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Why #GamerGate Failed: A Look Back at 2014's Most Ridiculous Movement

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Blogger Andy Baio tweeted a chart showing that a huge number of the people talking about GamerGate on Twitter were doing so from accounts created within the time frame of the hashtag's beginning. You can look directly at the IIRC logs from the beta release of GamerGate -- the 4chan #burgersandfries channel -- and see members discussing the best way to impersonate women and people of color in sock puppet accounts in order to lend diversity to the movement. In that dense wall of text linked to members discuss whether using a Sailor Moon or a Bratz avatar would make for a more convincing impersonation of the account of a teen girl while others brag about showing up in blackface.

From the very beginning there were two sides of GamerGate. On one side were indie game developers, media outlets, media critics, and industry people who could be interviewed and examined. On the other was a wall of anonymous puppet accounts created by 4channers that couldn't. Reporters could never be sure of the credentials of the person they were talking to on Twitter and could never verify facts. There was just a soup of throwaway Internet chunks called GamerGate. Is it any wonder that instead media chose to focus on the more relevant and compelling story of harassment of women in the gaming world?

Eventually some people did stand forward and put their names and reputations behind GamerGate but it only made the problems with the movement worse, not better. There was reporter Milo Yiannopoulus, who started giving GamerGate favorable coverage through Breitbart.com after previously calling gamers "pungent beta male bollocks-scratchers and twelve-year-olds". He's also famous for the controversy he started by saying that "girls" were well-represented in the tech industry because so many work in public relations and attempts to actively draw more women to other aspects "positive discrimination" and wasting time on a "problem that doesn't exist". When your movement is already accused of harassment of women and misogyny this is not a good representative.

Christina Hoff Sommers also openly supported GamerGate despite having no connection to video games whatsoever. The author -- who calls herself a feminist but who is best-known for writing books about how feminism destroys boyhood -- was enthusiastically welcomed by GamerGate and given the moniker Based Mom. Sommers released a video claiming to rebut claims of sexism and misogyny in gaming, but relied mostly on ad hominem attacks on critics, conflated misogyny and violence, and waved away criticism of content because games are marketed to men anyway. Again, this is not a strong spokesperson in a movement already under attack for its attitudes against women.

The list went on to include author and game maker Vox Day, who has claimed a woman accusing a white man of rape must be lying because only black and Hispanic people are rapists and remains the only person ever kicked out of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Houston's own Paul Elam, founder of A Voice for Men and de facto head of the Men's Rights movement also voiced support. Roosh V, a pick-up artist who authors what critics call "rape guides", went so far as to build a site dedicated to games that live up to GamerGate ideals.

This story continues on the next page.

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Jef Rouner (not cis, he/him) is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.
Contact: Jef Rouner