Gaming Culture Strategies 2020

SUBOTRON arcademy /departure talk

Talk: Steam Nazis Must Die! Radicalization in the internet and gaming culture

Christian Huberts
mighty™ cultural scientist (Berlin)

Not only since the terror attack in Halle on October 9, 2019, radicalized internet communities are being discussed. Back in 2014, the #GamerGate movement provided a blueprint for a decentralized, anti-feminist hate campaign, which was soon instrumentalized by right-wing groups and later almost entirely absorbed into the so-called »alt-right«. Scientific research on modern extremism also speaks of an »alt-right pipeline«: Young men that feel victimized by a supposedly left mainstream search the internet for identity and explanatory models. If they encounter spaces in which misanthropy and conspiracy ideology has been normalized as satire, humor or trolling, they begin a radicalization career, which in individual cases can lead to the acclimation to extremist communities and end in the dehumanization of whole groups of people. Even supposedly harmless platforms such as the distribution service Steam play a role in this process. Largely unmoderated and with an absolute understanding of free speech, they provide spaces of normalized anti-semitism, racism and sexism. Even people who do not necessarily want to radicalize themselves quickly encounter more and more radical content – and various bridges to even more extreme areas of internet culture such as 4chan. Gaming culture must develop strategies to deal with this appropriation of their spaces.

after the talk:

Panel on Nazis, #metoo, blitzchung and the state of Indie with

Natalie Denk (Applied Game Studies Donau-Uni Krems)
Harald Koberg (Ludovico Graz)
Rainer Sigl (freelance journalist)
Eugen Pfister (Bern School of Arts)

Moderation: Sarah Kriesche (ORF)

Die Veranstaltungsreihe wird durch die Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien und die Bundesstelle für die Positivprädikatisierung von digitalen Spielen im Bundeskanzleramt, Sektion Familien und Jugend (BuPP.at) gefördert.

Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Wirtschaftsagentur Wien
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