From Gamergate to Trump

at wok F Daily, Andrew Marcello. And if you all remember, a couple of weeks ago, we had a conversation with our friend or in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel about Generation Z men and how they are aligning with Donald Trump and MAGA and the reasons for that, feeling left out, the rise in misogyny, what is their role in place in a modernizing society, And what Andrew had brought to my attention is that, like these things did not happen over night or transpire out of thin air, that these

young men have been reached through the gaming industry, and how the right wing has utilized gaming culture and capitalized off of it for their own means and political end, and so in order for us to get to where we are in present day, Andrew brings us through kind of this extraordinary journey into gaming and where it was like in the nineties and the early two thousands and then how we get to where we are right now. So this is part one of a two part conversation

with Andrew Marshello, folks, I am super excited. I don't actually remember the last time that we did this, but I feel like it was a couple of years ago.

But I am super excited to welcome from behind find the production table, video and microphone, my producer here at wok at Daily, Andrew Marcello, to talk about an issue that we started in conversation with doctor Jonathan Metzel about kind of gen Z's male gen Z turned to the right and their like desire to connect with Donald Trump and kind of what I refer to as toxic masculinity and this push to the right by this younger generation.

And Andrew, you brought to my attention after Jonathan and I were discussing this New York Times article that this is not new and that it actually began as something called gamer gate. And I say something called because for those of us that exist outside of the gaming world

in industry, you may not have heard of this. And so I want to give you, Andrew an opportunity one to kind of explain that, explain game or gate, and like just the title what it is, and then we can get into a larger conversation about what's being fueled inside of this community and how it's spilling over into politics. Right.

a lot of mainstream media coverage. And like maybe if you're in something like this, like what we're talking about right now, in the political world, you may know about this and may have heard about it, and may have at least heard like game or Gate, and possibly heard of Miley Yanopolis and definitely heard of Steve Bannon, who will get to But and that's sort of the lynchpin for all this. So let's go back. Let's go way

back to nineteen ninety three, because this matters. In December nineteen ninety three and going into nineteen ninety four, the United States Senate Committees on Governmental Affairs and the Judiciary held congressional hearings with executives for several video game companies, including Nintendo and Sega, who were leading the industry back then.

If you remember the nineties, the Super Nintendo and the Second Genesis were the hottest things at the time, at least in America, and so executives from Nintendo and Sega and some other big video game companies were called to Congress for hearings about video game violence. And these were sparked by Senator Joe Lieberman.

they held congressional hearings on it. This is important and relevant because it sets the stage for people who play video games video gamers to have a cultural identity, a subcultural identity where they see themselves as persecuted and countercultural. They have a hobby that is being attacked by outsiders

who don't fully understand what they're attacking. So this is important. Now, going ahead about ten years, we have a Florida attorney named Jack Thompson who you may not have heard of, but if you're listening and happen to be in the sort of online video game culture worlds twenty years ago. Jack Thompson was someone who got a lot of attention because he was there's no polite way to call someone

an ambulance chaser. He was disbarred in two thousand and eight, and he basically anytime there was a violent crime that he could sort of take advantage of. I'm characterizing this, but the way that it came off was that he would see these violent crimes in the news and attribute them to video game violence, particularly the Grand Theft Auto series. So he was something of a moral crusader against violent

video games. And this again reinforced the idea amongst people who play video games, and especially people who play video games and then go on the Internet to talk about the video games they play. That video gaming is this thing that isn't understood by the mainstream and is also seen as violent and harmful even when it's being misconstrued.

So these two things really helped to set the stage for what would then happen another decade later, when at the same time as stuff is happening with video games on the Internet, there's also a broader change happening on online social media platforms such as Tumblr that are embracing feminism and feminist social justice and feminist critical analysis of pop culture media. So a woman named Anita Sarkisian had a YouTube channel called Feminist Frequency and she released a video series.

broke out. You've heard of it. So, with this stage having been set by the things I mentioned prior, the reaction to Tropes verse as Women in Video Games played into the gamer identity of we are persecuted by outsiders who don't understand us.

to have evolved in that same way. Tell us what would happen just Herakeysian, because this, I mean this to me is like is wild right?

a greater recognition of like women or people. I hate to say it that way, but like the end tail of third wave feminism and whatever it started to evolve in in the late two thousands and early twenty tens was something that really did break through in the mainstream, even in such a casual way of like, we should be showing women in things more because they make up fifty percent of the population. And at the same time as this, the demographics around video gaming were changing. The

