Endnote 5: A Case Study in Digital Radicalism (UC Merced Talk)

[@InnuendoStudios]

I accepted UC Merced's offer to talk about GG in part because I felt there really wasn't a good timeline of the movement on KZbin that isn't made by a GGer. My own videos on the subject from back when it was still very much A Thing That Was Happening assumed a lot of familiarity from the audience. And the sources that actually laid out a timeline tended to be so comprehensive I couldn't imagine someone new to the subject wading through it all. So, if someone ever asks you "what the hell was GamerGate?" you can tell them to watch the first 20 minutes of this video, and stick around for the rest if they feel like it.

[@Jamandabop]

God, I'm so glad that GG was before my edgelord phase.

[@DukeGusion]

oh my god yes, I've been needing this since forever. I've had the problem several times that I've introduced people (sometimes from the games industry!) to the subject and i couldn't find anything to link them that wasn't either overwhelmingly detailed or too deep into the subject to understand. thank you!!

[@KARKAT420]

I was very much an outsider when gamergate was going on, so thank you so much for this video! I remember my brother and other people I knew always telling me crazy sounding things that women did who were trying to ‘destroy gaming’ or whatever, but I could never get any specifics from them so it’s interesting to see the actual facts. Love your videos fam!

[@TamDNB]

I never knew most of this, thanks for posting

[@razzle_dazzle]

This was a great talk by Innuendo Studios. If anyone wants to be able to steelman "the other side", look up "Gamergate Controversy Explained Easy Cartoon" by PSA Sitch (don't worry, he's not a GGer). Even though it's four years old now, I think it's still the best and most concise explanation of GG that is somewhat sympathetic to the GG side. Personally, I think there is truth in both interpretations of events.

[@JacobGeller]

The bit explaining meme culture about 30 minutes in is extremely good and something I'll probably show my parents at some point lol

[@thalamusDecimation]

Your videos are something i've shown to my parents

[@Twelvecarpileup]

Yeah, I run a non profit with a board mainly of seniors who have a hard time understanding internet harrassment, might show them that part. They're really having a hard time understanding the logic. "We haven't done what they say we're doing." "It doesn't matter..." "What? That doesn't make any sense!" "I know, but we still have to put time and resources into dealing with some of it" "Can you arrange a meeting with them so we can talk about it?"

[@ReplicaSeven]

Oh hey Jacob, you're amazing at explaining things as is, why not make a video about explaining meme culture so you can show that to your parents?

[@sabinasabino141]

Just wanted to thank you for introducing me to Noah Caldwell Gervais. It seem like all you great youtube essayists know each other.

[@iacopo538]

At 29:17 you really begin to get a sense of the desperation these GamerGate folks feel, like they've lost their way

[@KatBlaque]

The thing that sucks about this stuff is that Quinn is STILL dealing with the fallout around this. People have refused to hire them because of Gamer Gate. It's fucked up.

[@vintheguy]

still??? in 2021??? how?? why?? wasnt gamer gate literally 7 years ago?

[@KatBlaque]

@@vintheguy Yes. There are still people who avoid them because of Gamer Gate.

[@vintheguy]

@@KatBlaque Completely absurd. To hell with the mods of the escapist and Google for not out right deleting or banning 4chan and 8chan then and even now

[@danmorgan3685]

That sucks. I have no contact or relations with their but I never cared much for their work or overall attitude. My solution was to ignore their work and unsub when KZbin subbed me to their channel a couple times. It was just that easy and nobody had to get their life ruined by a bunch of internet psychos.

[@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342]

@@danmorgan3685 I see......

[@razzle_dazzle]

I remember hating Anita Sarkeesian, but I have no idea why. It's not that I can't remember why, it's that I never knew why.

[@tremolo2109]

I heard that it's because she says Bad Things

[@danitho]

That's a powerful statement. I feel like most people share this sentiment more than anyone will ever know. Not just around GamerGate but in every aspect of life.

[@AdamNoizer]

Same here. It was always; “I don’t know what it was that she said. I think it was cuz she was a feminist or something. And feminism bad”

[@autumncaraway3383]

big same. never watched her videos, just knew she was mocking gamers. absolutely foolish for me to have believed that.

[@GreebusBleeb]

@@AdamNoizer tbh video games were a safe space for me, away from my crippling insecurities with women. It was scary for me to see that women also existed in that space, and the hubbub around Anita made it easy to turn that insecurity into anger.

[@elgato1721]

I remember, during my own alt-lite redemption arc (surprisingly common occurence apparently) going from "these guys are probably right but i don't really care" to "these guys are tragic failures whining uselessly about things they made up", but never realising the sheer scale and danger of it.

[@chloesibilla8199]

I noticed thats a problem I run into a lot when I debate people who "don't care about politics" . They don't realize just how bad it is and just see drama. Good on you for getting out of there.

[@chloesibilla8199]

Loveing the phrase #altlightredemtion

[@Gibusnipu]

I had this also happen to me, back when I was getting out of my little anti-sjw hole. Truly shows that these folks really just make boogiemen to be afraid of and use those to trap in young and impressionable teens in their said hole

[@asterling4]

as someone who has to see the danger of it all the time, up close and personal (lottery of birth, man, shit's fucked), it makes me rlly hopeful to see you and others in the comment section who actually got _out_ of that radicalization after being sucked into it. sometimes i feel like the world is only going to get more and more terrifying because the people at the top (people like the ones who started GG, who lead malicious misinformation campaigns) are _so fucking good_ at roping ordinary folks in. if i had been born any different - if my mother had been white, if i had been a boy, or maybe if i had been a girl who so much as _liked_ boys - i know i might well have been sucked in, too. i've known so many good guys who seemed perfectly reasonable just... start down that road without even seeming to notice. it's real fucking scary. all this to say, i'm glad to hear you're in a different place now. i have no idea how hard it must be to take those first steps of your own volition, and it brings me a LOT of hope to know people have actually done it.

[@elgato1721]

​@@asterling4 Did I really change because my empathy compelled me to? As nice as it would be to tell myself that, I kind of doubt it. It was mostly my already existing preconceptions against religion (on the basis of being boring, often authoritarian, and factually wrong) and nazis (paradoxically, back then it was mostly on nationalist grounds, ie "they invaded MY country"). The way the pipeline initially bypassed those preconceptions of mine and temporarily coaxed me into what I called "alt-lite" ideology is by presenting me with this cool, trendy, and arguably much more secular version of conservatism with pepes and wojaks, as opposed to the "boring" one with dusty holy books and the satanic panic. Rather than defending any consistent conservative values, it largely consisted of ridiculing progressive ones - and in discourse, attacking comes so much easier than defending. Eventually I saw that "pepe conservatism" is not a real and coherent ideology with its own ideals, it just exists to capture the rebellious teen's desire to go against the grain and then funnel them towards one of the two things I hated - classical conservatism or the far right. If I had harboured no initial dislike for those endgoal ideologies, I would more than likely have been successfully funneled into one of them. So in my case it was largely the context of my upbringing rather than some noble effort on my part. At any rate, thanks for your kind words for doing the bare minimum. It may be hard not being a dipshit at times, but it's infinitely harder to endure the attacks from existing dipshits if they target you for your inherent characteristics.

[@daredaemon8878]

Regarding the 'card says moops' thing, here's a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre that is exceedingly relevant if you replace all references to anti-Semites with 'gamergater' or 'alt-right member' (and besides plenty of them are anti-semites, too.) “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

[@topcatmatt]

Lol I think I wrote that on the video

[@holstatt6896]

Thus, we beat anti semites into silence.

[@maestro3947-b9g]

Is this from his essay on anti-semitism? My first reading of his writings was that, but as i read in portuguese long time ago, dont remember this passage in particular. Now i have to read again!

[@ShadowOfTheVoid]

Honestly, that quote explains a lot of things other than just antisemitism or the alt-right. Look at the broader state of right-wing propaganda for the past few decades, and especially since the rise of conservative talk radio and Fox News. They've spent decades using words irresponsibly in order to re-frame the discussion to suit their own goals. The most prominent example is their use of "socialism" and related terms. They feel that if they can convince enough people that their opponents are literal Stalinists, then they can win by default without having to honestly engage with or debate the other side. It's classic demonization in practice.

[@Wired_User]

Yes! Love Jean-Paul Sartre so much for this essay and this quote! Replace anti-Semite with literally any anti and it’s their main pattern of attack. The alt-right uses it so often nowadays it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. People like them have been using those tactics for hundreds of years.

[@damdamfino]

This video is so infuriating, but also so necessary because as an outsider I’ve tried for years to find out what Gamergate actually WAS, but all I ever found were videos made while it was happening which refused to go into any details about it, they just assumed everyone already knew. This is necessary for historical and archival purposes so, so much.

[@superslash7254]

Mate there are literally 60 second summary videos directly from the women and PoC who were some of the most prominent voices at the time: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5fRg4aCaMmSrrc

[@NotAGoodUsername360]

It doesn't help one of the problems was that there was a legitimate split between the harassers and those that wanted to talk about niche journalism, reporter groupthink, and the insertion of mainstream identity politics in hobbyist culture. Of course, the harassers would use those as a cover for their actions and deliberately blurred the lines, which is also what their opponents wanted so they didn't have to talk about or even acknowledged the unwanted political aspect and the coordination of journalism. It was very much a canary in the coal mine and those still actively engaged in the pursuit of coalesing power through propaganda would rather just dismiss as a case of "deplorables being deplorables" and worked actively to prevent any legitimate concerns from being made known.

[@Digital-2_4_6]

@@Donuts8 PSA Sitch is linked to the alt-right. He is a part of the very thing that this video is trying to stop.

[@AbandonedVoid]

@@NotAGoodUsername360 Honestly, who cares about the people that complain about "mainstream identity politics?"

[@Ranzord95]

I don't think most people really knew anyway

[@therebelle66]

"they are weaponising good faith against us" That phrase needs to be remembered

[@migarsormrapophis2755]

"good faith" "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience, 'Gamers are over.'" Sargon's Law: "Whenever an ideologue makes a character judgement about someone they are debating with, that character judgement is usually true about themselves."

[@Alex.R.L]

Always remember: The Tolerance Paradox

[@Kyrielsh1]

@@migarsormrapophis2755 "Sargon's Law: "Whenever an ideologue makes a character judgement about someone they are debating with, that character judgement is usually true about themselves." " That sounds like a saying from Granny or something... This kind of automatic thinking is really the death of thinking...

[@drsamuelhaydensecretgaming6749]

@@Kyrielsh1 what, projection? Nah man you see that kind of shit everywhere. If someone feels guilty about an action or idea that they hold which is indefensible, they will usually accuse people of doing the exact same thing, usually unprompted. It isn't some right wing pseudointellectual concept, You can literally see it play out 100 different ways across every demographic. Just because Sargon or Hitler or whoever drank a refreshing glass of water, does not mean that we should ban water. The ideas that they hold that are actively harmful and inherent to right wing conspiracy theorists, are the ones that you should be concerned about.

[@skepticpunk_]

@@migarsormrapophis2755 Who the fuck is Sargon?

[@frodo4627]

I was 16 when Gamergate started. It was around the time smartphones became fully saturated and everyone had one. I remember all of my friends and I sitting around the cafeteria table showing memes to each other and having a good time. For the first year or two it was all pretty innocent but once Gamergate began many of my friends began a slow turn into some very disturbing stuff. Suddenly a few of the memes were about why women are irrational and oppressive and how LGBT rights were going too far. It's not at all a coincidence that the friends who jumped on the gamergate bandwagon are the same ones who became obsessed with telling me election and vaccine conspiracies. It was very hard to watch that happen to them and to the country as a whole. It's insane to me how gamer gate still flies under the radar as a huge point of radicalization for the internet. When I look around at the fascist shit going on, it's no mystery to me where it started, especially for people my age. I saw it happen right in front of me at my cafeteria table.

[@patternrecon5271]

A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). Denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes. Women inherit a pair of X chromosomes from their parents, and are capable of pregnancy and giving birth from puberty until menopause. More generally, sex differentiation of the female fetus is governed by the lack of a present, or functioning, SRY-gene on either one of the respective sex chromosomes. Female anatomy is distinguished from male anatomy by the female reproductive system, which includes the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina, and vulva. The adult female pelvis is wider, the hips broader, and the breasts larger than that of adult males. Women have significantly less facial and other body hair, have a higher body fat composition, and are on average shorter and less muscular than men. A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the father. Sex differentiation of the male fetus is governed by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome. During puberty, hormones which stimulate androgen production result in the development of secondary sexual characteristics, thus exhibiting greater differences between the sexes. These include greater muscle mass, the growth of facial hair and a lower body fat composition.

[@daylanadams9522]

@@patternrecon5271 Are you okay? Did Ben Shapiro seduce you? Are you human? Do you have a degree in biology? Do you at all know what you are even talking about, or is this a copy pasta?

[@patternrecon5271]

@@daylanadams9522 lmao Ben"IsraelFirst"Shapiro hey baizuo Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person feels due to a mismatch between their gender identity-their personal sense of their own gender-and their sex assigned at birth. The diagnostic label gender identity disorder (GID) was used until 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the STIGMA (lmao) associated with the term disorder. Lmao Body integrity dysphoria (BID, also referred to as body integrity identity disorder, amputee identity disorder and xenomelia, formerly called apotemnophilia) is a mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or having discomfort with being able-bodied beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences. BID appears to be related to somatoparaphrenia. People with this condition may refer to themselves as "transabled".

[@moleedaboi]

@@daylanadams9522 it's a bot lol

[@theescoob8684]

this is sad to hear man... now that I think about it, if i can remember enough... I probably went thru a similar experience. I'm 21 now and see the way some of my friends have changed. The guys who spent all their time on iFunny, or watching JonTron or Filthy Frank content... we aren't the same people who used to be friends anymore. I used to tolerate constant racist jokes from one of my high school buddies, bc for so long I was friends with other guys who spread around edgy content. Stuff like the Moon Man cover songs (i can still hear that stupid fucking song "i hate n, i hate j, i hate s and a too") i digress. It took that high school buddy stabbing me in the back Junior Year, tearing a rift in our friend group at the time, and standing up for myself... cutting this guys off from ever having contact with me... to spark my path to growth. Come Senior Year, i have some difficulty starting a relationship, and I eventually started dating someone else, who came out at trans after we graduated. I started working. I started city college. I had a real relationship with someone I cared about, and this someone cared about me. This person had the bravery to break down in my car time after time to exclaim that BLM was not a hate/terrorist organization... but a group of people who just wanted to be recognized as human beings... (side note here. I don't know why, with all amount of alt right shit i'd consumed... I managed to understand that being trans doesn't change who you are, it's just your identity. nobody taught me that. I still don't understand why it was so easy for my then dumbass wanna be alt righter to accept, but I'm incredibly grateful for it.) outside of school, i had work with a boss who studied political science... and he helped spark my path to mentor seeking. I took every single lesson to heart. If someone seemed to know more than me, I listened. I went from watching JBP content, to Jimmy Dore content somehow, and eventually Hasanabi's old debate content. two years later... and I've learned so much... and I see how some of my old friends fall for the same bullshit they did when they were 17. These guys are just drifting along in the ether, not unlike the rest of us, but god damn... it's so awful to see people you were once cool with, slowly succumb to careless whisper that is the maintenance of the status quo.

[@YourHumbleNarrator]

Fun fact: Press Fart to Continue was a play on the KZbin channel Press Heart to Continue, which was run by a delightful woman, who he was obsessed with and digitally stalked.

[@Pluveus]

Yeah Dodger is a baller, and I instantly got the reference and cringed SUPER hard.

[@Patrick-Phelan]

The joke's kind of obvious and unnecessary, but I can see the trailing tail for it, so I kind of have to say it: that fact wasn't that fun.

[@poisonedlava]

Fun!

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@poisonedlava That ain't fun.

[@arempy5836]

Yeah, I... Remember defending him and sending a bunch of aggressive tweets at dodger calling a friend of hers a manipulative sociopath. I deleted those tweets a long time ago now but, it's still one of the most shameful things I've ever done.

[@apocritas]

the bit at 24:00 about the contradictory points reminds me a lot of the 'narcissists prayer' used in forums for abuse victims, which goes like this: "That didn't happen, And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, You deserved it."

