Gamergate: Gaming, The Culture War, & The Rise of the Alt-Right

Ahmad J
Mar 22
32 min read

Updated: Mar 27

In the mid-2010s, an online movement known as Gamergate was formed which would alter the gaming industry forever, while having resounding effects on culture and politics for years to come. Today, many academics, commentators, and analysts recognize the importance of Gamergate as a cultural moment; one which ignited the contemporary culture war, cemented the formation of the alt-right (the ‘new’ right-wing conservative faction that emerged in the 2010s and was largely a loose network of online tech-savvy conservative subcultures), and laying the foundation for the current Trump/Musk era. This paper is a condensed exploration of Gamergate, with a greater focus on Gamergate’s cultural and political impact.

So What was Gamergate?

Gamergate was characterized by massively coordinated harassment campaigns against women within the gaming industry who were seen as invaders bringing politics and feminist ideologies into gaming. Yet, till today, its adherents claim the movement was about “ethics in gaming journalism”, and these narratives of the harassment and persecution of these women were deflections at best, and at worst, attempts at gaining popularity by playing the victim.

However, the evidence collected around the movement reflects a pattern of vicious abuse and hateful rhetoric targeting females in the gaming industry; defining the movement as a systematic harassment campaign instead of a legitimate consumer revolt. This term ‘harassment campaign’ still fails to describe the extremism of Gamergate; which is reflected in a dichotomy with the one side being a campaign of violence, and the other being a coordinated propaganda and public relations campaign.

*Anita Sarkeesian pictured at her TEDx talk on the harassment she endured*

The violence featured in the online activities of Gamergate was significant and widespread; ranging across the movement’s messages, memes, themes and ideologies. From direct threats of rape and murder – and both – to doxxing (leaking of personal information online, like a home address) and deepfake pornography (using AI to make fake porn videos of the victim). Threats of mass shooting at a school were leveraged against Anita Sarkeesian in order to prevent her from making a public appearance.

As the movement developed, these attacks were supported by fake accounts operating in coordinated bot nets; these accounts were also used to collectively amplify their narratives online through posts and interactions.

In the harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, one of the stated goals was to manipulate Quinn’s past history of depression to drive her to commit suicide. This was documented in IRC chat logs formed by groups to coordinate their attacks. This phenomena of suicide amongst victims of harassment campaigns would become realized in subsequent years, as several victims targeted through online harassment campaigns mobilizing on forums like Kiwi Farms would tragically take their own lives.

On the other side of the Gamergate dichotomy was a very active and coordinated propaganda campaign that sought to spin doctor this extremist rhetoric into a legitimate consumer movement. This propaganda campaign was also amplified through fake accounts and botnets, now commonplace in today’s world of disinformation networks, to create the facade of a consumer revolt within the gaming industry.

Gamergate represented a shift in extremist cultures of violence online; where anonymous groups from the fringes of the internet now influenced extremist ideologies within the mainstream social networking communities of Twitter and Facebook; bolstered by a response from celebrities which furthered its rhetoric to many more. In the years to come, it would become recognized by many commentators as a watershed moment; serving as a portent of violent online extremism reflected in phenomena like the QAnon movement and events like the January 6th insurrection. Similarly, Gamergate was also an omen warning of the capabilities of coordinated botnets, now commonplace in the black markets for misinformation and online influence.

At the time, the rage, hate, and harassment was not yet reflective of the continual culture war that we know of today; where conservative discourses clash with inclusive narratives across every platform, where media frenzies are stoked by content creators posting inflammatory rage-bait material about upcoming casting choices for films. In 2012, these were mostly contained to platforms like 4chan, where users could post racist and hateful content anonymously. Today, this behaviour is much more overt and has migrated away from anonymous platforms to mainstream platforms like Facebook.

This transition has much to do with Gamergate’s cultural impact; which saw these narratives migrate from anonymous echo chambers to mainstream social networks. This period also saw the arrival of early influencers and thought-leaders looking to grow their audience by jumping on the bandwagon and using the popularity of Gamergate as a vehicle to greater popularity and relevance. Figures like Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, to UKIP’s Karl Benjamin (aka “Sargon of Akkad”), supplied Gamergaters with streams of supporting content, propaganda, and ‘information’ that confirmed their biases and drove the movement forward. These influencers also helped to consolidate the various online followings and communities that formed the alt-right into a more unified entity; and direct them towards more mainstream platforms through Breitbart and Gamergate.

*Richard B. Spencer, developer of the term "alternative right"*

The alt-right was initially a loose collection of online communities that reflected values ranging from stauncher paleoconservativism to far-right white nationalism. These online communities intersected over various common discourses; from Islamophobia and antisemitism, to the beliefs in white genocide, to anti-feminism and racism. Though not always in agreement, certain components – like white nationalism and the celebration of white European identity to the point of biological racism (that the white race is inherently superior) – are held in common across these varying strands. These communities found safe spaces practise their discourses in the anonymous echo chambers of platforms like 4chan. The term itself, ‘alternative right’, was coined by paleoconservative ideologue Richard B Spencer for his online magazine, The Alternative Right; this was then shortened to ‘alt-right’ by 4chan users, particularly on the /pol board (the notorious “politically incorrect” board). Spencer would famously lead the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville which saw varying strands of obscure and online far-right movements pool together.

