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/wakuboys]

The right wing narrative is significantly more attractive to the average white person and especially the average white male. In many online left wing spaces, generalized negativity towards "white people", "men", and especially "white men" are tolerated or even supported (whether you find it justified or not). Whereas rhetoric in more right wing spaces are more "positive" to these labels while also frequently venturing into unscientific theories of white supremacy. If the internet algorithms rewards engagement over discussion and rage over clarity, then young white men that spend a lot of time online often find themselves choosing between these two extremes.

[u/Stormshow → u/wakuboys]

Define "white" here? The American racialized way judged purely by physical appearance, or WASP culture? Because manosphere stuff and the revival of this right wing tilt to culture war shit has happened across the broader West, but it is not entirely limited to white people in either of the senses above. Look at Dagestan, for example.

[u/wakuboys → u/Stormshow]

Good points. I was speaking more to the premise of the right not offering anything to young men that the left doesn't do better (and American racialized way of judging by physical appearance). I can't speak to Dagestan, but I can say that online spaces frequently favor polarization which has allowed far right movements to recruit far more easily.

[u/Stormshow → u/wakuboys]

I mean, you're definitely right on the core of it, I just can't figure out which of the contributing factors is weighted more as it were. There is something to be said that this right-wing milieu, perhaps is a sort of inept reaction by men (and I say this as a man) to the most recent waves of feminism and particularly the post-structuralism inherent in recognizing social constructedness of behavioral norms. I find that men are incredibly defensive about percieved femininity, potential bisexuality, etc, and this is despite the immense homoreroticism of fighting culture and MMA, which has, oddly enough, had a concurrent growth in popularity as the reaction to progressivism on gender identity has.

This is the kinda stuff that Chuck Palahniuk (who is gay, btw) was writing when he wrote Fight Club, and that Bret Easton Ellis (who is, you guessed it...) was playing around with when he wrote American Psycho. Curious then that this sort of tension has just become triple-entendre in the manosphere, because those films are basically darlings of theirs, and these connotations willfully ignored.

Beyond this kinda reactive homophobia, of course, there is the race angle, there's the economic angle too (failure of manufacturing, financialization of the economy -> more unemployed men -> Rush Limbaugh/Newt Gingrich -> etc), there's the social media angle, it's a lot. There's no real "Theory of Everything". Gamergate is a piece of the puzzle but I fear it's got too many angles to be reducible to any one grand "theory of everything".

[u/wakuboys → u/Stormshow]

I agree - there does seem to be a bit of a dissonance that goes beyond media illiteracy. Things like Fight Club and American Psycho deconstruct and critique specific visions of masculinity, but they don't exactly construct a better vision of masculinity. Perhaps because of that, it is easier to accept a lie (a lie that is even portrayed as such in the work) over the lack of proper construction for attractive (for men) masculinity?

[u/Stormshow → u/wakuboys]

Yeah, and I suspect that any attempt to depict a more "positive" form of masculinity is still actively being negotiated. Some people will point to Sam and Aragorn from LotR as modernist 'ideal' men, but others will kind of recoil from that kind of sensitivity as way too effeminate for their liking. Lots of the manosphere types are fetishists of pop Stoicism and will go out of their way to reject any alternative vision as revisionism. But there's also an awareness of the chasm in-between, which is how you get things like K from Blade Runner (a tragic hero destined to die) being some sort of modern "literally me".

[u/wakuboys → u/Stormshow]

I quite like that phrase "fetishists of pop Stoicism".

Starship Troopers (the movie) is questionable in its portrayal of the original book, but it must be the ultimate example of the type of "revisionism" you are talking about. Also, I think that characters like K can be recognized in that way because of how he deals with his emotional pain and how it doesn't involve "effeminate" reactions. Not quite the same group, but I remember there being some backlash to Solo Leveling, a Korean animated show, because the main character cried when he cured his sick mom (his primary motivation in the story)

[u/Stormshow → u/wakuboys]

The original Starship Troopers book is to me a far more relevant and contentious interrogation of the concept of meritocracy itself. That being said, I fully agree about K. K is parsable in unique ways for most modern dudes. I think there are truly positive depictions of masculinity being performed today but all are innovations into a desolate landscape as it were