[@metaparalysis3441]

reminds me of the denialist's prayer

[@dc2guy2]

@@metaparalysis3441 I had a hard time finding it so sharing for others.. The denialist’s prayer: "This isn’t real. And if it is, it’s not that bad. And if it is, it’s not our fault. And if it is, there’s nothing we can do. And if there is, it will be too hard. And if it isn’t, I don’t care."

[@thenullhypothesis6179]

Shame he doesn’t cite any thing and all of his work is nothing but the same pseudoscience conjecture the alt-right relies on.

[@dc2guy2]

@@thenullhypothesis6179 the citations are in the video description..

[@thenullhypothesis6179]

@@dc2guy2 oh yeah, the random links that are much more broad and he cherry picks from? Lol.

[@Radiodragonofdoom]

Ya'know, a lot of people say that kids no longer getting their references makes them feel old. For me though, its this video. Hearing this story broken down again, and then understanding the shit tsunami that these events unleashed on the world makes me feel ancient. Its like having a person who got conned by Joseph Smith brought forward in time to look at the Mormon church now.

[@ScottishVagabond]

TBH seems like yesterday to me, but I am 39, and ADHD means time means very little to me :P

[@AnnDVine]

Hearing the Tropes vs Women in Video Games Kickstarter launched in 2012 made my bones turn to dust

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

All of this was building long before Anita Sarkeesian. The alt-right playbook was already being used by some of the worst assholes online during W's presidency. They just lacked the ability to hide their agenda; they still thought their arguments alone could win the culture war. In any place that wasn't a toilet, they were quickly isolated and mocked. But they were discovering successful strategies. Like pretending they sincerely believed any stupid thing they could use to psychologically abuse/dehumanize women, minority groups, and the poor.. Who cared whether they were right? It got them attention, and started a conversation about whether their worst bullshit was right. Best of all, it excluded anyone from the conversation who refused to seriously debate their piss take. Centrist debate moderators would fall for it, every single time.

[@mausklick1635]

@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Its the entire point of centrism, to fall for the conservative deception. Its has always been like this on any other topic. Nobody stands up for the truth, so everything is reported as a "he-says she-says" matter.

[@mindsetpower5712]

Here's what many of you smooth brainers don't get-- if the MESSAGING you embrace is THE SAME MESSAGING that's being pushed by THE LARGEST CORPORATIONS IN THE WORLD, then YOU ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF POWER. Notice how ALL of the LARGEST corporations in the world promote *THE SAME MESSAGING* (aka ideas and "values") onto society, with no diversity of messaging but literally ALL IN SYNC, because this is exactly what social engineering is and is what they use against society to GAIN AND REMAIN IN POWER. The Corporate Machine WILL NEVER promote messaging that threatens their power. And what they've done over decades is gain control of all the institutions and channels of influence in order to be able to keep control of the messaging and ideas that society absorbs. The Corporate Machine realized a few years ago that this channel wasn't fully under their grasp and so they've begun to take control of this entire space, and then then input their messaging into the content of the games to be in line with their social engineering messaging that keeps them in power. So check the ideas, values and "messaging" you now embrace, and if you are parroting THE SAME MESSAGING AS THE CORPORATE MACHINE, then guess what kiddo, you're part of the problem. Go AGAINST their messaging if you want to fight for THE PEOPLE. (I'm not going to waste time responding to all the subverted Corporate Machine following zombies that will undoubtedly reply--the REALITY is that if you embrace Corporate Machine messaging, you are falling for their strategy of power, and you are part of the problem).

[@BestBetterBestest]

Hilarious to think that alt right tried to bag furries, as if furries have no idea what getting harassed and made fun of for no reason is like

[@kittykittybangbang9367]

plus a lot of furries are LGBT+

[@raistlinmajere7149]

Being a Brony its weird when I do find the alt right brony now and again and see how pathetic they are. Its like they join these fandoms wanting to be better but instead they just weaponize their feelings of loniliness and rejection then blame society for their issues.

[@Liliana_the_ghost_cat]

F cking wild right?

[@TwixtheFox]

Yup. I remember Milo tried to "become" a furry by getting a fursona and art and stuff, but nobody wanted him in the community. He tried to attend MFF but they banned him and said that they'll have security there if he tries to attend. It was clear he didn't care about furries, he just wanted to seem "in and cool" with the community so they'll listen to him more. Furries have been on the outskirts of society and treated like dirt for far too long to fall for stuff like that. Not to mention a lot of us are LGBTQ+, ND, and PoC, or know and are close with many people who are. We defy the standard, and we've been trashed for it our whole lives. Furries were pretty much started from rejected nerdy people who just wanted a place to be themselves and escape the daily torment. That's one of the reasons a huge amount of the community is into tech, and how Furries basically built a lot of what the early internet was. This community is my home, it has been for most of my life. All my friends are here, my same sex partner is here, every thing I love is here. This community has given me life and purpose when my life was so devoid of it because of my horrible family. It means so much to me. Furries are my family. I go to conventions to hang with friends and get cute stuff with friends, cute art, etc. I love fursuiting with my friends, I love giving hugs out to random strangers and friends at cons. Hugs are the furry handshake after all :P All in all, furries probably saved my life and gave it a purpose. I have no idea where I would be without this community. It's given me everything, and I love giving back to others in the community in return and making purpose and love and care in their life as well. The community was founded on being a safe space for people who were different to express themselves and be accepted, and we still are. Companies and others who are trying to capitalize on our community can never understand us and that's why they fail to convince us on anything. Furries are really just misunderstood. We're just your average person who loves anthro animals and fantasy, and finds solace in a community surrounding that. So many of my friends and I included work normal jobs and are regular people who have just given up or don't want to be confined and forced to be the norm, and are just more in tune with ourselves and enjoy what we want. Though, it's definitely a lot better than it once was. Most people you see these days are cool with furries and all our uniqueness and quirks, and many defend us from the insecure idiots who still harass us. It's 1000% better than it used to be, but it's still fairly common to get harassed for being a furry. Many people freak out when I tell them my Fursuit costs 5000$ lol. I could explain here all the stuff about sonas and suits and breathing life into a character you created and only you have, but this is already such a long post :V I went from getting daily harassment no matter where I went from anyone in 2015 to now where it's certainly a lot better. 2015 was easily the worst year to be a furry. It was bad before but cringe culture just blasted us into being the most hated thing on the internet for years. Anyhow, post over. My ADHD probably took over and I just gushed about something I care about, sorry for the huge essay :P To anyone who reads this, have a nice day! Make sure to drink water and get something yummy and get some good rest tonight :3

[@voodoodummie]

Furries "you merely adopted the harassment, I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light of the community until I was already a fursuit!"

[@None-lx8kj]

“Here’s a strongly held belief I’ve just decided I have.” It’s crazy to think how many thousands of online interactions I’ve had with disingenuous trolls without piecing together this simple, yet brilliant, deconstruction.

[@None-lx8kj]

@@11111110 “The card says Moops.”

[@agentc7020]

@@11111110 today I had a discussion with a guy that was ok with throwing people out of helicopters, some people are in it to troll or are genuinely just there to be shitty.

[@tupactheory3739]

@@11111110 innuendo studios has repeatedly mentioned that people on the far left do this as well, next

[@MLBlue30]

@@tupactheory3739 can you give examples?

[@MsScarletwings]

@@11111110 I’ve been screamed at by an uncle at thanksgiving dinner because he was openly suggesting we should drop nukes on the Middle East and commit an ethnic cleansing of arabs and Muslims the very second he got any questions or mild pushback over some dumb shit he originally said about current events. Immediately pivoted to ‘well you’re the real bigot because you’re challenging my sincerely held religious belief!’ It’s not a simplistic explanation, it’s a shoe that fits certain interactions to a tee.

[@VinnieGer]

Hearing the phrase, “ethics in games journalism,” literally gave me whiplash.

[@OntheOtherHandVideos]

Because ethics have been gone for so long in gaming journalism? :D

[@UberCletus]

@@OntheOtherHandVideos at least since before gamer gate ;)

[@VinnieGer]

R Thoreau those two chowderheads are being purposefully vague. Best not to engage.

[@Cythil]

When I heard people first throw around that term like there was an issue in game journalism, I thought as someone interested in game history: "You know, it used to be a lot worse. You should check how thing work in the 80s. Boy what crap. Let's not go back to that". And I also though that if they wanted good journalism, then maybe they need to upturn a capitalist system where the journalist is beholden to larger corporations. Maybe we should like fund them directly rather than have them relay on advertisement clicks. But all I heard was pretty small crap from people who talk about that. All this small crap that even if it was true would not change a systemic issue. So I promptly ignored them. Especially since, frankly, this is one of the few cases I would say you could really vote with your wallet. I mean, the truth is that your not even the customer. You're the product. So by not actually following crappy games journalism, you lose nothing. Maybe I should have actually tried to convince people more about that. That is pointless to try to change a system that will die off if you simply refuse to engage with it. Ether fully, or at least in your mind. And that would be a win either way. (And well. There is actually good games journalist out there. Sometimes there not called that. And often there independent and on sites like KZbin. But there plenty of interesting, thoughtful media about games out there.)

[@OntheOtherHandVideos]

@@VinnieGer Well I appreciate the mildness of the insult. And I wouldn't say I was vague, sarcastic - yes, but vague? Not really.

[@TalkingVidya]

Amazing how 2014 never ended

[@melaniey.5596]

Hey Vidya! Keep putting awesome videos in the spanishphere! Me encanto tu video de Amphibia y me empujo a ver la serie.

[@valuebrandmelkor5973]

Dwarf Fortress knows it, all the wikis current info is under DF2014

[@SA-mo3hq]

It didn't end, but it did mutate and get much dumber

[@crazyluigi6664]

@@SA-mo3hq Pretty much this. 2014 mutated to be so much worse the further it went along through very, very stupid means.

[@YellowJelly13]

Fun fact: 2014 started on the 27th of February with the Russian invasion of Crimea

[@KazaMarie]

Being a female content creator during the time of gamergate was very difficult. Thank you for covering this.

[@SinclairLocke]

lol such a victim

[@sethbritton6970]

@@SinclairLocke Because you were a woman content creator during this time period, right?

[@1GTX1]

Are you a narcissist like Anita?

[@sethbritton6970]

@@1GTX1 STFU? Yeah. STFU, you broken little man.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

Don't listen to those jerks on the reply section. You are a human being that's why.

[@bluedotdinosaur]

It's worth considering in all this that Steve Bannon had originally started keeping his eye on young, largely white male "gamers" thanks to encounters in World of Warcraft. He noted that video games, which provide various kinds of escapism for a wide variety of people, were attracting a particularly self-destructive sort of young male who felt impotent and resentful. Games provided a form of therapy, allowing such people to feel they could accomplish something. Bannon however saw this as something exploit. These people were primed to be led down a dark path, by selling them more resentment and more hatred. White nationalists had long understood the kind of person they should keep an eye on for recruitment. This led directly to the alt-right not very many years afterward.

[@missybarbour6885]

That's the craziest part to me! Bannon was trying to work in WoW forums across the internet and ended up finding a huge population of young, disaffected white men who he realized he could easily turn into a reactionary hate mob with nebulous grievances. The comments of that video we full of "Wait, BANNON was one of the guys flooding every forum across the internet in 2015 with ads selling Warcraft gold???"

[@twilightvulpine]

@SussyBaka The difference is there is a factual record of the intentional plan to radicalize gamers to harass women, minorities and journalists under the pretense of fighting for ethics. You are doing the same "but you can't really prove they personally meant yadda yadda" that the video warned about. The result was still harassment and threats. Besides, not all ideologies are equivalent. Being a feminist is simply better than being a literal nazi.

[@twilightvulpine]

@SussyBaka No, it just sounds like you are muddling the issue to throw shade at BLM by treating conspiracy theories as equivalent to a scheme with recorded evidence. "Trained marxists", seriously? A great example how bad faith permeates any attempts of debate.

[@chaosvii]

@SussyBaka So I guess one important distinction to be made is what “organic & cultural factors” really are, and at what point the proportion of those recruitment methods cease being a primary characteristic of a given political organization’s rise as opposed to non-organic growth & spread. Alternatively, you could explain how much more organic the gamergate or the alt-right stuff was when compared to any other social movement you’ve alluded to here. As well as why people should conclude that there is an appreciable difference in organic spread of the underlying political philosophies. If your argument is intended to convince others that there’s something being missed by transposing Bannon’s and/or white nationalist methods aimed at a given demographic with the cultural rise of the alt-right, as well as gamergate before that rise, then being vague with stuff like “recruited” “free-thinker” and “any other conspiracy theory” is going to undermine the request of your audience to avoid a hasty explanation of intentionality. Rather, you’re opening yourself up to accusations of equivocations for reasons I’m not personally interested in speculating on.

[@twilightvulpine]

@@chaosvii Don't bother, they are just trying to bait people into the rabbit hole by pretending to be neutral while not-so-subtly bringing up alt-right accusations.

[@KingsandGenerals]

Now you are killing it!

[@oiaeyu]

Based Kings and Generals

[@tranquility6789]

Why are you guys so based?!?

[@themediocremaster2388]

Hey cool seeing y’all here haha we gonna get a media history some time? 😂

[@hq4287]

Just subbed a day or two ago! And I am so impressed by the focus of your channel.

[@oriffel]

@@tranquility6789 What does that mean? it seems like its taken on a (new?) meaning and im out of the loop.

[@CapnJigglypuff]

Imagine dating some shitty guy for five months and seeing that lead to the destruction of your life and the collapse of the entire Internet.

[@metropunklitan]

seriously why did they cared so much for some idiot's break up man, i wish i have that much free time in my hands

[@SpoopySquid]

And the rise of a modern nascent fascist movement in US politics

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

And the same jerk who dated Zoe back then is responsible for Gamergate.

[@io1121]

​@@SpoopySquid that would then go on to ruin political discourse in other countries

[@strangebird5974]

"They tried to get in with the furry community, but failed spectacularly." I would like to hear more about this. The furry community had its share of reactionaries back at its inception, but there were just too many lgbt+ furries for an ideology of exclusivity to stick, I think.

[@vriskaserket1120]

4Chan has been trying to send the alt right into furry communities because of some overlap with gamer culture, but because of the furry community’s high LGBT population proportional to the actual population, there was significant pushback.

[@SnakeMan448]

I can only think of the wolf-goat guy with the stinky feet as a significant reactionary furry. And he only got one video in before being excised from the internet.

[@pangiokuhli512]

@@SnakeMan448 ^ lmao when you said "wolf-goat guy with the stinky feet" I immediately knew what you were talking about

[@SpoopySquid]

@@SnakeMan448 he's one of the newer ones but if you want to really lose hope for humanity, look up someone called Foxler (Dogpatch Press ran a series of good exposés back in the day). He was the face of Nazi Furs for a while and was every bad furry stereotype combined with every alt-right stereotype

[@metaparalysis3441]

and the community seems too different in idea to be associated

[@BlackburnBigdragon]

When you said that the Atheist community was already in their pocket, I remember that time period well. I'm an atheist, and as such, I watched quite a bit of atheist media at the time. And around the time of Gamergate, there was this.. change. I noticed that half of the people I was watching, or at least paying attention to in atheist media, started spewing right wing talking points. It was subtle at first, but then it got REALLY noticeable to the point that half of the people I was watching were pretty much turning into Breitbart parrots before my eyes. It resulted in me unfollowing a LOT of channels, and media back then. I don't know what happened that caused a large portion of the atheist movement to shift to the Right like that back then. To this day, it baffles me. You don't expect atheists to be right leaning. You really don't. You always tend to expect the Right to be mostly Christian-leaning, anti-atheist types, because that's what we see in the majority of their belief system. But no. We ended up with a lot of atheists who seemingly jumped ship and ran straight to the Right somehow back then. And to this day, I don't understand why.

[@frapseddatsht]

A lot of reasons. I think one that really sticks out to me is that a lot of atheist channels were very concerned about religiously based laws, especially ones concerning freedom of speech and scientific stuff. It was super easy to get people like that riled up if you just frame anything as attacking freedom of speech. And just because people are people, all it takes is a little priming and phrasing it the right way and they'll buy anything.

[@greywolf7577]

Basically what happened was that, because the right was associated with the religious Conservatives, the Atheists went over to the left. But the left also had SJWs as well. Atheists viewed them as crazy and reacted against them. Unfortunately that pushed some of the Atheists back to the right. So even Atheists are affected by tribalism. What a lot of people failed to understand is that you can be against Fundamentalism and Conservatism and SJWs all at the same time. There is no reason to place yourself as the extreme of either side.

