In this post, we’d like to stress one thing: do not go near this person if you are a new or struggling author.
Leigh Alexander is an author who attacks other authors, something we have seen on here quite a bit. She is also a journalist for various publications. We are not concerned with her background, however, and the intention of this post is not to vilify her, but to issue an urgent and strident warning to writers who may think of approaching her.
DON’T!
Just like the usual bullies, Leigh Alexander, delights in “ruining careers,” which is something she not only admits to, but has bragged about on several occasions.
She habitually engages in career sabotage so often that it has become an inside joke among her rabid fanbase.
Recently, she has targeted Anne Rice, threatening to “sic her fans on her” while making childish comments about popularity after Anne Rice linked to the article of another notable bully whose behavior is so bad, it made the news, here and .
Arming yourself with knowledge is the best way to keep from getting hurt, and we strongly advise authors keep out of her radar. Not just book authors, however, but all writers, as she has been known to target journalists as well as freelance writers. She is a loose cannon who thrives on conflict.
As far as “why” she does it, we don’t know, but we’re not interested in her personal life, and we ask that our blog readers please be considerate and refrain from making personal attacks against her. However, we do welcome any further evidence of bullying activities.
Lastly, we are not the only ones to document her bullying activities. No, she has done that herself. The following comes directly from her own website:
Writers: be careful. She’s looking for a fight. Don’t give her one.
« Randi Harper Fights Amazon’s Removal of her Bully Review John Scalzi and the Bully Kool-Aid »
You’re only scratching the surface of all corrupt gaming journalism (and modern journalism in general). http://gamergate.me/
This link doesn’t make any sense. It’s all about ethical behavior, bullying of nerds, and authoritarians. Where’s the good stuff Ginmar told me about? You know, all the secret plans to harass and stalk women and engage in immoral behavior for no conceivable reason?
Why does this look like something put together by a diverse group of people? Show me the harassment!
I’m sure this has hatred you’re looking for.
http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=leigh_alexander
You must be talking about deepfreeze http://www.deepfreeze.it
It’s where we store all of our dirt when they breach ethical standards so we can use it against them later by holding them accountable for being bullies… I mean so we can harazz themz!
She talks like a 13 year old girl.
Ooooh boy. Leigh is, in one of many words, a fine example of a bully. If you wish to see why, the journalism watchdog site http://www.deepfreeze.it has some researched and cited examples of her actions.
Wait, is that thing about the poison candy true? She mocked a guy who was having heart troubles and said he deserved it and should be sent poison? WTF lol
You can click the links to see for yourself (and usually they are archives so you won’t give pageviews to her): https://archive.is/77wqO Also note the tags.
This is probably about as hateful as you can get with news reporting. (In case you’re unaware: Thompson is generally disliked in and around gaming for good reason, but that still doesn’t justify anything close to what Alexander is doing on a semi-regular basis.)
At least she’s now hopefully slowly fading into obscurity after losing all of her more visible positions to her journalistic improprieties.
Leigh attacks people because she is a nobody and knows it. She has her group of friends in the gaming press but outside of those friends nobody takes her seriously. Lucky for her those friends are in high places BUT it hasn’t helped her failing career as she has turned into a liability at this point. She started a new website that is quickly failing and due to that she has reappeared and started attacking people again simply to get her name back in the “news”. After l if she attracts a single person to her new site her campaign of hatred is successful.
By the way she does have more twitter followers than Rice BUT most of them are fake accounts she either bought or one of her friends like the other harrasing moron Randi Harper probably made for her with a bot. Harper after all has a buddy in twitter support so Shes allowed to blatantly game the system. She’s also allowed to harass people on Twitter constantly without any consequence. Fortunate for us gamergate has exposed Harper and Alexander for the filth they are.
DeepFreeze names people and calls them out for nothing worse that writing reviews which GamerGate disagrees with, and accuses people of serious ethics violations based on how they interpreted a few tweets. It is far from well researched and cited.
Don’t listen to anyone who mentions “gamergate” because you won’t get very far trying to find what you want to find with them. They just have an undying need to be right.
Regarding deepfreeze, however, although it stemmed from said revolt, it actually has the information you’re looking for and provides a big list of industry bullies.
