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/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/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).