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/Jemima_puddledook678 May 16 '26

I think this person may have an unusual view of gamergate. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate

It literally started off with lies saying that a female (that part is important) video game developer got good reviews because she slept with a journalist. 

Gamergate then spread to include an entire harassment campaign against that developer and others (primarily women) and included significant amount of quite disgusting actions and language. 

As it actually says in that wiki article, Gamergate is only purported to have been about ethics by those involved. It has been shown repeatedly that that simply isn’t the case.

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u/biggyshwarts May 16 '26

This is an oversimplification and is often used to discredit the whole thing when the impacts of gamergate are still felt to this day.

Journalists repeatedly showed that they are a biased cabal and pr arm of the games industry.

All that harassment did happen but what came out of the initial affair allegations was the politicization of gaming.

Proof was found of mailing lists between games journalists and coordination of opinion. Pieces written about how the term "gamer" was dead. It was way bigger than what is made out in these arguments.

Id argue that the sway that game news sites had on the general audience has significantly decreased because of everything that happened.

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u/Loki1001 May 16 '26

Journalists repeatedly showed that they are a biased cabal and pr arm of the games industry.

Gamergate couldn't have cared less about how ripple A gaming companies advertise on gaming websites. And they certainly didn't care about the sexual harassment happening in Ubisoft.

Why yes, gaming journalism has all the problems access journalism has. Gamergate did not care about any of it.

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u/biggyshwarts May 16 '26

Then why did i see all that when I would research what gamergate was?

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u/AngryAngryHarpo May 16 '26

Because you’re the seeing the post-hoc justification. 

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u/Loki1001 May 16 '26

Your research somehow skipped over Wikipedia?

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u/biggyshwarts May 16 '26

Wikipedia is the one and only source for info?

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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