I can understand, in an abstract way, why Gamergate seems like such a big deal to those who took part, or who had front-row seats to it, as it were. It was, perhaps, the first time that people of a certain age noticed the effects of inimical cultural forces on something that they knew well and cared about. And it went on at a time when what we once quaintly called "Web 2.0" had just managed to consume most everyone. So it was an early sign of social and discursive tendencies that would become even more manifest in 2015-2016, and indeed, ever since.
I still can't grasp it in sentiment, though. I remember oblique references to "Gamergate" while it was going on, I guess. But I was doing other things: my last year of working for the black-helicopter people, pinning on lieutenant colonel, living with an infant in the house, etc. And the job that I just mentioned had given me an excellent excuse, a few years before, to stay off of social media (which I still referred to derisively as "Geocities 2.0" -- just to date myself further). So against that backdrop, maybe, you can appreciate why descriptions of Gamergate as some kind of apocalyptic struggle that "changed the face of Western culture" always strike me, at an emotional level, as silly.
I get that it prefigured the clash between the "alt-right" and the "Woke left" in the Trump years. But for some of us, "SJWs" were just the latest incarnation of "PC," something which had never really gone away in the 1990s (speaking as someone who was part of the federal bureaucracy throughout this period, the notion that PC had retreated at some point, only to return later for vengeance, is just false). From this vantage point, Gamergate was just an epiphenomenon, not a driving force. I suppose that it mobilized some people and primed them for 2016. The way in which Gamergate was conducted certainly foreshadowed the "alt-right" of that year.
But this statement is as negative as it is positive. Even if intellectually incoherent, the culturally and institutionally dominant group whose positions align with the mythologies of the Second World War and the Civil Rights Era is going to "win" in the way that they care about. Flaunting a willingness to break taboos and to do the thing that One Isn't Supposed To Do only get you so far. We see that the purportedly great victories in Gamergate and 2016 mostly came to naught. Read the Wikipedia page on Gamergate, if you want to see history as it was written by the real victors.
And as for the Eternal Return: don't worry about it. A meaningful answer would involve classical music and natural history, though, and this comment has already gone on too long. Thanks, though; I always appreciate your perspective on things like this, and you know more about them than I ever will.
Thank you for the insightful comment. I see what you're saying. I'll admit, my perception of events, being young and impressionable and more or less squarely in the demographic of the archetypal gamer at the time, does lend itself to coloring my view in seeing the event as something of a watershed moment in a way that it may not to outside observers. 2012 and the years immediately following were some of the most formative in my life, where a lot of those events that would define who I would be happened, so I suppose those years and the events around them may appear on a more grandiose scale to my perception. My penchant for hyperbolic and overly-theatrical flourish doesn't help :P
I do understand that GamerGate was an epiphenomenon of greater forces. Whenever I whinge about how things are, my dad is always quick to remind me that "PC" was a term from the 90's that, as you said, never really went away. I feel like you could take it back even further, if you really wanted to, but I'm not well versed enough in tracing back the cultural trends that ultimately culminated in the rise of "PC" in the 90's to do a deep dive on where it started... though, it would be an interesting research project. GamerGate certainly was, at the time, as you correctly surmised, the first time many people in my age bracket encountered the "inimical cultural forces" in any real sense. I was aware of SJWs - I do remember when that was the term du jour, too, and I often do think it's funny just how much you don't hear it these days - but it wasn't until GamerGate just what they were about, and I think it was very much a shock to many of us to see not only the influence they exerted over certain segments of the culture that were important to us, but also how truly vitriolic against the laity of the scene they were. It wasn't just that they didn't like us - they categorically hated us. Before that, SJWs were more or less considered whackjob lunatics that were easy to point and laugh at and then ignore. I suppose that I could properly describe it by saying that, so far as I recall prior to 2012, no one really took them all that seriously, at least, not in the online culture that I was steeped it. And, in that way, that definitely served as a kind of jarring, bellweather moment where a lot of things flipped for us and it became crystal clear just what the lay of the land really was.
This is all to say - I totally understand why it seems silly. Like I said - it was, at it's core, a bunch of nerds bickering on the internet, albeit with some pretty severe consequences for some of the participants. Like I said, I appreciate the insight and feedback, and that you take the time to leave a comment (long ones are welcome on this publication ;) ); it helps keep me grounded. And, as for that Eternal Return... I'm not really all that worried about it. I figure that, if there is any merit to it, it'll be one of those problems that I'll deal with when I get there.
