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This is important content cuz it touches on one of the more overlooked aspects of the recent altright encroachment: a lot of it is about doing it “for the lulz”. Making traditionally marginalized groups angry or reactive is a form of entertainment for some, and the fact that happens to work towards reclaiming white male supremacy for them is more of a secondary bonus. That’s what makes it so difficult to logically or “correctly” combat it; the most forward face isn’t an ideology or philosophy, so to speak, but rather a form of indulgence. It’s not a grand mission, it’s a game they play.
She leaves out the part where GG people were basically trained and radicalised by people who used trolling and harassment as their profession. Regardless of what people said about it being a faceless, nameless movement, there was a small handful of leaders at that time. A bunch of people jumped ship at that point because, well, that’s terrifying. This all happened both gradually and quickly, because that’s the way the Internet works.
That’s when politics were introduced, via Milo Yiannopoulos. He helped further organise what was basically a mob of people who leveled targeted harassment on people who criticised video games in a certain way or who allegedly unfairly benefited from bad journalism in the industry press, and turned them into a mob of people who leveled targeted harassment on targets who share the above people’s ideology and to seek institutional change to strip power and influence from people who hold that ideology. The alt-right.
So, then you have a mob of trolls who have been trained to troll more effectively. They are guided by the bigger better old-school trolls who may or may not call themselves alt-right. They in turn are wrangled by what is basically the Alt-Right leadership.
