GamerGate: the Unowned Word with Multiple Meanings

01/18/15

So, I've done a lot of reading into GamerGate, and I'm tired of it. I would call it a waste of time, but it helped me develop a lot of personal philosophy: the purpose of journalism, what constitutes good journalism, what defines a group, and the nature of making excuses. And I'll get to that someday, but for now, I want to talk about the word.

I understand the frustration from people in GamerGate whom actually want to focus on journalism in video games, but the problem is you are using a made-up word which no one owns to label your actions. Because no one owns it, anyone is allowed to use it to label any given action, and they aren't wrong. So the harassers using the term make it about harassment. Unfortunately, they're the most visible, and debatably they started this whole "movement", so that's what it looks like to everyone on the outside looking in.

Well, that, and now the general harassment prevalent in gaming (and the Internet, because gaming has a large presence on the Internet) since who knows when has a name: GamerGate. So named because after seeing most of the hate coming their way with the tag "GamerGate", people being harassed call it that, regardless of whether or not it comes with the tag now. And again, they're not wrong, because the word isn't owned by anyone. It can mean whatever people infer it to mean. There is no official representative on the word that can say what is and is not approved as GamerGate.

And I really don't see how people who want it to be about games journalism think they can derail the harassment conversation by saying, "It isn't about harassment, it's about ethics in games journalism." It's not about ethics in games journalism to the people being harassed. All that looks like is an attempt to distract away from the issue they are focusing on. Which is ironic, as this is one of many things that the "ethics in games journalism" accused those harassed of doing.

Also, I just want to say that it's great that the general Internet and gaming hate has a short, succient name now. Names are powerful, it really helps anthropomorphize the problem, and makes it much easier to clarify and distill a culture that gets muddied by being embedded in hazy human nature. Whereas before pinning this down seemed difficult by the victims of this harassment, now it's much simpler.

Maybe next time we don't have to let these people name themselves and hide behind hopefully well-meaning people.