Alec Holowka Died, Gamergate Readying to Exploit the Tragedy

The playbook of 2014-era Gamergate is being pulled out again.

Tragedy-grifting has become Gamergate’s main currency of choice. After dozens of women and non-binary people came out in stern opposition against sexual abuse, inadequate pay, and workplace discrimination — a predominant staple in the gaming industry–now a new event is likely to shift the tides in their favor back again, after game composer Alec Holowka — one of many who the accusations centered around — was pronounced dead via suicide this Saturday morning.

It didn’t take long for Gamergate to take this into the streets, protesting it as a failure of cancel culture. Jeremy “TheQuartering” Hambly already milked the tragedy for views by painting a target on Zoe Quinn and other victims’ backs less than an hour after the news broke. In their view, because the accusations were unsubstantiated, this gave no right to Quinn to accuse Holowka of sexual abuse, holding them captive in his apartment, and blacklisting them from getting further gigs in the industry. But therein lies the problem already–Holowka’s sister when announcing the death of her brother, confirmed the allegations were true. So making the opposite claim would be the harshest disrespect to her family in a time where his death should be a learning moment for all, to duly consider supporting mental health organizations across the globe, not exploit the tragedy for further harassment against his victims.

To put things into proper context, Alec has always had some form of suicide ideation, according to Zoe Quinn’s testimony and his own sister’s obituary. As these words are being penned, Zoe’s Twitter account has vanished off the internet, presumably signaling that they’re getting a new round of harassment from people who thought the Alec situation could’ve been “better handled”.

What this “better handling” looks like, warrants a thorough examination. The first presumption is that if done through the proper channels, Zoe would’ve had a much better chance at exacting justice against Alec without him taking his own life. The problem is that according to recent studies, less than 1% of rape cases lead to felony convictions–a number that is so low, that the margin for error is easily within the…