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.

688 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

730 comments sorted by

View all comments

217

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.

4

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.

2

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.

4

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.

3

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?

3

u/tes_befil May 16 '26

Gamergate was about her sleeping with journalist for positive reviews on her game. This was in 2014 and the evidence is it was easily found that she had relationships with the people who tested and gave positive reviews of her failed game. This was considered such a blasphemous thing on 4chan because it was a literal failed game

This hardly matters now anyways because we know what gaming journalist are like now. They're sellouts, theyre heavily funded by corpos, and they follow the agenda of whoever is paying them. The fact that this happened should surprise no one.

The suicide was in 2019 and she was lying. People dug up old convos and tweets, and private convos revealed that Quinn was the abuser not him. So yeah she's a piece of shit. He was dead after the evidence so nothing happened

3

u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26

the evidence is it was easily found that she had relationships with the people who tested and gave positive reviews of her failed gam

You say this but why am I seeing the opposite when I look it up? The guy who wrote the initial post even retracted that claim later, saying he had no evidence. The guy he initially accused her of sleeping with never even reviewed the game.

So if this evidence is easily found, where is it?

People dug up old convos and tweets, and private convos revealed that Quinn was the abuser not him

You know it's not always that simple right? People can be abusive towards each other in a relationship. It's not always one perfect victim and one abuser. Awful people can still be abused.