[@russelljackson2818]

Same here. I used to love listening to Sam Harris in particular, but seeing the people he's platformed and appeared with over the years, it just got too disgusting to continue. It's clearly not about "protecting free expression" anymore, it's about the fact that Sam is susceptible to the influence of anyone willing to praise him for how smart he is, and the Shapiro crowd lovebombed him hard in that area.

[@jaywhangmakes]

I remember coming across some atheists and anti-theists who state that they agree with Dick Cheney and some neo-conservative figures only on foreign policy issues.

[@PitLord777]

Fascists and their likes didn't harness religion because they were religious, nor did they harness atheism because they didn't believe in God. Their real target was the feelings of anger, hatred and resentment that these demographics expressed. An example is Milo Yiano-whatever, who once railed against video games and gamers but then promptly switched when it was apparent that this rising GamerGate movement was a campaign of hatred.

[@DokiDokiDiscourse]

the venn diagram of people whining about "cancel culture" today and people who ruined people's lives for talking about video games a few years ago is a wobbly circle

[@moscanaveia]

Right?

[@omgitshim]

This video is whining about cancel culture.

[@feva6774]

@@omgitshim this video is whining about sexist, racist groups taking violent action on innocent people

[@Top-Lip]

@@feva6774 I guarantee everyone here supports JK Rowling being cancelled, and would disagree with a video making exactly the same talking points about how the death threats and harassment was wrong. Like JK Rowling, Anita Sarkeesian isn't innocent, she deliberately tried to create scenarios in videogames that would appear sexist to outsiders that haven't play videogames, by purposefully twisting information in order to label game developers and gamers as sexist and fuel the narrative. Its still unclear why she did this, whether something in her personal life made her hate videogames, but we never really got any candor and to this day she never really explained herself or acknowledged her mistakes. She would kill female characters in Hitman and then create narratives that the game rewards players for killing women and fetishizes the murder or women, when the opposite was infact true and players got punished and actually failed the mission and lost points for killing innocents, there was no difference between killing a male or a female, despite knowing otherwise she still chose to promote misinformation on her channel. All of her other takes were like this, they were disingenuous and made with the intention of slandering the gaming community. She was vilified on social media because of her behaviour, she was called out for spreading misinformation and lying for political gain, she was called out for wrongly stereotyping people. Since people always have and always will have peasant mindsets, burn the witch culture came into full effect and some people took backlash too far and sent death threats and harassed her on social media. People like to pretend that this was the only backlash she got. Just like people pretend that all JK Rowling's criticism is just vitriol with no valid critique. People are hypocrites when it comes to cancel culture, on both sides of the spectrum because everyone always defends their favourite football team, its just human nature at the end of the day and civilization will always be like this.

[@feva6774]

@@Top-Lip no sir, people aren't as violent as you. Nobody half decent is okay with doxxing and death threats, no matter to whom

[@lorenzobraschi2010]

"Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike being normalised. Because they know once they're normalised, they will have to accept them" I know you read Corey Robin but this is the most brilliant, succint definition of reaction I've ever come across. It packs so much in so little. Genius.

[@GallantJayVT]

You caught me, I don't want to normalize abusive pieces of shit being put in positions where they can continue being abusive pieces of shit just because they have the right political views.

[@nukiradio]

@@nullset560 no. Its saying that to be a reactionary, is to do whatever is in your power to obfuscate change.

[@tenaciousrodent6251]

It all comes back to the second law of thermodynamics in the end: The one true problem.

[@fedoratalks5442]

​@@nullset560 I think it's more accurate to say that reactionaries will be "normal" at all cost and thus they protest change because they know that, when normal expands to fit more people, they will have to accept the "normal". It's not just stopping what you don't like from happening but trying to be "normal" at all costs and thus excluding people from the "normal" to obfuscate change.

[@FearlessSon]

@@nullset560 I'm reminded of something Bob Altmeyer observed in his research on authoritarian personality types. They desperately want to think of themselves both as "morally upstanding" and as "normal". It's a big part of why they tend to fall into thinking of themselves as a "silent majority" even if they are neither silent nor a majority. However, it's a big part of why they resist changes to the status quo and normalizing the same outsiders they used to victimize is because it changes what the definition of "normal" is and they're terrified of then, without any difference on their part, being shifted out of that "normal" category. Further, that same victimization of outsiders they used to practice puts them in the position where they think others will inevitable victimize *them* for now being "abnormal", and they get stuck in this perpetual fight-or-flight response to even modest change.

[@YaroKasear]

Speaking as a furry it doesn't surprise me at all attempts to coopt the furry community backfired. Not just because of the exceedingly strong LGBT+ representation in the community, but by just how strong there already had been an Internet marginalization of furries before that point thanks to the same sort of people who tried to coopt them later. It wasn't really until someone tried to chlorine-bomb a furry convention a few years back that anyone generally covered furries with anything approaching even-handedness. Mainstream media always tended to follow the easy-to-sell salacious narrative that being a furry is a kink. As a furry it didn't surprise me at all that one of the "founding" gater articles was first attempted to be published on SomethingAwful, because that forum was actually almost the tip of the spear on stuff like that. Furries used to be that exact forum's favorite target for punching down. Does this mean there aren't shitty furries? Of course not. But it really honestly was never, ever, a community the alt-right was ever going to win over because pre-gamergate, the same people who would have been alt-right were already punching down on and harassing them.

[@KeithBallardA]

I remember being vaguely afraid to share stuff like this at the time in fear of "being political." Glad I outgrew that lol I'm thankful to the internet for giving me a job, but damn this sure was a bad decade in which to be doing it. You have to actively filter your audience in order to end up with anything vaguely acceptable. At this point as a defense mechanism whenever I play a game that's going to touching on social issues I'll intentionally go on a rant a few episodes in, then set the comments to moderation-only. Approve all the normal people, ban all the creeps that got baited into showing how poisoned they are. It's like shaking a tree until all the spiders fall out. "It's just a funny mug" seems like funny, outlandish satire in Disco Elysium until your comments section is filled with people who unironically agree with the dialog written intentionally to mock racists.

[@MilChamp1]

Fancy seeing you here! What a lovely surprise.

[@francodamiani2099]

Aren't you the guy who yelled at a girl for a few days straight because she asked you to swear less? honest question, I'm not too sure on the topic itself but that's what I've been told, but if that's true, that isn't the best way to keep around a non toxic fanbase my guy

[@MadsOcto7]

Hold on to your hats, we're just starting this decade and I'll bet that Qanon is just getting started. It'll be "fun"... depending on your definition...

[@Desert_paige]

Hey Keith! Ive been watching you since the Witness and I'm really impressed with what you do and your videos! And I'm glad you have been testing out some long format essay videos. Thank you for always being chill and a very calming force in let's plays

[@clerklymantis4661]

@@francodamiani2099 hey, I was wondering what you were talking about, went looking, and couldn't find anything. I'm not doubing you, I think you're talking I'm good faith, I just wanna see or at least read about what happened for myself.

[@frocco7125]

This is everything the right claimed to hate about SJWs and "cancel culture".

[@Godzillakuj94]

Indeed.

[@J-manli]

"Stop being a snowflake," said an anonymous man who posted several twitter and reddit posts about how "SJWs" are ruining gaming by including characters who are not straight, muscular, emotionally calloused, white men with violent tendencies.

[@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342]

@@J-manli Lol what's funny is they often use Cloud as a example of that but like... Did you morons not play the game? He's pretty flamboyant lololol.

[@videocrowsnest5251]

@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 I notice the troubling trend is that anything seen as cool, or that a lotta folk enjoy, tends to get almost automatically converted and forcefully assimilated by the alt-right to suit their purposes, regardless of the source material, any messages it might hold, events in it, or context. Basically, it's a rather cheap, and for a lot of reasons quite nasty trick. The best example I can think of this "assimilate anything that's cool and in essence hijack the source material to serve our purpose" trickery being The Matrix, which is basically a trans metaphor per it's creators, making it a very good case and point of this forceful assimilation regardless of the source material and motivations behind it.

[@guitarsoupify]

@@videocrowsnest5251 Yup, straight out of the capitalism playbook. See the sanitizing and co-opting of MLK and Malcom X.

[@charlottearanea7507]

I distinctly remember hearing about Gamergate as an "ethics in games journalism" and thinking it was, like, maybe about more stories like that time Jeff Gerstmann got fired for giving a lukewarm review to a game that GameSpot was advertising. Heard about the Depression Quest story in VERY vague terms and thought "ok, yeah, it is about stuff like that". Decided to check out the subreddit and saw all these people talking about feminism being bad and not wanting "forced diversity" in games and shit like that. INSTANTLY noped the fuck out of there. It's baffling to me that GG was able to lure in so many people with the "ethics in games journalism" stuff because as soon as you dig a centimeter into the movement, it becomes very clear that it's not really about that unless you consider critics expressing their opinion of liking games with progressive themes unethical.

[@Julius064]

As someone who pretty saw the beginning as it was happening it wasn't something terrible for maybe the first month or two tops. 4chins politically incorrect board showed up and the whole thing rotted from the inside out. After the Quinn stuff leaked people were banned from 4chin, reddit, escapist, literally the entire internet was scrubbing the story. Thats when people started to notice that yes the gaming journalism (that phrase is laughable tbh) is insular and cliquish. Then many major outlets ran stories decrying gamers saying gamers are dead (not literally) , and leaks came out proving people coordinated these stories. That was pretty much the end of anything good, after that initial month or two ish, it was taken over from the inside by absolute shit people, complaining about forced diversity, feminism blah blah blah we know the rest of these peoples nonsense. The reason is was that there were shit people in it from the start and people said why alienate potential allies? Huge mistake.

[@wanded]

why do you wanna force people to insert diversity? why do you think authoritarianism is good? seems pretty evil to me

[@voltex12345]

That was probably a mistake, yes. Requesting for that was never going to yield anything. All of journalism, not just gaming journalism, was corrupt to high hell decades before then. But I really can't blame them, back then they really had no idea what they were dealing with & were swarmed & systematically destroyed by postmodern journalists whose intention was to deliberately lie about them, change the playing field to shift public perception, & demoralize & extinguish their presence in gaming, replacing it with a "new audience", an exclusively progressive one. (And if you do know what the original meaning of the word progressive means, as in "to progress towards the revolution" then yes, it is unethical) It was the deliberate intent to have them destroyed through lies that made any peaceful interaction compromised. Any attempt at reasonable discourse was unfortunately shot down before it had any chance to reach any measure of reason. I can guarantee you'd be surprised speaking to most of us if you do so with an open mind.

[@clairemacphee4273]

always struck me as kind of wild that the gamergate crowd was like: ""a woman slept with a journalist in exchange for good reviews therefore we are against feminism." like... is this not the exact type of situation feminists are also against? women (and femme/ nb ppl etc) want to be taken seriously in the workplace and not have to perform sexual favours in order to succeed... the whole gamers vs feminism debate is pretty weak considering literally every feminist would be very critical of this scenario if it had actually happened, they would just see quinn as the victim, whereas gamers saw themselves as the victims somehow lmao. it literally boils down to "feminism = woman/femme person does something i don't like". would be cool if there was an actual conversation about actual ethics in the media industry, but that conversation would have to include women and minorities and the gamergate dudes were not about that

[@musicalbacon2]

The last part about people wanting to be normal really hits home. A close family member was swept up in the anti “sjw” gamergate nonsense and years after the fact shocked me by saying “we basically feel the same way about things”. We didn’t. We were constantly at each other’s throats and I was actively pretending I didn’t hear half of what he said when we hung out so I didn’t have to engage it anymore. It really makes sense that the crazier he got the more he saw himself as a centrist

[@JustSayPie]

“Faced no meaningful consequences” is the awfullest thing of all. And so it continues and escalates.

[@tomtimelord7876]

It's so sad. Sending death threats should involve jail time.

[@PitLord777]

"Facing no meaningful consequences" = "Practice for the real, successful thing"

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@tomtimelord7876 Sad is that the police don't take the Internet so seriously unless if it's a murder investigation, like the 4Chan murder incident.

[@tomtimelord7876]

@@poweroffriendship2.0 I didn't know about that incident and just Googled it. Holy shit! What is wrong with some people?

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

After dragging the FBI in to investigate. Almost like there was no meaningful crime.

[@SylverstoneKhandr]

Being at a primarily gamedev-focused college during this era was not fun at all. I even got to meet Zoe Quinn six months before it all started too. Like, damn, it was an odd time to be on the Internet.

[@razor8191]

It's funny, I remember GamerGate happening but pretty much ignoring it. At the time, the gist of it from what I heard was that feminists were critiquing video games in how they presented women. My reaction was basically, "Ok, that's just their opinion, whatever." I thought nothing more about it. I do remember watching some backlash videos from people claiming that developers had every right to design women characters the way they wanted to. They were pretty tame, and could possibly be considered persuasive enough to get you to agree with their points. Looking back on those videos now, there was clearly something insidious about them with the language that was being used and the stuff they were insinuating. In the months that followed, the stories about rape and death threats made the news, convincing me that these people were crazy. To make matters worse, because those backlash videos were in my KZbin browsing history, and having an interest in video games in general, I was being recommended all this alt-right/conservative garbage. It was really astounding for a website to basically say, "Oh, this is one of your hobbies? You must be a terrible person then." To this day I don't dare search for anything video game related on KZbin. Plus, I've done my best to avoid video game sites/forums/discussions as well. One point you give at the end is very striking and can be applied to gaming circles too. That is, it's not about winning the argument, it's about keeping the argument going. This speaks so true to almost every single video game discussion/debate I've ever encountered. The same stuff is posted and argued over and over and over again. These gaming sites/forums/discussions are so depressing and predictable, nothing ever changes, and people devote so much time and energy to these pointless arguments. At the end of the day, I just play video games to relax and try and have fun. Somewhere along the way, that stopped being the whole point.

[@nd0136]

I concur with the KZbin algorythm thing, that shit is really terrible. There's videos out there from Innuendo Studio and a few other that offer great thoughts and insight about the alt-right, their rhetorics and all the related topics, but all it takes is watching a couple of them and then your feed turn into 20% Jordan Peterson, 20% SJW / feminists-owning compilations and 20% things with "woke" in the title - as nobody uses this word unironically now, their ideological leaning isn't hard to guess. I block as much as those channels as I can, but this is very frustrating.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

_"I do remember watching some backlash videos from people claiming that developers had every right to design female characters the way they wanted."_ Nowadays, they just complained that if a female character isn't sexy enough, then they ended up being ballistic and aggressive over that. That really happened to Abby from _The Last of Us 2_ or Tifa Lockheart from _Final Fantasy_ series. Heck! Even the Almighty Thor from the _God of War_ got affected by the culture war phenomenon due to his fat body, when in reality, he looks accurate to the Norse myths (save that for Fat Thor from Avengers Endgame) I kinda understand that a slim, attractive bodies are common to females (as well as the muscular types for males), but they missed the fact that there are a lot of different body types that existed whether they are skinny, buff, or chunky depending on what fits the character in both man and woman rather than just traditional ones. It makes matter worse (in the most obvious and strange way) is that most of the people from the anti-SJW community sees the hunky or sexy fictional character/s as some kind of a role model to them. When they see a fat character, they ended up getting a hissy fit and complain that the fat character is an insult to their own reflective image as if reality just knock them in the back. This gives me a hint that these guys must have insecurities and self-esteem issies, which leads to mold their narcissistic state. That explained why they claimed to be an "alpha male" despite the fact they look nothing like one. I understand where they came from because of their insecurities and they play video games as a form of escapism but that doesn't excuse that their ego said that otherwise.

[@gabrielmelnik6796]

One really good forum that calls on all this bs is r/gamingcyclejerk

[@Speedojesus]

@@poweroffriendship2.0 Bro, trust me, Tifa's tits not being as big in the remake is a big issue. This is the first clue the end is nigh and Western civilization is falling. As Plato said - "censorship of sexy women is bad."

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@Speedojesus Can't tell if you are acting sarcastic or dead serious. If it wasn't for that Plato quote, I'm sure you're just taking a jab at these "gamers". There are a bunch of R34 content that focused around Tifa as well since she's the most popular next to Ankha from Animal Crossing and Aunt Cass from Big Hero 6. So I don't think the size of the breast is even the issue of the game to begin with. Why can't you just focus on the story and the gameplay instead of focusing more on male gazing and fanservice? A game being bad because a female character is not sexy enough is an invalid criticism. So I disagree and I can give you my reason for that.

