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Gamergate may look a lot different now than it did back in 2014, but its patrons still behave very much the same–the elaborate grift designed to manipulate gamers into thinking there’s an all-out cultural war against them has made the lives of game journalists and industry personnel a living hell. The group that has historically reaped the industry’s spoils — being of the cisgender heterosexual white male variety — has its dominance threatened, and in a bid to preserve it, it’s lashing back hard.
Naturally, that gave rise to TheQuartering–a new figure to the Gamergate movement, but by no means revolutionary in terms of tactics. Since vlogging about Magic: The Gathering didn’t prove itself to exactly be that lucrative, Jeremy Hambly turned away to parroting Gamergate talking points to his audience, lacing it with as sensationalist and provocative a presentation as possible.
It’s not dissimilar from the litany of ill-faithed game criticism that already exists on YouTube, but what sets Hambly apart from everyone else, is that he has a frightening capacity to shape the discourse in parameters that make it almost-impossible to defy his framing. The deck’s already stacked against a potential target of his–what’s left is for his fanbase to take the not-so-subtle hint and go wreak havoc of their own.
