The man told jurors he spent hours listening to far-right podcasts before breaking into the Pelosi home and attacking the then-Speaker’s husband with a hammer.
The dumbest possible thing to be radicalized by.
Right? Gamergate is something I’ve never understood at all. Like… People try to summarize the whole thing for me and after two sentences I just blank out entirely because it’s all so weird, convoluted and dumb.
A gigantic “he-said-she-said” that somehow devolved into tons of harassment, death threats, violence and “calling someone’s boss so they’d get fired because they weren’t nice enough online” or something…
Your 1-sentence answer to understanding Gamergate has less to do with any of the people involved or a timeline of events. Gamergate, more than anything else, was an opportunity. A springboard to indoctrinate people into far right politics by playing to people’s fear of the Other, mistrust in media, and stoking anger at a perceived scandal.
If it never happened, if it wasn’t video games, it would just as well be something else. It would be music or sports or anything that people are passionate about. Right wingers were running out of steam with the Tea Party, and Gamergate was in the right place at the right time.
EDIT: Some contemporary discussion on GG actually, prophetically, supports this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2k0bpi/why_gamergate_is_a_rightwing_movement/
As someone on another forum said, the GG movement is primed to be the next young Republican demographic, and all of the pieces have been put into place to subvert the Authoritarian revolt into a rabid conservative base. So next year when all of the GGers (who remain) go from moderate liberals to Tea Party advocates, you can say you were at ground zero.
That got me thinking about my Q/MAGA following father and how both being indoctrinated into Tea Party politics as a teenage boy on top of Evangelical Christianity as well as being sucked into Gamergate and Sargon of Akkad’s whole “classical liberalism” grift for a while. I see a lot of that same outrage and ingroup-outgroup clashing being taken advantage of by Q and MAGA.
People are already teetering on the edge. Mental health treatment and awareness in this country is replaced by toxic masculinity and the idea that taking care of your head is for cucks.
Was he radicalized for it, or is it what finally set him over? These are two very different things, even if they may immediately appear “the same”.
How actually historically relevant it is is just mindboggling. It is literally the codification and beginning of the alt-right. Britebart news guy and eventual Presidential advisor Steve Bannon and a massive swack of the early alt talking heads right got their start with Gamergate. It’s essentially the proving ground of the model of engagement and the networking that brought the scum together.
I suggest Ian Danskin’s talk on "A Case Study of Digital Radicalization " https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=WD8gi7XXFVrIKg-n
It is one of the best breakdowns of Gamergate I have ever heard while keeping sight of just how bloody insane the whole thing is. It’s a really long video yes but it really has some interesting takes on digital Radicalization and a key part of the modern history of how we got where we are.
Ian Miles Cheong got his start with Gamergate. That sholud tell you everything you need to know about what it was.
Cheong was around before gamergate. He switched from being left leaning to full on alt right to get that grift going.
Sounds like it’s all you need to hear, not all there is to know. Plenty of extremists use legitimate movements or concerns to prey upon those desperate individuals who are seeking redress.
Dude, I watched gamergate spring up. I damn well know what it was and the damage it caused not just to gaming but to politics in general.
When Steve Bannon decide to use your movement as a recruiting tool and playbook, you KNOW it’s rotten.
Game journos got real chummy with indie devs and everybody was fucking everybody. All objectivity was lost and it was full of corruption. Look up the gamejournopros group.
Everything you said was wrong, wow.
Everything I said was true. Just because you think it’s wrong doesn’t mean it is. Maybe do a little research outside your bubble.
My brother in Christ, I was there watching it happen. I saw the sad, misogynistic weirdos who used it as an excuse to harass women or as a way to gain a platform (ie, Ian Miles Cheong, Miles Yiannoppoulos). So miss me with that. Hell, Cheong and I used to follow each other on Twitter before his heel turn during GG. So yeah. Miss me with that.
Yes, those are the people who used it to gain clout. That doesn’t mean that’s not how it started, though. There was a loss of objectivity in game journalism due to personal relationships, then a bunch of mysoginistic shitbags took the bag and ran as far as they could so they could gain a podium to spout their hatred.
It’s never just one thing.
Some people had different ideas about it but the vast majority that I saw were all about corruption in games journalism. Sure a lot of trolls got their start there too but it doesn’t mean that was the point.
The vast majority of the movement was misogynistic, but even the parts that were legitimately focused on corruption were focused on the AAA devs “paying” for preferential reviews of their garbage. That A. hasn’t stopped and B. had nothing to do with indie developers.
Yeah, you are a good example of what happens to somebody who shapes their reality after nonsense like gamergate and other right wing bullshit conspiracy theories.
That doesn’t explain the rampant misogyny and death threats.
Whatever the fuck that means.
Gamergate was something Steve Bannon had his gross fingers all over. He’s one of the most disgusting, infuriating propagandists out there… If I remember correctly he got his “start” with political manipulation in the gaming world. He recognized that you can radicalize “rootless” men who were lost in life and just playing video games to escape so he chose that vector to propagndize and create an army of gravy seals.
He literally did a fascist tour of Europe during the Trump years to push countries already flirting with far right policies to go further.
He’s one of a few people that really deserve a one way trip to the sun.
TIL. Really, I wasn’t aware of any of that. Now it makes sense lol
It was Steve Bannon himself engaged in a proof of concept that gamers were a ripe plumb of dissatisfied idle white men just ready to be radicalized by the right wing.
He learned this from his background and how he got rich in the first place: building World of Warcraft gold farms (seriously).
Holy. Fucking. Shit. Thanks for the rabbit hole, I didn’t know any of that (not American).
Shocked! Shocked I tell ya. Who but everyone could have seen this coming.
Sounds like made up bullshit. Either way he either needs to be in an asylum or a prison.
Cool story, bro. Tell it to your buddies in prison.
I am mostly surprised that this shit had such a long breath.
Its great that we have free speech protection for Nazis because they like totally won’t oppress anyone else’s speech when they gain power
Can’t tell if guy needs a mental health evaluation or is going for one after the trial to reduce/alter sentencing. He doesn’t seem competent. Pleading not guilty and then openly admitting to stuff on the stand makes it seem like he doesn’t understand the situation he’s in.
I still think it was a lovers spat gone wrong.
His next big video game challenge? Keeping the soap in his inventory.
Yeah, not a big fan of prison rape jokes, sorry.
Mm, good for you. I’m not a fan of fascists beating the spouses of senators with a hammer either, yet here we are! Maybe if people like this got more than a slap on the wrist from permissive, gullible judges, it would stop happening.
He probably also drank Gamergirl Water.
What the fuck does videogame journalist corruption have to do with Nancy fucking Polosi?
Try reading the article.
And that’s not what gamergate was about, no matter what you tell yourself. It was a misogynistic hate campaign.
It’s what the vast majority of those who followed it cared about. And it’s about a decade late to have anything to do with this dude.
