Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Recording from the home bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I am very excited to bring to you the first
Speaker 1: part of a two part conversation with my producer extraordinaire
Speaker 1: at wok F Daily, Andrew Marcello. And if you all remember,
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, we had a conversation with
Speaker 1: our friend or in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel about
Speaker 1: Generation Z men and how they are aligning with Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and MAGA and the reasons for that, feeling left out,
Speaker 1: the rise in misogyny, what is their role in place
Speaker 1: in a modernizing society, And what Andrew had brought to
Speaker 1: my attention is that, like these things did not happen
Speaker 1: over night or transpire out of thin air, that these
Speaker 1: young men have been reached through the gaming industry, and
Speaker 1: how the right wing has utilized gaming culture and capitalized
Speaker 1: off of it for their own means and political end,
Speaker 1: and so in order for us to get to where
Speaker 1: we are in present day, Andrew brings us through kind
Speaker 1: of this extraordinary journey into gaming and where it was
Speaker 1: like in the nineties and the early two thousands and
Speaker 1: then how we get to where we are right now.
Speaker 1: So this is part one of a two part conversation
Speaker 1: with Andrew Marshello, folks, I am super excited. I don't
Speaker 1: actually remember the last time that we did this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like it was a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: But I am super excited to welcome from behind find
Speaker 1: the production table, video and microphone, my producer here at
Speaker 1: wok at Daily, Andrew Marcello, to talk about an issue
Speaker 1: that we started in conversation with doctor Jonathan Metzel about
Speaker 1: kind of gen Z's male gen Z turned to the
Speaker 1: right and their like desire to connect with Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and kind of what I refer to as toxic masculinity
Speaker 1: and this push to the right by this younger generation.
Speaker 1: And Andrew, you brought to my attention after Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I were discussing this New York Times article that this
Speaker 1: is not new and that it actually began as something
Speaker 1: called gamer gate. And I say something called because for
Speaker 1: those of us that exist outside of the gaming world
Speaker 1: in industry, you may not have heard of this. And
Speaker 1: so I want to give you, Andrew an opportunity one
Speaker 1: to kind of explain that, explain game or gate, and
Speaker 1: like just the title what it is, and then we
Speaker 1: can get into a larger conversation about what's being fueled
Speaker 1: inside of this community and how it's spilling over into politics. Right.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Well, first of all, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: bringing me back on This is, like you said, a
Speaker 2: bit of a different context than I've been on to
Speaker 2: discuss in the past, But I appreciate you inviting me
Speaker 2: on to talk about this because also, as you said,
Speaker 2: this wasn't something that I don't think this is something
Speaker 2: that a lot of people outside of the gaming and
Speaker 2: tech worlds really know about. It's not something that received
Speaker 2: a lot of mainstream media coverage. And like maybe if
Speaker 2: you're in something like this, like what we're talking about
Speaker 2: right now, in the political world, you may know about
Speaker 2: this and may have heard about it, and may have
Speaker 2: at least heard like game or Gate, and possibly heard
Speaker 2: of Miley Yanopolis and definitely heard of Steve Bannon, who
Speaker 2: will get to But and that's sort of the lynchpin
Speaker 2: for all this. So let's go back. Let's go way
Speaker 2: back to nineteen ninety three, because this matters. In December
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three and going into nineteen ninety four, the
Speaker 2: United States Senate Committees on Governmental Affairs and the Judiciary
Speaker 2: held congressional hearings with executives for several video game companies,
Speaker 2: including Nintendo and Sega, who were leading the industry back then.
Speaker 2: If you remember the nineties, the Super Nintendo and the
Speaker 2: Second Genesis were the hottest things at the time, at
Speaker 2: least in America, and so executives from Nintendo and Sega
Speaker 2: and some other big video game companies were called to
Speaker 2: Congress for hearings about video game violence. And these were
Speaker 2: sparked by Senator Joe Lieberman.
