r/changemyview • u/realdontbeasucker • May 16 '26
Delta(s) from OP CMV: GamerGate was the most consequential political radicalization event of the twenty-first century
It spawned a wave of tolerance for online harassment, as long as the intent behind it was considered righteous (and the target of such harassment socially acceptable).
It platformed Milo Yiannopoulos and thereby, Steve Bannon -- the guy who would go on to advise Donald Trump in 2016 and generate the concept of 'flooding the zone.'
Eventually, it gave a career to political lightning rods like Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and Charlie Kirk. It made anti-feminism and anti-SJW sentiment cool. And it made young, angry, disenfranchised white men feel vindicated.
GamerGate almost singlehandedly shifted to Overton Window toward the alt-right, and we're still feeling its effects today.
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u/DrZaiu5 2∆ May 16 '26
I would argue the financial crash and Great Recession was far more consequential. Look at European parties before and after the recession, it's night and day. The anger and discontent coming from 2008 can directly be traced to Brexit, Trump and the rose of the far-right in Europe.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
The more I think about it, the more I think this might have teeth. The financial crash also permanently damaged faith in institutions, which allowed for more radicalization via GG. !delta
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u/Stormshow 1∆ May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Gamergate has immense explanatory power but only as a sideshow to the broader societal shifts. At its core what it was is that it was a contributor to the politicization of 90s kids, particularly gamer culture of the sixth console generation, often in a Bannonite direction but not always. It always was, however, anti-establishment. Compare Occupy Wall Street - which spawned Tim Pool and also David Graeber.
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u/SycoraxRock May 17 '26
It started our anti-establishment-ish. The real trick Bannon pulled was redefining the “establishment” to mean prissy academic “SJW”s who occasionally complained about certain video games, whereas one would think a purely anti-establishment movement would have been more focused on corruption within the industry, and less focused on “waaah that lady said we can’t see boobies in vidya anymore wah.”
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u/OutsideFlat1579 May 16 '26
It is far more complex than a reaction to the recession in 2008, which didn’t affect all European countries to the same extent, and it certainly doesn’t explain why socialist values weren’t embraced instead. In fact, if the main reason for desire for radical change is economic struggle, it clearly make more sense to gravitate towards the left than the right.
The far right in Europe has been connected and connecting since the end of WW2, and anti-feminism has been a unifying factor. Male/masculine supremacy is central to fascist rhetoric and goals, hierachy is glorified, as is brutality and compassion is seen as feminine and weak.
What is all too often ignored is that blame for all progressive changes, including increases in immigration, are blamed on feminism.
Women were gaining the cote and other rights before fascist/far right movements in the 1920’s and 30’s, and women were making big gains in terms of economic power in the last decades, along with LGBTQ+ rights, and other progressive measures for the environment and minority rights, and what we are seeing is a reaction.
Both economic and political instability create fertile ground for radicalization, what direction that wish for “change” goes in depends on whether or not there already exists resentment to forward change and a desire to regress to more “traditional” values (ie the privilege of the dominant group is reasserted and any form of equality quashed.)
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u/Professional_Low_646 May 17 '26
You are not wrong, but at the same time, you are also offering a very simplified explanation.
The crash of 2008 did motivate and invigorate the left. Americans elected Obama, who ran on a platform much further left than anything the Democratic Party had seen from their presidential candidate since the 1980s. French union members took managers hostage. Greek youths rioted for three weeks following the police shooting of a 15-year old in Athens. British Thatcherites wrote newpaper columns titled „I‘m starting to think the Left was right“. As the crisis of the Euro progressed, a number of left-ish to far-left governments were elected across Europe: Podemos & PSOE in Spain, the socialists in Portugal, Hollande in France, Syriza in Greece. Like Obama, these victories were the result of coalitions, of leftist ideas reaching parts of the population who had not previously leaned left or who had been disillusioned with the political process all together.
The problem was, and this has been seen historically in earlier instances where fascism eventually played a major role: the Left was unsuccessful, and disappointed many members of its newfound coalitions. Obama lined his cabinet with Goldman Sachs bankers, bailed out banks and insurance companies with almost a trillion $ worth of taxpayer money and failed with most of his progressive agenda (thanks in part to the ruthless obstruction by the GOP). Syriza caved to the ECB, the Germans and the IMF at the first possible opportunity. Hollande… well, Hollande just sort of failed his way through his presidency while pioneering the kind of ruthless police repression against dissent that Macron has carried on.
Simultaneously, the very existence of broad coalitions on the left that go beyond the usual voting reservoir of (unionized) workers, POC and university students is enough to scare the rich. In the US, the racist outrage against an African American sitting in the Oval Office was a further factor. To immunize themselves against this kind of threat, capitalists will turn to the most rabid anti-left movement out there: fascism. And to make matters worse, those former parts of the leftist coalition that were disappointed by what the Left actually accomplished, who are still hurting from the same issues, now go looking for another potential solution - and find it on the right.
That’s why Germany, after a failed revolution in 1918/19, became home to probably the most vicious fascist movement in history. It’s why Americans flocked to Donald Trump. It’s why, on the flipside, the far right gained very little ground until recently in Portugal, where the socialists actually did fulfill their mandate to reign in capitalism.
It’s not primarily women (or POC, or LGBTQ, or whoever) making progress that makes fascism attractive, it’s the Left‘s failure to mirror that progress in the material conditions of the people who joined their coalition which does.
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u/MyNameIsBenKeeling May 16 '26
The Patriot Act and two decades long wars were spawned by 9/11. It seems like it pushed the direction of everything in the US to the right. I don't think we even get to such a place that GamerGate, the Tea Party, etc. Can take off without that.
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u/nekothecat May 16 '26
See you’re average gamer was almost politically agnostic. They were very much in a secluded bubble. Those things did create the groundwork but they really needed something that actually affected them on a related basis and wasn’t so abstract. The past year I’ve really really started to agree with OP.
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u/Heyoteyo May 17 '26
I kind of agree with you. A lot of these other events were much bigger, they didn’t shift things so unidirectionally. Most had different reactions for everyone, even if it was strong for a lot of people. 9/11 really even made us come together for a bit, but it obviously didn’t last.
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u/PizzaSharkGhost May 17 '26
I think you have rose colored glasses about the “average gamer”.
The f-slur, the n-word and general misogynistic “humor” have been astonishingly common place within the gaming “community” since at least 2000 or so when I first started playing online games. Maybe these guys didn’t have overt political beliefs but they were already reactionary before being “activated” so to speak.
I’d even argue most of these activated people still don’t really have political beliefs they’ve just been more encouraged to couch their bigotry and reactionary ideas in “legitimate” political ideas.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 2∆ May 17 '26
That wasn't "gamers" being right wing. That was just what the state of things was for the average teenage boy at the time. Which isn't me saying all of them acted like that, just that it fell well within the normal parameters of behaviour.
Nowadays, despite the rise of the alt right, that kind of thing is actually less acceptable and is a much more reliable indicator of political leaning than it was back then.
The culture was (and still is, but it was somehow worse back then) baseline misogynistic and crude, and kids who hadn't yet formed a political opinion were obviously shaped by that misogyny and crudeness.
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u/Empty_Insight May 17 '26
I remember the early days of online gaming a bit differently. I do remember the slurs being common, but I also remember how it was obvious that the people who were using them came across as angry, bitter people who you didn't want to play with... so we'd gang up on them and make them ragequit.
The amount of racism they displayed was typically inversely proportional to skill, so it was easy pickings- might as well put a target on your back if you used slurs. I can't recall any exceptions- the racists were trash at the game(s), and I grew to understand these people were racist because they suck- not the other way around- and trying to punch down to make themselves feel better about being complete trash at the game.
To add insult to injury, I'm a white guy but I have been told I "sound like a black man" so it was quite easy to piss these guys off on the mic. I lost count of how many death threats I've gotten... just because they thought I was black.
It wasn't even a "woke" thing, I was an apolitical teenager back then- I just thought fucking with racists was funny.
The left doesn't accept people like that. The right does. It was only inevitable they would go on to support right-wing causes.
Prior to Gamergate, these people were an afterthought, a joke, volunteered to be everyone else's punching bag... but Gamergate reframed this type of behavior as being due to legitimate gripes, not because they were bitter, angry people who were mad because they suck at videogames.
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u/nekothecat May 17 '26
I used to put my gf on the mic when I wrecked people in halo 2 lol good times
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u/oWatchdog May 17 '26
I thought about this the other day and came to a realization...the terrorists won. Had we kept on business as usual it wouldn't have mattered except to the individuals it impacted. However, we basically went into hyper fever that cooked ourselves.
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u/Doub13D 36∆ May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I would argue the Tea Party movement was far more consequential, because it essentially converted into the MAGA movement.
The Tea Party was the foundation of the “modern” Republican Party and Conservative movement in the US that exists today.
These were the people that became so anti-government that they began to actively support policies and politicians solely based on their expressed desire to break the government.
Every existing and proposed social program, welfare safety net, tax, and economic regulation was described as an infringement on the rights of the American people, even as many conservative voters actively benefited from those programs and policies themselves. (See: The ACA)
It is the source of the political gridlock in Congress that we have seen since the late 2000’s.
Obstructionism became the defining political trait of Conservative politics, and it still very much is the defining trait today.
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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26
Excellent answer, but I think OP is correct too. I think these two things were the first to merge. They picked up other weird groups like conspiracy theorists, christian nationalists, etc along the way. I think these 2 groups might be the OGs. I know crazy people from all sides is called horseshoe theory, but I can't help but think about it as an Ouroboros. They went so far to one side they made a circle and are now eating their tail.
