Video Game Culture VI Justice for all... social or not

[Solmyr]

1. SJW never makes sense.

2. Gamer gate started with the harassment and threats, the corruption was tacked on later

1. Ok, so what's your solution? The term won't go away, it's already ingrained in the speech of entire groups on the internet. Agreeing on its definition seems to be the only logical discourse at this point - otherwise we end up, you know, arguing over its meaning for 6 threads.

2. But the threats and harassment were in response to something else, no? Or do you mean that it started being called GamerGate only after the threats and harassment started? I guess it would make sense then, tho I still maintain my original statement that it's an exercise for people with too much free time.

[Shryke]

1. Ok, so what's your solution? The term won't go away, it's already ingrained in the speech of entire groups on the internet. Agreeing on its definition seems to be the only logical discourse at this point - otherwise we end up, you know, arguing over its meaning for 6 threads.

2. But the threats and harassment were in response to something else, no? Or do you mean that it started being called GamerGate only after the threats and harassment started? I guess it would make sense then, tho I still maintain my original statement that it's an exercise for people with too much free time.

No, it started, literally, as a guy trying to shame his ex-gf for cheating on him by implying she fucked a ton of game's journalists for good review scores. It then turned into a harassment campaign that, and there's chatlog proof of this, decided to disguise itself as being about journalistic ethics.

[Seli]

1. Ok, so what's your solution? The term won't go away, it's already ingrained in the speech of entire groups on the internet. Agreeing on its definition seems to be the only logical discourse at this point - otherwise we end up, you know, arguing over its meaning for 6 threads.

2. But the threats and harassment were in response to something else, no? Or do you mean that it started being called GamerGate only after the threats and harassment started? I guess it would make sense then, tho I still maintain my original statement that it's an exercise for people with too much free time.

1. It is intended as an insult, but no-one seems to care, because it does not make sense. Best ignore it, or use it to troll those who take it seriously.

2. The harassment was the start, even though it is merely the continuation of existing patterns of harassment. It is what bound people together initially. The cover is an indication the bullies realize their behavior isn't accepted anymore in polite society. Sadly some are so good at ignoring harassment happening to others they think the movement is really about the cover.

[Inigima]

Today in The Company You Keep: Meet Mike Cernovich, newfound #gubbindorf hero:

https://storify.com/stillgray/matt-binder-nails-gamergate-based-lawyer-mike-cern

I don't think all or even most #gribbleflat proponents are crazy Internet tough guys like him, but again, these are the people you're associating yourself with by participating. Repugnant.

EDIT: Here are a Boston Globe reporter's comments directly to one of the main #gg subreddits: http://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2h36ue/another_poorlyresearched_hitpiece_from_the_boston/cldrqeu

[Gears of the Beast]

https://storify.com/stillgray/matt-binder-nails-gamergate-based-lawyer-mike-cern

"When you think of what's truly ugly in our culture (feminism, abortion, political correctness), you'll see atheists behind it."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Cernovich is quite the asshat. I see the one tweet showing support for Gamergate (not disputing but looking for more information) why is he called a "Gamergate hero"?

[Inigima]

That storify is specifically a "hey look what a dick this guy is," which is why most of the stuff in it is unrelated. He got into it over that Gawker writer's "bring back bullying" tweet and has been expressing support for it. See his Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously

[Stalker]

No, it started, literally, as a guy trying to shame his ex-gf for cheating on him by implying she fucked a ton of game's journalists for good review scores. It then turned into a harassment campaign that, and there's chatlog proof of this, decided to disguise itself as being about journalistic ethics.

No, that's not correct. These people were already in action when the angry ex posted, however, they decided to use the material to attack ZQ, including spreading lies about sex for reviews. They certainly knew it wasn't true, but there may be people around now that believed it.

[Gears of the Beast]

Cernovich is quite the asshat. I see the one tweet showing support for Gamergate (not disputing but looking for more information) why is he called a "Gamergate hero"?

Well the obvious answer to that question is a loose definition of hero and some bias thrown in for good measure.

The guy drew some positive attention from Gamergate when this happened.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Inigima,

He just loves "SWJ's" doesn't he?

[Werthead]

So, 6 threads in, I am still unsure what GamerGate is. Nor have we reached agreement about the definition of SJW and its appropriate use.

