Nina Jankowicz, the online researcher who up until its recent dissolution was set to serve as the director of the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board, appears to have thrown her support behind the exasperated and paranoid rhetoric that Gamergate is to blame for most of society’s current ills.
A self-proclaimed “disinformation expert”, Jankowicz was announced to lead what would have essentially been the Biden admin’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ alongside the board’s official reveal on April 28th, serving in the role for roughly three weeks until voluntarily resigning after the board’s activities were put on hold on May 18th following a wave of backlash to their proposed authority.
Seemingly unwilling to reflect on how the entire endeavor was a flawed and partisan effort from the start or her own history of attempting to muddy the waters of truth, most notably a resounding denial of the Hunter Biden laptop story, led to the imminent downfall of the board, Janckowicz appears to have instead placed at least partial blame on that favorite scapegoat of dishonest media actors, Gamergate.
On May 20th, just two days after issuing her resignation, eagle-eyed Twitter users observed that Janckowicz had ‘liked’ a thread from behavioral scientist Dr. Caroline Orr Bueno, wherein the noted online personality opined, “I feel like calling Gamergate ‘Gamergate’ relegates it to the domain of gaming, when really it was the kickoff of basically all the awful things in media, social media, culture, tech, and business that are still going on today.”
“Like, if you give me almost any terrible thing that has happened in the past several years — including the Buffalo mass shooting — I could draw you a map back to Gamergate in some form,” accused Bueno. “I’m not saying it *caused* all of these things, but they’re not at all unrelated.”
Continuing, Bueno opined, “Elon Musk’s shitty response to the story about him exposing himself to someone — and even more so, the internet’s response to that — is bringing back strong Gamergate vibes. As is the Depp/Heard trial. As is the Buffalo mass shooting. As is Dark MAGA. And so on…”
“You can’t even untangle Gamergate from the erosion of democracy & the rise of fascism,” she added. “GG basically taught a bunch of aggrieved young white males that they could use the Internet to appear more numerous & powerful, and troll companies & politicians into bending to their demands.”
RELATED: Snopes Insists Gamergate Was A Coordinated Harassment Campaign, But The Facts Say They’re Wrong
Though Janckowicz only liked these four opening tweets, they were not the entirety of Bueno’s thoughts on the topic.
Further displaying her paranoia, Bueno asserted, “And the whole thing we see now with issues like ‘free speech’ and “medical freedom” being weaponized by fascists? During Gamergate, it was ‘ethics in gaming journalism.’ GG taught them how to play the media by hiding really hideous movements behind a facade of respectability.”
Eventually, she even made the unsurprising leap that, “yes, you can even link Jan. 6th to Gamergate.’”
“GG was at least in part the response of a bunch of angry young white men who saw women and minorities ‘invading’ what they believed to be ‘their’ space,” she disingenuously mischaracterized the reasons behind the entire affair. “Gaming no longer revolved around them, and they couldn’t tolerate it.”
“But it wasn’t just about gaming — gaming was a microcosm of larger societal trends,” she said, again providing a documented false approximation of events. “Many white males believed they were playing a zero-sum game with women and minorities; that becoming equal and seeing others gaining rights meant they were losing theirs.”
Maintaining this version of events, Bueno posited, “And so the backlash started. Not only has it not stopped, but it has grown more intense, more dangerous, & more sophisticated.”
“It has also gained political power,” she claimed, before attempting to ascribe the actions of those she would ostensibly consider to be on ‘her side’ to her opponents. “It’s Grievance Politics 2.0 — the oppressors are demanding that we recognize their victimhood, or pay the price.”
Self-retweeting a post in which she declared that “White America decided it would rather burn itself down & reign over the ashes than share the power/wealth with everyone else,” Bueno affirmed, “This fits.”
Offering what could generously be described as a caveat, Bueno ultimately concluded, “And yes, obviously there are pre-Gamergate events that share links to some or many of these events. That’s not the point. The point, as I said in my first tweet, is that Gamergate isn’t just a gaming thing, but it’s still often framed that way.”
What do you make of Janckowicz’s liking of Bueno’s thread? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!
NEXT: GamerGate To Blame For Washington D.C. Protests, Claim Mainstream Video Game Media Personalities