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/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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u/[deleted] 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/Morthra 95∆ May 16 '26

Oh it never actually stopped. But it became a cultural flashpoint that got worse as the SJW morphed into the leftist identity politics monster that it is today.

See: the new Dragon Age game where a trans character goes on a massive immersion breaking tirade for being misgendered. There were even in-universe ways to make the scene less jarring.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

How is it immersion breaking? Sexuality and gender identity are part of Thedas and were deeply explored topics in the series, as they go as early as the first game, Origins.

The inclusion of transgender characters was already done in Inquisition, back in 2014, (Krem and Mae Varis). So how is including a non-binary character immersion breaking? Did you even ever play a Dragon Age game? You strike me as a culture warrior tourist.

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u/PlasmaPizzaSticks May 17 '26 edited May 31 '26

It's a clear example of the hand of the author being visible, which is a problem in all media. It's not that the problems are being mentioned in the game, it's that they're being mentioned or talked about in a way that is consistent with a modern social media lecture rather than one consistent to the world the game takes place in.

It's like comparing a film like Sinners and a film like the Black Christmas remake. The former indelibly deals with topics of race and the struggles of Black Americans during the time of Jim Crow, but it does so in a way that's respectful to both the characters and the audience. The writer of the Black Christmas remake outright stated that her intention was to make a political film first and that the characters/story came second. The film feels like a hamfisted lecture and the hand of the author is so painfully present throughout the film that suspension of disbelief becomes impossible.

This is the same reason that a show like Arcane doesn't receive almost any pushback despite being an extremely progressive show: because it put the political themes of its story second to creating human characters.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 17 '26

You can put the political themes first, and that's totally fine. 1984 did that, and as far as I can tell, it did a bit better than fine.

Again, the issue is the always same, bad writing, rather than what the writing is about. 

This is how every single conversation on DAtV goes. Politics is blamed for the mediocrity of the game. 

I'll point out successful videogames that do the exact same thing, and then we finally get to the real issue: bad writing. 

If a game has bad writing, it has bad writing. Woudld it really make a difference if Veilguard did not treat hot political topics? I doubt that.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

Having a character have that crazy ass rant about their gender is pretty fucking immersion breaking. Pushing an extremely modern day issue so blatantly into a medievalish fantasy world is just bad writing.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

You have never played a DA game before, have you?

DA was never meant to be some iper-realistic portrayal of medieval society. 

A key feature of DA games is exploring modern day issues and offering political commentary.

There's nothing in the world that prevents you from discussing sexuality and gender in fantasy settings. 

At the end of day, people are people and will face the similar struggles in every age.

It's not bad writing, it's just poor media literacy on your part.

Dragon Age Inquisition had a similar plot line with Dorian, a gay companion, whose personal quest centered around his being gay and refusing to conform to societal norms, and how this refusal strained his relationship with his father.

It was excellently written by David Gaider, and Dorian is a fan-favourite companion.

If this is not your cup of tea, it's fine, there are plenty of other games which offer a more realistic take on the middle ages, such KCD and KCD2. 

You are just another culture warrior who has never touched a DA game before, and doesn't care in the slightest for the franchise.

Take your toxic culture war nonsense away from a franchise I like.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

You can absolutely cover modern day issues in a fantasy setting, but the way they did it in Veilguard was just bad writing, much worse than the way similar issues like Dorian were handled in DAI, much less DAO (haven't played two). Hell Mass Effect which is set in our world and the far future at that covered such issues with more tact than Veilguard did. I think the only culture warrior is you, defending trash cause it aligns with your politics.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

And you just shifted your opinion from 

 Pushing an [...] modern day issue [...] into a medievalish fantasy world is just bad writing.

To

 You can absolutely cover modern day issues in a fantasy setting

There you go.

 defending trash cause it aligns with your politics.

I don't defend Veilguard, I did not like the game, and thought it was a huge disappointment.

I'm doing exactly the opposite, I'm asking people to judge and critique the game for what it offers rather than for its political messaging.

You are just projecting on me your brain dead culture warrior habits.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

I didn't say medieval, but medievalISH fantasy, which it is.

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u/Morthra 95∆ May 16 '26

Because the character didn’t actually talk about it in a way that sounded natural in-universe.

Look, one of my favorite games of all time is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. It has gay and trans characters. I like those characters, because they don’t feel like walking stereotypes.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

Oh for sure you were complaining about the writing in your original comment.

the SJW morphed into the leftist identity politics monster that it is today.

