Is it truly possible to know if this was a deliberate strategy of Gamergate? I’ve heard this statement before and when I try to politely challenge it...the results aren’t as kind in return.

Hoping that isn’t the case here, because I am perhaps inappropriately curious if an answer exists.

Yes, it's beyond possible. It's a certainty. Contemporaneous logs[0] revealed the deliberate efforts of mysoginistic trolls to pretend their motivations were more palatable.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-ho...

Trolls always try to wrap their attacks in semi-agreeable contexts so it doesn't get immediately dismissed and can enter mainstream channels. That's the whole idea. Similar to how activists try to wrap everyone who disagrees with them as mere sexists/racists/etc to give their arguments weight and credibility in those same channels - usually using the troll's purposefully provocative behaviour as their evidence and justification.

It's an increasingly popular phenomenon that we need to be conscious of as a culture and not give credence to the trolls while also not using examples from the fringe to pigeonhole the whole.

Interesting. Proceeding to read your link this moment

I admit-despite being someone who plays a lot of video games quite frequently I didn't wade into these waters because from the sidelines it looked like a lot of people painting things with very wide brushes and a lot of static noise that made trying to sift through any of it more annoying than it was worth.

Do you realize you are employing typical defence of any conspiracy theory when facing the fact that an alleged conspiracy doesn't look consistent to be real? And I mean absolutely literally. That exact statement I heard from people who believe in ZOG.

You've in fact heard lots of reasonable sentences from conspiracy theorists, if you replace the nouns. I think it's less reasonable to believe in ZOG than to have the opinion that Gamergate appeared to be more about childish mockery and hatred than the more weighty concept of journalistic integrity. By the logic you're implying, we can't accept that anything is any more or less than exactly what it's most well-spoken proponents try to present it as.

A conspiracy theorist can say reasonable things, however this exact thing is a circular argument: conspiracy exists but our proof doesn't look convincing exactly because it is conspiracy.

There are no generalizations in my comment which you implied.

We know gamergate was a conspiracy because someone found the IRC channel where the conspirators were conspiring.

The proof of which existed only in form of a picture posted by 'someone' who (mildly speaking) was deeply involved in the controversy.

It's not just gamergate that uses that ambiguity -- think of how the "okay" symbol ("o" formed with thumb and first finger, remaining three extended upward) has been repurposed as a white power gesture; all of the group photos of proud boys and other white supremacist groups now have them all holding up that distinctive "okay" hand gesture, because it's a call out to their values and to the people that share them.

But when the 4channers were first starting to use it this way, it could be dismissed as "what, it's just an okay symbol"...

The ambiguity ("it's just a joke, it's just this, it's just that") is part of their discourse.

Yes, that's what I was alluding to.

The proud boys are a strange white power group when they have prominent black members.

I'm glad you didn't dispute that they're a white power group; for interested readers who waded this far into the comments, here are some useful links:

* https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/proud-boys * https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...

Obviously I was disputing it.

You do know that Gavin McInnes wife is an Indian right and he started the proud boys as a joke? Do do know that right?

I wouldn't believe everything you read from those sources. The SPLC just had to apologise and pay 3.3 million to Maajid Nawas because they called him Islamophobic and he is a Muslim. Maajid Nawas was suing them for deformation in the UK.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2018/06/18/splc-statement-reg...

If you'd like to post anything refuting the fact that the Proud Boys are a white supremacist group, please do so.

None of these statements: 1) they have non-white members so they can't be, 2) the founder has a non-white wife, 3) the SPL Center was successfully sued for unrelated reasons by someone unrelated to the Proud Boys, or 3) "it started as a joke" refute the claim.

No sorry this is backwards. I don't have to prove anything. I wasn't making a claim they were (and it is quite a serious claim).

As far as I am concerned there is no evidence other than spurious claims from the SPLC and the ADL.

I gave you evidence that the SPLC throws the racism (Islamophobia is a very similar accusation) around too liberally and because Maajid Nawas is in the UK that has tighter defamation laws he was able sue them for a substantial amount of money. If the SPLC doesn't do basic research about Maajid Nawas, how can you trust they have done their research about the Proud Boys? The answer is you can't.

And sorry those statements do somewhat refute the claim. White-supremacists wouldn't have non-white people in their movement. White-supremacists wouldn't have children with non-whites (they call those people race-traitors). The movement was started as a joke (Gavin McInnes was on Joe Rogan Podcast 920 & 710 I believe it was one of these appearances where he specifically coined the term, but it could be an earlier appearance on his show).

So I can back up everything I've said. All I've seen presented so far from you is smear pieces by organisations that even Noam Chomsky has criticised in the past.