“I’ve been using Twitter for eight years, but I’ve never seen behavior quite like this. This swarming…”

I’ve been using Twitter for eight years, but I’ve never seen behavior quite like this. This swarming behavior is so prevalent, it got a new nickname — “sea lioning,” inspired by David Malki’s Wondermark comic.

I wanted to understand #Gamergate, how its proponents and critics behaved and the composition of both audiences.

So I wrote a little Python script with the Twython wrapper for the Twitter streaming API, and started capturing every single tweet that mentioned the #Gamergate and #NotYourShield hashtags.

72 Hours of Gamergate.

“Gawker is rarely perfect, but it strives to be honest and fearless. For us to have apologized for a…”

“Gawker is rarely perfect, but it strives to be honest and fearless. For us to have apologized for a joke—to have even clarified—in the face of such breathtaking cynicism and dishonesty, from both “ad partners” and the enemies who leverage those brands’ fearfulness to silence opposing voices, feels like an utter abdication of those responsibilities. Frankly, that sucks. If anyone is owed an apology, it’s our readers. So: Sorry.”

How we got rolled by the dishonest fascists of Gamergate.