*Unite the Right Rally at Charlottesville*

Gamergate created a massive cultural moment that unified these strands into a cohesive movement, while also introducing non-politically active gamers to a far-right political movement. The alt-right was distinct from traditional right-wing conservative value-systems in that it saw itself as more technologically progressive and at the same time, radically conservative. For instance, its ‘progressiveness’ was reflected in its use of technology, as well as its embracing of digital online culture, geek fandoms, video games, electric vehicles, and in some cases, even homosexuality (which is regarded as a distraction from the greater matters of race; with some members of the less radical sister-faction of the alt-right, known as the “alt-lite”, being homosexuals themselves). At the same time, its radical conservativism clashed with traditional conservatism which it saw as ‘selling out’ white identity.

The movement also heavily uses online humour, memes, and irony; another means of distinguishing itself from traditional conservativism. These memes and inside jokes are often used to ‘dog-whistle’ secret meanings; like memes and references to the number 1488 (a combination of the Neo-Nazi David Eden Lane’s 14 words for The Order – his white nationalist neo-Nazi group – and the 88 rules by which they should follow) to the use of Pepe the Frog as a common identifier, and even the ‘daily dose’ - a rape meme which would become central to Gamergate.

Additionally, and quite importantly, Gamergate provided a basis for Cambridge Analytica and their strategy for the 2016 election of Donald Trump. It signaled a political movement to figures like Steve Bannon – then Donald Trump’s campaign manager – who saw in Gamergate an anonymous yet systematic online army whose ethos reflected conservative values that aligned with the Republican agenda. Being centrally involved in Breitbart also gave Bannon a significant connection with the publication's growing alt-right audience. Bannon was in addition, a gamer himself; keenly aware of the industry, so much so that he ran botnet scams on World of Warcraft.

The movement also demonstrated how far-right politics could weaponize the internet and digital media through memes, misinformation, and botnets; and formed a blueprint for reactionary culture war politics that would follow.

The Origins of Gamergate

The roots of Gamergate began in 2012, when media critic Anita Sarkeesian began a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a YouTube video series, Tropes against Women in Video Games, in which she critiqued misogynistic and sexist tropes in media with a focus on gaming. These tropes, ranging from the "women in the refrigerator" trope (wherein a female character has to die to motivate the male character and drive the plot), to the more commonly understood "damsel in distress", are similar to the media fallacies we explore on this site.

Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter campaign was met with scorn and anger from (mostly) male gamers online – particularly on 4chan’s ‘/v’ board (v for video games). They saw her criticism as an invasion by feminist influences and discourses on gaming – which was initially regarded as a traditionally male-dominated area. However, their response to her criticism went far beyond hateful comments on her videos, and resulted in threats of rape, violence, stalking, doxxing, and other forms of harassment. This even included the development of a video game targeting Sarkeesian herself; titled, Beat up Anita Sarkeesian.

Ironically, the harassment of Sarkeesian resulted in her Kickstarter becoming popularized and saw her receive donations far greater than her initial target. This success would further add to the conspiratorial mythology surrounding Sarkeesian; claiming that her success was the result of a biased media promoting her Kickstarter - and that she manufactured or deliberately encouraged the harassment in order to portray herself as a victim and generate attention. The positive reception of Sarkeesian's work within the gaming industry would also further add to the hatred and conspiring around her.

Depression Quest

At this point however, the movement was still a loose collection of anti-feminist trolls online; it had yet to achieve critical mass and become the broader cultural movement known as Gamergate. This happened two years later, when game developer Zoe Quinn released a free-to-play game titled Depression Quest. The game was based on Quinn’s own mental health struggles; and was intended as a tool for individuals suffering with depression.

Quinn’s game was celebrated for its approach to tackling mental health issues and received a fair-bit of attention from the gaming media (especially for a small-sized, independently made, free-to-play game designed by a single individual). This positive reception was criticized by many gamers online, who saw it as evidence of the influence of political ideologies on gaming. At the same time, a significant portion of those behind the backlash, particularly those identifying with incel beliefs and ideologies (involuntary celibates), claimed that Quinn could not fully understand depression as she was a female for whom sex and intimacy was more accessible. This demonstrates the intersection of Gamergate with incel and manosphere rhetoric; both popular amongst the emergent alt-right.

*Screenshot of Depression Quest; a text-based game about life with depression*

Soon after the release of the game, in act of scorned vengeance, Erin Djoni, Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, released a long post on online forums titled the Zoe Post in which he detailed his breakup with Quinn. Djoni accused Quinn of cheating on him with several other men; one of whom was Nathan Grayson, a writer for Kotaku which is a popular online media magazine focusing on video games and films.

Djoni alleged that Quinn slept with Grayson in order to receive favourable reviews for her game (Depression Quest). This allegation gained momentum with online, particularly with existing critics of Quinn’s game (who saw the popularity around the well-received Depression Quest as the gaming industry becoming enmeshed within the political spectrum).

This theory inserted well into the existing anti-feminist rhetoric amongst gamers online dating back to the Anita Sarkeesian harassment of 2012. The theory essentially claimed that Quinn slept with Grayson to receive favourable reviews for her game; this was a method of explaining away the successful critical reception of her game – and thus, combating the influence of feminist ideology in gaming. This became the basis for the conspiracy theory known as the Quinnspiracy.

The Quinnspiracy birthed a new harassment campaign targeting Zoe Quinn. Quinn would receive over a thousand threats of savage violence, rape, and murder. However, beyond simple threats, many of the harassers would attack her through doxxing (leaking her personal information online), hacking her online accounts and locking her out, distributing images of her and her family members.

According to Zoe:

I had been dating this guy for 5 months. We broke up and he wrote a manifesto – a sort of call to arms – about me and posted it in online communities that had a reputation for targeting women. The abuse I [then] experienced on Twitter included rape threats and death threats – people calling me ‘a nasty slut’, telling me to ‘die slowly’, saying that I’ would f*ck anybody’.

