Aram Zucker-Scharff

Understanding the Jargon of Gamergate:

The memetic terms Gamergate’s supporters love to repeat, explained.

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Gamergaters demand to be seen simultaneously as a 70-million-strong market force, too big for the industry to ignore, and as a persecuted minority. They warn advertisers it’s “racist” and “sexist” when a gaming site dares to point out that most angry gamers are young, white, and male. At the same time, they argue that angry, young, white males are those sites’ “target audience,” and writers offend them at their own risk.

It’s ironic, then, that #Gamergate is also spamming advertisers with links to Leigh Alexander’s highly controversial piece arguing that the stereotypical gamer is no longer the only audience available to the industry.

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– What Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks.

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Female comics professionals and comics fans are frequent targets for online harassment, especially if they comment on feminist issues.

The harassment doesn’t always stay on the Internet. Asselin’s bank accounts were compromised after her article was published online, and independent comics editor Caitlin Rosberg says, “some people have had stuff mailed to their homes as a threat of ‘I know where you live.’ “

Marvel’s Jeanine Schaefer believes this behavior is partly driven by extreme fear on the part of some comics fans.

“There’s this perception that, ‘Well, if we let women in, then everything is going to change. They’re going to take away everything that I like about comics,’” Schaefer says.

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– Where’s Thor When You Need Her? Women In Comics Fight An Uphill Battle.

“And that’s where the problem lies. We’re still behaving like the rebel alliance, but now we’re the Empire. We got where we are by ignoring outsiders and believing in ourselves even when nobody else would. The decades have proved that our way was largely right and the critics were wrong, so our habit of not listening has become deeply entrenched. It even became a bit of a bonding ritual to attack critics of the culture because they usually didn’t understand what we were doing beyond a surface level. It didn’t used to matter because nobody except a handful of forum readers would see the rants. The same reflex becomes a massive problem now that nerds wield real power. GamerGate made me ashamed to be a gamer, but the scary thing is that the underlying behavior of attacking critics felt like something I’d always seen in our culture, and tolerated. It only shocked me when it was scaled up so massively into rape and death threats, and I saw mainstream corporations like Intel folding in the face of the pressure we can bring to bear.”

– Why Nerd Culture Must Die.