Timeline of GamerGate found on X
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It really was surprising for me that it was basically every gaming site.
In retrospect, you could tell who wasn't in the #JournoListPro distribution, because they published articles saying, "Why is everyone freaking out?"... and then getting publicly chastised.
Yeah, I remember when Nichegamer went into it and were wondering why's everyone losing their shit. Then they asked us instead of copy-pasta-ing the media and got shit on by the leftists for daring to get the actual facts.
I think Tech Raptor had an article as well.
Not reading it yet, though it looks good at a glance. Any prospective timeline on GG is incomplete unless it includes the 2 - 3 years of "background". What happened didn't spring up overnight.
Journo outlets such as Cracked gave a platform to views such as Anita's about 2 years before GG happened, and were among the first to give Zoe a soapbox. Zoe herself was already known to /v/ by the end of 2013 because she was involved with a much smaller controversy. Does this timeline mention any of that?
It starts at the five guys letter.
Yeah, the downfall of Cracked was the beginning of the modern era of the Culture War. There was definitely a push since 2012. Nowadays, I wonder if part of this actually had to do with government funding of these outlets.
Do you remember when they took down an article about natural disasters because of the Boston Bombing? That was one of the first signs that Cracked's writers were a bunch of cucks. Then there was the "Top 64" articles from 2012 where the writers who talked about video games hadn't actually PLAYED them, and then they threatened to get rid of the comments section about a year before they actually did.
tbh I'm kind of just reciting a lot of this from Cracked's EncyclopediaDramatica article (probably because I actually wrote it lmao)
I actually don't remember. But I was reading Cracked pretty regularly at the time for entertainment and I just remember how they kept getting more bizzare, political, and unhinged. I probably looked back at in 2012 once or twice and it was just fucking off the wall, and wasn't even funny. Just weird people saying weird, hyper-political shit.
I like to include the context of Doritogate in 2012, since it was basically Gamergate before journos had the bright idea of coordinating their defence. These days people tend to just remember it as just a funny photoshop of Geoff Keighley, but it's actually remarkably similar:
-Woman called out for games journo corruption (Rab Florence's article on journos benefiting from game dev junkets, which happened to mention female journo Lauren Wainwright)
-Woman attacks as form of defence rather than accept any criticism, industry conforms to woman's wishes (Rab resigns from his mag as they unpublish his article)
-Rab's article and the response draws uncomfortable attention to widespread incestuous relationship between games journos and dev PR (Geoff's funny photoshop occurs here)
-wider discussion avoided and deflected, some use the tactic of alleging that the controversy was rooted in misogyny so could be safely ignored.
I used to check Giantbomb around this time, as well as other random gaming sites occasionally, and the sheer weight of cringeworthy discomfort in their not wanting to discuss any part of the Rab Florence article was striking.
Between 2012 and 2014, the main difference is that they got all their slack chats and circlejerks in better order, ready to form a fighting circle the next time one of their greedy women was criticised. Plus it was a better connected slut in 2014; despite Wainwright actually having been a journo insider, all she really was was some British fangirl type who wanted free Tomb Raider merch and maybe a job at Crystal Dynamics. That said, I did discover that she once ran a podcast with Jim Sterling, reemphasising how games journalism was a puddle deep bedroom industry.
That first Vivian pic made me realize I have nostalgia for a video game based political protest. How bizarre. Not particularly surprising, though. Information was coming to light so fast in the early days, and the pieces were falling so perfectly into place, my brain was on fire. It was like divine revelation of commie fucks. What a time to be sapient.
Those first 20 days were absolutely insane. I'm only just starting to see it again with Trump overwhelming the US government's bureaucracy this time around.
The problem is, back in 2014 we didn't have any media representation and those fucks did. So most of the momentum we'd built up through to the beginning of #NotYourShield was quickly reversed and pushed to its most extreme, right up until "GAMER GIRLS GO HOME" a year or so later.
And by the time we did get public figures on our side, many of them ended up grifters or wishy-washy towards the whole issue. Our only choice was to dive into the many-headed political monster and begin subverting every single elected government in the Western hemisphere for anti-woke populists, which to our credit is working magnificently.
I'm not as confident as you with regards to how it's going. I'm worried the current momentum will evaporate in four years when Trump can't run again. But I will happy to be proven wrong.
In the words of Elie Wiesel: "YOU KNEW"
Still reading, but dude spells Erin GJONI as "Gonji" the entire time.