I have been following #Gamergate for the last 9 months and regardless of what you think of them, you have to admit they have been extremely successful at achieving their aims and not falling into the same pitfalls/bear traps that other groups have, when it comes to battling the SJW cancer. (As an aside, TRP and GG share many of the same tactics. TRP is separate and distinct from MRA's )
They set out to reform the Gaming media and push back against the SJW establishment. They have engaged in a 9 month (so far) asymmetrical warfare campaign and have been extremely successful in their goals. This discussion will look at the success of GG and failures of MRA's in the context of an asymmetrical warfare scenario.
They have achieved more in that time, than the MRA manosphere has achieved in the last 10 years. I would argue with the current state of college campus rape hysteria, the passing of various radical feminist legislation (at both state and federal level) and the unmitigated failure to mount any sort of serious resistance / legal challenges to these laws, that the MRA movement is going backwards at a record speed, circlejerking all the way as they do.
Feminists in the West have won. At this point they are really just "Bayoneting the wounded". Small pockets of resistance exist, but they are disorganized and unable to achieve anything meaningful. They win small meaningless victories, but are losing the war. SJW's ARE the establishment. Any group who goes toe to toe with them, on their terms is going to lose, and lose hard.
So this got me to thinking as to WHY they are failing so hard. Comparing the tactics of #Gamergate and the tactics of MRA's it becomes painfully clear.
MRA's tactics are bad, and they should feel bad!
Here's why....
Where you fight, matters
MRA's are under the false assumption that society gives a fuck about men in general and their suffering. Due to In group bias, human beings are emotionally numb to the suffering of males, and hypersensitive to the suffering to that of females. This is an intrinsic, hard wired human behavior. Humans have evolved this way, because in terms of evolution it makes more sense to preference women over men. The loss of 90% of males from a group will not seriously impact the population of said group long term, where as 90% loss of females would be catastrophic for the same population.
You see the in group bias in our closest animal relatives too. Ape Males and females will protect the females of a group, but Ape females generally won't lift a finger to protect the males.
So with this in mind, MRA's make the mistake of trying to make emotional (ego) driven arguments to try and get society to help deal with their problems and issues. This is like trying to emotionally appeal to a sociopath, who is physically unable to care. Men can literally blow their brains out on the steps of Congress, and the best you'll ever get is a collective "meh"
GG recognized this issue almost immediately. Most of the GG crowd come from people with a long experience of society not giving a fuck about them and realized the futility of making any sort of emotional (ego) based arguments against a bunch of SJW's. They knew that "crying woman > everything" and that SJW's are masters of trotting out crying, innocent looking women to win sympathy and exploit the "in group bias" flaw that humans have.
So, instead of fighting the sharks in deep water, they dragged them onto the beach and are beating them senseless.
Hearts and Minds
The gaming media had created a fertile ground for this sort of thing by making themselves hated and despised by the gaming populace. The "insurgency" has been fermenting for years, and all it took was a spark to kick the whole thing off.
GG's biggest strength has been the ability to unite a vast and diverse group of people under a common banner, while at the same time avoiding the fracturing that occurs with large groups of diverse people. They are welcoming of anyone and everyone, but without compromising their overall goals. They are also effective at recruiting and keeping new membership (AKA "Weaponized Kindness"). Even when faced with people who are initially hostile to the movement, they keep a stoic face and stick to the logic, facts and evidence. ("Actually it's about ethics") This has allowed them to turn hostile parties neutral, neutral parties into allies, and allies into champions.
MRA's by comparison are extremely thin skinned, and will go of like insane, rabid dogs when they come under even the slightest bit of criticism. This is their egos running rampant, which in turn allows SJW media to set easy traps that they gleefully jump into balls first. GG suffered from this early on, but very quickly learned to spot the ambush and avoid it. MRA's still haven't.
Decentralized command structure
There is no leader of Gamergate ("Everyone is the leader of Gamergate, and no one is"). It's a shared set of ideas and goals which means it's almost impossible for any large organization or group to effectively target them. There is no single platform or meeting place. GG is spread across any number of different boards, platforms and internet spaces. GG has actively resisted setting up any sort of formal structure because once you have a formal structure and organization, it gives the opposition a much narrower attack space and allows them a much more effective concentration of time and resources for greater effect.
So if one spaces falls, it's quick and efficient to set up a new one in a matter of hours. They could shut down Reddit, 8chan and Twitter tomorrow and within the week GG would be set up and operating again with very little loss.
MRA's on the other hand, are prone to set up formal organizations and lobby for things like "men's centres" on university campuses which are very quickly attacked, destroyed, and infiltrated by SJW's. They set up groups with leaders, which gives SJW's a clear target to call in the media artillery barrage.
Use their mistakes against them
Every time the US drone strikes a village somewhere and kills a bunch of civilians, it adds more fuel to the fire and more recruits to the insurgency they are trying to fight. The same is true of SJW's when they attack GG. SJW's are purely emotional (ego) driven creatures which means they are easy to taunt and easy to trick if you know how. Thanks to the expertise of the gang over at /pol/, GG has learned very quickly that rather than get pissed off when SJW's attack GG, it's the single best source of material to use to show the world how absolutely crazy the SJW's are.
Every time some SJW goes off on a half arsed rant, GG just gathers it up and shows the world how corrupt, petty and stupid they actually are. The shit they do is far better than ANY propaganda that GG could ever come up with, and they have been extremely effective at using it to win hearts and minds. They aren't trying to show people how good they (GG) are, but how BAD they (SJW's) are. The GG meet in DC is a fantastic example of how a SJW fuckup became an awesome world wide recruiting tool.
MRA's have been (for the most part) terrible on capitalizing on the sheer craziness of SJW's and there rhetoric. Because they too are using emotional (ego) driven arguments, they look just as bad as the SJW's. It's why they remain marginalized, and generally regarded as a laughing stock in most countries.
Attack their infrastructure
The other big success is the boycott of advertisers of Gawker Media. Gawker by all reports is hemorrhaging cash pretty badly now that all their advertising partners have bailed and they are reduced to dealing with the most low paying ad systems. A number of high profile SJW's have been quietly removed or re located to other areas. Some have retreated to their own hugboxes.
This has been done in an extremely efficient manner with almost no cost to GG, but to a crippling effect. With a little digging they were able to identify the key advertisers and very quickly and effectively do a lot of damage.
MRA's could use similar tactics against any number of feminist organizations, but they are too busy bitching about small battles like Mad Max to actually organize anything.
Celebrate your victories, learn from your defeats
GG has made some stupid mistakes and fuck ups in it's course, and I don't doubt there will be more before it's over but they always seem to learn from them. They are constantly trying new tactics and figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's the same behavior and skills that gamers have been working on their whole life. They are failing as fast and cheaply as possible and in the process getting extremely good at what they are doing.
MRA's by comparison, are doing the same thing over and over and over...
Edits for spelling and grammar
Edit 2.
The complete running list of all the things that Gamergate has achieved.
Gamergate in 60 seconds. (A bit dated but still a good primer on how this all started.
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