Tuesday 18 November 2014

College professor gave no trigger warning before 'gunning down' hundreds of half-baked theories on Gamergate


College professor Patrick Gayle gave no trigger warning prior to figuratively gunning down hundreds of ill-conceived theories on Gamergate.

Students at the Rainer Academy, CA, many sporting ridiculous beards, lip piercings and brightly-coloured hair, dived for cover as Gayle's carefully-aimed bolts of searing white-hot logic tore through their flimsily constructed arguments.

It was carnage,” said Winnie Garner - a Drama and Gender Diversity Studies student, majoring in Consensual Mime.

Some of the arguments proffered by my fellow students, painting Gamergate as the work of misogynists, were scarcely a few days old and, as such, barely developed. My own essay, in which I portrayed Gamergate as an online enclave of white, socially-inept, basement-dwelling males, who have somehow formed a powerful cabal capable of reversing centuries of female emancipation, was effectively torn from my arms and ripped to shreds. It should have been nurtured and allowed to grow beautiful and free, and with the same rights as a real child, sheltered from the world and at liberty to believe in the tenuous reality of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.”

Clutching her ruined thesis to her T-shirt bearing the hashtag #KillAllMen, and choking back her tears, Garner continued:

Killing an idea that has grown inside me for literally 20 minutes before being birth-typed on a MacBook Air and supplemented with text copied and pasted from Wikipedia is like killing my child. Actually, when you think about it, it's worse than killing a thousand children. It's literally worse than the holocaust. I want to go on record as saying that Professor Gayle is the embodiment of ISIS in a leather-patched corduroy jacket. Education should be a safe space where ideas are cherished – not torn down.”

Andrew Saxxer, president and founder of a campus-based organisation called Safer Spaces (SS) warned that Gayle's actions could have far-reaching consequences:

Tragically many of the academic papers, whose credibility was destroyed by the brutal and barbaric actions of Professor Gayle, had dependants. I have taken numerous calls from distressed victims all concerned that without their extremist theories on Gamergate to validate their indolent, free-wheeling lifestyles, support for their Patreon accounts may dwindle. This could have the unforeseen consequence of forcing these individuals into a world that has a low tolerance for them as human beings; a world where their lack of marketable skills and utterly obnoxious personalities make long-term employment an unlikely scenario.”

Some of Gayle's former students have already removed themselves from the Rainer Academy in protest at the Professor's actions: In an open letter to the world media posted on her Tumblr page, and later reprinted in full in The Guardian newspaper, Clare Steeple said:

Following the unprovoked assault on my idealised intellectual self by Professor Gayle I have decided to take a step back from higher education. I now plan devote myself full-time to self-actualising in a supportive non-confrontational environment which just so happens to be a large apartment with stunning views across San Francisco bay, that is entirely bank-rolled by donations to my Patreon account. I can't go back to my job at Starbucks – literally - they told me that I they won't employ me again. Please donate to my Kickstatrer. I am going to start a small business making bags from carpet remnants.”

As students attempt to come to terms with the fallout from the tragedy, eyewitnesses to the massacre describe the professor as being more animated than usual:

Media and Communications student, Kyle Motion, said: “People were saying things about Gamergate that were obviously nonsense. You could tell that Gayle was bothered by what he was hearing and invested every last ounce of his intellectual might in bringing down the hammer.”

Motion added: “It was awesome. That guy just single-handedly rekindled my interest in teaching as a profession.”

Eric, a troubled young teen from the 1980s who wears a frayed denim waistcoat and sits at the back of the lecture hall with his feet up on the desk, said:
The Professor was on fire. Words were coming out of his mouth so fast he was freestyle rapping. He would be welcome to breakdance with my crew anytime.”

In a brief interview with Professor Gayle, conducted by the Rainer Academy Student Press, the educator seemed unrepentant:

Truly a reckoning has come. Those who those return to Lecture Hall B at 10am, on Tuesday, for my class on Counter-Contextual Perspectives in Print Journalism, will have taken their first step towards holding their own in the gladiatorial bloodsport that is Culture and Media Studies.”

A spokesperson for the Rainer Academy said: “Despite receiving numerous calls, all demanding that Professor Patrick Gayle be arrested for crimes such as rape, genocide, the mass-murder of the enlightened self, and the retrospective sexual assault of Emily Pankhurst, we have concluded that no crime was committed and will not be contacting the police or the FBI on this matter. We firmly believe that Professor Gayle had excelled in his role as an educator by challenging the beliefs of his students and calling upon them to robustly defend their arguments.”

Saxxer confirmed that a 6-month candlelit vigil for the discredited theorems will be taking place outside the Department of Cultural Studies “along with any other public space that our movement decides to occupy at a later date.” Grief counselling will be provided with preference given to oppressed minorities.

1 comment:

  1. This is literally glorifying the idea that arguments need to be defended.

    ReplyDelete