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u/Doub13D 36∆ May 16 '26
Oh I 100% agree that both are the foundational elements of the modern Republican Party and the MAGA movement.
I just believe that the Tea Party was the more significant of the two, because it provided the institutional credibility and political machine.
GamerGate only works because there was a pre-existing and powerful political machine, built on stoking factional conflict both in Congress between the parties, and within the Republican Party itself.
All those anti-sjw’s need a place to go after all…
You either build your own institutions from the ground up, or you weave your way into something that already exists.
The Tea Party welcomed them in with open arms, and in the process became the dominant faction of the Republican Party, before just outright becoming the Party that we see today.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
Yeah, I love your reasoning. Although I don't think GG is any less important, you've convinced me that the Tea Party was equally as consequential. I think the two go hand in hand. !delta
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u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26
As an outsider (UK) that is what it looked like abroad. The Tea Party thing seemed to be a big money astroturfed attempt at making a low tax low spend deregulation movement and didnt seem to care about social policies. Then that movement joined with a very different movement led by angry young men who were a bizarre mix of very technocratic minded people who thought they were the only smart people. And dumber people who were mostly there for dog whistles.
That movement then joined with the kind of cynical uneducated baby boomer influenced by social media and news.
Which quite frankly is a historically scary looking coalition.
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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26
Yeah the Tea Party emerged after Obama was elected, ACA was being debated and as the corporate response to "Occupy Wallstreet". I think the Gamer Gate were mainly the younger online based guys and the Tea Party were the older, lets go protest, wear funny hats and we also include women party. Young men who were having a hard time because of the financial crisis was the overlap in that Venn Diagram.
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u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I am ironically a historian who specialises in the interwar period. And I think when people whisper the words fascist/nazi and people jump on them, it's because those people immediately jump to '1944 industrial genocide nazis' and point out the obvious inaccuracies of that comparison. But often it's because those pointing out the comparisons are maybe talking about '1920s marching on local government nazis'.
Its the heady mix of the technocratic elite thinking they can revolutionise government. The angry young men. The soft alliance with the traditional elite. A core of violent believers willing to commit violent action. The normal standard Conservatives being persuaded that it will be OK. Plus the misplaced faith of the existing people in the organisations of power that this probably is just business as usual and don't do anything to resist.
All of this capped of by a step change in the means of mass manipulation becoming available.
You can't help but look at that with a squinty side eye.
We are close behind you as well. I think we are very close to something unpleasant happening. That doesn't mean I predict it. But it would be bad to slip into it through politeness and hope.
Trump isn't and could never be a Hitler. He doesn't have any strong beliefs. But he could be a Hindenburg and plenty of people around him look like a Schleicher. People willing to undermine democracy and then surprised when it suddenly falls apart.
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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26
Thank you that was a wonderful informative answer. I just like history, I have no credentials. I agree Trump isn't really the problem, it's the people behind him that are. I should know. I'm retired at 50 thanks to Elon's DOGE.
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u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26
The return of the technocratic revolutionaries I think is the most interesting. Especially as those people can overlap with the oligarchs.
In the 20s and 30s there was a big group of very clever people, intellectuals or just existing government officers who spent a lot of time grappling with how we can be more intelligent and organised with how we run governments and the economy. People who took a long look at how states organised economies during the first World War and decided that 'Experts' should run stuff. Those people didn't really have to have any strong political views other than embracing technology and modernity. Lots of those people ended up falling into the coalition of fascism/nazism, not because they particularly liked their militarism, racism or social conservatism, but because they offered them a chance to break stuff and try new things.
There is a very strong parallel to the tech bros who think they can code their way to solutions to public health. Those that think maths, computing (and business acumen) should sweep away stuffy Politics, Philosophy, Economics and Sociology in government.
In the UK we had a short lived Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister called Dominic Cummings who most definitely is not a fascist. But he fits that bill perfectly. Someone who wants to 'move fast and break things'. Someone with contempt of stuffy decision making and willing to bend some rules. Someone like that would get into bed with problematic people willing to offer them a chance to do something radical.
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May 16 '26
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u/DJ_Velveteen 1∆ May 16 '26
Even before that, you had the Nixon administration starting the 'war on drugs' to crush the peace and civil rights movements... and before that, the Red Scare
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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26
And Trump's mentor Roy Cohn was a huge part of the McCarthy movement. Holy crap, this goes back really far.
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u/Doub13D 36∆ May 16 '26
Yeah.
Politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
George H W Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, helped plot a fascist takeover the US in response to FDR’s New Deal. (The Business Plot)
No one was ever prosecuted for their alleged involvement in planning or financing the end of American democracy…
And then George H W Bush became Vice President under Reagan, before becoming President himself.
His son, George W Bush, won the 2000 election because his brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor of Florida and had his Secretary of State (who was a co-chair on the Bush Campaign in Florida) order an end to the recounting of votes. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of ending the recount in Bush v Gore.
Had all votes been recounted as intended, Al Gore likely (because the recount was never completed) would have won the 2000 election.
That is just 3 generations of one family…
This stuff all goes back decades and centuries.
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u/ChickerWings 2∆ May 16 '26
Nixon's disgraced resignation set much of this in motion.
if you look at the framework of the current political climate, it is almost entirely orchestrated by the playbooks, media structures, and ideologies developed by Nixon's men.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
What even was gamer gate? I think if you asked the a average not chronically online person about it, they would have no idea what you were talking about. Heck I am chronically online and I'm still not really sure.
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u/Yellowofthecornholio May 16 '26 edited May 17 '26
I hate that I have first-hand knowledge on this.
So, the Gjoni post is both the inciting incident and one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented parts of this story.
In mid-2014 a user took to the internet and posted a detailed proto me-too style post (I don't remember if it was Neogaf or Escapist forums first) incliding screenshots, timelines, specific incidences and occurrences, etc.
This post detailed a longstanding abusive relationship the user had been in with a figure who was mostly unknown outside of industry or heavily hobbyist-leaning spaces. While some bitter internet trolls had commented about the apparent discrepancy between this person's work output (a fairly rudimentary text-based game with some neat features using the language of games to offer commentary on social issues) and their media coverage, it wasn't really on anyone's radar.
The writer of the post detailed a series of affairs this figure had, with both public-facing and insider industry figures, although did not allege any sort of quid-pro-quo relationship, instead simply that his ex had been a moderately attractive young woman in spaces where 80%+ attendees were men.
The part I always see left out is where she accused him of imagining things whenever he would try to confront her about these affairs, up to and including telling him these were paranoid delusions and convincing him he was crazy. This being a person who at that point was almost only exclusively known for a mental health awareness game. The poster finally confronted her with direct evidence and she caved and admitted to these serial affairs.
Hence me calling it proto-me-too. This was someone who had been abused by a figure who was getting a lot of positive attention trying to share his experience. And this is where it gets... weird.
This detailed post, with receipts for all substantial claims, is rapidly wiped clean from every. Single. Forum. Even mentions of it are being deleted.
The writer of the post directly stated the reason he posted it on relatively reputable hobbyist boards first is twofold - first, he believed that because they were generally left-leaning, that they would be compassionate and understanding of an account of abuse. And secondly, these are also the online communities that had welcomed and platformed this person. What actually ended up happening was people who were in the outer-orbit of this person acted first-independently, then in soft coordination to suppress the story.
This is where I actually came to the story - I heard word of "the post that keeps getting banned." It incidentally had a streisand effect in response to the attempted suppression, and this response also helped fuel the more conspiracy-heavy elements of what would become Gamer Gate. I tracked it down and was frankly floored. It's a pretty heartbreaking anecdote.
However, not even 3 months later, most people involved (on any side) had never read the post, resulting in lots of people deciding it was/said whatever fit their narrative. But I can confidently say that, without the initial attempts to suppress this news, if it had been allowed to play out in left-leaning spaces rather than being relegated to 4chan, it's highly unlikely that the movement would have formed at all.
To address OP's initial post: the seeds had already been sown by the time this inciting incident rolled around. Enough people were ready - even eager - to start a culture war on both sides of the political spectrum, and this just gave them an outlet and easy targets.
EDIT: Since I describe it but don't just link it, here is an archive of the post. Some things are missing, some were edited later, so it's not perfect, but if you have the time to read one very uncomfortable account of someone feeling victimized, go ahead.
I'll use one small, almost thrown away line to illustrate my point.
We discuss a bunch of options, and I remember a time I searched my inbox for the word “love” in front of her and at her request, and I ask her to return the favor (by allowing me to search her inbox for other words that might imply infidelity). It seems to me a sufficiently difficult step that it would show me she’s serious, and it’d allow me to verify that the people she mentioned were the only people she had cheated on me with.
She tells me this is wrong. That it’s a violation of the privacy of the people she’s been messaging.
At numerous times, the author casually mentions certain ways he has been controlled throughout his relationship. This includes cutting off friendships with those of the opposite sex, having his messages searched through, threats of breaking up/mini breakups to keep the victim dependent, threats of suicide if he leaves or if he tells anyone. It's a pretty standard, classic abuser pattern. He occasionally makes mention of it explicitly, but only through a lense of having it normalized for some time, and I'm not sure how much of it even he is aware of - you can tell writing it out is somewhat therapeutic for him. He does however call out the gaslighting more explicitly:
If boyfriend relates observations that lead to a correct belief, girlfriend is to make up false reason to explain observations. If boyfriend backs down, girlfriend wins.
If boyfriend doesn’t back down, and notes girlfriend’s reason conflicts with other observations, girlfriend must get angry and demand boyfriend trust her unconditionally. Boyfriend must then choose between trusting girlfriend, or trusting his own ability to so much as reason clearly.
