this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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It started with the whole Dorito pope thing and American capitalism really starting to choke creativity out of games and the few bits of honesty from gaming journalism. People who weren't active /v/irgins don't even know about that part. As expected, the Wikipedia article doesn't mention that either. Then American feminism. Then the weird relationship thing. Then Russian trolls on both sides fanning the flames. People would post screenshots of horrible and hateful posts on 4chan (what good luck they often happened to see them within minutes of them being posted...). Then the American white supermacists came to pick up and nurture all the young boys who were being demonized. Then American left being surprised that Trump gets elected so they hate on white men a bit more to fix that. Russian propaganda fans the flames a bit more.
It's funny how back then 13 year old SJW were screaming about there not being women, black people, trans people or gays in games. People on GG would make massive lists of games since the 80's that featured minorities - positively. Now you have 13 year old boys screaming that back when games were good, there were no women, black people, trans people or gays in them. The grown up SJWs could just give them the same lists.
One of the more prominent voices of anti-GG people is currently one of the most blocked people on Bluesky because she is seen as a turncoat. The feminist talker seems to have fallen from grace too after delivering underwhelming Kickstarter promises, despite banking quite a bit on the GG kerfuffle.
It was weird to be there and see it all happen first hand and then watch how the public narrative twisted and turned to support various political agendas. A great example of a piece of online history that will never ever be told with any degree of accuracy because so many people have a vested interest in telling their version of the story. So you can pretty much disregard everything I wrote. But it is a great cautionary tale about how easy it is to make people hate whole groups of other people.
As firmly as I am on the left, watching GG happen in real time and seeing plainly the manipulation and lying the Literally Whos orchestrated definitely made me want to distance myself from both sides. None of that is in the Wikipedia article.
Yeah, GG was completely hijacked by misogyny and alt-right politics and absolutely fuck Milo and the other proto-Trumpist cunts that paved the way for that but the common narrative that it began as just evil gamers attacking innocent women for daring to exist is a blatant lie. Funny how the article mentions the sockpuppets but seems very certain that everyone doing that were definitely on the GG side, not the antis harassing themselves to have more ammo. People were caught doing this multiple times but it's all been conveniently buried. There was a massive culture of fear built around being even slightly critical of anyone on the anti side so nobody without a significant established online presence dared to speak up. The article doesn't mention the amount of death treats and harassment people who did speak got from the antis either. Because again, nobody dared to even acknowledge it, lest they be considered to be on the wrong side. The natural consequence of that was that it was a whole lot of anonymous people flinging shit at each other, and the only safe option was to either be quiet, or be a vocal victim of GG. Like you say, many young men who were involved in it then found themselves warmly welcomed by actual neo-nazi shitheads that had been lurking on 4chan for many many years and of course, manipulating GG for their own ends as well.
Nobody is immune to propaganda.
edit: and these days I don't trust anyone whose online presence revolves around any kind of controversy. It's all just cash flow.
For me GG was a great example of why anonymous online environment is not for political discussion, and I generally speaking avoid it. Especially for controversial topics.