How #GamerGate Destroyed my Faith in the Media, Part I

A Google search of the term "GamerGate" yields pieces from outlets like Spiked, The Mary Sue,  and Slate, that label the movement with buzzwords such as "misogyny" and "harassment". Previously, respected news outlets such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and the L.A. Times, among others, have published stories and editorials, and conducted interviews centered around the "harassment" that enemies of the movement have received, framing the campaign as one driven by straight white men, frothing at the mouth with sexist hatred against women in gaming such as Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, and Zoe Quinn.

The major problem with the vast majority of this coverage is that it's sensationalist and, frankly, false--and even though it's "just video games", the scandal has completely destroyed my already-waning trust in what seems to me now to be a very left-leaning media machine.

Incidentally, the debacle surrounding Rolling Stone magazine and their seemingly unchecked publishing of an horrific story of a gang rape at the University of Virginia provides a perfect example of and context for how the media, in order to sell a narrative (and thus, remain relevant and profitable) will jump on certain stories with little concern for the truth.

Indeed, it seems the narratives become particularly obfuscated if the alleged victims in the story are women or non-whites--and I find that stories that set out to debunk theories set forth in histrionic journalism often get little to no traction, another phenomenon familiar to those that support the #GamerGate movement. Suffice it to say, once I saw (and more importantly experienced) how voices like my own were stifled in order to slander gamers, especially MALE gamers, who have always been scapegoats for society's ills, not only did I learn some stark truths about the media we consume, but my political views shifted dramatically; among my Facebook friends, I now feel like the "right wing crazy".

But more on that later--here's a little about myself.

AN OLD SCHOOL GAMER

I received a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for my sixth birthday in 1988 (before that I was obsessed with Pac-Man on the Commodore 64). I and my friends in Hampton Roads, Virginia enjoyed classic games such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, River City Ransom, Double Dragon II, Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden, among many, many others; we'd visit each other, play games, then get bored and go outside and play. On my own, I would try my hand at games such as Final Fantasy and that shitty Ninja Turtles game (I was a boss at the underwater level that has become one of the most infamously difficult levels in games history. And later I would become a master at Battletoads, often considered one of the hardest NES games ever made).

A few years later, I was gifted with a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), which in my opinion is one of the greatest consoles in the history of home gaming. Super Mario World, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Mortal Kombat II, Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island, Star Fox, Contra III, Turtles in Time, Super Mario RPG, A Link to the Past--these are just SOME of the classic games in my SNES library; and I got a Sega Genesis soon after that, enjoying the Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage series.

Over the span of my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, I would own a Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Sony Playstation and Playstation 2, the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube, and the original Xbox. I also enjoyed great computer games such as Maniac Mansion (and its sequel Day of the Tentacle), and the Monkey Island games, along with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, not to mention the Carmen Sandiego series. I'll probably purchase a 3DS when the new model debuts here next year, and thanks to emulators I've been able to revisit classics such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, one of most incredible games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

Hell, I was even a little competitive in Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken 5 for a short, short time, and poured countless hours into Tekken 3, and I'm learning the basics of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo right now.

Although I haven't owned any consoles since the PS2 era, I do stay connected to games culture thanks to YouTubers posting footage of fighting game tournaments, posting Let's Plays, and posting reviews and news.

In short, I still feel VERY connected to gaming, even though I don't play as much as I used to. Unlike Anita Sarkeesian, I can speak/write with passion and specificity about video games and I don't need to lie about playing them.

CULTURAL BATTLEGROUND

#GamerGate is confusing if you haven't been following it closely, so I highly recommend checking out this website, and/or at least watching the video that set the conflict in motion (it's a copy of the original, which had over 1 million views before it was taken down by the owner of the account). The video, in particular, was made right after the scandal broke, and provides great context for the conflict that would unfold over the next several months. The allegations levied in the video may not all be factual, however the central point of contention, an intimate and undisclosed relationship between an indie game developer and a journalist who subsequently covered her game, has been verified, and thus the ostensible goal of the movement was born: addressing ethical failures in games journalism.

The movement itself is essentially a wildfire accelerated by The Streisand Effect, as game journalists and a couple of key websites (such as Reddit and 4chan) first sought to ignore the issue, then to censor discussion of the issue (found out more about that by watching this), and then, inexplicably, to disparage and dismiss gamers, the very demographic that the video game journalists should be protecting and serving.

And yet the controversy extends beyond ethics in games journalism; it exists within a larger cultural war, mainly against those mockingly called Social Justice Warriors, or SJWs, for short.  So-called SJWs tend to have their hearts in the right place, fighting for equality across a broad spectrum that of course includes gender, sexuality, and race--but their online tactics, reliance on emotions over reality, and hyper-dogmatism have turned them into one of the scourges of the internet.

In fact, if you click on the previous link, which goes to the Urban Dictionary website, you'll find the conflict encapsulated perfectly: the so-called SJWs are referred to disparagingly and accused of lacking integrity, and the response is quite typical, with blanket accusations of bigotry and hatred (often while being bigots themselves). They'll even venture as far into absurdity as comparing their comrades to Rosa Parks and other progenitors of the Civil Rights Movement in America during the 1950's, likening their escapades on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to real movements of social change that endangered the lives of many involved, and, as one may recall, actually led to the assassinations of people such as Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

One last point to make is that so-called SJWs, from what I've seen, are typically left-leaning (many times VERY leftist), while one survey found that Pro-GGers cover a much broader political spectrum, and that will become relevant later. Of particular interest in the conflict is what I'm calling the Radical Feminist Wing of the SJW armada, which includes people like Ms. Sarkeesian and Ms. Quinn, and they are at the very core of the conflict.

In the next part of this blog I'll look at how these women have been portrayed in the mainstream media and how (and possibly why) only their side of the story has been presented to the public, and how the voices of gay, female, and minority gamers have been almost completely ignored in order to weave a false narrative that #GamerGate is fueled by white male "misogynerd" rage.