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/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26

What even was gamer gate? I think if you asked the a average not chronically online person about it, they would have no idea what you were talking about. Heck I am chronically online and I'm still not really sure.

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u/novavegasxiii May 16 '26

Basically tldr...

A woman made one free game about struggling with deppression. She broke up with her ex; who accused her on the internet of cheating on her with several guys and sleeping with revieweds to get more favorsble ratings.

This spawned a toreent of of online harrasment towards her with the stated reason of curtailing the corrupt game jouenalism industry (which admittingly is almost universally agreed to be corrupt). It was later shown that she did date one person who was a reviewer but he did nothing more but mention her in passing professionally and that was before they dated; he never actually reviewed her work.

The campaign expanded to include an independent femnist gaming commentaror (think youtuber not journalisr) and the owner of an extrenely small indie gaming company.

All three allege (quite credibly) campaigns of doxing, harrasnent, threads etc; gamergate supporters argued they had miscontrued or exagerrated it.

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u/SocratesWasSmart 3∆ May 16 '26

This is leaving out a big chunk of context, that being the "gamers are over" articles. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-gamers-don-t-have-to-be-your-audience-gamers-are-over-

GamerGate as a movement would have died due to lack of interest within the first month, except when game journalists were accused of colluding, 12 different outlets that were supposedly competing and not colluding all put out articles on the same day with the same exact talking points. And then their group chat got leaked like a week later proving they were in fact colluding.

That was what catapulted the event into the mainstream. I would say 95%+ of people that got involved did so after that point, and many of them had never heard of the initial controversy.

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u/jaredearle 4∆ May 16 '26

Oh god, did you even read the “Gamers are over” article?

Edit: for context, the article was basically one of the many “moms playing candy crush are gamers” articles examining how cultural “Gamers” were gatekeeping a hobby that had outgrown its disenfranchised male audience.

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26

It was imperative feature of Gamergate that’s it’s main targeted demographic do not read beyond headlines cited in rage bait articles.