i was suxked up into it briefly in its heyday when i was 14-15. I think people today might underestimate how persuasive it was to tween/teen boys (I didn’t know ) in that phase after they’ve divested themselves from their parent’s opinions but before they’ve had the chance to independently develop their own (inasmuch as one can opinions can be “independent” in society).

EVERYBODY knew games journalism as an industry was a joke— 10/10 IGN, 7/10 too much water, Skyrim with Guns, and so forth — so a “movement” claiming to be concerned about ethics in games journalism was inviting as a 14 year old dweeb with nothing better to care about.

And once you’ve swallowed the hook with a few alt-lite zingers from “Based Milo” Yianopaulos and Christina Sommers it’s easy to accept the rest of the reactionary rhetoric that builds on it—if games journalism was being ruined by liberal pansy feminists, then all the other stuff they were being blamed for must be their fault, right? I watched PragerU videos of my own volition () because YouTube recommended them and they built on the GamerGate stuff by offering easy answers that demanded nothing from me.

Honestly its a miracle I wasn’t completely lost to online alt-right brainrot. I don’t even know why I stopped believing in it, I just… did? Then I spent like a year being a generic lib before finding r/cth and beginning my slow ascent to smug communist superiority

All this to say, don’t be too hard on yourself for getting sucked into something. And as someone once said, if you don’t look back at yourself and cringe, you haven’t grown