The actual Wikipedia article says it all:
"The Gamergate controversy concerns sexism in video game culture. It garnered significant public attention after August 2014, when several women within the video game industry, including game developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu and feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, were subjected to a sustained campaign of misogynistic attacks. The campaign was coordinated in the online forums of Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan in an anonymous and amorphous movement that ultimately came to be represented by the Twitter hashtag #gamergate. The harassment included doxing, threats of rape, death threats and the threat of a mass shooting at a university speaking event."
I'll include this article for good measure. The facts aren't in dispute, except by a group that wants cover for their continued harassment of women in gaming, even going so far as to attempt PR stunts to make it look like they aren't as detailed in the Wikipedia article. Somehow I doubt the FBI would have been involved in some of these cases if women were just making this shit up or something.
This article is incredibly biased. I'm not saying this as either pro-GG or anti-GG, I'm saying this because the same article in French is very different and much more balanced.
In French, the first sentence is rendered as something like "GG supporters describe the movement as one focused on ethical issues in video games journalist, in the same vein as "DoritosGate", while GG detractors denounce the atmosphere of misogyny in video games culture and particularly the attacks and harassment campaigns women are subjected to by GG supporters. GG supporters also have been doxed and harassed, according to statements collected on OneAngryGamer."
I've heavily paraphrased it because truly I don't have the patience or time for a real translation right now but it doesn't take a genius to see that this is a much fairer way of viewing things. THIS is what a neutral article is supposed to look like. In comparison, the English article exposes nothing but the way anti-GGers view what happened and completely glosses over the SWATing attempts, doxing and relentless harassment pro-GGers have also suffered. Anti-GGs are nowhere near saints themselves yet the article makes them look like knights in spotless armour protecting women from a mass of rabid, unwashed nerds with Cheetos fingers.
The English article might use a lot of sources but every time pro-GGs try to fix the article a bit, they are shut down from doing so by editors and mods who seem to do nothing but camp that page all day. Their sources are thrown out without much ado all the time, while anti-GG sources just make it past the scanner. I've watched the whole ryulong debacle and could not help but shake my head. Indeed, this page is hostage to people with an agenda and I've lost a lot of trust in Wikipedia on political matters when I learned about this.
And about it all...
I've been observing this glorious shitfest since the beginning and I've slowly learned to detest anti-GG. I actually used to be on the left-ish before this shit happened and this completely turned me off progressive causes. All their figureheads seem to be these charismatic, but fraudulent characters, reminiscent of cult leaders.
Look at Zoe Quinn. Rebel Jam
still doesn't have any info on it and details were supposed to be released "very very soon!" for what, a year now? There's the whole TFYC debacle too. She's been taking donations for her game jam all this time too (and apparently they went into her private PayPal, so how is she supposed to know what is for the Jam and what isn't?) CON is still on countdown and doesn't seem to do anything except telling people to call the cops, and she has the fucking nerve to even think about running such a thing after being part of a goon board whose specialty was harassing people into suicide. She hasn't made dick on the game front since DQ, if you want to call that a game. She's been caught red-handed lying about harassment multiple times, going so far as harassing herself. She's been shown, without the shadow of a tiny doubt, to be a manipulative, deceitful, deceptive individual who says things then does the complete opposite. Yet she's raking Patreon cash in, and of course she put it to work per month because she does not do shit except cry foul and harassment.
Look at Anita Sarkeesian. This woman told us how big of a gamer she was since her childhood but turns out she does not even like games very much. She was paid over a hundred thousand to deliver a vaguely interesting series on women in video games years ago and she still hasn't delivered, and those she has delivered include footage taken straight up from Let's Plays on Youtube (that money was supposed to be for buying games and consoles). She's been caught manipulating the games to make them appear much, much worse than they are. She's been linked to pyramid businesses and confidence scams kind of things. She also has her Patreon going per month because literally all she does is bitch on Twitter and ask people to give her money.