Though I don't know whether it will come to another Gamergate. Things are just too different, especially in the demographic department. The mostly reasonable, if unpolarised, 20-something middle-class white gamer with a decent job who was the digital footsoldier for most of the previous net-war just isn't there. He's grown up, or become a consoomer slob, or committed himself to one or another side of the broader Kulturkampf. Gaming as an industry is a ruinous wasteland compared to even a decade ago; most of the people who possess the faculties to stop caring have done so already.
I see what you mean, but I feel as if there's still enough gas in the tank for something to start again. Maybe not on the same scale, as, yes, most people with sense have checked out, but I there's still a contingent of Kabrutus's out there spoiling for a fight. You're certainly right about the state of the gaming industry, though - anything that might happen would effectively be a bunch of barbarians squabbling over an irradiated, bombed out wasteland. There isn't really anything left to preserve, just the last remnants of a rotten out, semi-collapsed husk left to demolish.
Phenomenal work here once again from everyone's favorite Ape.
To keep the gaming theme going, this is like "edutainment," except good: an amazing blend of meticulous research chronicled like a modern-day Herodotus (if Herodotus had also read Batman comics and played Pokémon) presented in a clear, often comical manner that makes it eminently enjoyable... even if I am learning stuff in the process haha. And I say this as someone who has actually participated in "sensitivity reviews" for various games, but that is a story for a different day...
In several more words: I was actually there for--and contributed to--the inception of that process at my company in mid-to-late-2010s. In my case, it initially had to do with "culturally sensitive" issues across different countries, where of course you can indeed have radically different views on topics that arise in your games. Road to hell, good intentions, all that jazz. Crazy as it seems now, this was before I ever really gave much thought to Wokesters as a serious force or had ever heard of DEI, etc... aside from my extant disdain for "political correctness" going back a couple of decades at that point. In retrospect, I seem hopelessly oblivious, naïve, to the larger forces brewing. As you point out, even though GamerGate and similar guerilla cultural warfare had already been occurring, I didn't really pay much attention then. So was this largely a personal failing on my part? Yeah, I'd say, "yes" unfortunately haha. Once I realized what had been created, it had become a Frankenstein's Monster in the micro, and the societal equivalent of NeverEnding Story's The Nothing in the macro,. I did my best to bring it under heel, to take a wrench to the whole blasted machine, but we saw how well that worked for Dr. Frankenstein, as well as how much damage The Nothing has wreaked across the cultural landscape. "They look like good... strong... hands, don't they?"
That's just the tip of the iceberg though! I am not really doing it justice here; it got very complex, very quickly, and I have a million anecdotes and thoughts on it that I haven't even begun to unpack for myself even, really. Anyway, to borrow another line from Never Ending Story, "But that's... another story."
Well, if you ever feel inclined, I'd be interested to read some more on the topic from someone who's been in the thick of it. I've always been lucky enough to avoid working for companies being co-opted by that kind of thing, and only heard horror stories from people who have.
I appreciate the encouragement. That whole time feel so surreal. In some ways, I still feel like Legolas: when Gandalf went tumbling off the bridge with the Balrog: "For me, the grief is still to near."
There were a lot of good people at the company too, along with some truly malicious, manipulative "bad actors," so trying to parse that all out in a way that is honest, fair, and comprehensive sometimes seems so daunting I just give up haha. But, I will endeavor to tackle it at some point, and I'll be sure to let you know, as I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Absolutely. I actually completely understand. I've wanted to write about GamerGate since I started this publication, but I could never bring myself to do it. It always felt like way too big of a fish to fry. But, then, recent events made it impossible to avoid.
The thing that made GamerGate and the broader meme war of that era so great was that it was fun. Most of my generation (X) tuned out of politics at a young age because the generation before us treated it as such tiresome Serious Business. Finding out that you could win battles with frog memes and ridicule was intoxicating. Not that GamerGate wasn't serious; as you pointed out, people lost jobs and even lives to the cancel crowd. But we found out that the enemy *hates* not being taken seriously and being laughed at, and the laughter drew in others who wouldn't have joined a too-serious effort.
I guess you can say the progressive scolds "won" if their goal was to stay employed while hiding from social media. I don't think that's what they expected when they set out to cancel all those loser gamers who offended them. I'd say the war just never ended; it went into a lull when the industry forces realized they needed to be more subtle. The gamers did pretty well in round one, considering they were up against the gaming industry, the media, the rest of Big Tech, and the social media companies. We'll see how they do in round two. It may not be as much fun this time, because now everyone is more aware of the stakes.
