I can't remember what she was criticising, but I remember a couple of months back Anita Sarkeesian saying something was bad and there were a batch of people on Twitter basically saying, 'It's annoying we had to support her due to GamerGate, because she's not actually any good'. Ideology trumps all with these people, and while they can never, ever allow that they were wrong, they can and will back away from centering people like Sarkeesian, Wu and Quinn from the GamerGate narrative. Because, turns out, they were wrong all along and the people they hate were right, but they will die rather than admit that.
So I expect those inevitable articles to, at best, pay lip service to the specific women (and Wu) who made sure to be the biggest targets, and therefore victims, and will instead focus on generic 'GamerGate = misogynist, hate movement, alt-right, Trump, bad bad bad'. Not focussing on specific targets is actually preferable to writers who would push such drivel, because it makes it easier to paint it as something that targeted all women online. If anything, the main thing they'll try to force into the narrative is that it was also racist and transphobic, because those are more hot-button words than misogynistic nowadays. So expect some 'ethics in games journalism; troons most affected' thrown in there. Considering Quinn calls herself nonbinary when she remembers and Wu is a troon who will never admit it, that's more likely to be the angle that includes them more than a simple timeline.
Ironically, the first person who I spoke to, in person, at a Gamergate meet-up was a Pakistani woman who had recently given birth to her first child.
It is strange that Brianna Wu, who was a pariah/running joke within the anti-GamerGate crowd, and who hilariously didn't get invited to Google HQ along with the usual suspects (Wu hastily claimed on social media to have a prior engagement - you could tell that no-one had told her about the trip) has arguably profited the most; at least among those who lacked the self-awareness to realise that their fifteen minutes had petered out and remained on the radar. There were extenuating circumstances; a husband of means. Even so, of late, Wu's flailing spergery has plateaued.
The man who built the Sarkeesian persona (hardboiled pop culture detective, Jonathan McIntosh) inadvertently holed his creation below the waterline at the same moment that Sarkeesian was poised to use Josh Whedon as a springboard into some kind of Hollywood equality consultant sinecure. Jon's criticism of the director put paid to that. I am not entirely clear how she makes a living these days. In recent photos, you can see (in the memorable words of William Burroughs) the "mean, pinched, bitter, evil face" of the old woman she is becoming before her time. Roald Dahl made a good point about ugly thoughts eventually showing up on the surface.
I can see Wu and Sarkeesian remaining credible figures. The former, for all her bizarre histrionics, has somehow remained borderline respectable. The latter is among the most boring women who ever lived. I recall, in a livestream, the disgraced porn star, Mercedes Carrera, making an offhand remark about how she would like to see Sarkeesian in a gang-bang. Even at the time it seemed too high an expectation of a sexless pod person, whose sole dubious talent is to point accusingly at dissenters, like Donald Sutherland at the conclusion of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
If anyone is going to eventually be tossed into the volcano by her own disgruntled peers, then it will be Quinn, with her out-in-the-open corruption, her inability to stop lying, and her tendency to burn bridges with her supporters. Like all good sociopaths she picks her victims with care - the kind of people who are somewhat damaged, don't put themselves across too well, and who therefore aren't listened to. That's bought her a little time.
A decade won't be enough, however, eventually the journalists who staked their reputation on her story will move on, and others who are less invested will gaze upon her with a more critical eye. If you lump together everything Quinn has done over the past decade or so, it's one hell of a story.