Speaker 1: You yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah wow. The late Joe
Speaker 1: Liuba okay.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, a staffer for Joe Lieberman, had a family
Speaker 2: member who had gotten Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, which
Speaker 2: is a game about teenage girls being haunted by like
Speaker 2: vampiric monsters. It's very b movie, but just seeing like
Speaker 2: full motion video of like I don't even want to say,
Speaker 2: scantily clad, like girls in like pajamas, like dancing around
Speaker 2: for the camera. Somehow this sparked his moral outrage, and
Speaker 2: especially Moral Kombat sparked this moral outrage so much that
Speaker 2: they held congressional hearings on it. This is important and
Speaker 2: relevant because it sets the stage for people who play
Speaker 2: video games video gamers to have a cultural identity, a
Speaker 2: subcultural identity where they see themselves as persecuted and countercultural.
Speaker 2: They have a hobby that is being attacked by outsiders
Speaker 2: who don't fully understand what they're attacking. So this is important. Now,
Speaker 2: going ahead about ten years, we have a Florida attorney
Speaker 2: named Jack Thompson who you may not have heard of,
Speaker 2: but if you're listening and happen to be in the
Speaker 2: sort of online video game culture worlds twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: Jack Thompson was someone who got a lot of attention
Speaker 2: because he was there's no polite way to call someone
Speaker 2: an ambulance chaser. He was disbarred in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: and he basically anytime there was a violent crime that
Speaker 2: he could sort of take advantage of. I'm characterizing this,
Speaker 2: but the way that it came off was that he
Speaker 2: would see these violent crimes in the news and attribute
Speaker 2: them to video game violence, particularly the Grand Theft Auto series.
Speaker 2: So he was something of a moral crusader against violent
Speaker 2: video games. And this again reinforced the idea amongst people
Speaker 2: who play video games, and especially people who play video
Speaker 2: games and then go on the Internet to talk about
Speaker 2: the video games they play. That video gaming is this
Speaker 2: thing that isn't understood by the mainstream and is also
Speaker 2: seen as violent and harmful even when it's being misconstrued.
Speaker 2: So these two things really helped to set the stage
Speaker 2: for what would then happen another decade later, when at
Speaker 2: the same time as stuff is happening with video games
Speaker 2: on the Internet, there's also a broader change happening on
Speaker 2: online social media platforms such as Tumblr that are embracing
Speaker 2: feminism and feminist social justice and feminist critical analysis of
Speaker 2: pop culture media. So a woman named Anita Sarkisian had
Speaker 2: a YouTube channel called Feminist Frequency and she released a
Speaker 2: video series.
Speaker 1: You've heard of this, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was called Tropes Versus Women in Video Games
Speaker 2: and it basically took off. There are a few popular
Speaker 2: videos in there. There was a two part series on
Speaker 2: Damsels in Distress that really broke through, but the Tropes
Speaker 2: Versus Women in Video Game series was something that really
Speaker 2: broke out. You've heard of it. So, with this stage
Speaker 2: having been set by the things I mentioned prior, the
Speaker 2: reaction to Tropes verse as Women in Video Games played
Speaker 2: into the gamer identity of we are persecuted by outsiders
Speaker 2: who don't understand us.
Speaker 1: Her point was like, here is this culture that when
Speaker 1: you look at the videos that are including women in them,
Speaker 1: they're playing out these stereotypes, and they're playing out these
Speaker 1: caricatures that can be harmful and be dangerous. And she
Speaker 1: wanted to lift up the fact that while society on
Speaker 1: the outside in four to D may be moving forward,
Speaker 1: that what is happening in the gaming industry doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have evolved in that same way. Tell us what
Speaker 1: would happen just Herakeysian, because this, I mean this to
Speaker 1: me is like is wild right?