So you are saying they are right about Deepfreeze…. Sounds like you are contradicting yourself in mocking their being right and then admitting they are right?
It’s true, we in the #GamerGate movement do want to be right… as does everyone on the planet with a functioning ego, come to think of it. Who has an undying need to be wrong?
More importantly, though, we want the industries which are supposed to serve us to stop lying to us and acting like perpetual wet blankets. I swear, if they weren’t complaining about white protagonists in a Polish-based cultural setting, they’d be outraged that a game’s shipping boxes hadn’t been made with recycled paper.
If are living in the right side , the one that can censor on reddit[1], block people[2] and have other peoples names put in a blacklist slandering them[3], why are you using such a lame nickname like “anoymoua” and not a more creative nickname that you can share with your SEO bros?
[1]
http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/Censorship
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2015/03/reddit-mods-admit-to-censoring-gamergate-hiding-corruption/
[2]
See the old post on harper
[3]
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/11/igda-founder-responds-to-indie-devs-being-blocked-on-gamergate-blocklist/
Yo, same poster here. Verifying this is mine. Someone screencapped this and removed context and now people are praising it for the wrong idea. Sorry ’bout that. I value the truth over brownie points.
I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=Leigh_Alexander
Her suggesting poison candy be sent almost speaks for itself.
The fact that she was bragging about having more twitter followers than Anne Rice is really really sad. I’m guessing in REAL life, Anne Rice is a much happier person.
Fun fact: Twitter audit on Leigh shows 51% non-legit followers (meaning bots)
Also great advice in the blog post: ignore and don’t engage. Just… don’t bother
She’s one of the journalists behind the “Gamers are Dead” articles as well, and often credited as writing the one that made the consumer revolt (GamerGate) blow up into inferno it is/was
http://www.deepfreeze.it/article.php?a=enemy#dead
https://archive.is/l1kTW
Does anyone know who the “young female writer” Leigh references in the first tweet? I would very much like to purchase anything she has for sale after reading this.
Given the constant stream of conflict-seeking vitriol that seems to stream forth from her Twitter feed, that story of the “young female writer” (among other stories) may well be apocryphal.
I’ve seen little if any supporting details to any of these petty victories that she’s claimed on social media. But it almost doesn’t even matter if Leigh’s stories are pure fiction, because they do a wonderful job in illustrating what an awful individual she is regardless.
It makes me worry about as a budding game designer. Thankfully, I have no interest in the larger industry (for other reasons.)
But this takes the cake.
I wish to add to your warning. Leigh Alexander’s followers, those who would attack upon request. Know this:
1) They will ignore facts, evidence, and reason to suit their agenda on a hour to hour basis.
2) They are subject to Myer’s Law: Anything you communicate will be misinterpreted, and used against you by any means possible. http://greylining.com/2011/12/01/myers-law/
3) They Can and Will seek to harm you, your family, your friends, personally, and professionally by any means at their disposal.
Keep a record of anything they say to you, about you, or in passing. Do not engage them under any circumstances.
I’ve got more info on Leigh ^^
http://deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=leigh_alexander
Her and her ilk have done all they can to try and hurt the game industry and do anything they can hurt people they don’t like. They tap into their many corrupted journo friends and have them slander libel anyone they disagree with and even do there best to get them fired from their job. Leigh has an agenda and there is even video footage of her making that claim on You Tube, she is tied to Anita Sarkeesian as well and helped get what started #GamerGate to happen. These people have tried blacklisting folks out an industry, and Harpers own Block Bot the GG Autoblocker was even used and endorsed by the Independent Game Developers Association, calling over 10,000 random people harassers.
I agree DO NOT engage with these people they believe the ends justifies the means and above all else act like a odd cult.
-Lord Nurgle
One of the nice things about GamerGate has been that Leigh is no longer in a position where she can do anything to anyone’s career.
It gets worse, her gamers are dead article is responsible for most people joining gamergate at the start, she called every gamer an “obtuse hyperwailing shitslinger”. Why would anyone be inclined to side with their own bully?
She didn’t call every gamer that. She was defining “gamer” as that. I’m not defending her, she’s a complete sociopath. But it doesn’t help to just misunderstand what she said.
