GAMERGATE: actually it is about freedom.

Please wait before hitting.

GamerGate has been going on for almost a year now, and I have been observing it since the beginning.

I went through all phases about it, from very against (at the start), to more neutral (most of the time), to supporter from the side (after some nasty interaction with very anti), to more neutral again, which is my current place, and likely will be forever.

It has been called many things, from “hate group” to “consumer revolt”.

There will be no science, no big data to support what I will say, but just the “feeling” (“Muh”, as many would say) of someone tired of the overkill allegory.

First of all, we have to come back (shortly, been there, done that) about the inception. We will never resolve it, because it developed on a very short span and did involve true ugliness (think of the ZQ part), reaction to the ugliness (the “gamers are over/dead/shitlords/…” articles) to reaction to the reaction (journalism conspiracy/agenda/SJW/…).

A useful reminder is to consider that the # was created by the famous/infamous (depending on your political inclination) Adam Baldwin. It was in reaction to the emergence of “social justice” theme in the political arena of gaming. As he said it himself, Adam Balwin really does not like “social justice”.

Being personally inclined to these themes, I was very against this movement initially, but I was partially wrong.

What I did not realize at the time, is that the problem was not around the themes themselves (more on that later), but about the way people were pushing these themes forwards.

Let’s stop for a minute: diversity, equality, better representation of women and minorities, better access and inclusion in the gaming community, better writing of characters, etc… I do not think that anyone interested by gaming as a medium would rightfully oppose to these.

The problem was that the people who initially seemed to support these progressive ideas (I will never understand why they are not just called normal/obvious instead of progressive) were actually running a more complex enterprise.

I don’t know if there is really any collusion, any master plan brewing in the background, I would tend to think otherwise.

But what is clear is that CONTROL is a big focus here.

From tweets to tweets, articles to articles, these people were not just pointing facts out, being positive about potential changes, but really negative about what was called status quo, being beyond disrespectful of people daring to have opposing opinions, and asking for major systemic changes to address what they demonstrated (felt?) as societal short-comings. They were defining a new NORMATIVITY.

This was spreading way beyond gaming (actually you could see the same themes on almost anything). Shaming was a major techniques. Insults were profuse. Dehumanization was OK.

But this was normal, and JUSTIFIED. Why do you ask? Because the “intent” was identified as good, because it was directed against “oppressive” forces. If you dared to ask about such double standard, then you were opposed the (very strange) concept of “tone-argument”, which explains that you can act like an ass-hole and it is OK if you are identified as oppressed from a sociological stand-point.

If you, as a “privileged individual”, were to comment on a potential inappropriateness of action/tone, you would indeed reinforce the oppression.

It took me a while to go over this (strange?) rationale. The problem is that many people would never go over such concepts, and I struggle to blame them for that.

Twitter (and social-media in general) is a public forum, like it or not. So if you say something provocative (because you have to, to be heard), well it will provoke!

Let’s say you say: “white males should shut-up” (remember?) as part of a long rant.

What is going to happen? Many people will cheer, many people will get mad, and few people will try to understand why. And this is the problem.

What is likely to follow is mass-reaction. I am becoming more and more interested in this concept. On social-media, you can get mass-positive and mass-negative feedback. It means that many INDIVIDUALS will react in a same way to a stimulus you created. From their end, they are one and only reacting to said stimulus. They are justified in their reaction by the fact that you used a public place to make your statement. They are right.

On your end, if you get mass-positive feedback, you will feel praised, if you get mass-negative feedback, you will feel harassed.

The reality is that there is no real praise nor harassment, but something in between, something that should get a new name.

Let’s come back to GamerGate.

In GamerGate, you have a lot of people, extremely reactive on social-media. They are very quick to spread information (it has been shown on many occasions by all parties). They are very sensitive to criticism of their group, or issues around their interest. To be fair with them, they have been characterized as any awful thing you could think of (from Nazis to fascists, from haters to racists, etc…), so again, I can’t blame them for their acquired “sensitivity”

Recent data demonstrate that very few of them are actually “harassers” from a standard definition. Most are not, and if you follow many individually, you will see a lot of very pleasant people.

