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Notes -
See that's just US politics to me, but I see your point, maybe it's better described as an escalation. A dramatic escalation. Gamergate marked a change to me not just as an event, but because it coincided with complete US control over the Western cultural hegemon through social media. It went pro and spread from politics to everything, and from the US to everywhere (in the west). I have been politically aware since 2004/5, but trying to get Australians to talk about US politics back then was like pulling teeth. Even during Obama's election people mostly just saw it as a curio - he's going for the record for the fastest assassinated US president they'd laugh and then change the subject. 2012 wasn't much different - Obama was going to win or else Americans are all bigots so what's there to talk about? But after gamergate started, people started paying attention to US politics too. Suddenly every politically aware Australian I knew wanted to talk to me about the midterms! I didn't even want to talk about the midterms. But a lot of Australians and Europeans became very interested in US politics from then on, and I had to start explaining that I was an expat so other Americans wouldn't tell me to shove my opinions up my ass.
So the way I see gamergate is as the engagement where the scolds tried out their new weapon to great success - mind killing themselves in the face of empathising with the enemy. And it hit my shitty little corner of the internet - tech and gaming journalism - just before spreading everywhere. I wrote neutral stories on many of those previous events, and the only one I got push back on was Eich, because Eich himself supported his ousting. I'm sure there was bitching and sniping behind my back about what a chud I was, but it stayed behind my back. Then when gamergate came around, merely asking for a link to gjoni's post had people threatening to blacklist me. The ideology had become so totalising that not even enthusiast press could escape it - and enthusiast press has always been one of the most trivial things in existence.
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