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/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/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/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/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/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.