Peeling Back the Nebulous Strata of Gamergate

Nechoic Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 8, 2015

I remember when “the Quinnspiracy” broke out on the web, I was completing my morning ritual of twitter on the toilet and was trying to make sense of a long and rambling blog post about an ex-girlfirend and asking myself “why is this a thing?” And so during that strange transitional period when #burgersandfries coagulated into what we know today as #gamergate, my main goal as an outside observer was just to figure out one thing: who the fuck are these people and what do they want? And that’s honestly been the bulk of the discussion on this issue by both gamergate and its critics since August. Not ethics in gaming journalism, not by a long shot, as 90% of the conversation has been centered on self serving e-celeb laden metadrama centering around one question: what is gamergate and what do they do?

I’ve since come to understand that that is no longer a discussion worth having, as gamergate encompasses a wide range of people and groups across different corners of the internet with each corner having little to no awareness of what the others are doing. Calling gamergate a “movement” or even a “group” is generous, as it’s assuming that they all actually know what’s going on among themselves, much less care about accountability. Instead, I’ve seen a wide range of narratives and goals that individual gamergaters have claimed for the whole, and it’s left me scratching my head. What this has created is a strange ecosystem that perpetually provides controversy for gamergate and its critics to talk about, and it’s time we view it as such. Having been privy to this circlejerk since the beginning, this is my best account of the strata of gamergate and how they mutually benefit each other to create a perpetual masturbatory machine. Bear in mind that these layers are not distinct, but rather blend in with each other.

On the very top layer we have the people who are actually interested in ethics in gaming journalism. These are the ones who jumped on the bandwagon around October/November when the “actually it’s about…” meme was at its peak. While there certainly were some great points that were talked about (like the Assassin’s Creed Unity review embargo) a lot of it just gave a feeling to the outside observer of “so what?” A lot of it seems to focus on finding dubious,unconfirmable, and conspiratorial conflicts of interest for individuals/sites that have been critical of the other less forthcoming strata of the movement. This gives the impression that the majority of the ethics discussion occurring in this layer has the ulterior motive of defaming critics of gamergate. The irony, however, is that because these people have the mantra “gamergate is ethics” that they think these critics are anti-ethics, while in reality they are actually being critical of another layer within gamergate that has radically different opinions on what the purpose of gamergate is.

Which brings me to the “anti-SJW” crowd, and for the sake of not derailing from the purpose of this writing (because they’re a subject in and of themselves), I will focus more on their role within gamergate. To someone who’s new to the conflict, it seems strange that a movement that claims to be about video game journalism ethics spends so much time engaging in anti-feminist discussion, but it becomes more clear when one considers the early days of gamergate in August/September. Back then that’s all it was: immature unapologetic harassment towards “SJW’s,” and it was being exposed as that. To save face, dubious claims about ethics ( especially Zoe Quinn’s sleeping for press thing, jeez) were asserted and the meme “actually it’s about…” was born. The ethics crowd that this brought on ate it up, and by continuing the tradition of conspiratorial claims against the gamergate-critical they provided excellent cover for the anti-SJW crowd to perpetuate to this day.

This strange arrangement, and the response that it brought by the gamergate-critical created my all time favorite group: the gamergate apologists. These are the ones who spend the majority of their time defending gamergate, and the only reason they started doing so was because the previous two groups created the conceit that gamergate is a coherent group about ethics and they bought it wholesale. What’s interesting about this group, however, is the sheer amount of mental gymnastics they have to go through to claim that gamergate is a solid movement for good while writing off the bad parts as not not authentically gamergate, claiming group coherence only when it suits them. A common tactic that they use to derail the gamergate-critical is to take bits and pieces out of the context of the larger discussion and claim logical fallacies. Fallacy of origin, fallacy of association, and fallacy of composition seem to be the common claims, and it gives the impression that they don’t actually care about discussion but rather are trying to shotgun pseudo-rationalist arguments at critics to see what sticks. However, they are making two big mistakes: that any sort of concrete claim can be made about a nebulous “movement” like gamergate and that simply pointing out logical fallacies in the dissenting opinion means that the pro-gamergate claim is automatically correct. Then there’s the cringe-worthy propaganda and the faux-statistics that makes this scientist want to hurl.

(You have to look at this and wonder if these people are actually being serious or if this is all a big joke)

While I’m sure that the apologist crowd has the best intentions while they are tilting at “anti-gamergate” windmills, they are not completely innocent. By playing down, declaring disassociation from, or flat out denying some of the more vile actions done in the name of gamergate they have provided the perfect cover for these kinds of actions to continue with impunity. They make the banal mistake that the critics of gamergate are trying to propagandize against it instead of pointing out very real occurrences of harassment and violence and calling it out. Instead, by shifting the conversation from “something should be done about this abuse over here” to “Gamergate is actually about…” they’ve provided the perfect (#notyour)shield for the real scum of the internet to be, well, scum. In essence, by refusing to be self-critical the apologetics of gamergate has created a free-for-all for the right wing nutjobs like Milo, the PUA’s and redpillers like Roosh, the amoral e-celebs like roguestar and Mr. Fart, the doxxers, the harassers and the trolls to have a platform and do whatever they like in the name of gamergate.

So that leads us back to the original question: what is gamergate? Well, fuck if I know, and I honestly don’t think there’s an actual answer to that question because it gives the generous assumption that gamergate is a coherent entity. It makes much more sense to view gamergate as a bunch of mildly disenfranchised gamers each with their own gripes whilst standing on a vague internet soapbox to give it some sort of external importance. The only reason it hasn’t died yet is because the component groups of this “movement” have created a perpetual controversy machine to support each other’s reason to exist. The scum and the anti-SJW crowd do their thing, and the apologist and ethics crowd spin and make conspiracies. The former groups give the latter groups something to talk about, and the latter groups provide the cover for the former groups to function, a remarkable yet horrifying web-based symbiotic relationship if you ask me.