Speaker 2: We're actually really just setting the stage now. And like
Speaker 2: you said, the world was starting to move on even
Speaker 2: outside the online space, even outside Tumblr, like there was
Speaker 2: a greater recognition of like women or people. I hate
Speaker 2: to say it that way, but like the end tail
Speaker 2: of third wave feminism and whatever it started to evolve
Speaker 2: in in the late two thousands and early twenty tens
Speaker 2: was something that really did break through in the mainstream,
Speaker 2: even in such a casual way of like, we should
Speaker 2: be showing women in things more because they make up
Speaker 2: fifty percent of the population. And at the same time
Speaker 2: as this, the demographics around video gaming were changing. The
Speaker 2: SIMS was a really big breakout title. There were breakout
Speaker 2: titles online that people could play on their web browsers
Speaker 2: on Facebook without having to have a video game console
Speaker 2: or a high powered PC. So at the time, video
Speaker 2: gaming was already approaching or maybe even at this statistic
Speaker 2: where not only do women make up fifty percent of
Speaker 2: the outside world population, but hello, gamers, women actually make
Speaker 2: up close to or literally fifty percent of the population
Speaker 2: of people who play video games. And then you get
Speaker 2: into gamers trying to claim what is and isn't a
Speaker 2: game for gamers. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. So
Speaker 2: what happened to Anita is a sort of microcosm of
Speaker 2: what would happen more broadly, because you get this backlash
Speaker 2: from capital g gamers who have been conditioned by these
Speaker 2: social events to see themselves as social outcasts, and like,
Speaker 2: let's be real in real life. You know, in the
Speaker 2: nineties and two thousands, if you were a person who
Speaker 2: played video games and made that a part of your
Speaker 2: cultural identity, you weren't necessarily a popular person unless you
Speaker 2: played Madden or Call of Duty or the sims. You
Speaker 2: were discussing something that a lot of people didn't understand
Speaker 2: and quite frankly didn't want to engage with, and so
Speaker 2: that contributes to the type of person who then goes
Speaker 2: online to discuss this with people like them online and
Speaker 2: get into this bubble and all this. Now we've set
Speaker 2: the stage ten minutes later for the explosion of gamer
Speaker 2: gate in twenty thirteen into twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: So let me say this because as a complete and
Speaker 1: total outsider, I do think that to some extent, there
Speaker 1: is a caricature of gamers that has been created that
Speaker 1: raw I can totally picture it, and I think that
Speaker 1: in some ways it has been like the gamer identity.
Speaker 1: And I want you to talk about the gamer identity
Speaker 1: because a question that I had was like, do you
Speaker 1: consider yourself a gamer? And what does that mean for
Speaker 1: those that identify as gamers Given the equation to the
Speaker 1: parallels to in sell and right wing and toxic masculinity,
Speaker 1: that is like, oh, the young white guy in a
Speaker 1: basement of his parents' apartment that hasn't seen daylight in,
Speaker 1: you know, in a week, and just plays video games
Speaker 1: for ten twelve hours a day. That's like a caricature
Speaker 1: and a stereotype that has been created. But there is
Speaker 1: also something too what the right wing and the white supremacist,
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity and misogynist movement has been able to do
Speaker 1: to infiltrate this community. So I guess the first question
Speaker 1: is do you identify as a gamer? And if not,
Speaker 1: or if so, like, what does that identity actually mean.
Speaker 2: To you listening right now? We are actually going to
Speaker 2: get to what gamer gate is and how it happened
Speaker 2: and how it ties in. But all this stage setting
Speaker 2: really does matter. And so to get to the gamer
Speaker 2: identity of it all. It's sad because I would love
Speaker 2: to sit here and be like, I'm a gamer and
Speaker 2: I'm proud, but that's hard to say amidst all of this.
Speaker 2: And this is relevant to the anti social harassment movement
Speaker 2: that was gamer gait, that became the thing that you're
Speaker 2: talking about. The gamer identity became a lynchpin. And there
Speaker 2: was an article published by Lee Alexander, who became targeted
Speaker 2: by mile Unanapolis and became targeted by Breitbart by name
Speaker 2: in the headline of articles that they published on their
Speaker 2: hate blog. She wrote an article called Gamers are Dead,
Speaker 2: which was the focal point of the article, was saying,
Speaker 2: the gamer identity is dead. There's no longer basically what
Speaker 2: you're describing, gaming is no longer an enthusiast hobby that
Speaker 2: targets a minority of people who approach it one specific
Speaker 2: way and like one specific type of design. If you
Speaker 2: like games where you shoot things in space, or you
Speaker 2: like things where boys with swords fight monsters, you're into
Speaker 2: video games. Video gaming, as we discussed, moved away from
Speaker 2: that already by that point, and so at the same time,
Speaker 2: the gamer identity, whether pejorative or positive, of you know,
Speaker 2: someone by themselves in a room, sort of shut out
Speaker 2: from society or at odds with society in some way,
Speaker 2: was no longer useful, and gamers people who identified that
Speaker 2: way hated it. They hated this idea that, like your
Speaker 2: identity could be dead, which I understand, or even changing,
Speaker 2: even evolving. Even if Lee Alexander had said gamer is
Speaker 2: evolving as opposed to gamers are dead, I don't think
Speaker 2: there would have been a different response because the response
Speaker 2: wasn't to the statement gamers are dead. It was a
Speaker 2: response to the sentiment of, like you said, things are
Speaker 2: changing the world around you. Is changing, get with the times.
