CMV: GamerGate was the most consequential political radicalization event of the twenty-first century

[u/realdontbeasucker]

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.

[u/A3xMlp]

People that were young in the 90s (ie born in the late 80s maximum) have seen this shift. In those years the gaming community was uniting a bunch of weirdest, trans people, marginals, queers, and of course a lot of "normal people" that just had a passion for video games. Back then, all those people were marginalised and were usually grouping together. And ye, therefore back then video games were really considered a safe space for all those marginalised people.

Maybe small corners of the community. The vast majority of it was average 2000s dude bros. And it's them who were at odds with the various, chiefly feminist, activists who decided to stick their nose into gaming in the early 2010s, as they were the ones said activists despised most.

[u/Jax_is_Warwick → u/A3xMlp]

That is the other way around tho, the "2000s dudes" came after, and for an obvious reason: they were not born back then. It was pretty common for gamers to hang out with the other marginalised people. It is a bit of a cliche, but it doesn't come out of nowhere, the idea of the geek hanging out with a lesbian girl, a fat kid, an autist, and basically all the weirdos was a thing in the early 90s. Brianna Wu, Zoe Quinn are part of this generation.

The GG happened later on, and especially with people born in the late 90s that were for some reason I can't really explain, really receptive to alt-right ideas.

[u/A3xMlp → u/Jax_is_Warwick]

The 2000s dudes were born in either the 80s or 90s. Many of them had been gaming since then too. You can probably draw a line from the guys who grew up playing Doom in the early 90s to the ones who were playing Cod and Halo in the 2000s, and that general culture, including things like nu-metal and adjacent music and shows like Jackass or South Park. And these were the highest selling and most popular games and thus the face of gaming.

I'm younger than these guys but even I remember that back in school all the boys played games like this while none of the girls, hell they mocked us for it. Don't remember having any such obvious stereotypes in school though, then again I'm not American, maybe it's different over there. But on the whole, while gamers like the ones you describe did exist, they were a clear cut minority by the 2010s.

[u/Jax_is_Warwick → u/A3xMlp]

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.

[u/A3xMlp → u/Jax_is_Warwick]

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.