[@AwsomenessRain]

It’s insane seeing people TO THIS DAY, 7 YEARS LATER being like “actually they deserved all the harassment because [extremely inconsequential thing]”. It’s aaaaalways the same things too like they’ve just been going on auto pilot for close to a decade.

[@AwsomenessRain]

BEEP BOOP. MENTION OF ANITA SARKEESIAN DETECTED. DEPLOY ARGUMENT “CHERRY PICKING”. EXECUTE “SHE DOESNT EVEN LIKE GAMES” DOT EXE.

[@Zanzopan]

@@AwsomenessRain I assume someone posted something stupid and borderline sexist then deleted it when you responded.

[@AwsomenessRain]

@sandric very possible, but no I just prefer the format of not having all the text in one comment

[@BarelyMakinIt]

Can you imagine what these salty griefers are going to be like when they're in their late 40s and early 50s? *shudder*

[@pantalonemarco]

I think Sarkeesian's content is crap and she has only done harm to gaming by having a rather dishonest discussion about a real issue. It still doesn't justify a single instance of harassment. Gamergate only made things worse one way or another for literally everyone

[@KilgoreTroutAsf]

As someone who followed the skeptic community pre-anti-sjw, i can assure there were far right trolls lurking and mass-posting on atheism videos WAY BEFORE the first "skeptic" anti-feminist video was uploaded.

[@daishoryujin95]

“Those jackasses” were always there before the entire scene became “those jackasses”

[@enfercesttout]

Which is weird because far right is rarely big on secularism. Prolly, stem fetishizing young men are natural breeding grounds independent of ideology.

[@anarchomando7707]

@@enfercesttout although there was a small liberal atheist movement Vice rhino Suris Logicked Sir sic Telltale And Lloyd Evans to name a few (Yeah somehow I landed from "skepticism" to actual atheist content Not chauvinistic atheist content Really help me develop my love of learning psychology and how the mind can trick you, and radicalizations

[@ragingbombast]

@@enfercesttout The old youtube skeptic community was never really about secularism. It was young edgy people finding an authority that was easy to dunk on, and there's not much easier to dunk on than Christian apologist. The transition of those channels to anti-sjw rhetoric was an unsurprising move for a bunch of people who so desperately wanted to be Christopher Hitchens but who were unwilling to invest all that time into reading.

[@steve7613]

@@ragingbombast It sucks that the skeptic community has basically stigmatized atheism as a movement full of either bad actors or reactionary dipshits. Secular institutions are at the core of democracy, but in leftist spaces I think it's largely considered an afterthought because of videos like "DESTROYING a Christian Minister on the Bible".

[@TransSappho]

The fact that there’s a direct line of causality from gamergate to everything related to breitbart is genuinely horrifying

[@czechmeoutbabe1997]

@@11111110 literally quoting Steve Bannon: “I realized Milo (the main “Breitbart Tech” writer) could connect with these kids right away. You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."

[@GPantazis]

When sheltered 14 yos being left unattended on the computer directly causes the downfall of American democracy

[@bluee3348]

@@The_Reality_Filter do you have any evidence for the claims you're making?

[@bluee3348]

@@The_Reality_Filter care to provide any of it?

[@dickstarrbuck]

Its really crazy but in hindsight, not even shocking.

[@wwdda7877]

"tried get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly" Feels good being a community so open and accepting that it can recognize pretty easily those who are looking to twist it otherwise. :P

[@Byefriendo]

Im very proud of furries for completely just denying alt right any ground, I can attest to this personally, in the fandom locally anyone who is found out to be any form of alt righter is completely shunned and basically blacklisted by the community, its great.

[@hankboog462]

As a cis boy who was a pre teen during the trump administration/the aftermath of gamergate, I'm sure you can imagine I was anti furry. It's ironic how the alt right furries are so often used to make the furry community look bad when those who strongly hate furries tend to be alt right. I'm lucky to have had friends and parents who helped snap me out of that shit, I can't imagine still being that hateful and generally wrong today

[@peniscapture068]

I can't empathize with furries but I respect them. I just don't understand their enjoyment but it's all good. All stories/videos/interactions I have had with them has been postive

[@hellishcyberdemon7112]

unfortunately... furries are ruled by emotion... if you have an opinion they dont like you get blacklisted... im not even alt right and im worried about going to a con because im a libertarian... i can be as respectful as i can but to some people i will always be the enemy... which ive come to accept...

[@LeBonkJordan]

(guess i'll copy-paste this in here as well) Turns out, it's actually pretty hard to market fascism to a very openly sex-positive community that already contains a critical mass of gender/romantic/sexual minorities and where the identity of the person behind the screen is explicitly less important than the identity of the character they're voluntarily identifying as. Who woulda guessed. but yeah re: Hank Boog, I find that one can generally tell how nice a community is by how much edgy teenagers on Reddit and the Chans violently despise it Also worth noting is that there's a somewhat common joke in the furry community that people who really commit to fighting furries will inevitably become furries themselves by sheer exposure

[@legopenguin9]

alt righters maybe but ive seen a fuckton of racist/transphobic furries so ???

[@mill_ania]

You exclaiming literally at the start that gamergate, overall, "is always bullshit", is the most concise and correct way to call whatever this whole thing is. Weird kids and mankids making shit up.

[@TheSm1thers]

You think the mainstream gaming press are paragons of truth and balance?

[@sethbritton6970]

@@TheSm1thers And that justifies an eight year long stochastic terror campaign?

[@TheSm1thers]

@@sethbritton6970 Yes

[@sethbritton6970]

@@TheSm1thers Even though the incident that you're mad about never happened?

[@TheSm1thers]

​@@sethbritton6970 It was obviously not about that one incident, but a build up of incidents in the games industry. It's not that it never happened, but it's more of a half truth. There was no review, but there was coverage of Depression Quest from the guy Zoey Quinn had slept with. It was more the straw that broke the camel's back. I think being abusive is wrong, but I also think Gamergate or some form of it had to happen. I think consumer's are well within their rights to revolt if there's something they're unsatisfied with.

[@ariariari7138]

I'm so proud of the furry community for being way too gay to let the Alt Right people infiltrate us

[@mikelundun]

Theres a great 2-parter on a podcast called "Worst year ever" that looks at the tactics used by the furry community to out maneuver and defeat the attempts of nazi encroachment into the community.

[@EwemizDreamsRawks]

@@mikelundun ooh now that sounds interesting. thanks for sharing! /gen

[@Emma-Maze]

You guys are queer as hell and I'm happy for you ☺️💛

[@emofangz]

lmao thanks!!🧡

[@charlieandhisantics9954]

Your ability to keep lunatics out of your community will never cease to amaze me.

[@Calpsotoma]

"You can't review a thing if you paid anything for it" Review pirates is ethics in games journalism.

[@Blirre]

Funny thing to say, cause if you got it for free then you're called a shill. I guess it's best to not review at all.

[@Brisarious]

@@Blirre if the publisher/developer gave it to you, you're a shill. The only way to ethically review games is piracy

[@moyayaille2609]

you know, there unironically IS a discussion to be had there. In France at about the same time, "Usul", who would go on to be one of the loudest voices for the left in french-speaking internet space, did talk about corruption in game journalism in a non-toxic manner.

[@neoqwerty]

I mean, that's not wrong. A good way to ensure unbiased review would probably just be to seed a demo torrent out and go "hey, anyone wants to try out the game and review it?" If you give free access to the demo to anyone like that, you can't pick and choose who reviews it or track who said bad words about it and ban them from getting access to the demo torrent. (just gotta make sure you ONLY include the demo's data in there and not a whole game, else you've accidentally pirated your own game.)

[@moyayaille2609]

@@neoqwerty haven't there been several times where journalists were given access to a demo that wasn't representative of the game though ?

[@femthingevelyn]

Re: Misogyny and gender identities It's worth noting that this is coming from the perspective of a trans woman, so others may have a different view on the subject. I believe it's important to remember that oppression is not based on the actual identity of the oppressed, Misogyny isn't about being a woman, it's about others perceiving them as a woman, Transmasc people often face misogyny, as do many nonbinary people, even gender nonconforming Cisgender men face a certain degree of misogyny, as misogyny and homophobia are fairly closely linked, though it's important to note that they're not exclusive. Misogyny isn't aimed at women, it's essentially aimed at anyone who the aimer doesn't consider a "Real Man", gender independent, much in the same way racism is so often pointed at those who aren't White™, and transphobia and homophobia are pointed at people who aren't Cisgender enough or Straight enough.

[@disasterjones5798]

As an afab nb, hard agree with all of this.

[@justineberlein5916]

See, for example, how the "punchline", as it were, in a lot of rape "jokes" is that the victim wasn't masculine enough / was too feminine to fight it off

[@drsamuelhaydensecretgaming6749]

I wonder where we'd be right now if stanislav pushed the button

[@Cathowl]

My go-to phrase is "bigotry/prejudice does splash damage". It hits everything even vaguely in the same area as the target.

[@beansworth5694]

@@Cathowl I think I'll use that phrase from now on!

[@pommer2128]

The thing I hate the most is that when you bring up Gamergate all the previous gamergaters or current alt righters are like, "UUUGGHH, this again???? bro, RENT FREE!!! you people NEVER let this go, huh?" as if the shit that happened in Gamergate isn't relevant anymore or they're denying that a majority of the current alt-right movement online was created and still can tie it's roots to Gamergate

[@invaderhydre]

People really do be out here acting like gamergate hasn’t changed online discourse to a degree that can still be felt today.

[@pixmantle]

I mean, by angrily dismissing it, they're basically telling you that it is relevant. It hurts them to look back on it, and dissect it. When you see them saying that, you can really just imagine it as their way of getting flustered, and saying 'Don't talk about this.'.

[@Ellie_deMayo]

“Gamergate is over you guys! We had a Gamer president.”

[@GeneralOlde]

The same folks also claim it was predominantly a leftist/liberal movement... and then their social media feeds are full of far-right talking points. They'll also claim that GGers totally didn't fall for what Bannon, Milo, et al were peddling and didn't hop on the Trump bandwagon. It also doesn't help that certain self-proclaimed journalists (not naming names) are still peddling the GG line and attacking people, both journalists and developers, in the industry.

[@xBINARYGODx]

GG is not really over though - go over the IGN where something-something-social is mentioned in a videogame, and the comments are fuill of what is basically GG whining. It's alt-right and anti-SJW now, but it's not really different.

[@brokengirrafe]

I remember seeing PressFartToContinue in the comment sections of many KZbin videos back in 2013 (he was basically the justin y of that time). We were mutuals on Twitter when I was 14 and we had a few jokey exchanges. We unfollowed each other after a while, and I completely forgot about his existence. It feels so surreal to see this rando from my youth become a full-on alt-right figure and it’s chilling to think that if we became just a bit more friendlier, I could have fell in the pipeline.

[@vriskaserket1120]

I saw him on a PBG video. It’s crazy how many people got roped into this

[@Minihood31770]

I had a similar feeling. Shiver down your spine, "There but for the grace of God go I" etc. I think his name was a reference to PressHeartToContinue, Dodger's channel. Dodger who was on a regular podcast with TotalBiscuit at the time. He was always fairly high in her comments section, and I thought it was a funny pun name with a weird profile pic. Then at one point he vanished. I think I remember Dodger saying she had dealt with some stalking around then, which I assumed was PressFart because of how other comments referred to him. Didn't realise how much larger an influence he had.

[@butHomeisNowhere___]

Around this time, I had juuuust sorta started watching more things on YT. Some of my very first subs were channels like Sargon, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin. This may have been either 2014 or 2015, I don't recall perfectly. Having subscribed to them, I actually learned of more left leaning channels. Luckily, through that, I got pulled left and eventually unsubbed from all of those other channels. I wish I could remember who the creator was that pulled me away from the edge. I feel like it might have been David Pakman, but I'm not sure. But I was there... on the cusp of being roped into the right... and it scares me when I think about how things couldve gone differently.

[@anarchomando7707]

@@butHomeisNowhere___ I think mine personally was either suris the skeptic Or vaush ,(Suris with a crossover to pig puncher (later Xanderhul) mention vaush and I checked it on a whim and was blown away later (I fell off that bandwagon and later got back on during late 2019 early 2020 (I say suris and his group of more liberal atheists really saved me from reactionary thinking And helped build up good solid foundation the advice and other Lefty creators built upon) (It's easy to see a cult like thinking in reactionary circles)

[@butHomeisNowhere___]

@@anarchomando7707 I've been an agnostic since maybe 8th grade, and,now that you mention it, that mightve been what saved me from the right. The aversion to cult tendencies and the ability to try and look at things from more than one side. I wonder, had I been still a Christian, would I have had the mental framework to eventually reject the likes of Shapiro/Sargon/Rubin. Also, vaush is awesome, I genuinely think he might be one of the most Taken-Out-of-Context lefties Ive ever seen haha So many people just let Twitter tell them what to think, and those people do NOT like Vaush 😂

[@ansel569]

Re: misogyny and non-binary identities. Personally, as a trans man, i don't want the word misogyny to be taken away from me as a tool to describe a part of the bigotry that I face just on the basis that i am not a woman. I think it's a really reductive way of seeing it. Like, undoubtedly, i am, have been, and continue to be a victim of misogyny, not necessarily in spite of my identity as a trans man either. Even people who respect my gender identity still treat me in misogynistic ways because of their subconscious assumptions about the sexes. Misogyny is absolutely a factor in sooooo much of the transphobia I and other trans people who are afab or otherwise perceived as women face, I don't think it's misgendering to point that out.

[@kakizakichannel]

Hell yeah bro you tell em. Fuck transphobes and fuck misogynists

[@EphemeralTao]

Agreed Situation is definitely not helped by a certain small group of transmen recently coming out as trans-misogynists.

[@ansel569]

@@EphemeralTao i don't really see what that has to do with my comment

[@IDKDevvy]

I’m NB and I fully agree, misogyny will always be applicable to my life.

[@samjaymac]

@@IDKDevvy same

[@nastynategreenlotus]

They spammed the hash tag about the topic they said they cared about with porn so nobody could have the discussion, kinda reminds me of how all the false accusations of pedophilia actually makes fighting real child abuse harder to fight. They don't even care about the things they tell us they care about...

[@c0nd0rd4myt]

and how the seven page "don't say gay" law that's meant to protect against child predation and pedophilia does absolutely nothing to actually address those topics.

[@devofficialchannel]

Because most of the actual child abusers are often people with higher positions. And they're often the ones who project onto others to avoid accountability by creating a convenient "boogeyman" to distract people. (But as we know it, that never lasts long and people will eventually see through lies).

[@catiseith]

The usage of Loss to explain memeification was a very good idea.

[@zenosAnalytic]

I feel like US cops and courts choosing to be THIS USELESS in the face of a concerted international campaign to terrorize mostly women with harassment really should have led to mainstream media discussion of how useless they've always chosen to be at stopping everyday harassment and domestic violence, and Im a bit infuriated that it didnt.

[@sethbritton6970]

@@sovsurv ....... what on earth are you talking about. I've read your comment a couple times, and it seems like you're projecting hard enough that I could point you at a wall and get Powerpoint presentations.

[@superslash7254]

So let me get this straight. You believe there was a massive global conspiracy of unprecedented size with overwhelming amounts of live video and in-person evidence of huge numbers of its membership being women and non-whites, formed solely to "terrorize" women, which they carried out by... lobbying the FTC for reforms regarding advertising and affiliate linking, sending delegations to the Society of Professional Journalists, and raising $80,000 to fund female game developers? kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYrUc5d5oqmFZq8

[@sethbritton6970]

@@superslash7254 I think that your efforts to ignore the video you're commenting on is... bewildering.

[@BLZ231]

In fairness it would be extremely difficult to investigate so many death threats, especially since most of them were empty threats that were just trying to make noise, and it would be extremely hard to sort through them all to find the genuine threats. If anything I think Twitter and other platform holders are more to blame, since they’re terrified of being accused of censorship (and also of losing money, since arguments and drama mean more clicks and attention) and so allow blatant disinformation and death threats to run rampant without doing much of anything about it. But then again there’s so much content uploaded on a daily basis that there’s no way to pull all the problematic content that crops up without resorting to the use of algorithms and bots, which comes with its own problems. I don’t know, there’s not a clear solution.

