If this had been going on mainly in film, or television, or literary fandom, I think people would have taken it much more seriously as a leading indicator of cultural changes.
When a young person develops a view that "the media lie constantly and see you as an enemy if you disagree about any tiny thing", that can bed in and last a long time through someone's life. Once trust is gone like that, how can the media redeem itself with someone?
I think this is going to have very long-reaching consequences, decades into the future. There is a growing, persistent constituency of young people who are richly informed by alternative information sources (youtube, online communities, personal experience) whose first exposure to mainstream media is to learn that they're self-indulgent, lying, moralizing bullies.
This is still going on today. See the recent saga with PewDiePie being slagged as a neo-nazi. His response video has 12M views, a lot of those are 13-16 year olds learning to never trust the media, especially when they call people racist.
It's like when you yourself are involved in something and see it grossly, maliciously misrepresented in media. You lose trust in media that way. Gamergate was basically that happening with thousands of people, because all of them had personal experience with gaming and knew how it actually works.
1. The people who lie constantly about GamerGate are the people supporting it, not the media.
2. PewDiePie actually said racist things and had people hold up anti-semitic signs. This was accurately reported in the media.
There are indeed a lot of young men whose primary political belief that they should be allowed to say whatever they want on the internet without consequences, and are upset with the media when this turns out not to be true. But that isn't the media's fault.
1. Lies were put out on both sides of the GamerGate controversy. It all turned into a horrible mess on both sides.
2. PewDiePie paid for people on fiverrr to hold up an offensive sign, just to see if they'd do it. If you'd seen the video you'd know that he was incredibly surprised that they went through with it. Reporting that he's a neo-Nazi off the back of this is exactly the kind of exaggeration and lying that many now find to be commonplace in the media.
2. PewDiePie is a comedian. His racist jokes are outliers, not the norm. The anti-semtic debacle was about pushing the boundaries for his "how far can I get with just $5 on Fiverr" skit -- its prime motive was not to enlighten his impressionable audience about his views on jews.
> There are indeed a lot of young men whose primary political belief that they should be allowed to say whatever they want on the internet without consequences, and are upset with the media when this turns out not to be true. But that isn't the media's fault.
This is true. It's a growing trend and I forsee it becoming the norm. If this incident shows anything, it's that legacy media v. young progressivism is a losing battle.
But they reside in a space (the internet) that doesn't have the same controls over conduct as the physical society.
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that their current anti-PC attitudes will prosper after being given a space like this.
That's what freedom means. It means freedom from consequences. If there are heavy consequences, you don't have freedom. Otherwise you can say that North Koreans have freedom of speech too - they just have to deal with the "consequences".
This "freedom from speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" thing is so patently bizarre.
What the heck can "freedom" possibly mean besides freedom from consequences?
In my opinion, I'm conflicted about whether or not it's good. If our political system didn't use a FPTP voting system(and thus allowed for a multiparty system) then this cultural shift would be good because a middle-ground between the two parties would likely be found. But because we have a two party system, I believe this might just strengthen the divide between the political parties.