All Politics is Gamergate

Image: Smithsonian

If you know about Gamergate, you probably know the version of the story that goes like this:

In August 2014, a young man wrote a lengthy, explosive blog post detailing what he claimed were a series of grievances he had against his ex-girlfriend -- most notably a (false) allegation that she engaged in a sexual relationship with a video game journalist in exchange for a favorable review of her own video game.

The post went viral, and in the following months, a growing horde of angry young men took to the internet to lob abuse at video game journalists, women in gaming, and prominent female influencers (although the word didn't really exist yet). The misogynistic harassment campaign continued for well over a year, spawning the absurd-on-its-face explanation that its participants weren't there to hurl abuse, but rather, to argue for "ethics in video game journalism."

Though the mob claimed they were seeking ethics in video game journalism, the true purpose of their abuse was to restrict the role of women in digital spaces -- rolling back notions that women could be the target audience for a video game, or that women could even review a game.

That version of the story is relatively simple to understand, and to be sure, it's also accurate. But the truth of Gamergate was so much more complex, messy, and confounding than that clean explanation makes it sound. It's true, but it's not the whole truth.

Gamergate Was So Much More, And Worse

Gamergate was about a misogynistic harassment campaign in the same way the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima was an attack on a bridge. Sure, that's a true thing to say, but does that really describe what happened?

The real story of Gamergate is inseparable from the internet itself. It was how many people first learned about the concept of swatting. It was organized and coordinated via Reddit (r/KotakuInAction) and Twitter. It featured fan art and the fictionalized persona, "Vivian James" -- meant to sound like "video games." She had a color scheme, green and purple, that anti-Gamergate mythology claims was associated with a rape meme.

It popularized terms like "SJW" (social justice warrior) and created one of the most famous early copypastas: They targeted Gamers . The movement was promoted by Steve Bannon's Breitbart. It pushed figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, Mike Cernovich, Baked Alaska, Shoe0nHead, Sargon of Akkad, and others into the internet spotlight.

That it happened at the same moment social media shifted into hyperspeed is not a coincidence. That many of the people involved went on to become Trump campaign figures is also not a coincidence. Moreover, there are more than a few similarities between the harassment campaign levied by so-called Gamergaters and those perpetrated by fans of various Twitch streamers, conservative influencers, and even excitable Bluesky shitposters.

Because Gamergate was a misogynistic harassment campaign, but it wasn't only a misogynistic harassment campaign. It was a misogynistic harassment campaign fueled by a perception of righteous grievance.

Righteous Grievance Goes Nuclear on Social Media

That idea -- righteous grievance -- is what really is living with us today.

Righteous grievance is the thing that led harassers to spend months feigning good faith in an attempt to get Wikipedia editors banned so that they could fill the Gamergate page with misinformation.

Righteous grievance is the thing that led January 6 insurrectionists to storm the Capitol Building in 2021.

Righteous grievance is the thing that led Bernie Sanders supporters to vote for Jill Stein in 2016, or not to vote at all.

My username, ghazelleberner, is a bit of a joke.

At the height of Gamergate, a group of anti-Gamergaters came together to form a subreddit meant to mock the increasingly conspiratorial claims of the movement: r/gamerghazi. The name was a play on the -gate suffix Gamergate tried to adopt, implying a serious crime. In reality, it was a hallucinatory excuse to yell at women, and so the GOP-pushed Benghazi scandal seemed like a more apt comparison. Thus, the name and subreddit were born. Its denizens were called Ghazelles.

By 2016, Gamergate fever had largely broken. The subreddit mostly slowed down, and the fight itself took a backseat. In its place, two internet movements sprung up that capitalized on the same religious fervor and similar harassment tactics, but with significantly higher stakes: The Donald Trump campaign and the Bernie Sanders campaign. Ghazelle, Berner. Get it?

This led to the same dynamic: r/TheDonald and r/SandersForPresident were their r/KotakuInAction. And both had similar counterinsurgencies: r/EnoughTrumpSpam and r/EnoughSandersSpam. The latter, I wrote about before. Both are still going today, although the anti-Trump movement has spread much further and wider than the anti-Sanders movement.

I won't go deep into the Sanders harassment campaign here today. If you saw it, you don't need me to. If you think it didn't exist, nothing I write here will change your mind.

But the thing that ties both together is that concept of righteous grievance. For the Sanders movement, it's grievance at the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, her supporters, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and so on. For the Trump movement, it's -- well -- it's everyone. But especially Hillary Clinton and now Joe Biden.

What ties these together isn't their grievances specifically, nor that they often committed harassment. It's that they believe the harassment is righteous in nature. The ends justify the means.

Righteous Grievance and Misogyny Are Colocated

You see this same dynamic play out today. Why is Bluesky obsessed with Will Stancil? Because they view him as an evil centrist lib, and therefore their harassment is an acceptable weapon. Righteous grievance. How does their harassment metastasize? Strangely enough, by calling him soft and feminine and making weird AI images of him as such.

Graham Platner has lied about having a Nazi tattoo, he had multiple women accuse him of toxic, potentially abusive behavior, and he posted noxious things on, where else, social media. Those who support him excuse these things. Why? Because of their righteous grievance against Chuck Schumer, the "establishment," and his primary opponent's age. How have his defenders done most of their work? By smearing his accuser and calling Democrats "HR ladies" or "smoothgroins." Misogyny.

Even many of the people who oppose his primary candidacy will vote for him or publicly support him in November? Why? Because of righteous grievance against Susan Collins and the Senate GOP. What does that signal to the women who are the base of the Democratic Party? We support you, until it's time to win. Then, the ends justify the means.

We all live in this state now. We are all righteously aggrieved, and we all use it as an excuse to delve into the dark arts to achieve a higher purpose.

But as we've seen with the Graham Platner campaign, I think there's a fundamental flaw. It's something that has been there since Gamergate, since the beginning:

Righteous grievance is, evidently, inseparable from misogyny.

Look at each of these movements -- MAGA, Bernie Bros, Platnerism, so many more -- they're all buoyed by misogyny. The righteous grievance is one thing, but it always finds its most useful weapon in misogyny.

It's time to give up on the idea that righteous grievance can lead to positive outcomes. It can't. It is necessarily colocated with some of the worst instincts humans possess. It always leads to the dark heart of hatred. Always.

Until we accept this truth, we'll be stuck down the Gamergate rabbit hole. It's been over 10 years. At some point, we have to start climbing our way out.