#Gamergate, the most popular online trend among gamers and haters alike…

 What is #gamergate?

Quoting David Weinberger on his news article on “Why #Gamergate won’t die,” “Explaining it makes Watergate look like a piece of cake. (‘You see, kids, burglars broke into Democratic Party offices, and the Republican president tried to cover it up.’ Easy!)”

It really began to heat up in August 2014, though it actually started pre-2012 (Yeah, it’s been going on a while), and has finally died down just recently. This “flamewar” between the sexes has gone on long enough to start begging for press attentions and has gotten its due respect.

Now to start digging in the real dirt: “flamewar?” Yes, it’s a flame war – flat-up internet battles – between male and female gamers. The subject? Media coverage on games.

The most notable aspect of this is the “ongoing” harassment of game developers Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, as well as female gamers in general. These threats have gone so far as to a school shooting and death threats at the two aforementioned game developers.

 What started it?

Nearly every piece of juicy gossip on the web has started with… ‘The ex.’

According to CNN’s Weinberger’s article (above), Quinn was one of the creators of a new game, “Depression Quest,” a multimillion indie game released in 2013. Quinn’s ex caught wind of the good press from Kotaku and reportedly started to “slut-shame her” by saying that Quinn slept with the reporter to further her career.

These accusations have lead to a whole stream of accusations and threats against not just Quinn herself, but also to Sarkeesian and other women igniting a war pitting the sexes against one another.

What exactly is misogyny?

Misogyny is mentioned in every news story cover and even in some of the anti-#gamergate comments on the web, but not every person reading this knows what this means. The google definition of misogyny is the “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.” In other words, it is sexism directed at women. And where all that hating going? You guessed it. Cover articles, TV news stories, YouTube, and multiple other parts of the news..

 So what side are you taking?

It’s pretty hard for any journalist not to take a side, and on a personal basis, I don’t want to take a side. However, for the purpose of this overview, the resolved stands as such: female gamers shouldn’t be the center of gamer hating.

Demographics prove that nearly half of the gaming population is female. (Check out the photo if you don’t believe it.) Nearly 50% of the gaming population in the U.S. is female, and according to Bob Jones High School teacher Brandy Panagos, the gamer population in Japan has more female than male gamers.

So you’re saying what?

Weinberger wasn’t kidding around when he said that it wasn’t easy to explain. #Gamergate is a whole mess of sexism, gaming, feminism, flame wars, and journalism. (And that’s just bulleting the main points.)

Yes, #Gamergate is all over the web and is still going, but the real heat of the flame wars has died down. So reader, beware, for gamers are in the air… (Or is it the net?)

Interesting in learning more?  Visit A/N Visit Quinn’s site on beesgo at http://www.beesgo.biz/ or Feminist Frequency, a site dedicated to anti-feminism http://www.feministfrequency.com/.