[@jucom756]

"Terrorize mostly women" tbf it's more like terrorize everyone that isn't a cis white straight man, or supports non cis white straight men...

[@westwind429]

I remember watching Gamergate unfold and feeling something was terribly, horribly WRONG with things, but I was unable to articulate the exact "what" and "why." One of my coworkers at the time was one of the normies sucked in on the "ethics in game journalism" angle and I was never really sure how to navigate those conversations. I really wish I knew then what is so obvious now. Hope that guy's doing alright, and not a piece of shit.

[@PromotedPawn]

I had the same feeling. I remember talking to my therapist at the time about how this particular thing was going to whiplash on society at large BADLY but being unable to say exactly how. I couldn’t quite explain why I had seen tons of toxic internet subcultures come and go in the past ~20 years but this time felt *very* different.

[@ChibiRuah]

hindsight is 20/20, and when you dealing with people that get off on being trolls, they will do what they can to get an edge to make you an idiot (because they basically get off on it). To be fair, I had no clue what was going on and I did my best to try to "be above it all". But clearly i was just an normal person that knew nothing.

[@halfbloodprincess989]

I remember a friend of mine, who got sucked into this nonsense, always talking about the 'evils' of feminism and sjws destroying comics and video games. I once asked her *(yes a female one and what is even wierder: bevore she couldn't stop ranting about sjws she spent **_years_** complaining about getting discriminated for being pansexual - I'm pretty sure **_everyone_** who is pansexual is considered a sjw in the eyes of gamergate?):* "why do you keep bringing this up? You keep starting arguments and it'll end in us screeming at each other and you know that!" She said just wants to share things that are funny and ranting about feminists is funny apparently. Maybe this is some sort of humour I'm just not getting, but nobody comming off this ANGRY can ever be funny.

[@bogger3k]

Easy, realized there was an actual basis for needing change because there are real problems with media and their ethics. And also realise that same media will do anything to label those trying to hold them accountable as the most horrible things possible. Usually cherry picking examples that aren't representative of the whole on a massive generalization fallacy.

[@bogger3k]

Absolutely not. What you just said is entirely wrong about them. These claims of any form of hate for minority groups was heavily responded with the "notyourshield" hashtag. Because the media was manipulating the narrative to try to use extreme examples to misrepresent the entirety of those that had an issue with the ethical failings of the journalists.

[@savageblackfish5117]

My brother has been radicalized by these dangerous idiots. Videos like this, they help me understand and get "closure" for lack of a better word. I hope to one day help him see the error of these ideologies.

[@kingstarscream3807]

Sounds like your brother was radicalized by the alt-right, not Gamergaters. Gamergate was an apolitical campaign against corrupt journalism and censorship. You got them mixed up.

[@monkofdarktimes]

He saw the ugly truth about the world. You can stay in bliss with this video or join your brother.

[@regisglass5464]

​@@kingstarscream3807 that's weird, then why were the main targets women who were programmers or KZbinrs?

[@ej5677]

@@kingstarscream3807the problem with that summary is that the alt-right perpetuates itself as a movement by leeching onto other movements. Thereby driving it in a right-leaning direction. So even if it didn’t start that way, that’s absolutely what it became. And why a lot of people became far-right

[@emjakos3548]

​@@monkofdarktimes"Everything is the fault of [insert minority]" sounds a lot like a dark sort of blissful ignorance.

[@randomguy019]

I have to say, as someone going through College, in leftist spaces on the internet, that "August that Never Ended" strikes me to my core. It was the first time in my life where I inundated myself with a bunch of horrific shit and realized how awful the right really is. Gamergate and murder of Mike Brown occurring in a matter of Days not only solidified my leftist positions, but also did some minor trauma to me. To this day, I have a creeping sense of dread for August's, because the worst shit happens in August.

[@anarchomando7707]

January 6th was mine I was already floating there I just never solidified it Although that could be the finalization I was already in the process of that from 2017-2019 through 2020 (While I fell down the skeptic sphere I felt right into the liberal atheist sphere(the pocket of the skeptic sphere that was a lot more left-leaning I already had my hatred of right right leading radicals Through my love of History (studying Nazi party or really their ideology and why they commit such foul acts) I do have to blame KZbin personalities like Lindsay Ellis and the analysis left-leaning sphere to help. January 6th truly just solidified everything

[@Kropothead]

@@mindsetpower5712 “LEFTISTS GET ALL THEIR OPINIONS FROM CNN BECAUSE CNN IS LEFTIST I AM A VERY SMART POLITICS UNDERSTANDER AND NOT A GODDAMN BOOMER.”

[@turtleboy1188]

Waaaaa

[@anarchomando7707]

@@turtleboy1188 Luigi

[@b.parker1740]

My August of dread was probably 4 years ago when Charlottesville happened, but it wasn't necessarily my wake up moment. That was when, after years of deluding myself that I was ideologically following was a party of "values" and b.s. like that, the president who won't be named clenched the Republican nomination. Sure, I had my red flag moments, as I could never get into the edge-lord content others my age at the time were eating up and I was at least willing to drop a lot of my embarrassing stigmas of others by then (which are ironic with who I grew into) than others, but that moment and his following election made the pieces come together in a way that made me drop almost all my beliefs at the time. It was like the political equivalent of finally getting that Santa Claus isn't real.

[@HerrFenrisWolf]

Hate when someones says about Gamergate: "Well both sides were bad. So they deserved each other..." Really? Both sides? Persons analysing tropes and doing critique vs rape threats, sabotaging carriers, doxxing, thats the same level to you?

[@sombrewarhammer]

I think it’s often based on the belief (sincere or otherwise) that the non GG ‘side’ is corrupt games ‘journalists’. But of course the actual target of GG was basically women.

[@HerrFenrisWolf]

@@sombrewarhammer Had a discussion with a guy who said it was about journalism. He didn't try to explain, how all the harassing against woman would make "journalism better". It really is futile to have those discussions.

[@chameleonh]

Don't you see? Their counterculture is preventing the collapse of the West. Everything they do is justified, because the stakes are so high. It's not supposed to make sense, because if it did, you could use logic against it and win. And you're never supposed to win. And not winning, actually, works both ways --- because if GG got what they wanted (whatever that is), they would either immediately die as a movement, or GG would have to invent new shit to be mad about.

[@neoqwerty]

It *started* with a valid ethics criticism (if you're a gaming journalist, you're not supposed to review games that your S.O. or ex or friends or family worked on without at least disclosing that bias, and the infamous IGN 7/10 ratings galore) and then it all went to shit within 5-6 hours. It was kind of impressive how fast the people who were actually concerned about a conflict of interest and review manipulation got swarmed out by incels just angry at women and the alt-right recruiters feeding on them.

[@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342]

Well said. It's simply nazis vs reg folk trying to get by in life with their careers... That's it.

[@seanbrady2232]

I never really GOT how the alt right was funneled out of gamergate until this video. Seeing you go back over the alt right playbook with GG makes the series even more prophetic. Amazing

[@placeholdernameisplacehold7671]

You gotta realise though that the "alt right" was a different thing during gamergate. The alt right started out being more pro-gamergate centre right, but devolved after they got labelled a bunch of fascists. It turns out that if you publish lots of articles calling a group of people racist nazis, racist nazis wanna join that group.

[@rugierro]

@@placeholdernameisplacehold7671 That's not so accurate, though. The accusation does jive with "How to radicalize a normie", but Richard Spencer already didn't have much of a problem doing Nazi stuff, and people like Steve Bannon didn't seem to have much of a problem co-opting that newfound notoriety for his own purposes. They didn't devolve, they just took off the mask. Steve Bannon has always thought what he does. So has Richard Spencer. So has 'Baked Alaska". If someone only became a neo-nazi because a bunch of people told them they were already acting like one, then they probably already were one. Sure, some radicalization happened to some in that whole mess, but someone was there doing the radicalizing.

[@placeholdernameisplacehold7671]

@@rugierro Yeah, but Richard Spencer didn't start the alt right. It was originally a bunch of internet folks. They called themselves alt right to distance themselves from traditional conservatives.

[@rugierro]

@@placeholdernameisplacehold7671 as far as I've read, he coined the term. So if little internet trolls who had a good time harassing people over video games started to identify as such, then they moved towards him. He didn't co-opt what they were, he gave them a place to be more of it.

[@placeholdernameisplacehold7671]

@@rugierro I don't know what you read, but that's completely wrong. It was Milo who coined the term alt right. It was picked up by some podcast I don't remember the name of, then by brietbart. Richard Spencer didn't call himself alt right until after the Hilary Clinton speech.

[@KalaamNozalys]

I think a video explaining why they failed so hard on infiltrating the furry communities might be interresting

[@macslash5833]

I mean, it's kinda self explanatory: a group of people who already are outcast by a lot of people with a very very large portion being POC, LGBTQ+ and ND I don't see how the alt-right could really ever gain traction in such a community and it's pretty damn funny

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

Regarding that the furry community have a strong support to the LGBT and the alt-right has a huge beef with the LGBT due to their prejudice, it's no wonder why.

[@LeBonkJordan]

I fucking read that as "inflating the furry communities" at first lmao

[@KalaamNozalys]

@@LeBonkJordan Found the furry ahah

[@KalaamNozalys]

@@Zertikaya-ln6jc Sorry I don't understand what you are trying to say

[@badsnipertwopointoh]

"If you're hesitating to condemn a movement because 'what if it's legitimate?', take a look at whether they're selling ideology like it's Pepsi." goddamn my Q-believer friend needs to hear this one. The mantra of "but what if it's true" literally sounds like something he would say.

[@ibahart3771]

I feel like we need InnuendoStudios' light shone on QAnon

[@brano13177]

@@ibahart3771 Agreed, especially given how that QAnon is spreading like the plague.... No pun intended given we are still in the middle of a pandemic.

[@kostajovanovic3711]

@@ibahart3771 in the meantime, there's chill goblin

[@karue7581]

It's actually so disgusting how many teenagers fell for this.

[@photonicpizza1466]

I was unfortunately one of those. Thankfully, I've grown up since then, it led me to places and people that made me deeply uncomfortable, made me take a good look at what they're actually saying. It's scary just how easy it is to fall into that hole as a lonely teenager.

[@karue7581]

@@photonicpizza1466 Happy that you got out of it, pal

[@MeesyIce]

Teenagers believing in dumb shit is as old as time.

[@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342]

Talk about imposing nasty bs on a group of young dumb and impressionable people. Nazis lol... They never cared about human beings. Shocker right? lol.

[@jeffersonclippership2588]

It's even more disgusting how many are falling for the same thing again. Us millennials didn't fall down the alt-right pipeline just for gen z to make the same mistake.

[@murphyleigh6319]

Gamergate makes me really grateful that, when it was happening, I basically lived on Les Mis fandom Tumblr, so I basically never saw any of it go down.

[@aturchomicz821]

Based and Innocence Pilled

[@liz_violet]

yea same, but not les mis. i was too busy getting my sex ed and media lit skills from tumblr to care about gamergate, just that it was an anti-girl thing...don't outright say your a gamer till its over.

I never even got in the internet until around 2015 and the English speaking internet until around 2017/8 so I didn't live through any of this and I'm SO happy for it

[@raistlinmajere7149]

I was in boot camp and tech school during that time with little to no access to the internet.

[@enjolraswaters7491]

good for you, thats a good place to be

[@theyrenihilists]

I think it was Hbomberguy or another breadtuber who brought up the point that alot of pre-GG "gamers" were already radicalized during the new atheism hayday of the late 2000s. A common thread in 2000s atheism culture war flame fests was ideological hatred towards Islam (in particular Islamic misogyny per the writings of Sam Harris, Hitchens, et al). Tolerance activists and feminists interpreted new atheist criticisms as Islamophobia, and were in turn demonized as pro-Islam apologists. Thus by the time gamer gate became a thing, there was already a huge population of online contrarian atheists (some being gamers), who harbored anti-feminist and proto-alt-right sentiments.

[@Kyrielsh1]

Waow, looks a bit like France to be honest...

[@PapaSmurf11182nd]

Unfortunately I think that there is a lot of truth to this. The good news is that there are a lot of people (myself included) that went in other directions.

[@leonodonoghueburke4276]

Guilty as charged, the mid 2010s were something else

[@pickyphysicsstudent201]

So a large chunk of GG were carry overs from the late 2000s Internet Athiesm, who have a history of hating Islam because Islam is misogynistic. If the pre-GG people hated Islam for being misogynistic, then it stands to reason that they are anti-misogyny and therefore GG is not sexist.

[@chriswilliamson9993]

@@pickyphysicsstudent201 Watch what they do, not what they say.

[@unslaadkrosis3489]

As a former anti sjw, I can’t believe I didn’t realise how awful that community was sooner. It’s my biggest shame.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

Same goes for me. Glad that my boredom of the anti-SJW content saved me and moved on to something else. Looking back to their content and realized how bad and crazy they are than the SJWs they are fighting with. If they claimed they "seek the truth", then I already found about the truth behind their true colors.

[@Kyrielsh1]

Well, you're really not the only one. Can't change the past dude, glad you take a different stance now.

[@Silver_Prussian]

@@poweroffriendship2.0 like what ? exactly what made those people seems more crazy than screaming women with dyed hair with logic even they hemselves cant understand

[@Silver_Prussian]

Ohh what a cliche the classic i am ex something yeah all of you who switch ideology so easily hear a mediocre argument and go to the other side immediately because you cant think for yourselves. Not only is the ,,my personal story argument" lame as f*ck because its based on one expirience which may be and it probably is unique to you but its also highly probable that you have changed your views for the worst

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@Silver_Prussian Basically, the SJW being referred as a screaming woman with dyed hair is just a massive stereotype to make someone look bad and most of the compilations you see on KZbin are taken out of context.

[@phanzon]

There is a terrifying question one can ask (particularly to Gen Z) that shows the depth of just how effective Gamergate was in its propaganda, domination of the narrative, dizzying speed and the potential it had to be much worse than what it was: "How many of you had an edgy phase in 2014?"

[@useroffline9999]

@@elimyers1 same 😬to think i was in the fourth grade when this all went down

[@laylamorrison9596]

@@useroffline9999 I was in 2nd Grade and I had no idea about any of this until 2019! Seven-Year-Old me was too busy reading comic books, and looking foward to the new Star Wars movies at the time to worry about any of this.

[@TheBeatlesShow]

I am so lucky to have never fallen into their trap. I never became one of them, and I'm relieved to know that.

[@redspriteaja6362]

As an older person in generation z, I guess you could say I was coming out of it or rather whatever things like that ended already. By the time GG was a thing or vaguely relevant it seemed like an impenetrable mass of nonsense. With the glory of hindsight and people explaining what happened... It's still an impenetrable mass of nonsense that even if I were to take at face value would be immature at best from that crowd.

[@liambrewerpowerlifting]

I kinda caught up with this stuff in 2017 and I’m still confused why I thought it made sense

[@amandaisonadventure]

This was tough to get through, i feel physically nauseous. Im at a loss of words but I wanna say thank you. this video will forever influence the way I look at the digitalisation of society and the online world in general.

[@superslash7254]

Wait until you see the firsthand videos from the women who had the blueprints of their homes and detailed plans of attack against their disabled children published online. Or the PoC who were evacuated by the police due to bomb threats... multiple times. Only that's going to make you feel even more ill because those people are the ones this video is trying to convince you never existed, and they were victimized by the people this video is defending: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5fRg4aCaMmSrrc

[@WolfCoder]

I remember thinking Anita Sarkeesian being treated unfairly and Thunderfoot made so many videos it looked like a creepy obsession. It was because of him that I sort of dropped out of my "rational" era KZbin phase.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

I think this goes the same for Brie Larson all because of her performance on Captain Marvel and anti-SJWs stated that the film is so bad it wasn't even come out yet and they expected to fail. Due to how successful the film was, the anti-SJWs find an excuse to justify their hatred on the movie and the actress herself. I find it really creepy to see them, especially in the likes of TheQuartering, spending their time uploads many videos of Brie Larson repetitively and make a rant about how bad she is 24/7. Brie may not be my favorite actress, but I think she is pretty innocent to say the least and I don't think she deserves the hate she gets. As for Thunderfoot, his obsession with Anita has the same energy as other anti-SJW channels obsessed with Brie Larson. Whether they do it for KZbin money or not, the repetitive videos ranting on someone they don't like is pretty disturbing if you think about it.