I got tweets from a guy who said that he was carrying a bottle of disinfectant for me to swallow in case he were to see me at a games conference. People were sharing drives full of images and stuff about me to post online – to hurt me.

They mass reported my Twitter account and work account [to get them shut down]. My blog was hacked and it was linked to my Twitter account, and so they posted my home address, phone number, dad’s address and dad’s phone number on Twitter. They changed my passwords [to lock me out of my account].

*4chan, the notorious image-board that has been host to everything from racist to Islamophobic content, the QAnon conspiracy, and even mass shooters*

While 4chan served as the initial site of Quinnspiracy-activity, platforms like Reddit and IRC would become deliberate staging grounds for these angry gamers to migrate to and coordinate their attacks. A board on Reddit titled ‘KotakuInAction’ was formed, and would become a key site of mobilization for Gamergaters. Additionally, an IRC channel named “Burgers and Fries” was formed in order to covertly plan their operations (named after the “Five Guys” fast food chain, so-named because the Zoe Post accuses Zoe of cheating with five guys). The stated aim of “Burgers and Fries” was to convince Zoe to commit suicide.

IRC allowed users to open and host channels for group communication. This was a common practice amongst 4chan users who would often migrate more extreme conversations to other platforms like IRC, or even to imitation versions of 4chan created by users themselves in order to continue more extreme threads.

At the same time as the campaign against Zoe Quinn was underway, the attacks against Anita Sarkeesian were reignited, these attacks included doxxing (leaking of personal information online), threats of violence and rape, and even the threat of a school shooting.

*Actor Adam Baldwin of Full Metal Jacket, Chuck and Firefly fame*

As the Quinnspiracy grew in popularity, it weny beyond the fringe platforms of 4chan and IRC, soon hitting more mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This growing popularity eventually reached actor Adam Baldwin; who retweeted a Quinnspiracy post with the hashtag ‘#Gamergate’ (using the ‘-gate’ suffix to imply a conspiracy theory and scandal; like Watergate). Baldwin’s use of the hashtag, and his popularizing of the Quinnspiracy to his audience on Twitter, is how the term Gamergate was born.

"Ethics in Gaming Journalism"

The movements entry in the mainstream was matched with a significant propaganda campaign in order to sanitize its public image by spin-doctoring these allegations of harassment. Using the veneer of “ethics in gaming journalism” as a facade for the movement, they attempted to deflect these allegations of harassment as a means of diminishing what they claimed was a legitimate consumer revolt. Thus, using this framing device, they portrayed the movement as a response to growing concerns around ethics and integrity within gaming media which sought to hold developers and journalists accountable to their audiences and customers. This also motivated the shift to the name Gamergate over the earlier name of Quinnspiracy. The Quinnspiracy was a conspiratorial claim against Quinn; whereas Gamergate was a legitimate consumer revolt resulting from multiple instances of "ethics in gaming journalism" - from Anita Sarkeesian, to Quinn and Nathan Grayson, to other female journalists and media critics who became targets and victims - like Brianna Wu and Leigh Alexander.

Scholars of political ideology and power, like J.B Thompson, consider this an ideological legitimation – a means of using an ideology (like “ethics in gaming journalism”) to legitimate acts of power and domination (like the violent harassment campaign that followed). This ideological facade was developed across these groups and boards (evidenced in IRC chat logs); but crucially, was contributed to and popularized by influencers who jumped on the Gamergate bandwagon to fame and infamy.

Gamergate’s Influencers

Key among these influencers were former UK Independence Party (UKIP) member Carl Benjamin (also known as ‘Sargon of Akkad’ after the Sargon the Great who united Akkad and Sumer into the world’s first empire) and notorious far-right provocateur and Breitbart editor, Milo Yiannopoulos. These influencers stoked the fires of Gamergate, building up its hatred and rage, while simultaneously directing this rage at these female media figures.

*Carl Benjamin image credit: Evening Standard*

Carl Benjamin developed a conspiracy theory claiming that figures like Anita Sarkeesian were conspiring with researchers from DiGRA – the Digital Gaming Research Association – to insert feminist influences into video games. Benjamin used his own appropriations of Greek philosophers as well as Marxist thinkers to develop his own brand of anti-feminist ideologies, which he disseminated through lengthy YouTube videos on his channel “Sargon of Akkad”.

Benjamin used YouTube in a reciprocal relationship that represents the central revenue logics of the contemporary digital age. Benjamin developed content which answered YouTube’s content demands for Gamergate content – a popular content genre of the time; and early predecessor to the misogynistic content landscape that would follow.

According to writer and media analyst Gavin Haynes:

Railing against the perversion of his beloved video games by diversity ideology, Benjamin uploaded essays that used the core of Western philosophy to justify his positions and vanquish his enemies. Chief among them was Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist who typified the mould then emerging: recently graduated upper-middle-class girls obsessed with tokenistic representation, intersectionality and victimology. Benjamin saw the tide of evil rolling in.

(Haynes, 2025)

According to Rebecca Lewis, a researcher who has done tremendous work on alternative influence online:

He (Carl/Sargon) grew his popularity in 2014 by broadcasting throughout Gamergate, a movement of coordinated harassment against women game critics and designers. Since then, he has continued to grow his following with more anti-feminist, anti-social justice content... (Lewis, 2018)

According to Anita Sarkeesian describing her experiences and abuses:

Carl is a man who literally profits from harassing me and other women: he makes over $5,000 a month on Patreon for creating YouTube videos that mock, insult and discredit myself and other women online, and he’s not alone. He is one of several YouTubers who profit from the cottage industry of online harassment and antifeminism; together, these people have millions of followers who are regularly encouraged by the videos and tweets of these individuals to harass me and other women who make videos daring to assert the basic humanity of women, people of color, trans folks, and members of other marginalized groups.

