Brianna Wu

About

Brianna Wu is a video game developer, computer programmer, and politician, as well as the cofounder of independent video game development studio Giant Spacekat. She entered the public eye following the harassment she received during GamerGate. Following the 2016 United States Presidential Election, she announced that she would run for a seat in the United States Congress against Massachusetts Rep. Stephen F. Lynch.

History

Wu cofounded Giant Spacekat in 2010 with Amanda Stenquist Warner, adding Maria Enderton as lead programmer.^[1] Wu was the developer of the studio's first iOS game, Revolution 60, released in July 2014. The game featured female protagonists and was critically acclaimed, listed as one of the ten best indie games when it was demoed at Pax East 2013. Wu also was the cohost of the podcast Isometric, which ran from 2014 to 2016 before it ended, and is now cohost of the podcast Disruption.

GamerGate-related Harassment

In October of 2014, Wu posted tweets critical of pro-GamerGate advocates, mocking their fight against "an apocalyptic future where women are 8 percent of programmers and not 3 percent." On October 10th, an anonymous user on 8chan posted Wu's address, phone number and email to the /gg/ (GamerGate) board. Several users responded denouncing the post and raising suspicions that it was part of a false flag attack (shown below, left). That evening, Wu tweeted that she was contacting the police after receiving threats from a Twitter account named "Death to Brianna" (shown below, right).

On October 13th, MSNBC covered #Gamergate with Eric Johnson and Brianna wu during which Wu claimed the death threats she received came from #Gamergate and 8chan.co (shown below, left). On October 14th, Frederick Brennan and Brianna Wu were featured on a Huffpost live segment in which Wu blamed Brennan and #Gamergate for her doxing, after which Brennan refuted the mistakes of Brianna's explanation (shown below, right).
On March 17th, 2016, Syfy channel aired episode 102 of "The internet ruined my life". It featured an interview with Brianna Wu about the death threats she received.

Wu set up a legal fund for families affected by GamerGate and offered an $11,000 reward for anyone who provided information that led to the prosecution of those who sent her death threats.

Oppressed GamerGater

On October 9th, 2014, Brianna Wu tweeted an image macro series titled "Oppressed GamerGater" to criticize the GamerGate community.^[32] In reply to this, on the online imageboard 8chan, users started to create new image macros of the character with messages that disagree with the contra-gamergate community. This development was subsequently shared the next day on the /r/KotakuInAction subreddit.

Samus is a Transgender Woman

On September 1st, 2015, Wu and Ellen McGrody published an article titled "Metroid’s Samus Aran is a Transgender Woman. Deal With It." on the feminist pop culture news website The Mary Sue.^[1] Both authors claimed that Samus Aran from the Metroid series is a male-to-female transgendered woman, using developer comments and instruction booklet excerpts as sources.

Within 24 hours, the article had 2000+ comments and made Samus trend on Twitter with almost 4,000 tweets in one day.^[13] Criticism of the article focused on the author's lack of sources and mistranslations. An anonymous user on Wikipedia began editing the Wikipedia article for Samus Aran to include references to transgenderism, and claiming those who were reverting the edits were "Gamergators" and "transmisogynists." This user was quickly blocked and the article locked.

Run for Congress

Following the 2016 Presidential Election, Wu announced that she would be running for a seat in the United States as a Democrat against representative Stephen F. Lynch of Massachusetts. Wu cited her fight against the alt-right as evidence she could fight conservative forces in the United States government. On January 17th, 2017, she officially announced her run and posted a video supporting her campaign (shown below).

Proposed Campaign Logo

On April 12th, 2017, Brianna Wu tweeted a potential logo for her campaign. The tweet, shown below, has since been deleted.

Instantly, Twitter users began mocking the design as being more suited for purposes other than a political campaign as well as its general poor design.

One user, @jimpjorps,^[3] tweeted several jokes about the logo. The most popular, with 175 retweets, read "that Brianna Wu logo looks like it belongs on a steampunk burlesque lounge that gets shut down by a health inspector." The Daily Dot^[2] covered the story the following day.

Search Interest

External References