I still don't understand how anyone can consider GamerGate pure evil or pure good. It is a god damn hashtag that has been used for both good and bad purposes by all kinds of people, anonymous or not.
That may be true, though I struggle to find the 'good purposes' particularly around the start of the movement. And then there is, of course, the original source of the hashtag – Adam Baldwin's clear cut slutshaming tweet. I think that the movement has existed before, but gained in strength by taking up this hashtag. Which is kind of damning right from the start. I would have welcomed a thorough rebranding, and there definitely were attempts at the outset of this fiasco, but they sadly never took off. Had gamergate taken up e.g. the #gameethics hashtag, I'm convinced we'd be having a very different discussion today.
The SJW thing isn't made up. People on twitter call themselves Social Justice (name) or SJW (name).
Of course they do, as a counter reaction to an aggressive culture that started to call people that. There's really no doubt about the etymology of that label and the shame that comes with it. It was created derogatorily to lump certain people together and give them a bad name. People 'on twitter' calling themselves Social Justice Warriors is the equivalent of black people calling themselves nig***. They find themselves attacked under a certain name, which they then take up. But that isn't particularly wide spread as far as I know. These days, I'm going with Social Justice Bard.
I really don't want to get into the SJW discussion at length here. If gamergate is about 'fighting SJWs', it indeed is a movement with a mainstream, fictional, ready-made, unreflected, cardboard enemy concept for undiscerning people without any insight into what they attack – video game journalism, video game criticism, video game narrative, diversity in games. "SJW" is, today, a shortcut in the discussion to ignore issues and instead
to attack game designers for their game design with a set of ideologemes that isn't really understandable to the game designers (especially visible in the link provided - Tørnquist was attacked this week for daring to release concept art with the Dreamfall Chapters main character having her hair cut short).
The discussion shortcut that is "SJW" needs to stop. The label is absolutely derogatory, doesn't make any sense and needs to be reevaluated. People who are using the term as an expression with meaning are making themselves look bad in the discussion.
I don't know much about the Honey Badgers,
That is a problem that really should be corrected, particularly as they are obviously allowed to drive gamergate ideology and in fact 'stand in' for the movement. I am seeing a widespread reflex in gamergate discussions to defend the Honey Badgers as if they were gamergate. Ultimately, that displays the gamergate cause in a very negative light. Feminists – and a whole lot of other groups – are calling the HBB disruptive, and they "can do that", because the only reason the HBB was there was to BE DISRUPTIVE. That's essentially what they announced in their crowd funding campaign. Some people who were on those panels are describing the HBB women as perfectly civil, but indeed rather off topic and unable to understand or accept factual agreement with some of their positions. There's no doubt that this was a planned provocation with the intent to get thrown out eventually, screaming censorship. This whole thing was literally
announced as activism. I'm really sorry about that, it shouldn't have happened. It's an invalid, unnecessarily politicized way to lead the discussion. It's also the communicative strategy of religious cultists. The distance gamergate culture brings between itself and the HBB is nothing I have a personal stake in – I only absolutely reserve the right to judge gamergate for the HBB if no distancing is taking place (not trying to kiss ass here, but Chris has the same right).
