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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Today I Learned
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Gamergate was a false conspiracy that radicalized young white men. It was a horrible attempt at a "return to normalcy". Gamergate was one of the first dominos to fall in this current realm of disinformation.
I honestly still don't understand what gamergate is or was.
I "lived" through it, and both read and saw post mortem videos about it, as well as had various people try to explain it to me. And yet it never made any sense to me.
Nobody can, it seems, point to the specific thing it was about. It's vague, it's nebulous, and it seems to me more like there was controversy for controversy's sake.
It's because it doesn't make any sense on the surface. Why were people so angry? Why was the jovial jokey part of the internet being so serious and violent? It marked a shift of the internet being srs bzns to serious business.
Never thought about it that way, but it's a great observation
It's because it was a lot of things. People are right* in saying there were some toxic elements of it, like on 4chan. But there were also people criticizing how IGN and others seemed to be very lazy in their reviewing, and criticizing Anita Sarkeesian for (from my perspective) valid reasons.
Game media's mailing list and their gamers are dead articles all coming out at once.
Now someone gave you an exact fucking event. It's not even hard to find, so I kind of question your intent.
If you grew up on 4chan and haven't read It Came From Something Awful, I highly recommend it. It lays out how gamergate was the inflection point. It also makes the case that counter culture is now forever dead. Makes you feel pretty bad about things, actually. It feels pretty correct though.
Also, it's an incredible anticonsumerism piece. If you ever feel like you can no longer fight the machine, this book tells you that you're not alone.
Holy hell, thanks for the rec. Another piece I recommend on similar themes: https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5
Thanks for the link. Good read so far.
While we're throwing out Qanon dissections, Gabriel Gatehouse's The Coming Storm is a wild listen. I heard about it when he guest interviewed on Jon Stewart's The Problem. The stuff he said there was so interesting that I checked out the podcast. Gabriel's moved on from BBC now, but I'm eager for more of his reporting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bc3rjy
Edit: Oh and how could I forget: HBO's Q Into the Storm is the best piece out there on this. They're there interviewing Qanon while at the height of them kicking shit up.
I read half of this book yesterday and felt like I was having Vietnam flashbacks. I remember so much of this. Thanks again.
What was the false claim?
I agree it led to popularity of a lot of the same outlets that helped elect Trump, I also agree it led to mistrust in main stream media sources. So I guess I agree that's true to an extent.
The idea that there was a grand conspiracy against men, and that it started in the gaming industry.
Here in Poway, we had someone shoot up our synagogue as a result of this movement. It's a dangerous rabbit hole. 4chan can be bad, but 8chan (in it's "prime") was much worse. It's platform was well designed, and full of vitriol.
4chan is and always was bad, and 8chan was just more of the same 4chan.
8chan was where everyone went during gamergate because they thought Moot was a feminist/ anti freedom of speech. Weekendgunnit on reddit also ended around the same time. A lot of angry young men who believed the world was out to get them, consolidated in one place. It was a powder keg.
I'm super grossed out to say this, but I was one of them. I was there. It was bad. As soon as I matured and gained a SINGLE ounce of human decency, I immediately disavowed 8chan. It's not the platform, it's the people.
I'm glad you grew out of it.
I was already a married 'adult' with a child of my own by the time 4chan arrived on the scene and had spent enough time online since the early 90s to know what had arrived. It was created by a 15 year old so there's no surprise that it was populated by 1. kids and younger adults without life experience having any regards for ethics, morals, legality, or even thoughtful reasoning, and 2. evil creepy older fucks that migrated from Usenet's darkest corners looking to take advantage of those kids, together who created the most fucked up collection of forums with the some of most vile and evil content possible because moderation was just not done. It fucked up a lot of social radars for the young people that became engrossed the chan-troll lifestyle and community.
I even attribute it to why we have Qanon grandmas now, the Q conspiracy made the jump from chan conspiracy trolling to my in-laws cousins believing its real because their Facebook feed is where they do all their best research. I even give it a lot of credit for the rise of Trump in 2015-2016, as I watched The_Donald on reddit explode from the chan kids pouring in with their obvious trolling, then the braindead right wingers embracing the literal crazy.
don't forget the CSAM as well
It sounds like you got into the worst subset of people within gamergate, the type on Kiwifarms too. But, that wasn't the vast majority of people, my interaction with gamergate was just seeing what was on Twitter, and Youtubers like Thunderf00t.
...they thought this because Moot banned the topic from 4chan. Which...isn't a thing that happens often.
I remember during Occupy Wallstreet, 4chan was in someways seen as like a robinhood type community. Connected with Anonymous. I agree 4chan was bad even then, if only because of the glorification of violence/gore. But it wasn't as hated.
But that wasn't a claim of gamergate. There were a lot of "points" of it, but no one said there was a coordinated conspiracy against men, it was somewhat related to the MRA movement that was growing at the time. But MRAs also weren't claiming it was a coordinated conspiracy against men.
People have committed terrorist acts because of a lot of things, there are christian, muslim, terrorists. So that invalidate those religions? There are socialist terrorists, does that invalidate socialism? No "key actors" in gamergate encouraged murder.