Holy shit this guy is clearly on the ball and has been following it closely. I definitely fell (or was pushed?) into one of those camps, due to the vehement whinging, whining, ranting, raving, accusations, shaming and what have you from camp #3 I kind of felt pushed into camp #4 with a bit of camp #2.
To make it clear, I'm not specifically 'pro' gamergate- but I am one of the people who was initially quite taken aback by the swath of remarks and insults coming in the general way of gamers or people who aren't extremely left.
It seemed when this whole thing went down originally, to EVEN ASK QUESTIONS, even politely (!) regarding the circumstances of it all, meant you were suddenly labelled a misogynist piece of.... by a whole plethora of well,.. frankly, extreme, white knight, SJW types. There's either "with us" or "sexist piece of garbage"
I found that (and still do) extremely frustrating, confronting and annoying. I wouldn't say I'm against rights of anyone at all â" but I do believe the politically correct / SJW movement has gone to a point where anything you do, you feel as if you're doing something wrong, or being a terrible person. This relentless shouting down of people, has some (many?) on the defensive, I honestly feel this is a primary factor in why GG lasted so long and why the "pro-GG" kept on with it, not necessarily as initiators of attacks but infact feeling the need to defend themselves of accusations of being ghastly people.
To add fuel to the fire, the terribly worded, clickbait garbage article by Leigh Alexander "gamers are dead" and the hashtag it spurned "#describeagamerin4words" being a relentless barrage of horrible insults "manbaby" comments and what have you from again, the SJW types, it's no wonder a whole huge heap of people who identify as gamers (as do I) got on the defensive and effectively "joined gamergate" in camp #4 (with boogie) as they felt opressed. Once on the defensive and identifying with gamergate in some way, bam, you're again, being labelled as garbage and further comments come at you, hence this huge separation.
I've taken to unfollowing good friends / muting good friends on twitter and even blocking some people on twitter because of this relentless onslaught of anti-gg rhetoric. It's ridiculous. Also, the vast vast majority of the gamergate discussion now appears to be mostly now coming primarily from the anti-GG'ers shouting from the rooftops, spamming twitter, spamming articles and endlessly raving how bad GG is, yet to me it seems the majority of it has fizzled out from the 'pro' side.
As I've said candidly, I think I'm just sick of being preached to, good message or not, it's relentless, annoying and constantly shouting it will achieve nothing, my twitter feed has become a nightmare of endless womens rights tweets (which is not a bad thing, IN MODERATION) but people in camp #3, many -have become total zealots, incapable of having a day go by without ridiculing sexism in general, yeah sexism is bad, but fuck me gently, spamming about it daily ain't gonna solve it.
I attempted to comment on a GG news article recently, outlining how the article was not only one sided but managed to say (as usual!) there's only 2 camps (unlike your far more logical analysis of the people involved in this)
The article effectively said it consisted of the scummy manbaby people and "those in the right". Of course my post on the article was rejected. Which is just further censorship along the "with us, or mysoginist garbage and against us" attitude, it's incredibly tiring.
http://i.imgur.com/mSxhW9e.png
Thank you for seeing there are more than 2 damn sides to this entire thing. Honestly based on the tweets I read, civil conversations I had (with women in the pro camp!) I am not in any way convinced the vast majority of GG was abusing people, I think it was a tiny fraction of people to be honest. Furthermore, while not condoning abuse here, but people with their "back up" on both sides, becoming defensive are more likely to say irrational things. It's just a giant internet shouting match now.
Ultimately, I'm _EXTREMELY_ over GG, both sides of it. Like I don't think I've ever been more frustrated by anything on the internet ever and I'm eager for it to stop.
I'm gonna risk it this time and not post anonymously, let's see what kind of backlash I get long term, ideally it should be 0.
