5 ms·

No idea why this is being upvoted here now, but it is a reminder of all the internet culture wars that I think had a big effect on the lead up to Trump's victor

• azernik 10y ago
  I absolutely agree - I feel that mainstream outlets ignored this rising phenomenon because they thought gamer culture was "marginal". They didn't cover Gamergate (a yearlong slog) nearly as much as they did its one foray into more "traditional" media culture (harassment of the stars of the Ghostbusters remake). If this had been going on mainly in film, or television, or literary fandom, I think people would have taken it much more seriously as a leading indicator of cultural changes.
  • Shubley 10y ago
    Even more so given that the people involved in Gamergate are young people forming political views that they'll hold for a long time. When a young person develops a view that "the media lie constantly and see you as an enemy if you disagree about any tiny thing", that can bed in and last a long time through someone's life. Once trust is gone like that, how can the media redeem itself with someone? I think this is going to have very long-reaching consequences, decades into the future. There is a growing, persistent constituency of young people who are richly informed by alternative information sources (youtube, online communities, personal experience) whose first exposure to mainstream media is to learn that they're self-indulgent, lying, moralizing bullies. This is still going on today. See the recent saga with PewDiePie being slagged as a neo-nazi. His response video has 12M views, a lot of those are 13-16 year olds learning to never trust the media, especially when they call people racist. It's like when you yourself are involved in something and see it grossly, maliciously misrepresented in media. You lose trust in media that way. Gamergate was basically that happening with thousands of people, because all of them had personal experience with gaming and knew how it actually works.
    • dagenleg 10y ago
      Are you seriously implying that "trust in media" had even been a good idea? Come on, in the modern world you cannot even trust a priest, why would one advocate trusting in propaganda factories main purpose of which is to exploit that trust?
      • dukeluke 10y ago
        I don't think the post above was implying that it was a good idea, but merely acknowledging that the cultural shift is occurring. In my opinion, I'm conflicted about whether or not it's good. If our political system didn't use a FPTP voting system(and thus allowed for a multiparty system) then this cultural shift would be good because a middle-ground between the two parties would likely be found. But because we have a two party system, I believe this might just strengthen the divide between the political parties.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • samth 10y ago
      For the benefit of anyone reading this: 1. The people who lie constantly about GamerGate are the people supporting it, not the media. 2. PewDiePie actually said racist things and had people hold up anti-semitic signs. This was accurately reported in the media. There are indeed a lot of young men whose primary political belief that they should be allowed to say whatever they want on the internet without consequences, and are upset with the media when this turns out not to be true. But that isn't the media's fault.
      • beaconstudios 10y ago
        a correction for anyone reading this: 1. Lies were put out on both sides of the GamerGate controversy. It all turned into a horrible mess on both sides. 2. PewDiePie paid for people on fiverrr to hold up an offensive sign, just to see if they'd do it. If you'd seen the video you'd know that he was incredibly surprised that they went through with it. Reporting that he's a neo-Nazi off the back of this is exactly the kind of exaggeration and lying that many now find to be commonplace in the media.
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• gpawl 10y ago
  The young male gamer culture isn't so different (with respect to gender issues that affected the election), from older male(+female) conservative culture.
  • Vaskivo 10y ago
    I'm curious. In what ways are they similar?
    • beaconstudios 10y ago
      it has been reported in recent years that Generation Z is more conservative than Millenials in all ways except socially (e.g. they hold positive views about transgender rights, marijuana legalisation and same-sex marriage). see https://www.quora.com/Is-generation-Z-more-conservative-than-previous-generations-Why-or-why-not https://www.quora.com/Is-generation-Z-more-conservative-than...
• ma2rten 10y ago
  I thought Trump voters skewed older.
  • akhilcacharya 10y ago
    They do, but he has a very vocal base among young people (much more vocal than young people for Clinton).