An event or moment · 2014 · Internet
Gamergate
Coordinated harassment of women in games, disguised as a debate about whether harassment should be allowed.
The case study for how a parasocial grievance gets weaponised: people who felt strongly about a hobby organised against individuals who had done nothing personal to them. The counter is to ask who benefits from the fight, not what the disagreement is about.
Where it sits
2010 2010+ · 2014 2026
Provenance · 2 source record(s)
- retrievableAugust 2014: a campaign targeting women in games, organised largely through an anonymous account, escalating within days to coordinated harassment, doxxing and death threats. The FBI investigated. Wikipedia's article is the de facto record and its revision history is itself an artifact of the harassmentGamerGate (Wikipedia). ↗
- unverifiedThe essay that started it was about the emotional labour of game design, which the campaign reframed as a grievance about womenGamerGate (Wikipedia), discussing Begum Bayrak's 'Depression Quest' and Zoe Quinn. ↗
PREDATOR The one inside the group
Connected · 3 out, 1 in
Fandom warspart of · 2012 · An event or momentFighting about a stranger in a reply sectioncites · 2005 · A mechanism or tacticParasocial persuasioncites · 2015 · A term or conceptFandom warscites · 2012 · An event or moment
It sits in