GamerGate: Angry White (Young) Men 

If you’re curious about GamerGate at all, which its proponents would have you believe is about getting truth in gaming journalism, go read this amazing Deadspin article.

As is often the case, GamerGate is really about a minority of angry white men (in this case, they tend to be teens to twenties) who are mad that somehow talking about sexism is akin to violating “men’s rights”. (As if being born a white man wasn’t already about as big an advantage in the world as is humanly possible.)

It’s so incredibly disheartening and so incredibly infuriating. There are a billion good things about the internet and anonymity, but the bad things are rapidly eroding any value that anonymity brings. When you get the chat log talking about whether or not driving someone to suicide is the right PR move, you’ll realize how bad people can get when hiding behind an anonymous screen name.

The whole thing is an amalgamation of everything that is awful right now. Sexism, anonymous online threats, the media reporting both sides of a story as having equal truth/value. The tide may be turning in a positive direction, though. The recent abuse handed out over Twitter to a local (and prominent) game developer may have caused enough of a stir that the media might actually a) pay attention, and b) not treat both sides as equivalent.

A few well place prosecutions and this whole sordid issue may be in the past.