Speaker 2: So to come back around, I don't self identify as
Speaker 2: a gamer. Like I said, it kind of makes me
Speaker 2: sad not to, but I'm a person who plays video games.
Speaker 2: I am. I would consider myself a video gaming enthusiast.
Speaker 2: I actually am someone who engages with video game stuff
Speaker 2: online and I use it to late to people in
Speaker 2: my real life. But I don't consider myself a capital
Speaker 2: G gamer. I wouldn't really use that word in conversation,
Speaker 2: and sadly, a lot of people I know if you
Speaker 2: use that word in conversation, if you said, like you're
Speaker 2: a gamer or I'm a gamer, the people I know
Speaker 2: would cringe at that because of all this. And so
Speaker 2: that's another Now we've sort of set the stage from
Speaker 2: forward because the well around gamer became so poisoned because
Speaker 2: of people like this, because of the type of person
Speaker 2: who evolved into a very short amount of time, which
Speaker 2: we will get too soon in two or three years,
Speaker 2: into tiki torches in Charlottesville. So I think we're ready.
Speaker 1: Now, So Andrew, this has been wonderful. The table is set,
Speaker 1: the candles are lit, the china is out, and the
Speaker 1: meal is on it, like, let's eat now tell us
Speaker 1: how we get from gamer Gate tutiki torches in Charlottesville
Speaker 1: to a population of young men Generation Z that is
Speaker 1: finding their identity more aligned with MAGA and Trump than
Speaker 1: they are with Democrats.
Speaker 2: We've set this stage and still I find myself at
Speaker 2: where to begin. So there is an independent game developer
Speaker 2: named Zoe Quinn who in twenty thirteen, amidst other transformative
Speaker 2: games releasing games that aren't about shooting things or slashing swords,
Speaker 2: they released a game called Depression Quest, which was a
Speaker 2: text based adventure game. I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 2: but they used to make games on like the Apple
Speaker 2: to or the Macintosh where the whole game was text
Speaker 2: and you would type like go forward, go backwards, pick
Speaker 2: up the candle. So it was a sort of old
Speaker 2: school throwback game, but it was about mental health and
Speaker 2: encountering the world through the lens of dealing with mental
Speaker 2: health struggles. Already, the Capitol G gamers do not like
Speaker 2: Depression Quest. They do not like the amount of attention
Speaker 2: Depression Quest gets on websites. And then the day in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen that Depression Quest released on Steam, which is
Speaker 2: a PC platform. It's probably the most popular PC platform
Speaker 2: to play video games, millions upon millions upon millions of
Speaker 2: people you Steam. The same day that it released, Zoe
Speaker 2: Quinn's X released a manifesto online that accused them of
Speaker 2: infidelity and also implied that.
Speaker 1: That they got there by sleeping their way to the top.
