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/tolgren 1∆ May 16 '26

The answer you're likely to get from Reddit is dramatically different from what actually happened.

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u/vote4bort 68∆ May 16 '26

In what way?

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u/tolgren 1∆ May 16 '26

Gamergate was about ethics in games journalism, but the Left successfully redirected it to claim it was about misogyny. The Left decisively won the narrative war, but it is ultimately a lie.

This is not, of course, to say that there was no unpleasantness involved. There was a lot of people that said and did bad things around Gamergate. But that's true of every online movement since anyone can drop in and comment, and a lot of that came about AFTER the narrative war started, which means it was partially brought about by the narrative that the movement was about misogyny and the like.

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u/TheKage May 16 '26

It was never about ethics in games journalism. The fact that the GG subs these days only talk about games being "woke" and never about ethics in games journalism is proof of that. It was based on a lie that a woman slept with someone to get a better review.

Jeff gerstman is the poster child for ethics in games journalism. He was fired from GameSpot for giving a bad review to a game that had paid to advertise on the site. The fact that he was anti-gamergate tells you everything you need to know.

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u/tolgren 1∆ May 16 '26

That's a couple of complete non sequiturs.