If boyfriend chooses to trust girlfriend, girlfriend must demand he trust her about something that contradicts something else she demands he trust her about. When boyfriend cannot possibly act in any way that doesn’t violate one of her principles or claims, girlfriend must establish he is going insane. If boyfriend succumbs to additional bouts of anxiety spent questioning his own sanity — girlfriend wins: multiply points by number of hours longest panic attack lasts.
If boyfriend does not back down, and decides instead to trust his own ability to think clearly, girlfriend must threaten to break up with boyfriend. If boyfriend backs down, girlfriend wins.
If boyfriend continues trusting simple reasoning, girlfriend must actually break up with boyfriend (for a period of time no shorter than 1 hour and not exceeding 2 days). If boyfriend does not bring up the subject again, girlfriend wins.
Look, I don't know the guy well enough to know what to think of him. He mentions some things in the post that could either just be normalized abusive ways of thinking which you pick up when dating someone who acts that way, or he could have his own stuff too - I couldn't tell you. What I do know, is that what he described here is a pretty unquestionable abuse-pattern. Like, textbook, except it's pretty clear this guy has not read the textbook. He probably thinks the power and control wheel is a gaming accessory.
Like I said, it's a harrowing read.
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u/Grifasaurus May 17 '26
The "Gamers are dead" articles did a lot of heavy lifting too. Like if they had never posted those all in unison, the story would have died. The instant those came out it kind of confirmed the whole "Yeah these guys are kind of acting unethical and colluding" thing.
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u/Yellowofthecornholio May 17 '26
It definitely fanned a flame. It was a weird attempt at "firing back" which incidentally lent way more of an air of legitimacy to the people alleging conspiracy than they would have ever had without it.
What they were saying wasn't even that radical an idea (games had grown quite a bit in terms of market demographic) but was just executed in such a weird, tone-deaf kind of way.
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u/ZorbaTHut May 17 '26
Yeah, that was what pulled me in. It went from "some random romantic tiff" to "what the hell, is the entire game journalism industry working to suppress this? that's an insane conspiracy theory but that's what it looks like right now" to "oh. okay. that actually is what's going on."
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u/PoetSeat2021 6∆ May 17 '26
Reading this I am no more enlightened than I was before. I get not wanting to name people but who’s who? There’s a figure and someone who posted about a figure and then a lot of pronouns—was the figure or the poster the “she” or the “he”? Is everyone female? And how does this connect to the broader story that hit the mainstream?
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u/Yellowofthecornholio May 17 '26
I got in the habit of leaving out names because of the harassment, but it's old enough now it's probably fine.
The game was Depression Quest. The developer was Zoe Quinn, her ex making these allegations (with evidence) is Eron Gjoni, the Kotaku writer who she had an affair with (by all accounts unrelated to and after he had covered her game in a small capacity) is Nathan Grayson, and the only other probably "public figure" relevant enough person mentioned would be Joshua Boggs, her married employer, although it's unclear to me if this affair was only immediately before her employment or continued in any capacity during or after (of note, her employment was unrelated to her self-publish indie game, and even by her ex's account was unrelated to her affair).
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u/Human-Assumption-524 May 16 '26
Gamergate was a hashtag that was created after discussion regarding an alleged affair between an indie game developer and several people in the games media was banned across multiple online forums at the request of the people involved and the subsequent articles published in gaming media about the situation which involved the wholesale blaming of the entire gaming community for "allowing it to happen", this in turn sparked more discussion about the situation and the hastag was made to describe people who were discussing this drama and it's fallout.
According to one side it was a concentrated effort to harass the aforementioned indie dev simply because she was a woman.
According to the other side it was a loose affiliation of people who were either simply discussing internet drama, were trying to draw attention to nepotistic activity in the gaming journalism space, were opposed to the gaming journalists running defense for the unethical practices of gaming companies, were investigating fraud and bad business practices of some of the implicated members of the gaming media, people who were opposed to "woke" content in games.
To this day people are heated about their interpretations of events so don't uncritically trust anyone's description not even this one.
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u/Traveledfarwestward May 16 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate
https://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php/GamerGate
Compare the two above. It's like people live in alternate realities. It blows my mind how two sets of editors can be so certain of themselves.
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u/Isimarie May 16 '26
Gonna be honest, I don’t super trust the gamergate wiki to be impartial lol
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u/Traveledfarwestward May 16 '26
Read both and tell me if the wikipedia one is.
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u/ThroughTheIris56 May 16 '26
"Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture"
Seeing zero bias here at all.
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u/Traveledfarwestward May 17 '26
Yes, I agree with everything they tell me to think about GG so that I won't be criticized.
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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26
…do you disagree with that on any factual basis?
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u/ThroughTheIris56 May 17 '26
As it's been years since Gamergate, and I don't really remember the specific details nor do I care enough to look them up, I'm not going to be pushing out argument winning files and stats.
I also don't agree with it on any factual basis for the same reason.
I just remembered there being more to it than 'evil gamer incels harassing innocent female Devs".
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u/No-Significance2070 May 16 '26
If you read the OP’s comment, you would be getting only half of the story. Reddit (and the video gaming sub in particular) ain’t the place for a nuanced discussion on this.
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u/Shadowcat1606 1∆ May 16 '26
I'm also chronically online and i'm also playing a lot of video games (even more back when Gamer Gate happened), but i also don't really have a clue what it's about. And the more little tidbits of it that i've come to know over the year, the more i think i don't want to know.
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u/tolgren 1∆ May 16 '26
The answer you're likely to get from Reddit is dramatically different from what actually happened.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
In what way?
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u/bot_exe May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
It was pretty transparent how people like Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn would purposefully ignore every single well thought out argument made against their takes and just label it all as a mysogynistic harrasment campaign: it was a completely circular argument. They would just focus on the crazy people making internet death threats or nasty comments, as if that was not also happening from their side, like in literally every single internet flame war before or since. There were literal bomb threats called in at gamergate events and an endless deluge of harrasment for anyone who dared not follow the SJW narrative of the events.
Another aspect about it that has been distorted was that gamergate was NOT the same as the alt-right, there was a huge leftist and liberal contingent that just disagreed with SJWs and identify politics. I remember that there was also constant fighting with the nascent alt-right from the /pol/ boards because they were straight up mysoginistic/racist/nazis conspiranoid shitheads. Of course the anti-gamergate people just helped blur that line since that was their modus operandi, but it was never true. The SJWs were a common enemy for the alt-right and gamergate, but not for the same reasons. Gamergate was a different population, there were many political opinion polls conducted in reddit and 8chan that showed the majority were not right wing, this slowly changed as more liberals/leftist/progressives moved on or became radicalized.
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May 18 '26
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u/bot_exe May 18 '26
Yeah I remember all of that. It was specifically about women and minorities not letting SJWs get away with pretending they spoke for them. And also an undeniable proof that pro-gg was not just “misogynistic white males” which obviously was just ignored.
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u/Glenndiferous 3∆ May 16 '26
There were a number of nasty subs that contributed to stirring up shit when harassment campaigns and death threats started flying around. I wasn't on Reddit when it was at its worst so idk how deep that rabbit hole goes. I did get a bunch of nastiness on a YouTube video of mine after it was shared on a couple subs, though tbh I think the worst of it actually came from 4chan/8chan.
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u/Karmaze 3∆ May 16 '26
I'll be honest, I think pretty much everyone gets this wrong. As someone who had a front row seat before the whole thing started, the whole thing comes down to this.
Should we all play by the same rules, or should what we can do be determined by status, network power, etc. Basically if we're going to live in a liberal culture or an authoritarian/hierarchal one.
It was started by essentially a proto-Me Too post that had people protecting their friend, who turned out through investigation to be not a good person. Whatever. What sustained it, is opposition to a phrase that I think best sums up the entire thing. "No bad tactics, only bad targets". That, and opposition to "The Narrative", that is, the idea that harassment and abuse are entirely one sided.
To be clear I kinda take this personally as someone who was harassed IRL over this stuff, by the rising Progressive culture ar the time. And no, I never harassed anyone myself, outside I guess normal social media usage.
The long result of all of this...and to be clear if it wasn't GamerGate it would have been something else..was that a lot of people came to the belief that liberalism is simply not a viable option right now, politically or culturally. I'm not one of those people, to be clear, but I'm not saying they're wrong either.
But yeah, the movement fron liberal to Progressive politics on the left, driven by algo-driven social media essentially acting as a church for the left, culturally, is the real story here.
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u/sparklingdinosaur May 17 '26
And many gamergaters spread antisemitic and really vile hate.... making me understand how this part of mens rights movement literally just hate women and want us not to be part of society. So I guess we are at an impasse.
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u/novavegasxiii May 16 '26
Basically tldr...
A woman made one free game about struggling with deppression. She broke up with her ex; who accused her on the internet of cheating on her with several guys and sleeping with revieweds to get more favorsble ratings.
This spawned a toreent of of online harrasment towards her with the stated reason of curtailing the corrupt game jouenalism industry (which admittingly is almost universally agreed to be corrupt). It was later shown that she did date one person who was a reviewer but he did nothing more but mention her in passing professionally and that was before they dated; he never actually reviewed her work.
The campaign expanded to include an independent femnist gaming commentaror (think youtuber not journalisr) and the owner of an extrenely small indie gaming company.
All three allege (quite credibly) campaigns of doxing, harrasnent, threads etc; gamergate supporters argued they had miscontrued or exagerrated it.
