FAFO Reality Check

And he really loved that dog, like loved him enough to get a tattoo of him. Pekka wasn’t kidding, it is almost the most ridiculous tattoo ever made. 20 /

But somehow Pekka couldn’t quite get his priorities straight. 1st: Game 2nd: Dog 3rd: Work 4th: Wife Was T allowed on the couch and the bed or only Freddie? 19 /

Pekka took his lady on romantic dinner dates to the local Burger King and promoted her band in hopes of being rewarded with some “sexy time” 18/

Sometime in 2008, Pekka somehow managed to meet and cuff an attractive and talented young woman. Together with Pekka’s little dog Freddie, they lived in a little house not too far from the university. T spent some time on the road touring with her indie rock band with Pekka tagging along only to drunk tweet against her wishes. The lovebirds even got matching his (All you need is🖤) and hers (🖤 is all you need) tattoos 17/

It appears that Pekka also had an affinity for boozing and tweeting and dabbled with some illicit substances. We cannot determine whether this was for purely recreational or research purposes. 16/

Now may be a good time to introduce you to a different side of Pekka and how he spent the little free time he had outside of his never-ending studies, video games and Reddit debates. He was an avid traveller, swing dancer (he was even an instructor for some time), tree lover, the world’s greatest dog dad, a seemingly terrible husband to his first wife and quite possibly the Finnish king of all things cringe. 15/

⚠️☢️🚨 TRIGGER WARNING NAFOTARDS 🚨☢️⚠️ In 2014, Pekka tweeted that Putin was his favorite president. The only context was the accompanying gif. We believe that the NAFOTARDS have as many pressing questions on this as we do. Don’t leave us hanging Pekka. An honest man understands and embraces the process by which his thoughts and convictions may change and evolve as he gets older and wiser, even when it’s a 180° turn. An honest man will not shy away from sharing why and how that process took place, he fears no judgement. But Pekka doesn't appear to be an honest man. 14/

Pekka dedicated a whole Vatnik soup to Starlink as part of his current obsession with Elon Musk but previously thought it was hilarious that “1st world westerners” were criticizing Musk’s planned global internet access for being too slow. 13 /

A few additional examples. In February of 2014, Pekka thought that it was “fucking scary” to watch Ukraine slip into a “civil war”. Interesting, considering that the new version of Pekka repeatedly insisted that any mention of it being a civil war in Ukraine is just a vatnik talking point. 12/

Pekka ended his blog post with “By the way, I’m always ready to talk about Gamergate and my views on this issue. Hell, you can even doxx me if that makes you feel better.” While we appreciate the permission, Pekka wasn’t genuinely ok with making anyone feel better. What if your boss did give a shit Pekka? What if the campaign to get you fired for holding an opinion was so relentless that your life did get ruined, what then? If you don’t know the answer, consider asking some of the people whose lives were in fact ruined by the reinvented version of you for doing exactly the same thing as the old version of you was doing. 11/

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Namecalling – Please don’t call us basement-dwellers, don’t make snarky comments about our personal hygiene and don’t critize our sense of fashion. Here’s a short quote from the infamous Leigh article: “‘Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing — it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet. It’s young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave.” Comment: Self-own aside, NAFO’s entire collective personality is that of degenerate name-callers. Anecdotally speaking, it is very possible that the worst of the worst within NAFO are simply an off-spin of the pro-gamergate rejects who have somehow been legitimized and main streamed and Pekka is just masterfully playing dress-up. I’m not very smart man, and I don’t have a way with words. That’s why I don’t have solution or even suggestions on how to solve this. That’s why I really suggest you read some of these articles that talk about Gamergate from a neutral point of view: Comment: Pekka may not be a very smart man but he is a smart opportunist. 10/

In a blog post, Pekka outlined his reasons for supporting Gamergate as following (verbatim), we have added a few comments for consideration. “I’ve been wanting to write my thought on GamerGate for a while now. I suppose there’s always the chance of getting no coverage for our game, but based on our previous “success” with several gaming sites, I don’t know if that’s such a big loss. The thing I’m most afraid is the reaction from my game dev friends, I hope we can still be friends even if we have different opinions on the issue. I would also like to emphasize, that everything I say here is just my opinion – the rest of the REDACTED team probably doesn’t share my opinion on Gamergate. Like some of you already know, I am pro-Gamergate. I have been following the debate since day one, and slowly it has grown into the huge movement that is covered by the biggest news outlets out there, including NY Times, BBC and CBC. As biased and one-sided these stories were, it is a sign that this debate won’t be going away anytime soon. Mainstream and “normal folk” will be interested for a short while, but as soon as we have another scandal exposed, their attention is elsewhere. But gamers will still be there, and they will remember all this for a long time. Like TB wrote on Twitter, “When the dust settles, remember who it was that fed their own readership to the wolves.” There are few reasons why I am supporting this movement: Censorship – When this whole thing started, there was a huge wave censorship on Reddit. For example, r/gaming had a thread with over 25000 deleted comments, Mundane Matt’s video was hit with DMCA and even 4chan started censoring everything GG related. Naturally, any commenting or conversation is censored in several sites that are critized by GG movement, including Kotaku, The Verge and Polygon. Comment: Censorship of voices and discussions that are not unilaterally aligned with supporting every aspect of the pro-West and pro-Ukrainian narratives is the true and fundamental basis of Pekka’s current mission Lack of dialogue – So far it seems that there has been only few parties that are trying to resolve the issue through dialogue. The Escapist has written about Gamergate covering both point of views and Huffington Post Live had two live segments and that’s about it. What are the reasons for this? I’m pretty sure there are levelheaded people on both sides ready to discuss. Comment: In Pekka’s own words during his NAFO Summit debut, “Ridiculing the message, that’s how you should approach Russian disinformation, to ridicule it, because it’s lies. There is no reason to have a meaningful discussion with anyone who is spreading bullshit” Blaming it all on misogyny – This seems to be a very common narrative (god I hate this word) amongst anti-GG’ers. They claim that all Gamergate supporters are women-haters. I’m sorry, but WHAT THE FUCK? I don’t know ANYONE who hates women. That’s like, half of the population in the world. Disliking some women is not misogyny, and neither is critizicing them based on their actions. The threat against Sarkeesian and USU was unfortunate, but I’m pretty sure that it had nothing to do with Gamergate – there a lot of crazies out there who want all the attention they can get. GG’ers even helped to identify one of the people who sent threats to Sarkeesian. She should be irrelevant to the whole debate, since she has very little to do with journalistic integrity issue at hand. Comment: Pekka currently sees no distinction between those who are truly spreading disinformation, those who provide counterarguments rooted in facts, those with nuanced views, those who are asking valid questions and even those who may hold neutral views. All are equally guilty of being vatniks. What is consistent however is him stating that the threat to Sarkeesian was “unfortunate”. Unfortunate may not be the most appropriate word to use when commenting on a threat for “a Montreal Massacre style attack being carried out against the attendees, as well as the students and staff at the nearby Women's Center".