[@Speedojesus]

@@poweroffriendship2.0 The Quartering is basically GG/modern gaming culture in a concentrated form. Edgy fucks who can't form a single clue in their about why they even dislike something beyond a reason they literally just remembered or came up with. I watched a BF2042 glitch video with a good amount of views the other day, and to my surprise because I don't really watch those types of Crowbcat cherrypick videos, even on a 1 minute video about 2042 having a feature missing one of the most upvoted comments was basically just "devs removed it because women gamers and disabled POC found it too hard lol XDDDDDDDDD", with people agreeing and trying to connect a BFV dev that was fired after saying "SJW" stuff to 2042 having no spawn protection against aerial vehicles, despite the change actually making the game harder. It honestly just feels like I'm seeing psychotic people babble at the walls, and it frustrates me because I know these people are most likely literal children and that worries me.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@Speedojesus TheQuartering also got blacklisted from _Magic: The Gathering_ community for harassing a female cosplayer and one who literally peed on the basement drain on livestream. Even other KZbinrs with the likes of DeAngelo Wallace, Bowblax, H3H3, Darkviperau, and even Keemstar knows that he becomes a problem outside the anti-SJW community. That dude sucks.

[@kittykittybangbang9367]

@@poweroffriendship2.0 Remember when The Lego Movie 2 trailer dropped out, and it seemed like almost every anti-sjw youtuber was making it seem like it was sjw propaganda? And then the film came out and it turns out it was nothing like the sjw propaganda everybody was making out to seem, and then it bombed. And everybody was asking to themselves "Why did The Lego Movie 2 bomb?" "Oh yeah it was the weather, and not the fact that the internet was making out to seem like it was going to shove sjw propaganda down kids' throat during 2016/2017 when the alt-right was at its absolute peak." And thanks to The Lego Movie 2 bombing, other Lego films were also canceled. I made this comment because I felt like no one else had brought this point up, and it was just something I wanted to get off of my mind.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@kittykittybangbang9367 I never knew that. I thought the LEGO Movie 2 is good but the reason why why other LEGO movies were canceled simply because it has anything to do with WB making another dumb decision and the creators behind the LEGO movie left the project.

[@virtueisdead]

honestly the whole story about zoe quinn is genuinely one of the most horrifying stories i have ever heard in my entire life

[@semantick]

It's really insane to me to watch this play out. I remember being only 15 when this all started, and the reason I was so sucked into it was because I had so many unacknowledged mental health problems, I was utterly depressed, aimless and not planning to reach my 18th birthday. I devoured long-form content like candy, hours and hours of videos a day, always trying to find something to occupy my adhd and autistic brain so I wouldn't be miserable thinking about my life. GG, specifically internet aristocrat/metokur, was like a goldmine to me. Hours of what felt like unraveling a sweater of lies and deception, and all tied up with a neat list of people to mock and an ideology that was all too eager to accept an impressionable underage girl into it's rank and file of human shields. You wouldn't believe how easy it was to go from dunking on a girl who's crime was was being a moderately attractive game developer with a personal life to listening to fucking documentaries about the Frankfurt school and Kalergi plan. I think the thing that made it the hardest to get out was people denying the absurd humor of the reality. I had been browsing imageboards since I was 11, and it certainly fucked up my sense humanity, but idk. I still listen to some of the semantics, like Vivian's daily dose origins, and it's funny. So much of this is funny if life doesn't mean anything to you and you have nothing to lose and everything to gain and you feel like life would be better if people you view as beneath you would just fall in line. The feeling of retribution and perverted justice that permeated threads upon threads that I consumed is blood curdling looking back. I think we're really underestimating just how much nihilism and the crushing onward march of late-stage capitalism is the first step into becoming whatever these people are becoming. And I wasn't even born after 2000, I can't imagine what the internet landscape looks like for kids who are 15 now.

[@chloesibilla8199]

Thank you for this comment it is extremely informative and adds context I was missing from a first hand account. Good on you for getting out of there . And your right, fascist groups rely on grownups not knowing just how much gas changed online and at school. It always catches us off guard when something terrible happens and we get a small peek into that hidden world of hate. And your right

[@Jtak-qu5hk]

I was 14 when this comment was posted. I think i remember being swept up into the antifeminist “wing” of the alt-right but got out because i was beginning to get into difficult games like dark souls and found hbomberguy and then saw some incredibly stupid stuff that he was covering the alt right saying (not about feminism, i fixed my belief later)and quit the rhetoric entirely.

[@DarkspinedZim]

@@Jtak-qu5hk Hbomberguy? MrMetokur's old troll buddy whose fans harassed some guy for plagiarism?

[@Jtak-qu5hk]

@@DarkspinedZim Hi, I don’t know who that is, or how that’s relevant to a short explanation of how i got out of the alt-right rabbit hole. I didn’t mention hbomberguy out of believing he’s immune to being a bad person. That said, I haven’t seen him endorse the harassers or his (assumed) past actions with this trolling stuff. Thanks i guess?

[@Sarah-re7cg]

This is horrifying. Like this is genuinely horrifying with how obsessed and organized these people are with attacking women and any guys who get in their way.

[@suffer1055]

they don’t put that much effort in into anything else either, the amount of drive they have to hate is honestly intriguing like…if you put that much effort into gaining some emotional intelligence or compassion or just damn near things you ACTUALLY like to do becaus let’s be clear, these people arnt happy. i mean sure, their plan “worked” but in grand scheme it didn’t. Women are in gaming more than ever and how they are treated is being talked about more than ever we still have a LONG LONG way to go

[@Plotbunnyhunter]

i thought gamergate was bad, but then I learned about kiwifarms ...

[@autumncaraway3383]

i got big caught up in the lies of gamergate when it happened by watching mundanematt. I genuinely believed that it was about ethics in games journalism. i absolutely had the potential to fall down the alt-right pipeline as i was a 4channer and considered myself a centrist. I feel im truly lucky to have friends who could talk to me and introduce me to more feminist ideas with the extreme patience one would need for such a feat. i honestly stopped believing in gamergate in like 2015 after a slow and belated understanding of finally seeing how everything was more about hating women than journalism, and deciding to finally give the anita sarkeesian videos a chance (which i had judged without watching until then) and realized how much a valid point she had i finally stepped away from it. its been an absolute ride to watch your videos and reflect on the whole experience. Id say i was lucky to find my way away from teetering on the edge of alt-rightism. hindsight is 20/20 ofc.

[@PayAttEx]

I'm similar to you. I really thought it was about gaming journalism, but looking back at it now? It was anything but that. It pretty much all boils down to the gaming community feeling threatened, the gaming media and both left and right wing grifters fanning the flames of that for big clickbait and then the gaming community retaliating against them. It was quite literally a vicious cycle and it kept going for so long because neither side would let it go. The media was profiting, the alt right ranks were swelling and so the grifters were profiting and the gamers toxic by nature would never back down from the challenge. Nobody was willing to let it go and it just kept escalating to the point it was starting to become a global cultural clash. But looking at the world right now it seems Gamergate was only the prelude, the beta version of the real cultural clusterfuck. Back then it was about gamers, now it's about everything.

[@SourSpark.]

A line that kinda caught me there was, "I honestly stopped BELIEVING in gamergate". I'm definitely reading too much into it, but it's kind of interesting how the GG community had such strong roots in atheism and for many atheist it's common to have that "This was all a lie" experience when moving away from religion. It's almost like Gamergate gave them something new to "believe in" and then many of them, just like you, realized it was another lie and stopped "believing". Sorry I don't know if my point is getting across or not, I just find it all really interesting.

[@autumncaraway3383]

@@SourSpark. oh wow thats curious. im an atheist and have been most of my life, but when framed like that i absolutely see the parallels. I think thats a very strong point that should probably be talked about. I swear i remember other gamergaters talk shit about the Atheism + movement which was supposed to be an intersectional feminist lens and theres probably some heavy overlap there too.

[@jaywhangmakes]

I remember stumbling across a video made by mundanematt where he defends the Men's Rights movement.

[@desmondbrown5508]

Yeah, for a short period, I fell for the allure of the ethics part of this, not knowing about the other parts until several months later. And to be fair, I think the problem I was looking for was corruption, and just didn't have words for it back then. And that's something that has to do with the incentive structure of the system, not the individuals who have to work their for a living. But as a teenager, it's hard to see past the individual element.

[@namixless9732]

i was in middle school when everything went down. as a queer person…the only way you could survive being online was to try and distance yourself from your own community. make yourself “one of the good ones” in hopes that they would just leave you alone. it was genuinely painful to be any type of minority at that time

[@sushinilou666XXdarkzob]

How, is it better today ?

[@Handler22134a]

@@sushinilou666XXdarkzobAs a black dude yes its better but it’s still incredibly racist online.

[@sushinilou666XXdarkzob]

@@Handler22134a Ok, thank you

[@MaticTheProto]

Not a wise strategy. Divide and conquer…

[@tumeg8282]

God you are so cringe

[@balrogdahomie]

14:02 in vid so far Interestingly, for me - and I’m by no means claiming this was a common occurrence, just sharing my personal experiences- Gamergate was actually part of what got me into leftism. Way back when all this was happening I was… 13 or 14, I think? I was born in 1999. I found Anita Sarkeesians videos from a KZbin recommendation, and was just Astonished at all the hateful comments they had To be clear, I was a 13 year old white kid from Arizona. I didn’t agree with a lot of what she was saying, and I was largely still in the mindset that “the laws are equal now so we don’t need feminism”. I was by no means a leftist, or even a centrist on these kinds of things. But the vitriol was just so astonishingly horrid, I just started to ask myself, “are these really the people I want to throw my weight behind?” The “breaking point” for me, so to speak, was when I talked to my mom about it. Very basically, I told her that there was a lot of arguing going on online, and a lot of people were very angry at someone called “Feminist Frequency”. My mom’s response, I kid you not, verbatim, was; “Oh, a feminist? I wouldn’t listen to those people, they’re all a bunch of gross hairy lesbians” Zero exaggeration And like. I didn’t think of my mom as particularly conservative or homophobic. And, worth mentioning, this was in a period where I had just started to learn about homosexuality, and I had begun to realize there wasn’t anything wrong with it. And there was just something about my mom telling me to write off everything this person said wholesale, that just gave me this weird reality check. Maybe it was just teenage rebellion; when your parents tell you not to listen to something the first thing you’re gonna do is go right back to listen to it. But, I like to think there was something deeper going on. It still took a long time for me to come around to more socially inclusive ideas, but I do think, looking back, that was the first domino. The absolutely ridiculous level of vitriol, combined with the insistence that I ignore everything this person says, set me on the course to examine the ideas sarkeesian presented more closely than I ever would have otherwise. Sorry for the weird, semi-personal wall-of-text rant. I just thought my experience was interesting and wanted to share

[@pandoratypography]

Thanks so much for posting this-it’s a really interesting look at that sort of fulcrum moment in your life where things could have gone one way or the other based on how your gut reacted.

[@oanaalexia]

You don't need to apologize, it's safe to state your opinions and experiences here. I am always curious about the minds of younger generations, I'm 35 but I want to know about what happens to our society and how things may evolve in the future. Thank you for sharing.

[@imfrcd]

Not weird, but a well thought out telling of how you feel. If I may, I would recommend you read as much as you can and travel as much as possible. That way you will be exposed to what this world has to offer. There is no try, only do.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

That's really an interesting to tell. The way your mom says "Feminists are all bunch of gross hairy lesbians" sound like what she referred to a typical stereotype that you see on the Internet now and then, especially with those cringeworthy "SJWs gets rekt/own the libs" that were popular back then (and nobody seemed to care about these kind of content on KZbin anymore).

[@carlavandermeer9732]

All too often misogyny and the horrific threats that go along with it are ignored. Women are expected to "take a joke' or grow a thicker skin or are told that's just what happens on social media. Any woman who has had an opinion on social media is subject to these attacks and nothing is done. If it were any other kind of bigotry it might be dealt with. This has real world ramifications and needs to be dealt with now.

[@huuuuuuh2057]

You ever hear of uh, blocking

[@sethbritton6970]

@@huuuuuuh2057 Dismissive and ignorant. A potent double combo you got going on there.

[@carlavandermeer9732]

Have you never thought of not giving hate space to spread their lies and and recruit impressionable young men? This kind of rhetoric has real world consequences for women and other at risk groups. These hateful f*ckwits don't deserve to have space to share their garbage.

[@huuuuuuh2057]

@@carlavandermeer9732 Well, there's real life.

[@stirpiano]

@huuuuuuh2057 That's called the I Hate Mondays fallacy, darling.

[@alexelliott7960]

I don't think I'll ever be able to hear the words "ethics in game journalism" and take it seriously. It could be the least ethical industry, and I don't think I'd be able to completely ignore gamergate nonsense.

[@MadsOcto7]

The mainstream sites are hyping games from companies that harbors sexpest. Not acknowledging that a company is a sexpest is bad, the way some sites are f'ing parasites on the companies, that is sickening.

[@sergnb0]

The worst part is that the gaming industry DOES have a shitload of unethical practices, but of course they all ignore all of them because, well, those benefit rich capitalists, and there's way too many feminists with vibrant hair colors to bully to even begin to care about that!

[@MadsOcto7]

@@sergnb0 you got to have priorities 🤣 But seriously. Fuck the games media

[@Stars-Mine]

The industry was unethical and corrupt back then as is now, as its very much an access based industry, as in, you only get access to the tinniest bit of info if you butter us up and act as a marketing arm rather then a journalistic arm. and that's why many people fell into the trap, including me to an extent. It didnt mater if the zoe quinn story was false when you had all this other unethical shit going on outside of that. But yea, Gamergate ruined any chance of having that stuff actually addressed.

[@Minihood31770]

If you are actually interested in the ethics of the games industry, or rather the lack of them, I would very much recommend James Stephanie Sterling and People Make Games. A lot of it can be depressing as fuck, but they do actually report on the rampant abuse, predatory gambling, and capitalist exploitation rife in the industry. Far too much of mainstream games press does not. Funnily enough most of the GG people don't seem to like Steph though, can't imagine why. On a completely unrelated note they recently came out as non-binary.

[@DiThi]

"They don't want to win the argument, they want to keep the argument going"

[@jama211]

Right???

[@tb_eest]

Hence climate change and abortion are "political issues". Just keep bringing it up every so often, and it'll remain a political problem. As if either are up for debate.

[@topster888]

Meanwhile, the only people who still talk about gamergate are chuds like this guy whining about it, lol

[@russelljackson2818]

And you see dudes in this very comment section still trying to do it.

[@kittykittybangbang9367]

@@tb_eest 6 months later, and now Roe v Wade has been overturned :(

[@HeckleJeckle87]

"The atheist community was already in their pocket" As an atheist, I hate that this statement is true. I pretty much stopped following ANY atheist KZbin channel (except darkmatter) after pretty much every one of them went for Trump.

[@MechanicWolf85]

Trump, the famous "most of my politics come from the bible" and "I use the bible as a defence around a massive protest" Yeah many Athiest lost me during the Anti SJW era, but that would have been the nail

[@anonymousname5860]

I’m so thankful I never fell into the pipeline. It would have been so easy. Thankfully it never happened and I ended up on a Lindsay Ellis video instead.

[@KazeShikamaru]

Are you serious? Glad I stayed out of following people like that.

[@EpioN]

Amazing Atheist has been doing left wing content lately. He fell down the gamergate anti SJW rabbit hole hard but has been crawling his way out the last 3 years.

[@EpioN]

@@gluehfunke1547 at least Dark Matter is going after right wing shills like Prager U now, but he definitely was on the GG tip.

[@TrulyMadlyShallowly]

What I find so interesting - and by interesting I mean: endlessly frustrating - is that people in online feminist circles have been noting and been alarmed about all. this. way before GG. They also warned during and after GG how dangerous the online hate machine - the playbook - could become in general (if it wasn't bad enough) and that GG was more or less a training ground for the masses. People weren't very interested because: hey, online, and hey, special interest groups or something. And yet, 2016 happened and here we are. I can only count the small wins, like Milo being forgotten since.

[@chloesibilla8199]

You don't have to answer but who's milo?

[@TrulyMadlyShallowly]

@chloesibilla8199 See? If he hadn't been - rightfully - deplatformed, you wouldn't have had to ask. Milo Yiannopoulis was a professional troll who got big because of GG.

