As Hollywood got caught up in the maelstrom surrounding Harvey Weinstein on Thursday, another major media story also broke courtesy of Buzzfeed, revealing how Breitbart News and Milo Yiannopoulos influenced the mainstream media with Nazi and white nationalist ideas over the past few years.
The detailed story was partly based on a number of emails sent and received by Yiannopoulos. Those exchanges included a number of reporters, who would email Yiannopoulos encouraging him to attack certain women, offer up tips, or simply ask crude questions. Among those emailing Yiannopoulos was journalist Dan Lyons, who in 2015 seemed awfully interested in the gender of various GamerGate targets who were in Yiannopoulos’s bullseye.
These emails, per Buzzfeed’s quotes and screenshots, include Lyons asking Yiannopoulos if game designer Zoë Quinn is “a biological female or trans?”, to which Yiannopoulos replied “She is a girl… A hideous girl but a girl.”
Lyons has been a well-established voice in tech journalism for decades at publications like Forbes and Newsweek; he also created the satirical blog Fake Steve Jobs, which began skewering the Apple CEO in 2006. He wrote for the Emmy-nominated “Silicon Valley” in 2015 and 2016, although the only episode for which he is the sole credited writer is Season 2’s “White Hat/Black Hat.” Lyons did not write for “Silicon Valley” Season 4, and is now back working as a journalist.
Following the publication of Buzzfeed’s story on Thursday, Lyons responded on Twitter, first to a tweet from “Silicon Valley” star Kumail Nanjiani about the story (Nanjiani has since deleted his original tweet, but did later tweet a link to the Buzzfeed story in full). Lyons’ responses:
Kumail I feel sick too. I am to the left of Bernie Sanders. Ppl who know me know this. But I am getting smeared as alt-right.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
Nothing could be further from truth.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
In additional tweets replying to Nanjiani, Lyons defended himself and his record as an “outspoken critic of bro culture, SV culture, diversity problems,” who has “never met Milo. Don’t like his politics or antics. Traded a few emails with him in 2015, for this BFeed says I’m part of some cabal feeding Nazi ideology into mainstream via Milo & Breitbart. It’s ridiculous.”
Following his Tweets to Nanjiani, Lyons then made some statements regarding the women he emailed Yiannopoulos about.
I apologized earlier today directly to Amber Discko and Zoe Quinn, for those emails. I feel awful about them. I wish I could take them back.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
I apologized to Amber and Zoe, at length, before the Buzzfeed story came out. I didn't remember those emails. I felt sick when I saw them.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
The emails were each one line long. I feel awful. I made a mistake. That's what I told Amber and Zoe when I apologized to them.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
I don't know Amber or Zoe. I didn't remember those emails until BFeed contacted me. When they did, I reached out to & apologized.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
Unfortunately, those apologies seemed not to have gone through initially — at least according to Quinn, whose Tweets from Thursday evening reveal that she hadn’t gotten the message.
What apology. Where.
— 💀zombië queen💀 (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
No you didn't. https://t.co/xi7XYwTqMg
— 💀zombië queen💀 (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
— 💀zombië queen💀 (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
Yeah imagine how I felt. And then imagine how I feel being used for your sadboy redemption arc before ever hearing from you. https://t.co/DB7w2oIvAu
— 💀zombië queen💀 (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
You're not sorry you said it. You're sorry you got caught. https://t.co/poCyRaHBO9
— 💀zombië queen💀 (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
Lyons, per a screenshot from Quinn, then blocked her on Twitter.
I guess he didn't like the fact that I called him out on lying about apologizing to me. pic.twitter.com/6rRH19JYO1
— 💀zombië queen💀 (@UnburntWitch) October 6, 2017
But then, approximately 12 hours later, he chose to reach out to Quinn again on Twitter with a potential explanation for why she might not have received his apology:
Hey: I used the contact form on your book website and wrote a long letter to you. Did you really not get it? I'm sorry about this. Truly.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
Followed by another attempt at making contact.
For what it's worth I just tried writing to you again via the contact form. I hope you get this one.
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) October 6, 2017
Whether or not Quinn chooses to respond and/or accept Lyons’ apology is pending. Here is what matters: based on how this played out on Twitter, it definitely seems that this situation could have been handled better.
Of course, the best possible scenario would have been this: For Lyons to have never felt like it was a good idea to send Yiannopoulos those emails in the first place.
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