#GamerGate. Sexism, misogyny and rough stuff in a video game world culture clash.

A screenshot from the interactive game, “Depression Quest,” the game at the root of the ongoing #GamerGate controversy. (Courtesy “Depression Quest”)

Hashtag “Gamergate” is all over the world of online fisticuffs lately.  If you’re in it, you know all about it.  Gamers – video gamers, online gamers – on an online tear, charging corruption in the incestuous world of video game journalism.  Standing as the new citizen activist.  Warriors at the Alamo.  Critics, charging that raging gamers are a bunch of culturally-privileged largely young white guys ready to unleash very real menace and misogyny to defend a passing era of supremacy.  The threats are real and ugly and maybe the future of culture clash.  This hour On Point:  Inside Gamergate.

– Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Kyle Wagner, staff writer at Deadspin. Regressing Editor for Gawker Media. (@kylenw)

Arthur Chu, actor, comedian and columnist. (@arthur_affect)

Soraya Chemaly, activist and writer. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Salon, the Guardian, CNN and in other publications. (@schemaly)

Milo Yiannopoulos, technology media and society journalist, associate editor at Breitbart. (@nero) 

From Tom’s Reading List

Deadspin: The Future of the Culture Wars is Here, and It’s Gamergate — “By design, Gamergate is nearly impossible to define. It refers, variously, to a set of incomprehensible Benghazi-type conspiracy theories about game developers and journalists; to a fairly broad group of gamers concerned with corruption in gaming journalism; to a somewhat narrower group of gamers who believe women should be punished for having sex; and, finally, to a small group of gamers conducting organized campaigns of stalking and harassment against women.”

The Atlantic: The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women — “Who’s proliferating this violent content? Who’s controlling its dissemination? Should someone be? In theory, social media companies are neutral platforms where users generate content and report content as equals. But, as in the physical world, some users are more equal than others.”

The Daily Beast: Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage – “I’m scared of people who look at someone like Zoe Quinn, an individual who makes free indie games, or Anita Sarkeesian, an individual who makes free YouTube videos, and honestly think that these women are a powerful ‘corrupt’ force taking away the freedom of the vast mob of angry young male gamers and the billion-dollar industry that endlessly caters to them, and that working to shut them up and drive them out somehow constitutes justice. The dominant demographic voice in some given fandom or scene feeling attacked by an influx of new, different fans and rallying the troops against “oppression” in reaction is not at all unique. It happens everywhere, all the time.”