Christopher John Goldberg, aged 32, was arrested and charged on the morning of June 28th, 2017 for possessing child pornography. This was detailed in an article from a small Pennsylvania media outlet named Pocono Record, which picked up the event after Goldberg was arrested and charged by the local police.
According to the report, Goldberg had 53 pornographic images of small children between the ages of 4 and 14 years of age on his mobile phone. Additional images and video were also found on his home computer.
So what’s the relevance of this story to #GamerGate? It turns out that Christopher John Goldberg was a former moderator at NeoGaf, going by the handle of Amir0x. Not only that but he was one of the more vocal and outspoken members from NeoGaf who defamed and mislabeled anyone using the GamerGate hashtag as racist harassers.
Evidence of any organized harassment from #GamerGate has never surfaced, and according to the FBI report the only thing they could find were a handful of random trolls who had no affiliation with any side, but just wanted to stir the pot. The only known association that they were able to make linked back to the Somethingawful.com forums.
NeoGaf users were quick to point out that Goldberg was a former moderator of NeoGaf, and began making threads about it, expressing disgust and disdain for Amir0x after the discovery of his child porn charges came to light.
NeoGaf owner Tyler Malka made a public post before closing the thread, addressing the situation with the following statements…
“Amir0x hasn’t been a moderator here for the better part of a decade and has not had any association with the site other than as a regular member here since then. Most of the current moderators were not even around yet when Amir0x got kicked out, and this was a very long time ago and his real name was not on file.
“[…] The mod team just informed me of the circumstances re: this thread earlier today linking him to an arrest for some heinous stuff; as per standard policy here, the mod team doesn’t let unconfirmed allegations and doxxing run wild for an internet witch hunt, whether someone is a member here or not, so the thread got deleted pending further confirmation. Looks like it’s been confirmed to be him, however. Again, no one on the moderation team even knew his real name, so it was not something that could be confirmed immediately. His account has been permanently banned in response, but it looks like that’ll be the least of his concerns.
“That’s all. No conspiracy. Thanks.”
What Malka leaves out of the statement is that he was personally aware of “Amir0x”’s real name and could have informed the rest of the mod team and community about it to prevent any confusion. In fact, Malka donated $1,000 to Goldberg’s GoFundMe.
Goldberg’s behavior as an anti-#GamerGate critic and labeling other people as “harassers”, fits a trend of other anti-#GamerGate individuals who have a history of sexual abuse… and even rape. This includes former Forbes contributor and male feminist Matt Hickey, who was arrested for multiple counts of rape; and Devin Faraci, former editor-in-chief at Birth.Movies.Death, who resigned amid a flurry of controversy surrounding multiple claims of sexual assault.
Other anti-#GamerGate critics such as Sun Patel also lost book deals following claims of misconduct with peers; and anti-#GamerGate critic and Citizen Radio co-host, Jamie Kilstein, had to resign following claims of sexual misconduct.
In a more high profile case, anti-#GamerGate journalist Juan Thompson was arrested by the FBI for cyberstalking, harassing and sending death threats to his ex-girlfriend.
It’s become a troubling trend among the anti-#GamerGate journalists, critics, and pundits to have some sort of criminal or sexually deviant behavior exposed painting them as harassers, stalkers, pedophiles or rapists.
NeoGaf has become notorious for being anti-#GamerGate, and yet one of the people most vocally opposed to #GamerGate regarding sexism and harassment turned out to be addicted to child porn.
I attempted to reach out to Malka for further comment about whether or not they will begin vetting the mod team for heinous criminal behavior, but he has me blocked on Twitter.
