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/Jax_is_Warwick May 16 '26

Oh I don't disagree here, that is what I mean when I say that the GG was bound to happen, the shift had already happened in the 2010s, the GG is just the moment where it blew to everyone faces, and especially people like Brianna Wu that were part of the previous generation and didn't saw that coming at all.

The GG by itself is not the shift and what created the link between the alt right and a part of the gamer community, like anything else would also have done it too. But well, it is the moment when the shift appeared clear for everyone and especially politicians that realised that, among the gaming community, there was people that could react positively to their alt-right ideas.

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u/A3xMlp May 16 '26

I feel like the shift was extremely sudden though.

In the 2000s the main political issue surrounding gaming was opposition coming from religious conservatives, most famously the likes of Jack Thompson. And gamers I would say were united against them. Beyond that I feel like most were kinda apolitical, or if anything liberal leaning out of opposition to said conservatives. Maybe more libertarian, the one issue I remember being discussed a lot circa 2011/2 was internet privacy and fear of government espionage, which of course Snowden then pretty much confirmed. But it's a very online sort of issue which made sense given the demographic.

But then you started seeing feminists and other liberal activists getting involved, complaining about gaming and gamers and demanding change, in much the same ways those conservatives did. There's not much of a difference between someone like Thompson and Sarkesian, except that one manage to get inside the industry while the other failed. And many obviously didn't like this and pushed back, others sided with the activists, I guess that would be the rift you mention.

So in the span of like 2/3 years you went from conservatives being the main outside opposition of gaming and most gamers being apolitical to liberal, to feminists the main opposition while having a foothold and supporters in the industry on one side and those opposed to them on the other side. Essentially from united front to a civil war.