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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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I must admit, GamerGate was also a conflict that almost entirely passed me by. I had one friend in college who I had one conversation about it with, and I was vaguely aware of Anita Sarkeesian, but neither side was salient to me

I never heard of GamerGate at the time but it was still salient to me, in that I was reading Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun reviews and I started noticing when they became anti-male and anti-nerd. I was still in a 'it would be nice if games were a bit less hyper-macho' mode but I noticed the tone of the conversation change, to the point where it felt like the games industry was actively trying to reject me. It was just the small waves caused by explosions deep beneath the sea, but it made me Notice for the first time that lots of people online seemed to actively dislike me for being a bog-standard white male teenager.

EDIT: I mean mostly the "gamers are dead" articles referenced by @theincompetencetheorist

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