Wow, that's a great overview of the whole situation, and the long term implications it describes as having are pretty eye-widening.
And it has many people, on both sides, who are far surer about who they're fighting than what they're fighting about.
The conversation on both sides has been full of so much noise that it's clear this was all merely an excuse to vent highly political frustrations that have been bubbling for a long time. And the media are just stirring the pot. Internet rage is legit getting worse.
Politicized media outlets and activist information sources have incentives to cover the worst of the other side, and to play to the fear, anger and even paranoia of their own side. Structurally, each side only becomes familiar with the most extreme members and interpretations of the other side — and so comes to loathe and fear them even more.
You see this with every online news site now. Huffpost, Breitbart, Salon, Gawker. I know bias is common, but it's fucking malevolent now. The headlines alone cater so openly to one side that it's practically impossible to have a conversation about anything. You've been vilified from the outset. I tweeted one thing about Gamergate being unsympathetic to women and I immediately got some random person trying to link me to an article explaining how Gamergate was being hijacked by liberals seeking to discredit the cause or some crap.
The point here is that the Gamergate fight is now being partly driven by forces that have nothing to do with the video gaming industry, or even with gamers. Forces that are very good at making these kinds of conflicts worse and deeper. Forces that will be around long after Gamergate dies down. Forces that will create the next Gamergate.
Fuck.
Gamergate is going to happen again. As polarization proceeds, our political identities become powerful enough to drive our other identities. As Washington locks up, the political outlets that normally spend their time covering fights in Congress need to find fights that will engage their audience elsewhere. As cultural mores change ever more rapidly, the battles over what's acceptable to say and do will become even fiercer. And as everyone becomes more and more dependent on web traffic, skirmishes with deep digital roots will become increasingly attractive to cover.
This has been abundantly clear, but reading it doesn't make it any less sad. So basically we're all becoming more devotedly political and the media are seeking to aggrevate both sides' already disdainful attitudes towards one another for hits and ratings? Great.
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