From what I've seen of the whole thing, the GamerGate stuff is just a (very) vocal fringe minority of sociopathic manchildren from sites like 4chan and the like, who are apparently angry about (according to them, at least) all the supposedly rampant feminism taking over and "corrupting" all the gaming news sites and the video game industry as a whole.
Or, at least, it started that way, but was then co-opted by right-wing idiots like Adam Baldwin and Andrew Breitbart (who almost assuredly only really care about the so-called "issue" to the extent that it gets them ratings or page views or followers on Twitter or whatever), and then turned into the Next Big Thing™, apparently now worthy enough to be reported on by the likes of the New York Times or whatever.
These GamerGate twits aren't representative of gamers, in particular, or Americans, in general. It's kind of like how the Ku Klux Klan, Lord's Resistance Army, or Westboro Baptist CultChurch aren't representative in any real, meaningful way of the majority of Christians, or how ISIS or al-Qaeda aren't representative of the majority of Muslims. Yeah, it may be a bit hyperbolic to compare these doofuses to terrorists like that, but still... that's about how mainstream these guys are, in reality. The problem, in this case, is that most people at least for now seem to be treating the GamerGate guys as though their stance is something to actually be considered and debated seriously and not simply dismissed out of hand like the travesty that it really is. There are actual, real problems with the ethics of video game journalism and the industry as a whole that are getting buried under the unwarranted mountains of vitriol and horseshit (and death/rape threats) that the GamerGate guys are spewing, all because some girl who happened to be a video game developer happened to fuck some dude who happened to be a video game journalist a couple months ago.
The entire thing has been blown hugely out of proportion. It was just 4chan throwing crap at a wall like they always do and hoping something would stick, and this time it seems to have stuck, at least for the time being. If anything good comes out of this, maybe it will be, finally, the rest of society collectively standing up and telling these morons to sit down, shut up, and grow the hell up already, once and for all. I'm not going to hold my breath on that, though. ¬_¬
no subject
Or, at least, it started that way, but was then co-opted by right-wing idiots like Adam Baldwin and Andrew Breitbart (who almost assuredly only really care about the so-called "issue" to the extent that it gets them ratings or page views or followers on Twitter or whatever), and then turned into the Next Big Thing™, apparently now worthy enough to be reported on by the likes of the New York Times or whatever.
These GamerGate twits aren't representative of gamers, in particular, or Americans, in general. It's kind of like how the Ku Klux Klan, Lord's Resistance Army, or Westboro Baptist
CultChurch aren't representative in any real, meaningful way of the majority of Christians, or how ISIS or al-Qaeda aren't representative of the majority of Muslims. Yeah, it may be a bit hyperbolic to compare these doofuses to terrorists like that, but still... that's about how mainstream these guys are, in reality. The problem, in this case, is that most people at least for now seem to be treating the GamerGate guys as though their stance is something to actually be considered and debated seriously and not simply dismissed out of hand like the travesty that it really is. There are actual, real problems with the ethics of video game journalism and the industry as a whole that are getting buried under the unwarranted mountains of vitriol and horseshit (and death/rape threats) that the GamerGate guys are spewing, all because some girl who happened to be a video game developer happened to fuck some dude who happened to be a video game journalist a couple months ago.The entire thing has been blown hugely out of proportion. It was just 4chan throwing crap at a wall like they always do and hoping something would stick, and this time it seems to have stuck, at least for the time being. If anything good comes out of this, maybe it will be, finally, the rest of society collectively standing up and telling these morons to sit down, shut up, and grow the hell up already, once and for all. I'm not going to hold my breath on that, though. ¬_¬