[makomk]

It's entirely possible that the guy the FBI declined to prosecute is this guy: https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/24/8099531/gamergate-jace-co... Roughly the right area and description. In any case, he's a good example of the problem with the whole Gamergate harassment narrative.

Minor details like him not actually being part of Gamergate in any way and his videos being obvious jokes didn't stop the media reporting this as an example of Gamergate death threats against women. Meanwhile, in actual non-media reality Gamergate was split between people who thought his jokes were distasteful but not actually harassment and those who considered them over the line. Then when it became clear he was a fictional character, the narrative changed to one where Gamergate were now threatening him because they'd discovered he didn't really support their harassment of women. Of course, the Gamergate position all along was that he obviously wasn't serious, the fact it was like harassment made him unpopular, and it was still that other internet community sending death threats and harassment. (A community, if I'm remembering rightly, which went out their way to go after a bunch of Gamergate supporters for taking a stand against their harassment.)

The most important thing to understand about Gamergate is this: the entire media (and social media) anti-harassment campaign of the time was primarily about attacking Gamergate and criticism of the game critics in general. Everything else fell by the wayside. All the groups actually doing the harassment went unmentioned. The most powerful, long lasting meme to come out of this fight, "It's about ethics in games journalism", was entirely about crushing the idea that games journalism has ethics problems. About discrediting criticism of games journalism, not stopping harassment or death threats or anything like that.

(The second most important thing to understand is that the media coverage attracted a bunch of hangers-on who wouldn't otherwise have had anything to do with it, and some of them were exactly the kind of people you'd expect to be attracted by that kind of coverage.)