(Anita Sarkeesian, 2017, as cited in Caplan and Marwick, 2018).

Another influencer and controversial thought-leader who used Gamergate as a vehicle to greater popularity was Milo Yiannoupoulos, the alt-right writer and commentator who spewed out a continual stream of Gamergate articles through Breitbart, as well as through his own online accounts. As a homosexual, Milo represents the distinctiveness of the alt-right in relation to traditional conservativism.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart senior editor who used Gamergate as a star-vehicle to greater popularity. Milo would go onto serve as an intern for QAnon Republican politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, then for white nationalist Nick Feuntes, and then briefly work for Kanye West's 2024 Presidential election run.

For those who are unaware, Breitbart is a far-right news platform intended to be “the Huffington Post of the right”. Developed and co-founded by Andrew Breitbart in 2005, it began as a news aggregator which, according to fellow co-founder Larry Solov, was intended to be unashamedly and unapologetically “pro-freedom and pro-Israel". Breitbart’s peculiar position as a pro-Zionist and yet antisemitic platform draws attention to the progression of far-right attitudes in contemporary times where antisemitism is enmeshed with neo-Nazism; as reflected in Elon Musk’s nazi salute being juxtaposed against his support for Israel.

According to a 2016 article titled How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time from independent Jewish news outlet the Forward: “Breitbart News, the site chaired by Donald Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, is widely known as a platform for white nationalism and anti-Semitism. It is also brazenly Zionist, albeit peddling an exclusively right-wing perspective on Israel.” (Zevelloff, 2016)

*Steve Bannon at the recent 2025 CPAC performing a Nazi salute - soon after Elon Musk performed a similar gesture at the inauguration of Donald Trump*

This is something that is becoming increasingly consistent amongst right-wing figures like Musk and Donald Trump; and the broader Republican movement in general. Yet though it would seem impossible to hate Jews but love the Jewish state, these two viewpoints are not as contradictory as they appear. There is actually “little correlation” between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, according to Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Cohen further says, “Many people who dislike Jews like Israel and many people who are critical toward Israel are affectionate toward Jews.” (Cohen, S. M, as cited in Zevelloff, 2016)

Breitbart has been repeatedly criticized for publishing articles that range from inflammatory perspectives to outright misinformation – ranging from the aforementioned antisemitic perspectives to climate denialism. Additionally, many themes consistent with Breitbart’s publications reflect racist and Islamophobic values, along with racist and Islamophobic conspiracies like Eurabia-esque rhetoric and ‘Sharia No-Go Zones’. Following the death of Andrew Breitbart, Steve Bannon would assume the role of executive chairman – Bannon’s name will come up repeatedly in these discussions, particularly for the roles he played at Breitbart and as the campaign manager of Donald Trump who led the Cambridge Analytica partnership.

Milo Yiannopoulos was the senior editor of Breitbart; where he poured out a series of articles around Gamergate, particularly targeting figures like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. As seen in the screenshots below, Gamergate provided continuous rhetoric for the Breitbart audience for years to come.

Below is an extract from Milo's initial Gamergate piece, titled Feminist Bullies Tearing the Internet Apart (2014) in which he says:

Step forward Chelsea Van Valkenburg, who goes by the pen name Zoe Quinn. Quinn recently released an online novel called Depression Quest, described as an “interactive fiction game where you play as someone living with depression.” It’s an internet version of one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books – except boring, and as excruciatingly badly written as its promotional material suggests.

Quinn started furiously marketing her game just after Robin Williams died. Tasteless and opportunistic, sure, but many gave her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she was just trying to “raise awareness.” But what later came out, thanks to a startling series of confessions from Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, is just what an unpleasant and manipulative human being she is.

Though she presents herself as a champion for depression sufferers, Quinn picked on a forum for depressed men called Wizardchan, misrepresenting content there to claim she was being harassed. She used her influence to torpedo a charity – a charity! – which was later hacked by one of her supporters. (Yiannopoulos, 2014)

Wizardcan is a spin-off of larger image board sites like 2chan and 8chan. It was founded by Christoper Brennan, a paraplegic who would go onto found 8chan. Brennan has since distanced himself from his affiliations to these sites and the movements and communities that have emerged from them particularly after 8chan was involved in the Christchurch Killer’s manifesto, and in the rise of QAnon.

The term ‘wizard’ in this case is used to describe a male virgin past the age of 30; it is almost recognized as a term of seniority within the incel (involuntary celibate) movement. According to some internet commentators like Ian Danskin, the creator of Innuendo Studios and the Alt Right Playbook, Wizardchan was notorious for misogynistic content and even instances of child pornography.

Milo continues:

She (Quinn) leveraged friendships with moderators at online forums to have nearly 25,000 comments deleted. She swept an allegation of sexual misconduct under the carpet using intimidation.

There’s even a theory floating around that she is planning to have herself beaten up at an upcoming conference. It’s an unconfirmed internet rumour, but it illustrates Quinn’s credibility to gamers.

Quinn is not alone. There is a platoon of irritants in the media whose talents are vanishingly slight, but who generate column inches by the thousand for victimising innocents and manipulating their way around an over-sensitive industry. Some of them, such as Anita Sarkeesian, have no discernible higher purpose in life, except to bother innocent games developers. (Yiannopoulos, 2014)

Milo’s writing continued to frame the harassment within the ideology of “ethics in gaming journalism” as a way of legitimating the anger of the movement while publicizing it to a broader audience – including those who were completely oblivious to the harassment, or to the intended reason which originated the movement – drive Zoe Quinn to commit suicide.

