This shit made national news. It got addressed on Law & Order. It drove people out of their homes. It is not hyperbolic to say that it was a factor in turning fascism from something we ALL knew was evil into a "legitimate" political stance according to the American Overton window.
The link in the reblog above leads to a great video breaking down all of what was involved, but the tl;dr is: this was a far-right hate movement composed entirely of people who were radicalized in fan space. These were men who, going in, mostly had the popular level of a lot of biases, but were radicalized into a full-on fascist fervor by the fear that their leisure space, their hobbies, would be stolen or changed.
In my honest opinion, Gamergate should be remembered as a case study in how hobby drama can easily become a lot bigger than hobby drama if enough of the motivation behind it is based in real-world bigotry.
Part of the downfall of Gamergate was outsiders calling out the venue that started it for the petty bullshit it was, but that's something of a double-edged sword - now we barely remember that the impact was not petty bullshit at all. Those random-ass Just Some Dudes who got radicalized into fascism? Most of them are still fash; their regrets about their GG involvement mostly boil down to "I can't believe I wasted so much energy on how this hurts GAMING". The rise of Breitbart? Gave us the political hellscape we're currently still trapped in. Some of the people who they attacked only became stronger due to the backlash, but others - the less visible, smaller targets, largely POC - actually had their livelihoods ruined, and even the better protected targets who ended up better off on paper went through a LOT of shit that no person should ever have to go through.
So when I see people in fan space using queerphobic, racist, ableist rhetoric to defend their stake in fan wars, when I notice people hearing "hey maybe don't harass random queer strangers online over fandom bullshit, especially not at the behest of OTHER strangers whose motivations you do not know" as "YIPPEE I LOVE SEXUAL ABUSE" and slinging accusations straight up using the EXACT language of right-wingers proposing queerphobic legislation, or defending """""ironic""""" racist hate symbols in fanart in the name of "freedom of expression" EXACTLY like any alt-righter, no, that's not just "petty fan drama" anymore.
Just because you're gay, or trans, or disabled, or you self-identify as "a progressive" or "a leftist" does not make you immune to hate radicalization.
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