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Its so obvious looking back on it. I was sucked in for a bit as a teen. The fashy dudes who quickly attached themselves to it made even young conservative me dislike the movement. I fairly quickly dropped it, slowly became a leftist, and now realize it was all basically made up to radicalize me and my peers. It was funny hearing about people like Steve Bannon from it, then seeing him help elect a president, and having to talk about him in an ethics class. Truly proof that this timeline is scuffed.
I just remember being in it for a bit but then at some point was like "hmmm, these guys who care about 'ethics in video game journalism' also seem to think police killing black people is justified every single time" and it shook me out of it.
I was never that right-wing to begin with though. Maybe "anti-SJW liberal" at worst.
depression quest came out 8 years ago. it's been nearly a decade since gamer gate first kicked off. you know, if half the people back then who cared about 'ethics in games journalism' saw that basically the movement turned into hardcore anti feminism and then literally just fascism, I'd hope some of them would back down
if half the people back then who cared about ‘ethics in games journalism’ saw that basically the movement turned into hardcore anti feminism and then literally just fascism, I’d hope some of them would back down
It was basically just a movement to create a more libertine reactionary space on the far right, directly appealing to the worst impulses of chauvinist libertines who were previously politically disengaged or hostile towards the right over its relationship with theocracy. Maybe some of them needed the intermediary steps to really build a firmly reactionary world-view starting from the premise that women and minorities want to take their shiny fun-time treats and tell them "please sir stop screaming slurs, this is a mcdonalds and I'll have to call the police if you don't calm down," but what most of them fundamentally wanted was a sense of power and belonging and for no one to be allowed to tell them "no," just the age-old reactionary idea that someone isn't really free unless they can own, use, and trample upon others without consequences or resistance (a notion pushed by slavers, the original Fascists, and countless libertarian libertines who openly argue for children and women to be considered chattel property of men).
I think most people who wouldn't have gotten sucked in if they knew where it was going and actually got suckered in by the polite propaganda probably dropped it once it fully crystalized into a fascist movement.
Recalling my own time on chan sites, if you didnt see it coming it’s because it didnt bother you.
I mean I cared about that, but the real version with publishers buying reviews, not the version about hounding random bloggers.
I care about ethics in games journalism too, I think it matters that mega corps are buying opinion pieces to turn articles into extended marketing. it's just that the phrase became a dog whistle and justification for gamer gate and all that fucked up shit that came with it. and so now, I do not care about 'ethics in games journalism', I care about the total abolition of private property which will behead every publisher CEO that exists, thus solving the problem
It is funny how Jason Shreier, a man who actually looks at the industry with a critical eye, is absolutely loathed by KotakuInAction types.
Sorry, that's what journalism is, or should be, a reporting of factual information based on things the journalist found out. KIA weirdos just want journalists to uncritically report what video game companies tell them to report and then say whether a game is "objectively" good or bad.
Same could be say about Jim Sterling. They constantly attack the industry and call out the reason for microtransactions and shitty games being a product of capitalism, but then KIA goes absolutely nuts about them. It's like they think EA is just an evil company who loves being evil for no reason.
It was a surreal experience being active on the internet when Gamergate was blowing up. Felt like everyone around me was collectively losing their minds.
I didn't reach fascism but I stuck around for a while because I was a privileged kid who really only had videogames in my life.
"Why the hell were these sjw's so bothered by this? Literally all I did was exist and somehow everything is my fault?"
Is what I would tell myself. Basically with no knowledge of how to separate myself from these critiques I really felt like I was being told to internalize those criticisms, and I rejected that. I knew not to be shitty towards women, so what harm was it if I I played these games? To me it felt like the "videogames cause violence" panic.
After a while I started to realize something felt off and my mind opened up a bit. For one thing, it was seeing brazenly transphobic rhetoric that gave me an "are we the baddies" vibe. Like it never made sense to me why people could be so shitty to trans people, when trans people just wanted to go about their lives.
Anyways It took a few years of being around women more and listening in to their discussions (also there were some good Reddit posts, like one that explained toxic masculinity did not mean all men are inherently bad) which got me to realize GG was this giant self-sustaining bastion of ignorance that I had naturally taken to.
"Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" is not just a fun saying. It accurately describes a phenomenon that shows time and again that the smallest things they disagree on can send them hurtling to the far right.
Doesn't help that there was almost no left at all back then and spaces like reddit were entirely controlled by libertarian-bros.
Like, what? A normal person who didn’t like what they were hearing would simply ignore Anita Sarkesian and go back to playing COD (a loser move, but better than being a nazi)
I mean, many did. At least at the time. It's not like even back then video games were still nerd shit, every dudebro in the country hopped on CoD every day to do sick 360 noscopes. And they didn't care about this shit, because they were neither interested in video game discourse nor terminally online. And the gamers back then fucking hated CoD, it was this intermediate period between CoD being for gamer nerds, because only they play video games, between gaming becoming mainstream enough that CoD gets talked about again en masse, where no self-respecting gamer would admit to touching the stuff.
Braver than the troops. And the cops. And the woke FBI girl who’s reading this :)
For real she has had death threats and the cops just shrugged them off. Seriously an amazingly brave woman.
Anita Sarkeesian is very much a liberal feminist lacking a lot in her critiques of video games. that said, this woman became a fucking pariah for millions of angry young men who harassed and attacked her for years, and still do even, because she took the most bland feminist critiques of their video games and said they were kinda shitty to women. not to boycott games, not to attack the people who played them as evil, just to take a critical look at the media people consume with a feminist lense. and then they all became nazis because this was too much
Yeah, I tried watching her because the right people hated her, but it was pretty bad. She obviously hadn't played the games she was critiquing (for example she criticized white Supremacy in Bioshock infinite) and the production value was low.
But I think she inspired a movement, and there are more game critics now, folks like Errant Signal (their video on Civilization is very good), TUN, Jimquisition and HBomberGuy.
I just realized my list is
-all-3/4 Male, does anyone have any good game critics who are women?Jimquisition is no longer male, they are non binary now 😎
(for example she criticized white Supremacy in Bioshock infinite)
I haven't seen any of her videos, but this seems like a plausible take to me?
Like the whole second half of that game is about Black revolutionaries who somehow turn evil as soon as they try to take power.
Yeah, it's white supremacist in the sense that it both sides things, but she was pointing at the games depictions of white supremacists and going "look! White Supremacy!" Which like, yeah, there's going to be white supremacists in a game about white supremacy being bad.
Yeah, I tried watching her because the right people hated her, but it was pretty bad. She obviously hadn’t played the games she was critiquing (for example she criticized white Supremacy in Bioshock infinite) and the production value was low.
I typically abstain discussing Sarkeesian because at this point its a third rail and no matter what criticism you might have of her, the reaction was absurdly horrifically disproportionate and she is unquestionably a victim.
....
But yeah, that was always my issue with her content also. I know feelings towards Lindsay Ellis are mixed but like her or not you can tell she's 100% a film/media person through and through who genuinely loves movies while also offering a woman's perspective and feminist take on them and damnit I consider myself a fan even if she does have some bad takes now and then. I suppose it is gatekeeping...but I just don't feel the same way towards Sarkeesian.
Ellis is entertaining and right like 95% of the time. Anyone who's putting their takes out on the internet 24/7 is going to have a couple bad ones. Also she's a lib and that doesn't help.
But the twitter backlash was way disproportionate.
Femenist frequency still routinely gets like at least a 40:60 like to dislike ration or worse every video lol it’s crazy that people are still burning that torch a decade later
Broke: Hating Zoe Quinn over dumb reactionary bullshit. Woke: Thinking Zoe Quinn is cool.
Bespoke: Hating Zoe Quinn for taking the money and running on the Chuck Tingle FMV dating sim.
Ah the “it’s about ethics in game journalism” crowd that never make a peep about the sycophantic relationship games journalism has with the developers wherein they just print whatever the fuck the devs want so they can keep getting special treatment. Every big game is perfect, crazy coincidence that
if for some reason you want to know the nitty gritty, wikipedia has actually a very competent recollection of the events that lead up to gamergate and everything thereafter, for some reason
Tbh that’s pretty the beginning yea. It spiraled out and grabbed Anita mainly bc her show came out at about the same time and it all just escalated bc gamers sat around all day psyching themselves up over it
