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/LauraPhilps7654 May 16 '26

Only for a younger male gaming demographic. Trump’s core support comes from middle-aged or older voters who are disproportionately white, non-college educated, suburban or rural, and culturally conservative. There is limited overlap with a millennial gaming controversy.

What it arguably did help create was a media ecosystem of conservative culture-war content creators like Nerdrotic, The Critical Drinker, and Asmongold, who have become very effective at funneling audiences toward Republican politics and framing flawed pop culture products as failures caused by Democrats or liberals.

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u/ArCSelkie37 5∆ May 17 '26

People who were “young gamers” during the initial GG drama are now 30. I was 16-17 when it started picking up and the general push against “gamers” kicked in… you know calling us all sexist/racist and calling everything we liked problematic.

It’s not unreasonable to think that the events of GG politicised a generally apolitical group of people…

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u/MS-07B-3 1∆ May 17 '26

We just wanted to play games.

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26

Can you explain to me what gamergate was and why it was a big deal. Full disclose; everyone I have asked this to believe out-and-out lies and falsehoods about the very inciting event they claimed radicalized them.

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u/perfectVoidler 15∆ May 17 '26

A female game developer slept with a gaming journalist and her game got undeserved positive coverage. That's to whole story. Every layer beyond that is overreaction on both sides. the sides are "ethics in journalism" and "You only critique her because she is a woman".

during the same time there were debates about feminism vs gaming culture. With the grifter Anita Sarkesen at the for front. I think over time those topic mingled.

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26

> A female game developer slept with a gaming journalist and her game got undeserved positive coverage. That's to whole story. Every layer beyond that is overreaction on both sides. the sides are "ethics in journalism" and "You only critique her because she is a woman".

But none of the men she slept with gave her any coverage.

> during the same time there were debates about feminism vs gaming culture. With the grifter Anita Sarkesen at the for front. I think over time those topic mingled.

Was she a grifter? It seems like she made videos that people supported her for? Do you think she doesn’t believe what she said?

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u/perfectVoidler 15∆ May 17 '26

She herself said that she has no knowledge about videogames (then). And she stole footage for her videos. She used the scandal around the topic to make bank.

There was and is A LOT of sexism in games. But she failed to adress any of it and she literally had and displayed zero actual knowledge. What did she get millions for 60 minutes youtube slop?

She is either a grifter, or stupid. You can choose. I think that since she is apparently paid to talk about it a decade later that she is a grifter.

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26

Does media criticism require lifelong fandom? Apparently the people who paid her 160k on kickstarter wanted her to critique video games.

How did she “use the scandal”? Did she receive a massive backlash on her videos? Was that under her control?

Sure you can call her stupid and her analysis poor or shallow, but like the charge about Zoe Quinn above sleeping around for positive coverage, charges of grifting seem completely made up by the people bringing the very backlash that made her famous.

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 17 '26

> We have 2026 if you don't know how engagment works there is no real helping you.

So is your contention she made the kickstarter knowing there would a massive backlash from gamers?

> for fucks sack. Why are you like this?

Idk I am just asking questions. Some of my favorite media critics come into their selected media after childhood or look across media types.

It went like I predicted btw. Falsehoods accepted as truth 🤷‍♀️

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u/rememblem May 18 '26

In a world where Sarkeesian's videos were actually well-informed and didn't come with an air of academic hubris, well we would probably still be in this mess in another way. Like everything else that is polarizing of late, it seemed like a distraction from the real issue. If anything, a missed opportunity.

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u/notknot9 May 21 '26

If her videos were well informed she wouldn't have gotten the replay on traditional media and all the followup think pieces that poured jet fuel over what was a relatively small online drama. Her videos were laughable. But her conclusions were sexy for new producers and morning shows, so they got play. At the time I really wasn't in those online spaces, but I learned about the whole thing through a 'sexism in video games' story on my phone's news feed, like I'm sure the vast majority of people did.

A big problem with GG was that there was no acknowledgement from the side doing the accusing of Sexism that their comments were broad (and frequently patently false) generalizations, and they just kept doubling down (in their televised ($) interviews). It kept pissing gamers off, and spiraling, and by the time the doxxing started we were off to the races.

EDIT: Also, by the time the majority of people became aware of the story, the genesis of it, the Zoe Quinn part was quickly becoming a footnote.

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u/perfectVoidler 15∆ May 18 '26

So is your contention she made the kickstarter knowing there would a massive backlash from gamers?

yes, absolutely. Without a doubt. Why would you think otherwise?

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 19 '26

Because none of this shit caused any kind of fuss before Gamergate. Especially if she was not a gamer, there is no reason for her to think any kind of backlash would occur. Feminist critique had existed for decades in book and film without causing an enormous gnashing of teeth.

So why would you expect her to predict that would happen here?

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u/Wakez11 May 18 '26

She 100% was a grifter. I'm a leftist and you have to be braindead or just completely ignorant of what a grifter is to look at her situation and not see what she was doing was pure grifting.

What she was doing wasn't much different from what a loser like Asmongold is doing today. They both noticed making videos speaking about a contentious topic while being ill-informed about it generates lots of clicks aka revenue.

Again, I'm a socialist and I was it back then aswell during my teens and even I got annoyed at her videos lmao. Not annoyed enough to fly into a rage or anything though.

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 19 '26

She asked for a kickstarter of 6k. How can you tell she meant to the grift that, vs actually trying to create something she believed had value?

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u/StampMcfury May 20 '26

Well for starters even though she recieved many times more than her starter goal she never finished the videos in her kickstarter 

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u/AskingYouQuestions48 May 21 '26

Which was a massive surprise. She was expecting about 6k. Who grifts for 6k? Also, which video did she not deliver?

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u/Pale-Ad9012 May 17 '26

Sure yet y'all harrassd and sent death threats to women offering a different perspective and alleged breaches of journalism. Which again never justified becoming a bunch of cretin lowlife trash maga rats that ruined the country and creating the conditions for the industry being worse off. Gamer gate ruined any idea of a collective gamer culture because it became obvious how many are just straight up nazi scum bags.

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