You were sent here because you think Gamergate is right wing. You are wrong.

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Bands, Businesses, Restaurants, Brands and Celebrities can create Pages in order to connect with their fans and customers on Facebook.

Assassin’s Creed: 5 Key Things That Need To Stay In The Games (& 5 That Should Change) There have been a lot of changes to the Assassin's Creed series over the years. The username is not just your login account, the username is your business card in the website/community/game. The first thing other netizens touches you is your username, so the username is very important. You can use the same username in all your registered websites, or you can set different usernames for different websites. GamerGate is a viral campaign that became an occasion, particularly from August 2014 to January 2015, to both question journalistic ethics and badger women involved in game development and gaming.

(I have shamelessly stolen the idea and format for this piece from Ken White over at Popehat, who wrote a worthwhile article for people who often misinterpret the first amendment.)

Maybe you think they’re the alt-right. Perhaps you labeled them all as Trump supporters. Nope. But don’t fret! You are not very wrong. There are right wingers within Gamergate. There are alt-righters within Gamergate. They’re just not the majority. It is a common mistake, and it is understandable why many people feel this way. At first glance, looking at the anti-progressive, anti-social justice, anti-feminist movement, you could be forgiven for thinking it is right wing. It requires a good amount of research and engagement to see that it is not, and most people are not interested in understanding Gamergate. It’s also commonly not a mistake when people call Gamergate right wing, but rather an attempt at painting the complex, nebulous online movement as politically extreme and hateful in order to dismiss it outright. If that’s the case – if you are portraying Gamergate as right wing because it makes your political round pegs fall neatly into your mental round holes – then I have to ask you to consider whether your political position is a strong one if your view requires the mischaracterization of thousands and thousands of people?

Who am I to tell you that you’re wrong?
I’m Brad Glasgow and I am among the few journalists who understand Gamergate. In fact, I am currently writing a book about the movement. As a local newspaper journalist who finds internet culture fascinating, I decided to step up and cover the story after seeing the ineptitude online journalists applied to their coverage. Being a small fry journalist, I knew I had to distinguish myself from the multitudes of editorialists covering Gamergate. I took the radical step of reaching out to its supporters, listening to them, and presenting their side of the story in my famous Interviewing an Internet Hashtag article.

Before I became a journalist I was a project manager for a market research firm. I applied that knowledge to my study of the movement, and in January of 2016 I conducted a survey with 725 Gamergate supporters who were able to verify that they had supported the movement on Twitter, Reddit, or elsewhere, at least one month prior to hearing about the survey. You can read my methodology, including the entire questionnaire, here.

Now that introductions are out of the way, let’s get down to business
The first mistake that you made is that you tried to paint a complex movement with one big fat hairy brush, and that’s not how you make happy little trees. Gamergate is not at all a cohesive movement. It contains factions upon factions, renowned within the movement for warring with each other every weekend. Just about the only thing you or I or anyone can definitively say about Gamergaters is that they are gamers.

Let’s talk about Gamergate’s politics
If you ask Americans where they fall on the political spectrum, you generally get about the same percentage of liberals as you get conservatives. If you ask the same question of Gamergate supporters, this is what you get.

You will immediately notice that around half of the Gamergate supporters I surveyed were not American. As one would expect, they are more left wing than American Gamergate supporters. So let’s take a look at how the more conservative American Gamergate supporters voted in the last national election.While Obama leads by a huge margin, it is worth noting that libertarian Gary Johnson nearly beat out major party candidate Mitt Romney.

If you look at the numbers for the second largest nation in terms of Gamergate supporters, the United Kingdom, it does not bode well for the Gamergate-as-conservative argument.In total, Gamergate supporters from 48 nations took the survey, and if you look at who each nation voted for you will see the same left-leaning results.

“But they’re lying! Those evil Gamergaters want to appear that they are not right wing so they misrepresented themselves in huge numbers in your survey!” you say? I have several responses to that. First, why would they lie? Gamergate supporters are known for their bluntness. They are famous for their desire to talk and argue with people with whom they disagree. In my research I have never known them to be shy when it comes to telling people exactly who they are and exactly what they believe.

Second, at the end of the survey I asked them to pick between several political choices. Take a close look at their responses.You will notice some overwhelmingly liberal choices, such as the abortion and homosexual marriage question. But you’ll also notice some not-so-liberal choices, such as the huge proportion of Gamergate supporters who believe minorities have as much a chance to succeed as anyone else. The more classically left wing response was obvious, yet Gamergate overwhelmingly went with the more conservative answer. Why would Gamergate supporters lie throughout the questionnaire on every question but that one?

Furthermore, if I broke down the responses by American vs. non-American, you would see exactly what you would expect: Americans are more conservative than the rest of the world. If they were misrepresenting themselves, I would think there would be less of a difference.

