Popular YouTube comedian and lets-player, Steven Williams, better known to the internet as Boogie2988, claimed Friday that Gawker‘s gaming and technology vertical Kotaku had blacklisted him because he refused to publicly disavow consumer press ethics movement GamerGate.
After Kotaku spoke out against game publishers last week for blacklisting the discredited Gawker property, Boogie pointed out the irony of Kotaku whinging about blacklists and blocking:
Having been a recipient of a blacklisting by the folks at Kotaku, it's amusing to hear them complain about being blacklisted.
It hurts, eh?— Boogie2988 (@Boogie2988) November 19, 2015
He then followed up the tweet with a 10-minute video explaining the situation on his YouTube channel, BoogiePlays. In the video, Boogie details the events that led to his apparent blacklisting, and explains that prior effectively blackmailing him, Kotaku not only wrote multiple articles either about or including him, but that he also had regular communication with the staff there too before being excluded.
Boogie claims that all communication and reference to him was cut off after he declared a neutral position on GamerGate.
Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo quickly claimed the allegations to be false, but Twitter users soon criticised Totilo’s defence.
@Boogie2988 Untrue. We never blacklisted you. We don't blacklist people. And we never asked you to condemn anyone.
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) November 20, 2015
One user posted a screenshot of a NeoGaf forum comment made by Kotaku news editor Jason Schreier in 2014, in which Jason can be seen replying to a post by Boogie stating, “You really need to understand that continuing to support the tag #gamergate is participating in the campaign, and therefore implicitly supporting what they’ve done”.
Schreier then likens Boogie’s neutral stance to “standing at a Tea Party protest and shouting “go Tea Party! But also peace and love!” and then finishes his comment with what looks like a sinister veiled threat: “I’m not sure how to make this any clearer.”
Another user linked to an article exposing Kotaku writer Patrick Klepek for requesting other prominent journalists to stop quoting and referencing games industry veteran Kevin Dent, for his association with GamerGate.
Schreier responded to Boogie:
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/667693347142782976
This led Boogie to reply: “you know without a doubt you told me to publicly condemn gamergate and everyone involved in it. It’s on gaf,” referring to the above comments made to Boogie by Schreier on the NeoGaf forums.
@jasonschreier @TalonBrown you know without s doubt you told me to publicly condemn gamergate and everyone involved in it. It's on gaf.
— Boogie2988 (@Boogie2988) November 20, 2015
Even Minecraft creator Notch entered the conversation, tweeting to Boogie: “Getting blacklisted by Kotaku is one of the remaining items on my bucket list”, along with the following picture:
@stephentotilo dammit pic.twitter.com/ls0A8lnnfr
— Notch (@notch) November 20, 2015
Boogie tweeted Totilo asking to speak about the issues over email or Skype, but Totilo did not tweet back. Kotaku writers did not return a request for comment.
Charlie Nash is a British libertarian writer, memeologist, and child prodigy. When he is not writing, he can usually be found chilling at the Korova Milk Bar, mingling with the elite of society. You can follow him on Twitter here @MrNashington.
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