Thoughts about Gamergate

    I was secretly trying to connect to the internet through a phone cable to play StarCraft 1. I didn’t care how much the phone bill would be.  This was the very first moment that I played the game with the other players by using an Internet service. I remember the moment. I could express my own feeling to other people who lived in the virtual world even though we hadn’t met each other face to face. I was getting used living in web. When I played games, sometimes I met people who were rude by speaking bad words. However, I wasn't concern too much about these problems because those were only limited in games.
 

    I recently heard the news about Gamergate. The story and timeline about Gamergate is so complicated. Still now, I am not sure which information is true. Basically, the woman who made the game, “Depression Quest”, was attacked by the netizens, because the her ex-boyfriend exposed the uncertain fact that she had a disorderly life with others. Then the media published many articles about her and gamers, such as “The end of the gamer” and “facing misogyny in the video game world”.

    I thought many activities that happened inside the web can't affect to real life, but I was wrong. The meaningless of one sentence of tweet, and one like button can affect other people’s life. The issue of Gamergate started with one minor wrong information that came from the woman’s ex-boyfriend, and then the problems were getting bigger and bigger. The netizens who live in the web helped to spread out the information. The tweeters blamed her by using the hashtag, "#gamergate" While the wrong information floated on the web, and the woman was attacked by netizens, Other issues also came up to the surface of the web, such as feminism in games, and white man supremacy. 

    I want to mention the danger of misinformation and revelation of personal information. As we heard the news of Gamergate, we tend to easily believe uncertain information on the internet. I think we need to have the eye that can distinguish the information whether it is true or not, and we have to be aware that our minor action on the web can ruin one person’s life. Even if the people have secret crime or have wrong life, he or she shouldn’t be punished on the web. It is too dangerous to handle with netizens, who wear the mask that we can’t see the face.