Intimidation Game (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)
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A textbook example of how not to attack the GamerGate movement...
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Intimidation Game is the 14th episode in season 16 of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. The plot is about a game developer woman being harassed and assaulted by cyber terrorists who are gamers, the episode also stars a few YouTubers as guest appearances such as Logan Paul, Toby Turner, Jack Vale, and James Ciccone.
Why It Sucks
- It's just a propaganda episode surrounding the GamerGate movement, which is sad since Law & Order was made to be based on real crimes, and yet the crime in the episode isn't real at all.
- At the very start of the episode, we are presented with a show of misandry: a mother is talking with a therapist about her boy breaking stuff and the therapist claims that it is normal for boys to break things because "Boys run around. They break things. They hurt themselves. It’s in all their DNA.".
- Pointless guest appearances of YouTubers such as Logan Paul, Toby Turner, Jack Vale, and James Ciccone, which feel rather forced.
- Speaking of WIS#3, the episode even had the gall to include Logan Paul, who's infamous for filming a person who had committed suicide in Aokigahara, better known as the Suicide Forest for one of his YouTube videos, and laughed at it, mocking the LGBTQ+ community by saying that "implying that being gay is a choice," which resulted in GLAAD called him out for his remarks. After the Suicide Forest incident and his ensuing apology, he posted a video of him using a taser on two dead rats and another video of him killing a fish. More backlash ensured since it demonstrated that he didn't learn anything from the Suicide Forest despite his attempts to come off as a changed man. Not only did controversial animal rights group PETA vocally criticize his actions but many people sided with them as well. YouTube themselves ended up temporarily demonetizing his channel.
- The episode has an overall sense of cheesiness to it. For example, the video game played by cyber terrorists is titled "Killed or Be Slaughtered", which seems more like a parody title made for laughs. Also, the site where the cyber terrorists congregate is called "Redchannit", an embarrassing portmanteau of "Reddit" and "Chan", and the internet is referred to as "DarkNet".
- It is written in a fashion where the writers thought that their audience was stupid. For example, one of the detectives explains that "fps" means "first-person shooter", despite one of them having been shown on screen a few minutes before.
- It promotes stereotypes such as a gamer that only likes violent video games.
- The cyber terrorists are masked (pictured), to make them similar to ISIS militants. This is a questionable choice and the masks are also ridiculous because they look like cheap grey-tinted lucha libre masks.
- Awful and cringeworthy lines that utilize terms of video game slang. For example, the slogan of the cyber-terrorist organization is "It's time to level up" and a woman who was just sexually assaulted in a bathroom told the detective, who asked her what they did to her, "They leveled up". Other examples are "Rape is a mod in level 16 of KOBS" and one of the detectives saying "Nice try. There's no reset button in the real world".
- Repetitive and boring dialogue. Throughout the whole episode, the gamers always refer to Raina, the game developer, using vulgar synonyms of "prostitute" or "bitch". This also contributes to render the antagonists of the episode very one-dimensional and uninteresting.
- The writers tried to scare the audience but they failed miserably. For example, when the cyber terrorists eventually manage to abduct Raina, they leave a smartphone for the detectives to find where a video of one of them ripping her shirt and punching her in the face is shown. At the end of the video, the phrase "LEVEL COMPLETED" appears in green letters.
- It promotes the stereotype that nearly all gamers are white males who hate gamer women.
- The resolution at the end is trying to be anti-climatic but fails.
- It is overly dramatic, despite the show being dramatic in a realistic way.
- It promotes hatred against gamers.
- Overuse of cliches. The detectives eventually find out that one of the cyber terrorists lives and plays video games in the basement of his mother's house.
- The script consists of a messy unorganized mixture of internet phenomena that happened in the US.
- The episode was so bad that even Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, and Zoe Quinn hated it. When you manage to successfully piss off three of the most notable victims of the GamerGate controversy, you know you screw up extremely badly!
Reception
This episode was met with mostly negative criticism for its poor scripts, cringeworthy delivery, and oversimplification of actual events. Even websites like Kotaku criticized the episode for "turning complicated conversations over misogyny in gaming into a cartoon caricature of good vs. evil." It has a 4.6/10 on IMDb, the lowest rated episode of the show on the site.
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