A hashtag will not stop Gamergate. Conversations like these, en masse, over time, will. The dehumanizing effects of the Internet are not helping anyone here, but they can be overcome with time and patience. Everyone has the potential to change and exercise empathy, though it will usually end up happening on their own terms. “This really IS a hate movement fueled by nutters. How did I get dragged into this?!” said one reconsidered Gamergater in a post on the NeoGAF forum (a post that, predictably, is being called out as a fake by the rest of the Gamergate community). “We can’t start enacting change when the people who actually could start making these changes happen want nothing to do with us.” Funny, the same could be said of both sides.

But the backlash has only made her point for her: Gaming has a problem. And as this interview demonstrates, gamers like Sarkeesian are determined to solve it.

It is tremendously disheartening to suspect that the treatment of women online is getting worse, not better. We've had decades of experience dealing with those who use the Internet with the intent to cause mental or physical distress or harm. We really haven't leveled up? As individuals, communities and corporate entities, do we still lack the will, despite seeing the fruits of apathy and averted eyes?

I know this entry will probably draw contempt from people in the Gamer Gate movement. Something to scorn, something to rile them up against me and everything I’ve ever made. Especially, and most hurtfully, to mock my vulnerability. I just have one thing to say to you who do that: I’m genuinely sorry you are so angry. 

I have allowed a handful of anonymous people censor me. They have forced me, out of fear, into seeing myself a potential victim. 

The closest thing that any of these officially unofficial forums can agree on is that GamerGate is anti-progressiveism – a push back against the Social Justice Warriors that have been “infiltrating” gaming and somehow controlling it through means that nobody can quite explain except through dark inferences of “influence” or “coercion”.

In this video series, Feminist Frequency will explore five common and recurring stereotypes of female characters in video games

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Certainly my first reaction to reading GamerGate griping was “why on earth does this matter to you so much?” But we need to remember that all of these cultural shifts or policies make privilege visible to the privileged: when your unspoken norm is spoken, it loses its assumed, invisible status, and this feels like a threat. That revelation of privilege can hurt, as people with such privilege have not had a lifetime of experience processing the role of difference and inequality, so it can feel like a sudden shock to the system and disruption of your assumptions. You put that sense of shock, threat and hurt into a community defined by a love for a medium foregrounding violent simulations, anonymous smack talk, and demeaning representations of people outside the dominant norm, you get GamerGate.

By contrast, Jeong’s tweets were, at best, mean to some white people

that she had openly supported the notorious neo-Nazi weev

The screencapped tweets also circulated among fringe alt-right sites like the Daily Caller

in at least two instances dropped the n-word.

Here’s the message it sent to the people on Reddit, according to one commenter:

“Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of Reddit. We’re literally running the company now, they’re in fear of the very users they seek to consort with ... The moment a dev steps out of line or try to talk back to a player, guess what, they’ll know we got their hands on their throat and we can squeeze any time we like.”

Yes, there were an absurd number of mistakes in Rolling Stone’s journalistic method, but like most events ostensibly about ethics in journalism, the kernel of the controversy is about politics, not journalism.

And he has in fact recently resigned form his job to spend more time coordinating GamerGate. Oh, and he declines to either stop violating his restraining order or stop seeking to have it removed.

YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW PROBLEMATIC THIS IS. IT'S ALMOST THOUGHT TO BE IMPOSSIBLE. WHAT HAS ESSENTIALLY HAPPENED IS THAT WE HAVE TAKEN A CULT BEHAVIORAL APPROACH TO DISCUSSION AND PHILOSOPHY - NORMALLY A REALLY DIFFICULT THING TO INSTILL INTO PEOPLE AND REQUIRES ISOLATION, DIRECT PROGRAMMING AND FULL-ON CULTURAL SEPARATION - AND TURNED IT INTO SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN CASUALLY LEARNED ON THE INTERNET'S PROVERBIAL STREETS THROUGH THE ORGANIC PROCESS OF BEING A PART OF VIDEO GAME'S MOST TOXIC SUBCULTURE. THIS IS ONE OF THE SCARIEST THINGS HULK HAS EVER SEEN.