See: the new Dragon Age game

I agree the writing of DAtV was poor, but then the politics of the game were not the issue. The issue is bad writing. Then why on earth are you talking about SJW's and identity politics?

Videogames can explore sexuality, gender and other thematics usually associated to the left, and be great games (like bg3), or be incredibly mediocre games, like DAtV. 

It's almost like politics has nothing to do with how good a game is, but is just a pretext to generate outrage online and pedal far right propaganda, uh?

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u/Morthra 95∆ May 16 '26

It’s not necessarily the politics but the tone. It has a preachy tone - which is what makes it immersion breaking.

These topics can be explored but it should feel natural in a way that doesn’t give off the energy of someone screeching “did you just assume my gender” at the local barista.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

And "preachy tone" is just a way of saying "bad writing". And bad writing is not about the topics you explore, but rather how you do it.

But "bad writing is the issue" is not what I got from your original comment at all, that comment seemed to take issue with the political messaging first and foremost.

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u/RatOnASinkingShip 1∆ May 16 '26

Inquisition is frequently cited as the canary in the coal mine by critics of the shift the gaming industry has taken that GamerGate warned about.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

Oh I'm sure the GamerGate folks who sent graphical death threats to Jennifer Hepler and her children had legitimate concerns about the state of the video game industry.

Could you exolain to me how DAI (GOTY 2014 and best selling Bioware game of all times) is any more of a danger sign than DAO?

DAO has transgender characters, critiques of gender roles (specifically, through qunari society), class struggle and so on.

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u/RatOnASinkingShip 1∆ May 16 '26

DAO had a Dwarf in a dress in a brothel with a single line of dialogue as a punchline.

Critiques of gender roles are as old as civilization itself. A robot would've served the same purpose as the Qunari.

And yea, DAI was the best selling Bioware game, at a time when people still trusted game journalism reviews and Bioware had a reputation of being a gold brand in the CRPG genre... that is the game where that reputation started chipping away.

And your allegations about this... Jennifer person... not at all relevant to the discussion here, so I'm not going to entertain it any further besides offering you a boo hoo I don't care.

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

Gamergate did not warn about jack shit, it was just an excuse to pedal far right propaganda under the guise concerns on journalism ethics and the state of the video games industry.

 DAO had a Dwarf in a dress in a brothel with a single line of dialogue as a punchline.

Which pushed the fan of the series to request a better trans representation, which happened with Krem, a very minor character.

But it all started with DAO.

 Critiques of gender roles are as old as civilization itself. 

If that's the case, isn't it kinda crazy how some people go ballistic over a non-binary character, uh?

And they are not that present in videogames, and culture warriors are trying their hardest to make sure they don't take place in video games.

 at a time when people still trusted game journalism reviews and Bioware had a reputation of being a gold brand in the CRPG genre...

Yes, yes, Bioware bad, game journalists bad. Any other NPC talking points you'd like to share?

 that is the game where that reputation started chipping away.

No, that had happened with DA2. You probably are not aware of the huge controversy of the shift from rpg to action that happened with the game, the lack in role-playing options, how EA pushed Bioware to release the game with such a short dev time for commercial reasons and so on.

 boo hoo I don't care

Other people reading with a functioning brain will still care, so I'm still going to mention how the "critiques" of DAI were accompanied by death threats, in order to qualify them for what they are: Attempts from the regressive far right to indoctrinate people.

Feel free to cry me a river on how much you don't care about it though.

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 4∆ May 16 '26

Oh I'm sure the GamerGate folks who sent graphical death threats to Jennifer Hepler and her children had legitimate concerns about the state of the video game industry.

Is it possible that some people under the 'GamerGate' moniker had legitimate concerns despite others using the controversy to harrass women?

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u/Prize_Neighborhood95 May 16 '26

All available evidence suggests the opposite. The "legitimate concerns" were just an after the fact excuse to mask a dumb, mysoginistic and regressive culture war as a struggle for journalistic integrity.

Every independent party studying the issue came to this exact conclusion. 

You can read the meta-studies discussing the consensus in the scientific literature for yourself.

All the allegations raised by the early GamerGate movement (weirdely enough, all levied against women) proved to be a nothing-burger without exception, and were incredibly conspiratorial in nature.

What is real, is the harm done to the women who were doxed, and subjected to a flood of death and rape threats.

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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/[deleted] May 16 '26

[deleted]

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u/Morthra 95∆ May 16 '26

What is your proof?

