GamerGate -- A Trilogy Ends

Part 1
Part 2

This post is special for a multitude of reasons.

Number one: we're getting closer and closer to 10k! I'll probably do another roundup like I did for 1k, except this time not make all the images puush so they don't get deleted after like a week.

Number two: this is our 100th post! Pretty interesting, speaking that when we hit 1k we were at 50. I'm just going to assume this means exponential growth for eternity and it never actually plateaus.

And lastly, number three: as you can tell by the title of this post, this is my last address to GamerGate as a whole. If something else happens in GamerGate, I'll talk about the event in specific -- but as for generally, this is the last one.

This movement has slowly degraded into a cat-fight, mostly due to the help of trolls (yes, I used the word trolls) who think sending death threats to people are absolutely hilarious. This has turned both sides spinning out of control: anti-GamerGaters have used it as an excuse that "Look, they really are trying to attack us! See!" whereas GamerGaters have gone ahead and shut their ears, automatically assuming that they are actually just alts made by the anti party in an effort to make the pro party look bad and not thinking anything else of it again. Of course, both of these are wrong, but both sides seem eager in staying with their side of the story.

I take from the wise words of TotalBiscuit when I say that it makes no sense to stereotype a group of people as one person, and that also applies to both parties. There are people in pro party who believe in journalistic ethics, however there may also be a few who are just radical anti-feminists. There are people anti-GamerGate who believe all games that come even close to their definition of sexism should be panned, but there are also some who just want to have a few of their own games that promote diversity on the side that aren't panned. However, people like to stereotype and therefore both sides are often mislead about the other side, Most people on the side of the pro-party who just came probably think all anti-GamerGaters are crazy feminist bitches. Most people on the side of the anti-party who just came probably think GamerGate is a purely misogynistic movement created by that hacker 4chan. You see how this doesn't work?

So, with my last address to this is a notion of truce, by accepting both the sins and the saints that have happened on both sides. The reason I gave the introduction above is, to make things more simple, I may make it seem like the entire group has done it, but as all you smart folks now know the truth, and I can make things less complicated while still telling things clearly. So, here we go.

• GamerGate started over a blogpost made by an ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn (the creator of Depression Quest). He stated that Zoe had relations with five other men besides him at the time, all people in the gaming journalism. This created the movements first name (the Quinnspiracy), however it was not that great of an idea from the get go to trust some guy on the internet. As far as I know to this day there has never been any proof that the man even knew Zoe Quinn. 
• In response to the mass amounts of talk of the Quinnspiracy, various websites decided to censor any content about it as well as complete radio silence over it. Didn't really help them much at all, did it?
• Time had past, and the movement had changed from Quinnspiracy to GamerGate. In an effort to prove their worth, the pro-party funded a game done by a group of women who were also pro-GamerGate
• ...and in response, the group was harrassed and their fundraiser not given any media attention. Brilliant move, once again.
• The website to Polytron Corporation, Phil Fish's game studio, was apparently hacked shortly after this. The pro-party dismissed this as the first of many "false flags", or fakes done by the opposite party, and was probably not the best decision.
• However, the anti-party used this as traction, as well as the first time GamerGate news actually showed up on the media. This made it seem the connection to the anti-party and the media was closer than it seemed, and multiple independent journalists took at this moment to side with the pro-party.
• And with the increasing size of the pro-party, the games media took this as a clear disruption and the end of morality and humanity in the gaming community, creating the infamous "Gamers are dead" articles that alienated the viewers of these websites. This caused a mass boycott, taking down viewcounts by the thousands, most notably gamasutra whose total viewcount went down by almost 80%
• Independent journalist Milo Yiannopoulos (spelling my memory, give me a break) revealed during his snooping that there was a secret emailing group among both game journalists and game developers called "GamingJournoPros", a name I try will refrain from making any more jokes about. The group seemed reminiscent of a big conspiracy in the political journalism community which resulted in the firing of multiple members of the group. But this is game journalism, so that didn't happen.
• To add even more salt on the wound, a member of Kotaku made a comment on his twitter insulting members of the GamerGate movement. GamerGaters used this to their advantage, messaging multiple advertisers on Gawker media about this attack. Multiple advertisers, including Mercedes-Benz and Adobe, dropped their advertising due to these claims. Despite even THIS, the CEO of Gawker Media refused to fire the person who did it.
• After a long standstill in the conflict, a group of trolls sent death threats to multiple members of the anti-GamerGate party, including Anita Sarkeesian, who by this point had actually surprisingly been on the sidelines. For the first time ever GamerGate would hit national news, and it was not on the side of the pro-party.

By this point both groups have done bad, and I'm eager to just avoid this discussion now entirely and wait to see if anything actually comes of it besides some trifle between the journalists and the people who view their content. But as of now, this blog will no longer showcase it. 

So, what can YOU do in the meantime? Well, wonderful question! First, you can check out my twitter, which is essentially a feed that provides updates for both this and Codex of Aegis, my fiction-writing blog you should probably check out next. Right now, I should probably get back to writing my b- I mean, more stories for the Codex of Aegis!

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis