Earlier tonight, the Ralph Retort presented details of a leaked document planning an end to #GamerGate (archive here). Sargon later joined him on a stream to admit that the essence of the idea was true. The Witchfinder kind of disagrees. #GamerGate needs to change and to grow and to become something more. That process could benefit from a lot more planning.
Vivan James has been called the daughter of #GamerGate. Will she become mother of a new political movement against the authoritarian left?
To me, GamerGate is a revolt against culturally authoritarian Social Justice Warriors. The chaotic growth of the hashtag and, in particular, KotakuInAction has shown there is an enormous groundswell of support for an alternative viewpoint.
Allum Bokhari of Breitbart (@LibertarianBlue), coined the term ‘cultural libertarianism‘. I like the phrase because it focuses on the core mischief of the SJWs – speech control.
As KotakuInAction and GamerGate have grown, real tensions have emerged between those who were focused on gaming and those who are want to change the wider issues.
‘Gamer’Gate is at once a catchy term, but with a marketing hat on kind of not very attractive to anti-SJWs who want the anti-SJW-ness to extend beyond games. On the other hand, Cultural Libertarianism, whilst an incredibly useful intellectual label and ballast, is not as catchy as the term ending in ‘-Gate’, coined by Adam Baldwin.
Clearly, we are outgrowing the #GamerGate hashtag – however what I don’t like about the plan is its, well, poor planning. It reminds me of the invasion of Iraq. We know what we want (the power we have gathered to use in the cultural debate, without the negative and niche connotations). What we do not seem to have is a plan to get their beyond stopping what we are doing now.
I agree with Sargon we could benefit from rebranding, ditching our baggage and focusing on the goal – but the way to do that is to create a new and catchy brand, a new meme focusing on (say) our opposition to extremist SJW feminist, otherkinists and sinister paedophile liberation activists. Going around in private with a half-assed document is not the way to do it – for one thing it simply will not work.
The way to ‘end’ #GamerGate is to create a new successor meme that takes the camaraderie and spirit we have and attracts our cultural libertarian anti-SJW members into it.
