Faculty Sponsor
Peter Acsay
Final Abstract for URS Program
This text concerns the formation of beliefs that would shape the 2014 harassment campaign of GamerGate. Specifically, how GamerGate was perpetuated by stereotypes and ideas in Geekdom that spanned from the 60’s Disco Demolition to the Internet’s Wild West that ended in 2013. These include ideas like simulated ethnicity, geek melodrama, nerd determinism, and nerd fatalism. It also discusses the views and beliefs on anonymity, critique, and social capitals of the Wild West Internet and how the changing views of these led to resentment that started the movement. Drawing from historical research, I studied the history of moral panics like the Disco Demolition, Satanic Panic, and ElevatorGate and their influence on GamerGate. It will also examine online sources that gave their personal retrospectives of the events or culture around that time, which I verified by looking through news articles, forums, and reactionary videos of the time. I also looked through the BurgerandFries chat log and read feminist and journalism scholarly articles related to the subject.
The results of this paper and my historiography cover the many facets that influenced Gamergaters to harass those they viewed as being in line with progressivism. It also provides an explanation of terms like woke and the exact relationship between Gamergaters and the BurgerandFries chat log. All to pave scholarly avenues of research to understand GamerGate and other online harassment campaigns. Harassment campaigns that have been shown to have an effect on our physical world and politics.
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Document Type
Article
Included in
Anthropology Commons, Cultural History Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Sociology Commons, Political History Commons, Social Justice Commons