Looking back through GG history (as well as I can, since it seems Deepfreeze is never going to get fixed...), it's curious how long we tried to affirm a moral high ground when it was clear the lying press were content to paint whatever picture they wanted. Didn't matter how many women, coloreds, or colored women of color tweeted "#NotYourShield", GamerGate was only ever about "angry white male rage". Honey Badgers and Sad Puppies fell on deaf ears and only made the press hate us more for pointing out their hypocrisy. We teamed up with "good fags" and "good feminists" like Milo and CHS and the only thing it ever achieved was excommunicate them from their in-groups before they eventually dumped us further down the line.
It also didn't help that the GG movement was being strangled for years thanks to control of the 8chan board by Acid Man following Niko's capitulation to the Ayy Team. Cole Lamberson's obsession with "muh pr" tanked the entire movement and stalled genuine discoveries such as Seattle4Truth uncovering the money trail between the Literal Whos and big organizations like Microsoft, even if he went totally insane in the end and committed matricide.
What happened over the next decade was virtually an entire generation becoming politically active in a way that hasn't happened since the Vietnam War. Two US elections won, Pizzagate exposed to the world, trannies banned from sports, populism movements sprouting up all over the world, and it was all because we only ever wanted to play video games and be left in peace.
So I ask you - if we had our 2025 mindset back in 2014, would you have skipped the #NotYourShield part of our movement entirely and just got straight to shutting out troons, fags and general SJWs? If not, why?
It isn't your movement. You merely adopted the cringe. I was born in the cringe, moulded by it. I didn't see based until I was already a myn, and by then, it was only memes to me.
The fact you're needing a wayback machine... Are you some kid? Nothing wrong with new youth involvement, just stressing that those who went through it all definitely did their best. EVERYONE hated GG. We got banned from fucking 4chan. Hate groups dedicated to harassing us were sponsored and paid for by all the major tech and social media companies.
And yes, people DID cheer that the FBI found nothing interesting. Because the dead gamers were the king's bootlickers? No, but because we were the jesters. We were a joke. Gamergate did everything wrong, from wiping out the dinosaurs to moving the stairs muffin. It was the boogeyman. And so it appearing so innocent, so milquetoast, so mild, that an FBI that was financially incentivized to find ANYTHING wrong, found NOTHING... was a damning indictment of the paid critics.
The jesters, the meme mages, the Shadilay-singers... They were everywhere, and they were joking about the state of society, the REAL state of society... And even the alphabet agencies said "yeah, that's all legit". We're in a world where truckers get their bank accounts frozen under terrorist financing for honking a horn, where a security guard opening a door for people who walk through and within the velvet ropes of a toured building means those 70 year olds are hardened insurrectionists.
The friendliness gave legitimacy to the concerns. And it painted the haters as malicious agents.
You don't build a house without building a foundation. Without GG's foundation, the more effective efforts wouldn't have that foundation to stand upon.