Saluting Gamergate

An exchange concerning Gamergate seen over at VoxDay’s website, I thought I must share. A comment was posted by one AESchool supporting Antigamergate:

The discussion has gone well beyond [Anita Sarkeesian] and her agenda. It’s well out of her hands. But her work is done here…just look around at the media coverage. It’s not very kind to the GG crew. She won. The reason we know is that she could bow out right now and her agenda would continue on.

Prompting this comment from cailcorishev:

And in the TV era, the media coverage is all that matters, and since you’ve owned that, you’ve always won, right?

So what happens if that chain breaks? What happens if you take on a group of people and then find out they can’t be shamed by your media?

Prompting this counter from AESchool:

It’s a case of the bubble you live in just becoming a tiny bit bigger. That’s all.

If you don’t think culture is changed by media, ask yourself why the anti-gay contingent in the U.S. is so much smaller today. Ask yourself why blatant racism is no longer casually accepted today. Ask yourself why President Obama is president today. Ask yourself society is no longer based on patriarchy. Ask yourself America is much less stridently religious today.

The tiny gang behind GamerGate is so outmatched it’s not even worth trying to measure. What I’m finding interesting is watching the dynamic play out that motivates the GamerGate people to declare they are winning. That’s the interesting part.

However, please note that the Morlock admits something Brietbart used to say, and which I repeat: the Media is the enemy.  The press and the entertainment industry is where we must carry the fight. We must supervert, if I may use that term, what they have subverted.

The above prompted this reply, adroit and clear, and the comment I wanted to emphasize and underscore was from Jack Amok:

It’s funny to read leftists like this AESchool troll. They think they are the inevitable victors, but they don’t realize how fragile the castle they’ve build really is. Their victories are those of bullies with time on their hands to harass and vandalize people who can’t spend all day defending themselves. Nobody respects them. Nobody likes them. Nobody thinks they ought to be making decisions or be given much of a voice on any substantive matter. They’re only allowed to do what they do because people with jobs and lives and responsibilities are unwilling to risk all that against the howling mob, so people duck their heads and try not to be noticed.

One crack that erodes their ability to siphon resources, and suddenly they don’t have the time to target and harass. One successful Black Knighting operation and suddenly they don’t have quite the number of vocal foot soldiers, as their side starts to ponder the costs of being visible, of being a target.

Because nobody likes them. Nobody respects them. Nobody – not even their own side – trusts them. And many hate them, despise them. They have squandered all their goodwill, they have no reserves of social capital to draw on if they suffer a reverse.

And so it’s all very fragile. One crack, one demonstration of weakness, of the inability to hurt someone who stands up to them, and it can all crumble. The whole, rotten, Potemkin façade, steam-rolled to dust in a frenzy of pissed-off retribution. Or, maybe just shrugged off and ignored as irrelevant to a society trying to feed itself and fight off the banditos and jihadis.

One crack that they can’t contain and they’re toast. Which is why they’re so afraid of #GamerGate. When you rule your empire as a Mafioso, you can’t afford to ever lose.

But sooner or later, everybody does lose. Nobody can win forever, and they’ve set themselves up to be slaughtered when they do lose.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.