"Gamergate" is basically about telling stupid women they need to shut up and stop trying to ruin videogaming culture by being feminists. It's featured a parade of horribles, like death and rape threats and really tragic crimes against logic. There's a fair bit of overlap between the Gamergaters and the "Men's Rights Activists" crowd, because both have the important mission of keeping women from emasculating real people and imposing lesbian communist tyranny on the world. But today we are pleased to bring you a Gamergate story that isn't about horrible vicious online smears of women. Instead, it's about a couple of these terrible He-Man Women Haters Club dorks going to war with each other, and it is a beautiful thing.

Our protagonists: Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini, who have been working on a very serious crowdfunded documentary called The Sarkeesian Effect, whose important goal, according to their crowdfunding appeal, is to

explore how gaming and tech culture have been hijacked by Social Justice Warriors as well as look into the background, ethics, and methodology of some the movement's most prominent voices.

And here we must back up and do MORE explainering: Gamergaters do not like "Social Justice Warriors" -- i.e., anyone who thinks maybe social justice is a good thing and the world might be better off without racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred of trans people, and so on. The Gamergate and MRA crowd really can't stand "SJWs," which was confusing to us the first time we saw the term because we wondered what single Jewish women had done to piss them off so much. And then there's the title, which refers to videogame critic Anita Sarkeesian, who outraged a lot of manchildren by making a series of videos critiquing how women are represented in videogames. Really. OUTRAGED like you wouldn't BELIEVE.

But there is trouble in Documentary Maker paradise! After raising roughly $56,000 to make their takedown of the whole Social Justice Warrior scam, Messrs Owen and Aurini have had a great big falling out, and Owen has given Aurini his walking papers from the project -- except there are no papers, because the two Professional Filmmakers never actually had a written contract, so now there are sadfaced videos and butthurt blogposts aplenty. Owen posted this very sad announcement of Aurini's departure on Tuesday, and yes, the Professional Documentary Producer really is standing there in his bathrobe:

We'll let nerd culture/movie blog Badass Digest summarize:

In the video, actual human emotion almost penetrates the world-weary producer’s stoic facade as he describes his decision to “terminate [his] working relationship with Davis Aurini”. According to Owen, Aurini will cease active work on The Sarkeesian Effect and post-production will be handled by Owen and a team of experts in Atlanta. Owen’s reasons for the split are unclear, but what is clear is the passion that Aurini has for the project. Such is his passion that he delivered Owen an ultimatum with three potential courses of action:

1. Pay Aurini “his regular salary” and carry on as normal;

2. Pay Aurini half the film’s budget to walk away;

3. Pay Aurini nothing and have him go public that Owen is absconding with the budget.

It seems as though Option Three was taken: in a blog post (the URL of which features the words “abscond” and “budget”), Aurini hit back with some highly charged language.

And oh, what highly charged language it is! Aurini pledges that his betrayal will be avenged, and that The Sarkeesian Effect will be completed, and that there will be many words spilled in High Manly Dudgeon:

This project will see fruition, and it will be a palpable blow against the Social Justice movement.

As I tried to explain to Jordan several times, this project is bigger than him, than me, than us, even than all of you – this project is a moral obligation. I will see this project done.

A moral obligation, yes, that's what it is. He says that shooting is all done, and that only a few minor tasks remain, such as "the editing, the animations, and possibly a bit of fact-checking." Aurini seems pretty sure that Owen took off with the money because they'd just wrapped up their fundraising, and also because Owen is just not much of a Man. And here we need to introduce another member of the dramatis personae, the offstage presence of"Roosh V," a legendary in his own mind pickup artist (PUA), antifeminist, and leading light of the Manosphere. You know, another woman-hating asshole. So this is why Aurini really thinks Owen fired him (as if he even had the power to):

I strongly suspect that he undermined this project because of an irrational jealousy of Roosh, and any man who’s able to relate to women easily.

He’d been asking me for advice about women since the get go -- which led me to recommending my colleague Roosh who has done much to support us -- but every time I spoke about him, it seemed to fill Jordan with rage. Eventually leading to a panic attack that got him kicked off of an airplane -- the last time I saw him in person.

Remember, you have to remember to run this passage through the MRA/PUA translation filter, so that you understand that "any man who’s able to relate to women easily" does not mean "a man who can talk to a woman as if she too were a human being" but rather, "men who get laid a lot because sadly some women have poor senses of self-worth." Also, he suspects that Owen may actually be a closet liberal, since even though they agreed that the project would be "apolitical" -- yes, an apolitical look at how "Social Justice Warriors" are ruining the tech world -- Owen had increasingly "made a point of attacking anybody on the right whom he could get away with criticizing, culminating with his attack on Roosh."

And so the future of what could have been the end of Political Correctness -- indeed, of Feminism Itself -- appears to be in doubt. Or maybe there will be multiple, competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect, complete with bonus tracks of the two former buds calling each other treasonous little beta bitches.

The world awaits breathlessly in this haze of testosterone and MRA tears, wondering who the greater man will be. Quien es mas macho?

[Badass Digest / Stares at the World / Badass Digest again]