One side seems to insist that SJW must be taken at its literal meaning and thus convey respect for that person, while the other group adds a pinch of sarcasm and prefers using the term as derogative. I can think of many examples in language, where both solutions would be acceptable, depending on context. And as far as I've seen from the internet, there already exist plenty of context to give credence to both meanings.

As for GamerGate - a bunch of people arguing over games and gaming journalism ethics then escalating into death threats? Am I on the right track? No offense to anyone involved, but it seems to be an exercise for people with too much free time on their hands - judging from the amount of threads, their length and the dedication of some of the people involved.

GamerGate is best seen in the larger social/cultural context of the changing demographics of video gaming. GG supporters tend to back away from this analysis because it is not good news for them, but it's the only way for the thing to make any sense (so it appears only mostly insane instead of completely inexplicable).

Basically, video games started off (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) as being relatively gender-agnostic. After the great gaming crash of the early 1980s, the games that became popular again and saved the industry from extinction tended to be violent action games. These were successful so gaming companies and publishers tended to push them more, creating a positive feedback loop in which gaming de facto became predominantly aimed at young men and boys. This was not completely the case - adventure games (the Monkey Island series has a strong feminist subplot in which our hero constantly fails to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend because she is vastly more capable than he is and has usually sorted out the crisis long before he shows up) and console games aimed at youngsters tended to be a lot more diversity-friendly - but up until the mid-1990s gaming was completely dominated by male players.

The arrival of PlayStation in 1995 changed that, first through being a console aimed firmly at the living room rather than the bedroom, encouraging the whole family to play, and then through massively popularising games with female protagonists. Tomb Raider is the original example of that and also demonstrates the confusion in the industry: Lara Croft is a jokey, tough action hero and very capable female protagonist, but also had huge breasts and the camera spent a lot of its time pointed at her backside. This coincided with the arrival of more female-friendly games on PC as well, such as BioWare RPGs (the first, Baldur's Gate, was released in 1998). MMOs and games like the original The Sims (released in 2000) also expanded the larger number of women playing games. The PS2 era and the arrival of smartphones, casual games and so on radically increased that as well.

Simultaneously, we also had the conversation about the art and culture of gaming. As many gamers entered their 30s, there was widespread dissatisfaction that the artistic merits of gaming were being ignored, and (ironically) the whole medium was being dismissed as just being violent and male-oriented. The fact that gaming overtook cinema in terms of worldwide revenue generated in 1998 (!) and it continued to be ignored was seen as ridiculous. This reached a peak when film critic Roger Ebert dismissed gaming as an artform in 2005. This led to a lengthy debate within and outside the industry (some of it in discussions here and on thousands of other forums). It culminated in 2010 when Ebert effectively conceded the argument, admitting that some games he'd played in the meantime had some artistic merit. We also saw an explosion in games coverage in non-traditional venues at this time, such as Forbes Magazine, Rolling Stone and in major newspapers and online. These saw gaming being covered from different viewpoints than purely from within the industry.

Finally, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the explosion of the indie gaming scene allowed games creators to tackle more difficult and sensitive topics (like depression and mental health) than would be possible in a big budget, AAA title costing tens of millions of dollars to make. So a perfect storm took shape, made up of much more widespread outside scrutiny from cultural and political viewpoints (rather than purely mechanical gameplay or graphical ones); greater freedom to make more challenging and different games; and a substantial rise in the number of women (and POC, transgender and other 'minority' groups) both making and playing games.

The irony is that the apparent victory - the games were now being considered as a cultural artform - directly led to people like Anita Sarkeesian being able to examine gaming from those cultural/societal viewpoints. And of course what they found in many cases was disturbing, because whilst women had become much more widespread as game-makers and game creators, there was still a core of AAA titles aimed at being as violent as possible and being either indifferent to women as players and characters, actively ignoring them or even being (consciously or not) misogynstic and sexist as a result. Where Sarkeesian is criticised - sometimes correctly - is that gaming has certainly made massive strides away from where it was ten or fifteen years ago and things are better. Where Sarkeesian is correct herself, however, is that core gaming still has some way to go. It's the central tenent of modern feminism: critics claim that because things are much better than they were, we should slacken off because freedom of speech or something. Feminists argue that getting 85% or 90% of the way (being generous here) to full spectrum equality is great, but we need to be 100% and should not take our eye off the ball until we get to that point.

