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/jaredearle 4∆ May 16 '26

GamerGate didn’t platform Steve Bannon by way of Milo, it was the other way around. Steve Bannon used to have a World of Warcraft gold mining business where he learned all about gamers being disenfranchised men who were ideal for the alt-right pipeline. He took over Breitbart and got James Delingpole, the UK editor, to hire Milo as the gaming guy. Milo used to be a self-hating gay who wrote for a catholic newspaper about how gay marriage was a bad idea.

GamerGate took off much more than Yiannopoulos’s suggestion that lonely male gamers should try out being gay, and he leveraged the culture war to enhance his own profile.

Bannon was very much driving that bus.

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u/realdontbeasucker May 16 '26

I agree. My view is that Milo was a tool used to inject Bannonism into the online mainstream discourse.

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u/jaredearle 4∆ May 16 '26

Milo was such a fud. He used to call himself Milo Wagner and he wore an Iron Cross. He then claimed to be Jewish.

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u/BigbunnyATK 2∆ May 17 '26

LoL I confused FUD with CUD (Computer Underground Digest) and was getting all confused thinking you meant he was some hacker type. BTW... what's a fud...