I totally forgot about the Depression Quest thing. I recall the name Zoe Quinn floating around but I was so disconnected from what was going on when it was happening that I only vaguely recall how the whole thing started. Anita Sarkeesian was more the person I recall, and later saw videos about, which I didn't realize was an extension of that. Funny how they don't seem to touch on the Zoe thing that much compared to Anita. People seemed to have diluted a lot of the GamerGate situation from the Zoe Quinn situation to the Anita situation, grossly summarizing the whole ordeal as "nerds got unreasonably mad when she suggested video games focused too much on a woman's ass".
Patriarchy affects virtually all fields in virtually all walks of life. You see it in Hollywood, in sci-fi/fantasy communities, in the science community (subdivided into biology, physics, etc.), in computer science, in history (as in, the field of history) - men turn everything into a "gentlemen's club" that bar women from participating or being recognized.
A while back in 2020 when my channel started to get mildly famous from creating machinimas, someone invited me to a machinima Discord server. The server is mostly filled with Gen Z gamers, and it didn't take me long to realize the hotbed of misogyny and radicalization that had been taking foot within the gaming community. Conversation came up about Noah's Ark (forgot why by now) but I joked (very lightly) about Noah's Ark, and everyone got mad at me. Like *seriously* mad. Like "We could ban you for this if you do it again" mad. And I remembered thinking "Are we five years old here? Come on, man." I started to see the signs that Gen Z culture was becoming conservative based on my interactions with the people there. Someone in my age group in another server told me not to worry about it because I was "generalizing" based on a small population. Whoa, buddy. That guy has surely kept his mouth shut now after what happened with the last election.
So you have a couple factors at play here IMO. The older generation of patriarchy from GamerGate, and the newer generation from Gen Z raised on radicalization across the Internet.
Patriarchy affects virtually all fields in virtually all walks of life. You see it in Hollywood, in sci-fi/fantasy communities, in the science community (subdivided into biology, physics, etc.), in computer science, in history (as in, the field of history) - men turn everything into a "gentlemen's club" that bar women from participating or being recognized.
A while back in 2020 when my channel started to get mildly famous from creating machinimas, someone invited me to a machinima Discord server. The server is mostly filled with Gen Z gamers, and it didn't take me long to realize the hotbed of misogyny and radicalization that had been taking foot within the gaming community. Conversation came up about Noah's Ark (forgot why by now) but I joked (very lightly) about Noah's Ark, and everyone got mad at me. Like *seriously* mad. Like "We could ban you for this if you do it again" mad. And I remembered thinking "Are we five years old here? Come on, man." I started to see the signs that Gen Z culture was becoming conservative based on my interactions with the people there. Someone in my age group in another server told me not to worry about it because I was "generalizing" based on a small population. Whoa, buddy. That guy has surely kept his mouth shut now after what happened with the last election.
So you have a couple factors at play here IMO. The older generation of patriarchy from GamerGate, and the newer generation from Gen Z raised on radicalization across the Internet.