GamerGate to Trump: How video game culture blew everything up (cnet.com).
Suggesting that what began as a backlash to a debate about how video games portray women—and especially how much more attention women developers and players get than the two-a-penny chaps comprising the majority of the demographic seemingly determined to keep it that way—helped sweep Donald Trump into office.
“Today, angry internet mobs routinely use the threat of rape, bombings and assassinations as a way to lay claim to whatever it is they think they’re losing to what they describe as political correctness. And along they way, they’ve adopted new approaches that combine old-school write-in campaigns with internet terror efforts like publishing people’s private information online, with the intent of bringing chaos and fear into their lives. In short, trolls are now causing havoc in the real world.”
Well, anonymity gives mighty troll power to some leaping out from under their bridge who’ve never had it or actually much attention having been largely ignored with that old Internet 1.0 maxim of “don’t feed the troll” (rationalwiki.org). It also seemingly confirms the Freudian premise that debate inevitably regresses (Wikipedia) to the bullying infantilism recalled from the playground.
But surely its a bit of a jump from being muscular and daring piloting their gamer keyboard while posting porno Pikachu and self-reflective Squirtle to convincing pragmatist Americans to put on conspiracy dungarees and elect as disaffected orange Rustbelt saviour and face and hair of America a tangerine tycoon more—and very obviously more to the rest of the world watching and either giving facepalm or laughing—interested in his TV ratings and making his own ego “great” again.
“Ultimately, some of them—like the popular right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich—moved on from GamerGate to attack presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. ‘GamerGate was an excellent breeding ground and practice ground,’ said Soraya Chemaly, director of the Women’s Media Center’s Speech Project, which tracks online abuse. Over time, different groups on the internet that tend to respond negatively to women, such as some communities of hardcore gamers, coders and far-right white supremacist groups, began to coalesce around shared harassment of women and distaste for social change. ”
Gamergate controversy (Wikipedia).
But has it brought the anti-liberalism and attention they sought along with subservient women who don’t easily take their stick away from them in a RT meet-up or, in truth, while trollin’ Twitter et al. is much of the furtive interaction to fulfil any “social needs” they may have actually still taking place in the likes of Moose ’n’ Buck’s alt-truck stop basement text-based Gorean (Wikipedia) bondage ManOChat?
.:: Update ::.
After years of GamerGate harassment, Brianna Wu’s still fighting (cnet.com).
“Wu, who co-founded indie game development studio Giant Spacekat, became the target of a legion of mostly anonymous internet trolls during GamerGate … The trolls have made death threats and made Wu’s personal information public so others could heap on even more harassment. … Despite what Wu’s lived through—or rather because of it—she’s now running for Congress in Massachusetts in 2018. Her thinking is that perhaps, all is not lost.”
Whereas said trolls when not dramatically leaping out from under bridge to expose themself on Twitter are… yep, still plotting virtual Gorean domination for six hours a night in their Y-fronts at Moose ’n’ Buck’s ManOChat.
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