Controlling the narrative: Gamergate and activist-driven gaming journalism

GamerGate is an incredibly complex phenomenon, different from anything that has ever happened before. It’s likely that the world of video-games will never quite be the same again. And in the center of it it’s a lack of trust, a divide, between the gaming journalists and the gamers. Even though we are taking about individuals who probably should have a lot in common, at the very least a passion for the same subjects, true exchange of ideas has been extremely rare. And here’s my take as to why.

1. Introduction.

“You didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for Gotham’s soul in a fistfight with you? No. You need an ace in the hole.” – The Joker

You can’t argue with the wisdom of a madman, at least not when he’s being wise. For as much as the 2008 movie’s Joker might enjoy a fistfight with Batman, he’s genre-savvy enough to know he’d probably lose, and so he’d better have something up his sleeve.

From Sun Tsu to the modern business analysts, there’s a strong consensus that having something to tip the scales in your favor is a sound strategy. And why wouldn’t it be? It might give the impression of poor sportsmanship, but few ever care about such things. History cared little about what Scipio Africanus had to do to deprive Hannibal’s army of the deadly Numidian cavalry before the decisive Battle of Zama. It cared only that he won at the end.

History and fiction are filled of Game of Thrones-like shenanigans where conflicts are decided before they ever happen - hardly an exclusive feature of the Lannisters. The same applies, of course, on the lovely world of the conflict of ideas. There’s a plethora of rhetoric techniques available, from the eristic tricks of ancient Greek sophists to Schopenhauer’s The Art of Being Right. But rhetoric tools (or weapons, if we want to be topical) are one thing, and another is to create a situation so unleveled that one side will always win regardless of what happens.

2. What’s with “activist-driven gaming journalism”? Why don’t you say SJWs like everybody else?

Well, I don’t really like the term SJW. It’s silly and, while it was meant to be ironic, has been appropriated by their intended target and it has a kind of positive connotation. It’s like “right-wing bastard”. There’s even a game on steam with named after it. Besides, I’ll be talking here specifically about gaming journalism and SJW is far too broad of a term for that. ADGJ sounds like a terrible acronym, so I won’t use it. You can mentally read SJW when I talk about activist-driven journalism if you want, I don’t mind.

3. Controlling the narrative

“He who controls the Spice controls the universe!” – Baron Harkonnen

A lot has been said about the gaming journalists aprioristic dismissal of GamerGate to the point that the movement’s basic ideas are barely addressed, if at all, in the responses. It’s all about controlling the narrative. Think of the narrative as the spice in Dune. The spice not important because it’s valuable, like gold or diamonds; the spice is valuable because the monopoly of spice means controlling everything. Just as the houses of Dune are in business of controlling spice, media activists are in the business of controlling the narrative.

Controlling the narrative isn’t some shadow conspiracy at all, it is, in fact, a much simpler strategy that relies on confirmation bias. People tend to accept things that confirm what they already believe in, especially when it makes themselves feel “the good guys”, and reject things against this, particularly when there’s a shaming component involved. Once you accept that A are the good guys and B are the bad guys, you automatically assume that anything that corroborates this to be truthful, while dismissing without going much into it. This is a known and relatively normal feature of the mind. Everybody knows this stuff.

In short, it’s not a conspiracy, it doesn’t require every journalist to be a media activist, or for any collusion to take place. Far from it, really. All you need is compliance. You have your strong activist-driven journalists out there, creating a narrative that makes A the good guys and B the bad guys, and all it takes is for the majority to remain neutral to this, and the contrarians to remain silent.

There’s a large number of people involved in any given media, but the major activist players can usually be counted with your fingers. The others may collaborate to a degree, but without the activists enforcing the narrative, it would quickly dissipate.

When you have the sort of hegemony this is so strong that it becomes the “common sense”, when side A’s status quo is seen as the natural, everlasting and benign state of things, and anyone of side B is seen as completely evil and wicked people bent on doing bad, terrible things for no reason. Why won’t side B simply stop? We can’t stand side B. Poor side A. Those guys are the true heroes.

Think of it as the ultimate ace in the hole, that will make your side win any discussion, debate or dispute regardless of how wrong you are, or how stupid your arguments are, even by the standards of your own faction. For example, you might have a group that overtly stand for animal rights killing thousands of innocent animals and still coming off as the good guys before the eyes of the public, even having their opponents, that are effectively trying to save the lives of innocent puppies, coming off as animal haters. It doesn’t matter. You are right by the virtue of being on the right side, and the other guy is wrong because he’s on the wrong side.

Another key component is that dissenters will be labeled, pigeonholed and associated as the terrible things of Side B, no matter if any of that is actually true. Reality is just a boring thing that should be ignored in favor of a good story, anyway. Maybe that’s the reason that, to this day, people still insist that people who use #notyourshield are either (a) sockpuppet accounts or (b) have internalized oppression/are trying to be a member of the boy’s club, or something outlandish like that. The reason for this is that the existence of minorities favoring GamerGate directly contradicts the Side A’s narrative.

This shock of reality cause some sort of pain because the reactions are almost invariably very emotional, and it must be countered with some good, old fashioned cognitive dissonance. Only by telling themselves that the aforementioned (a) or (b) are the only two possibilities, only by believing that the narrative could never be wrong, can this discomfort go away. The narrative must remain true, that’s what matters. The mind will hold to anything that makes this threat to the narrative go away.

All this essentially means that it’ll be almost impossible to demonstrate the hypocrisy of individual members of side A to the eyes of others. Even if they do the bad things that side B is identified with, it’ll be downplayed or ignored, no matter how self-evident it is. Normal rhetoric, discussion and debate will be generally fruitless, because side A has such an upper hand that even if you are able to finally defeat a member, he or she will simply be disavowed as “never being a member of Side A after all”, or “being a crypto-member of Side-B all along”. It’s a battle that it’s pretty hard to win by conventional means.

4. Conclusion

It’s difficult win these things, but it’s not impossible. This kind of hegemony is something made to appear natural and perpetual, but in fact it isn’t. It’s ephemeral by nature and must be constantly enforced. This may be why the initial reactions were so strong. Side B is dead! Side B don’t have to be your audience! A guide to end Side B! STOP TRYING TO MESS WITH OUR NARRATIVE, YOU MEAN BULLIES. A side that really has a strong narrative grip doesn’t do that. Shouldn’t really have to. This heavy handed enforcement denotes that they perhaps don’t have such a grip on the narrative, after all. Allies from more mainstream media outlets have been called to reinforce the narrative. “See? It isn’t just us, all those other guys think the same! It’s a consensus”.

But again, this suggests, more than anything else, an inability to maintain the narrative. By this point both it’s becoming clear that GamerGate is winning. The degrees varies on each analysis, but the progress seems undeniable. There are cracks on the dam, and they are making water. All GamerGate have to do is to continue to exist. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going away anytime soon.