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Tangent: Gamergate

Hi friends,

There was a Tangent Topic Tie this month between Gamergate and Satanism, which I decided to break in favor of Gamergate for reasons described at the beginning of this video.

This is another near-video-essay that I made over 10 days. Tangents are not supposed to take this long, but as usual I got invested in the topic and I couldn't help myself. It was a wild look back at the internet era in which I started ContraPoints, and I found I had a lot to say about it.

In case you're going into this without much familiarity with Gamergate, I feel like I should let you know that this topic gets quite dark, touching on sexual assault, domestic abuse, suicide, and every conceivable form of bigotry.

Also, IMPORTANT UPDATE ABOUT MAIN CHANNEL VIDEOS:

My takeaway from doing nine Tangents in nine months is that I work much more efficiently with deadlines. So in the future I plan to pre-announce deadlines for main channel videos on certain months in place of Tangents. The idea is that, in 2024 I will produce eight Tangents and four main channel videos. Those are the rules, no excuses. I'd like to start this schedule as soon as possible because I'm beginning to feel like I need the pressure of a deadline to force a crunch in which the video actually gets finished. I currently have a "notes document" for a video I'm supposed to have made a year ago that has swelled to One Hundred Thousand Words. This is not acceptable to me, nor I think to most of my audience. So consider this an official announcement that there will be no October Tangent, and that instead I will upload a main channel video by October 31. (I'll probably miss it by a few days but the point is to force myself to complete the project).

Let me know what you think about this idea, and about the Tangent. And thanks as always for your support!

-Natalie

P.S. Here's the video link, in case the embedding doesn't work for you: https://youtu.be/N8EqmExn1No?si=O9nvJTOD0GVC24JP

Tangent: Gamergate

Comments

When I click on the shortcut to watch it on youtube it only shows a black video with a voiceover ...

Ana Geršak

~1:05:05 "it's interesting that as straight male attraction towards minors has become more taboo, accusations of pedophilia has grown more rampant" - I remember reading some kind of "list of reasons to oppose LGBT" thing on a neoreactionary blog that specifically contended that increased LGBT acceptance directly correlates with decreased tolerance of straight male pedophilia (though they used other nomenclature of course). According to these neoreactionaries this was a bad thing, a tragedy in fact. Found that quite revealing.

governmentfunding

I had to go part time during the summer so that me and my adult daughter could juggle her siblings while we both worked. I'm back now and the first thing I wanted to do was re-watch your GamerGate video. It's saying I have to watch it on YouTube because it's been age restricted. That's wild to me. It doesn't require maturity to listen to this particular rant, but maturity is a possible side effect. Thank you for all that you do. ❤️

The Existential Shrew

Why does she say "no" and "so" like my Canadian housemates making fun of my Aussie accent? #triggered

Morgaine

Everyone should definitely watch Ian’s video after this to go deeper into the topic. But glad we’re still discussing this today.

Unionize_Your_Workplace

I was confused too, but it’s age restricted so the embed is broken. Try following the direct hyperlink in the post!

Violet

I there a reason it doesn’t play anymore?

Austin Childress

Ooh, boy. I had the vaguest idea about what GamerGate was, but wow. These guys aren't very nice...

Fifi Dosch

was anyone ever prosecuted for all the threats, doxing, swatting etc? Do we need better laws to make it easier to find and punish these people? what kind of fucked up society just lets stuff like this happen?

IronMisanthrope

Hello, I think you replied to my comment earlier? FYI I answered as a reply to my original comment :) If it wasn't you, then ignore me lol.

Sofia Montero

Ugh. Like... do these men think we're objecting to default FemShep's bizarre lip gloss makeover because we hate heterosexual men and their sexuality?

Helen

This is such a good video.

Helen

wow. incredible.

Lily Stein

love david mitchell - didnt expect him to get a mention in this!

rose

I doubt you will see this but I hope you consider putting this video on the main feed at some point. The way you describe how the agenda of this hate movement was strategically obscured is so helpful to recognizing similar behaviors in other hate-mongerers.

Rachel Zitomer

McKinnon and Dworkin? Oh no, the feminist sex wars are eternal.

Had to look up what "swatting" means. Oh my, S.W.A.T.ting

i fall asleep to this video every night it’s like being big spooned

Thank you for making this video. I was not on the internet until pretty recently. I tried to look into gamergate before and got lost. My fiancé is one of those majority normies who still believed gamergate was about ethical journalism and sexual favors for good reviews. So honestly, whenever our fav lefties took a hard position about it being conservative bullshit, we simply did not understand.

Sofia Montero

Please take whatever time you need to make your videos. Deadlines are useful for planning and thinking, but please be careful with how much power you give them. Sometimes we can create quickly and and with great volume, and sometimes we need time to simply rest and recover. Just like with lifting weights, it's good to push your creative muscles to "failure" to grow stronger, but after the failure must come the recovery. :)

Shoe0nHead actually has a history of bullying other women way predating her youtube fame, the late "scarf girl" that she still didnt feel bad about bullying ten years later (she had a video in her mid 20s, with her friend, reminiscing about this harassment they engaged in and laughing). Im her former viewer (2017-18/19 when i was in my late teens), and ive seen her now long privated videos, this sort of bullying of other women and the pick me impulse were a standard feature of her diversely bigoted content. Yes, it's a pervasive pattern, and one that never really ended.

Sappho's Friend

"pre-announce deadlines for main channel videos" - that is fucking brave. I believe in you. You can do this!

Lady Bunnerkins

Thank you Natalie, I was totally uninformed about this and with everything that is being brought up anew in the UK about Russell Brand's behaviour—and how he seems to be defending himself at least partly by criticising the media writ large—it felt especially pertinent. What is this thing about disparaging the media as a guise for oppressing women?

Thank you Natalie, I was totally uninformed about this and with everything that is being brought up anew in the UK about Russell Brand's behaviour—and how he seems to be defending himself at least partly by criticising the media writ large—it felt especially pertinent. What is this thing about disparaging the media as a guise for oppressing women?

really enjoyed it. Please do a video on Propaganda! thank you!!

J Jones

Great Video, hoping for a Camile Paglia tangent one day..

Epic video

Thotwire

Was any legal action taken against the gamergate crowd? That aspect is always missing from these videos. It strikes me that a large number of the people in those leaked chats should have been given some sort of terrorism/harassment charges. I’m also surprised (well, not really) that there’s been no policy response from politicians yet on the subject of online harassment considering how omnipresent it’s become (and yes, there are laws we can write to address this kind of thing).

Woodson Baldwin

back up on my birthday!!! >=)

Errrika

this is great

ContraPoints

Awww you’re a doll for posting the direct link. As the embedded link for this particular tangent hates me and refuses to clock in for work 😤

foreverNwonder

Here is the best explanation of QAnon: https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

J Jones


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