I can understand, in an abstract way, why Gamergate seems like such a big deal to those who took part, or who had front-row seats to it, as it were. It was, perhaps, the first time that people of a certain age noticed the effects of inimical cultural forces on something that they knew well and cared about. And it went on at a time when what we once quaintly called "Web 2.0" had just managed to consume most everyone. So it was an early sign of social and discursive tendencies that would become even more manifest in 2015-2016, and indeed, ever since.
I still can't grasp it in sentiment, though. I remember oblique references to "Gamergate" while it was going on, I guess. But I was doing other things: my last year of working for the black-helicopter people, pinning on lieutenant colonel, living with an infant in the house, etc. And the job that I just mentioned had given me an excellent excuse, a few years before, to stay off of social media (which I still referred to derisively as "Geocities 2.0" -- just to date myself further). So against that backdrop, maybe, you can appreciate why descriptions of Gamergate as some kind of apocalyptic struggle that "changed the face of Western culture" always strike me, at an emotional level, as silly.
I get that it prefigured the clash between the "alt-right" and the "Woke left" in the Trump years. But for some of us, "SJWs" were just the latest incarnation of "PC," something which had never really gone away in the 1990s (speaking as someone who was part of the federal bureaucracy throughout this period, the notion that PC had retreated at some point, only to return later for vengeance, is just false). From this vantage point, Gamergate was just an epiphenomenon, not a driving force. I suppose that it mobilized some people and primed them for 2016. The way in which Gamergate was conducted certainly foreshadowed the "alt-right" of that year.
But this statement is as negative as it is positive. Even if intellectually incoherent, the culturally and institutionally dominant group whose positions align with the mythologies of the Second World War and the Civil Rights Era is going to "win" in the way that they care about. Flaunting a willingness to break taboos and to do the thing that One Isn't Supposed To Do only get you so far. We see that the purportedly great victories in Gamergate and 2016 mostly came to naught. Read the Wikipedia page on Gamergate, if you want to see history as it was written by the real victors.
And as for the Eternal Return: don't worry about it. A meaningful answer would involve classical music and natural history, though, and this comment has already gone on too long. Thanks, though; I always appreciate your perspective on things like this, and you know more about them than I ever will.
Thank you for the insightful comment. I see what you're saying. I'll admit, my perception of events, being young and impressionable and more or less squarely in the demographic of the archetypal gamer at the time, does lend itself to coloring my view in seeing the event as something of a watershed moment in a way that it may not to outside observers. 2012 and the years immediately following were some of the most formative in my life, where a lot of those events that would define who I would be happened, so I suppose those years and the events around them may appear on a more grandiose scale to my perception. My penchant for hyperbolic and overly-theatrical flourish doesn't help :P
I do understand that GamerGate was an epiphenomenon of greater forces. Whenever I whinge about how things are, my dad is always quick to remind me that "PC" was a term from the 90's that, as you said, never really went away. I feel like you could take it back even further, if you really wanted to, but I'm not well versed enough in tracing back the cultural trends that ultimately culminated in the rise of "PC" in the 90's to do a deep dive on where it started... though, it would be an interesting research project. GamerGate certainly was, at the time, as you correctly surmised, the first time many people in my age bracket encountered the "inimical cultural forces" in any real sense. I was aware of SJWs - I do remember when that was the term du jour, too, and I often do think it's funny just how much you don't hear it these days - but it wasn't until GamerGate just what they were about, and I think it was very much a shock to many of us to see not only the influence they exerted over certain segments of the culture that were important to us, but also how truly vitriolic against the laity of the scene they were. It wasn't just that they didn't like us - they categorically hated us. Before that, SJWs were more or less considered whackjob lunatics that were easy to point and laugh at and then ignore. I suppose that I could properly describe it by saying that, so far as I recall prior to 2012, no one really took them all that seriously, at least, not in the online culture that I was steeped it. And, in that way, that definitely served as a kind of jarring, bellweather moment where a lot of things flipped for us and it became crystal clear just what the lay of the land really was.
This is all to say - I totally understand why it seems silly. Like I said - it was, at it's core, a bunch of nerds bickering on the internet, albeit with some pretty severe consequences for some of the participants. Like I said, I appreciate the insight and feedback, and that you take the time to leave a comment (long ones are welcome on this publication ;) ); it helps keep me grounded. And, as for that Eternal Return... I'm not really all that worried about it. I figure that, if there is any merit to it, it'll be one of those problems that I'll deal with when I get there.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Though I don't know whether it will come to another Gamergate. Things are just too different, especially in the demographic department. The mostly reasonable, if unpolarised, 20-something middle-class white gamer with a decent job who was the digital footsoldier for most of the previous net-war just isn't there. He's grown up, or become a consoomer slob, or committed himself to one or another side of the broader Kulturkampf. Gaming as an industry is a ruinous wasteland compared to even a decade ago; most of the people who possess the faculties to stop caring have done so already.