Another typical green-eyed monster, full of rage and jealousy. Does anyone have an idea what her amazon or goodreads alias might be? What I’m learning is that most of the bullies have at least 3 to 5 different identities around cyber world. One for twitter, one for FB, and etc on and on. Sometimes they open several accounts, for bullying purposes mainly. I suspect this is another one of those multiple personality bullies with several different fake names. (If she’s the person I suspect she is, anyway). Well, keep on exposing those turkeys! Great work again, STGRB!
I’m unsure if she has an Amazon reviewing account, but she has many cronies and high end friends that allow her get away with her BS and Randi Harper is 1 of those people.
Judging from her immature statements, she sounds likes she’s STILL in seventh grade. Maybe she made a career of junior high school. LOL!
Just read her and her ilk are now targeting the creator of Mine Craft there is no end to tehm and the antics
You can usually get a fairly good idea of whether someone is a so-called “SJW” by just reading through their twitter timeline quite briefly.
I know almost nothing about Notch, but it’s pretty clear he’s not an SJW.
Since when was Leigh Alexander an “author”? All I knew was she was an editor for some dead website called Gamasutra. She also wrote some articles for her friends and was paid to write favorable reviews of video games. She’s a member of GameJournoPros – a collection of online “journalists” that write about each other and push the video games of friends & investor. Being an online bully is just part of her problem; I’m surprised she’s not already in prison (or at least jobless) from half the things she’s done. Oh well, it’s just a matter of time – Karma comes around.
I’d like to think this is relevant.
http://i.imgur.com/Mw2Q2My.jpg
Long story short:
Satire game about tentacles on Kickstarter
Publication that Alexander worked for called it rape (as well as other publications).
Kickstarter for tentacle game was shut down.
BUT
Similar game appears on Kickstarter
Alexander writes article promoting it (other publications follow suit)
Alexander is friends with the developer.
Woa am I spotting a major double standard here!? Not that I’m surprised with some of these loonies.
Leigh Alexander says that her readership, commenters and followers are a pack of fucking idiots. It’s reason number 48 why she drinks so much. Check it out: https://pdf.yt/d/8ZI5EhmQWfFTefrw
Just a tip STGRB, try and avoid delving too much into the videogame industry issues (i.e both Harper and Alexander are connected to the industry). The gamergate movement that you’re seeing mentioned a lot in these comments was hugely demonized by the gaming press and most of the mainstream media (surprise surprise when you point out corruption in the media, they don’t thank you for it, they try and ruin you)
All that will happen if you get too linked to the movement is that the mainstream press will try and completely delegitimise you with accusations of sexism and bigotry. It’s become this really creepy way they try and ruin political opponents and it’s worryingly widespread.
Keep doing what you’re doing, but really try and just stick the specific issues and specific examples of bullying. Don’t give them any ammunition to try and declare you guilty by association.
Thank you. We are.
Sir just by posting info on these folks they already have called you and Anne Rice Pro Gamergate
We’ve stated what we are about and that’s protecting authors from abuse by educating them about the dangers in the cyber world. If there are people out there who try to pass on lies about us, well, it wouldn’t be the first time. We call out bullying when we see it. No matter who the bully is.
Good on you. Sincerely. Regardless of how I heard about you, I respect what you do immensely.
All you have to do is disagree with the opposition on the smallest point. I for instance took umbrage and wrote a piece about a high-profile member of the opposition trying to dissuade the public from aiding a charity for a rape victim (because GamerGate had endorsed it). I was labeled as one of them before I had ever heard of it. In fact, that’s *how* I heard of it.
Seconded. In correspondence about all of these kinds of issues unless I’m replying to something that directly mentions the name of that group I try not to bring it up. It’s not that I’m ashamed to find myself agreeing with them but because the name has been so maligned it can make even people not involved immediately dismissive.
That’s part of the reason it’s such a boon that the larger writing community has been alerted to the actions of some people independently of the title itself. Like I said in the reply to the comment posted below this, it’s important to judge each issue, each person as individual.
Being admittedly pro myself, I anticipate vindication more often than not.
