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Most people radically underestimate the role that misogyny played and plays in online far right radicalization, and Gamergate was *the* critical turning point for the far right using online misogynist culture as an on-ramp into the far right. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgwmdz/paul-pelosi-attacker-gamergate 36 comments
@gwensnyder I wish I wasn't so close to this piece of history. It was and continues to be horrifying. I recall seeing and dismissing some screed about ethics in game journalism right around the same time I wandered into /r/KotakuinAction for like half an hour, becoming increasingly horrified and disgusted. I quickly locked down my identity info online and was thankful I never posted much to begin with, because I'm a queer woman with opinions about games and other things. @argv_minus_one @rora_borealis @gwensnyder Basically they thought women were trading sex for success in the video game industry, an industry they felt possessive of, and from that moment on the social contract was null and void.  @kandoh @rora_borealis @gwensnyder Well, that's just ridiculous. Trading sex for success in the video game industry is impossible. Bad games don't magically become good just because the developer banged one reviewer. Such a scheme would instantly fall apart as soon as actual players started actually playing and talking about the game. @kandoh @argv_minus_one @gwensnyder That's a pretty succinct description. They didn't care that their initial assumptions were entirely baseless and used the same excuse long after it was fully debunked. It was painful and scary, and it's not really over, just spread out among the culture war bullshit. @gwensnyder I am tired of Bannon escaping accountability by pretending he’s not part of the movement to overthrow democracy.   @firecat @gwensnyder The only correct answer is "to harass women and other diverse populations of gamers".  @gwensnyder    @gwensnyder That is a reason to go after those types of broadcasts, to teach about propaganda in schools, but it is not a defence for his actions. :(  @gwensnyder@mstdn.party yeah you are right, how horrible. :merchantshocked:   @gwensnyder It makes me wonder what level of command obedience the perp is susceptible to, and if someone put him up to it. His 'kids' sure as heck didn't make him sound like a free thinker, basically said he was an automaton. Really strange stuff. @noyes @gwensnyder this is the problem with social media there's always been unhinged dangerous people. and they have been found and organized into violence but social media takes that process to a whole new menace. the level of reach and the level of indoctrination is like nothing we've ever had before in human society  @accretionist @noyes @gwensnyder Sometimes history adjudges them to be insane. Other times, it adjudges them prophets and puts statues of them in churches.... Zealots are probably all insane. @accretionist @noyes @gwensnyder "Remember, folks... there's a difference between kneeling down and bending over !" -FZappa @gwensnyder @hedders @gwensnyder It can be so demoralizing realizing how much that movement was a proving ground that directly fed into where we are now - when it was happening I kept trying to explain it to people and was always met with a shrug. After, it was just video games, right? It's not like these people could ever weaponize this movement more... @gwensnyder A lot of them don’t remember Elliot Rodgers where some incel motherfuckers worship him as a God. Edit: Here, a compilation of incel lunacy https://archive.li/search/?q=Elliot+rodgers+supreme+gentleman#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Elliot%20rodgers%20supreme%20gentleman&gsc.page=1 @gwensnyder I honestly underestimated how thoroughly Gamergate just...simultaneously poisoned so many minds and at the same time just uncorked a literal ocean of bigotry. Only in the last couple of years and with a lot of reading did I actually fully start to see how screwed up it was and is still. @gwensnyder Misogyny is a pervasive cancer throughout the right, and is the foundation for so many of their bad ideas. @gwensnyder How awesome that he is an adult and therefore responsible for his actions. Gamergate was such an insane microcosm of hateful stupidity... Really troubling how these obscure "silly" things become viral and eat away at the population of the otherwise sane. How do we even combat on a thousand fronts? |
Gregory's Server
Bannon very deliberately recruited Milo Yiannopoulos to exploit Gamergate and use it to expand misogynists' open hatred of women into open hatred of oppressed people in general.
It worked very, very well.