Speaker 2: Exactly, they got that coverage by sleeping with members of
Speaker 2: the gaming press. That was the allegation, and even even
Speaker 2: implicitly because this person tried to go back and say, well,
Speaker 2: it was my wording, like act like they didn't they
Speaker 2: this one single thing, a jilted X making accusations which
Speaker 2: in the whole grand scheme of things doesn't matter whether
Speaker 2: they were true or not. This is what caused the
Speaker 2: entire thing. So gamers latched onto this, said, Zoe Quinn
Speaker 2: is getting coverage because of outdated sexist tropes that are
Speaker 2: being fed into It became a harassment campaign very quickly,
Speaker 2: and it was called quinnspiracy. And so they would be
Speaker 2: in places the people who were involved in this because
Speaker 2: they have nothing better to do with their lives, like
Speaker 2: actually go play video games. They have nothing better to
Speaker 2: do with their lives, then go online coordinate harassment against
Speaker 2: a person. It's almost like they treated it like a game.
Speaker 2: But when you harass someone and you're going online and
Speaker 2: posting about quinspiracy and all this stuff, you're kind of
Speaker 2: telling on yourselves.
Speaker 1: So this is the irony for me because I'm just like, so,
Speaker 1: you're pissed off that your identity is being called out
Speaker 1: and your community is being called out, and then you
Speaker 1: engage in the very activities that your community is being
Speaker 1: held accountable for. So, oh, we're not all sexist, we're
Speaker 1: not all misogynists, we're not all these in cell types.
Speaker 1: But then all of the harassment and rhetoric is around
Speaker 1: raping and killing and torturing women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very please excuse my language, but it's very like,
Speaker 2: how dare these bitches say I'm misogynists?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't even think about that angle, the
Speaker 2: angle of like at the same time, literally the same
Speaker 2: time that tropes versus women, which we will get back to,
Speaker 2: is running. They're doing all this. So to make this
Speaker 2: part short, they rebranded conspiracy as gamer gait. They had
Speaker 2: started calling Zoe Quinn LW, which stood for literally who
Speaker 2: is to act like they weren't talking about harassing Zoe Quinn,
Speaker 2: and then they started harassing other women and fem presenting
Speaker 2: people who criticized video games and video gamer culture. So
Speaker 2: Anita Sarkisian was a target. Lee Alexander, who gamers are Dead,
Speaker 2: was a target. Brianna Wu who manages to still be
Speaker 2: around and get headlines, it was a target. And when
Speaker 2: I want to be clear to anyone who's listening, when
Speaker 2: we're talking about harassment, this is bad in and of itself,
Speaker 2: but we're not just talking about like sending someone posts
Speaker 2: and being like I'm gonna do violent act to you.
Speaker 2: It went beyond online threats, which again are bad enough
Speaker 2: and need to be taken seriously, but it went into
Speaker 2: finding members of their family, getting in contact with members
Speaker 2: of their family, leaking their addresses, sending the police to houses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doxing and all of.
Speaker 2: That, doxing and swatting, which are techniques that have been
Speaker 2: talked about on this program before, but essentially, yes, use
Speaker 2: it weaponizing the police, which if you're a listener to this,
Speaker 2: you're aware of how the police can get weaponized. I
Speaker 2: imagine a weaponizing the police against people, against against women
Speaker 2: and people perceived as women for the act of being
Speaker 2: a woman, and saying that men shouldn't be doing the
Speaker 2: things that men do, or just you know, happening to
Speaker 2: exist as a woman and have some sort of perceived
Speaker 2: moral failing that you as an individual and individuals coming
Speaker 2: together as a little hate group have you know, hate
Speaker 2: for I don't think it's coincidental that like, oh, this
Speaker 2: attractive mid twenties woman who cheated on her partner and
Speaker 2: is in tech. So it's like, as a gamer, I
Speaker 2: do want to sort of set the stage of you know,
Speaker 2: it's embarrassing, but I've been in circles like this, Like
Speaker 2: when there's a woman in your circle, she is like
Speaker 2: the center of everything because it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: a girl's in our boys club. A girl has chosen
Speaker 2: to be in our boys club, A girl wants to
Speaker 2: hang around us. And so it's like the worst thing
Speaker 2: that could happen happened. The gamer girl betrayed them, their
Speaker 2: imaginary gamer GF. Like this could be your girlfriend, This
Speaker 2: could be your gamer girlfriend a cheating on you and
Speaker 2: then getting famous.
