Note: I did not write this. A friend wrote it as a effort-comment in a facebook conversation, but I wanted to be able to discuss it more broadly. It is presented unattributed because they, like many of us, don’t wish harassment.

Many people have expressed a belief that the “GamerGate” movement is driven by an innate hatefulness present within the gaming community. The underlying disdain for feminists and women in general has finally erupted, showing the “true colors” of the community at last. I don’t think this is a valid statement at all, while the movement has performed many hateful actions those are symptoms of an underlying ill that’s common across many social groups. Movements generally grow into hatefulness out of a desire to compensate for pain and wounded social pride.

There’s a vague social contract that this gaming community feels was put forth to them. Companies will make games that will be enjoyable to play (‘they will depict a power fantasy that I enjoy’) and I will be able to play them in a social setting that I enjoy (‘I will be able to bro out hard online with my bros’). These promises are now kind of evaporating because the economic realities have changed. The cost of producing game content goes up and up as more technological and graphical resources become required to develop a ‘triple-A’ title. At the same time, mobile and Facebook/casual gaming has taken a huge chunk out of the market which now needs to be replaced by DLC sales and nickel-and-diming. Games journalism outlets are basically advertising/marketing mouthpieces existing to over-hype whatever mediocre product is next on the list — over and over it’s ‘No, really, THIS new game will be the cool and fun game you want! We promise! GET EXCITED!’ for a product that is released unfinished and forgotten a few months later (Watchdogs? Titanfall?). This cycle repeats every month or two, because you need to get players buying your sequel or expansion in order to keep the cash flowing in. At the same time there are all sorts of new people showing up! As gaming becomes a more mainstream hobby, it’s less and less the domain of the most dedicated. Women and minorities are playing too, and are finding that the traditional white male power fantasy isn’t always to their taste. They want changes, things that will make them feel comfortable, and as a decent chunk of the market segment they’re starting to get listened to.

While the specifics are a little unique, this isn’t a new thing that’s happening overall. They’re the natural things that change as something goes from being a ‘hobby’ or ‘labour of love’ to an ‘industry’. There are growing pains, and unfortunately the people who were in it for love (or ‘before it was cool’) are the ones feeling them the most. So now you have a society composed mostly of people who are emotionally attached to this medium, and this medium is changing out from under them. It’s not something they understand, or are willing to accept. All they know is that what they were doing, what was supposed to make them feel good, doesn’t work anymore — instead they feel lost, abandoned, off-balance, foolish. Deep down they know that they’ve been taken advantage of repeatedly by throwing down $60 on over-hyped, under-realized dreck…and nobody wants to ADMIT to letting that happen.

Quite frankly, I don’t give a crap about the dating habits or potential personal misdeeds of a stranger. I also don’t care much about whether or not some games journalists have potentially done less than perfectly ethical things. The only interesting thing here has been what the microcosm of this whole Quinn escapade has demonstrated about human nature. What you have here, within this smaller community, is wounded social pride. And wounded social pride is a dangerous force. To make the obvious comparison, wounded social pride is what turned World War I from “a horrible mess” into “a horrible mess that spawned another, even more horrible set of messes”.

The interesting thing is, you see this also in middle-class America. There was a social contract once — go to college, get a job you’ll keep for 50 years, get married, buy a house, start a family you can support with your income, and eventually retire. One by one over the past 50 years or so these promises have been broken. College is revealed to be mostly a money-grubbing scam that shackles you in 5 or 6 figure debt for 20+ years. Jobs (I mean, if you can get one) no longer pay fair wages or have 10 years of job security much less 50. Divorce is the norm. Salaries are so low that buying a house is immensely difficult. Affording a family is an exercise in dodging bankruptcy and nobody “retires,” what even is that?

(BTW onlookers, if you’re about to respond talking about how you, personally, have not been affected by these negatives, I’ll be proactive — I’m very happy for the success you have enjoyed in your life however singular anecdotes of success do not rebut or excuse a system that produces failure in the majority.)

This is a much larger community with similarly wounded social pride. Middle-class America doesn’t understand WHY the old promises just don’t work anymore, but they have that same feeling — something’s not right here, the world isn’t what it used to be, I’m forgotten and unappreciated. At the end of the day, nobody wants to admit they’re being taken advantage of by their schools, employers and elected officials…and they’ll go to great lengths to believe anything but that.

Social groups that are in this state are basically tinder for whatever fire anyone wants to light. Feed a social group a story that ties in to their existing biases, making sure the story promises them an outlet — a point of blame for them to fixate on as the cause of their pain. At this point many of them will become emotionally invested in believing it, as it gives their identities a sense of stability. You no longer have to worry about supporting or defending your ideas, they’ll do a great job of zealously maintaining it on their own. Instill them with a sense of uprightness and righteousness — they are the virtuous people and ills that befall them have happened because of the Evil Other. Mobilize them with a series of clear targets. Sit back and watch the fireworks go on and on as your self-sustaining ideological fire burns its way through whatever it can.

Now think about American politics for the past, well, let’s stick to 10 years. A large portion of our middle class has become more and more willing to believe more and more egregious fictions in their quest to hold on to their pride and their identities. We’ve seen things move from “Economic policies that might not actually be the best for you” to “Obama: Kenyan? Muslim? Or BOTH!” Workers aggressively fighting raises for other workers because “THEY don’t deserve it! THEY’RE lazy! I’M a hard worker!” The crusade against the reality of climate change. Nothing can be our own fault, nothing requires any introspection and the only thing that could have caused things to change is some evil foreign entity (Imperial Obama, Immigrants/The Lazy Undeserving Poor, and Crazy Environmental Nuts respectively for these examples).

This article talks about GamerGate’s concern with “end[ing] gaming journalism’s ‘increasing corruption by money and hype’”. This sounds like a lot of other calls for purity you can hear coming out of other wounded social groups, from “god is punishing America because of gay people and abortions” to “it’s all because of those dern immigrants” to “feminists are destroying our masculinity and society” to (Godwin!) “the Jew must be removed altogether”. This zealotry is common between all of these fear-fueled movements. It becomes more and more necessary to “cleanse”, to remove the impure elements. Movements often end up turning back on themselves, casting out members they feel aren’t dedicated enough to the cause. They are clearly traitors, after all — the only thing that could stop The Movement is The Evil Other, and we must be ever vigilant lest The Evil Other infiltrate and destroy us. The worst thing a member of the Movement can be called is the name of that Other, and it becomes a deadly word, withering all it touches.

The important thing to note here is this: These are not innately hateful people. These are hurt human beings. Now I’m not saying this in order to excuse or whitewash their actions, far from it. However, understanding the core motivation of negative deeds can be as important as calling out the negative deeds themselves. Tell people a lie that gives them relief from their pain by pinning it to a purported external cause and they’ll want to believe it more than an uncomfortable and complicated truth. Give people a slogan they can chant together and they’ll follow it literally over a cliff to maintain their pride. We can all be hurt. And when we are hurt, we are all equally vulnerable to believing convenient fictions and to pointing fingers rather than putting forth the effort to truly understand and come to terms with the shape and magnitude of our own wounds. The results of this failure are not necessarily excusable, but it is a human failure made by human beings.