This led to the situation of the previous three or four years where proto-GGers discovered that gaming was being analysed and taken seriously as a cultural medium, with lots of coverage of the artistic merits of games like The Last of Us, Braid and Journey - which was great - but that this cultural analysis was also discovering a lot of asshattery and lots to criticise in the most popular types of games (militaristic shooters, the GTA games etc). This led to a low-simmering state of cultural siege in which self-proclaimed 'hardcore gamers' (note: logging the latest CoD for 500 hours does not make you a hardcore gamer, it just means you have a lot of time on your hands) suddenly felt they couldn't read a review of their latest favourite game without seeing criticisms for being 'non-PC'*. They reacted badly, targetting any critic or commentator who stuck their head into view. Sarkeesian came in for the lion's share of fire for her profile, her use of Kickstarter to fund her campaign and for her initially self-acknowledged state of not being a regular gamer.

The GamerGate situation itself blew up earlier in the year when developer Zoe Quinn released her game Depression Quest. It's a pretty debilitating text-based game about the experience of going through depression. It's certainly not a 'fun' game. The proto-GGers initially blew up because the game was very simple (it's a text game consisting of Q&A roleplay scenarios) and because it attracted a fair bit of outside coverage for its unusual-but-important subject matter. However, what caused the controversy to go nuclear was the following sequence of events:

1. Quinn's ex-boyfriend posted a rant revealing that Quinn had gone into a relationship with a journalist from Kotaku. This gave the proto-GGers an excuse to attack Quinn's morals and ethics directly. Initially it appeared that Quinn had cheated on her boyfriend but later it was clarified that this was not the case (although it is still widely reported now). Exactly why that is relevant is unclear. It appears that the proto-GGers were Outraged Morality Crusaders and seized on the alleged infidelity as proof of Quinn's bad character. Or something.

2. The gaming press, which itself had been diversifying in recent years with more female reviewers and greater coverage of non-AAA titles (necessary as the number of indie games being released became inordinately high), posted a series of articles criticising the stereotypical gamer identity, of the young man sitting at home with lots of time on his hands enjoying violent shooters and using racial and gender-based slurs online. The press suggested that "Gamers" should be "over", referring to the stereotype rather than literally every gamer everywhere (which would be nonsensical). However, several of the articles phrased this badly.

3. The proto-GGers seized this on an attack on all gamers everywhere. They claimed that the gaming press was in bed with developers - in this case literally - and this was a corrupt practice. They conveniently ignored the immutable fact that Depression Quest had never (and still hasn't) been reviewed on Kotaku and the journalist in question had only mentioned the game in one article before having a relationship with Quinn. They also ignored the sheer mind-numbing avalanche of journalistic corruption that had been going on for the past 20+ years with regards to Triple-A publishers funding the gaming press through advertising and threatening to pull adverts when critical reviews appeared. Finally, they also ignored the fact that Depression Quest was free, so no money was changing hands at all.

4. The movement got its name when actor Adam Baldwin described it as "GamerGate". He was, to be fair, apparently more angry about the conflation of "all gamers everywhere" with "basement-dwelling, murder-obsessed misogynists" rather than suggesting that all games should be misogynstic and violent towards women. However, this almost instantly became problematic when many of the basement-dwelling, murder-obsessed misogynists did indeed adopt GamerGate as their shield and even put forwards a lengthy plan on how they were going to use it to this end (laid out in a 1,000 page IRC chat mentioned previously).

5. Now the situation has become chaotic because many people who completely missed the original Quinn Saga (but have despised the degree to which the gaming industry and journalists are in bed with another) have now jumped on board to help target corruption in the gaming press and are genuine in that desire. However, there's also a huge number of women-hating arseholes (ranging from standard or garden mysoginists to active members of the "anti-PC" brigade to those who just want Lara Croft to have big tits again) who have also adopted the GamerGate moniker. The GamerGate community - which isn't a community at all really, with no leader and no core identity - is therefore difficult to deal with because it has a spectrum of members (including women) ranging from people who genuinely want reform of journalistic standards to trolls to disturbed people who like dishing out rape threats and exposing the identities of their enemies online.

tl;dr: GamerGate is a direct attempt to threaten, marginalise and halt the greater diversity of people making games and characters in games which is simultaneously being used by some genuinely well-meaning people to target corruption in gaming journalism. It's bascially a clusterfuck which would be helped by those who are interested in journalistic reform (which I think all gamers regardless of their stripe agree is a problem) adopting a different moniker or identity. It's clinging onto the toxic and poisonous GamerGate identity which is now causing a lot of the problems, failed definitions and missed opportunities for genuine progress.

