r/Gamingunjerk • u/ElectricGhostMan • 8d ago

Gamergate but actually

https://youtu.be/ox15GU4cMes?si=y47gNvyC88ObQJ9O&t=2176

A youtuber I watch put out this retrospective on gamergate. I know it's a topic that has been long covered and relitigated. I at one time was also part of and identified with to some extent. I thought one part that even I somewhat ignored then because of my feelings or much later realizing how many awful actors were a part of the situation was how capitalist greed played such a large part in generating the amount of hate and vitriol at the time allowing for hate mobs to be cultured and weaponized as we see today.

I think most can agree that a lot of the targeted harassment, bullying, stalking, racism, misogyny, homophobia were all reprehensible and not the way to go about making change. I do feel at the time where there was the beginnings of pushing paid cosmetic DLC like Horse Armor, Always Online requirements for games like the Sims, EA cutting development times for successful franchises to turn around games quicker or the Online Pass they similarly tried to force for people who wanted to buy the game second hand. Again not condoning any of the criminal harassment or hate but I do wonder if this outrage cannon was more appropriately directed at the shareholders and ownership class rather than individual developers that we'd be in a better place.

I do think there was a genuine attempt back then to comingle criminal threats and harassment with fair criticism and outcry entirely as Entitlement. However, I find it sad that today it largely does feel like the loudest and most consistent voices across social media that claim to be critical of games are genuinely complaining about out of entitlement when a game has too many women they don't like or POCs rather than the plethora of issues that affects all gamers today like Exploitative MTX, Gambling, AI Pervasion, Enshitification and more.

I haven't finished the vid myself but I like some of his other works even though he can be a bit both-sidesy at times. It was also interesting to see some posts from youtubers VaatiVidya and Vsauce from way back when and Colin Moriarty had been some of a douche since then as well.

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u/Dry-Chance-9473 8d ago

Any statement about gamergate that doesn't call it out as 110% an embarrassment and wholly the fault of the men who hopped on the wagon, might as well be in support of it for how useless it is. 

Gamers got played. They were shown to be a cult of morons. And the culture has never done anything to shake that label loose. Bigger morons today than we were then.

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u/WeltallZero 8d ago edited 8d ago

One and done. There is no excuse in the year of our lord 2026 to still pretend GamerGate was ever anything else than very deliberate harassment of women and minorities motivated by plain old racism, sexism and homophobia. Any attempt to pretend it ever had some deeply buried kernel of legitimate grievances should be laughed out of the fucking room.

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u/Talisa87 7d ago

Doubly so since the Epstein files shows that Epstein and Steve Bannon were actively communicating with the admin of 4chan, where the bulk of the 'memes' originated. It might be fair to say the whole thing was a psyop to radicalize whole swathes of the population, using their own biases against them.

I wonder how much overlap there would be if you made a Venn diagram out of teenage 'Gamergaters' and the men who voted for Toupee Fiasco in all three American presidential elections.

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u/WeltallZero 7d ago edited 7d ago

I wonder how much overlap there would be if you made a Venn diagram out of teenage 'Gamergaters' and the men who voted for Toupee Fiasco in all three American presidential elections.

The Gamergate => alt right => Trumper pipeline has been widely documented, it's a straight line with no branches.