Gamergate at 10
Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends, aka Caitlin Dewey, is doing a bunch of posts about Gamergate, that moment when for many people the internet took a sudden turn into a dark and scary place and which arguably set the tone for the next decade of misogynistic culture-war shite. This post is an introduction for those of you lucky to not be that aware of what exactly Gamergate was, setting up what’s proven to be a fantastic series.
I hope you don’t remember Gamergate, or that you recall it dimly, like a bad book you read and largely forgot. The ugly, year-long spectacle, which kicked off 10 years ago today, disrupted the lives and careers of dozens of women and non-binary people — and forever changed culture and politics. Depending on whom you ask, and what your precise threshold for “credit” is, Gamergate can be credited with the rise of the alt-right, the prevalence of misogyny in online discourse, the mainstreaming of several harassment tactics and the normalization of abusive campaigns…