Yes, probably. Anita was a Joss Wheadon fangirl for years. 3/4th of her thesis is about Joss Whedon's work and reeks of fangirling to me. I attached a copy of it so you are free to make your own judgement.
Before pivoting to video games, Anita spent a year or two focusing on film and TV criticism from feminist perspective on youtube. Whedon's work was used numerous times as a positive example. These videos are now gone from youtube of course, but from what I remember ones that were most glowing endorsements of Whedon used red theater curtains as their backdrop.
After kickstarter and later on GamerGate notoriety, Anita got to met with Joss Wheadon multiple times and made her way into his circles. With limited information it's pretty hard to say how much she benefited from it and how involved was she. I suspect that connections she made while orbiting Joss let her land at least a few lucrative public speaking gigs. There are some photos of Anita and Wheadon from that era. One below is probably the most famous and most amusing after Whedon's cancellation.
Anita clearly was interested in entering film industry in some capacity all along. She admitted her lack of interest in video games. Video game pivot only happened because her video game AMV for Too Many Dicks was more popular than movie and TV criticism videos. After the famous kickstarter she was locked into the video games market, and all her later attempts to branch out to criticism of other media failed. Joss was her best shot at becoming a serious movie critic or maybe something more.
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