GamerGate - Autistic MRA manchildren and the twitter feminists who love them

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Least Concern said:
An "esports reporter" (good God) is alleging that Activision/Blizzard knew Ellie was a fake for weeks, but didn't do anything about it because they wanted the controversy to increase attention, even if negative, on the property.
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Is there any real evidence for the "OVERWATCH IS DYING! IT'S NEARLY FUCKING DEAD!" shit I keep seeing? Because all I ever see when people talk about is how Twitch and Youtube "content creators" are bored with it and therefore nobody must be playing it anymore. People have been saying that shit for years about Team Fortress, too, and I don't think I've ever seen it not be in the Top 10 by current players chart which can't be explained by "idling" anymore.
 
KillThemCrackasBabies said:
Is there any real evidence for the "OVERWATCH IS DYING! IT'S NEARLY FUCKING DEAD!" shit I keep seeing? Because all I ever see when people talk about is how Twitch and Youtube "content creators" are bored with it and therefore nobody must be playing it anymore.
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There is always this entourage of hangers-on that follows every new fandom and tries to make money out of it when it's "hot" and then moves on to some other shit with no fan loyalty whatsoever. If they're moving on to something else, any fandom is better off without that swarm of locusts sucking all the joy out of it.
 
KillThemCrackasBabies said:
Is there any real evidence for the "OVERWATCH IS DYING! IT'S NEARLY FUCKING DEAD!" shit I keep seeing? Because all I ever see when people talk about is how Twitch and Youtube "content creators" are bored with it and therefore nobody must be playing it anymore. People have been saying that shit for years about Team Fortress, too, and I don't think I've ever seen it not be in the Top 10 by current players chart which can't be explained by "idling" anymore.
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I don’t watch YouTube or twitch but it seems to me fortnite is far more popular than overwatch with less of the lgbt/tumblr crowd playing it and no forced gay characters. Overwatch and tf2 will always have their core players but they’re falling behind the battle royale games because they’re the flavor of the month.
 
Sissy Galvez said:
I don’t watch YouTube or twitch but it seems to me fortnite is far more popular than overwatch with less of the lgbt/tumblr crowd playing it and no forced gay characters. Overwatch and tf2 will always have their core players but they’re falling behind the battle royale games because they’re the flavor of the month.
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Being smaller than literally the biggest videogame on the planet means "dying"?
 
KillThemCrackasBabies said:
Being smaller than literally the biggest videogame on the planet means "dying"?
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Declining? I dunno, I certainly wouldn't call Overwatch 'dying'. It's no longer at its peak by any measure, but I think it's easily got a couple years left in it. As long as a multiplayer game can pretty much immediately produce enough players to start a match, I'd call it healthy.
 
Crossposting the shocking bombshell revelations from ResetERA:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/hy...terfered-in-the-2016-american-election.94326/
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I thought this was pretty well agreed upon? Gamer gate helped establish a lot of the trends that helped Trump win in 2016 and groomed a lot of his nascent support.
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This is already known. Russia actively pushed Gamergate nonsense.
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Yes, this isn’t largely disputed.
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People still have Total Biscuit avatars over in the Gaming section.
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I thought it was already well known that Gamergate was a test run for alt right fuckery and 2016.
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Good luck trying to untangle this particular rat king.
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It's been known for a while that GG was a beta test of sorts.
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It was a very useful tool in recruiting the youth. It bolstered the sexism rampant in the hobby and for some no doubt was there first introduction to any political side.
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I've been trying to explain this to people since early 2016 but most are just like "Videogames, huh?"
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You should look into the work of Renee Diresta who has argued that Gamergate is not the first of its kind at all.. it was just the first to get sufficient scale to be noticed. Similar tactics had been employed before by anti-vaxxers groups etc.
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It’s sickening as fuck watching millions of my peers get brainwashed. The internet is regressing peoples’ empathy.
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There are no conspiracies in this world and everything is out in the open. There was not a shadowy hand behind Gamergate, Gamergate was just a reflection of the morals and beliefs of the people who flocked to it. Those happen to be similar to the Alt-right at large.

I sort of side-eye everyone who thinks this way because it smacks of growing up in a sheltered bubble.
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Fuck everyone who enabled that shit and stood by and did nothing, especially the game companies that didn't come out with a hard line against it and still really haven't. The amount of harassment and vile shit that went on and still goes on is inexcusable.
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They are both fascist movements, full stop, and one was very much a testing ground for the methods of the other.
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One of the other things that still doesn't sit right was the FBI not bringing charges related to the threats coming from those associated with gamergate. Considering the severity of the threats and the obvious political presence it does create a sense there may have been pressure on the investigation to not bring forward charges.
As charges would interfere with gamergate as a means to funnel support for Trump.
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You can trace the Trump presidency and the resurgence of neo-Nazism back to two people: Eron Gonji (AKA Zoë Quinn's shitty, petulant ex-) and Norwegian terrorist/WoW fanatic Anders Breivik.

