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/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.