Aneris ✻
Nov 3 · 2 min read

Of course it is bad, but it will pass.

You overlook three main things: (1) the structure of harassment campaigns, singling out individuals, sifting through everything they ever said or did, misrepresenting their views, recontextualising them etc is a more general phenomenon that came with social media. This can be used by any political ideology or subculture, as long as they have a moral framework to cast some people as beyond the pale. So you are confusing an instance with a structure. Naturally, the first users of this were pioneers of social media, associated with the Tumblr crowd, “SJ Blogging” — then dubbed so-called “social justice warriors”. It also affected “prominent” opinion leaders before, be they Richard Dawkins or Richard Carrier.

(2) GamerGate is also not a particularily good example for the structure. You may know it know it best, or because you find it easiest to identify a broader phenomenon with something you already dislike. GamerGate is not typical for this phenomenon. It was an instance that got named and cognitively “banned” quickly, because in this case the “wrong people” were using social media that way. BECAUSE Gamergate was atypical, it was quickly named and denounced by the media establishment. The many different other harassment campaigns, from Donglegate to harassing Matt Taylor in shirtgate, or Tim Hunt etc. were media approved, and thus names like shirtgate never caught on as much and typically refer to the “controversy” or “shitstorm“ rather than harassment by one side. GamerGate also did not turn “against their own” in this manner. Sarkeesian was never accepted as an opinion leader in the first place, let alone as a “gamer” by GamerGaters.

How this situation turns out depends once more who has the prerogative of interpretation. Since Obama outed himself as an Anti-SJW, the winds might be changing. The bottom line is, Natalie Wynn, Lindsay Ellis and Harry Brewis endorsed the woke hate brigading, and contributed to demonizing all critics as fascists. They thenselves contributed to this inverted picture where GamerGate was bad, but all the other hate campaigns were tacitly endorsed, because they all singled out GamerGate, thus normalizing what is now happening to them — they get to taste their own medicine. Maybe they smarten up, and now they are in a kind of new trend since Barack Obama outed himself as an “Anti-SJW”. Maybe it’s okay for them too. But they got to admit their own actions, and not, like you try here, try to again blame the situation on others. This is not GamerGate. Making it about it is ludicrous. It’s time to look in the mirror.

Oh, and (3) the “controversy” is about, once more, about “social justice activist” particulars. If you want a good parallel, see Atheism Plus, which Harry Brewis (HBombergy) defended at the time. Didn’t see anything wrong with the Freethought Blogs style of dogpiling and harassing. They also turned against each other, eventually and it imploded. BreadTube is nothing new.

    Aneris ✻

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