The Verge: As an activist movement with the ability to inspire positive change, Gamergate is dead. Its constituents and its hashtag will remain — and I suspect will be, for sometime, as fierce, aggressive, and vocal — but these remainders represent a hate group and its banner, associated with bigotry and cruelty.
Gamergate died ironically from what it most wanted: mainstream exposure.
3 comments:
I've been hearing a lot about GamerGate recently, and honestly I'm still pretty confused by the whole movement. In general I find it incredibly bizarre that anyone would ever think that video games are worth making death and rape threats over. I think it's terrifying that it's gotten to the point where this woman couldn't speak at a school for fear of the biggest school-shooting in history (and I think it's a pretty big argument against concealed-carry laws that they couldn't guarantee her safety.) I think that these people's reactions to a woman daring to talk about depictions of women in video games are simply proof that she has a point- they clearly think of women as objects who need to sit down and be seen and not heard, and they are willing to resort to terrifying and violent threats to get what they want. They're simply proving feminists' points- that if people are constantly exposed to media that glorifies violence and objectification of women, that just maybe that might leak over into how those people behave in real life. Clearly something gave them the idea that it was appropriate to threaten to rape and kill someone simply for being a woman who was expressing an opinion. Someone needs to sit these people down and point out that maybe- just maybe- if they actually cared about ethics in video game journalism, maybe they could address these concerns like rational adults, not like whiny middle schoolers with access to Twitter and concealed guns.
I was very confused by the people who attempted to keep Gamergate alive by claiming that those who sent the threats were not associated with Gamergate. If one wants to discuss actual breaches of journalism ethics without being accused of being misogynistic, then maybe one should A) focus your attentions on actual journalists instead of game creators who happen to be female and B) maybe you shouldn't use the name of a movement which has spent the entirety of its existence attacking women who they do not believe should be in the gaming industy.
I am confused by how counterintuitive Gamer gate is to their cause. They want to prove that the way video games were being portrayed in the media (violent, sexist and rapey) was grossly misinformed and over exaggerated, but have effectively proved everyone's point by threatening violence and rape in the name of video games. There are a lot of problems withe portrayal of women in videogames and there are a lot of journalist, who over exaggerate those problems for personal gain, but the way this is being handled in the moment is just ridiculous.
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