Game Informer!
Got damn the constant nostalgia on this thread!
The point is you weren't turning to YouTube for game reviews in 2014. You were turning to a journalist. Kotaku, Polygon, Giant Bomb, IGN, and GameSpot were the just about the only way people got game reviews. Game Informer was the other way. But all of them were journalists and the power of journalists in the gaming industry was MASSIVE compared to what it is today.
Nope. It started with the Zoe Post:
thezoepost.wordpress.com
Then the twitlonger blog by TotalBiscuit:
www.twitlonger.com
Then the actor who played Jane on Firefly (cool guy cool show if you haven't seen it go watch it) coining the term #GamerGate on twitter.
TB's twitlonger is usually sited as the beginning of GamerGate.
TB did some videos on GamerGate before anyone had ever heard of Internet Aristocrat:
But then bowed out of the controversy because he was too liberal for that, and spent every day until his death trying to pretend he hadn't be a part of it.
Jim's very first Quinspiracy video was 2 days after the twitlonger:
And as TB stepped back because of his butthurt, Jim took more and more charge of it. Until Sargon upstaged him with his bigger platform. He was honestly the leader of GamerGate for just about a month. Then it was Sargon for the next two years.
I lived there. It's what I learned. If you want to go spend years living in Japan so you can tell me I'm wrong about them, feel free.
We were the first to do exactly what Josh is doing. Calling out SJWs, calling out a slut for her disgusting behavior, tracking the money and opposing grifters, we were doing all of that. And he does it with more or less the same attitude we did it with. I think we were honestly having a lot more fun than Josh seems to be having. But I see GamerGate then as being pretty similar to Kiwi Farms now. He's carrying the torch.
He presents himself far to much as the arbiter of truth. Which was something we never did. None of are leaders called themselves leaders. Because none of them were leaders. The term influencers had yet to be coined, but they were probably the first influencers to have a major cultural impact. Keep in mind, PieDiePie had just happened almost on the day GamerGate started.
He's also way too censorious and moderates his board way too hard. Everyone, from Sargon to Hotwheels, supported almost completely unfettered free speech. 8chan was almost completely unmoderated.
It would be nice if we could get some of that free speech back in here. But people have spent ten years now "canceling" people, and it seems like that attitude is everywhere these days.