So why such disconnect between what the group is and its description? It is multifactorial.

On one end, let’s be honest, there is a hardcore fringe, that loves provocation, lives for it even. These people would never hesitate to resort to the most extreme tactics to make others feel uncomfortable, miserable. This part seems to exist as part of the internet, no matter where you look, in or out of GamerGate. The aggression is what matters, no real goal there.

Then, you have a politically involved component. These people are interested in a global fight against any “social-justice” based arguments. They see this large group as a concept-supportive entity, with lots of undeclared but sympathetic supporters.

You also have a lot of supporters, very reasonable people, who make good and interested comments, who are interested in freedom of speech, ethics and gaming in general.

Then you have many detractors with different categories. In it, you will find the true victims (people who are first line of the most aggressive components of the group), the users (people who will build a story that will suit their interest by using a theoretical definition of the group) and the fanatics (people who are obsessed by the group and seem to live for its extinction).

Finally you will find many indifferent people, likely the immense majority.

Here is the background. When a detractor makes a statement, any statement, it will not stay unseen for long. Sometimes this was part of the plan, sometimes not so much so.

What will happen is almost systematic.

Many in the group will react, then retweet, then react more, then soon an overflow of responses will exist. Then the detractor will quickly harden his response, and then the “shit-stirrers” will jump in (they may have already) and well, shit-stir. The politically engaged may then contribute, attracting with them their political opponents.

From a GamerGater point of view, he said what he had to say. From the receiver, either purposively or not, you have now a sea of mass-negative comments, from sound to obscene. You are harassed. And you can show the world that you are.

So there you have it, the bad reputation, and the hate-group phenomenon. But this is not true. Hate/hateful intent are not part of what the group is defined by. It is an effect of the very complex and broken way disagreement is handled on social-media platforms.

Let me give you an example. What if I say that supporters/followers of Randi Harper are a hate-group, harassers? You will think that I am lying, smearing her reputation. But my past experience has been exactly symmetrical to what I described earlier. I called her out, and then a sea of followers came and over-flooded me with nastiness. I have a tendency to know where idiocy lies, so was able to know that it did not really matter, but from a receiver point of view, I was harassed as per the social-media definition.

I am sure that many of you, with any visibility at some point, can relate to such experience. Mass-positve and mass-negative comments leading to Praise and Harassment are inherent to any significant interaction on these platforms. In this setting, most forces could be seen as hateful, divisive and inacceptable.

This is an issue of modern communication, not of GamerGate.

In order to progress, I would then examine the evolution of themes amongst the group. On that front, there has been a very interesting shift towards more moderate strong voices.

People like Mark Kern, Adrian Chmielarz, and even John Bain, all very critical of early weaknesses of the group, have nicely been leading what I would call a more “respectable” GamerGate. They emerged as a force in favor of free creativity and freedom of speech/intent/content from the developers.

What a twist! GamerGate was supposed to be the exact opposite of this, and now this is their main focus! How could that be?

It is because, at the end of the day, it all boils down to CONTROL. In or out of GamerGate, people want in fact more of the same. Diversity, better content, more creativity, etc… The main division is around the place of personal choice, personal freedom, individual versus society. Many people strongly opposing GamerGate want a society dictating the rules, for what they think is the greater good. This is the new normativity as mentioned earlier. This is fascinating as key aspects they defend only came into political places through rejection of controlling systems (think of LGBT rights, racial equality, etc…).

GamerGate is control-adverse, leader-adverse, structure adverse. It is really about freedom. That way, it is great, that way it is terrible. Because freedom means that you can use it for the best or the worst.

Being a “Gater” is rejecting a choice made for you, being a good choice, being a bad choice.