As Gamergate shifted from the fringe to the mainstream, Breitbart (and Milo) supplied the demand for Gamergate content and commentary; this helped Breitbart shift from an obscure fringe media entity to one with increasing traction within mainstream online communities.

This was a critical moment, which on the one hand led figures like Bannon gaining increased prominence within conservative political circles – and eventually becoming campaign manager to Donald Trump. On the other hand, this created a ‘pipeline’ for gamers in the mainstream to connect with far-right ideas and discourses. Many of these gamers were led into this discourse through the narrative of ‘ethics in gaming journalism’ and the fears of the erosion of the gaming industry – which writers like Milo deliberately framed as instances of poorly developed games (by female gamers) gaining prominence through illicit relations with gaming media and game reviewers.

The Slippery Slope

Milo, and influencers like him. perpetuated this mythology; that feminist influences were treading into territory (gaming) where they did not belong. Implicit in this understanding is the idea that these emerging instances of feminist rhetoric represents a greater cultural threat than these instances suggest. It represents the erosion of traditionally established values, represented by the gaming industry which for the longest time was marketed largely towards white middle class, mostly male, children – even though the actual consumers of these products were significantly more varied. The growing awareness of markets beyond the traditional ones represented a shift in racial and gendered depictions in games. This shift was met with staunch opposition from the traditional gaming base, and fermented attitudes of conservatism bolstered by a sense of suspicion and conspiracy, creating a furtive climate for a phenomena like Gamergate.

These conspiratorial ideas helped to nurture the reactionary climate that came to define the culture wars; where any shift in cultural dynamics was observed as evidence of a moral and social decline, for which feminist influences were responsible. This trope would become a consistent messaging strategy which was subsequently applied to ‘Social Justice Warriors’, Black Lives Matter (and the ‘woke’ term that arose from it), to the current anti-DEI climate.

The faulty logic behind these conspiracies is known as the Slippery Slope Fallacy, which is a type of logical fallacy. Logical fallacies are cognitive traps that are easy to fall prey to; they refer to logical conclusions we reach based on faulty evidence – usually evidence that does not support the conclusion. In the Slippery Slope Fallacy, the argument claims that because a single event or incident occurred, it necessarily means subsequent increasingly negative events will occur – culminating in a worse outcome. Gamergate frames feminism in gaming within this fallacy; claiming that though the growing feminist influence in the gaming industry may begin by modifying tropes or including more female characters, it would eventually result in the erosion of existing traditional values and moral codes, and threatens society as a whole.

This argument has become a key theme in conservative media content; from content that stoked fears of social justice warriors, to the moral panic around BLM, ‘woke-ism’, critical race theory, and DEI. These arguments all claim that these incidents will eventually lead to overall moral decline; without presenting a logical connection between any evidence and these conclusions.

Gamergate Media

The shift from the Quinnspiracy to Gamergate was a deliberate public relations strategy; Quinnspiracy was the name of a fringe internet theory amongst fringe internet communities, whereas Gamergate was a mainstream movement representing a consumer revolt. This movement had its own branding, its own mascot, its own celebrity endorsements, and even its own charity donations.

However, likely owing to the troll culture and meme-laden environments from which Gamergate sprang, even this public relations work was designed to troll its audiences and followers; especially those who weren’t “in on the joke”.

For example, the colours green and purple have become synonymous with Gamergate through its branding, logo, and general media. This combination of colours is popular on 4chan, and stems from a meme known as the “daily dose” which is an image depicting characters from the popular anime Dragon Ball. In the image, the character of Piccolo, who is green and purple, is depicted raping the character Vegeta.

The meme became so popular on 4chan it began being repeatedly shared, eventually resulting in board moderators deleting instances of the meme. This resulted in the meme evolving; wherein the daily dose meme was connoted rather than denoted. Through the use of connotative signifiers - like the colours purple and green, or similar connotations associated with the act of rape, or characters from Dragon Ball, or the idea of taking a medicinal dosage - became sufficient to signify the daily dose. This resulted in a wide range of memes with overtly distinct material yet subversively communicating a rape joke. The following are all instances of the daily dose:

Thus, Gamergate, a movement from 4chan claiming to be about ethics, chose to use green and purple – popular on 4chan as a hidden rape joke – as its branding.

This branding was used in the design of Vivian James; a female character which came to be 4chan’s mascot. The character was designed through an act of charity in which Gamergate drove a funding campaign to support the development of an upcoming independent game developed by a female developer.

This was done to prove the movement was innocent of the harassment allegations. The largest donor was awarded the ability to design the lead character for the game; unsurprisingly, the largest donor was Gamergate, acting as a collective. Thus, Gamergate developed and designed the character, Vivian James; a female wearing green and purple to be the lead character in a female-developed video game. Vivian would go on to feature in Gamergate memes and media, becoming a mascot for the movement.

Gamergate, Steve Bannon, & Cambridge Analytica

Crucially, in the broader picture, Gamergate signaled discourses of white nationalism and conservatism to political spectators like Steve Bannon. Working as Donald Trump’s campaign advisor, Bannon would partner with electioneering firm Cambridge Analytica, the infamous firm behind the breach of hundreds of millions of profile data from Facebook which it used to train its models and develop its messaging and micro-targeting used in the 2016 election.