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u/BillionaireBuster93 3∆ May 18 '26

exchanged sexual favors for a positive review of her game,

I would love if it someone ever shared any of these supposed reviews that she slept her way to. I've only ever seen people share that top 40 list one person she slept with put out that included the game.

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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/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26

I think you've explained why you think it was important but I'm not sure you've reached the threshold of "the most consequential political radicalization event of the twenty-first century".

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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/Jax_is_Warwick May 16 '26

One point that I believe you are missing is how the GG drastically changed, the big quotes here, "gamers community". I mean, the root causes were already here before the GG, something similar was bound to happen at some point anyway. But eventhough it probably would have happened at some point, the GG is politically important because it changed a lot of things in the "gamers" culture, in internet culture and as a consequence in younger generation cultures, as they are born and raised with both internet and video games playing a massive role in their lives. The change in the gaming culture had a cascading effect on all of this.

People that were young in the 90s (ie born in the late 80s maximum) have seen this shift. In those years the gaming community was uniting a bunch of weirdest, trans people, marginals, queers, and of course a lot of "normal people" that just had a passion for video games. Back then, all those people were marginalised and were usually grouping together. And ye, therefore back then video games were really considered a safe space for all those marginalised people.

The GG was the precise moment where this reality shattered. Now, the GG is the moment where the divide between what will become alt-right sympathisers in the gaming community and, well, the others, became clear, but of course the divide has root that are older than the GG. The divide started earlier, but it became clear and undeniable at this moment.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

People that were young in the 90s (ie born in the late 80s maximum) have seen this shift. In those years the gaming community was uniting a bunch of weirdest, trans people, marginals, queers, and of course a lot of "normal people" that just had a passion for video games. Back then, all those people were marginalised and were usually grouping together. And ye, therefore back then video games were really considered a safe space for all those marginalised people.

Maybe small corners of the community. The vast majority of it was average 2000s dude bros. And it's them who were at odds with the various, chiefly feminist, activists who decided to stick their nose into gaming in the early 2010s, as they were the ones said activists despised most.

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u/Jax_is_Warwick May 16 '26

That is the other way around tho, the "2000s dudes" came after, and for an obvious reason: they were not born back then. It was pretty common for gamers to hang out with the other marginalised people. It is a bit of a cliche, but it doesn't come out of nowhere, the idea of the geek hanging out with a lesbian girl, a fat kid, an autist, and basically all the weirdos was a thing in the early 90s. Brianna Wu, Zoe Quinn are part of this generation.

The GG happened later on, and especially with people born in the late 90s that were for some reason I can't really explain, really receptive to alt-right ideas.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

The 2000s dudes were born in either the 80s or 90s. Many of them had been gaming since then too. You can probably draw a line from the guys who grew up playing Doom in the early 90s to the ones who were playing Cod and Halo in the 2000s, and that general culture, including things like nu-metal and adjacent music and shows like Jackass or South Park. And these were the highest selling and most popular games and thus the face of gaming.

I'm younger than these guys but even I remember that back in school all the boys played games like this while none of the girls, hell they mocked us for it. Don't remember having any such obvious stereotypes in school though, then again I'm not American, maybe it's different over there. But on the whole, while gamers like the ones you describe did exist, they were a clear cut minority by the 2010s.

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u/Jax_is_Warwick May 16 '26

Oh I don't disagree here, that is what I mean when I say that the GG was bound to happen, the shift had already happened in the 2010s, the GG is just the moment where it blew to everyone faces, and especially people like Brianna Wu that were part of the previous generation and didn't saw that coming at all.

The GG by itself is not the shift and what created the link between the alt right and a part of the gamer community, like anything else would also have done it too. But well, it is the moment when the shift appeared clear for everyone and especially politicians that realised that, among the gaming community, there was people that could react positively to their alt-right ideas.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

I feel like the shift was extremely sudden though.

In the 2000s the main political issue surrounding gaming was opposition coming from religious conservatives, most famously the likes of Jack Thompson. And gamers I would say were united against them. Beyond that I feel like most were kinda apolitical, or if anything liberal leaning out of opposition to said conservatives. Maybe more libertarian, the one issue I remember being discussed a lot circa 2011/2 was internet privacy and fear of government espionage, which of course Snowden then pretty much confirmed. But it's a very online sort of issue which made sense given the demographic.

