] On September 9th, 2014, the tech news blog Ars Technica^[12] published an article accusing #NotYourShield as being largely driven by sock puppet accounts.

Tim Schafer's Sock Puppet Joke

On March 5th, game designer and Double Fine Productions founder Tim Schafer made a joke about #NotYourShield at the 2015 Game Developers Conference while holding a sockpuppet (shown below). GamerGate supporters subsequently criticized the joke for being dismissive of women and minorities with opposing political views.^[15][16]

SockPuppet: "How many GamerGaters does it take to make a single piece of armor."
Tim Schafer: "Oh god, I don't know."
Sock Puppet: "50. One to do the modeling, one to do the materials and 40 to tweet that it's "#NotYourShield."

Search Interest

External References