If I told you 20 minutes of a puppet talking Gamergate makes for riveting watching, you might give me the side-eye. But it's good, pinky swear! Dan Olson, a writer and academic, uses critical tools to analyze the movement and how it operates. A couple very sharp insights that applicable to many situations:
* "The use of terror tactics, such as death threats, doxxing, hacking, and the tacit threat of mobbing, while engaged in by the minority, creates an environment of fear that all members enjoy the privilege of, whether they engage in them or not."
* "Gamergate at every turn claims decentralization... each individual being able to dispute their own involvement or cite the timidity of their contribution. This allows for perpetual deflection of real harms, because it is difficult to summarize the impact of hundreds of messages implying you are a liar, or obnoxiously asking for proof of well-proven fact."
We haven't seen the end of these techniques, I'm afraid. But still, worth a watch. --Ryan Cooper
The Week
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