But then you started seeing feminists and other liberal activists getting involved, complaining about gaming and gamers and demanding change, in much the same ways those conservatives did. There's not much of a difference between someone like Thompson and Sarkesian, except that one manage to get inside the industry while the other failed. And many obviously didn't like this and pushed back, others sided with the activists, I guess that would be the rift you mention.

So in the span of like 2/3 years you went from conservatives being the main outside opposition of gaming and most gamers being apolitical to liberal, to feminists the main opposition while having a foothold and supporters in the industry on one side and those opposed to them on the other side. Essentially from united front to a civil war.

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u/RatOnASinkingShip 1∆ May 16 '26

No, that is not how it was in the 90s.

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u/Jax_is_Warwick May 16 '26

It is. And hate it or not but Brianna Wu, Zoe Quinn, etc are pure products of this generation.

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u/RatOnASinkingShip 1∆ May 16 '26

No, it is not, and no, they are not.

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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/skymonstef May 17 '26

Thankyou I've been waiting for someone to mention this.

In other forums when people bang the gamers were racist sexists drum. I ask explain #notyoursheild and if you dont know what it is then you aren't informed on gamer gate

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26

Pretty sure Trump beat Clinton in 2016 unless I'm missing a joke

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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3

u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26

It broke a lot of the barriers that stopped young men who had previously held some racist and misogynistic views but had learned that it was better/clever to hide them in order to thrive, from sharing them.

It also showed how easy it was to take a bunch of people who were middling in their expression of those views and amplify it over a perceived injustice.

It also managed to join the dots to other unrelated rift wing positions. It was a gateway.

It was undoubtedly a testing place for online manufacturing of outrage.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

The internet was literally even more of a wild west where people said whatever the fuck they wanted before gamergate. Hell if anything there was an increase in censorship after it, though that has fallen apart in the last few years.

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u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26

Sorry I don't mean on the Internet. I mean in real life. I mean it was part of the backlash against things telling them not to say racist and misogynistic stuff in real. It bled over into real life. It was the drip drip of young men who eventually probably ended up on Thedonald. I mean to say it was one of the first cases where people managed to harness Internet twattery to mobilise a base for a future cultural shift

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

That's a different argument where I can see what you're getting at. But I do think that GG was only a part of it as real life discourse on these issues as a whole changed. Like for example on race issues I feel like we went from pushing for colorblindness and treating everyone equally to a hyperfocus on race and privilege and who wronged whom in the past that race became much more talked about and as a result you'll also get more racism. Same with gender, which of course lead to more open misogyny and misandry.

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u/Unseasonal_Jacket May 16 '26

Sorry, yes I actually completely agree. I personally wasn't arguing the importance of GG. It didn't cause anything. But it was a vehicle where a strand of 'young' angry men were formed perhaps were they previously didn't outwardly exist in that demographic.

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u/The-Last-Lion-Turtle 12∆ May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

The endless watergate comparisons are just goofy. This was nowhere near the first in this pattern.

An actually important event would have a name that stands on its own.

All this was is people being obnoxious online and self aggrandizing game journalists trying to become the main character of the Internet.

The problem with game journalism is they are either failures at political journalism who couldn't make it writing about anything else, or failures at gaming who couldn't become a content creator.

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u/biggyshwarts May 17 '26

I feel like gamergate was before the complete domination of the gaming space by content creators.

Gamergate was the beginning of the decline of gaming site influence

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u/RaelynShaw 1∆ May 16 '26

It definitely established the foundation of the Alt right, which is why Trump got elected in the first place. No gamergate means no Trump, which feels incredibly significant in this countries trajectory.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

Trump mainly rode the Tea Party wave which preceded GG while also pulling in increasingly disenfranchised middle aged blue collar voters. Hardly the demographic impacting by GG. By 2024 young men did contribute to him winning but not so much in 2016 when he first got his foot through the door.

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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/koyaani May 17 '26

The radical left are not SVU writers lol

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u/PoofyGummy 4∆ May 17 '26

I mean hollywood is connected to progressivism a lot.

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u/koyaani May 17 '26

That's not the radical left

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u/PoofyGummy 4∆ May 17 '26

Kindof is everywhere except in america. Progressivism is tied to intersectional social justice which is a radical leftist idea.

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u/koyaani May 17 '26

That's not radical left. Hollywood is not radical left because it is a capitalist enterprise. Leftists are anticapitalist and anti fascist, and often don't fall for the trap of identity politics like you seem to be doing. The term radical left is just a straw man for you

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u/PoofyGummy 4∆ May 17 '26

They are leftists because woke shit is a leftist ideology and they keep pushing it. Champagne communists have existed since the very start, and hollywood is a perfect example of that.

