Prominent GamerGate target details disturbing harassment, all these years later

Years on from the peak of the GamerGate controversy, women in the game industry are still finding themselves harassed by anonymous people.

In a series of troubling tweets on Monday night, game developer turned congressional candidate Brianna Wu said GamerGate is still "ongoing" for her, years after receiving death threats that forced her to flee her home.

Wu highlighted a recent incident where she had been sent pictures of herself by a stranger, taken near her Boston home without her knowledge.

"The coffee shop I write at, the theater my husband and I go to, the shops I frequent near my home. Message was, 'I know where you live,'" one of her tweets reads.

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Wu said she contacted police, who were blasé about the incident. Then she said a rock was tossed through her front window on Monday morning. "This not a subtle message," she wrote.

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Frustratingly, Wu said she doesn't know who is behind all this, and why. "It could've been teenagers messing around," she said. However, the recent spate of harassment has brought fear into her life again, years after GamerGate targeted women in the video game industry.

"I just want you all to understand, for people targeted by the alt-right, the harassment never ends. It just ebbs and flows," she wrote.

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Despite everything, Wu said she didn't want to be defined by the attacks. "I would just like to say, as a congressional candidate -- I'm not defined by the alt-right and their attacks on me," she said via email.

"Harassment is something I am passionate about addressing, but I don't want to make it the focus. Personally, I think climate change and income inequality are more pressing issues. 

"But, the reason I shared [the tweets] is we're seeing a resurgence of hate crimes in the U.S. Over the last week, Jewish community centers have been targeted with hate crimes, as well as Jewish cemeteries. I see this as a consequence of law-enforcement's failure to prosecute Gamergate. The kitchen was on fire, and we did nothing -- now the whole house is ablaze," she said.

"I asked the system to do the right thing, and it failed us. The reason I'm running is to do the right thing myself."