In 'Crash Override,' Zoe Quinn Shares Her Boss Battle Against Online Harassment

"You're just data and data doesn't bleed."

Video game developer and activist Zoe Quinn lived through what, for many, is unimaginable: a sustained, two-year campaign of harassment involving hacked accounts, stalking and death threats, all touched off by an ex-boyfriend's blog post. That post sparked the online movement that came to be known as GamerGate, and plunged Quinn into a life of couchsurfing, changes of address, court battles, and public debate over everything from her personal relationships and professional life to ethics in journalism. In Crash Override, she tells her story for the first time.

I always get apprehensive when discussing harassment in gaming publicly, and almost turned down this review. The hostilities that her ex-boyfriend tapped into made Quinn a reluctant symbol in two different ways. To some in the GamerGate community, she became the embodiment of all that is wrong with the gaming industry and gaming journalism. To many outside Gamergate, she came to represent their fears of gaming culture in the first place, justifying their baseless beliefs that all gamers are hostile, antisocial, maladjusted, even