Articles everywhere have sprung up overnight claiming that 'gamers are dead', or 'gamers are killing gamers'. Chances are youve seen one of these articles with whatever sensationalist title theyve used to draw you in, but why are people saying this? What does #GamerGate mean? Well, to put it simply, the general gaming public are concerned with the quality and integrity of video game journalism. Much evidence has surfaced over the past few weeks that exposes many gaming journalists have personal ties with the people they sponsor and write about. Type in #gamergate on any social media site (Twitter and Tumblr being the most bountiful) to be flourished with a wave of evidence supporting this. And how have the journalists over at Kotaku and Polygon and the like reacted to this? With interesting and critical analysis of their own practices and methods? No. Fact-checking all the sides of the debate before coming to a reasonable and logical conclusion? No - just pointing fingers at gamers and saying that they are to blame. With this barrage of accusations from journalists and their followers, it can be pretty difficult to find out what GamerGate is truly about. This article should help clear things up.
10. It's Not About Misogyny
Its not about gender at all, actually. People have flooded the #GamerGate tag on Tumblr and especially Twitter, strawmanning by claiming that GamerGate is merely a group of misogynists that are unhappy with women in video games. To anyone whos actually examined the issue, this couldnt be further from the truth. In fact, observations found no blatantly misogynistic tweets or Tumblr posts, what we did see were laments from gamers who are sick to death with being demonised by mainstream media sites. The term misogynist is often tossed around indiscriminately in todays social media as a tool to silence someones opinion. Why listen to someone if theyre a sexist, right? Well, the power of the word has ironically lead to its meaninglessness, so much to the point where misogynist can easily translate to someone who disagrees with me. Always be skeptical of these sudden accusations unless proved otherwise.