According to the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie:

...it (Gamergate) was a sign to Bannon, who saw that angry, lonely white men could become incredibly mobilized when they felt that their way of life was threatened. (Wylie, 2019: 62)

Bannon became a regular reader of Reddit and 4chan and began to see the hidden anger that comes out when people are anonymous online. To him, they were revealing their true selves, unfiltered by a “political correctness” that was preventing them from speaking these “truths” in public. It was through the process of reading these forums that Bannon realized he could harness them and their anonymous swarms of resentment and harassment. (Wylie, 2021: 126)

According to Joshua Green’s book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (2017), Bannon was a once-Hollywood producer who discovered the world of angry gamers on the internet through the massively popular, massive-multiplayer-online game, World of Warcraft.

By 2005, he had left Hollywood for the other side of the globe, Hong Kong, where he became involved in what was undoubtedly the strangest business of any in his kaleidoscopic career—one that introduced him to a hidden world, burrowed deep into his psyche, and provided a kind of conceptual framework that he would later draw on to build up the audience for Breitbart News, and then to help marshal the online armies of trolls and activists that overran national politics and helped give rise to Donald Trump.

The business centered on a video game, World of Warcraft...

Skilled players can win weapons, armor, and gold. These are, of course, virtual items acquired and used within the game. Yet ardent enthusiasts were willing to buy them for real money, in the real world, to help them conquer World of Warcraft and other MMOs—a practice known as “real-money trading.”

The Hong Kong company Bannon joined, Internet Gaming Entertainment, sought to take gold farming to industrial scale by building out a supply chain of low-wage Chinese workers who played World of Warcraft in continuous, rotating shifts, battling monsters and dragons to produce a steady stream of virtual goods that IGE sold to gold-hungry gamers in the West. (Green, 2017)

This enterprise was eventually shut-down; IGE suffered hacks from angry gamers to lawsuits from customers – as well as gaming developers realizing they were losing out on the potential of making these sales themselves directly – leading to the development of microtransactions (a pet peeve of the gaming industry’s legions of customers). However, in spite of IGE’s failure, Bannon discovered upon something greater:

Yet Bannon was captivated by what he had discovered while trying to build the business: an underworld he hadn’t known existed that was populated by millions of intense young men (most gamers were men) who disappeared for days or even weeks at a time in alternate realities. While perhaps not social adepts, they were smart, focused, relatively wealthy, and highly motivated about issues that mattered to them, their collective might powerful enough to wreck IGE’s business and bend companies such as Blizzard to their will. As he would later confirm, this luciferous insight gave him an early understanding of the size and strength of online communities, along with an appreciation for the powerful currents that run just below the surface of the Internet. He began to wonder if those forces could be harnessed and, if so, how he might exploit them.

(Green, 2017)

Bannon saw a way of transforming these angry gamers into Republican voters; beginning with Breitbart’s intense focus on Gamergate and its inflammatory coverage intended to yield high traffic and clickthroughs. According to Green, Bannon said: ““I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away,” he said. “You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.”” (Green, 2017)

Bannon suggested promoting Gamergate rhetoric while targeting these groups of individuals with their messaging campaign for the election. These were users who were already open to consuming fringe rhetoric reflected in Gamergate content; this results in the algorithms of mainstream networks deliberately personalizing more of that type of content for that user. For Cambridge Analytica, this nature of Facebook’s sorting algorithms (and the sorting algorithms of similar platforms) made it convenient for the firm’s messaging to be further sorted for the increasing audience of Gamergate rhetoric.

This places Gamergate as a significant point in the rise of the alt right from amongst the traditional conservative base. Comparably, the alt right was a younger and more digitally nuanced and aware set of conservative voters. This was a community of gamers, a community of nerds and geeks who found belonging within these digital spaces; who were fluent in internet lingo and online subcultures. Through movements like Gamergate, the political power of these communities was realized – and then weaponized, by enmeshing its rhetoric within the discourse of the Trump campaign. This would grow to such significance that memes, figures, and movements from 4chan and 8chan would become intimately entwined with the media around Donald Trump and the Republican Party – from Pepe the Frog (a 4chan cultural icon), to the QAnon movement which emerged from 4chan (and then moved to 8chan – just like Gamergate did), and the January 6th insurrection.

*An image of Donald Trump as Pepe the Frog, which Trump himself tweeted. This was an overt gesture to the alt-right by Trump.*

Gamergate 2.0 and Trump 2.0

While Gamergate itself lost its momentum and splintered over time, its cultural impact is still felt. Ranging from the rise of the alt-right and its contribution to the election of Donald Trump; to the pattern of continuing culture wars over woke-ness, immigration, and DEI.

Recent events in the gaming industry have signaled a type of Gamergate 2.0, demonstrating the consistent proclivity for anti-feminist anti-woke ideologies amongst gamers and the media entities ready to supply content to exaggerate and enflame these issues.

Sweetbaby Inc. was a consulting firm that contracted with various video game developers in order to help make their games and media more inclusive. The company worked with major titles of the past few years including God of War Ragnarok and Alan Wake 2. In 2023, a user posted on Kiwi Farms about Sweetbaby Inc.’s involvement with Alan Wake 2, citing it as a major scandal in the gaming industry (where a black character was allegedly included in the game upon instruction from Sweetbaby Inc.) that was being swept under the rug.

Kiwi Farms is a notorious online forum that has is an echo chamber of hate and racism, but which has also been used to organize significant harassment campaigns. Several of Kiwi Farms harassment victims have committed suicide. The site also helped to popularize the manifesto and the livestream of the Christchurch Killer’s massacre.

This initial post on Kiwi Farms led to much discussion, and soon led to a deliberate phase of organization – conducted through the r/KotakuInAction subreddit, the same subreddit mentioned earlier, which was formed during Gamergate’s persecution of Zoe Quinn. This led to the company becoming the target of a moderate harassment campaign which gradually escalated until the formation of another group “Sweetbaby Inc. Detected” which would go to amass around 350 000 followers.

