I don't disagree that it would have happened eventually - I guess my issue is how it did start. And from someone who was paying a bit closer attention to it than your every day person might have, it certainly did seem to me that it stemmed from the Zoe Quinn incident and was just exacerbated by the following events as you said. Unfortunately, some it seems like to me that some people took advantage of that situation.
I don't let a minority of people dictate things I do or don't participate in. That's the same reason I won't give up. I dont cave to bullies who intentionally misrepresent how the internet is to make the situation any worse. People chose my consumer revolt to be a platform for anti misogyny and anti harassment when my concern always was a simple basic 'Is this recommendation legitimate or is it being recommended because of a conflict of interest.'
Someone else noted the same about the hashtag change, and he hasn't responded yet, so my response to that is the same as my mind hasn't been changed and I will quote that reply "I actually do remember those other hashtags, so I see what you mean. But this was also during a time where I didn't particularely agree with the #GamerGate/ZoeGate/BurgersAndFries/etc narrative as it seemed to be very much concentrated on just Zoe Quinn,
Quinn's had a hate following ever since the wizardchan incident, and while it may sound callous I honestly don't give a shit.
when the journalist himself was just as much at fault.
That's why kotaku had to release a statement on the incident (which failed to alleviate my concerns) and totilo even had an interview with tb for nearly 2 hours discussing the issues. You should also go back to august and see how many times quinn tweeted about gamergate vs how many times grayson did.
She was also the one responsible for the mass censorship. It was due to her communications with el_chupacupcake that resulted in a thread of 50k comments getting nuked from orbit, she was also the one who issued a dmca to mundanematt's video discussing the controversy. Was the attention on her the goal, or was the attention given to someone doing everything in their power to smear the consumer revolt? What came first the chicken or the egg?
On the same note, all those hashtags really seemed to have happened at the same time, just finally settling on #GamerGate. In this case, it doesn't surprise me that it is still associated with those. Thus the proposition."
Not really.
Then on August 27th at 6:22 PM Pacific, movie star Adam Baldwin tweeted a tag for the first time in association with the events associated with Zoe Quinn. In the tweet, Adam Baldwin uses #GamerGate for the first time. He links to the retelling of what was previously called “The Quinnspiracy” again after Quinn’s twitter handle.
The timeline present does not permit Adam Baldwin to have been coerced, recruited, or brainwashed. It must thus be decided that the creation of the tag was not because of 4chan misogyny. It was created because a man tweeted a woman in support, a woman tweeted a man to GET support, and the man tweeted a woman in support.
Around August 28th, 12 days after the initial post, a slew of websites began to post concurrent stories declaring “gamers” as an identity dead, over, unnecessary starting with the piece by Leigh Alexander:
“‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.” by Leigh Alexander (8/28, approx 10:28 AM): “The End of Gamers” by Dan Golding (8/28, no time, this possibly was posted before Alexander’s piece) “Gaming is Leaving ‘Gamers’ Behind’” by Joseph Bernstein (8/28, 3:29 PM) “The death of the ‘gamers’ and the women who ‘killed’ them” by Casey Johnson (8/28, 7:00 PM) “A Guide to Ending ‘Gamers’” by Devin Wilson (8/28, 7:57 PM) “We Might Be Witnessing The ‘Death of An Identity’” by Luke Plunkett (8/28, 8:00 PM) “This Guy’s Embarassing Relationship Drama Is Killing the ‘Gamer Identity’” by Mike Peark (8/29, no time) “Why does the term ‘gamer’ feel important? There are gamers at the gate, but they may already be dead” by Johnathan Holmes (8/31, 7:30 PM) The Monday Papers by Graham Smith (9/1, 7:00 PM) — This piece covers some of the above works by Alexander, Golding (All of these times are from those listed on the articles.)
This caused the #GamerGate tag to kick into overdrive according to examination of the #GamerGate tag from topsy.com
August 26: 0 tweets (pre-creation)
August 27: 4,292 tweets (creation)
August 28: 8,124 tweets (first articles start and continue into the day)
August 29: 15,879 tweets (first day after the articles)
August 30: 43,328 tweets
August 31: 40,901 tweets
Compare that to #quinnspiracy which never breaks over 400 tweets at the same time.
There's no reason to believe changing the hashtag will change anything, and I don't cave to bullies. So here we are.