This is probably the best critique of #GamerGate ever written by a mainstream journalist, and ironically enough, it's posted on /KotakuinAction, the central headquarters for the "movement" on Reddit. It's by Jesse Singal, Senior Editor at NYMag.com, who also writes a Sunday video games column for The Boston Globe. Singal published a Globe editorial last month aruging that GamerGate is really about opposition to women and feminism in games. Unsurprisingly, GamerGaters in Reddit complained that the editorial was biased and poorly researched... and so last weekend, Jess Singal went into the Reddit forum himself and explained in great detail his sources for reaching that conclusion. It is a thing of beauty you should read in full here, but here's just a sample:

[F]aced with this complete lack of clarity [of GamerGate's purpose], all I or other journalists can do, then, is journalism: We ask the people in the movement what they stand for and then try to tease out what is real and what is PR. And every every every substantive conversation/ forum/encounter I've had with folks from GamerGate has led me to believe that a large part of the reason for the group's existence is discomfort with what its members see as the creeping and increasing influence of what you call social-justice warriors in the gaming world.

"Basically," Singal tells me, "I stumbled upon a Reddit thread from awhile back in which GamerGate people were calling me a hack, and instead of doing the reasonable thing and going on with my life because who cares, I posted a little response saying Hey, happy to actually talk this over if you guys want to. Generally speaking, when people misunderstand how journalism works – which a lot of GamerGate folks are at the moment – I do think it’s useful for us to step in and provide an explanation (assuming the accusers are acting with a baseline level of decency and respect)." After devoting a lot of time engaging with GamerGate supporters on Twitter, "I wanted to get down in one place everything that bugged me about trying to debate this movement (or 'movement')... So why not post in KIA itself, I figured?"

Since he was directly addressing GamerGate supporters angry at his Globe column, you'd think he'd mostly get angry replies. But here's the surprising thing about the response: