Gamers vs. PC Bullies

Writes Adam:

The #Gamergate controversy is a consumer revolt of fans of video games who are demanding ethical and ideology-free journalism in their hobby and has been going on since about mid-August. This goes back a few years, since roughly 2009 or so. In that time, there’s been an increase in radical feminist and social justice-laced opinion pieces and outrage/clickbait articles on major game journalism websites (eg Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, Polygon, etc), mostly focusing on the supposed misogyny and “boys club” mentality of gaming culture, at the expense of actual reporting on video games.

During these years, gamers, some of the most inclusive folks in the world, grinned and bore it as the hysterical shouts of misogyny grew louder, culminating this past August in mass censorship on social media sites like Reddit in the wake of a sex scandal between an indie game developer and various game journalists, with her exchanging sex for favorable coverage of her game at the expense of more deserving ones, as well as her sabotage of a charity drive specifically set up to help women break into the game development industry. When the discussion began, she hid behind the claims of sexism and played victim, and most of these journalists shielded her, outright insulting the gaming population as “privileged straight white male virgin neckbeard misogynists,” and insisting they as an identity were “dead,” posting this vitriol in the form of 10 articles around major outlets on the net all in a 24-hour period.

The progressive busybodies are scared, because this is one of the first major pushbacks against their social justice agenda that has weaseled its way into many other subcultures, so they’re pulling out all the stops, painting this as a hate movement full of misogynists and serial harassers, comparing gamers to terrorists, and saying they’re worse than ISIS. All in all, they don’t realize who they’ve gone up against: a subculture of peaceful people who want politics out of their hobby and are programmed to win.

– There are a lot of resources to get up to speed so I’d like to pass some along: Gamergate in 60 Seconds.

– A more in-depth look at how this all started (NB: Some bad language), including details of the mass censorship. He did 2 followups as more developments came forward as well as a more recent summary video.

– Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopolous, a wonderful ally of the movement, has done great work in giving the pro-GG side a voice, and later went on to expose collusion and agenda shaping on a leaked
private game journalist mailing list.

– Gamergate as a battle between authoritarian and libertarian ideals.

– 3 wonderful ladies involved in gaming appeared on a HuffPoLive segment to discuss what Gamergate is REALLY about, and to prove it’s more than just straight white males throwing temper tantrums about women taking away their games.

Keep up your great work as always!

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9:21 am on October 17, 2014