OMM, Gamergate, Bannon, Trump, and the End of Democracy

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

On the flip side you have the SJWs who are summed up nicely by this chap:

https://youtu.be/oGahbQS-rJU?t=215

And that's our new reality. That's what's driving our consciousness today.

- Doc

[_beastie]

Gamergate had a lot to do with escalation. And it had to do with the worst behaviors we see on all sides on the internet. There's a temptation to reduce it down to nihilistic white guys who live loser lives battling with radical man-hating feminists because that happened.

.

Honor,

I'm going to chip away at this a bit at a time.

I think I should have focused on this part of your response to hopefully correct what I think your misperception of my OP was.

I never suggested that I was reducing the possible deterioration of liberal democracy down to "nihilistic white guys who live loser lives battling with radical man-hating feminists".

Here's what I said in my OP

Now obviously most of Trump’s base was not the OMM gamergate crowd, but those that Milo was martialed to appeal to were. And his margin of victory was so slight it may have been an important component.

I think this statement of mine makes it obvious I wasn't reducing anything - including Trump's victory - down to this one issue.

You, and EA, have concurred that it was, indeed, an issue. I liked EA's line here:

The rise of gamergate and the contemporary synthesis of strains of red-pill misogyny, ethnonationalism, and just general anti-liberal "ironic, but not really" trolling clearly are a significant phenomenon that is a major factor in our current political climate. And it's still difficult to believe something that recent and that dumb could be that influential, but it is.

So given the fact that you agree that this did happen, and it was a factor, I'm left a bit confused about your overall reaction to my post, and I'm left suspecting it was because of your basic misperception that I noted above.

My initial response to you, partly to avoid getting into too much derailing, was brief and just affirmed that I believe there are many factors.

You still interpreted that to mean that somehow I was reducing this all to the gamergate crowd.

I may be off base here, and I say this as someone who respects your insight and input quite a bit. But it seems to me lately that you've become so fixated on one particular idea. For a shortcut I'll call it Haidt's Righteous Mind model. And I agree that is worthy of fixation, and contains many important insights. But I think your fixation, of a sorts, on that has caused you to perhaps look for symptoms of the phenomenon he described a bit too eagerly, and over-diagnosing them.

At no time in writing this post, or thinking about the ideas in it, did I for one moment believe that the gamergate phenonemon was the core issue of anything. Sure, as you say, it's a symptom of something.

[_beastie]

As I said, I think we're ____. I read your OP and wonder how apparent the blame seeking nature of this kind of analysis fails to be apparent to people I know are intelligent...yet I also realize there is a certain consistent sense of rightness that isn't new so it's unsurprising if also unlikely to lead anywhere but that same from the other side. So, yeah. You're looking for a cause that explains your biases and it was successful. I assume you aren't surprised things work that way and are clear eyes about it when it comes to others. So it may be understandable that it isn't necessarily respectful but probably seen as rather aggressive due to methodology. Respect includes a more well rounded approach.

How can you avoid "blame seeking" when analyzing a particularly negative event?

Although I still have hope that our country is resilient enough to recover from this (after all, the sixties were pretty divisive as well), I think that Trump's election is representative of something that has really gone wrong in our political system. And yes, I do think that Trump, if he were competent enough, could be a real threat to liberal democracy, but the more likely threat are the combined background issues that enabled someone like Trump to be elected in the first place.

So yeah, I'm going to look back over what happened, and ask myself what went wrong, what led people to conclude that such an obviously corrupt and politically incompetent and intemperate individual could possibly be a good president. Some of those things have already been discussed quite a bit. The gamergate phenonemon is one that, until a few months ago, I didn't see discussed as much. I'm interested in it for various reasons and wanted to discuss it.

Now is it "blame seeking" to talk about the impact the gamergate phenonemon may have had on the election? Maybe, since I think the election of Trump was a bad thing. Does discussing this one factor mean that I'm blaming only one group, one phenonemon? No, of course not.

Yes, a well rounded discussion would include other factors as well as recognizing traits of human nature common across all groups. But I'm not writing a piece for some editorial page of a newspaper. I'm just talking to a small group of friends on an LDS related message board. I'm just yakking. And I wanted input on one event in particular.

[_beastie]

My general view is most accurately expressed in an economic argument made by Tyler Cowen in his book The Complacent Class where he points out American innovation and social mobility has been negatively impacted by our ever escalating urge to silo into groups most like ourselves in all aspects of life which makes us less innovative, less likely to take risks, and less likely to encounter differing views except as presented in the form of oppositional framing. Democracy is failing because we are failing to live up to the potential of embracing actual pluralism in favor of seeking ultimate security of our current silo of choice.

At a meta-level I think we are scared of change that we can't control, we see the absurdity in the views of those with whom we disagree, and we follow pied pipers who are all too willing to take advantage of this be it the Steve Bannons of the world, the Sam Harris', the Bill Mahers, the mobs on social media marching to who knows whose beat, or whatever.

So when we talk about the rise of the alt-right, we're talking about a symptom not a causal thing. Radical opposition to free speech is the right's equivalent enemy, attacks on American values and traditions the equivalent of the "normies, cucks and basics".

And it's easy, it triggers lots of dopamine, there is so much evidence available one can support anything one cares to believe so long as one searches narrowly enough and man that feels good to be right.

So, yeah. We're ____.

I completely agree.

I think humans have always had the urge to silo ourselves into groups of like-minded people. We evolved to be so inclined. I think the reason this is a particular problem right now is that our media has become balkanized so effectively that we no longer even share basic facts anymore.

And yes, our brains that are wired to be our personal lawyers rather than scientists renders us vulnerable. The expanding media leaves us more exposed to pied pipers who are very willing and eager to use that to their own purposes.