* This is the definition of political correctness as, "I want to be a total shitberg and anything that stops me being a total shitberg is political correctness gone mad violation freedom of speech oppressed waaaah."

[TerraPrime]

So, 6 threads in, I am still unsure what GamerGate is.

You only have yourself to blame. The genesis of GamerGate has been rehashed multiple times in these iterations, with links to the original IRC chat dump and then the subsequent analyses. Wert is kind enough to write up a summary for you so now you can get caught up.

Nor have we reached agreement about the definition of SJW and its appropriate use.

We won't reach an agreement because one side insists on using it as a term to denigrate and to insult.

As for GamerGate - a bunch of people arguing over games and gaming journalism ethics then escalating into death threats? Am I on the right track? No offense to anyone involved, but it seems to be an exercise for people with too much free time on their hands - judging from the amount of threads, their length and the dedication of some of the people involved.

Yes we should leave the commenting instead to people like you.

[daskool]

Inigima,

He just loves "SWJ's" doesn't he?

After the whole female as a noun FUBAR isn't it about time you..checked your privilege??

As for Social Justice Warrior, the definition is an easy one. People who hold far left political views, overwhelmingly women who are self described 3rd wave feminists, who view every single event that has or will happen in their utterly stunted and pathetic lives through the prism of identity politics. They combine the jargon filled meanderings of a math geek with the religious zeal of an ISIS jihadi.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

daskool,

What is your opinion on the tweets from Cernovich documented in the article Inigima links to?

[daskool]

GamerGate is best seen in the larger social/cultural context of the changing demographics of video gaming. GG supporters tend to back away from this analysis because it is not good news for them, but it's the only way for the thing to make any sense (so it appears only mostly insane instead of completely inexplicable).

Basically, video games started off (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) as being relatively gender-agnostic. After the great gaming crash of the early 1980s, the games that became popular again and saved the industry from extinction tended to be violent action games. These were successful so gaming companies and publishers tended to push them more, creating a positive feedback loop in which gaming de facto became predominantly aimed at young men and boys. This was not completely the case - adventure games (the Monkey Island series has a strong feminist subplot in which our hero constantly fails to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend because she is vastly more capable than he is and has usually sorted out the crisis long before he shows up) and console games aimed at youngsters tended to be a lot more diversity-friendly - but up until the mid-1990s gaming was completely dominated by male players.

The arrival of PlayStation in 1995 changed that, first through being a console aimed firmly at the living room rather than the bedroom, encouraging the whole family to play, and then through massively popularising games with female protagonists. Tomb Raider is the original example of that and also demonstrates the confusion in the industry: Lara Croft is a jokey, tough action hero and very capable female protagonist, but also had huge breasts and the camera spent a lot of its time pointed at her backside. This coincided with the arrival of more female-friendly games on PC as well, such as BioWare RPGs (the first, Baldur's Gate, was released in 1998). MMOs and games like the original The Sims (released in 2000) also expanded the larger number of women playing games. The PS2 era and the arrival of smartphones, casual games and so on radically increased that as well.

Simultaneously, we also had the conversation about the art and culture of gaming. As many gamers entered their 30s, there was widespread dissatisfaction that the artistic merits of gaming were being ignored, and (ironically) the whole medium was being dismissed as just being violent and male-oriented. The fact that gaming overtook cinema in terms of worldwide revenue generated in 1998 (!) and it continued to be ignored was seen as ridiculous. This reached a peak when film critic Roger Ebert dismissed gaming as an artform in 2005. This led to a lengthy debate within and outside the industry (some of it in discussions here and on thousands of other forums). It culminated in 2010 when Ebert effectively conceded the argument, admitting that some games he'd played in the meantime had some artistic merit. We also saw an explosion in games coverage in non-traditional venues at this time, such as Forbes Magazine, Rolling Stone and in major newspapers and online. These saw gaming being covered from different viewpoints than purely from within the industry.

Finally, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the explosion of the indie gaming scene allowed games creators to tackle more difficult and sensitive topics (like depression and mental health) than would be possible in a big budget, AAA title costing tens of millions of dollars to make. So a perfect storm took shape, made up of much more widespread outside scrutiny from cultural and political viewpoints (rather than purely mechanical gameplay or graphical ones); greater freedom to make more challenging and different games; and a substantial rise in the number of women (and POC, transgender and other 'minority' groups) both making and playing games.

