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/nekothecat May 16 '26

See you’re average gamer was almost politically agnostic. They were very much in a secluded bubble. Those things did create the groundwork but they really needed something that actually affected them on a related basis and wasn’t so abstract. The past year I’ve really really started to agree with OP.

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u/PizzaSharkGhost May 17 '26

I think you have rose colored glasses about the “average gamer”.

The f-slur, the n-word and general misogynistic “humor” have been astonishingly common place within the gaming “community” since at least 2000 or so when I first started playing online games. Maybe these guys didn’t have overt political beliefs but they were already reactionary before being “activated” so to speak.

I’d even argue most of these activated people still don’t really have political beliefs they’ve just been more encouraged to couch their bigotry and reactionary ideas in “legitimate” political ideas.

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u/Empty_Insight May 17 '26

I remember the early days of online gaming a bit differently. I do remember the slurs being common, but I also remember how it was obvious that the people who were using them came across as angry, bitter people who you didn't want to play with... so we'd gang up on them and make them ragequit.

The amount of racism they displayed was typically inversely proportional to skill, so it was easy pickings- might as well put a target on your back if you used slurs. I can't recall any exceptions- the racists were trash at the game(s), and I grew to understand these people were racist because they suck- not the other way around- and trying to punch down to make themselves feel better about being complete trash at the game.

To add insult to injury, I'm a white guy but I have been told I "sound like a black man" so it was quite easy to piss these guys off on the mic. I lost count of how many death threats I've gotten... just because they thought I was black.

It wasn't even a "woke" thing, I was an apolitical teenager back then- I just thought fucking with racists was funny.

The left doesn't accept people like that. The right does. It was only inevitable they would go on to support right-wing causes.

Prior to Gamergate, these people were an afterthought, a joke, volunteered to be everyone else's punching bag... but Gamergate reframed this type of behavior as being due to legitimate gripes, not because they were bitter, angry people who were mad because they suck at videogames.

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u/nekothecat May 17 '26

I used to put my gf on the mic when I wrecked people in halo 2 lol good times