Brands, prepare to join every internet cause you didn’t know existed.

Recently, an internet movement called Gamergate has been targeting major brands with mass e-mail and social media campaigns in a bid to get them to pull advertising from websites they perceive to be anti-Gamergate. This puts brands in a difficult position as it is not actually clear who, if anyone, is “right”.

Adobe and Intel were the first brand casualties in what is being called a “culture war”. Both were flooded with e-mails as part of a campaign called “Operation Disrespectful Nod”; coordinating their large network of supporters to disrupt detractors’ revenue and shut down websites perceived to be critical of their movement.

Intel were the first to pull ads from a website called Gamasutra. Of course, the anti-Gamergate side saw this as an endorsement of the tactics employed by some of those claiming to be from the Gamergate community, such as harassment and anonymous death threats. Once Intel realised what their withdrawal implied they were endorsing, they attempted an apology but did not reinstate their ads. Neither side seems to have been impressed by this and, while I doubt it will affect their bottom line, Intel has not secured any kind of definitive PR victory.

Adobe’s situation was somewhat different as it seems they were only mistakenly listed as an advertiser. They even went so far as to make a public statement that doesn’t seem to endorse either side but, as they acknowledge, they did send the wrong impression by their initial actions. As I mentioned at the top, the waters of Gamergate are very muddy and it is very difficult for a brand to navigate them with any sense of ‘right’. Adobe and Intel seem to have had the best of intentions but it does not seem to have helped either of them.

So what does this have to do with brands that have no association with Gamergate? It’s about how they could be used in future cultural wars. Brands and advertisers will be the new weapons used to undermine and shut opponents down. This Operation Disrespectful Nod playbook shows how savvy consumers are about brand sensitivity and how they can use this knowledge to launch complex social engineering attacks. This parody article from The Onion suddenly sounds depressingly plausible.

Thankfully, it is not all doom and gloom. Other brands targeted by Operation Disrespectful Nod seem to be willing to stay the course and weather the negative feedback so far. The lesson to be learned is that, while social media can empower brands to act quickly to negative feedback, we need to remember that there are two sides to every issue and jumping in without looking a bit deeper can land us on the wrong side of an argument we have no place being involved in.

Authors note: There is an awful lot of contradicting information about Gamergate out there which is why I have tried to restrict the number of external articles that I link to. I have, as much as possible, tried to keep the links neutral. If anyone could send me more reading material about this movement or about the brands involved I would be very grateful.