[@vitormelomedeiros]

46:42 "Because we want to believe truth always wins," that strikes me as one of the most fundamental flaws of contemporary leftist politics. I guess that's why we're still unable to deal with "fake news" (disinformation in general), a lot of us still cling on to the Socratic ideal that truth prevails after debate. But, as was said in the "you go high, we go low" video, that ain't true. "Venceremos" is a beautiful sentiment, but I'm glad here in Brazil we swapped it for "só a luta muda a vida" (only strife changes life). We can only win if we admit that _we_ are trying to win. The right's been doing this since forever. When and why did we stop?

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I mean, as to our last question, a lot of the people who fought in brazil have been persecuted and even killed over history. Last century we saw a lot of that, including bombings in the 20's and a concentration camp in the forties , as well as dictatorships all over, the last of which saw a very lukewarm defeat after decades. Some years later we had PT (worker's party for anyone from the outside : p) reach power along with all their influence on workers movements, and implement a more conciliatory approach. They fell 5 years ago and now it's now, and I fell that even though we have a bazillion blocks on the road, we indeed are, as you say, swapping - back - to strife. Let's just hope that doesn't get canned in favor of next year's elections : /

[@Beretta249]

(to give a USA-centric answer) Coming out of the tumult of the 60's and 70's the Left decided the answer was Pluralism, which is to say politics by expert representatives (elite leaders) instead of by mass movement (thousands in the streets). A problem with Politics By Elites is they tend to get out of touch with their base and enraptured of Ivory Tower anti-materialism, the glory of being courted by lobbyists, and comfortable with the skills they've cultivated playing the system. They become anti-Reform and anti-Populist. They then get run the fuck over by a demagogue, wonder what happened, and decide the common people are Evil and tainted by some vast all-consuming concept like Whiteness, for example. A lot of top-tier Lefties are vocally anti-democratic these days. They like the idea of requiring minimum education or the like to prove someone is "fit to vote." Much easier to justify the hierarchy that rewards them than examine themselves.

[@aleka..]

@@Beretta249 that's some racist, fash-enabling bs. they are the ones who "invented" whiteness, white supremacy... Using words to explain it - it's fine. But sure, make ignorant claims, why not...

[@Saje3D]

@@Beretta249 Well, that’s a bucket of shit. Try again.

[@m3ntyb]

Because assassination, both character and fatal, exist.

[@leasinclaire]

ironically enough, it was gamergate that (eventually) got me into communism and leftist ideas. i was a baby feminist at the time and the toxic backslash to ""sjws"" just made me dig my heels in more. i did high school papers on media representation and investigated further on topics of queer culture, racial problems, and wealth inequality. i still remember when 4chan would spam the popular tags with gore and porn

[@enfercesttout]

internet is weird.

[@dominiccasts]

Kinda same, though oddly by way of Liana K responding to and later elaborating on points made by Anita Sarkeesian (who honestly gave me so much Catholic guilt that I very likely would have eventually snapped and gone anti-feminist without Liana giving a more complete picture of the history and schools of feminism), which primed me for channels like Philosophy Tube.

[@Bluebooty]

Honestly same

[@hithedragon7842]

Same here. I had some questionable opinions when I was a young teenager, as most people do, but it was largely stuff like this that prevented me from ever going any further right. And that gave me a basis for drifting more to the left as I got older. Although what really seems weird to me about it is that gamergate happened within a year or two of me gaining access to social media, so at the time I didn't fully realize that it was the result of a few recent events. I thought the internet was just Like That. I've regained some faith in humanity since then, but even now it's hard for me to imagine the internet without the aftermath of gg. It's scary how much of in impact that shitstorm had.

[@kevinmckenna5682]

Please just grow up and become social democrat or a progressive liberal. Communism is 1) stupid, 2) politically impotent, and 3) intellectually irrelevant.

[@stirrcrazy2704]

It was the internet right-wing’s attachment to “rationality” that finally convinced me to leave it. I got recommended an hbomberbuy video off of an armored skeptic video back when I was about to fall into the pipeline, and I realized that if I really believed I was a rational actor I should at least consider the arguments of the other side. From hbomb I found Shaun, and from Shaun I found this channel. I never looked back lol

[@Redactedlllllllllllll]

The fruit of intellectual honesty.

[@anarchomando7707]

Honestly I got more into hbomber through a lot of his analysis videos (I always loved the reviewing sphere And his critiques on Sherlock was scathing

[@russelljackson2818]

hbomb has this wonderfully British way of carefully breaking down why his opponents' arguments are wrong, while also holding a middle finger directly against their faces. It's really refreshing to see that his videos actually turned some people away from that path to idiocy.

[@KazeShikamaru]

Shaun is so chill.

[@IamBrixTM]

Same kinda. Except it came from my early atheist phase, which eventually absorbed into my reactionary phase. Then had the same thought process as far as the other side of the argument goes. I found Contrapoints :)

[@EikoandMog]

I distinctly remember "This should have been the end, part 2" because that was the moment I went from skeptical of GamerGate to outright hostile to it.

[@TheRealMuckluck]

Recently, I've been thinking to myself "As much as I've read about GG, I feel like I'm still missing parts of the picture." I've also been thinking "I'm really looking forward to more of Ian's stuff. Alt-right playbook is some of the best videos I've ever seen on youtube, and the deconstruction of Mad Max was brilliant. I wonder what he'll do next?" Looks like I got a double Christmas today. Cheers, Ian!

[@sjstronghold9238]

Of course the gaters would use the same tactics in this video: "It wasn't about harassment But also it wasn't that much But also they deserved it".

[@FumeiYuusha]

Going through the steps of a typical narcissist.

[@ConductiveFoam]

The abuser's credo

[@BagOfMagicFood]

I associate that kind of flipflopping logic with climate skeptics now: "Climate change isn't happening!" "Climate change was always happening, so it's not our fault!" "Maybe we did cause climate change, but it's not that bad!" "Maybe climate change is that bad, but there's nothing we can do about it!" "You say there is something we can do about climate change, but I found a spurious reason to believe this one action won't be effective in fixing all climate change or might be a minor burden to comfortable people, so we might as well do nothing at all, because climate change isn't real and I hate Mondays."

[@aegis_knight]

kettle logic

[@pickyphysicsstudent201]

Isn't that what you guys do with Antifa? The only difference is that GG's harassment is on the fringe of fringes and can be likened to some trolls. Meanwhile Antifa threaten, riot, loot and attack anyone who steps a toe out of lockstep and it is applauded as the one true Antifa way.

[@joearnold6881]

I was so disappointed by all this. I’m an atheist. I thought I was part of one rational community against the right wing actions of fundamentalist religion… And then gamergate showed that loads of atheists were just as bigoted, but in different ways. Turns out, being right about one big thing does not make you inherently rational and correct about anything else. In fact, with some people it makes you LeSS reasonable when it comes to self examination “I can’t be sexist! I’ve rationally examined my beliefs in a god and rejected them, so there’s no way I’m irrationally bigoted in some other way… fucking bitches!” I grew more progressive. Too many grew more reactionary.

[@neilfox4626]

Potholer54 taught me just because you are an athiest, it doesn't mean you are rational.

[@zammmerjammer]

I'm not an atheist but spent a lot of time reading about the topic of religion (not just my own), including lots of atheist writings because I read a lot about Romanticism and the era of the French Revolution when lots of different ideas about how society should be organized were being thrown about. Imagine my disappointment upon encountering self-described atheists online for the first time, assuming that meant they were interested in the same topics as I was, only for them to have like zero intellectual underpinning for their atheism beyond "god iznt reel, U R dumb!" and of course anything I said was dismissed out of hand, even when what I was saying were just... historical facts. It was very weird to be treated like a fundamentalist... by actual fundamentalists.

[@BillZoeker]

This is why I'm explicitly agnostic. I'll doubt other people's theories on creation all day, but I feel like once you decide that you know everyone else is wrong, and that you're so sure you've got a handle on the parameters of human existence, you've lost the philosophical plot. And we see it time and time again with atheist communities, it becomes more about righteous indignation and condescension than actually wanting to be at peace with the most complete understanding universe available to us.

[@tinydave17]

I too was really excited to discover the "dunking on Creationists" side of KZbin when it was new and I was just absolutely heartbroken watching it fall into the hands of Fascists. I was already firmly on the left but Breadtube wasn't a thing yet and I think that the experience turned me into more of a Brocialist than I'd like to admit. There are still good Progressive Atheist channels out there and that counts for something but still I'm disappointed beyond words by what happened to most of the community. As a result I don't really care for the label "Atheist" anymore. I've taken to calling myself a Secular Humanist because it describes what I advocate for instead of what I oppose. Sorry for rambling. I could go on and on about this topic.

[@BillZoeker]

@@tinydave17 yeah, I mainly frustrated that any atheist worth listening to is effectively agnostic, but then you've got all these edgy atheists who just hate their parents and give the concept of abstaining from religion a bad name

[@austinfletchermusic]

This video left me incomprehensible and sputtering with rage for almost two hours. Excellent job.

[@Respectable_Username]

It's doubly disgusting that the Gamer Gaters took the suffragette colours of purple and green and weaponised them against women. But then again, taking symbols and corrupting them is just what the alt right does.

[@torakokoneko]

Terfs did it just as well more recently

[@vesperlord4342]

The right wing doesn't have any creativity of their own, so all they can do is corrupt the things other people create.

[@shady8045]

As someone who at least like kinda listened to some of the “mostly those in the new atheist movement”, a lot of the rhetoric revolved around what was done in the past being good but ultimately feminists now going “too far” since I guess when women were allowed to vote literally less than a hundred years ago for the first time that somehow solved all of sexism. So if you asked many of them and myself included whether women’s suffrage was a good thing they would probably all agree with you.

[@tsrenis]

I dunno if I'm convinced that the purple and green were used with that intention, I think that purple and green just look good together but that's probably what they'd want you to think if it was used exactly with that intent so I dunno

[@LordPiccolo]

This is within the DNA of facism. Copying what is popular to get into mainstream. Before nazism marching music and red flags were very popular in the workers movement, that is why they have adopted alongside the name socialism to get into mainstream

[@shilohschwartz8671]

TLDR: it's 4 chan and twitter's fault for being the shittiest social media

[@Densester]

I hate how accurate this is.

[@kittykittybangbang9367]

I'm so glad I don't go on either of those websites

[@TheShuuman]

@@kittykittybangbang9367 I'll use twitter and 4chan as a resource for art learning and to support good friends I know are on the up and up, but I do not linger any longer than I need to.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

I think Tumblr used to be one of the worst social media sites, but Twitter took its place. As for 4Chan, it's no surprise since the website itself is already controversial. There are some good memes that were originated there, but that doesn't make it good.

[@NothingXemnas]

Weirdly, I still think Twitter is among the better platforms. I'd not miss it if it dies, but I follow a LOT of artists there. Streamers and fanartists alike. Content updates, schedules, plans and projects are all shared there in a much less invasive layout than Instagram or Facebook, and the discoverability is as good as KZbin. Horny content, funny content and other stuff are all well presented there. It all comes down to my own mindset coming into it, filtering things, not ever checking replies or quote retweets, and never following people who don't fit my morals. It is a SOURCE OF ENTERTAINMENT to me and should be for the entire lifetime of the site. I love what I see in it and the artistic friends I keep up with through it. Sadly, that is not true to others, and humans have an absurd attraction to sadness and tragedy, so every video talking about Twitter paints it in bad light. If it dies, a LOT of Japanese fanartists will disappear from my life because Skeb and Pixiv are kinda shit... It is only as bad as people make it, and I made it better for myself, but I totally understand people's hate for it. If anything, any social media is bad, there is no salvation, because bad actors are everywhere and humans just won't ever stop looking for sadness and controversy. Also in that same topic, 4chan SUCKS, but it is the internet's containment website. Much like Tumblr's death forcing a bunch of people with weird takes into Twitter, 4chan's death would flood every other side with the world people. Gladly or not, it is unkillable because it has a bunch of backup servers, and if it serves as doomer thought food, its very existence is proof that there will always be evil people. Hate all you want, but it cannot go away cuz it would be worse. It can only be weakened, but at the end of the day, this is what it means to be humans, and GLADLY it also shows me that evil is always a minority. A loud, destructive and hateful but tiny minority. Either way, surprises me I just miss out on so much drama people talk so much about!

[@lucarubinstein3907]

Thank you so much for explaining memeification, I remember at one point I had to explain the Cultural Marxism dogwhistle to classmates in college and they all looked at me like I'd grown a second head. It fucks with your mind when other people don't see the patterns.

[@DigiCount]

This was me with the OK symbol. I think I managed to break through when I mentioned that there's nothing inherently offensive about a person's middle finger, and symbols have the meaning assigned to them by people's understanding of them.

[@notrod5341]

Thats the most insidious shit to me. You have to explain the meme in such detail and depth or you just look utterly insane, and even then its often not enough.

[@GeneralBolas]

@oaktree_ It's not (just) that it's conspiratorial in nature. It's that antisemitism is *ancient.* The longer uncritical racism of any particular form exists in a society, the more deeply those tropes get buried within that society. They become normalized to a degree that they just become part of how you communicate. For example, I'd heard people talking about "lizards in people-suits" as a general condemnation of the wealthy *long* before I learned that this was a specific antisemitic trope. When those ideas are buried so deeply that people often hear about them devoid of their antisemitic context, it becomes exceedingly difficult to root them out. If for no other reason than that it becomes difficult to convince people that they even are antisemitic tropes.

[@hithedragon7842]

Yeah. It's often frustrating to try explaining dogwhistles to other people without sounding crazy and feeding into people's ideas about "people thinking everything is racist these days", and it's unsettling to see someone say one on the internet and not get any comments on it.

[@sethbritton6970]

@@GeneralBolas wait a minute, David Icke was spouting anti semitism instead of just lunacy? I literally just took his nonsense at face value, the way one takes the claims of people in aggressively dirty clothes with pupils that aren't properly dilated explaining how moonbeams can be used as a substitute for nutrition.

[@bennettsnyder315]

"The thing they care about most is being normal" brought me back here. Been thinking about it ever since dems started calling them weird.

[@OhLookNoNumbers]

I'll be honest, even as someone who's familiar with old 4chan memes, the Piccolo dick connection to the GG logo sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. If it was explicitly picked as a dogwhistle they did a damn good job.

[@airwindows]

That's covered. It's irony poisoned: picked both because it's piccolo dick AND because it sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. Pretty arcane, but that's the whole point. The more lunatic it sounds, the better, for these folks.

[@archagenteverlasting1239]

@BnR Clips you're literally a groyper

[@theMoporter]

@@11111110 Look, I know this is pointless, but it's extremely funny to say that GG wasn't making a Piccolo dick reference because male journalists got targeted. It's a gif where Piccolo anally rapes a dude in the first place.

[@asmodiusjones9563]

@@11111110 oh my gosh *you are not convincing anyone*. We see right, straight through you. You are so transparent that even jellyfish get weirded out by it. It’s about ethics in video game journalism, we know, we’ve heard it before.

[@AsherBunnyman]

@@airwindows See /r/frenworld

[@Y2Kikii]

God, this whole era on the internet was so fucking toxic and unbelievably rabid. I'm glad people finally opened their eyes and fought back. Great video and now if anyone ask about what GG was about or if they try to defend it I'll show them this cause people still believe the lies.

[@GallantJayVT]

None of you will ever have an honest conversation about GG because none of you will ever acknowledge that you dogpiled someone for speaking up about an abuser and you continued to defend that abuser for years even after they were shown to be not only abusive but dishonest with every single crowdfunding thing they've pitched.

[@Phlebas]

I really wonder if there's less of it now, because the world does feel more polarized than it did six or seven years ago and the Internet still seems pretty toxic. But I also feel like there's a lot less "Red Pill" stuff going around these days. It's like all these people either left the movement or just became full-on fascists.

[@xBINARYGODx]

@@GallantJayVT lol

[@cannibalisticrequiem]

@@Phlebas No, it's still there. They've just gotten better at hiding it from normies. (ie the people who actually believe this isn't a problem anymore and just something wild that happened nearly a decade ago.)

[@GallantJayVT]

@@xBINARYGODx yeah it was real funny how Milo got a foothold because a bunch of shitty game journalists couldn't admit they were wrong about defending someone with a history of abusive behavior.