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Pekka was however extremely passionate and did not hold back in sharing his opinions during the Gamergate saga. Pointing out the brazen hypocrisy of the pre-Vatnik soup era and the post-Vatnik soup era Pekka deserves an entire thread of its own but now is not the time so we will only scratch the surface. For those who may not be familiar with Gamergate, it can be summarized as a “loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture”. It resulted in targeted cyber harassment, doxing, intimidation, and threats. Some commentators went as far as to suggest that Gamergate was the precursor to the rise of the alt-right movement, MAGA and J6. The pre-Vatnik soup era Pekka was very much pro-Gamergate and that support makes it almost impossible to reconcile how that version of Pekka became the version that you see today. Pekka has on numerous occasions suggested to his followers that “anti-wokeism” is a common Vatnik trait. Gamergate may potentially be the pinnacle of anti-wokeism, which makes Pekka’s support of the movement equal parts confusing and hypocritical. 9/

As far as political discourse and discussion, Pekka only had this to say. He didn’t offer any further insights on the matter so we are not sure if we should take him at his literal word or give him an opportunity to clarify. 8/

In putting this together, we spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to best describe the type of man the real Pekka is, and we were unable to come to a consensus. So, we will leave it up to you, maybe you’ll have better luck. Here is Pekka’s bucket list. A little weird sure but quite straightforward. He did manage to check off two items of his list, he hung out with a sloth at the Budapest Zoo and enjoyed some huge trees (isn’t Finland full of big trees?) in San Francisco which he curiously posted to a “marijuanaenthusiasts” subreddit. We did not find any evidence of him “swimming and chilling out with manatees” but he did get bitten by a dwarf shark while diving in Sipadan so maybe he decided that water-based adventures aren’t for him. 7/

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As it happens, Pekka was a perpetual student for most of his twenties and thirties. In a span of 15 years, he obtained his Bachelor of Business Information Technology degree in 2007 from the Oulu University of Applied Sciences, spent some time in Budapest as an exchange student in 2006 at their International Business School, between 2009 and 2012 he completed his Master’s Degree in User Interface Software Development at the Tampere University and as you already know he then proceeded to obtain his PhD. Pekka’s public profiles do not include a full Curriculum Vitae which is quite uncommon for someone who has dedicated their life to academia. His previous work experience starting in 2001 was in Graphic and Web Design, Editing and being a Research Assistant and post-doctoral Researcher. Again, there don’t appear to be any obvious links to the 2022 version of Pekka and what he claims to be his expertise. Now, be patient with us as there is a lot to unpack moving forward, it may not all be linear or follow a timeline but trust us, your patience will be well rewarded. This may only be speculative, but it does appear that the academic pursuits were only a means for Pekka to buy some time while he pursued his true passion, which was to launch an absurd RPG game where he was the lead on game and story design. In Pekka’s own words: “My name is Pekka and I’m the game and story designer for REDACTED. I’m currently working as a researcher at University of Tampere where I study multimodal user interfaces. When REDACTED asked if I wanted to get involved in creating games, I was immediately interested. I have a long history with roleplaying games both as a DM and a player. I want to study gaming platforms as a way to tell stories and create emotions. I’m also interested in creating dynamic worlds where the player’s actions matter and where decisions have different consequences. I draw inspiration from movies, books, recordings, games and from day-to-day scenarios. I want to create realistic characters whose personalities are more in the shades of grey instead of black and white (good vs. evil) you traditionally see in RPGs.” Pekka dedicated 10 years of his life and thousands upon thousands of hours online discussing, promoting, and obsessing over his project, only to have it fail. Pekka’s previous Twitter / X account has been inactive since around August of 2022 coinciding with the time that the rebranded Pekka’s new Twitter / X account started picking up some traction. Remember that the new Pekka has consistently claimed that he is anti-social media, although in all fairness his preferred virtual stomping grounds can be considered as media for the antisocial. 6/

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