Burrito of Peace wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 10:13:

Quboid wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 09:18:
Otherwise, you get the attitude that GHOB is so wittily satirising.

Check their post history. It is not satire.

I presumed it wasn't, but it seemed appropriately dismissive and mildly amusing to describe it as such.

Beamer wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 08:01:

Prez wrote on Mar 23, 2025, 23:55:
I'm of the opinion that Gamergate served more to accentuate how something similar to the Streisand Effect can happen when journalists decide to attack their audience en masse. Writing inflammatory articles about the portion of the gamer culture that had very little perspective and fewer morals or scruples was easily rebranded as gaming journalists versus the entire gaming audience who made said journos' careers yet were directly in their sights and being attacked. They tried to protect people being attacked unjustly in the absolute worst possible way. It should have been a lesson in exactly how not to handle extremism but considering how this shit gets handled today obviously that lesson was ignored. Do you really expect your average person to be able to discern who exactly is being attacked? To respond in a mature way when belittled? C'mon...

I don't know, it kind of went like this:
A bunch of entitled douchebags that tried to gatekeep the term "gamers": Hey, we're gamers and we hate this, it needs to stop, it hurts all gamers
Game journalists: "Gamers" are doing horrible toxic things and shouldn't
Other people that play games: Hey, we're gamers and we don't do toxic bullshit. We better show them how angry we are by doing toxic bullshit!

I never felt under attack. I saw the shit they were writing about and agreed. And we have some of it here. Look how any time Blue makes a post about a game with a female or black person as a lead. It was really bad a decade ago, but one or two usual suspects still get angry about it here.

You've left out the very important part where gaming journalists wanted to stop using the word "gamer" because of some gamers.

Beamer wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 08:01:

Prez wrote on Mar 23, 2025, 23:55:
I'm of the opinion that Gamergate served more to accentuate how something similar to the Streisand Effect can happen when journalists decide to attack their audience en masse. Writing inflammatory articles about the portion of the gamer culture that had very little perspective and fewer morals or scruples was easily rebranded as gaming journalists versus the entire gaming audience who made said journos' careers yet were directly in their sights and being attacked. They tried to protect people being attacked unjustly in the absolute worst possible way. It should have been a lesson in exactly how not to handle extremism but considering how this shit gets handled today obviously that lesson was ignored. Do you really expect your average person to be able to discern who exactly is being attacked? To respond in a mature way when belittled? C'mon...

I don't know, it kind of went like this:
A bunch of entitled douchebags that tried to gatekeep the term "gamers": Hey, we're gamers and we hate this, it needs to stop, it hurts all gamers
Game journalists: "Gamers" are doing horrible toxic things and shouldn't
Other people that play games: Hey, we're gamers and we don't do toxic bullshit. We better show them how angry we are by doing toxic bullshit!

I never felt under attack. I saw the shit they were writing about and agreed. And we have some of it here. Look how any time Blue makes a post about a game with a female or black person as a lead. It was really bad a decade ago, but one or two usual suspects still get angry about it here.

It's okay to admit that you and many others here are exceptional. You didn't feel attacked. But surely you're not oblivious to the fact that a very large portion of gamers lack the ability to be discerning enough. A very large portion of humanity lack that capability. You know this. You're more exceptional than I was; I very much felt attacked and insulted by journalists I always respected. I did not appreciate it. Obviously over time I got the necessary clarity to understand what was actually going on, but that's an extreme minority of people. Much in the way so many worldwide "anti-terrorsm" operations serve only to make more terrorists, everyone fighting against extremists only helped create more extremists. Still, no one gets it. It's kind of amazing actually. And discouraging.

Quboid wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 09:18:
Otherwise, you get the attitude that GHOB is so wittily satirising.

Check their post history. It is not satire.

/---\

Gamergate was, essentially, a mass temper tantrum thrown by loser manchildren with the literary and social skills of a particularly slow 4th grader. The same loser manchildren who are now throwing temper tantrums about anything they want to label "woke" or "DEI".

While I didn't particularly agree with the the tack that some of the original authors took, feeling it was deliberately antagonistic and abrasive, the message itself wasn't wrong. The representation of characters in video games from the 80s through the 2000s was pretty monochromatic and monogendered. Even my wife, the snow princess of Canada that she was, sometimes complained that it sucked she couldn't play as a woman. NOLF stood out for the time because Cate Archer was the protagonist. But as fun as NOLF was back in the day, it's also a bit of an "also ran" today as it was then.

RPGs have always been more inclusive but those also tended to have their roots deep in to the PnP days so multiple genders, races, and species were in by default. No one gives a shit if you're a black, female dwarf in an RPG. It's expected. Mage classes have been able to swap their gender at will via spells since forever. No one bats an eye at that.

Today we're seeing more representation than ever in games and I think that is fantastic. If well written, a representation of someone other than a white dude can give a view in to a lifestyle, culture, and/or lived experience that is new to me. I appreciate it.

Beamer wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 08:01:

Prez wrote on Mar 23, 2025, 23:55:
I'm of the opinion that Gamergate served more to accentuate how something similar to the Streisand Effect can happen when journalists decide to attack their audience en masse. Writing inflammatory articles about the portion of the gamer culture that had very little perspective and fewer morals or scruples was easily rebranded as gaming journalists versus the entire gaming audience who made said journos' careers yet were directly in their sights and being attacked. They tried to protect people being attacked unjustly in the absolute worst possible way. It should have been a lesson in exactly how not to handle extremism but considering how this shit gets handled today obviously that lesson was ignored. Do you really expect your average person to be able to discern who exactly is being attacked? To respond in a mature way when belittled? C'mon...

