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On Gamergate -- OR: Why Games Journalism Was The First Symptom of the Rapid Radicalization of the American Public by Weird Guys Online From 1995. A thread.
In 1990-2000, it was not normal to be on the internet very much. With slow dialup connections, and the science of the attention economy still in its infancy, computer screentime for most was low.
The internet then was mostly inhabited by boomers on IRC, imageboards and bbforums. The picture of an online person was: 20-50 years old, not very well-adjusted to the real world, and highly well-read on obscure subjects such as conspiracies, or political theory.
Like it or not, if you're on the internet for more than 4 hours a day in 2020, those boomers are your forefathers. They fundamentally shaped the communities you're a part of.
After the turn of the century, when the internet became a bit more accessible, the next demographic to come online was misfit teenagers. It started to become more normal for a teenager to have a personal computer in their room.
Although some of these people were girls, heavy internet usage was still simply more common for boys. Unless ugly, it was still easier and more appealing for a girl to lead an actual IRL social life instead of escaping to the digital realm.
These boys were generally lonely, in search of community, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, in search of role models.
The parents of the millenial and zoomer generations have been more hands-off than any other generation. Most of the teenagers using the internet in 2000-2012 did not see their parents as role models (the ones who did, weren't on the internet; they were playing sports).
The lost boys found their way onto existing bbforums and imageboards. To many, this felt like a beautiful hidden world they'd just stumbled into. They excitedly latched onto those communities, and to the rolemodels therein.
Culture, first and foremost, is a matter of tradition. And tradition, first and foremost, is passed down by role models. It's merely coincidence that, historically, role models have been parents. It's not a given.
The lost boys of the internet picked up mannerisms and beliefs from the cultures of the imageboards and forums they found themselves on.
Their religion came not from their parents, as has usually been the case, but from weird old guys talking about things like Atheism, Schizophrenic Christian Protestantism, Neopagan Revivalism. The kids ate it up.
Their political stances were adopted not from their local region, but from some weird guy reminiscing about his time at Woodstock, and an old man ranting about how the CIA used moon-bullets to kill JFK.
Movements like "Antifa", "Kali-Yuga Accelerationism", and Right-Wing American Neo-Nazism, owe their lineage to a potheaded Leninist, a schizophrenic buddhist, and a guy who was Mad At Gays, all eventually posting on 4chan dot org.
They knew not what the impact would be, of explaining their ideologies to interested strangers who asked. But it turned out that those interested strangers were young and impressionable, and hungry for any flag to carry.
At the same time, online games like Counter-Strike, TF2, and League of Legends started to become popular. The first to get heavily invested in them were highly-online young men.
And now perhaps enters you, dear reader. It was 2011, and you got a laptop for Christmas, or maybe your birthday. Your friends did, too, and your social circle started playing Gary's Mod after school most days.
And the social hierarchy didn't change, but it warped slightly. Now that everyone was here to GAME, it was a bit cooler to be good at CSGO. And who was the best at CSGO, but your friend who had already been playing CS:S for years.
He introduced your friendgroup to 4chan, or Reddit. Perhaps got you all joining his online community's TeamSpeak or Mumble. This happened to everyone, across the western world. Within half a decade, internet usage was UP.
And the framework of internet communities was already set. Created by autistic boomers, inherited by a younger generation of tech-savvy outcasts, and then filled with normal people who were here to play videogames.
Whenever a small community undergoes a huge influx of new members, the nuance to the community's beliefs and mannerisms is lost, and the community is reduced to a caricature of itself. The rise of internet usage, followed by the rise of Instagram, Twitter, etc is no exception.
Although the communities of old are warped and desecrated, what remains is still made of the same flesh.
The rest of the story is known, and will not be rehashed. But know that "Gamergate" wasn't the start, it was the inevitable thrusting of these underground cultures into the public eye, which had been brewing -- fermenting, growing, festering -- for decades.