The irony is that the apparent victory - the games were now being considered as a cultural artform - directly led to people like Anita Sarkeesian being able to examine gaming from those cultural/societal viewpoints. And of course what they found in many cases was disturbing, because whilst women had become much more widespread as game-makers and game creators, there was still a core of AAA titles aimed at being as violent as possible and being either indifferent to women as players and characters, actively ignoring them or even being (consciously or not) misogynstic and sexist as a result. Where Sarkeesian is criticised - sometimes correctly - is that gaming has certainly made massive strides away from where it was ten or fifteen years ago and things are better. Where Sarkeesian is correct herself, however, is that core gaming still has some way to go. It's the central tenent of modern feminism: critics claim that because things are much better than they were, we should slacken off because freedom of speech or something. Feminists argue that getting 85% or 90% of the way (being generous here) to full spectrum equality is great, but we need to be 100% and should not take our eye off the ball until we get to that point.

This led to the situation of the previous three or four years where proto-GGers discovered that gaming was being analysed and taken seriously as a cultural medium, with lots of coverage of the artistic merits of games like The Last of Us, Braid and Journey - which was great - but that this cultural analysis was also discovering a lot of asshattery and lots to criticise in the most popular types of games (militaristic shooters, the GTA games etc). This led to a low-simmering state of cultural siege in which self-proclaimed 'hardcore gamers' (note: logging the latest CoD for 500 hours does not make you a hardcore gamer, it just means you have a lot of time on your hands) suddenly felt they couldn't read a review of their latest favourite game without seeing criticisms for being 'non-PC'*. They reacted badly, targetting any critic or commentator who stuck their head into view. Sarkeesian came in for the lion's share of fire for her profile, her use of Kickstarter to fund her campaign and for her initially self-acknowledged state of not being a regular gamer.

The GamerGate situation itself blew up earlier in the year when developer Zoe Quinn released her game Depression Quest. It's a pretty debilitating text-based game about the experience of going through depression. It's certainly not a 'fun' game. The proto-GGers initially blew up because the game was very simple (it's a text game consisting of Q&A roleplay scenarios) and because it attracted a fair bit of outside coverage for its unusual-but-important subject matter. However, what caused the controversy to go nuclear was the following sequence of events:

1. Quinn's ex-boyfriend posted a rant revealing that Quinn had gone into a relationship with a journalist from Kotaku. This gave the proto-GGers an excuse to attack Quinn's morals and ethics directly. Initially it appeared that Quinn had cheated on her boyfriend but later it was clarified that this was not the case (although it is still widely reported now). Exactly why that is relevant is unclear. It appears that the proto-GGers were Outraged Morality Crusaders and seized on the alleged infidelity as proof of Quinn's bad character. Or something.

2. The gaming press, which itself had been diversifying in recent years with more female reviewers and greater coverage of non-AAA titles (necessary as the number of indie games being released became inordinately high), posted a series of articles criticising the stereotypical gamer identity, of the young man sitting at home with lots of time on his hands enjoying violent shooters and using racial and gender-based slurs online. The press suggested that "Gamers" should be "over", referring to the stereotype rather than literally every gamer everywhere (which would be nonsensical). However, several of the articles phrased this badly.

3. The proto-GGers seized this on an attack on all gamers everywhere. They claimed that the gaming press was in bed with developers - in this case literally - and this was a corrupt practice. They conveniently ignored the immutable fact that Depression Quest had never (and still hasn't) been reviewed on Kotaku and the journalist in question had only mentioned the game in one article before having a relationship with Quinn. They also ignored the sheer mind-numbing avalanche of journalistic corruption that had been going on for the past 20+ years with regards to Triple-A publishers funding the gaming press through advertising and threatening to pull adverts when critical reviews appeared. Finally, they also ignored the fact that Depression Quest was free, so no money was changing hands at all.

4. The movement got its name when actor Adam Baldwin described it as "GamerGate". He was, to be fair, apparently more angry about the conflation of "all gamers everywhere" with "basement-dwelling, murder-obsessed misogynists" rather than suggesting that all games should be misogynstic and violent towards women. However, this almost instantly became problematic when many of the basement-dwelling, murder-obsessed misogynists did indeed adopt GamerGate as their shield and even put forwards a lengthy plan on how they were going to use it to this end (laid out in a 1,000 page IRC chat mentioned previously).

