The Fine Young Capitalists

The Fine Young Capitalists

Abbreviation	TFYC
Founder	Matthew Rappard
Legal status	Active
Purpose	Supporting work by underrepresented labor in the media industry
Website	Official site

The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC) is a self-described radical feminist^[1] group set up to organize production initiatives for underrepresented labor in the media industry. The group became associated with the Gamergate controversy when their prior argument with indie game developer Zoe Quinn over the group's women-only game design contest became widely known. Subsequently, The Fine Young Capitalists began to amass support from users of the message board 4chan, who provided significant financial backing to the project.

Projects

The group's first project is an initiative to increase the involvement of women in the video games industry, in which anyone who identified as a woman prior to the start of the contest was eligible to submit a proposal for a video game. Five nominees were selected and the nominee to receive the most crowd-funding would have the game produced and distributed. The winner would receive eight percent of the profits, with another eight percent going towards future contests, ten percent going towards the production company, and the remainder being donated to charity^[2][3][4]

After independent game developer Zoe Quinn learned of the women's game design contest, she accused it of being exploitative towards women and transphobic, prompting criticism of the group on social media.^[5][6] TFYC stated that the winner would receive a portion of the profits with most of it going to charity, while all rights would remain with the women who submitted proposals, and that their transgender policy only said someone had to have identified as female prior to the contest as a means to prevent men from lying about their gender identity in order to participate. Social media attention remained negative and TFYC found itself losing financial support and struggling to gain media coverage due to the criticism.^[1][4][6] After some delay to review the inclusiveness of their policies and finding nothing wrong, they opened the project up to submissions on March 28, 2014.^[2][3]

SNless is another project being pursued by TFYC, which concerns the representation of minority groups in science fiction and allows those who identify as black to submit a black character with five winning entries being reproduced in a graphic novel.^[1]

In collaboration with a charity set up by porn star Mercedes Carrera, TFYC will administer a scholarship for people looking to work in the STEM fields. An IndieGoGo campaign was set up along with a porn stream to help fund the scholarship. Carrera chose to collaborate with TFYC after a planned charity porn stream with The AbleGamers Foundation failed to pan out.^[7] The campaign managed to raised over $11,000 on IndieGoGo with an additional amount of over $3,000 from the adult web cam show hosted by Carrera, half of the latter being in tips and the other half in matching donations from Webcams.com.^[8][9]

Involvement in Gamergate controversy

Members of 4chan designed the character Vivian James to be used in the winning entry of TFYC's game design competition after offering the project significant financial backing.

After the Gamergate controversy began, the details of TFYC's earlier dispute with Zoe Quinn over the women's game design contest became one subject of discussion. Users of the site 4chan who were critical of Quinn began providing significant financial backing for the women in video games production project on Indiegogo. Members saw a show of support for a feminist cause against Quinn and her supporters as something that could benefit their public image.^[5][10] After some 4chan members told TFYC that they wanted the group's promotional videos to talk about female game developers, TFYC released a video on Roberta Williams and her influential role in the early gaming industry, with a total of five videos on female game developers planned.^[1][11] The group's decision to work with 4chan prompted criticism due to the alleged involvement of 4chan members in harassment of Quinn and feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian. TFYC responded to this criticism by stating social justice movements that would not let 4chan take part in a project were, by definition, oppressing them.^[10][12] Its involvement in the Gamergate controversy also earned it the support of actor Adam Baldwin, who tweeted a link to the project's Indiegogo page.^[13]

During the group's fundraising efforts, TFYC's Indiegogo account was hacked and the campaign was briefly shut down. Media suggested the hacking incident could have been retaliation from critics of TFYC for alleged hacking incidents targeting Quinn and her supporters.^{[5][13][14][15]}

After 4chan members donated over US$5,000 to the Indiegogo campaign, they were allowed to create a character who would appear in the winning game. TFYC later lowered the monetary requirement for donators to get a character to US$2,000. The character created by 4chan, named Vivian James (meant to sound similar to "video games") was designed to appear like an ordinary female gamer. Erik Kain of Forbes described Vivian as an “every-girl of sorts, and maybe not what you’d expect from 4chan".^[5] Vivian James met some criticism, mainly for the character's association with 4chan. Allegra Ringo of Vice called Vivian James "a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists".^[6][10] Allum Bokhari of TechCrunch, in turn, described her as "an entirely ordinary, non-idealized female role model."^[16]

The donations did not stop after the creation of Vivian, amassing over US$23,000 total in funds for the group.^[17]

TFYC responded to criticism of its association with Gamergate and the related harassment of Quinn by offering to sell Vivian James T-shirts with profits going to iFred, a charity Quinn was supporting.^[15] Later, the group was reported to have resolved its disagreement with Quinn, though founder Matthew Rappard later told an interviewer at APGNation that their agreement never went through.^[1][18]

References

External links

• Official website
• Indiegogo campaign
• Official YouTube channel