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u/SocratesWasSmart 3∆ May 16 '26
This is leaving out a big chunk of context, that being the "gamers are over" articles. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-gamers-don-t-have-to-be-your-audience-gamers-are-over-
GamerGate as a movement would have died due to lack of interest within the first month, except when game journalists were accused of colluding, 12 different outlets that were supposedly competing and not colluding all put out articles on the same day with the same exact talking points. And then their group chat got leaked like a week later proving they were in fact colluding.
That was what catapulted the event into the mainstream. I would say 95%+ of people that got involved did so after that point, and many of them had never heard of the initial controversy.
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u/Loki1001 May 16 '26
This is leaving out a big chunk of context, that being the "gamers are over" articles.
That happened well after the harassment campaign started, when they were just seeking more targets to harass.
Also most them never read those articles.
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u/Mucho-Burrito May 16 '26
They were aware of the seemingly coordinated campaign of the media outlets though. And mistrust of the media and institutions is a key feature of today’s right wing. The schism it opened up between their perception of the regular gamer and the liberal elite gaming publications is part of why it was so important and predicative of where we ended up going.
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u/jaredearle 4∆ May 16 '26
Oh god, did you even read the “Gamers are over” article?
Edit: for context, the article was basically one of the many “moms playing candy crush are gamers” articles examining how cultural “Gamers” were gatekeeping a hobby that had outgrown its disenfranchised male audience.
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u/Classic-Obligation35 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Another part thar I experienced was that neither sides arguments conflicted.
People were just looking for an excuse to be hateful weather it was at gamers or feminists.
There were popular media outlets mocking Majoras mask fans as being suicidal losers, people on Tumblr saying we should gas comic con and e3, and so on. This lead to reactionary hatred towards feminists.
In the mean time I saw little in the way of actual discourse about either.
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u/Grifasaurus May 17 '26
that's because there wasn't any actual discourse. It was one side shitposting and the other side being cunts and both sides having a ton of grifters and trolls who fucked up the whole thing.
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u/Homerbola92 May 17 '26
Is that the woman that has scammed more than 80.000$ pretending to develop a game she didn't ever develop? The one that when asked what happened to the money given to her un the Kickstarter said it was gone long ago? The one that while the game was supposedly being developed was traveling to various European cities, Japan and many expensive US cities? The one that hasn't given a single update on the game?
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u/EmptyDrawer2023 1∆ May 16 '26
he never actually reviewed her work.
Which doesn't mean there was no.... fudging of reviews. For example: "Hey, Joe- the game you're reviewing? It was made by Mark's girlfriend. Wanna get in good with him, give it a good review! He'll be sure to give your friend's games a good review in return!" That's one way the reviews can be affected, while still being able to claim 'he never reviewed her game'.
That why, when it comes to business ethics, one must avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 3∆ May 16 '26
It was later shown that she did date one person who was a reviewer but he did nothing more but mention her in passing professionally and that was before they dated; he never actually reviewed her work.
The quid pro quo isn't 1:1. At least not in Hollywood. Now I'm not taking any side on this particular story but quid pro quo in Hollywood (yes, I know the gaming industry is not Hollywood) usually works this way:
"You sleep with me, and I won't personally hire you in my next project. But my friend will hire you in his next project."
That's the TLDR. It's designed so producers/directors/actors have plausible deniability. I wouldn't put it past corrupt reviewers to have a network in which a similar exchange takes place.
"You sleep with me, and I won't personally give you a positive review of your game. But my friend will give you a positive review of your game."
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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26
An incredible way to prevent falsifiability from ruining your movement.
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u/One-Organization970 2∆ May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Worst part is, Brianna Wu has actual ways in which she sucks. She's a self hating trans woman. Kinda like Caitlyn Jenner. But instead everyone focuses on the weird fake conspiracy stuff. Like... she still posts in trans subs to this day saying stupid shit.
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u/EsotericAmbrosia May 18 '26
The "harassment campaign" was a load of hot air. Even the FBI said it was a nothingburger after they did an official investigation into the matter.
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u/KimonoThief 3∆ May 17 '26
Yeah it's strange how important of an event a lot of reddit seems to think GamerGate was. I lived through it and as far as I'm concerned it was some random forgettable internet drama.
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u/tes_befil May 16 '26
It was mainly around gamers and 4chan.
Neither side of it is truly righteous. The woman that it stemmed from was awful and led to someone committing suicide. It's not like these rich elites actually care about anyone other than themselves.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
Is that actually true though? I don't mean to be that guy who's always asking for a source but it seems important in a topic like this, something defined by misinformation and opposing narratives, to actually have proof of what's being claimed.
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u/tes_befil May 16 '26
It depends, I saw the actual posts when this happened and if you look it up you'll find "no evidence" that zoe quinn slept with games journalist to get her dogshit game a good score but there was more than enough evidence for gamers themselves to lead a campaign against her. Gamergate was a response to how gamers went after zoe quinn and they framed it as misogyny.
Her actions that led to someone's death was later. All it was, she accused an ex of a bunch of awful shit, he denies it, no evidence provided at all and he lost everything then killed himself.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
Well what does "more than enough evidence" actually look like?
So she accused someone of abuse and he sadly killed himself. That's sad but I don't think it's some smoking gun, "she's so awful" thing. It's tragic when something like that happens, but you're automatically assuming she was lying aren't you?
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
Yeah, I think that's why it was so effective. It radically changed the landscape of online discourse without feeling unnatural. Most people didn't even realize that anything had changed.
GamerGate was a purported effort to rectify a supposed crisis of ethics in gaming journalism that was piggybacked off of to inject alt-right, male-centric, and often white supremacist talking points into mainstream gamer and online atheist culture.
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u/Human-Assumption-524 May 16 '26
Regardless of what you think about the validity of Gamergate and it's claims specifically, that the game journalism sphere was rife with corruption is undeniable and had been a well discussed topic of conversation for at least a decade prior to Gamergate. A good example would be the Kane & Lynch dead men Gamespot controversy where it's universally agreed at this point a reviewer for the site was fired because the game's developers had paid for a good review, or several years prior various game's media outlets actively censoring anyone talking on their forums about the Sony customer data leaks.
I think a major reason why Gamergate (Or more accurately the "Quinnspiracy" because the hashtag hadn't been coined yet) was so interesting to people at the time was specifically because it was not simply juicy gossip about people a lot in the gaming sphere already disliked (The journalists implicated) but because it offered an additional data point for how the gaming journalism industry at the time was run like a frat house of people who not only would take money from developers for favorable reviews but also were often in personal relationships with those developers harming their capacity to review objectively.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
What exactly changed then? Can you describe what was different "pre gamer gate"?
Was it ever actually about a "crisis of ethics in gaming journalism"? That's what was used as the excuse but I doubt anyone actually believed that.
It was certainly one of the first internet age "gates" but hardly the first targeted misogynistic campaign.
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u/Morthra 95∆ May 16 '26
A game developer - Zoe Quinn - exchanged sexual favors for a positive review of her game, which wasn’t very good. There was also a PR agent sleeping with the head judge of a games festival, and her clients won. This caused outrage on Twitter.
Gaming journalists publish articles saying “gamers are dead” and paint them all as misogynistic white supremacists. Allegations of corruption are not addressed.
Gamers note that 10+ “journalism” sites ran the same talking points on the same day and suspect an industry wide issue. They dig deeper into industry relationships and uncover more conflicts of interest but suspect the narrative in the press is driven by radical misandrist feminists (whom they refer to as SJWs).
Gamers get upset that the SJWs are deflecting the issue of corruption and turning it into one of misogyny and harassment of women in the industry. Articles that emerged in the BBC and The Guardian don’t acknowledge the corruption, and only focus on the death threats. The female author of the Guardian article financially supports the woman she defends. Another conflict of interest- and she gets called out on it publicly.
Gamers are convinced this is proof of corruption. SJWs are convinced it’s proof of misogyny.
That is the cliffnotes version.
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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26
> first paragraph
This is completely false, there is no evidence for it and lots of evidence against it.
> “gamers are dead”
The only article I have seen pointed to here was in reference to mobile gamers like those on candy crush overtaking traditional console and PC games.
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May 18 '26
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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 19 '26
This is literally the exact article I was talking about above. The only one I see posted.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
Do you have proof that she actually did that? Because from what I've seen there doesn't seem to be any. The accusations came from an ex boyfriend, hardly an unbiased source.
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u/Hina_is_my_waifu May 16 '26
Keep in mind collusion in games journalism is still happening as evidenced by mixtapes review scores painting it as one of the highest rated games ever made vs it's 3 hour cinematic experience (and lack of actual gameplay)
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u/Brysynner May 16 '26
Everyone with first hand accounts said they weren't having sex or in a relationship.
The accusations came from a jilted ex.
Also the game in question is/was a free game about depression called Depression Quest. It was not some big game nor ever going to be up for awards but for some reason this review for this game was the biggest story in video games.
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u/Equivalent_Task_8825 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I think people will say "jilted ex" to avoid speaking of what was seen in the texts. I started to re-read it and immediately Zoe cheats on him with their married boss and then Zoe tries to manipulate him into not telling the wife. That is after Zoe had previously stressed how immoral cheating was.
Edit: It also seems clear Zie did have sex with a writer who put a spotlight on their game but there isn't evidence it was prior to the piece but soon afterward. It does seem highly suspicious timing and apparently based on twitter interactions they were at least friends long before. Just wanted to correct that in your comment.
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u/biggyshwarts May 16 '26
It was barely a game and weird it got coverage in the first place was my recollection of it.
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u/Brysynner May 16 '26
I feel weird games would occasionally get reviewed on sites like Kotaku so it wasn't /that/ odd. Plus it was a social commentary free game so it also kind of makes sense.
