😭

There is always difficulty telling if something actually started a trend or was just the first example of a trend. It makes sense that the young and somewhat lib gaming space would have a woke fight before other things like the military.

I think it's an overplayed connection as well, but I've come around a bit to the idea that they had their 'enemy' pacified, and then actively worked to take away all the things that were pacifying them. And G*merGate kicked that off.

The five guys bit is objectively true, and likely the bit Mercante is objecting to. The connection to current events is more dubious, though there's a decent argument to be made that the prog attempts to ideologically capture a lot of the circuses from straight men's 'bread and circuses' has significantly contributed to the political climate.

Mercante won't be arguing against that, though, because her group treats these men as if thinking Zoe Quinn is a whore makes them irredeemable Nazi fascists trying to hurt minorities for existing. They're also just a handful of manbaby chuds in their parents' basements, as needed.

Mercante is your standard game journo/foid who refuses to accept that their short-sighted behaviour could possibly lead to negative consequences, because it's all everybody else's fault. Surprise,

My guess is she was always "one of the boys" growing up, and now this "I am woman hear me roar" hyperfeminist turn is an attempt to reclaim her femininity on her own terms. You just know 2014 Mercante was telling her 4-6 male friends in the dorms about how "other girls just don't like me, I dunno why"

She's dabbled in a few other nerd spaces, but she got dropped from the last of her support when some women were trying to start a mass #metoo event in gaming, but she barged in early and the guy she accused killed himself.

Probably didn't help that she had a whole bunch of tweets and even podcasts from the time available to point out her version of events differed greatly at the time. Or that one of her biggest male supporters was accused, and her response was, 'Yeah, OK, but let's make this all about me and my fictionalised trauma.'

She's probably on BlueSky now, quietly being ignored because everyone knows she's a liability without talent or a work ethic but you can't admit that, ever.