Speaker 1: This is where I see the relationship and I want,
Speaker 1: with like the couple of minutes that we have left
Speaker 1: for you to get to Steve Bannon and like how
Speaker 1: this now presents itself outside of or still withinside of
Speaker 1: the gaming community, but now has presented itself in politics
Speaker 1: in a very real way where this kind of again
Speaker 1: i'm gonna say in cell type thinking, this kind of
Speaker 1: deep misogyny and hatred for women. How you see it
Speaker 1: present itself inside of Project twenty twenty five, inside of MAGA,
Speaker 1: inside of trump Ism, and how it's turning what has
Speaker 1: been this online world into real, live votes and issues.
Speaker 2: It's funny that you bring up in cell and someone
Speaker 2: more qualified than me can talk about because I didn't
Speaker 2: even think about this. The intersection between the rise of
Speaker 2: gamer gait and the rise of in cell culture. There's
Speaker 2: definitely intersection there, but there's also sort of like, these
Speaker 2: are two individual communities that have crossover. That's unfortunately to
Speaker 2: be stereotypical. If you're spending twelve hours a day spent
Speaker 2: playing video games, that leaves twelve hours a day that
Speaker 2: you're not socializing with your preferred potential sex partners. But anyway,
Speaker 2: there was definitely a simultaneous rise of like young men
Speaker 2: who are sexually frustrated and feel they have no options,
Speaker 2: which again I can't really speak to. And then also
Speaker 2: the gamer gait type culture. But anyway, enter Steve Bannon.
Speaker 2: We've gotten here, so enter Steve Bannon and enter Breitbart.
Speaker 2: Some people may remember the name Milo Yanopolis because for
Speaker 2: a little bit he was trying to crossover as a
Speaker 2: legitimate media person and no one would have him. He
Speaker 2: got hired by Steve Bannon to Breitbart as their tech
Speaker 2: massive air quotes journalist. And you can actually still go
Speaker 2: on Breitbart, and you can go on breitbart dot com
Speaker 2: slash tag slash gamergate and see the type of posts
Speaker 2: that Milenopolis and some other people at Breitbart were making.
Speaker 2: But it was a lot of even in the headlines,
Speaker 2: it encourages harassing women. It celebrates when their targets leave
Speaker 2: gaming and leave gaming journalism, their career is over, they
Speaker 2: have given up and decided they're no longer going to
Speaker 2: fight this, and Breitbart basically goes, hooray, yep, bee, we won.
Speaker 2: We got another one. And there's one specific headline that
Speaker 2: I wrote down. It was about quote, why so many
Speaker 2: angry women have blue hair? So if you ever hear
Speaker 2: the whole blue haired liberal or like liberals have blue
Speaker 2: hair and pronouns, that literally comes from Breitbart and Gamergate
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, and Steve Bannon had a quote in a
Speaker 2: book by Joshua Green called Devil's Bargain where he was
Speaker 2: asked about Milo and asked about Gamergate, and this is
Speaker 2: Steve Banner quote quote, I realized Milo could connect with
Speaker 2: these kids right away. And this is now ten years ago.
Speaker 2: You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate
Speaker 2: or whatever, in sell whatever, that's my editorial. Go back
Speaker 2: to the quote, they come in through Gamergate or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then get turned onto politics and Trump, and you're
Speaker 2: there on Breitbart. If you're on Reddit, say, if you're
Speaker 2: on the Kotaku in Action subreddit, which is where these
Speaker 2: people met up, you would see headlines for Breitbart, and
Speaker 2: then you click through the headlines to Breitbart, and then
Speaker 2: on the side you see articles about Trump and articles
Speaker 2: about whatever other heinous stuff that Breitbart is promoting. And
Speaker 2: then on the flip side, if you're a conservative person
Speaker 2: who's in the bright bart world, if you're in the
Speaker 2: burgeoning alt right, because that's what that became, then you're
Speaker 2: gonna see articles that say, why do so many angry
Speaker 2: women have blue hair? And you, as an alt writer
Speaker 2: or whatever they were called before the term alt right
Speaker 2: became a thing. You're gonna then get into gamer gate.
