10 Reasons Gamergate Has Failed

Content advisement: this article unabashedly discusses misogyny and some of the words commonly used as sexist slurs. There are also some screen captures of some of the actual sexist and abusive things people have written.

In the history of fail, there have been few examples quite thorough as Gamergate. Whatever momentum they briefly held in their championing the ethical treatment of video game journalism has been fully eclipsed by an increasing awareness that they are behaving like toddlers with overfull diapers. Sexist toddlers. With potty mouths.

You may have noticed that they're kind of becoming a joke these days.

How Video Games Make Me a Better Person

First, a disclaimer: I have a lot of privilege. I'm white. Male. Heterosexual. Middle class. Cisgendered. Able bodied. I have a few marginalized statuses, but you probably couldn't tell any of them by looking at me, so I pass, out in the world. These experiences are from my point of view, and they may be somewhat sophist to people who experience marginalization and systematic oppression every day.

I tend to be a bit outspoken when it comes to social justice issues. When I say "tend to" and "a bit" you understand that I mean most of my friends (even those who agree with me) have gone through at least one or two moments on Facebook where they said, "Chris, please shut up. Please for the love of God, just shut up. Just for a few minutes. Just this once. Please!"

From time to time, however, someone offers up some slightly more savvy discourse, and they often end up wondering, in particular, about how I came to care so much about the issues I have. Formative experiences about speaking out against injustice involve my mom, and no small amount of bravery can be attributed to my idolization of Luke Skywalker. But those experiences set a timber. They laid the foundation for wanting to do the right thing. They don't themselves help me parse the thicket of discourse to determine what the right thing is.

That comes from video games.