My family is filled with extremely hard-working, disgustingly intelligent people. Well, the elders anyway; us younger ones are all morons. So over my life, I've learned to be told "no, you're wrong; here's why" many, many times, to the point where I assume that anything I think is wrong, or not fully correct, and to seek clarification. My family and most places I've worked have also been staffed with hyper-competent people

The Mass Effect 3 ending debacle is what clued me in. Journalists and other online presences went after Jack Thompson, and it was funny because he was a backward old guy and edgy humour is funny. Suddenly, these same people turned on passionate fans, upset that a space epic ended with three colours. I honestly still get a little triggered when I see the word "entitled". Suddenly it wasn't so funny, and these people, who were supposed to represent us and speak for us, were definitely not our friends

I watched the Zoe Post stuff go down on GameFAQs. Every time it got nuked, some separate site was linked and I'd go there. It was a shitshow. Then wen things seemed to be setting, the Gamers Are Dead articles dropped and it was on again

I don't know how or when I discovered KiA; I actually didn't know about reddit before then. The earliest memory of KiA I have is when the Ghostbusters 2016 trailers dropped and everyone mocking it and the response to James Rolfe. I do know I had been lurking for quite some time at that point, so I likely found it in autumn 2015

I lurked because I had nothing to add to the conversation; I was there to learn. KiA, both of them (all five of them?) are filled with hideously brainy people, and were able to explain the feeling of wrongness of the internet, the creeping bullshit into gaming, the emotional traps regressives use in their writing, the behaviour and tactics they employ. I was finally able to have explained to me my thoughts on what was going on, and explain it to other people. A lot of the talking points regressives use when talking about GG I was already familiar with; I come from a farming background and am very used to the slander and smears farmers get from city folk and animal activists. Or even the general derision country people get about being backward; modern farming is (overly) computerised and mechanised these days! You can do six year courses at university about farming!

Then some guy asked about The Last Airbender/Korra and because I know more about those than real life, I jumped in to explain how Korra was a shit addition but good standalone product that wasn't necessarily woke within the show. And it's all been downhill from there. Haven't participated this much in an internet community since the ForumPlanet days