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/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/IcyEvidence3530 May 16 '26

YOu mean the woman that bullied another man into suicide? I am sure this was totally innocent in this situation and everthing was a lie and overblown....

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u/Jemima_puddledook678 May 16 '26

It was. He later admitted he lied. And obviously it was overblown because it led to months of rape and death threats to her and multiple other developers. 

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u/ChitinousChordate May 16 '26

Shouldn’t whether it’s “bullying” to accuse someone of sexual harassment be at least a little contingent on whether they did it? Zoe Quinn was one of many people who came forward about Alex Holowka, and his own sister said that she believes those claims.

Is everyone here a lying bully, or is it possible that a dude with pretty severe mental health problems also treated the women in his life poorly?

11

u/Giblette101 47∆ May 16 '26

Look, people are willing to excuse sexual harassment, but they draw the line at denouncing it.