Gamergate supporters overwhelmingly think abortion, marijuana, and gay marriage should be legal. When given the choice between the two, they would rather have government-run over private health care. They are not climate change deniers. Does that sound conservative to you?

But they are anti-feminist and that means right wing!
Their stance on feminism is more nuanced than you think. They fully believe in equality between the sexes. They believe a woman should be paid as much as a man working the same job. In general, Gamergate supporters deny the claim that men make significantly more than women; especially the 77% wage gap assertion, which does not compare apples to apples or adjusts for education and experience.

What’s more, they may be more accepting of women in gaming than you think.

Gamergate supporters frequently argue that they are not, in fact, anti-feminist. Rather, they say, they are against Third Wave or intersectional feminism.

But they have a close relationship with Breitbart and when they chose people to represent them, they chose conservatives, including that guy from Breitbart!
Last point first. The people they chose to represent them at SPJ Airplay were not progressive liberals, sure. Christina Hoff Sommers identifies as a Democrat (Update January 19, 2017: I recently conducted an interview with Sommers to answer that very question. Decide for yourself.) Cathy Young identifies as a libertarian. Ashe Schow is more of a conservative, I believe. But, in my opinion, Gamergate chose them because they are three strong women who listened to Gamergate, and rejected the notion that it was an inherently sexist, misogynistic movement. They listened to Gamergate. I know from personal experience that is something Gamergate values more than you can ever understand.

Likewise, the Milo Yiannopoulous affair with Gamergate is an unusual, complex relationship. He was perhaps the first to listen. In return, he – not Breitbart – received Gamergate’s support. Check out this graphic from my survey.

Gamergate is not a big fan of Breitbart, with two thirds rarely or never reading it. My interpretation is that most of them don’t care for Breitbart except for their Gamergate coverage. Breitbart and Milo and Gamergate had a mutually beneficial relationship. They used each other. At a time when media sites were desperately censoring everything related to this upstart Gamergate movement, Milo listened to them and published their plight. In return, Gamergate gave Milo an audience. They appreciated his antics. He gravitated to the more extreme factions within Gamergate, who taught him about imageboard culture. He eagerly adopted that culture and language and used it to become even more outlandish, more radical, more alt-right, gaining an even larger audience. Some in Gamergate went with him to become this odd Trump cult. The majority stayed behind and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.

Gamergate supports those who listen to them, regardless of their politics.

Final thoughts
Even if my survey is crap (it isn’t) and even if they’ve misrepresented themselves to me over the past two years (they haven’t), do you have any evidence to disprove my findings other than your limited interaction with them?

Have you considered that you may believe they are right wing because you are so far to the left? Many of Gamergate’s detractors are anti-capitalist, and Gamergate, which adores gaming culture and the consumption of gaming products, is in direct conflict with such philosophy. I believe this is the reason many of the ultra-progressive opponents of Gamergate label it as right wing.

As I said early on, however, you are not very wrong. There is a highly organized, highly contentious alt-right faction of Gamergate supporters. If you are on the receiving end of their ire, as I have been, it can be daunting. Likewise, there are trolls who find extreme joy in exploiting the Gamergate controversy for their stunted version of “the lulz”. It can be a lot to wade through. It doesn’t help that Wikipedia’s listing for Gamergate is a political minefield, taken over by zealots. If your experience is with the alt-right faction or with the trolls, then you have an unfortunately skewed view of the larger picture, and I can empathize.

While Gamergate is complex, it is not impenetrably so. You can understand them and their movement, but it takes time and effort and not many are willing to offer these precious commodities. Had more people done so at the beginning of Gamergate way back in August of 2014, we would not still be talking about it today.

GamerGate is a consumer revolt against unethical practices in video game journalism and entertainment media, including (but not limited to) corruption and conflicts of interest, collusion, and the censorship of ideas and discussion. It is comprised of video game enthusiasts all over the world working together to eliminate ethical misconduct by industry professionals and promote fair and balanced video games media.

As a group, GamerGate is leaderless and unstructured so all efforts and projects are collaborative endeavors agreed upon and fulfilled by the group’s majority.

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The Three C's of GamerGate

The multiple journalistic failings that GamerGate has exposed and challenged can be summarized and sorted into the following three categories:

• Corruption
  • Conflicts of interest (COIs), including the non-disclosure of personal relationships (romantic and otherwise), non-disclosure of direct financial support and/or investments, and the non-disclosure of Patreon contributions.
  • Cronyism
  • Bribes and similar enticements (or threats and similar intimidation tactics) towards reviewers to grant games a better score then they deserve.

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• Collusion
  • Secret cooperation of supposed competing outlets to push (or silence) a message or narrative.
  • Industry-wide blacklisting

• Censorship
  • Wide-spread prohibition of GamerGate and GamerGate-related topics on forums and comment sections.
  • Abuse of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown measures
  • Social media blockbots and shadow-bans
  • Attempts to ban or censor video games based on content

Endeavors, Achievements, & Criticism

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GamerGate strives to find and expose unethical practices in video game journalism, communicate the desire for better ethics and representation, and inspire and foster positive change in the video game industry. The #GamerGate hashtag on Twitter is the primary medium for communication and collaboration, and websites like 8chan, Reddit, and Tumblr boast high numbers of participants and supporters as well.