SIMS was a really big breakout title. There were breakout titles online that people could play on their web browsers on Facebook without having to have a video game console or a high powered PC. So at the time, video gaming was already approaching or maybe even at this statistic where not only do women make up fifty percent of the outside world population, but hello, gamers, women actually make up close to or literally fifty percent of the population

of people who play video games. And then you get into gamers trying to claim what is and isn't a game for gamers. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. So what happened to Anita is a sort of microcosm of what would happen more broadly, because you get this backlash from capital g gamers who have been conditioned by these social events to see themselves as social outcasts, and like,

let's be real in real life. You know, in the nineties and two thousands, if you were a person who played video games and made that a part of your cultural identity, you weren't necessarily a popular person unless you played Madden or Call of Duty or the sims. You were discussing something that a lot of people didn't understand and quite frankly didn't want to engage with, and so that contributes to the type of person who then goes online to discuss this with people like them online and

get into this bubble and all this. Now we've set the stage ten minutes later for the explosion of gamer gate in twenty thirteen into twenty fourteen.

consider yourself a gamer? And what does that mean for those that identify as gamers Given the equation to the parallels to in sell and right wing and toxic masculinity, that is like, oh, the young white guy in a basement of his parents' apartment that hasn't seen daylight in, you know, in a week, and just plays video games for ten twelve hours a day. That's like a caricature

and a stereotype that has been created. But there is also something too what the right wing and the white supremacist, toxic masculinity and misogynist movement has been able to do to infiltrate this community. So I guess the first question is do you identify as a gamer? And if not, or if so, like, what does that identity actually mean.

talking about. The gamer identity became a lynchpin. And there was an article published by Lee Alexander, who became targeted by mile Unanapolis and became targeted by Breitbart by name in the headline of articles that they published on their hate blog. She wrote an article called Gamers are Dead, which was the focal point of the article, was saying,

the gamer identity is dead. There's no longer basically what you're describing, gaming is no longer an enthusiast hobby that targets a minority of people who approach it one specific way and like one specific type of design. If you like games where you shoot things in space, or you like things where boys with swords fight monsters, you're into

video games. Video gaming, as we discussed, moved away from that already by that point, and so at the same time, the gamer identity, whether pejorative or positive, of you know, someone by themselves in a room, sort of shut out from society or at odds with society in some way, was no longer useful, and gamers people who identified that way hated it. They hated this idea that, like your identity could be dead, which I understand, or even changing,

even evolving. Even if Lee Alexander had said gamer is evolving as opposed to gamers are dead, I don't think there would have been a different response because the response wasn't to the statement gamers are dead. It was a response to the sentiment of, like you said, things are changing the world around you. Is changing, get with the times. So to come back around, I don't self identify as a gamer. Like I said, it kind of makes me sad not to, but I'm a person who plays video games.

I am. I would consider myself a video gaming enthusiast. I actually am someone who engages with video game stuff online and I use it to late to people in my real life. But I don't consider myself a capital G gamer. I wouldn't really use that word in conversation, and sadly, a lot of people I know if you use that word in conversation, if you said, like you're a gamer or I'm a gamer, the people I know

would cringe at that because of all this. And so that's another Now we've sort of set the stage from forward because the well around gamer became so poisoned because of people like this, because of the type of person who evolved into a very short amount of time, which we will get too soon in two or three years, into tiki torches in Charlottesville. So I think we're ready.

text based adventure game. I don't know if you remember, but they used to make games on like the Apple to or the Macintosh where the whole game was text and you would type like go forward, go backwards, pick up the candle. So it was a sort of old school throwback game, but it was about mental health and encountering the world through the lens of dealing with mental health struggles. Already, the Capitol G gamers do not like Depression Quest. They do not like the amount of attention

Depression Quest gets on websites. And then the day in twenty fourteen that Depression Quest released on Steam, which is a PC platform. It's probably the most popular PC platform to play video games, millions upon millions upon millions of people you Steam. The same day that it released, Zoe Quinn's X released a manifesto online that accused them of infidelity and also implied that.

entire thing. So gamers latched onto this, said, Zoe Quinn is getting coverage because of outdated sexist tropes that are being fed into It became a harassment campaign very quickly, and it was called quinnspiracy. And so they would be in places the people who were involved in this because they have nothing better to do with their lives, like actually go play video games. They have nothing better to do with their lives, then go online coordinate harassment against

a person. It's almost like they treated it like a game. But when you harass someone and you're going online and posting about quinspiracy and all this stuff, you're kind of telling on yourselves.

people who criticized video games and video gamer culture. So Anita Sarkisian was a target. Lee Alexander, who gamers are Dead, was a target. Brianna Wu who manages to still be around and get headlines, it was a target. And when I want to be clear to anyone who's listening, when we're talking about harassment, this is bad in and of itself, but we're not just talking about like sending someone posts and being like I'm gonna do violent act to you.