I don't know, it kind of went like this:
A bunch of entitled douchebags that tried to gatekeep the term "gamers": Hey, we're gamers and we hate this, it needs to stop, it hurts all gamers
Game journalists: "Gamers" are doing horrible toxic things and shouldn't
Other people that play games: Hey, we're gamers and we don't do toxic bullshit. We better show them how angry we are by doing toxic bullshit!

I never felt under attack. I saw the shit they were writing about and agreed. And we have some of it here. Look how any time Blue makes a post about a game with a female or black person as a lead. It was really bad a decade ago, but one or two usual suspects still get angry about it here.

Same. When it all blew up I was initially confused by where all these articles attacking gamers were. I didn't realise that, according to some, I was supposed to feel attacked by people saying that dickheads being dickheads are a bunch of dickheads.

Still, when a sizeable portion of your audience misunderstand your message, you really need to reconsider how you're phrasing your message. Otherwise, you get the attitude that GHOB is so wittily satirising.

Prez wrote on Mar 23, 2025, 23:55:
I'm of the opinion that Gamergate served more to accentuate how something similar to the Streisand Effect can happen when journalists decide to attack their audience en masse. Writing inflammatory articles about the portion of the gamer culture that had very little perspective and fewer morals or scruples was easily rebranded as gaming journalists versus the entire gaming audience who made said journos' careers yet were directly in their sights and being attacked. They tried to protect people being attacked unjustly in the absolute worst possible way. It should have been a lesson in exactly how not to handle extremism but considering how this shit gets handled today obviously that lesson was ignored. Do you really expect your average person to be able to discern who exactly is being attacked? To respond in a mature way when belittled? C'mon...

I don't know, it kind of went like this:
A bunch of entitled douchebags that tried to gatekeep the term "gamers": Hey, we're gamers and we hate this, it needs to stop, it hurts all gamers
Game journalists: "Gamers" are doing horrible toxic things and shouldn't
Other people that play games: Hey, we're gamers and we don't do toxic bullshit. We better show them how angry we are by doing toxic bullshit!

I never felt under attack. I saw the shit they were writing about and agreed. And we have some of it here. Look how any time Blue makes a post about a game with a female or black person as a lead. It was really bad a decade ago, but one or two usual suspects still get angry about it here.

I was there in the 90s. I saw the "culture" (if you can call it that) develop with the widespread application and adoption of the Internet. Was it toxic? Abrasive? Un-inclusive? Sure, which subculture isn't? That's like the "definition" of how most people who "belong" to one subculture or another view everyone else. Was it a problem? Hell no. It was definitely turned into one with the advent of the "modern" gaming audience, and with gaming going mainstream. Suddenly everyone and their mother was a gamer, and people were taking advantage of that and trying to make money off of this development. This is when things started to go sideways, and it's not only with gamergate....virtually every single aspect of gaming was negatively affected by gaming becoming a mainstream thing. (Except for indy gaming, which obviously grew because of the niche which mainstream gaming provided for it)

ZeroPike1 wrote on Mar 24, 2025, 05:22:
Gamergate showed me the internet has trouble with Dickheads. Mainly consisting of gaslighting, disingenuous, hate filled people.

Anyone who proudly touts the tag „im a gamer“ is instantly suss to me. Until their actions prove otherwise. And it marked anything coming out of that, dumpster of the internet, 4chan, as irrelevant immediately.

This is how you handle childishness. Personally I'd add:
If you unironically use the term 'woke';
If you're the type of person who believes a blog or claim from anyone with zero fact checking;
If you're the type of mental midget who types in all caps or writes everything with preposterous hyperbole allowing for exactly zero nuance;
If you rationalize being a mean dick to someone for any reason whatsoever

Gamergate showed me the internet has trouble with Dickheads. Mainly consisting of gaslighting, disingenuous, hate filled people.

Anyone who proudly touts the tag „im a gamer“ is instantly suss to me. Until their actions prove otherwise. And it marked anything coming out of that, dumpster of the internet, 4chan, as irrelevant immediately.

Gamergate proved that gaming 'journalists' were not actually gamers and in fact hated gamers with a passion. They were activists that had no real interest in games or gaming but rather in trying to make a name for themselves.

Unethical, woke and completely out of touch with reality, they very much resemble the current set of main media 'journalists/activists'. In the end, they basically wrote themselves out of existence and relevance.

I'm of the opinion that Gamergate served more to accentuate how something similar to the Streisand Effect can happen when journalists decide to attack their audience en masse. Writing inflammatory articles about the portion of the gamer culture that had very little perspective and fewer morals or scruples was easily rebranded as gaming journalists versus the entire gaming audience who made said journos' careers yet were directly in their sights and being attacked. They tried to protect people being attacked unjustly in the absolute worst possible way. It should have been a lesson in exactly how not to handle extremism but considering how this shit gets handled today obviously that lesson was ignored. Do you really expect your average person to be able to discern who exactly is being attacked? To respond in a mature way when belittled? C'mon...