Speaker 2: So Steve Bannon was feeding all these different types of people,
Speaker 2: people who are already hardwired to be hardcore conservatives, capital
Speaker 2: g gamers who dislike women and in cells and whatever
Speaker 2: other groups all through the same funnel. That funnel all
Speaker 2: takes these all these people, swirls them through and leads
Speaker 2: them to Donald Trump, And in August twenty sixteen, Steve
Speaker 2: Bannon was hired as the chief executive of Trump's presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: This is wild as fuck, Like it is so like
Speaker 1: I have to say, this was really startling to me.
Speaker 2: And this isn't like conspiratory. I just want to mention it,
Speaker 2: Like you can go online now and see and see
Speaker 2: all the stuff I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: But it's like the fact that these things were happening,
Speaker 1: this organization and this formation of essentially this hub of
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity turning against women and progress and like all
Speaker 1: of these things, and they found like this great fertile
Speaker 1: watering hole to go to and began that work twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. And now you're seeing the literally the fruits
Speaker 1: of that come to bear. And the fact that there
Speaker 1: has been no disruption. There has been no alternative, and
Speaker 1: if there has, then that will be a conversation for
Speaker 1: another day. But I think that I'm so grateful for
Speaker 1: you bringing this to my attention, because again, if you
Speaker 1: don't exist in these worlds, you're like, how does this
Speaker 1: shit happen? Like how did this spill over into politics?
Speaker 1: And you literally walked us through this handling Gretel breadcrumb
Speaker 1: place to kind of get to where we are right now.
Speaker 2: There's one more thing I want to point out as
Speaker 2: someone who was in that world at the time, not
Speaker 2: like as a gamer gator, but like seeing it happen,
Speaker 2: because I was online and in gamer world seeing the
Speaker 2: Trump campaign rise. It was the same social techniques. When
Speaker 2: you would I mentioned literally who before, you would say
Speaker 2: gamer gates about Zoe Quinn, gamer gates about harassing Zoe Quinn,
Speaker 2: and they would say literally who. They would make up
Speaker 2: these lies that were not remotely based in reality and
Speaker 2: just insist on them, and insist on them, and insist
Speaker 2: on them. They would use sardonic memes to further their
Speaker 2: agenda and just act like, well, the memes says it,
Speaker 2: so it must be true. All of these techniques very
Speaker 2: quickly became weapons of the Trump campaign that propelled him
Speaker 2: to popularity amongst the same type of people who were
Speaker 2: already drawn in by these propagandist techniques.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is extraordinary, it really is. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It's illuminating. It's readily disturbing because I don't see where
Speaker 1: it is going to be disrupted.
Speaker 2: You have to recognize it before you can disrupt it.
Speaker 1: Exactly on the other side, And that was the point
Speaker 1: of this conversation today because it was something that you
Speaker 1: brought to my attention that the New York Times article
Speaker 1: that I discussed with Jonathan brought to my attention about
Speaker 1: Generation Z. And there is just like so much more
Speaker 1: that is here.
Speaker 2: That's why Trump picked jd Vance. I wanted to get
Speaker 2: to that. We didn't get all the way from twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen to jd Vance, But that's the culmination of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we can do a part too, because
Speaker 1: there's so much more here. So we will leave it
Speaker 1: there today Andrew and pick up and do a part
Speaker 1: two of the question that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have been asking, which is why JD. Vance of
Speaker 1: all people? And I think that that would be a
Speaker 1: good place to pick back up. As always, I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you, appreciate you one for the work
Speaker 1: that you do and have done for years on WOKF.
Speaker 1: But for this particular conversation, this is part one, folks.
Speaker 1: We will come back with part two because there is
Speaker 1: just so much here and in order to disrupt something,
Speaker 1: to Andrew's point, you actually need to understand it, and
Speaker 1: that is the point of this conversation. So Andrew, appreciate you, thank.
Speaker 2: You so much. Here's my teas for part two. Gamergate
Speaker 2: is but a small subsect of what the pro Trump,
Speaker 2: altright white nationalist movement became in twenty seventeen. So that's
Speaker 2: for next time. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on WOKEF.
Speaker 1: As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.