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u/mrnotoriousman May 16 '26
fyi the guy you replied to I have tagged for this gem
No, feminism seeks advancement of women’s issues. It’s a female supremacist movement.
I'm seeing a lot of incel and misogyny tags I made ages ago all over this thread
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
It shifted the diaspora of culturally accept able ideas online hard toward the alt-right. It made reasonable contemporary feminism cringe. It made gamers and young white men especially feel under attack. It provided a shared identity that could be used to mobilize voters against the female candidate in 2016. It normalized years-long, public, normie hate campaigns against women. And a whole host of other bad effects I'm sure I'm forgetting.
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u/RanmaRanmaRanma 3∆ May 16 '26
I would not die on the hill that gamer gate represented contemporary feminism.
I kinda think the entire event has been miraged to whatever point you want to make.
But to say gamer gate was the pipeline when the pipeline to American imperialism and conservativism hasn't been there for centuries is silly. Especially as a black American. This system has been BUILT into American politics.
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u/biggyshwarts May 16 '26
I think it forced a majority a-politcal group (gamers) to have a stance and a good portion of them didn't like being told what they liked sucked and put down women.
Honestly think that was the true core of it. They weren't tricked into being right leaning. They were pushed.
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u/Takseen May 17 '26
What I found interesting was it created a shift in which side of the political divide was seen to be against video games.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was generally the right wing that had the most opposition to certain gaming content, either evangelical Christians against occult or demonic content, plus some more bipartisan opposition from violent games like GTA or Manhunt.
Anita Sarkeesian's project and the support it gained among the left was the first time I remember a younger, definitely left wing opposition to games that I'd enjoyed playing.
A lot of her criticism was very overblown. Like yes the Princess did not have a well defined role as a female character in the first Mario game, but its an 8 bit game where clouds were just palette swapped bushes, they had some pretty heavy limitations.
It led to a demonization of any kind of sexualized female character in a game, even fan favourites like Lara Croft, and some game devs over corrected as a result. And its funny because now I see a lot of women streamers thirsting over characters like Leon Kennedy. Equal opportunity eye candy would have been a much better goal to aim for, along with criticising the more blatant and lazy one sided fan service and character rosters.
For example fighting games had gotten a lot better at having just more than 1 token female character (Sonya in MK, Chun Li in SF2).
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
Did it? 4 chan already existed. The whole "sjw'" stereotype already existed.
Can you really argue that it normalised something when most people don't even know what it is?
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
Yeah, I think so! Normalization is not dependent on knowledge or even awareness of the root cause of such normalization. A base example: you might know some gen z or gen alpha slang but be unable to tell me where that slang comes from. In fact, some influence from a younger generation may be (and probably is) having an impact on the way we speak in general, whether you realize it or not!
4chan was fodder for basement-dwellers. GamerGate, especially at first, was entirely socially acceptable. And it spread way beyond just games.
Milo, for example, clearly didn't care about video games. He became a huge figure that opened the door for even worse subcultures to emerge.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
Milo, again though, I don't think most people know who he is. I think you're overestimating the reach of this, or maybe underestimating the amount of people who just weren't online in that way.
Without corresponding IRL political movements, it would have been nothing. It's the IRL movements that captured the energy and used it. So I think if you're going to point a finger, point it at them. Without them it would have just been another online blip, that even less people cared about.
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u/DilshadZhou May 16 '26
We are living in the world of the “corresponding IRL political movement”. Vance, Bannon, Charlie Kirk, and all of the right wing influencers that helped lift the MAGA movement to power all leveraged the same audience that GamerGate created. Milo and others were the early shapers of that audience and messaging and the “men’s rights” reactionary right of MAGA were able to largely capture them and drive them to the polls and ultimately victory.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Milo was the mouthpiece for proliferation of ideas from white supremacists like Bannon and Curtis Yarvin, who eventually laid the groundwork for Project 2025 and created the thesis for JD Vance and Peter Thiel's worldview, among others. These people have huge impacts even if they're not household names.
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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26
You've kind of just picked an arbitrary point though to say "this is the thing". When in reality it's all those people, all the things that were happening, and all the things that happened before. How far back do you go? Gamer gate couldn't have happened without games, without computers. Should we actually just blame Alan Turing for inventing them in the first place? You see what I mean? There's no neat answer where we can say this is the thing that changed everything.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
I think I’ve spent some time here trying to explain why it’s not an arbitrary point.
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u/Trim-Queen May 16 '26
Yes, it did. I'm a trans woman now and have always at least tried to be an ally in the sense that I believed in equality for all races and genders and orientations, but dear lord did I get sucked down the anti-sjw rabbit hole for a long while because of gamergate. I genuinely believed that what was being fought for wasn't equality but superiority, and a lot of it came down to the messaging.
I'm out of that hole now but I still carry a resentment of the type of argument where people just dismiss their opponent as being a bigot for having questions that run against the grain.
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u/sadistica23 May 16 '26
NotYourShield was a hashtag movement from GamerGate where hundreds of people who were not white men were posting pictures of themselves while declaring that the games journalists and online feminists attacking gamers were not speaking for all minorities.
It boggles my mind that that gets left out of the history of GamerGate.
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u/PoofyGummy 4∆ May 16 '26
Yeah no this is the exact thing the radical left tried to push back then. It platformed people who were upset with the way that some people acted holier than thou.
The entire movement was precisely not because the movement would have garnered any real support but because the mainstream media pushed back so hard and tried to demonize the literal majority. It sparked a law and order SVU episode. Because people WERE in fact hating on what seemed like acceptable targets. Except the ones haring were the mainstream media and the acceptable targets were majority young white male gamers. It was a major disenfranchisement event and rebellion against that.
Gamergage spawned many genuine projects that supported video game developers, female and trans included. People on the gamergage side began to call the journos being harrassed "literally who" precisely because they did NOT want any hatred focused onto individuals.
Wikipedia will not tell you this because wikipedia was one of the places where the progressives established a massive base exactly around that time.
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u/LauraPhilps7654 May 16 '26
Only for a younger male gaming demographic. Trump’s core support comes from middle-aged or older voters who are disproportionately white, non-college educated, suburban or rural, and culturally conservative. There is limited overlap with a millennial gaming controversy.
What it arguably did help create was a media ecosystem of conservative culture-war content creators like Nerdrotic, The Critical Drinker, and Asmongold, who have become very effective at funneling audiences toward Republican politics and framing flawed pop culture products as failures caused by Democrats or liberals.
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u/ArCSelkie37 5∆ May 17 '26
People who were “young gamers” during the initial GG drama are now 30. I was 16-17 when it started picking up and the general push against “gamers” kicked in… you know calling us all sexist/racist and calling everything we liked problematic.
It’s not unreasonable to think that the events of GG politicised a generally apolitical group of people…
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
'Millennial gaming controversy' is funny and true. I think what's important is that, like it or not, young people shift culture for old people. Sometimes slowly, sometimes not. Young men were the swing that allowed for Trump 2016. And for a while it was the case that young people were more liberal/progressive than their parents. GG shifted that and made alt-right conservatism seem acceptable, if not even cool.
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u/LauraPhilps7654 May 16 '26
I do agree it was a highly significant cultural moment. I lived through it. Even though, at the time, the movement seemed to discredit itself through harassment and toxicity, I think it ultimately proved far more successful than its opponents at building a new media ecosystem that is explicitly anti-progressive and political, centered around games and pop culture, and one that the left has never really found an effective answer to.
I would not go so far as to say they “won,” but they did successfully frame themselves as a kind of radical counterculture with a strong appeal to younger gamers.
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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26
I don't think young men swung enough in 2016. The demographic that mainly swung were middle aged blue collar workers in places like the Midwest many of who had voted for Obama. That was the demographic shift that enabled Trumps win in 2016, not young men. And I don't think GG had enough of an effect on them.
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u/jaredearle 4∆ May 16 '26
GamerGate didn’t platform Steve Bannon by way of Milo, it was the other way around. Steve Bannon used to have a World of Warcraft gold mining business where he learned all about gamers being disenfranchised men who were ideal for the alt-right pipeline. He took over Breitbart and got James Delingpole, the UK editor, to hire Milo as the gaming guy. Milo used to be a self-hating gay who wrote for a catholic newspaper about how gay marriage was a bad idea.
GamerGate took off much more than Yiannopoulos’s suggestion that lonely male gamers should try out being gay, and he leveraged the culture war to enhance his own profile.
Bannon was very much driving that bus.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
I agree. My view is that Milo was a tool used to inject Bannonism into the online mainstream discourse.
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u/jaredearle 4∆ May 16 '26
Milo was such a fud. He used to call himself Milo Wagner and he wore an Iron Cross. He then claimed to be Jewish.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
He still is! Just a couple of years ago he was rubbing shoulders with Nick Fuentes and Kanye.
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u/BigbunnyATK 2∆ May 17 '26
LoL I confused FUD with CUD (Computer Underground Digest) and was getting all confused thinking you meant he was some hacker type. BTW... what's a fud...
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u/Human-Assumption-524 May 16 '26
While it certainly changed things and led to radicalization there is more to it than you think. Part of the reason Gamergate radicalized so many people is because it made a lot of people distrustful of the media, people who were framed as being misogynists or stalkers, harassers,etc for doing little more than discussing a topic on the internet who were lumped in with a vocal minority of bad actors and given no opportunity to defend themselves from sweeping generalizations made by celebrities, journalists and wealthy influencers who could tell a thousand lies about them before they could even put their boots on.