Look at Brianna Wu. She was completely unknown until she started whining about how pro-GGers were harassing her, and all they could say is "who's that?" She's been caught red-handed lying about "being chased out of her house" by mysterious harassers. The sole game she made with her "all-female" development team is not only phenomenally bad but also the poster child of objectifying character development. This one is known literally because of her claims of harassment, and of course her Patreon is also rolling in per month without her doing dick.
Look at Randi Harper. The biggest Internet abuser of them all is setting herself up as some kind of anti-abuse guru. Best known for lacklustre programming skills and an alleged meth addiction. I won't even talk about the rest, such as Sarah Nyberg the pedophile (BTW, anti-GG was extremely quick to defend poor pedo Nyberg and to justify why being a pedo isn't a bad thing - give me a break).
Anti-GG figureheads are people with a proven history of fraud, lies and deceit, who have jumped on this inane bandwagon and are making bank just riding the flow and occasionally complaining about harassment (despite their dishing it out at least as much) on Twitter or using their connections to appear more important than they are to further their agenda. Zoe Quinn is due to speak in front of the UN on "internet violence". Are you kidding? The person who said herself she was addicted to a goon board specializing in harassing people to suicide, with one "confirmed kill"? The person who is a known liar, who mentally abused her ex-boyfriend by manipulating him to think he was the crazy one when she was getting fucked by five other guys, who literally fucking harassed herself on an imageboard best known for hosting a community of suicidal, heavily anxious, heavily depressed male adult virgins and sicced her dogs on these incredibly vulnerable people just to give herself a boost in e-fame? That monster?
I've decided to go in length about this because Ellen Pao is cut from exactly the same kind of cloth. We're witnessing the rise of a dishonest, authoritarian movement on the Internet, and in my opinion this is an incredibly dangerous thing. In fact, this is going on in every sphere of society. It is the dictatorship of feelings, where people must be sheltered and protected at all costs from things that might offend them. Society doesn't work like that, it can't work like that. In colleges, we're already feeling the effects of these policies, where professors are stymied in their teaching freedom, cannot assign certain books because one person in the class might find it offensive or disturbing, cannot talk about certain subjects for the same reason. Some students at Harvard asked their criminal law teacher not to teach the law on sexual offenses because that might be "triggering". One student in an university was told to leave because he was criticizing the often quoted (and false) "1 in 4 women will be raped in her lifetime" and that was offending others. One professor had to remove most of the books on his reading list because they were "offensive" in some way or another. What we are witnessing is the conflation of politics and emotions. Politics and emotions, where have I seen that before...oh yeah, 1984, loving Big Brother, hating Eastasia or Eurasia, whichever Big Brother tells me to. We are also witnessing the ride of gospel truths that cannot be criticized because they might offend others. From there it is only a single step before any criticism on anything hurts somebody's feelings and is discouraged. This is extremely dangerous.
Imagine if the Internet becomes the same thing. This is what Ellen Pao wants, along with the wider "progressive" movement. They want to stifle free speech so the gospel truths of their movement become immutable, something that cannot be talked about, a true taboo. It is enough to "listen and believe". This is what a "safe space" really is, a space where no one's conception of reality can be challenged, as long as it toes the approved line. It bothers me that this is a concept championed by people with notoriously low morals who are using it to further their own goals. There is something very sinister about the progressive movement. "Listen and believe". What the fuck? The first time I read this I couldn't believe my eyes. Who in their right mind would ask anybody to just "listen and believe", aka take it on faith?
Personally, I enjoy my free speech too much to allow some authoritarian pseudo-despots to take it away from me. It is my right to be offensive and your right to be offended, but that doesn't mean you can keep me from saying whatever the Hell I want. Being offensive, going against dogma is what drives society. The future the progressives have in mind for the Internet scares the Hell out of me. We wouldn't be able to criticize progressive dogma because we could "trigger" or "offend" somebody. This would make "unpopular" political opinions taboo. Think about it.