Much of the rage of Sweetbaby Inc. Detected and the general philosophy of the Gamergate 2.0 it inspired was that Sweetbaby Inc. was responsible for the recent issues affecting the games industry. From the poor performance and reviews of games like Suicide Squad, to large-scale firings across the industry. The ethos of Sweetbaby Inc. Detected was to ‘detect’ games that the company consulted on and demonstrate how their interference (along with their inclusive rhetoric) led to poor sales and poor reviews. In general, the company was being scapegoated for complex issues facing the gaming industry.

According to an article by gaming journalist Alyssa Mercante who bravely explored both sides of the divide – from Sweetbaby Inc. to Sweetbaby Inc. Detected:

The games industry has had its fair share of struggles lately, from massive layoffs to wildly expensive games like Suicide Squad falling short of expectations. According to the loudest members of the Sweet Baby Inc. Detected Discord, the company is directly responsible for those failures—not the studios that employed them in the first place—because of the content Sweet Baby allegedly “forces” into games.” (Mercante, 2024)

Mercante spent time on Sweetbaby Inc. Detected in order to communicate with its adherents and understand their rage. Members claimed that they sought to ‘detect’ games which had Sweetbaby Inc.’s influences so that they could make an informed decision about their gaming purchases and the type of media they choose to support. Once again, we hear the narrative of a legitimate consumer revolt, while at the same time, obscuring acts of harassment underneath. Not only does this mirror Gamergate thoroughly, but the group itself still included anti-Anita Sarkeesian posts.

Meme from Sweetbaby Inc. Detected comparing the sexualized character from Stellar Blade with female lead characters from other games allegedly affiliated with Sweetbaby Inc. or with progressivism in gaming in general

“In it, members shared posts referencing Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian, Marcus Aurelius quotes, and pictures of idealized female bodies in games. One image showed several pictures of the protagonist Eve from Korean developer ShiftUp’s upcoming action game Stellar Blade, juxtaposed against female characters from Overwatch, Forspoken, and Life is Strange. “Embrace tradition. Reject modernity” is emblazoned on the collage.” (Mercante, 2024)

Mercante interviewed staff members for the company to get a clearer understanding of their role as a consultancy:

Sweet Baby Inc. is a narrative design company, meaning most of its work is focused on writing stories and dialogue—they are not a DEI consultancy firm. That means they ensure a game’s plot points make logical sense and are satisfying to players, and that characters speak and behave in consistent ways. Narrative designers may also provide a final round of polish, like a Hollywood “script doctor.” For example, the team worked on Suicide Squad long after the story was written—and even then they joined just to write in-game ads, audio logs, and NPC “barks,”. (Mercante, 2024)

According to the company’s CEO, Kim Belair, game developers contract with them after completing the story and characters of their game.

One of the things that we do offer is cultural consultations or authenticity consultations. For us, that generally means that we might be asked to look at a story if there’s a character in it who is marginalized in certain way, and [the studio] wants us to connect them with a consultant who can bring a little bit of authenticity…But the perspective is never that we’re coming in and injecting diversity…For the most part, it’s the reverse. It’s that a company has created a character and they want to make that character more representative and more interesting. (Mercante, 2024)

Belair, who worked on the highly acclaimed Spiderman for Sony’s Insomniac Games studio, explained that the rage of these gamers prevents them from accepting that she worked on Spiderman as a narrative consultant, as they can only imagine her participation with the development as being restricted to the inserting of gay pride flags.

Instead, the followers of Sweetbaby Inc. Detected see it as a matter of forced diversity and inclusion, which not only reflects the original values of Gamergate, but ties in well with the current climate of anti-woke and anti-DEI campaigning. In fact, the current climate is much more furtive and receptive for Gamergate’s inflammatory ideologies than the media environment of 2014 was. Consequently, this has resulted in a firestorm of media as content creators once again look to jump on the bandwagon and benefit from the culture war frenzy it inspired; racking up millions of views while attacking the ‘woke’ agenda. This even led to 4chan’s /pol board – where much of the original Gamergate fervour originated from – recognizing Sweetbaby Inc. Detected as “Gamergate 2.0”.

According to analysis by Media Matters:

...mentions of Sweet Baby on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” message board (commonly known as “/pol/”) have jumped since the beginning of March, with nearly 500 mentions since then.

Multiple threads and posts on the platform have described the recent targeting of the company as “GamerGate2” or “Gamergate 2.0,” and have asked fellow users if they’re “ready for the Second Great War.” (Kaplan, 2024)

What we see in Sweetbaby Inc. Detected is a pattern of online ‘sleuthing’ similar to that of QAnon; where “Q-drops” and Trump-related media were scrutinized to reveal hidden messages or clues and drawn together to construct narratives that fit within the worldview of the group. Similarly, members of Sweetbaby Inc. Detected scrutinize issues and failures within the gaming industry for any hint of inclusivity upon which they scapegoat these failures onto. Whether it’s the inclusion of a person of colour as a lead character, or a female character that does not conform with hyper-sexualized tropes of yesteryear. This has even led to intensive analysis of facial features of female protagonists; claiming it is a result of the “woke-mob” seeking to “uglify” female facial features.

Worryingly, since Alyssa Mercante’s article on Sweetbaby Inc. and Gamergate 2.0, she has herself become the next target of the harassment campaign’s rage and hate; with Gamergaters claiming that Mercante is producing propaganda to smear Sweetbaby Inc. Detected. Once again, the narrative of ethics in gaming journalism rears its head, as it is used to legitimate the criticism of Mercante while harassing and threatening her and also leveraging their campaign against media outlets that publish her work – placing her in a very difficult situation career-wise and undoing years of her work as a gaming journalist.

