Intimidation Game

Go home, gamer girl!

Intimidation Game is the 14th episode from the 16th season of the show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which aired on February 11, 2015. While its creators deny this, many believe that it draws inspiration from the poisoned well of fallacious straw men known as the mainstream media's portrayal of Gamergate, as it depicts gaming culture in a severely negative light, insinuating that gamers are misogynists, bigots, bullies, and rapists, with frequent intertextuality between the episode's story and the aforementioned mainstream Gamergate portrayal.

Reception
The Imitation Game scored an IMDB rating of 2.7 out of 10, making it the lowest ranked episode of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" to date. As of February 20, 2015, it also forms the current trough of a cooling reception towards the show following a strong 16th season premiere.

Patrick Bissett of The Daily Caller called the dialogue "embarrassingly clumsy", the social commentary "beyond appalling", and pointed out that "throughout all the controversy, nobody has been murdered, kidnapped, sexually or physically assaulted, or had any serious crimes committed on their person as a result of Gamergate activity".

Many Gamergate proponents reacted by creating image macros, memes, and similar spoofs of the episode. Users on 8chan created a /redchanit/ board for spoofing the forum mentioned in the episode.

Frederick Brennan of 8chan acquired the URL redchanit.it in the wake of the episode, redirecting it to 8chan and setting it up for e-mails.

Mark Kern called the episode "the Reefer Madness of our times" and concluded that it is "the inevitable result of months of gaming press coverage on the rift between gamers that currently plagues our hobby".

Kotaku stated that "When Law & Order: SVU takes on video games, the results are usually not pretty. Tonight's episode—a GamerGate special—was no exception."