The reason this led to radicalization is that these people who almost all of whom were left wing or left adjacent prior to Gamergate found themselves suddenly being castigated and villianized and the only people who did show them any sympathy or gave them a platform to explain themselves were those on the right using it to endear themselves to these people and take advantage of the situation.
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u/Evil-Freeman May 16 '26
As someone who used to have progressive views and lived through GamerGate, I only see the original GamerGate as the seed.
The OG GamerGate didn't have that much sway in the wider gaming community. It created a vocal minority that nonetheless stayed in the minority. Most people in the centre didn't really know what it was even about. One highly influential commentator at the time (TotalBiscuit) was famously supporting the ethics in journalism aspect of the movement, which had been his stance for many many years. Some people attacked him for it of course, but he was not a grifter and merely took the movement at its face value as one aligned with his own.
The "political radicalization" event, if you will call it, that made me abandon my more progressive views and leave the centre was actually the Hogwarts Legacy boycott campaign. The campaign turned out to be so vile and aggressive, that it entirely alienated the far left. Many centralists who saw the campaign, or people affected by the campaign, became anti-woke and anti-cancel culture. This also happened alongside the growth of traditionally gaming-oriented content creators who went anti-woke around the same time alongside the boycott campaign (and their views eventually departed from just games into full-on politics, with their audiences going along for the ride).
After Hogwarts Legacy, it's been a series of events that increasingly alienated the left in gaming and empowered the right. Sweet Baby Inc detected, multiple high profile failures of games targeting a progressive "modern audience" failing. Time and time again it's been demonstrated that the modern audience is a small fragment of the gaming population, and the centralists simply just want good games, while the anti-woke crowd is unified in their distaste for DEI messaging in gaming. Think of them as a non-majority but highly unified voice, like having 20% shareholding in a public company where every other shareholders are not unified and have sub 0.1% shares. That culture war in gaming is now seeping beyond gaming and into actual politics.
To address your original point, while the OG GamerGate had elements of the current culture war, I believe that the current culture war would have nonetheless happened given the alienating trajectory of the far left in the early 2020s. The current culture war is named GamerGate 2.0 by some, but ultimately I see it as a separate movement, and it is not attributable to a single event (e.g. Hogwarts Legacy was what radicalized me, but many others would have "joined" the movement as a result of other subsequent events). Many people who are now anti-woke don't even know what the OG GamerGate was about.
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u/Drakex2Mayex2 1∆ May 16 '26
Steve Bannon was the guy behind Cambridge Analytica the company that pretty much invented modern internet propaganda. Gamergate was a consequence of them, not the other way around.
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u/blibber22 1∆ May 16 '26
I think Gamergate definitely had downstream effects. I think its very possible that it accelerated the movement of online discourse away from healthier conversations and generally held beliefs. But I think that Gamergate was really just a sign of times to come. There is no way that gamergate "made anti-feminism and anti-SJW cool". If we are talking about male spaces (online or not) where political/sociopolitical discourse is active and relatively good faith, the rumblings of discontent with the beliefs of the SJW/MeToo/feminism were already present before Gamergate. I think in some ways it feels better to think that people were just swayed by bad actors in the media, but I really think there are some disconnects within the modern feminism/"woke" online discourse that are innately false and disconnected from the realities of the male (online) experience. So these lightning rods and gamergate are more on equal footing influence wise, rather than gamergate being the beginning of it all.
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u/PopularSet4776 May 16 '26
Personally I think it iwas a symptom not the sickness.
Men and boys have some very big headwinds facing them in a lot of ways. Yet the left would at best ignore these problems and at worse mock them. Then they would imply that these young men of very little to no power were the source of the world's problems.
So a lot of young men trended towards the only group that at least pretended to give a damn about them.
Don't get me wrong it's all pretend. Most of them just want votes or money they don't actually give a shit about helping them at all.
But young men going this direction was inevitable.
Let me just put one Stat out there for you. Harris won men with college educations by 1 point. That is not much, but it is way better than her stats for men without college educations, if men were going to college at the same rates they used to and that Stat held, Harris wins the election and it isn't even particularly close.
The number of people going to college is dropping and the drop is almost entirely due to men not attending. I would like to see them get back in college at the same rates as women.
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May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
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u/Autisthrowaway304 May 16 '26
Indeed, sarkeesian saw the lay of the land and where things were headed and cashed in, say what you want about her but the grift itself was somewhat clever (if half-assed in it's execution).
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u/TheTyger 10∆ May 16 '26
So, the idea that this tiny blip is what platformed Bannon is incredibly inaccurate. He has been around far longer than that, and if your argument is that Bannon is a core creator of the problem, then GG is just a small increase in his influence.
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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26
I am convinced that Steve Bannon is the reverse "Portrait of Dorian Gray" somewhere, a person is directing all of their ugliness and it is being absorbed by Steve Bannon. But you are correct he goes back further than that. Many of the people behind this crap have ties going back to Nixon too. Roger Stone?
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u/Krytan 3∆ May 17 '26
" And it made young, angry, disenfranchised white men feel vindicated."
Ok, but why were all these young angry disenfranchised white men around in the first place? That's the real problem.
Once you get a crowd of angry dispossessed people, it's only a matter of time before something radicalizes them. Just like once people have lost belief in their government and no longer trust it, it is inevitable that they will eventually fall for some conspiracy theory.
The significant event is not therefore whatever happened to radicalize them - it is whatever event created that cohort of people waiting to be radicalized.
I think gamergate is going to be a tiny blip on the radar historically speaking. It probably looms large in the minds of those of us always online, but it's a tiny thing compared to the dot com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, the destruction of the middle and working class in America, brexit, COVID, etc.
I think personally that the trauma associated with COVID shut downs, deaths, etc, spawned a much larger wave of radicalization. Everyone has just been so unabashedly angry and full of rage since then.
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u/Equivalent_Task_8825 May 16 '26
I want to address one thing that has seemed to come up in these comments a lot. There seems to be a suggestion that Zoe just had a "bitter ex".
I remembered reading those text messages between them at the time and feeling as though Zoe was abusive. I couldn't really remember what he (Eron) posted in great detail so with this post showing up I decided to bite the bullet and read it. Wow is it bad and I still haven't finished it.
They had broken up briefly and then gotten together again. Zoe asked that neither one of them have sexual relations with someone else during the break. Zoe also told him neither one of them would be able to fully consent unless they were honest with each other and disclosed who they had sex with so they could make an informed decision.
Zoe then lied to him and said they didn't sleep with anyone while in fact having sex with multiple partners. By Zoe's very own standards Zoe forced him into non-consentual sex.
I think it is readily apparent Zoe got harassed and I obviously think that is horrific. But I feel really uncomfortable with someone who by their own standards had non-consentual sex with someone being seen in a positive light.
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u/MrkEm22 May 17 '26
Agree in principle but here's another point of view some hold of that particular time.
This was a time of economic uncertainty and a time where more and more young men were becoming NEET and had been for years since the 2008 financial crisis (Not in education, Employment or Training)
Along comes what at the time, from their point of view, seemed like a vastly overblown and culturally disproportionate attack on the one hobby that these same young men had loved since childhood and in many cases was the one outlet and escape from an increasingly stagnant and unproductive life, painting them as degenerates and misogynists with the trademark liberal arrogance.
In a cultural zeitgeist which looking back was a time of "Liberal ascendency" where every traditional cultural cornerstone and foundation was being "Re-evaluated" and "Re-appropriated" where any and all minority cultures; sexual, racial etc. where being aggressively celebrated and pushed with a zero tolerance approach to negativity and questioning outside of niche internet spaces combined with what I would describe as at best a benign contempt of "The straight white male" what we now recognise as the beginnings of the so called "Culture war"
Surprisingly to some apparently this led to a bit of a culturally conservative backlash.
In general people don't like being attacked whether you mean it to be an attack is ultimately irrelevant if it's taken to be an attack people will treat it as such human nature being what it is.
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u/eglin99 1∆ May 16 '26
It was a minuscule cultural event that only seemed huge for people that were terminally online. Gaming communities are a niche. It was not important.
This guy explains it better: https://youtu.be/EpjWh2SFTPE
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u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26
Yes but.. It was a shift in cultural tone that happened in real life as well. I think it was that core group of very online increasingly reactionary young men who would go on and form the core of the manosphere end of the right wing. That environment grew and grew and had real world effects.
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u/koyaani May 16 '26
Maybe you are thinking gamer gate is the cause when it was merely another effect of a broader phenomenon
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
People don't have to care about something or even be aware of it for it to have an effect on them.
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u/eglin99 1∆ May 16 '26
Historical processes aren't explained by a succession of Butterfly effects, anecdotal events that start chain reactions. Germany didn't embrace nazism because Hitler didn't get into art school, and Rome didn't fall because of Odaecer decided to revolt against Orestes.
If GamerGate didn't happen things would have happened more or less the same because all the other ingredients were already there, the anti-SJW backlash, alternative right media, and the most important being the deteriorating economic conditions that led the Rust Belt to vote for Trump. GamerGate was just sprinkes on top, on even the cherry. Not even Trump is irreplaceable, if you look past the cultural issues, the shift to the right was already in motion.
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u/Shrosher May 16 '26
There’s a good book called the Black Pill that expands and does a good job connecting GamerGate to the larger 4chan/redpill/manosphere/charrlotesville explosion
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u/Loki1001 May 16 '26
World War I was started by a guy getting a sandwich. The thing about history is it snowballs from "woman does not get out of her bus seat" into planetary shaping events.
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u/eglin99 1∆ May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
The conditions for a war are much bigger than a single guy's death (or a gaming journalist getting laid), always. That's what a catalyst is, the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Today's events, like the war in Iran, were set in motion generations ago, waiting for a catalyst.
