Six months after starring in the #Gamergate episode of Law & Order: SVU that managed to unite Gamergaters and the women they hate (in shared critical contempt of Law & Order: SVU, but still), Ice-T finally leveled up IRL and learned what all this Gamergate fuss was all about, alternately lending support to the Gamergate cause and telling its loudest Tweeters to “eat a dick.”
It began when Ice-T tweeted about no-opinion-having celebrities who “won’t stand their ground” in the pursuit of popularity. “Did you stand your ground on SVU’s #GamerGate ep? Or did you just read about it on Kotaku?” replied one Twitter user and YouTuber, indirectly quoting Ice-T’s own dialogue in the controversial February episode of SVU in which an amalgam of Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu is swatted, doxxed, kidnapped, and gang-raped by white male gamers.
In the season 16 episode, Ice-T’s character Fin Tutuola reveals to his fellow officers that he’s a hardcore gamer, mostly so he can then conveniently mansplain acronyms like FAL, KOBS, and FPS to the department’s lady cops.
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Fin even demonstrates his deep gaming knowledge to the episode’s victim, game developer Raina Punjabi, with lines like, “I read on Kotaku that it’s better than Civ V with a Brave New World expansion pack.”
After a sorta ripped from the headlines setup, the universally-panned episode devolved into a silly approximation of what the mainstream makes of #Gamergate, culminating in an ending that makes just about everyone involved look bad: Gamergaters, women in gaming, and the out-of-touch detectives of the NYPD.
Its controversial ending—in which the female victim of Gamergate terrorism admits defeat, quits her job, and withdraws from the gaming world—drew bewildered complaints from both actual women in gaming and their antagonists, who objected to SVU’s extreme-nerd depiction of them as misogynists turned delusional killers.
And yet on Thursday, Ice-T had to ask: “What is GamerGate?”
Explanations rolled in from both sides of the ’Gate, prompting Ice-T to explain his ignorance: “News Flash: I’m a ACTOR.. On TV I ACT like I know about shit I have NO idea about…”
Quoting Tweets alternately explaining that Gamergate was borne out of either rampant sexism in the gaming industry or, on the flip side, that it was a construct of the “gaming press,” Ice-T was satisfied and ready to move on within minutes.
The onetime gangsta rapper even sided with his fellow gamers, lending emotional support as someone who’s weathered his share of scrutiny from the haters in the past. “People have been Hating on gamers ever since the beginning.. They Hate Games almost more than ME… Lol Fuck em…” His message: Fuck the haters!
But the gamers started hating on Ice-T and on SVU, turning his sympathies. “FYI: SVU is Fake..” he tweeted. “But FAKE… LOL.” Some gamers were even “persecuted” as a direct result of that SVU episode, insisted one Twitterer!
“Get the fuck outta here,” Ice-T replied. “Somebody watched a Fake TV show and got in trouble.. Really? BuTT Hurt Maybe.”
Again, he attempted to broker peace with the Gamergaters by pointing out their mutual enemy: the media.
“Look Gamers.. Play your games. FUCK the press. And keep it moovin. The press will ALWAYS be the Enemy…… Always. The press has gone to Great lengths to end my career.. And Im still here.. Fuck em.. Let me say that again Fuck em. Live YOUR life… Don’t worry about what DUMB FUCKS write.. They can NEVER stop gaming.. EVER.”
Having fed the beast and appeased it, Ice-T signed off with a plug of his own music video about video games and how much he loves them, and tried to restart his day by playing cop killer on Payday 2: Crime Edition.
… but not before issuing one last missive to a fickle Twitter fan who dared to insult his reputation as rap’s most hardcore gamer:
