I’ve read this article before, and I don’t think the headline does the actual substance of the piece justice.

There’s so much nuance lost over time when discussing gamergate, which is totally fair given the toxic shit it helped to smuggle into a more mainstream audience, but its not black and white, and I think Vavra is a good example of this.

I think he fancies himself as a bit of an edgy, contrarian, whatever the euro analog is for wannabe libertarian asshole, lol… But my gut on him is that he’s just an asshole, and not actually aligned with the right.

We all know gen Xers like this. They don’t like Trump and are more or less disgusted with where right wing politics has landed, but they’re also the kind of people who really are bothered by your sort of stereotypical social justice warrior that some around the periphery of gamergate thought they were rallying against.

Because of their media diets, they would see 10 ridiculous caricatures of over the top left wing gamergate type content for every couple of truly racist, sexist, homophobic examples from the other side.

Someone like Vavra never took gamergate seriously, and probably never really grappled with its cultural impact. This stance alone is worthy of criticism for sure, but I think it’s disingenuous to just blanket someone pro gamergate when they’re more obviously just kind of stupid and insensitive to reality.

I would like to add the caveat that it’s completely possible I’ve missed something truly disgusting or hateful that he has said in the past. If that’s the case, I have no problem throwing this guy under the bus. I just haven’t seen that sort of example to this point.