The conclusion of Felicia Day’s response to GamerGate is a compelling, heartfelt plea from one gamer to her fellow gamers, asking them to stop ruining something they all claim to love:
I know this entry will probably draw contempt from people in the Gamer Gate movement. Something to scorn, something to rile them up against me and everything I’ve ever made. Especially, and most hurtfully, to mock my vulnerability. I just have one thing to say to you who do that: I’m genuinely sorry you are so angry.
… Steeping yourself in the emotions that you’re surrounding yourself with, of hatred and bile and contempt, is ultimately not destructive to others like you want it to be. It’s destructive to yourself.
I know it feels good to belong to a group, to feel righteous in belonging to a cause, but causing fear and pushing people away from gaming is not the way to go about doing it. Think through the repercussions of your actions and the people you are aligning yourself with. And think honestly about whether your actions are genuinely going to change gaming life for the better. Or whether they’re just going to make someone cross the street away from you. And away from something, ironically, that we both love.
Her entire post is a smart discussion of the whole awful Gamer Gate mess, the harm it’s causing to all women, and the damage it’s doing to gaming itself. So please read the whole thing on its own terms and don’t view it only in terms of the parallel I couldn’t help but see in reading it.
But I have to mention that parallel because I understand part of where Day is coming from here. She’s a gamer who loves gaming. I’m not a gamer, but I know what it’s like to see a movement you love and identify with get hijacked by hateful, amorphously aggrieved people intent on twisting the entire thing into an expression of their hate and indignation. And the plea that Felicia Day is making to her people — to those within her geek and gamer culture — is much the same as the plea I’ve long been making to my people.
Change a very few words and the final paragraph of Day’s post could serve as an excellent summary of what I’ve been trying to say here on this blog to the majority of my fellow white evangelical Christians, those who have, over the past 30 years, allowed their faith to be redefined as a political ideology:
I know it feels good to belong to a group, to feel righteous in belonging to a cause, but causing fear and pushing people away from Jesus is not the way to go about doing it. Think through the repercussions of your actions and the people you are aligning yourself with. And think honestly about whether your actions are genuinely going to change Christian life for the better. Or whether they’re just going to make someone cross the street away from you. And away from something, ironically, that we both love.
I know this post will probably draw contempt from people in the Jesus Gate movement, but that’s probably inevitable. Contempt and aggrieved indignation are the main thing they’ve cultivated in themselves for the past generation, so contempt and aggrieved indignation are pretty much all they’ve got left.
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