GamerGate, from which these accusations emerge, is as a movement far more guilty of bullying than the people their calling out. You see that from the outset, with the threats on individuals, but it continues through campaigns to damage publications through letter writing campaigns to their advertisers after they published articles with gamerGate disagreed with, through to exactly the sort of coordinated attacks on people through negative reviews that this site is opposed to. Some of the more vocal opponents haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory, either, and have been guilty of some nasty behaviour. But with GamerGate’s history of bullying behaviour, it may not be the best fit given this site’s role.
Well surprise surprise I just knew eventually someone who doesn’t know research was gonna jump in and say this nonsense.
Just a couple of observations here;
1. They’re, not their.
2. Yes, there are trolls that act in the name of GamerGate. There are trolls that act in the name of Harper, Alexander and company too. There are trolls in every walk of life and under every banner you can name, period.
The real meat of your talking points here;
3. “Letter writing campaigns to advertisers”
If those campaigns were unfounded, the delete key is handy. Email filters also work. I think it’s telling that after receiving those letters the advertisers *chose* to pull their ads. You’ve inadvertently pointed out the validity of the group you’re trying to discredit.
I recommend before anyone makes any decisions based on a label, they research thoroughly the content of any statement or accusation *anyone* makes. This is the internet, any claim or accusation has to be judged on an individual basis. To dismiss, or accept, anything out of hand is ridiculous. There is *always* spin. There is *always* an agenda. I think that people abusing that fact are one of the reasons STGRB exists in the first place and is also one of the reasons GamerGate has been around for nine months.
As for the cases that brought STGRB to the attention of GamerGate and vice versa it doesn’t take much of that research to find that Harper and Alexander’s words speak for themselves.
In regard to the ads, it was the core mentality behind the campaign which got to me. The argument that because publications wrote articles and reviews which GG disagreed with, they could run a campaign to have those publications put out of business. The worst was the campaign after the Bayonetta 2 review on Polygon, but the general response was just as ugly.
However, what really caused concerns was that, at the same time GG was calling out Harper for writing a negative review, they started a campaign to downvote Feminist Frequency on IMDB, having previously worked to assign insulting tags on Steam to GameLoading, and to brigade the votes for the Kotaku app on Google Play. I was pleased to see Damian Schubert taking note of the same issue: http://www.zenofdesign.com/anne-rice-and-brigading/ . It is frustrating to see a group calling out someone for the same behaviour that they are performing.
I was, sadly, expecting to be called out for a typo.
As for the typo, I tried to be gentle, and ended up making a similar mistake an hour later. Bygones? 😉
I’d like to talk about this further, but I think we’re starting to drift into an unrelated area for this comment section. You do make some fair points. My twitter is linked, and there are a few ways to contact me from there.
If you’d like to take this conversation off-board, I’d like that too.
Since you haven’t been researching and following only the MS Media narrative allow me to enlighten. First off Adam I have been in GG since the day it started. These sites that we contacted and advertiser pulled from all ran the exact same article within 12 hours of each other claiming all gamers are white entitled racist sexist people, see link below.