The case against Mercante also demonstrates how the broader gaming industry has failed to tackle the issues central to Gamergate when it first occurred; allowing its reoccurrence almost a decade later where this type of rhetoric fits in well with the state of political discourse today. Mercante makes the case for major figures within the industry to take a stand against the harassment; by explaining the intricacies of game development and dispelling the conspiracy theories and mythologies that have emerged since the first Gamergate. It would help if these counternarratives came from these gaming industry figureheads rather than gaming journalists whom the majority of Gamergaters reject. It paints an abysmal picture, which sees the gaming industry and gaming media entities as being willing to allow these female figures to be silenced so that they themselves do not get targeted by the trolls.

Furthermore, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and rebranding to X shifted the nature of moderation on the platform allowing the harassment of Gamergate 2.0 to thrive openly relatively unchallenged. Furthermore, it created an environment where a user whose tweet achieves mass circulation now has the opportunity to earn through the platform. This is worryingly different from the initial Gamergate movement – which was gradually deplatformed from 4chan, forcing it to migrate to the newly formed and lesser regulated 8chan.

In the wake of Gamergate’s return, a new legion of content creators has emerged across YouTube and other platforms, peddling mythologies and conspiracies to the audience of Gamergate 2.0. Like Milo Yiannopoulos and Carl Benjamin before them, these creators also seek to the ride the bandwagon of hate to greater popularity and earn their shares in advertising revenue through these platforms. Beyond just targeting the influence of female figures within the industry, the current form of Gamergate dabbles in the currents of anti-woke and anti-DEI discourses that are popular today.

Even US AID has become involved in Gamergate 2.0, as a new conspiracy theory alleges that funds from US AID were used to develop propaganda against the initial Gamergate movement – another instance of a “lack of ethics in gaming journalism”. This theory began after it was revealed that Politico, a website often critical of Trump (and once critical of Gamergate), received grants from US AID. This was used to claim that the government (under previous administrations) allowed US AID to fund Politico which was critical of Gamergate; thus helping to confirm the belief that even the government was complicit in the scandal over ethics in journalism.

The Age of the Alt-Right

*Truth Social, Donald Trump's social networking app*

While the controversy around Sweetbaby Inc. may have heralded a second Gamergate, the first Gamergate has never really gone away – both in presence and cultural impact. The formation of the alt-right began a revolution amongst conservatives. This was a new breed of conservative; one that was techno-savvy, forward-thinking, and thriving online. Yet, in spite of their growing presence and contribution to the Trump base, Trump himself initially disavowed them following his election in 2016. However, since then, the online subcultures that have developed around Trump grew in power and spread; from Pepe the Frong, to movements like QAnon (which emerged on 4chan), and to Elon Musk and the alt-right nature he represents – a techno-savvy online conservative following that is fluent in internet lingo and memes and drives electric cars.

In essence, the 2016 election of Donald Trump was not yet the election of the alt-right – but the 2024 election of Donald Trump was. From Trump shifting the locus of political rhetoric to the online world, to the emergence of TruthSocial and the array of conservative online media alternatives (GAB, Rumbler).

The development of QAnon – which took place during the first Trump presidency and received gradual dog-whistles from Trump – now has full-blown support as evidenced in the presence of many QAnon adherents in the cabinet, Kash Patel’s appointment as the Director of the FBI, to the pardoning of the January 6th rioters – many of whom were inspired by QAnon and other online related mythologies like the Wayfair Scandal.

Crucially, the arrival of Elon Musk, Pieter Thiel, and the other tech barons to the Republican side further testifies to this shift to the alt-; as does the contributions of influencers and podcasters like Joe Rogan and the Nelk Boys to the Trump campaign – and even Trump’s stunt to prevent the TikTok ban (which he helped to launch in the first place) – collectively signal that the current Republican Party is increasingly more alt-right than right.

This presence of the alt-right influence even extends to the selling of meme coins (a phenomenon popular online and which has potential to make money for many of these online “insider” types) and the development of DOGE and the youngsters staffing it. Even the release of the Epstein Files to right-wing online influencers and content creators by the Trump Administration is another tactic that signals the tech-era awareness of 2025 Trump.

Thus, Gamergate plays a significant role in the development of the current political climate; from the rise of the alt-right, to the ignition of the contemporary culture war, and even to the politics of Donald Trump. Understanding Gamergate allows us to “detect” Gamergate’s rhetoric online; while simultaneously understanding the reactive culture it helped nurture and the manner in which it divided communities of gamers through propaganda.

Ironically, in its crusade to prevent the emergence of political influences in gaming, Gamergate ended up inspiring one of the most powerful political movements of the decade – the alt-right and the reactive online cultures of trolling it encouraged. At the same time, Gamergate’s crusade and its persecution of inclusivity in media ironically resulted in increasing attempts at inclusivity to challenge the discourse of Gamergate and its related ideologies which attempted to repress inclusive discourses.

Furthermore, Gamergate demonstrated the capability of nameless and faceless trolls online, coming together to form collective disinformation networks. This was a portent of the use of coordinated botnets in the political arena – from Cambridge Analytica in the United States, to Bell Pottinger and the Guptabots in South Africa, and to the Tatmadaw and the genocide of the Rohingya. Gamergate was an early instance of a troll farm, which would become a staple of black-market service providers trading in disinformation. Many of these service providers are covered in my (still-to-be-published) research, which I shall later include on the site.

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