It went beyond online threats, which again are bad enough and need to be taken seriously, but it went into finding members of their family, getting in contact with members of their family, leaking their addresses, sending the police to houses.

you're aware of how the police can get weaponized. I imagine a weaponizing the police against people, against against women and people perceived as women for the act of being a woman, and saying that men shouldn't be doing the things that men do, or just you know, happening to exist as a woman and have some sort of perceived moral failing that you as an individual and individuals coming together as a little hate group have you know, hate for I don't think it's coincidental that like, oh, this

attractive mid twenties woman who cheated on her partner and is in tech. So it's like, as a gamer, I do want to sort of set the stage of you know, it's embarrassing, but I've been in circles like this, Like when there's a woman in your circle, she is like the center of everything because it's like, oh my god, a girl's in our boys club. A girl has chosen to be in our boys club, A girl wants to hang around us. And so it's like the worst thing

that could happen happened. The gamer girl betrayed them, their imaginary gamer GF. Like this could be your girlfriend, This could be your gamer girlfriend a cheating on you and then getting famous.

deep misogyny and hatred for women. How you see it present itself inside of Project twenty twenty five, inside of MAGA, inside of trump Ism, and how it's turning what has been this online world into real, live votes and issues.

you're not socializing with your preferred potential sex partners. But anyway, there was definitely a simultaneous rise of like young men who are sexually frustrated and feel they have no options, which again I can't really speak to. And then also the gamer gait type culture. But anyway, enter Steve Bannon. We've gotten here, so enter Steve Bannon and enter Breitbart. Some people may remember the name Milo Yanopolis because for a little bit he was trying to crossover as a

legitimate media person and no one would have him. He got hired by Steve Bannon to Breitbart as their tech massive air quotes journalist. And you can actually still go on Breitbart, and you can go on breitbart dot com slash tag slash gamergate and see the type of posts that Milenopolis and some other people at Breitbart were making. But it was a lot of even in the headlines,

it encourages harassing women. It celebrates when their targets leave gaming and leave gaming journalism, their career is over, they have given up and decided they're no longer going to fight this, and Breitbart basically goes, hooray, yep, bee, we won. We got another one. And there's one specific headline that I wrote down. It was about quote, why so many

angry women have blue hair? So if you ever hear the whole blue haired liberal or like liberals have blue hair and pronouns, that literally comes from Breitbart and Gamergate twenty fifteen, and Steve Bannon had a quote in a book by Joshua Green called Devil's Bargain where he was asked about Milo and asked about Gamergate, and this is Steve Banner quote quote, I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away. And this is now ten years ago.

You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever, in sell whatever, that's my editorial. Go back to the quote, they come in through Gamergate or whatever, and then get turned onto politics and Trump, and you're

there on Breitbart. If you're on Reddit, say, if you're on the Kotaku in Action subreddit, which is where these people met up, you would see headlines for Breitbart, and then you click through the headlines to Breitbart, and then on the side you see articles about Trump and articles

about whatever other heinous stuff that Breitbart is promoting. And then on the flip side, if you're a conservative person who's in the bright bart world, if you're in the burgeoning alt right, because that's what that became, then you're gonna see articles that say, why do so many angry women have blue hair? And you, as an alt writer or whatever they were called before the term alt right became a thing. You're gonna then get into gamer gate.

So Steve Bannon was feeding all these different types of people, people who are already hardwired to be hardcore conservatives, capital g gamers who dislike women and in cells and whatever other groups all through the same funnel. That funnel all takes these all these people, swirls them through and leads them to Donald Trump, And in August twenty sixteen, Steve Bannon was hired as the chief executive of Trump's presidential campaign.

has been no disruption. There has been no alternative, and if there has, then that will be a conversation for another day. But I think that I'm so grateful for you bringing this to my attention, because again, if you don't exist in these worlds, you're like, how does this shit happen? Like how did this spill over into politics? And you literally walked us through this handling Gretel breadcrumb place to kind of get to where we are right now.

and they would say literally who. They would make up these lies that were not remotely based in reality and just insist on them, and insist on them, and insist on them. They would use sardonic memes to further their agenda and just act like, well, the memes says it, so it must be true. All of these techniques very quickly became weapons of the Trump campaign that propelled him to popularity amongst the same type of people who were already drawn in by these propagandist techniques.

We will come back with part two because there is just so much here and in order to disrupt something, to Andrew's point, you actually need to understand it, and that is the point of this conversation. So Andrew, appreciate you, thank.