It was a genuinely nice place before Gamergate. I think that’s why it attracted such a diverse and interesting audience and why the media came to it in the first place.
Gamergate weaponized its flaws, and then the introduction of “the algorithm” a couple of years later amplified everything that was going wrong with it.
But there’s also no denying that problematic though it was, Elon Musk made it much, much, worse…
I still don’t understand what gamer hate - oops, gamergate was. I’ve tried to learn for years and I still don’t get it.
Anyway, I was whatever about Twit and used it as a useless 2 word stream or consciousness feed for 5 years, which was okay. Then in 2020 I was suddenly homeless in Portland RIGHT as the Floyd protests started and I was uh…. Twitter is a useful minute-to-minute feed of events. Then I liked it for a year or two. Then, Elron.
Basically Gamergate started as some butthurt guy trying to get revenge on his ex by claiming she slept around to get better reviews on her (free) game. Gamergaters used this as an example of corruption, thus the rallying cry of “Ethics in gaming journalism”.
However, in actuality Gamergate was driven by gaming going from a niche hobby to a mainstream entertainment. Many gamers were increasingly unhappy that games stopped exclusively catering to people like them (i.e. white and nerdy males) and started making token efforts to appeal to other groups. This combined with the spark of the butthurt guy’s lame attempt at slander birthed Gamergate, a fig leaf of “ethics” used to justify and to cover up a seething mass of resentment, misogyny and racism.
It was a genuinely nice place before Gamergate. I think that’s why it attracted such a diverse and interesting audience and why the media came to it in the first place.
Gamergate weaponized its flaws, and then the introduction of “the algorithm” a couple of years later amplified everything that was going wrong with it.
But there’s also no denying that problematic though it was, Elon Musk made it much, much, worse…
I still don’t understand what gamer hate - oops, gamergate was. I’ve tried to learn for years and I still don’t get it.
Anyway, I was whatever about Twit and used it as a useless 2 word stream or consciousness feed for 5 years, which was okay. Then in 2020 I was suddenly homeless in Portland RIGHT as the Floyd protests started and I was uh…. Twitter is a useful minute-to-minute feed of events. Then I liked it for a year or two. Then, Elron.
Basically Gamergate started as some butthurt guy trying to get revenge on his ex by claiming she slept around to get better reviews on her (free) game. Gamergaters used this as an example of corruption, thus the rallying cry of “Ethics in gaming journalism”.
However, in actuality Gamergate was driven by gaming going from a niche hobby to a mainstream entertainment. Many gamers were increasingly unhappy that games stopped exclusively catering to people like them (i.e. white and nerdy males) and started making token efforts to appeal to other groups. This combined with the spark of the butthurt guy’s lame attempt at slander birthed Gamergate, a fig leaf of “ethics” used to justify and to cover up a seething mass of resentment, misogyny and racism.