List of Gamers are Dead Articles
The site Gawker we were campagining against advocated to bring back bullying by their own staff:
http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/gawker_bullying.php
Arthur Chu the old Jeopardy fame contestant has consistently attacked us and even incited a Bomb Threat to be called on a GG Meet up in DC, which FBI had responded to, mind you keep in mind that ANti-GG was deemed a credible threat over all the claims made about GG:
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2015/05/03/gamergate-dc-gathering-targeted-bomb-threat#.VXMWq89Vikp
http://kotaku.com/gamergate-meetup-evacuated-after-apparent-threat-1701761645
http://nichegamer.com/2015/05/peaceful-gamergate-in-d-c-meetup-receives-false-bomb-threats/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/663.874793-Bomb-threat-tweeted-at-GG-supporters-meeting-at-DC-bar
Also please not Arthur Chu attepmted to stop a charity drive for a victim of rape, just b/c the woman was a former pornstar and b/c the charity was started by a GG supporter:
http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/18/brave-jeopardy-man-arthur-chu-takes-a-stand-against-helping-abused-porn-star-and-family/
We have thousands to multiple charities to help people:
http://gamergate.me/charity/
Former Journalist Geordi Tait advocated for a mass murdering of GG Supporters:
http://honeybadgerbrigade.com/2014/11/19/the-ballad-of-geordie-tait/
This still isn’t everything these people have done to bad mouth our names they have even gotten people fired from their jobs:
http://imgur.com/gallery/FzbfIRp
Ben Kuchera has tried his best to ruin careers of journalists:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/23/how-sloppy-biased-video-games-reporting-almost-destroyed-a-ceo/
Lest we also forget about Arthur Giess who owns a Suicide Girls Account yet discredits games as sexist and racist:
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/bayonetta-2-given-7-5-10-by-polygon-but-31636812/
Perhaps above all else all these people had been colluding with each other since year before GG started:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite/
Even the FTC has noticed this insanity and stepped up on policies due to us:
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/06/04/gamergate-scores-again-ftc-updates-disclosure-guidelines/
Not to mention if GG is such a hate group and totally wrong, why did all the sites update their ethics policies on disclosure:
http://gamergate.me/
Don’t even get me started on Briana Wu. If you still think that GamerGate is some bullying movement fine, but don’t try to discredit us just b/c without displaying any facts to back your claims.
This isn’t even tapping the barrel, so before discrediting a Consumer Revolt against the very media you might want to look outside the media itself!
Hope you have a wonderful day and take care.
PLease note my last comment was directed towards Adam and the information I provided is for anyone who wishes to know the truth about GG, that is all I shall be posting nothing further about GG.
I’ve also been closely following GamerGate since before Baldwin gave the movement a name. I won’t dispute that some of those opposing GG have behaved atrociously. But I’ve also been there, watching the Twitter comments, seeing the comments and attacks on forums and connected sites, and viewing what has been going on, and while I’m not willing to defend the worst of GG’s opposition, I’m also not willing to deny that there has bullying and harassment from GG.
But my main concern right now is the situation where GG was calling out Harper for doing the same thing they were doing. Looking through the IMDB reviews on Feminist Frequency, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3897284/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1, which all appeared within 48 hours of a KiA thread calling for gamerGaters to rate and leave reviews, , there are insults, a death threat, and a rating which is the result of over 200 negative ratings in the hours after the thread was started. I respect that GG isn’t a cohesive whole, but this problem – where GG is claiming that a person is acting badly, while as a movement performing the same or worse actions at the same time – is a concern, and damages their credibility.
Individuals in GG are often great people, whom I have a lot of time for, and considerable respect. But that doesn’t hold for everyone in the movement, and seeing a death threat appearing in those reviews – as insane and unlikely as it might be – highlighted the problems.
Adam, I don’t think 274 users who rated and 20 users who wrote reviews on Tropes vs. Women In Video Games on IMDB is factual evidence against gamergate. By the looks of the comments, some of them are not from Gamergate.
, there were no reviews until two days ago when the call went out to GamerGaters on KiA to write reviews and leave ratings. Then all 20 reviews – including the death threat – appeared within 48 hours – and the rating went from something like 6 people to what now sits at over 270. Meanwhile, on KiA, people were commenting on how scary GamerGate was to make such a big impact.
Yes, some people responded to GamerGate’s attempt to do this by leaving a couple of positive reviews. But if you want to deny that overall this wasn’t GamerGate, go ahead. However, honestly, I’m hard pressed to see how anyone could think it was anyone else.
The guy said that the site disabled review rating and comments. I look at the thread It didn’t do any damage by the looks of it.
, he was referring to YouTube, which is why they called for brigading IMDB reviews instead. It made a massive difference on IMDB, and was the sort of bullying that this site is calling people out for doing.
STGRB wants to thank you all for keeping the discussion civil.
If she’s such a female designer advocate, would she consider ruining the career of a fellow female designer? Honest question.
I haven’t heard of her till today.
She is part of clique that has this agenda to push feminism and identity politics into gaming, if anyone disagrees with her or her clique she smears their name and tries to ruin their careers. Many of us have posted links about her in the comments feel free to ask any questions on twitter I’m always available.
That sounds familiar, thanks!
No problem hit me up anytime at