5. Now the situation has become chaotic because many people who completely missed the original Quinn Saga (but have despised the degree to which the gaming industry and journalists are in bed with another) have now jumped on board to help target corruption in the gaming press and are genuine in that desire. However, there's also a huge number of women-hating arseholes (ranging from standard or garden mysoginists to active members of the "anti-PC" brigade to those who just want Lara Croft to have big tits again) who have also adopted the GamerGate moniker. The GamerGate community - which isn't a community at all really, with no leader and no core identity - is therefore difficult to deal with because it has a spectrum of members (including women) ranging from people who genuinely want reform of journalistic standards to trolls to disturbed people who like dishing out rape threats and exposing the identities of their enemies online.

tl;dr: GamerGate is a direct attempt to threaten, marginalise and halt the greater diversity of people making games and characters in games which is simultaneously being used by some genuinely well-meaning people to target corruption in gaming journalism. It's bascially a clusterfuck which would be helped by those who are interested in journalistic reform (which I think all gamers regardless of their stripe agree is a problem) adopting a different moniker or identity. It's clinging onto the toxic and poisonous GamerGate identity which is now causing a lot of the problems, failed definitions and missed opportunities for genuine progress.

* This is the definition of political correctness as, "I want to be a total shitberg and anything that stops me being a total shitberg is political correctness gone mad violation freedom of speech oppressed waaaah."

Gamergate developed into a mass movement only after the near entirety of the gaming press, led by well known doxxing harasser and racist Leigh Alexander, wrote wall to wall editorials condemning their own readership as unwanted, disgusting, gangrenous appendages that required amputation and burning. It was an eye opener for many.

[Galactus]

I do think an important bit o context remains the attacks against gaming made by eg. Thiompson etc. as important, insofar as itconditioned a lot of gamers to react instincitvely to ny criticism with incredible hostility and paranoia.

[1918me]

Gamergate developed into a mass movement only after the near entirety of the gaming press, led by well known doxxing harasser and racist Leigh Alexander, wrote wall to wall editorials condemning their own readership as unwanted, disgusting, gangrenous appendages that required amputation and burning. It was an eye opener for many.

"No, please, stop citing evidence and listen to my version of reality!"

I don't use the term "troll" lightly, as I find it does nothing but stunt genuine discussion, but seeing as how that's going to be impossible to reach with you anyway, I see no problem in writing you off as one.

[Larry of the Lawn]

After the whole female as a noun FUBAR isn't it about time you..checked your privilege??

As for Social Justice Warrior, the definition is an easy one. People who hold far left political views, overwhelmingly women who are self described 3rd wave feminists, who view every single event that has or will happen in their utterly stunted and pathetic lives through the prism of identity politics. They combine the jargon filled meanderings of a math geek with the religious zeal of an ISIS jihadi.

I didn't expect you to have been paying attention, but the male/female as a noun thing wasn't related to sexism. It's about sounding like a weirdo. And this is coming from a selfproclaimed weirdo. So it doesn't have anything to do with privelege, but its cute that you think it does.

[Shryke]

I do think an important bit o context remains the attacks against gaming made by eg. Thiompson etc. as important, insofar as itconditioned a lot of gamers to react instincitvely to ny criticism with incredible hostility and paranoia.

This is in many ways the core problem. Between various forms of marginalization (social, artistic, etc) and between a very boys club atmosphere slowly being pried open and throw into the light, the gaming community has become an incredibly violently reactionary group. And one conditioned by the style and lack-of-physical-presence of the internet to be ok with expressing themselves in truly awful ways.

[Werthead]

Gamergate developed into a mass movement only after the near entirety of the gaming press, led by well known doxxing harasser and racist Leigh Alexander, wrote wall to wall editorials condemning their own readership as unwanted, disgusting, gangrenous appendages that required amputation and burning. It was an eye opener for many.

That's certainly what caused it to blow up: the identification of the 'gamer' tag with 'arsehole misogynists'. The situation has subsequently been confused by many GG supporters claiming to be 'core gamers' and then demonstrating arsehole misogynist tendencies. The conclusion is certainly one I would agree with, that the simple use of the term 'gamer' was a mistake.

That said, I have seen zero evidence that Leigh Alexander has doxxed anyone. Since many forms of doxxing are illegal, I suggest taking that evidence, if extant, to the police.