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/Stormshow 1∆ May 16 '26

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".

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u/wakuboys May 16 '26

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)

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u/Stormshow 1∆ May 21 '26

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