The internet was so much better until around 2014-2015 with Gamergate, the rise of the alt right, Trump and the complete polarization of every community. The alt right managed to outright take over and radicalize so many forums and communities. People only began to notice it until after the transformation was complete or close to it and by then, it was too late.
I used to hang out on every Doom forum and it wasn't until 2014-2015, they all became polarized and had so much drama on them. It reached a boiling point in 2017 with ZDoom and their mods finally having enough of all the politics and completely banning it for good and enacting strict rules to prevent the discussions. Every gaming forum is overrun with the alt right. Even on Steam, you see iron cross avatars on their forums when looking for troubleshooting help for running old games.
Gamergate sped up the shitty on gamer internet, but platforms like reddit etc. replacing independent-ish sites and forums created the conditions. The same reactionaries were there but didn't share a website with actual humans. Web 2.0 fucking sucks/
Yeah, Reddit was always a shit hole. That's the ironic thing to me when people talk about how they miss Chapo on reddit like it was some how better than over here.
The MRA movement basically started on reddit and it was a radicalization site for that reactionary movement. They predate Gamergate and more than anything, Gamergate and the Alt Right was a culmination of all these reactionaries snowballing into one another.
The "redpill" philosophy BS got it's start on Reddit with the MRA. Redpill sub at one point had over 200k members, and it was only one of many anti-feminist subs.
The reactionaries have always been there, but they got louder and crazier around 2014-2015. I still remember when the reactionaries were Ron Paul bots.
It wasn't just gaming forums they took over either. Basically all entertainment, hobby and sports communities. People forget that 2015 was the year that Colin Kaepernick began kneeling. NFL forums were always a hell hole of jackass conservatives cause the sport has always had a chud fanbase, but the anthem protests sparked a change and they have never been the same again. Gone were the actual football discussions and it was just endless arguing over nationalism and DISRESPECTING DA TROOPS. Every forum would have several thread about individual players who kneeled and the threads would be filled with dog whistles for racists and accusations of hating America and the military. It got so bad that even the stat nerd sites started talking about it. The NFL handled this so badly and just poured gasoline on the fire to incite the moron fans to get even louder. 5 years later, nothing has changed. This year has sparked all of that to come back with the NFL's laughable PR stunt of putting anti-racist slogans on fields (the irony of a league that most of their owners voted for Trump yet they put Black Lives Matter on the fields), and these fans still haven't learned anything.
The internet was so much better until around 2014-2015 with Gamergate, the rise of the alt right, Trump and the complete polarization of every community. The alt right managed to outright take over and radicalize so many forums and communities. People only began to notice it until after the transformation was complete or close to it and by then, it was too late.
I'm not gonna argue that things weren't different back then, because they were, but they also weren't good either. Gamergate didn't create its frothing hordes of chuds from whole cloth, it provided a rallying point and radicalization path for disaffected men who were already self-serving chauvinist pigs: it was a breaking point where politically ignorant western chauvinists were functionally made to acknowledge their biases and bigotry and either embrace or reject them, and most of them embraced it and started exalting the vile bullshit they'd always carried with them but hadn't thought about or had consciously kept in private.
Social spaces were still dominated by shitty sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic guys, it just wasn't a fucking crusade for them yet; they wanted to intrude upon and silence conversation about anything outside their perspective as a function of their ingrained biases, but they lacked the militancy and focus that the reactionary movement behind Gamergate would later give them..
The internet was so much better until around 2014-2015 with Gamergate, the rise of the alt right, Trump and the complete polarization of every community. The alt right managed to outright take over and radicalize so many forums and communities. People only began to notice it until after the transformation was complete or close to it and by then, it was too late.
I used to hang out on every Doom forum and it wasn't until 2014-2015, they all became polarized and had so much drama on them. It reached a boiling point in 2017 with ZDoom and their mods finally having enough of all the politics and completely banning it for good and enacting strict rules to prevent the discussions. Every gaming forum is overrun with the alt right. Even on Steam, you see iron cross avatars on their forums when looking for troubleshooting help for running old games.
Gamergate sped up the shitty on gamer internet, but platforms like reddit etc. replacing independent-ish sites and forums created the conditions. The same reactionaries were there but didn't share a website with actual humans. Web 2.0 fucking sucks/
Yeah, Reddit was always a shit hole. That's the ironic thing to me when people talk about how they miss Chapo on reddit like it was some how better than over here.
The MRA movement basically started on reddit and it was a radicalization site for that reactionary movement. They predate Gamergate and more than anything, Gamergate and the Alt Right was a culmination of all these reactionaries snowballing into one another.
The "redpill" philosophy BS got it's start on Reddit with the MRA. Redpill sub at one point had over 200k members, and it was only one of many anti-feminist subs.
The reactionaries have always been there, but they got louder and crazier around 2014-2015. I still remember when the reactionaries were Ron Paul bots.
It wasn't just gaming forums they took over either. Basically all entertainment, hobby and sports communities. People forget that 2015 was the year that Colin Kaepernick began kneeling. NFL forums were always a hell hole of jackass conservatives cause the sport has always had a chud fanbase, but the anthem protests sparked a change and they have never been the same again. Gone were the actual football discussions and it was just endless arguing over nationalism and DISRESPECTING DA TROOPS. Every forum would have several thread about individual players who kneeled and the threads would be filled with dog whistles for racists and accusations of hating America and the military. It got so bad that even the stat nerd sites started talking about it. The NFL handled this so badly and just poured gasoline on the fire to incite the moron fans to get even louder. 5 years later, nothing has changed. This year has sparked all of that to come back with the NFL's laughable PR stunt of putting anti-racist slogans on fields (the irony of a league that most of their owners voted for Trump yet they put Black Lives Matter on the fields), and these fans still haven't learned anything.
I'm not gonna argue that things weren't different back then, because they were, but they also weren't good either. Gamergate didn't create its frothing hordes of chuds from whole cloth, it provided a rallying point and radicalization path for disaffected men who were already self-serving chauvinist pigs: it was a breaking point where politically ignorant western chauvinists were functionally made to acknowledge their biases and bigotry and either embrace or reject them, and most of them embraced it and started exalting the vile bullshit they'd always carried with them but hadn't thought about or had consciously kept in private.
Social spaces were still dominated by shitty sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic guys, it just wasn't a fucking crusade for them yet; they wanted to intrude upon and silence conversation about anything outside their perspective as a function of their ingrained biases, but they lacked the militancy and focus that the reactionary movement behind Gamergate would later give them..