Because GamerGate has no defined structure, much of the communication and messages directed towards developers, publishers, and journalists are done on an individual basis. However, GamerGate participants will frequently come together to collaborate on campaigns, referred to as operations.

The largest and most successful operation, Operation Disrespectful Nod, resulted in many different companies pulling their ads from sites that practiced unethical journalism, made no efforts to improve upon confrontation, and/or directly insulted their customer base through open disdain and mockery of gamers. Other operations have resulted in the direct improvement of gaming journalism. The Rebuild Initiative has given greater exposure to quality gaming media sites and strengthened the relationship between developers and gamers, and Operation UV directly influenced the enhancement of FTC rules regarding affiliate advertising and prompted websites to place disclaimers on paid advertisements disguised as articles.^[1][2]

Despite GamerGate’s positive changes on the industry, it has been met with heavy criticism from the journalists and publications under fire and their supporters, as well as third-wave feminists involved who have attributed the harsh criticism towards female offenders to misogyny and sexism. Additionally, due to the unstructured and anonymous nature of GamerGate, many individuals have taken advantage of the lack of accountability and have trolled and displayed abusive behavior towards members of the video game industry, notably women. As a result of all of this, GamerGate’s detractors have commonly referred the revolt as a 'misogynistic hate campaign' run by straight white males who want to drive women out of gaming. However, statistics^[3] show that this interpretation is patently false, and the existence of #NotYourShield suggests that GamerGate's demographics are far more diverse than its critics imply.

Origins

For a more detailed account of the origins and history of GamerGate, please read the History of GamerGate article.
For a comprehensive timeline of GamerGate, please refer to the Timeline.

The events leading up to the creation of GamerGate began on August 16, 2014, with the publication of 'thezoepost' by Eron Gjoni, an ex-boyfriend of indie game developer Zoe Quinn.^[4] The blog post outlined Quinn’s emotional abuse and infidelity, but what gamers took immediate notice of was the fact that Quinn, a developer, had engaged in romantic/sexual relations with industry professionals who had the potential to promote her and her work, including Nathan Grayson and Joshua Boggs. Discussion erupted on social media and various gaming websites, as suspicions of corruption and cronyism in the video game industry had already been present and thezoepost seemed to be a solid confirmation of those suspicions.

Most attempts to discuss these revelations online were silenced through thread deletions, DMCA video takedowns, and shadow-banning, but the attempts to silence conversation on the subject inadvertently caused a Streisand Effect and the topic spread. The publication of thezoepost, the impact it made in gaming circles, and the internet-wide attempts at smothering discussion of it is referred to as the Zoe Quinn Scandal.

As the scale and impact of the scandal grew, gaming journalists were placed under increased scrutiny by their readers, and many conflicts-of-interest were discovered and spread. In late August, actor Adam Baldwin coined the hashtag '#GamerGate' in response to the deluge of exposed breaches in video game journalism^[5], a hashtag that was quickly adopted by those arguing for better ethics. Shortly after, the coordinated Gamers are Dead media campaign began, with several different outlets posting articles decrying gamers, gamer culture, and the gamer lifestyle all within the same 24 hour period. The timing of the articles and the united message they spread caused #GamerGate supporters to immediately suspect collusion, which was all but confirmed in September 2014 with the revealing of the secret GameJournoPros group.^[6]

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Over time, the hashtag #GamerGate evolved to become the consumer revolt known as GamerGate.

Further Reading

Articles

Infographics

Videos

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See Also

DeepFreeze

GamerGate Achievements

The GamerGate OP

References

1. ↑ - 'Important Update: The FTC Heard Our Complaints. They Are Going to Issue Revised Disclosure Guidelines for Affiliate Links and You Tubers. We've Been Instrumental in Making Real, Lasting Positive Changes to Online Journalism - TheChiefLunatic - November 14 2014' Reddit - (archive)
2. ↑ - 'FTC Forces Gawker’s Kotaku To make Disclosures for Affiliate Links - Georgina Young - November 27 2014' TechRaptor - (archive)
3. ↑ - 'An Actual Statistical Analysis of #GamerGate? - jw - October 25 2014' Medium - (archive)
4. ↑ - 'thezoepost – Eron Gjoni – August 16 2014' Wordpress - (archive)
5. ↑ - '#GamerGate: - Adam Baldwin - August 27 2014' Twitter - (archive)
6. ↑ - 'Exposed: The Secret Mailing List of the Gaming Journalism Elite. - Milo Yiannopoulos - September 17 2014' Breitbart London - (archive)

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