It's gamers all the way down.
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I thought this was common knowledge by now? Been sayin' this since GG transformed into the Alt-Right.
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We can definitely say now that GG and the alt-right online presence was pushed along by Russian actors
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It's cute that you think Gamergate ended.
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We won't know the true fallout from Gamergate for decades.
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User Banned (Permanent): Downplaying the impact of a hate movement. History of severe infractions.
This forum is so laughable in the myriad of ways it'll go to try and pin all of society's evils on what was largely an irrelevant and short-lived moment that was almost five years ago. Seriously, get over it. There are real problems out there that need to be addressed that have nothing to do with the GamerGate boogeyman.
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AirdropShitposts said:
Crossposting the shocking bombshell revelations from ResetERA:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/hy...terfered-in-the-2016-american-election.94326/
gg-png.642528
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So in other words those horrible horrible little neck bearded basement dwelling incel gamers that died and went away 4 years ago, and nobody should pay any attention to... actually took over the world? And did so while the media and the entirety of the progressive left was naming shaming and demonizing them? And these are the people that the ReeeesetERA morons still want to fuck with?
 
The 21st Century didn't really start ... until GamerGate did. :story::story:

GamerGate starting was the equivalent of the Armistice from World War I. :story:

Making Zoe Quinn's naughty bits Franz Ferdinand, I guess?

The ‘innocent internet’ died and the 21st century was born [Opinion]

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The ‘innocent internet’ died and the 21st century was born [Opinion]
By John Leavitt Jan. 5, 2019 Updated: Jan. 7, 2019 10:30 a.m.
Comments hit record highs, prompting fears of massive fires in the future. America watched transfixed as civil unrest was live-streamed online following the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Sen. Bernie Sanders started to make headlines as a possible 2016 contender. Republicans swept the Senate and gained the largest majority in the House in decades, leading PBS to go so far as to say “there are no more moderates.”

The feeling in 2014 was of waiting for something to happen. And five years later, it feels like it was the year the world we’re living in now began to take shape. The phrase ‘jobless recovery’ got thrown around and it looked like the big banking reforms promised in the wake of the 2008 recession weren’t going to happen. In Texas, the fracking bubble burst when the world oil markets were glutted, deflating hopes of a continuing boom-time.

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We weren’t going to return to the old normal. We were starting something new.

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The Kernel called 2014 the year of the YouTube star, saying mainstream media should take notice and take them seriously. What they should’ve noticed was what people were actually watching on YouTube.

In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Natalie Wynn, creator of the YouTube philosophy-and-internet culture series ContraPoints, remarked that 2014 was when she saw YouTubers shift to more radical right-wing discussion:

“A lot of smug young men who wanted to prove how sophisticated they were by saying ‘There is no God’ over and over,” she said. “I can’t judge them too hard, though, because I was one of them.”


She said that was about when “they started posting videos about how feminism is cancer and Black Lives Matter is going to destroy us all. Before you know it, some of them became straight-up Fascist sympathizers. I was, like, ‘What is happening? Is no one else seeing this?’”

2014 marked the end of the innocent internet. It was the last time you could say “that’s just online, it doesn’t matter” and be taken seriously. It was the end of Animals Talking In All Caps and Reddit, a massive message board, being largely a place for funny animal memes. It was the end of Just Trolling, and it all began with a hashtag about video games.

The hashtag #GamerGate began as part of a harassment campaign against female video game journalists, creators and players in August 2014. It stated that there existed a secret cabal among feminists and journalists to implant hidden or overt “progressive” messages into video games and to promote only games that shared these values.

One major feature of the campaign was ‘Doxxing,’ digging up personal information and posting it online, from home address to personal emails and texts. The other major feature was rape and death threats. People targeted by the harassment often had to flee their homes or completely remove themselves from public life. Some had their bank accounts targeted and had to sell their businesses to survive. Public events got canceled due to threats of mass violence against speakers and audiences claiming affinity with #GamerGate.


The term and practice of “swatting” — that is, calling in fake bomb or terror threats in order to disturb the peace — goes back to the 1970s. But the word wasn’t included in the Oxford English Dictionary until 2015, when it started to be used against people whose opinions online a harasser didn’t like.

Despite the enormity of the threat and coordinated harassment of the victims, it was hard for a lot of people, especially those not online or not in groups targeted by these mobs, to take it seriously. How could anyone be this mad over something this dumb? Won’t this go away in a week? It didn’t. It picked up steam because the internet thrives on having an audience.

Many alt-right celebrities first made their name in this movement and their publishers found this extreme audiences great for sales. Clicks accumulating, it attracted larger, more established personalities — such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

In her 2009 book “Cyber Racism,” Jessie Daniels documented the speed and scope of the white supremacist internet and the recruitment techniques used on mostly young, disaffected men. The techniques were centered heavily on online forums, social media and hour-long YouTube rants about how everyone in the world conspires against the viewer. In short, there was an audience for the ideology in all the same online spaces. The white supremacist organization Stormfront engaged in online recruitment techniques on young men long before it became popular.