I see what you mean, but I feel as if there's still enough gas in the tank for something to start again. Maybe not on the same scale, as, yes, most people with sense have checked out, but I there's still a contingent of Kabrutus's out there spoiling for a fight. You're certainly right about the state of the gaming industry, though - anything that might happen would effectively be a bunch of barbarians squabbling over an irradiated, bombed out wasteland. There isn't really anything left to preserve, just the last remnants of a rotten out, semi-collapsed husk left to demolish.
Phenomenal work here once again from everyone's favorite Ape.
To keep the gaming theme going, this is like "edutainment," except good: an amazing blend of meticulous research chronicled like a modern-day Herodotus (if Herodotus had also read Batman comics and played Pokémon) presented in a clear, often comical manner that makes it eminently enjoyable... even if I am learning stuff in the process haha. And I say this as someone who has actually participated in "sensitivity reviews" for various games, but that is a story for a different day...
I have to ask - is it as bad as I think it is?
In a word: yes
In several more words: I was actually there for--and contributed to--the inception of that process at my company in mid-to-late-2010s. In my case, it initially had to do with "culturally sensitive" issues across different countries, where of course you can indeed have radically different views on topics that arise in your games. Road to hell, good intentions, all that jazz. Crazy as it seems now, this was before I ever really gave much thought to Wokesters as a serious force or had ever heard of DEI, etc... aside from my extant disdain for "political correctness" going back a couple of decades at that point. In retrospect, I seem hopelessly oblivious, naïve, to the larger forces brewing. As you point out, even though GamerGate and similar guerilla cultural warfare had already been occurring, I didn't really pay much attention then. So was this largely a personal failing on my part? Yeah, I'd say, "yes" unfortunately haha. Once I realized what had been created, it had become a Frankenstein's Monster in the micro, and the societal equivalent of NeverEnding Story's The Nothing in the macro,. I did my best to bring it under heel, to take a wrench to the whole blasted machine, but we saw how well that worked for Dr. Frankenstein, as well as how much damage The Nothing has wreaked across the cultural landscape. "They look like good... strong... hands, don't they?"
That's just the tip of the iceberg though! I am not really doing it justice here; it got very complex, very quickly, and I have a million anecdotes and thoughts on it that I haven't even begun to unpack for myself even, really. Anyway, to borrow another line from Never Ending Story, "But that's... another story."
Well, if you ever feel inclined, I'd be interested to read some more on the topic from someone who's been in the thick of it. I've always been lucky enough to avoid working for companies being co-opted by that kind of thing, and only heard horror stories from people who have.
I appreciate the encouragement. That whole time feel so surreal. In some ways, I still feel like Legolas: when Gandalf went tumbling off the bridge with the Balrog: "For me, the grief is still to near."
There were a lot of good people at the company too, along with some truly malicious, manipulative "bad actors," so trying to parse that all out in a way that is honest, fair, and comprehensive sometimes seems so daunting I just give up haha. But, I will endeavor to tackle it at some point, and I'll be sure to let you know, as I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Absolutely. I actually completely understand. I've wanted to write about GamerGate since I started this publication, but I could never bring myself to do it. It always felt like way too big of a fish to fry. But, then, recent events made it impossible to avoid.
The thing that made GamerGate and the broader meme war of that era so great was that it was fun. Most of my generation (X) tuned out of politics at a young age because the generation before us treated it as such tiresome Serious Business. Finding out that you could win battles with frog memes and ridicule was intoxicating. Not that GamerGate wasn't serious; as you pointed out, people lost jobs and even lives to the cancel crowd. But we found out that the enemy *hates* not being taken seriously and being laughed at, and the laughter drew in others who wouldn't have joined a too-serious effort.
I guess you can say the progressive scolds "won" if their goal was to stay employed while hiding from social media. I don't think that's what they expected when they set out to cancel all those loser gamers who offended them. I'd say the war just never ended; it went into a lull when the industry forces realized they needed to be more subtle. The gamers did pretty well in round one, considering they were up against the gaming industry, the media, the rest of Big Tech, and the social media companies. We'll see how they do in round two. It may not be as much fun this time, because now everyone is more aware of the stakes.
Tho only reason GamerGate2 could happen today is because Elon bought Twitter, otherwise any counter-activism would get quashed before it even begins.
I'm actually a follower of the Steam page Sweet Baby Inc lol.