Current Events > Gamergate was almost a decade ago.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Where does the time go?

I still don't even know what any of it was

I still can't believe the term was first coined by the dude that played Jayne from Firefly.

I remember when gamers were leftists and then the media response to GG drove them to the right, like Milo Yiannopolous and Steve Bannon wanted.

I remember the Sarkseesian Effect documentary, and the videos Hbomberguy made mocking it, and it's creators, Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen.

https://youtu.be/nsdIHK8O5yo

https://youtu.be/YGbnAJR-vZA

https://youtu.be/4UyPV2Fj4lk

And Jordan Owen, to this very day, is butthurt about those videos and trying to berate Hbomberguy into taking the videos down. He posted this video yesterday.

https://youtu.be/W4E86pZqdx4

Gamergate was an inherently right wing thing

No it wasn't

yes it was

No it wasn't. Plenty of gamers legitimately only jumped in because they didn't like the articles claiming hardcore "gamers are over", seperate gaming media outlets colluding behind the scenes, or criticism of these actions being censored. Some were under a genuine false impression that devs were sleeping with reviewers for higher scores, not deliberately spreading fake propaganda themselves. Lumping them in with the 4chan sexists making stuff up to harass female devs and the Twitter/Breitbart anti-SJW grift when they were just trying to defend the integrity of their hobby generated a lot of spite that could've been avoided.

How is gamers not liking like 12 articles dropped on the same day insulting hardcore gamers somehow an inherently right-wing thing? People in general tend to respond when they feel they're being attacked. (naturally this is where the "they targeted gamers" meme originated)

I still don't even know what any of it was

dk who Jordan Owen is, but Hbomberguy is a POS.

wait what's wrong with hbomberguy? I don't think I've ever heard something negative about him.

I'm definitely not hashing this out with anyone again. We have access to the full historical record now, you can go back and see what actually animated people, what actually got attention, what people actually did when left to their own devices.

"It's about ethics in gaming journalism!!!"

I was alive on on the internet on forums like this. I know what people were saying and their individual motivations. I know, for a fact, that the amount of people who cared about the GG tantrum before the gaming media basically called their readers losers was significantly lower than the amount of people who responded afterwards.

You underestimated the amount of people who were purely hardcore gamers who didn't like their hobby being attacked, didn't like being attacked for defending it, and were willing to ally with anyone offering help to fight back, regardless of their prior political views.

Generalization is lazy and in this case it was disastrous. There is always nuance.

The only rebuttal you guys ever have is accusing people of lying.

The amount of them who were lying was not 100%.

wait what's wrong with hbomberguy? I don't think I've ever heard something negative about him.

https://youtu.be/bWfQJpekgSU

It's funny to compare the extroverted chad that Jordan Owen tries to pass himself off as in this video, to the twitchy, OCD-ridden, neurotic mess that he actually is in real life. He's also diagnosed autistic.

And you underestimate the number of hardcore gamers who were too busy playing games to care about the gamergate nonsense and only witnessed the aftermath. My hobby was never attacked or at least it never affected me.

These were the group being mocked

I was alive on on the internet on forums like this. I know what people were saying and their individual motivations. I know, for a fact, that the amount of people who cared about the GG tantrum before the gaming media basically called their readers losers was significantly lower than the amount of people who responded afterwards.

You underestimated the amount of people who were purely hardcore gamers who didn't like their hobby being attacked, didn't like being attacked for defending it, and were willing to ally with anyone offering help to fight back, regardless of their prior political views.

Generalization is lazy and in this case it was disastrous. There is always nuance.

The only rebuttal you guys ever have is accusing people of lying.

The amount of them who were lying was not 100%.

I am specifically talking about devout gamers who live with it as part of their core identity. These were the group being mocked in the articles.

You're ignoring the fact that it started as harassment and only escalated from there.

No, what the majority of people got mad about is the idea that the feminists and SJWs and minorities were invading "their" space and trying to improve it or transform it using what they felt was disproportionate cultural power. They felt that inclusion or games that did not feature silent white male space marines with crewcuts were an attack on them, that 100 percent accurate statements about the exclusionary nature of gaming and gamers at the time were an attack.

Some gaming journalists called capital G "Gamers" losers....they sure went on to disprove that huh?

The gamergate subreddit is still active, they're complaining about black Tinkerbell rn

It started as harassment, but not everyone rallied in was aware of the harassment at the time. It was a plot cooked up by a small amount of malicious actors in a private chat; until they were exposed only they specifically knew the premise of the controversy was a lie. (i.e. it was a select group of depraved trolls' faults, and attacking "gamers" as a whole over it was off-base)

But by the time they were exposed the controversy was bigger than what started it. Whereas some were harassing devs/journalists, others' efforts were being made to simply petition advertisers to pull out from the websites publishing articles against their audiences.

There was the whole "NotYourShield" thing showing that some of them were minorities and women, and thus probably not explictly opppsed to minorities/women in gaming, but rather onboard for the journalism/censorship concerns.

But even an obsessive degenerate isn't necessarily a bigot. It's important to differentiate because some people are more reachable than others.

It was fairly obvious at the time. I didn't know about the secret plot back then, but I could still tell the overwhelming main thrust of GG was harassment and gatekeeping.

Those petitions had nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with the perception that non-GAMER (minority, female, leftist) journos were attacking gamers...by describing them and their actions accurately. What does that have to do with ethics? That's just culture war by another name.

What percentage of the movement were those people?

They targeted gamers

I remember when gamers were leftists and then the media response to GG drove them to the right, like Milo Yiannopolous and Steve Bannon wanted.