Was gamergate a turning point in your life, in your philosophy or in your worldview? From what to what?
I'm contemplating on how it has affected me (very significantly). Some of the friends I made during gamergate seem to have not changed so much. What was it like for you?
Share your stories.
Not a turning point, but a milestone.
When 2015-16 came around, before I started paying much attention to the election, I thought Trump was a racist ass. But he didn't burn out, he kept rising in the polls, then he started winning primaries. That didn't make sense to me, so I tried to find out why.
What I saw was that 95% of the "explanations" for Trump's rise and the criticisms of it exactly mirrored the lies and slander we saw during GamerGate. Everyone is racist. Entitled manbabies are crying about losing their privilege. Criticizing a woman equals misogyny. Targeted harassment. All coming from lefty full time media folks with their heads up their asses.
The nature of their attacks on Trump supporters, which I was primed to recognize as bullshit by GamerGate, made me realize that there had to be something else at play. I looked into it and realized Trump wasn't any of the things I thought he was or the media was slandering him as.
This, exactly. It's basically how I ended up as a card-carrying (not really, I asked for a card and they didn't have any) Republican. With a hard R. I saw how an article that took me under 15 minutes to read was illegible scrawlings from a "jilted lover." And the way the games journalists overreacted... well.
When they did it to Trump, the first thing I did was watch uninterrupted speeches- not editorialized, just in its totality- and realized oh fuck they're doing it again.
Thankfully, he won. Hopefully, he does again.