RumblyTumbly
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2018
Another factor to consider was the demise of the Religious Right that roughly coincided with the Great Recession and the rise of Barack Obama. The "New Right" finally decided to fight back because the biggest cliques in the Right (Religious Right and the neocons) had finally withered away and lost any kind of actual relevance even within their own side.
The Left knew how to win a culture war, but only against the neocons/fundies/traditionalists. The Right did not "concede the culture" to the Left. They fought an earlier culture war and fucking lost hard in the 2000's once Bush was no longer around to prop them up and the neocons no longer viewed the Moral Majority as useful.
Gamergate was an unimportant autistic internet slapfight by itself but it had that "Franz Ferdinand" effect where it snowballed out of control. The Left seemed like it couldn't fight a culture war because they were fighting the last war, as it were. 4chan shitposters and guys who just wanted to play video games in peace turned out to be a trickier opponent than hillbilly preachers, church ladies, Florida Man lawyers, and the neocons who bankrolled them.
The funny thing about GamerGate to me was that I came find out about it while in progress and nobody could explain to me what it was. I didn't know any "supporters" at the time, and the ones that fought against it were "THEY'RE NAZIS!!! FUCKING NAZIS!!!!" and I'd be like "How so?" and they'd just scream at me and accuse me of defending Nazis, when really all I was doing was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
So I had no clue what GamerGate even was for a long time, but the reaction to it was so hyperbolic, that I couldn't help but think the ones going against the Gaters were batshit crazy.