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I think in a way both sides were right about Gamergate. On the one hand, it really was about women entering into a "boys' club" space, not ethics in gaming journalism. So at the level of literal claims, the feminists were basically correct. However, I don't think it was wrong to oppose women entering a men's space and seeking to change it, just the pro-Gamergate side didn't have the language to frame this in a sympathetic way so they avoided saying it.
What was happening to gaming and online nerd spaces (like Reddit itself) was essentially a form of gentrification. You had a "marginalized" community (nerds) that had made something interesting in their ghettoized spaces (videogaming, online forums like Reddit, open source software, tabletop games). The mainstream that had previously stigmatized them decided they wanted to move in, force out the original communities and sanitize them for mainstream consumption. The same process that happened to Reddit is what leftists complain about when it happens to some neighborhood in Queens.
Anyway, as for my own personal journey through it, I was a bit older than you. All of this happened after I had already graduated college, and so I never really got invested in the whole Youtube debate/criticism sphere. I never watched Sargon of Akkad or Jordan Peterson or whoever. I think it was around that time, 2013 or 2014 that my brother sent me a link to one of the more popular SlateStarCodex posts which became my entry point.
I would say that both of these things were instances of a broader problem. It spread from the latter to include the former because they were instances of a broader problem.
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There were always women into gaming. What happened during gamergame that we get entrysts. And the game journalists bowed to them declaring practices and parts of games "problematic". Now gaming was always egalitarian - you either can consistently railgun someone from half a map away or you are pathetic subhuman. And if you are pathetic subhuman you shut up. Now suddenly we had whining about trash talk in chats and not having black people in medieval poland. And the game developers and journalists took their side. Now the ruin did came for the AAAA industry, but it was completely avoidable. Just give the people that consume and pay for your fucking products what they want.
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No, it never was.
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