I think being a gamer got co-opted during gamergate. There's plenty of people that like video games that are fine, but I definitely look closely at anyone that describes themselves as a gamer.

Because "gamer" is a category defined by a sort of libertine consumerism, and when that goes along with normal western chauvinism it becomes the foundation of fascism. Like people always naively imagine fascism as like some big unifying annihilating monolithic thing when it's really just one manifestation of the same self-serving warrior treat lad class shit that's formed the backbone of reaction forever: it's distinguished from monarchism by its vulgarity and from liberalism by how it turns the horror inwards on the core instead of restricting it to the periphery, but is fundamentally running on the same treat-based motivation structure for its footsoldiers.

There's a broader point to be made about how reactionary American counter-culture has always been, with this sort of chauvinist libertine element that may at times have arrived at some correct conclusions but generally out of self-interest and always subordinate to their own endless lust for special good boy treats. Gamergate was the crystalizing moment that took a bunch of these reactionary libertines and turned them into full blown fascists, and all it took was some talking heads signal boosted by billionaire financial backing telling them women and minorities were coming for their special good boy treats and were going to make them less tasty.

That bag of syphilitic jizzdump called Steve Bannon got to way more of them than any of them would've admitted at the time gamergate was kicking off.

The YouTube algorithm. Open a private window and start clicking on no-commentary playthough videos or some other innocuous stuff and then watch it start to put fascism in the recommendations.

lol yeah that kinda makes me sad