[@AllWIllFall2Me]

Man, it's always so weird to me to remember that I was a part of 4chan during this time, and my shock that the 'idiocy' of the gamergate thing caught on and actually had real-world effects and consequences. I remember hearing it all start up, and writing it off as "another dumb thing those assholes are up to". LIke, I was there because I just liked the breadth of topics discussed in the traditional gaming forum (stuff like D&D, Magic, board games) and how the anonymous system meant that ideas weren't judged based on the cachet of the author in the community, but on their value itself. Which would turn out to be kind of wrong, and have some big flaws, but that was my motive at the time. And whenever I would occasionally tab over to the video games board and see them ranting about KZbin feminists, I'd go "yeah, that's par for the course for these chuds", and then move on to look for whatever I actually had come there for. I just couldn't imagine people taking the obvious bile and lunacy of 4chan's neo-nazis and incels seriously, so I didn't think it was anything to care about. Sure, Elliot Rodger had just been a couple months beforehand, but (to me) that was more of an indictment of our mental health and gun control system than that 'incel culture' was something to be taken seriously. IT wasn't until I heard the brutality of their assaults and the scope of them that I really clocked "oh, wow, these assholes are really committed to this." And I even pushed back against it there on 4chan whenever it came up. The disillusionment I had with seeing that idea I held of "ideas will be judged solely on their merit" collapse in the face of obviously hateful groupthink is one of the things that really killed my ability to enjoy time there, and led me to move on.

[@mst3kharris]

Thank you for trying to push back. Seriously.

[@MadassAlex]

Word for word my exact experience. Well said.

[@hrrawr]

44:17 "This is why if you're trying to change the world for the better, it's pointless to ask for their permission." Thank you.

[@sertaki]

By bullshit sensor immediately went into overdrive when I first saw the term SJW used negatively. Upon learning it means "Social Justice Warrior", I was horrified that these people literally think fighting for social justice is inherently bad - but it also made people who were part of this easy to identify.

[@Meguminimal]

That was absolutely the right reaction, but I did want to talk about why it worked at all a little. SJW as a term makes sense and is a good form of self identification, but it was always used as a label against a strawman, the strawman of essentially someone who is a keyboard warrior (to borrow an older term), who doesn't move an inch from their keyboard to do an inch of good for anyone in reality but revels in fighting for their cause online. From there they extrapolate a second variation, that the SJW isn't just a keyboard warrior doing it because it feels good for them, but are in fact insidious in some nebulous fashion. At the very least, the idea was that SJWs were disingenuous as to their beliefs and just fighting for the most meaningless internet points possible, with the vague possibility of something even more sinister about their behavior for you to uncover, if you'll just come and check out this breitbart article. . . Of course, part of what makes this sell well is that it's committing a No True Scotsman fallacy. You aren't like *them*, you believe in totally reasonable amounts of social justice, like us.

[@pitdarkangel2961]

​@@Meguminimal Personally, when I was in those spaces, I always thought SJW was kinda like the term IQ fighter. That warrior kind of had a double entendre, in that it meant passionately fighting for it, while in practise, acting against it. Not that, this was correct, it was probably just how I justified it to myself.

[@sertaki]

@@Meguminimal Let's be real - these people are not mad because people are "keyboard warriors" - Gamergate is just as well made up exclusively of keyboard warriors. And they are not mad because people fight for good online because it makes them feel good - Gamergate is also made up of people who harass folks online because it makes them feel good. These are all nice little excuses and bs argumentations they like to throw around. They are not mad at "SJWs" because of these details that are really, completely irrelevant. Why attack somebody for fighting for change if you don't in reality simply disagree that change should happen? And that is the crux of the issue. The alt-right attacks people fighting for societal change *BECAUSE* they are fighting for societal change, not because they do it "in the wrong way". They do not want these changes, they want everything to remain exactly as they like it, being a perceived dominant power and part of normality. And they want to keep all these (to them) extremely annoying minorities, with their demands for equality and inclusivity and diversity out of the discussion. That's all that there is to it.

[@Meguminimal]

@@sertaki I don't disagree with you, but I think you are letting your (justified) anger with these slimeballs get in the way of properly assessing the term. It is important to them that their terminology make the left sound bad and even more importantly they want terminology that is widely used outside their own spaces. You can't poison your foe's mind if their reaction to your statements is "what the fuck are you talking about. " To that end, whether it was deliberately chosen or an artifact of serendipity, SJW as a term bring perverted by the alt-right made it an excellent onboarding tool for people who were not yet alt-right. And it is important that your onboarding have plausible deniability, hence the choice of a term with normal inoffensive meanings. Think like their attempts to make milk racist.

[@sertaki]

@@Meguminimal I don't think this is a problem of anger getting in the way of assessing terms. What you were doing is accepting their terms without questioning their motives for defining these terms in the way that they do it. Your original post framed their reasonings and definitions as reasonable takes - which they never were. It was always based on dishonesty and as you now pointed out on weaponizing and inverting meanings of terms the left might use. Poisoning the idea of "social justice" by attaching it to a derogatory insult was devious but also genius. I basically agree with everything in your second post (though there is no question the term was very deliberate). But do not ever make the mistake of taking a fascist's explanations for anything they do or criticize as the gospel truth. All this bs about "keyboard warriors", "tumblr outrage", "virtue signaling", "white knights" etc etc is simply trying to re-frame the target of their vile attacks from "people who are fighting for justice in whatever way they chose" to "ridiculous idiots". They do not oppose a specific style of activism. They oppose all activism. And they try to pretend that all activism is ridiculous, based on some cherry-picked examples they think look absurd in the eyes of observers (oftentimes removed from context).

[@PR0MAN01]

Watching this now at 24 years old and reflecting on my thoughts on this back in 2014 are like night and day. I was such a toxic little shit at 18 and got swept up in this hate mob by these selfish grifters. I never sent death threats or anything but I believed the bile these people spewed at face value. Great lecture, it helped me a better understand and reflect on my own history with the GG movement.

[@LunaSkye64]

Same here. I was fresh outta high school when this happens and my god I was such a piece of shit back then

[@Spider-Man_234]

i used to be in the movment too. fucking pewdiepie.

[@Power_to_the_people567]

Same here as a 26yo. I can relate. It sucks that I openly admit I was wrong and people don’t empathize.

[@4QIcehole]

That bit at the end about how any community made up of predominately young, angry white men being susceptible to this rings EXTREMELY true as a lifelong fan of heavy metal. It was somewhere around the millionth conversation in a row where I found myself trying to convince people that nazis and transphobes are bad that I realized I was no longer proud to be part of the community.

[@rhaeven]

Metal has had this problem a looong time. Me and some friends went to Bloodstock 2004, ended up drinking with another group of metalheads we just met, chilling out and talking about the bands we were excited to see. Then the very, very anti-jew talk started. We called them dumbfucks and ditched them fast.. Up until that point I thought almost all metalheads were gonna be nice progressive people, most of the ones I knew were and we were all a little marginalised as a weird subculture. Nope, turns out SO many of them saw metal as "white man's music"

[@asmodiusjones9563]

Oh yeah, the Dead Kennedys wrote a song about those guys…

[@maynardburger]

Thankfully, it's a lot less acceptable in the hardcore/metalcore scene, though it still inevitably has some reach there, too.

[@Yingxera]

@@rhaeven It's unfortunate that especially the more black metal-y side of the scene keeps falling victim to this kind of crap. You can write about horrible and dark topics without being a neonazi, as it turns out

[@ConductiveFoam]

@@Yingxera as a longtime fan of black metal that fact hurts me almost every day.

[@davidfronk9656]

As depressing as this is, if I could like this video multiple times I would. Your content is phenomenal and I greatly appreciate the thought and care you put into it. Thank you

[@Otokogoroshi]

Gamergate is why I stopped going to The Escapist. I've never regretted my choice. Watching Gamergate unfold, as an AFAB person was disheartening and unsurprising. I'm 40 years old, misogyny, anti-feminism, anti-women etc has been deeply tangled up in the Gaming culture since the 90s. In the 80s it was viewed as an activity for everyone, for the whole family! Then in the 90s, it was decided to targetting a specific demographic was more profitable. Gaming being 'For Boys' was manufactured and guys took the bait and believed it (many still do) to the core.

[@liambrewerpowerlifting]

what did The Escapist do?

[@winteryblackfyres]

same I left the site after it being my default home page for years and years during gg

[@mst3kharris]

Hello to another over-forty gamer 😀

[@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342]

@@mst3kharris I'm 35. Not too far behind yall : )

[@theMoporter]

There's something funny about GG giving it so much traffic, only for all the content creators bar Yahtzee to leave, and the only reason Yahtzee was unaffected was because he basically refused to be a part of it. He was grumbly about "SJWs" (which, I think, he has expressed regret for) , but even someone as edgy and easy to slurs as the Zero Punctuation guy could see it was fucking embarrassing.

[@lieutenant_lucky_rocks]

*Nobody* needs to hear “it’s just a game” more than these guys.

[@nukiradio]

Why you are mad? Is only game...

[@isaac1670]

It was never really about games for the people behind the movement. It was just a means to an end.

[@linkofvev]

@@nukiradio That guy is so wholesome.

[@sethbritton6970]

@@isaac1670 Oh man, love your profile name and pic. So want to see the Golden Sun franchise get at least a rerelease at some point.

[@isaac1670]

@@sethbritton6970 Me too, friend.

[@blazinnub2097]

The sad part about this is the Pewdiepie/WSJ conflict not too long after this was basically just gamergate 2.0. So many of the gamergate people got on this and recruited a new group of followers, many never knowing what gamergate even was before getting pulled down the rabbit hole.

[@streafe]

@@PocketDong This is from what I remember at the time, being an avid Pewdiepie (Felix) viewer at the time: - Felix said some questionable things... like paying two indians on Fiverr to hold up a sign saying 'death to all jews.' Felix said that he was 'trying to show how crazy the modern world is' under the guise of 'it's just a joke guys' defence. - saying a racial slur live on stream in a self proclaimed 'heated gamer moment' - announcing a donation to the ADL charity, before neo-nazis start a cosnsipricy theory that Felix was forced to donate to 'the jews,' and soon after Felix retracts his donation, and announces this retraction wearing a piece of clothing which contains something that can be identified as an iron cross, but was actually a Georgian Bolnisi cross. Why he decided to wear this item specifically for this video is suspect, but unknown. - plus some other contriversies which I can't remember off the top of my head. Obviously, being the biggest KZbinr in the world at the time, these contriversies gained some attention from news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal. Felix took issue with the titles of these articles, stating they were misleading and treating them essentially as 'fake news,' leading to distrust within his community of news outlets like the Wall Street Journal. However, these titles were nowhere near misleading, with titles like 'PewDiePie cancels $50 000 donation to anti-hate group: "I messed up," ' obviously referring to the retraction of a donation to the ADL mentioned above. This retraction alongside the Georgian Cross on his collar prompted Alt-Righters and Nazi's in his community to celebrate, with one particularly famous Nazi comic artist Stonetoss tweeting in response: '> that announcement > THAT COLLAR WHAT A FUCKING KING' Is PewDiePie an alt-righter? A Neo-Nazi? No, most likely he isn't. However, it doesn't matter what he actually is, it matters that some portian of his fanbase is, and that allows his community to become one of the prime entry points to the Alt-Right and eventually maybe into becoming a Neo-Nazi. This direct, unseeded outrage towards mainstream news outlets as 'propaganda' leads them away from reputable sources and closer towards sites like 4chan and other Nazi adjacent sites. This is why it was gamergate 2.0, and why PewDie Pie in the post-gamergate era (I stopped watching him after a while, so I can't comment on his behaviour in present day) was dangerous and worth of condemning. Hope this answers your question.

[@KingBobXVI]

@@streafe - "Is PewDiePie an alt-righter? A Neo-Nazi? No, most likely he isn't. However, it doesn't matter what he actually is, it matters that some portian of his fanbase is, and that allows his community to become one of the prime entry points to the Alt-Right and eventually maybe into becoming a Neo-Nazi." Reminds me of a quote from Shaun from his Charlottesville video (iirc) - "It doesn't matter if I ("the left") thinks he's racist. What matters is that _the racists_ think he's racist." As long as they can use you as a recruiting tool, your actual status as a racist/Nazi doesn't matter. As long as the Nazis think you're "one of them", you're functionally identical to an actual, self-avowed, Nazi.

[@moscanaveia]

@@KingBobXVI There's a saying that goes: If a known nazi joins ten other non-nazis at a table and none of them stand up and leave, that table will have eleven nazis.

[@xNero96x]

@@moscanaveia Exclusion will never help that person(the Nazi) ever change his point of view, if you isolate a person and his only people left to associate with are the ones he agrees with he will never change. There's a very clear example of this with the black musician ( can't remember his name) that attended kkk rallies and by just sitting with them and talking to them has changed the mind of a couple of high ranking members that eventually left the klan.

[@streafe]

@@11111110 I never said they at the same time... I only said 'these contriversies' which implies they were different contriversies which each had their subsequent backlash at their various times. I don't have a problem with the jokes PewDiePie makes, or comedy central or Family Guy. The issue I have with PDP is his idolisation by the alt-right and neo-nazi's and his possible unintentional posturing towards them and their beliefs. Kids who watch PDP are around 13-15, and don't have the critical thinking abilities adults have, so if they see a PDP forum on a social media and there are neo-nazi's inside that forum, they aren't able to recognise and avoid content like this. If they start interacting unknowingly with neo-nazi's and the alt-right, they become more accustomed to their persuasiveness and fall into the rabbit hole of the alt right and maybe even into becoming a neo-nazi. That is the issue with PDP how he is one of the biggest gateways into the alt-right.

[@Nyarurin]

It is wild... I've liked that gg mascot design so much - and i have never even had a clue of what those colors are reference to. For someone who was following alt right for about four years i have completely failed to actually learn anything about them. I will never get over of how they effortlessly played me.

[@kingstarscream3807]

That's fair. The alt-right are crazy white supremacists. But don't let the SJWs and anti-Gamergaters trick you either. They condone mass censorship.

[@conorford7852]

​@@kingstarscream3807 and the people who formed a lynch mob to drive feminists out of gaming space ISN'T censorship?

[@kingstarscream3807]

@@conorford7852 No. Crazy degenerates are going to be crazy degenerates. They can be stopped and controlled, like what did happen with the FBI. Attempting to blacklist certain words, images, and ideas from being expressed altogether, either by political means or corporate/societal means is a step beyond.

[@regisglass5464]

​​@@kingstarscream3807hen as the FBI concluded gamergate was about harassment, is blocking harassment mass censorship?

[@Little1Cave]

I had no clue about the purple/green connotations either. Thankfully, I never engaged with THAT bubble of meme culture, but I do feel better about knowing it in this context in case I somehow come across it. And as an artist, I know what color combo NOT to use in my artwork.

[@ooppii1]

As a woman in this space I left, and have never come back in the same capacity. Me and my bf also nearly broke up, because he was becoming an angry misogynist due to this

[@punishedf]

maybe it was you, not him

[@ooppii1]

@@punishedf that would be odd, since he agrees with me

[@gabriel9116j]

@@punishedf bro you are not gonna lay her lol

[@crystaleunoia3974]

@@punishedf Spoken like a true incel 👍

[@brano13177]

​​@@punishedfruh: you got ratio'd three times Maybe pack it in and stop with the bs ya jerk

[@ap_red]

Thank you for this, I never understood gg until now. I just thought it was a bunch of young misogynists having a strop over not having their boys-only club, I hadn't realised just how awful gg got and its impact.

[@ForeverGotShorter]

I was part of a Facebook group at the time that was like 95% libertarian (I was one of a handful of center-left people, literally like three people, though I hadn't figured out I was in the minority yet), and they weren't full-on gaters, they weren't talking about going on harassment campaigns as far as I know… …you could tell they were pretty angry at Sarkeesian and Quinn, though. But they could never quite articulate WHY. It was a gut feeling kinda thing. I don't think even they really knew.

[@JaMaAuWright]

They have not stopped trying to infiltrate the furry fandom, and have found a small amount of success in the niches they manage to carve out for themselves. Used to see attempts to recruit people into their ideology fairly frequently but nowadays it's only really diehards and people who were already furries committed to it.

[@USSAnimeNCC-]

These trash are always try to get in everywhere pretending to care of what ever it is so they can radicalize people to their far right view