The same kind of men who might think there’s a conspiracy out there to ruin video games might think there’s one keeping them from getting a decent life or a job or a girlfriend. Hatred of women is an easy gateway into hating everyone. Suspecting women of having a secret agenda is an easy gateway to seeing secret agendas everywhere. A lot of bad actors online seized on this to provide racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-feminist theories as to why these men felt this way.

Not that this is unusual in American political thinking. It’s central to Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay ‘The Paranoid Style In American Politics.’ However, online culture has a way of mutating and accelerating things. In our current way of using the internet, it is simultaneously alienating and intimate. Listening to YouTube speeches for an hour or more can feel a lot like hanging out with friends. Reading online that other people think is true what you thought might be true is very validating. And sometimes, those other people have an economic interest in making you feel that way.

If you were paying attention around 2014 it looked like a broader movement was rapidly congealing. Something nasty fueled by resentment and isolation and fear was taking hold. Traditional neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups recruited and joined forces with disaffected online trolls, vainglorious YouTube personalities and opportunistic provocateurs..

Before long many of these online forces threw their support behind a certain Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential race.


We’d previously worried about the blurring distinction between reality and reality TV, but now we had to face the fact that not only was there no distinction between online and not-online, there was increasingly no distinction between online forum politics and real world politics.

For most of us that was unthinkable. All the right people knew these were just basement-dwelling loners or teenage idiots riling everyone up by saying inflammatory things for kicks. Society is stronger than that they said, and we’ve made too much progress to be undone by something so stupid. All of this, we were convinced, would all blow over. Cooler heads would prevail. It wasn’t real, it was just online.

Now, the online weirdos have a body count. According to the FBI, there’s been a rise in hate crimes every year since 2016. There’s already well-documented links to stories that appear on anonymous troll forums and stories that end up on Tucker Carlson’s top rated news show.

The kind of harassment campaigns used by #gamergate trolls in 2014 have become common political tactics in 2018. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, has had to move four times and pay for a private security detail.


The daily news cycle orbits the president’s tweets.

It’s a new century all right, but what kind of century is it?

We’re all still wondering that, months and months after so many tiki torch rallies, protests, marches, mass shootings, political upsets, word salad press hearings, assassination attempts, floods, refugees, devastating hurricanes and raging wildfires.

All I know is look lively, take care of yourself, and get ready for Year Six.



Leavitt is a writer and artist based in New York City.
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Least Concern said:
An "esports reporter" (good God) is alleging that Activision/Blizzard knew Ellie was a fake for weeks, but didn't do anything about it because they wanted the controversy to increase attention, even if negative, on the property.
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Richard Lewis is probably the only guy who could legitimately be called "an esports journalist" in the classic definition of "journalist".

He's good at his job. Yes, it's a niche field and a relatively stupid niche field, but he's still legit. Like Dave Meltzer and wrestling (I guess that guy is still trustworthy?)
 
So, I'm wondering: Did GG actually accomplish anything? I'm struggling to think of a tangible impact it had on gaming journalism, the industry, etc. as far as its stated goals went.
 
Terrorist said:
So, I'm wondering: Did GG actually accomplish anything? I'm struggling to think of a tangible impact it had on gaming journalism, the industry, etc. as far as its stated goals went.
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Not really. Even the whole "Well we redpilled 'em on the media!" was shit that tends to happen organically when people come of age between their early and mid 20's, roughly the same age most GamerGaters did when that was happening. Did it maybe speed up the process some? Case could be made, sure. But I think that's about it.
 
KillThemCrackasBabies said:
Not really. Even the whole "Well we redpilled 'em on the media!" was shit that tends to happen organically when people come of age between their early and mid 20's, roughly the same age most GamerGaters did when that was happening. Did it maybe speed up the process some? Case could be made, sure. But I think that's about it.
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Yeah, there aren't a ton of people who blindly trust the MSM in the first place. If any one event redpilled people to the media, it was probably Trump coverage, not Gamergate.

robobobo said:
GG accomplished two things: It triggered a shitton of people, and damaged several to the point of being cows to this very day. You can easily identify them, they're the ones who are claiming that GamerGate is alive and well and the fascist core of Drumpf supporters, etc, etc.
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That's where my mind went too, but to play devil's advocate: most of those people still work, and are only cows to the same subset of people who wouldn't have supported them anyway. To an equally large group, they were unfairly persecuted by misogynist dudebros. Consider Zoe Quinn, who a lot of people don't like these days, but is also considered a martyr by a lot of others, was able to leverage her career because of it, and even spoke in front of the UN. I don't think anybody liked Brianna Wu much before or after GG.
 
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