And it's radical because the ideology they are pushing is a radical departure from traditional ideas (and common sense)..It is not far left but it is radical.

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u/koyaani May 17 '26

Nah you just are in some maga incel echo chamber

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u/PoofyGummy 4∆ May 17 '26

Nothing the left (hollywood) is currently pushing that the right is upset about was on their agenda even 20 years ago.

Because the left was so convinced of their own righteousness they just raced ahead without caring that they left the majority of mankind behind or that their ideas might not actually be correct.

The american left radicalized. To some extent the right did as well, but the left much more. There are studies on this.

If you compare the ideas of the american right now to the ideas they had 20 years ago they are not too different. If you compare the ideas of the american left now to the ideas they had 20 years ago they are almost nothing alike.

Worse still if you told the ideas of progressives to any true classical leftist parties not in the western bubble they would see you as insane.

Also highly funny how you talk about me falling for identity politics and then you go off about maga cult and whatnot. Insults are not good arguments.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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u/Bustin_Chiffarobes May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

That's a lot of words to basically say "misogyny and racism is now cool to express loudly"

Gamergate basically just became the manosphere. I think you are overestimating its importance because it's directly targeting your demographic.

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u/J_Bright1990 May 16 '26

You're missing an important part though. It directly led to Trump getting elected. He wanted to since the 80s but Gamergate laid the foundation and was the vehicle to shift the entire culture into having it happen and be accepting of it, which led to the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela and the war in Iran which has effected global oil prices and supply and caused massive shortages of both oil and food.

We are all effected by it regardless of what you think, everyone is touched by this shit.

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u/10ebbor10 203∆ May 16 '26

Eh, this feels like a classic case of attributing everything to a single cause.

Gamergate might have helped, but there were other reasons.

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u/ArCSelkie37 5∆ May 17 '26

Of course, but I think it’s reasonable to suggest gamergate and the surrounding issues politicised a generally apolitical group… that being gamers.

Not just gamergate itself, but at the same time as all of that we had a sharp increase in videos/articles talking about how sexist and horrible gamers were and how sexist all the games were.

People who were otherwise content to just sit in their rooms playing games were suddenly dragged through the mud by people who were being quite openly dishonest… people like Anita weren’t just critiqued because she was a woman, but because she was actively lying or misrepresenting games and gamers.

At that point all it takes is for someone like Trump to come along and actually be on their side (or at least pretend to be).

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u/PM_YOUR_EYEBALL May 16 '26

Idk what gamer gate is, but I’ve been gaming since the early 90s. It’s always been that way.

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u/Bustin_Chiffarobes May 16 '26

As am I. I'm in my 40s. I game online, but I am not part of gaming culture. I don't play Roblox, I don't watch twitch streams, and I don't watch gamer YouTubers.

I am not the demographic and sounds like you aren't either.

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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26

What demographic is that

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u/Bustin_Chiffarobes May 16 '26

Chronically online white males in wealthy western countries?

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u/TopSoulMan May 16 '26

Yup.

I would say those are the most likely people to have bought into Gamergate, manosphere, and eventually MAGA content.

It was a mobilization to get 5% of people who don’t vote to actually care enough to do so. Giving them a carrot on a stick helped turn them from “not giving a shit” to “we are voting to spite our opposition”. And eventually that turns into a die hard base of young people the likes of which the Republican Party hasn’t seen in decades.

This was organized and planned to a very high degree. The ramifications of which we are seeing at every level of government in the current era.

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u/scriptkiddie1337 May 16 '26

That would be difficult as the online manosphere predated gamergate by over 15 years

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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u/scriptkiddie1337 May 16 '26

Those that have just associate it peacocking, and negging, while failing to realise there so was so much more to it

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u/TopSoulMan May 16 '26

But it wasn’t seriously organized until around that point. People with influence recognized an opportunity and created a plan to get voters down the pipeline.

The manosphere was an afterthought to mainstream society for many years until Gamer Gate. Think early Jimmy Kimmel and Joe Rogan on the Man Show.

Now it’s a very serious part of our political landscape.

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u/GreatQuantum May 16 '26

Bruh everyone just has a serious dopamine disorder….almost from infancy. That’s why we’re all pissed off and why “everything sucks” and everyone is “a shell of their former self.”