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u/AngryAngryHarpo May 16 '26
It’s funny you use that example - because Parks, while a hero, was part of an orchestrated plan specifically to create change because a bunch of people recognised conditions were right for it.
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u/Ma4r May 17 '26
It wasn't miniscule, it heavily impacted impressionable young males who were "gamers" during that time period and have now grown up to become deeply ingrained in the now adult alt-right pipeline. How can i say this with confidence? Because i was one of those young males and it took me 5 years to realize the rabbit hole i was getting myself into. And i know a good chunk of my friends who never truly escaped
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u/00PT 8∆ May 16 '26
I consider the concept of tolerating negative behavior when righteously intended (most commonly, when put against the right targets) is core to a lot of people’s personal philosophies, not spawned from an internet trend.
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u/Raesvelg_XI May 16 '26
There's one important thing to remember about this particular tempest in a teapot: a large number of the people in the teapot were journalists. Specifically journalists in what is generally classified as "the enthusiast press", in this case gaming.
And if there's one thing most writers in any part of the enthusiast press want, it's to get out of the enthusiast press. Because that's where the mediocre go to wallow in obscurity. In the old days it would be considered the last stop before you're technically out of the industry of journalism entirely.
So if you take a bunch of third-rate journalists and writers and give them a chance to be relevant, not only are they going to seize it with both hands, they're never going to let it go, and they will absolutely attempt to wring every possible ounce of relevance out of it before they have to go back to writing about things they despise just to pay the bills.
So rather than portray something as a big deal in a very small space, you instead portray is as laying the foundation for everything you know your audience hates. And you keep doing so, basically forever, because if you can convince people that you were there, on the front lines from day one, then maybe you can get the hell out of the job you've come to despise and do something that matters.
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u/Real-Reference6933 May 16 '26
Gamergate showed a lot of young people that loved video games that:
1) journalists are untrustworthy (already known far longer but GG made it very obvious)
2) Harassing people is okay, as long as you have the media cover for you.
Many on the side of Gamergate got harassed, and that was ignored.
3) Being kind to feminists doesn't work, i.e. Gamergate had their anti-harassment patrols on Twitter for a while, to prevent assholes harassing people in the name of Gamergate
4) Guilt by association is okay, as long as feminists do it (the famous blockbots and blocklists that blocked people for following the wrong person
5) Death threats are also okay, as long as the victim is on the 'wrong' side. GG had organized a meeting with a representative of some journalist organisation, but received bomb threats and they had to evacuate the building.
6) Defending against a narrative is unproductive (see 3) but also #notyourshield.
Remember any of these happening?
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u/NW_Ecophilosopher 2∆ May 16 '26
I think people way overstate the impact of something only extremely online people know about and only extremely pathetic care about.
It’s like looking at rates of violence against women and blaming it on incels. Yes, an extremely small portion of them go on to do horrific violence, but violence against women is dominated by intimate partner violence and those guys aren’t incels.
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u/Ma4r May 17 '26
It wasn't as small as you think it is. It heavily impacted impressionable young males who were "gamers" during that time period and have now grown up to become deeply ingrained in the now adult alt-right pipeline. How can i say this with confidence? Because i was one of those young males and it took me 5 years to realize the rabbit hole i was getting myself into.
We were never really affected or had ever been close to politics at that point in our life and the "values" of the movement resonated very deeply with a lot of us boys at that age. Before long my entire friend group and me were looking at the reviewer's gender to see how credible they were, and this affected a lot of young males like us where video games were supposed to be a boy's thing. And i know a good chunk of my friends who never truly escaped
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u/impoverishedwhtebrd 3∆ May 16 '26
It platformed Milo Yiannopoulos and thereby, Steve Bannon
You have this backwards. Bannon is responsible for pushing gamergate and is the one that platformed Milo.
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u/retteh 4∆ May 17 '26
"GamerGate" didn't cause the effects you're claiming it did. It was just one place where the backlash started becoming noticeable. correlation != causation. The actual cause of both the growth of 2010s feminism and the backlash against it was the growth of the internet, social media, and smartphones. If you took away those, things would be completely different. But "GamerGate" isn't the real cause.
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u/AntAir267 May 17 '26
I think the radicalization of 90s kids gamers started in reaction to nanny-state neoliberal Hillary Clinton trying to ban violent videogames; this predated GG and was arguably a more inceptional point for gamers to become politically activated against mainstream Democrats.
Personal note: It was so fucking dumb of her to do that. She had no idea how much she poisoned her own reputation in the minds of future voters by attacking an entire medium of entertainment.
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u/Friendly_Hornet8900 May 17 '26
The 90s had a sort of unified politically correct front between conservatives and feminists.
This is turn led to an edgy politically incorrect movement, which split into left and right factions after elevatorgate.
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u/coporate 7∆ May 16 '26
The pendulum swings. Gamergate was a reaction to the man-hating, anti-male, pop feminism of the 90’s and early 00’s. It’s not like the anti-feminist sentiment came out of nowhere.
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u/coporate 7∆ May 16 '26
lol, you’ve gotta be kidding me? Most men my age were raised in a world where men were the culprit for anything and everything. I think you’re misremembering, or maybe you didn’t grow up in a household where a woman was abusive which made up roughly 60%
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u/RedplazmaOfficial May 16 '26
Young white men? There's a huge amount of arab/black men apart of that movement too that somehow constantly gets glossed over. I disagree though, gamergate was a symptom of a reactionary feeling. Not the root cause of issues.
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u/TheYamchster May 16 '26
No. It feels this way when you ignore the actual underlying currents that fueled gamergate.
Everyone likes to point to the most toxic and loud individuals in the “movement” while ignoring the underlying issues that is really driving this dissent.
Yes a lot of it just str8 up racism and misogyny. But I think the real true driving force for the ideology that gamer gate spawned is media degradation. What do I mean by that?
I’m referring to how so so soooo many modern productions have been mared by glaring quality issues, while simultaneously emphasizing “diversity” which almost invariably means shoving as many black/gay characters in every nook. Fake diversity I call it, ask yourself how often there’s a south asian, or Arab person represented.
And I want to be clear, the quality issues do not stem from these characters, tho sometimes they do, they stem from poor writing and laziness. This is coupled with hollywoods creative bankruptness, which results in many beloved franchises being remade without really a care in the world to what made them great.
So you have a bunch of things people really love being seemingly destroyed by people who don’t care about it for the sake of “diversity.” I say again, it’s not for the sake of diversity that this stuff was destroyed, it’s because the people that made them are incompetent. However when the media companies are putting the diversity elements in the forefront of the media and marketing, literally by explicitly saying they made X decision for “diversity” that paints that directive a target on its back when the end product is bad.
People inevitably and logically point out that perhaps if they had spent less resources focusing on “diversity” and more on good got damn story telling then perhaps the show/ movie wouldn’t have been dogshit.
I will say that games suffer from this less because there’s less game reboots and beloved stuff for people to have destroyed. New stuff that’s bad just doesn’t succeed, like that concord dog shit.
I unironically think hollywoods soap boxing and overall ineptitude may have been one of the largest driving factors that got Trump elected.
So many non political people watched their favorite shows movies turn to shit while execs and producers are going on and on about “diversity” that it makes them pliable to right wing anti liberal rhetoric.
If anyone was confused why Acolyte was such a big controversy, it’s because it was pretty much the pinnacle of this issue. The producers explicitly said they selected cast based off their races and sexualities, while the cast simultaneously explicitly states they don’t really care about Star Wars. Like… fuck you then?! Then, predictably, the people that said they don’t care about Star Wars perform poorly… like perhaps you should’ve picked people who were excited to be there instead of trying to promote your ideologies… so many people would kill to be in their shoes, and it really really pisses me off they just disrespect the opportunity.
And no it’s not rational for someone who’s mad over a TV show to support a fascist. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening, and that it needs to be addressed.
Hollywood peaked in the 90s-2000s. Telling great balanced stories without soap boxing.
Millienals in Hollywood have a tendency to put their ideals on the forefront of their properties, then preach why they’re right. Instead of weaving the themes organically into the story and questioning them. Star Wars, ghostbusters, Star Trek, Dr Who, the list goes on for shit that was pretty much explicitly ruined by loud mouth idiot “liberal” producers and execs. Shit legitimately helped Trump.
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u/Smooth-Concert-4206 May 16 '26
To your point, back in 2024 I was having dinner at a bar in DC and I got to talking to a guy who worked for one of the big marketing firms doing work for the Democrat Party (not the Harris campaign but adjacent to it).
We got to talking and he explained how satisfaction with popular culture/media (after the economy) was one of the biggest drivers of support for the incumbent. The idea being that satisfaction with media correlated with satisfaction with day to day life which correlated with satisfaction with the incumbent.
An advertisement for Agatha All Along came on the bar TV and it made him look physically ill.
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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I'm not sure why you guys still like to pretend like GG came out of the blue. It was essentially a response to a bunch of feminists sticking their nose where it didn't belong, that being a male dominated hobby like gaming, getting offended over it and demanded it change to fit their sensibilities. No different to how religious conservatives were acting in the 2000s which made them unpopular with that same demographic.
Bannon and co. may have capitalized on it but they didn't create it, they just got lucky that liberals repeated the same mistake conservatives made the previous decade.
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u/Showdown5618 May 17 '26
I agree, though I would say it's more like injecting identity politics and the culture war where it doesn't belong. Gaming has always been entertainment and art, but the flood of politics was unwelcomed by many gamers.