I still don't understand why these basic principles would make it so destructive to talk about one particular event that contribued to Trump's election.

[_beastie]

I've been thinking about how to try and more economically further the discussion.

Gamergate as a topic is a bit bizarre, in my opinion, because it has at its heart subcultural infighting and immature behaviors overlapping consumerism built up around a multi-billion dollar industry with "athletes" now, YouTubers making jobs out of posting videos of them playing games, and mashing up into all things "Nerd" in the culture that is basically mainstreamed in the younger generations. To me, the topic demands touching on Benjamin Barber's Consumed because the intentional infantilization of consumers has consequences for society that come as part of the total package for living as we live. So does the bubbling out of intensely social identity-based politics. Can we distill the concepts in Eric Hofer's The True Believer to reinforce the idea that disenfranchisement is a powerful liability used by the powerful in mass movements of all kinds into a simple point? How disenfranchised are people today? It's a constant topic as exampled by this pre-election report by Bill Moyers - http://billmoyers.com/2015/05/01/many-a ... powerless/

How about the topic of immaturity when it comes to social activism? For example - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... le/414810/

But after some thought I feel few things exemplify the insanity of this as the Shia LeBoeuf v. 4Chan-ers fight over his "He Will Not Divide Us" art exhibit as discussed on RadioLab which they ended up taking down because...yeah. But also, yeah, the internet: https://archive.org/details/01TruthTrolls

That RadioLab is an interesting episode that really talks about the mindsets of the people involved, in my opinion, but it's take down is also just as worthy of thought. Here's the RadioLab site that explains why they took it down: http://www.radiolab.org/story/truth-trolls/

I love RadioLab as well, but haven't had time to listen to that episode.

I did read your first two linked articles, and don't disagree with the points therein. I also detest the overzealous political correctness found on some college campuses.

[Guest]

[_honorentheos]

Gamergate had a lot to do with escalation. And it had to do with the worst behaviors we see on all sides on the internet. There's a temptation to reduce it down to nihilistic white guys who live loser lives battling with radical man-hating feminists because that happened.

.

Honor,

I'm going to chip away at this a bit at a time.

(snip)

At no time in writing this post, or thinking about the ideas in it, did I for one moment believe that the gamergate phenonemon was the core issue of anything. Sure, as you say, it's a symptom of something.

Hi beastie,

My reaction to the OP may best be expanded on by first ensuring my initial reading aligns with what you intended to convey. In my reading the OP asks this question:
What was Gamergate and how did it impact the US political environment?

And it answered the question with this:
People who have spent their lives in a gamer culture with increasingly lowering thresholds for the depraved have come to operate under two rules: Anything goes and nothing matters. This "Anything goes, nothing matters" mentality fuels a post-truth environment that has metastasized beyond the boundaries of the gamer subculture to the voting public broadly. It is used by the folks at Breitbart and the Trump team to push agendas forward that would be otherwise untenable.

Would that be a fair summary?

[_beastie]

My reaction to the OP may best be expanded on by first ensuring my initial reading aligns with what you intended to convey. In my reading the OP asks this question:
What was Gamergate and how did it impact the US political environment?

And it answered the question with this:
People who have spent their lives in a gamer culture with increasingly lowering thresholds for the depraved have come to operate under two rules: Anything goes and nothing matters. This "Anything goes, nothing matters" mentality fuels a post-truth environment that has metastasized beyond the boundaries of the gamer subculture to the voting public broadly. It is used by the folks at Breitbart and the Trump team to push agendas forward that would be otherwise untenable.

Would that be a fair summary?

No, not exactly, although that may my fault. I try to be as brief as I can in an OP, and sometimes that backfires.

I don't believe gamergate was patient zero in terms of our culture leaning towards a post-truth environment. As I've said many times, I blame more of that on the balkanization of our news sources and gerrymandering.

I do think that the gamergate culture did metastisize beyond its original scope and has influenced the behavior of a segment of our larger culture. I'm sure that's seen more on the internet. In ways, I think Doc shows some of those influences in some of his posting. I'm not saying doc was a gamer involved in gamergate. I'm saying that style of communication has spread.

I do believe that Bannon deliberately cultivated that group of people as future republican voters. I think that Bannon has genuine (scary) beliefs, and likely does believe that the end justifies the means. (I've read he's pretty apocalyptic and is trying to save the western world from the unwashed masses.) I think he was trying to tap into an anger and frustration and channel that to his purposes.

"Anything Goes and Nothing Matters" was a catchy phrase that seems to capture some of the debased communication style that we see now, particularly in Trump. It also points towards post-truth, although you seemed to think that meant I doubted the sincerity of the beliefs of some folk. I don't doubt the sincerity of their belief. I suspect, as I said about Bannon, that to some the ends justifies the means. I think Bannon is a smart fellow, and knows that he is a purveyor of (actual) false news.

I wish I had more time and energy to explain myself more clearly. I had more time on my hands when I posted this a few days ago, and was in a cranky mood due to a nasty cold that kept me housebound for a few days. Now I'm back at work, still recuperating and exhausted. Yeah, those are all excuses. But I hope this helps clarify a bit.

[_honorentheos]

Hi beastie,

To allow you to expand, out of curiousity what role do you see non-gamers having played in gamergate?

ETA: By that, I don't mean people like Bannon but going to the ideas behind the thing that became #gamergate.

[_honorentheos]

So I also contribute more than a question, I should add that much of my response comes from viewing the issues around Gamergate as it being one subcultural expression of a much broader culture-conflict that is wide-spread in US society that I think of as being more foundational than anything that could be assigned to the term Gamergate.