Gamergater

plural Gamergaters · alternative GamerGater

1. neologismA person involved in the Gamergate harassment campaign.

   Gamergaters have hurt people, and they've driven people out of games.

   2016, Dan Golding, Leena van Deventer, Game Changers

   4 more examples

   He credits GamerGaters with organizing a revolt against a deeply unsatisfying marketplace by loyal consumers who deserve better.

   2016, Alison Novak, Defining Identity and the Changing Scope of Culture in the Digital Age

   "But the cultural conflict between these two post-revolutionary styles — between frat guys and feminist bluestockings, Gamergaters and the diversity police, alt-right provocateurs and 'woke' dudebros, the mouthbreathers who poured hate on the all-female 'Ghostbusters' and the tastemakers who pretended it was good — is likely here to stay."

   2016 August 14, Ross Douthat, “A Playboy for President”, in The New York Times

   Harassment campaigns using the hashtag #GamerGate claimed, in part, to be a response to ethical shortcomings in games journalism; many Gamergaters criticized what they call “social justice warriors” in the gaming industry […]

   2016, Rebecca Ann Lind, Race and Gender in Electronic Media: Content, Context, Culture

   On Twitter, for instance, Gamergaters flooded the mentions of particular users as a form of harassment.

   2025 March 23, Harmeet Kaur, “How Gamergate foreshadowed the toxic hellscape that the internet has now become”, in CNN

plural GamerGaters

1. Alternative letter-case form of Gamergater.

   Some of the outrage is no doubt deserved—I have no patience for bigots myself, and better Social Justice Warriors than GamerGaters scared of vaginas or psychopaths voicing vendettas against wives on The Sopranos and Breaking Bad.

   2016, Chuck Eddy, “’10s”, in Terminated for Reasons of Taste: Other Ways to Hear Essential and Inessential Music, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 244

   2 more examples

   Various concern trolls repeatedly explained why #GamerGate needed a leader and how #GamerGate would never accomplish anything or be respected without a leader, concerns that were generally blown off with multiple GamerGaters declaring that they were the leader of #GamerGate or denouncing the concern troll as a shill, which is GG parlance for an individual who is not to be trusted.

   2015, Vox Day [pseudonym; Theodore Robert Beale], “Counterattack”, in SJWs Always lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, Kouvola, Kymenlaakso: Castalia House, →ISBN, page 91

   It [8chan] has also become, reports New York Times journalist Kevin Roose, ‘an online home’ for another collection of misogynists who are to sexual entitlement what the GamerGaters were to authority entitlement: a group who label themselves ‘incels’—involuntarily celibate.

   2021, Tracey Nicholls, “How to be a man: Prince Charming”, in Dismantling Rape Culture: The Peacebuilding Power of ‘Me Too’ (Interdisciplinary Research in Gender), Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, chapter 2 (A beautiful girl met a handsome prince . . .: Toxic masculinity and complicit femininity), page 72