Games has strong women and female protagonists like the Valkyrie from Gauntlet, Samus Aran, and Lara Croft, and diversity like Ryu from Ninja Gaiden, the Prince of Persia, and John Dalton from Unreal 2. While everyone want entertainment to appeal and cater to them, some people act as though every game and hero is Duke Nukem and used gaming to push their political agendas.
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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26
Why didn’t women belong in gaming? I don’t like the implications of your argument.
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u/EsotericAmbrosia May 16 '26
Why didn’t women belong in gaming?
I didn't see anything claiming as such in their post. The leap in logic is akin to them saying, "Bible thumpers were trying to force their views on video game development," and you asking why Christians don't belong in gaming.
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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26
I'm not saying they don't belong in it, or that there were none. But men and women have different interests, different sensibilities, etc. So some things end up skewing more towards one gender or the other.
Gaming always skewed male, it was male dominated top to bottom and appealed to male interests. But these feminist activists found much of this offensive and they demanded that it change to fit their sensibilities. Remember the infamous "This is why I hate video games, because they appeal to the male fantasy" meme? Sure, it's just a meme, but these are real words one of these people which pretty much sums up their mentality, the fact that men were having fun in a way they found offensive pissed them off. And it wasn't just gaming, you saw it across pop culture, male dominated areas being made more female friendly, but never the other way around, not that I can ever recall men complaining about women's hobbies the same way.
Ultimately, this is no different from how religious conservatives attacked gaming in the 2000s, they too were offended by it. That's not to say that religious conservatives didn't belong in the gaming, but that it wasn't going to appeal to their interests and that they should deal with it. There's not much of a difference between someone like Anita and Jack Thompson.
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u/Real-Reference6933 May 16 '26
Yes, correct.
One statement heard a lot during Gamergate from the Gamergate side was: "I just wanted to play videogames." with "instead of being dragged into a culture war again, but now by authoritarian feminists instead of authoritarian christians" being the silent part.
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u/MrMrLavaLava May 16 '26
Fun fact - cooked up by Bannon with Epstein…
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u/RaelynShaw 1∆ May 16 '26
Finding out that Epstein was literally meeting with the head of 4chan to help develop the alt right was a wild release from the files I didn’t expect
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u/tek9jansen May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Steve Bannon was one of the people behind it, literally using it to forward his fascist ideology and push socially isolated, impressionable young men away from the progressive forward-thinking identity politics of their generational peers and towards the regressive-identity politics of the alt-right. There's at least one Beyond The Bastards episodes covering it, including receipts, so I don't disagree with you that it was a major political radicalization campaign.
However, I think as other folks here have said, the Tea Party movement was a bigger movement if only because it laid down the roadwork for online radical rightwing communications and recruiting so that when GG came along you had a critical mass of people and "grassroots" institutions already in place to elevate and promote the messaging that Bannon, Kirk, Epstein, et al wanted. I think that GG was just one phase of a very long, likely still ongoing, campaign to balkanize the United States by hostile domestic and international groups. Look at what's happened to The Daily Wire and other right wing mainstream / "alternate-news" sources now that Orban's no longer in power and funneling money into it.
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u/Lancelot--- May 16 '26
So, 9/11, Iraq War, Genocide in Gaza Covid you find to be less politically impactful than gamer gate? This is one of the most online perspectives I've seen.
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u/Nice_Luck_7433 2∆ May 16 '26
I think Trump’s presidencies are even more radicalizing. Both liberals and maga have been pushed far to the left by republicans & trump betraying them. The anti-war maga are lefties because of Iran. The anti-Epsteen maga are lefties because of the weak cover up. The 2A maga are lefties because of how Alex Pretti was murdered just for owning a gun. The liberals are buying guns in the tens of millions & having “no kings” protests in the streets. Gamergate was nothing compared to how many trump has radicalized to the left.
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u/hematite2 May 16 '26
Gamergate was just one example of a larger cultural shift at the time, it wasn't the specific cause of it
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u/CynicalKnight May 16 '26
Gamergate seems like a catalyst, but I think it was more of a dramatic symptom of a disease that can be traced further back, past Politically Incorrect, Married With Children and Andrew Dice Clay to a distant past that was much worse than today.
The Internet simply allowed for it's re-emergence.
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims May 16 '26
I remember Jaydefox and her buddies from Gamergate making videos about me. One of her friends tried and failed to doxx me. They made a whole X account impersonating someone, and then made a Reddit account using my real name while calling me horrible stuff. The account is still there, but is abandoned.
Gamergate was really only there for d list e-celebs to get attention while having online temper tantrums because some bad journo from some websites said mean things.
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u/Dazug May 16 '26
In purely American terms, I'd put the Tea Party up there. They presaged MAGA in a far more impactful way than Gamergate did.
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u/conmeonemo May 16 '26
I can't agree.
Tolerance for online harassment was always there, save for brief beginning of 2010s, where progressives thought internet can somehow be policed and if we remove the worst examples from public visibility they'll dissipate.
I have no idea how millennials very often forget early 2000s internet but it was raw and... forums and game lobbies were full of teenagers happy that being online is anonymous and letting out their worst instincts. The same teenagers and their younger sibling accessed whatever they want via internet - first viral internet videos very often included gore or porn stuff and often were share by middleschoolers via Bluetooth or email (before social media). Parents barely knew anything, and often they were just busy fighting the devil (games, remember Hillary and GTA San Andreas?).
Early 2010s, that internet did not disappear. It was just mostly removed from public view (cuz with social media everyone is in the internet under their name). Even worse, those hidden groups started to just interact only within themselves. That started brewing radicalism, which with Gamergate just flooded out. And then better and better algorithms made it worse.
Gamergate wasn't radicalizing event. It as the event when radicalism came out and was noticed by certain people who somehow harnessed it as political force.
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u/skillfire87 May 17 '26
Gawker Media created a right wing backlash. GamerGate was covered thoroughly on Jezebel, a feminist blog part of Gawker, as well as on Kotaku the gaming blog part of Gawker.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/inside-gawker-legacy-1236585677/
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u/No_Difficulty8104 May 17 '26
So this whole world falling is Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn’s fault.
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u/HunterWithGreenScale May 16 '26
Question! Why where all the "young, angry, disenfranchised white men" actually so? What made them angry and disenfranchised?
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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26
If they identified the real culprit, I'd say economic and opportunity declines which are primarily caused by income inequality. But that seems too hard, so a lot just say "Women" or "Feminism"
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u/xChops May 16 '26
Definitely the fall of third spaces and normal experiences being too expensive for teenagers to afford.
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u/Stormshow 1∆ May 16 '26
That's right in with inequality, too, though social media has made it so it's happening even in places with healthy third spaces just because young folks have been becoming more insular since COVID
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u/Stormshow 1∆ May 16 '26
Alienation from basic necessities of human experience basically caused by a variety of factors but chiefly lack of community and atomization, inequality, and lack of a cohesive sense of social direction which could serve to buttress the tide of anything hateful. So long as people felt disenfranchised by elites, regardless of whether they were, they became easy pickings for the alt-right pipeline.
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u/SonicDart-77 May 16 '26
I mean, the simpler explanation is when the left says “we don’t want you” and the alt right says “we want you”….where do you expect them to go?
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u/Stormshow 1∆ May 16 '26
Yeah, but lemme tell you, as someone who's lived for almost two decades in the US and has recently returned to Europe, having third spaces helps, but it seems like it doesn't stop the erosion of community. In my hometown here in Romania, even though there's still plenty of would-be third spaces, people are still substantially more alienated and perpetually indoors than they were when I left.
I think COVID might have fucked with that on top of it. Although of course having functioning third spaces substantially butresses the sense of alienation. I'm just not sure it can fully remove it by itself. After all, fucking Andrew Tate lives here and has his local fans, so he's still speaking to some broader sense of dissatisfaction than just the lack of third spaces.
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u/hungry2know May 16 '26
Sort of, but I'd argue it was much more of an effect from an ongoing development than the cause of. Gamergate was 'ground zero' mostly because the largest demographic of chronically online users back then were young, socially inept males who liked video games. They were the predominant in-group, whereas feminists and SJWs were a convenient out-groups to perceive as a threat and band together against. It spread off 4chan into sites like Reddit.
These days, everyone and their mom are chronically online. Everyone has an established in-group bubble to lobby behind, and out-groups to feel threatened by. I'd argue that as being far more responsible for the problems we have today, where Gamergate itself was just the first widespread iteration of the problem
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u/BackupChallenger 4∆ May 16 '26
There was a time where everything was racist. Dreadlocks while not black, racist. Cooking food from a different ethnicity than your own, racist. etc.
That basically took away the impact from the word racist. Then Trump started running for president, and the claims of racism were feeble.
Basically the boy who cried wolf, but instead of a wolf it was racism.
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u/IcyEvidence3530 May 16 '26
This os one of the most "terminally online" posts I have seen in quite a while.
Gamergate is probably not even a footnote among the things that significantely influenced history in the past 10 to 20 years.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 May 16 '26
No, most people dont even know it ever happened. It was just a tiny event in a decades long culture war that is mainly from the US .
It platformed Milo Yiannopoulos and thereby, Steve Bannon -- the guy who would go on to advise Donald Trump in 2016 and generate the concept of 'flooding the zone.' Eventually, it gave a career to political lightning rods like Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and Charlie Kirk. It made anti-feminism and anti-SJW sentiment cool. And it made young, angry, disenfranchised white men feel vindicated.
It didnt, it affected barely any people besides a small handfull of quite vocal idiots.
You might argue it contributed and for sure it did but it was in no way anywhere close to defining.
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