Former ‘Silicon Valley’ Writer Named in Breitbart Exposé: Leaked Emails Reveal Crude Remarks About GamerGate Targets
As Hollywood got caught up in the maelstrom surrounding Harvey Weinstein on Thursday, another major media story also broke courtesy of Buzzfeed, revealing how Breitbart News and Milo Yiannopoulos influenced the mainstream media with Nazi and white nationalist ideas over the past few years.
The detailed story was partly based on a number of emails sent and received by Yiannopoulos. Those exchanges included a number of reporters, who would email Yiannopoulos encouraging him to attack certain women, offer up tips, or simply ask crude questions. Among those emailing Yiannopoulos was journalist Dan Lyons, who in 2015 seemed awfully interested in the gender of various GamerGate targets who were in Yiannopoulos’s bullseye.
These emails, per Buzzfeed’s quotes and screenshots, include Lyons asking Yiannopoulos if game designer Zoë Quinn is “a biological female or trans?”, to which Yiannopoulos replied “She is a girl… A hideous girl but a girl.”
Lyons has been a well-established voice in tech journalism for decades at publications like Forbes and Newsweek; he also created the satirical blog Fake Steve Jobs, which began skewering the Apple CEO in 2006. He wrote for the Emmy-nominated “Silicon Valley” in 2015 and 2016, although the only episode for which he is the sole credited writer is Season 2’s “White Hat/Black Hat.” Lyons did not write for “Silicon Valley” Season 4, and is now back working as a journalist.
Following the publication of Buzzfeed’s story on Thursday, Lyons responded on Twitter, first to a tweet from “Silicon Valley” star Kumail Nanjiani about the story (Nanjiani has since deleted his original tweet, but did later tweet a link to the Buzzfeed story in full). Lyons’ responses:
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916102855106486273
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916102912891383808
In additional tweets replying to Nanjiani, Lyons defended himself and his record as an “outspoken critic of bro culture, SV culture, diversity problems,” who has “never met Milo. Don’t like his politics or antics. Traded a few emails with him in 2015, for this BFeed says I’m part of some cabal feeding Nazi ideology into mainstream via Milo & Breitbart. It’s ridiculous.”
Following his Tweets to Nanjiani, Lyons then made some statements regarding the women he emailed Yiannopoulos about.
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916111444919406592
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916111649626574849
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916111975226269697
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916112903203426304
Unfortunately, those apologies seemed not to have gone through initially — at least according to Quinn, whose Tweets from Thursday evening reveal that she hadn’t gotten the message.
What apology. Where.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
No you didn't. https://t.co/xi7XYwTqMg
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
Yeah imagine how I felt. And then imagine how I feel being used for your sadboy redemption arc before ever hearing from you. https://t.co/DB7w2oIvAu
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
You're not sorry you said it. You're sorry you got caught. https://t.co/poCyRaHBO9
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
Lyons, per a screenshot from Quinn, then blocked her on Twitter.
I guess he didn't like the fact that I called him out on lying about apologizing to me. pic.twitter.com/6rRH19JYO1
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
But then, approximately 12 hours later, he chose to reach out to Quinn again on Twitter with a potential explanation for why she might not have received his apology:
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916282172205539328
Followed by another attempt at making contact.
https://twitter.com/realdanlyons/status/916283682352238598
Whether or not Quinn chooses to respond and/or accept Lyons’ apology is pending. Here is what matters: based on how this played out on Twitter, it definitely seems that this situation could have been handled better.
Of course, the best possible scenario would have been this: For Lyons to have never felt like it was a good idea to send Yiannopoulos those emails in the first place.
