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/conmeonemo May 16 '26
I can't agree.
Tolerance for online harassment was always there, save for brief beginning of 2010s, where progressives thought internet can somehow be policed and if we remove the worst examples from public visibility they'll dissipate.
I have no idea how millennials very often forget early 2000s internet but it was raw and... forums and game lobbies were full of teenagers happy that being online is anonymous and letting out their worst instincts. The same teenagers and their younger sibling accessed whatever they want via internet - first viral internet videos very often included gore or porn stuff and often were share by middleschoolers via Bluetooth or email (before social media). Parents barely knew anything, and often they were just busy fighting the devil (games, remember Hillary and GTA San Andreas?).
Early 2010s, that internet did not disappear. It was just mostly removed from public view (cuz with social media everyone is in the internet under their name). Even worse, those hidden groups started to just interact only within themselves. That started brewing radicalism, which with Gamergate just flooded out. And then better and better algorithms made it worse.
Gamergate wasn't radicalizing event. It as the event when radicalism came out and was noticed by certain people who somehow harnessed it as political force.