It's like, at first, it was relatively apolitical except maybe the New Atheists who got popular by criticizing the mostly right-wing religious nutjobs.
But then, I think around the mid-2010s, it started to get super political. Suddenly, everybody started to talk about how the evil wacky removed SJWs were trying to destroy gaming and our culture?
At this point, it seems like many people have snapped out of it and are making fun of these "anti-woke" crazies, but what materially caused this phenomenon to happen in the first place and why does it still persist to an extent?
I think we may be talking about two different kinds of "nerd" here. In this specific example, I'm not just talking about people with nerdy hobbies, I'm talking specifically about a very particular kind of (usually white, male, middle class) guy whose understanding of politics begins and ends with the South Park "everyone is dumb for caring about things" mentality. Spaces like that were very common prior to gamergate stuff, I would say they were the majority of "nerd" spaces online, but not the only spaces (people who didn't want to tolerate that bullshit didn't)
I wouldn't say that these people were concern-trolling nazis, but rather people who were useful idiots for them, and had their "let's just not talk about politics because it starts fights, and just enjoy the media we talk about here." twisted into the "politics is when wamens and minorities." sort of stuff we see today.
I can agree with everything you’ve said, I think we were just talking about two different types of people.
Yeah, I don't disagree with your stuff at all, I've known plenty of nerds who do care about politics and political ideas in their media as well.