jefequeso: Problem is, the entire thing has become so politicized that it's no longer a matter of supporting the ideas and agendas that you think are right, it's now a matter of aligning yourself with a team and fighting for it. This is part of the reason I bowed out of GamerGate.
hedwards: Which was more or less the strategy from the anti-GG side for quite some time. It's a shame that they've managed to more or less kill it off. But, I do think that some sites changed policies and most of the rest I'll never be visitng ever again. Or if I do I will be sure to be using ad-blockers at the time.
And things weren't helped by people like Internet Aristocrat urging everyone to be bullheaded fanatics "for the cause" and berating moderates like MundaneMatt.
Gersen: It's good to see that you follow yourself the "
don't generalize" argument that Lizzy made...
Vainamoinen: The generalization is a strategy gamergate applies to themselves. The preferred impression is one of "it's all us", and particularly in the most fervent gg supporting articles, you will rather find the first person plural voice, the individual speaking for the entire group. It's a rhetoric seldom found on that "opposite side", where the first person singular is the norm.
I think I understand why that is, and we'll get to that in a minute.
Gersen: If I had to take a guess I would say that those kind of bigoted comments have probably a lot more responsibility in the "creation" of Gamergate than any Actor, disgruntled ex-boyfriend or phony hate culture ever have; without them (and similar, tweets, post, articles,etc... ) I am pretty sure that Gamergate would have disappeared by itself after one or two week like all the other "controversies".
Vainamoinen: It's true that for a controversy to thrive, both sides will somehow have to be vocal. Maybe feminist clamor "created" Gjoni in a similar way gamergate and pre-gamergate clamor undoubtedly "created" Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. Who is to say?
For gamergate, validation and unification came with the tag. That's why the cultural development, which has been going on for some time before, today is still active and thrives under this same label, however bland it may be: The term "gamergate" unifies groups that may be structurally diverse; it is the perceived strength of this movement that it incorporates so many ideologically diverse subgroups.
The dogma is to take in as many supporters under the gamergate label as possible, regardless of individual ideology and motivation. That becomes all to clear from heralded figureheads like Baldwin (never interested in gaming, just in slutshaming), Gjoni (indifferent to gaming, very interested in slutshaming), Yiannopoulos (gamer hater and extreme turncoat who will likely stick a huge dagger in gamergate's back one day), Auernheimer (self declared nazi), Sommers (anti feminist [oh yes!] rabble rouser) or Aurini (cross-culture inequality denier). With the exception of Baldwin, all of them are trying to mold and instrumentalize gamergate to achieve their own private as well as political goals. All of them are universally allowed to do that.
The prevalent gamergate dogma is not to speak out against any elements that could strengthen the movement. These figureheads do not have to fear any kind of criticism from gamergate supporters. On the 'other side', I do see plenty of criticism e.g. for details in Sarkeesian's videos, Brianna's tendency to generalize complex problems, the sensationalist nature and inaccurate representation of the whole problem by ABC's Nightline segment etc.
Hence my claim that the label gamergater, usually
attributed by a person to himself (or herself), bears a conscious association with that diverse culture, including its most toxic and deplorable elements, against which hardly anyone ever speaks out.
In comparison - and here the "wonderful irony" comes to an end -
there is no culture of people trying to gain in strength by applying the term "social justice warrior" to themselves, as much as I'd like to change that. The term has been derogatory from the day of its creation, hence I called it an easy to swallow concept of the enemy. A hate crutch if you will.
Obviously you haven't paid any attention to the hashtag in the past month or so, which has been rife with interior conflicts between "big figures" in Gamergate.
And what do you mean "against which hardly anyone ever speaks out?" For the first few months, Gamergaters were CONSTANTLY calling out and distancing themselves from "deplorable elements," to the point of mass reporting anyone who harassed Zoe, Anita, or Brianna on Twitter.
EDIT: Besides which, there is immense irony in you labeling Sommers a "rabble rouser" and defending the likes of Anita, Zoe, and Brianna, who have basically made their careers out of rabble rousing and "man-shaming."
