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The dumbest possible thing to be radicalized by.
Right? Gamergate is something I've never understood at all. Like... People try to summarize the whole thing for me and after two sentences I just blank out entirely because it's all so weird, convoluted and dumb.
A gigantic "he-said-she-said" that somehow devolved into tons of harassment, death threats, violence and "calling someone's boss so they'd get fired because they weren't nice enough online" or something...
Your 1-sentence answer to understanding Gamergate has less to do with any of the people involved or a timeline of events. Gamergate, more than anything else, was an opportunity. A springboard to indoctrinate people into far right politics by playing to people's fear of the Other, mistrust in media, and stoking anger at a perceived scandal.
If it never happened, if it wasn't video games, it would just as well be something else. It would be music or sports or anything that people are passionate about. Right wingers were running out of steam with the Tea Party, and Gamergate was in the right place at the right time.
EDIT: Some contemporary discussion on GG actually, prophetically, supports this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2k0bpi/why_gamergate_is_a_rightwing_movement/
As someone on another forum said, the GG movement is primed to be the next young Republican demographic, and all of the pieces have been put into place to subvert the Authoritarian revolt into a rabid conservative base. So next year when all of the GGers (who remain) go from moderate liberals to Tea Party advocates, you can say you were at ground zero.
That got me thinking about my Q/MAGA following father and how both being indoctrinated into Tea Party politics as a teenage boy on top of Evangelical Christianity as well as being sucked into Gamergate and Sargon of Akkad's whole "classical liberalism" grift for a while. I see a lot of that same outrage and ingroup-outgroup clashing being taken advantage of by Q and MAGA.
I don’t want to get involved with this discussion so I only have 1 point to make.
Using r/gamerghazi as a source on the reality of what happened is like asking Trump to defend Bernie Sanders position on an issue. That subreddit is the complete opposite side of the coin and they paint a very different picture from reality.
Gamergate started with the premise that professional game reviewers were being biased by publishers due to being granted preferential treatment and access.
All the same stuff people are saying now about Clarence Thomas, which is TRUE, they were saying about video game reviewers back then.
I was actually a game reviewer back then, and, yeah, I got review codes for games and backstage access at Pax... it didn't influence my reviews though and I never had pressure from publishers or editorial to give good reviews for access.
My experience may not have been the norm though:
https://www.gamezone.com/originals/the-fallout-of-the-kane-lynch-debacle/
By having those privileged access doesn't it have an implication regarding the tone of the review you're making? If you shat on the game that the publisher gave you access to there might be a possibility that they won't invite you to future events?
This had happened on PC component review space. I remembered that LTT used to get review units for Apple products, but because of their reviews mostly just shat on Apple products, Apple basically stopped inviting them to events and sending review units.
There's the possibility it could happen, all I can say is I never saw it. Everyone was perfectly cordial before and after reviews.
Largely I think because when someone releases a garbage game, everyone knows it. The two biggest disasters I reviewed were Brink and Duke Nukem Forever, both of which I was granted backstage preview access for, both of which released in an absolute shit state.
Of the two, I still feel bad about Brink, it had such promise as an IP and then just absolutely fell apart.
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People are already teetering on the edge. Mental health treatment and awareness in this country is replaced by toxic masculinity and the idea that taking care of your head is for cucks.
Was he radicalized for it, or is it what finally set him over? These are two very different things, even if they may immediately appear “the same”.
dude was living in a garage playing video games and presumably under or unemployed. I wish we would just pay to let these people live an ok if unremarkable life already.
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How actually historically relevant it is is just mindboggling. It is literally the codification and beginning of the alt-right. Britebart news guy and eventual Presidential advisor Steve Bannon and a massive swack of the early alt talking heads right got their start with Gamergate. It's essentially the proving ground of the model of engagement and the networking that brought the scum together.
I suggest Ian Danskin's talk on "A Case Study of Digital Radicalization " https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=WD8gi7XXFVrIKg-n
It is one of the best breakdowns of Gamergate I have ever heard while keeping sight of just how bloody insane the whole thing is. It's a really long video yes but it really has some interesting takes on digital Radicalization and a key part of the modern history of how we got where we are.
It's incredibly fucking stupid.
I was even on /v/ at the time and it still doesn't make sense to me.
Just shows how seriously people can take their dumb niches and conflate them to be representative of the whole world.
Idiots.
Ian Miles Cheong got his start with Gamergate. That sholud tell you everything you need to know about what it was.
Cheong was around before gamergate. He switched from being left leaning to full on alt right to get that grift going.
Sounds like it's all you need to hear, not all there is to know. Plenty of extremists use legitimate movements or concerns to prey upon those desperate individuals who are seeking redress.
Dude, I watched gamergate spring up. I damn well know what it was and the damage it caused not just to gaming but to politics in general.
When Steve Bannon decides to use your movement as a recruiting tool and playbook, you KNOW it’s rotten.
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Wasn't gamergate like a fucking decade ago?
It is still going strong on places like reddit, where the official gamergate subreddit kotakuinaction still exists (personally unblocked by spez himself because it contributed "valuable discussion").
But I thought spez was a woke radical communist
/s
Lol wait, I'm genuinely confused whether that's meant to be "kotaku in action" or "kotaku inaction". Was it meant to be that way as a joke or is it genuinely just that bad a name?
Yeah, but it was the start of the cesspool the right has become.
He didn't say he was radicalised today
Btw he's remorseless, he's only sorry that he didn't find Nancy
I'll bet. This coward was out to attack a frail old woman with a weapon. When he was instead met with a frail old naked man, he was out matched.
Whatever the fuck that means.
Gamergate was something Steve Bannon had his gross fingers all over. He's one of the most disgusting, infuriating propagandists out there... If I remember correctly he got his "start" with political manipulation in the gaming world. He recognized that you can radicalize "rootless" men who were lost in life and just playing video games to escape so he chose that vector to propagndize and create an army of gravy seals.
He literally did a fascist tour of Europe during the Trump years to push countries already flirting with far right policies to go further.
He's one of a few people that really deserve a one way trip to the sun.
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It was Steve Bannon himself engaged in a proof of concept that gamers were a ripe plumb of dissatisfied idle white men just ready to be radicalized by the right wing.
He learned this from his background and how he got rich in the first place: building World of Warcraft gold farms (seriously).
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"It's not my fault. Please don't send me to jail for as long as I deserve for beating a sleeping old man with a hammer."
I guess this fear media is like a drug. Makes people go cyber psycho.
I remember when it was dungeons and dragons that was making people eat babies and stuff.
Yeps I remember the tail end of that. Being warned that I would disappear into steam tunnels from playing dungeons and dragons. Just about everything was Satanic. Men wearing an earring, a bandanna used as a sweatband, Halloween, cans of pop ring necklaces...
Yes kids the theists were always like this.
This is not comparable at all. Radicalisation through the media you consume is a known and proven phenomenon. None of the comics, d&d, heavy metal makes you satanic and violent claims have ever been proven.
I wasn't really comparing, more reminiscing.
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Man blames voices for decision he made. News at 11.
Its great that we have free speech protection for Nazis because they like totally won't oppress anyone else's speech when they gain power
Cool story, bro. Tell it to your buddies in prison.
Shocked! Shocked I tell ya. Who but everyone could have seen this coming.
I am mostly surprised that this shit had such a long breath.
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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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