The Reddit algorithm is serving Gamergate style material on the new Naughty Dog game (Intergalactic) and it's depressing

I've used Reddit off and on for a long time, especially since it is often the best place to go for specific information on games, but I increased my usage after other sources of information about my beloved Intellivision Amico dried up. Subreddits are basically individual message boards with their own moderators and other than the massively popular ones that have huge and diverse populations they generally have their own character. For example the Yakuza subreddit is chaotic and joyous, full of references, memes, and people trying to help others with the series. The Dragon Quest subreddit is more serious, with low-key appreciation for the games alongside detailed discussions of strategy and min-maxing. And then there are the toxic subreddits. There's one Subreddit devoted to The Last of Us that's pretty normal, and one supposedly devoted to the second game but long since taken over by people who absolutely hate that game, and it's a pit of toxicity and anger, with rampant homophobia and non-stop hatred towards the current direction of Naughty Dog in the Gamergate style of "this used to be good until the woke monsters took over."

Reddit seems to think I really want to see posts from this subreddit.

I don't really want to talk about The Last of Us Part II, a game that has its good aspects but that I think is very flawed. And I also understand why some people were disappointed or even upset by the way the game handled Joel and some of the other characters. Not every game or creative choice is going to be for everyone. But it's also a game that came out four and a half years ago, and you'd think people would have moved on by now. That's a long time. There have been lots of other games since then. But there's still this group of people with festering resentment over the game, and they seemed determined to keep that hate alive, feeding off of it and trying to bring it to others who are just discovering the game for the first time.

It's not something I really want to see but Reddit keeps serving it up to me.

Now Naughty Dog has announced a new game, and this group of people has joyously jumped at the opportunity to hate on the new thing. None of them have played it, of course, but it's seen as the child of their object of hate Neil Druckmann (who they blame for all The Last of Us Part II's problems) and they are gleeful to bash the fact that the protagonist is a bald woman of color and the tone seems to be similar to The Last of Us Part II in some ways. This is like what most of us experience when our favorite developer announces a brand new game, but in reverse. We're excited to celebrate whatever's coming next and they're excited to assault it.

They cheer every "victory" like the trailer getting a lot of negative feedback and having to remove comments, believing that this somehow represents their "side" winning, when what it really represents is a hardcore group of toxic people having a lot more energy to fight against the vast majority of people, who don't want to waste time voting or commenting on a trailer for a game that they don't know much about and won't be available for a long time. It's easy for a passionate few to drown out the not as passionate many and make it seem like the reaction is toxic overall. I think that's a microcosm of how Gamergate functioned, how much of gaming discourse is functioning, and even politics to a large degree.

It's just depressing to watch it happen in real time. To see people egging one another on and pushing negativity. It's not anything worth fighting because in the end I'd rather have fun talking about games online, whether that's writing blogs or poking fun in what I hope is recognized as a good-natured way at @imunbeatable80 and @mento, than be subsumed in hatred. If media annoys me I avoid it because there's lots of good stuff out there. I don't get the impulse to spend so much time seething about things that don't really impact your daily life. There are plenty of series I've given up on because they were no longer for me, and I barely think about them anymore, or I play the old entries that I did enjoy.

This has just been another look into how algorithms push toxicity and hate and incentivize people towards negative engagement, and how those communities push each other towards ever more extreme views, making discourse around a video game a vector for more insidious things like sexism, homophobia, and racism. I hate it. I don't know that video game discourse has gotten worse, because this stuff was around on Gamefaqs in the olden days, which is why I stayed away from those message boards, but the bad stuff is ever more visible and even dominant as more heavily moderated places like message boards die out and algorithm social media becomes the only game in town. There are still pockets of positivity but they are constantly under assault.

Maybe I'm an old man ranting at clouds but it very much makes me appreciate what we've had with Giant Bomb and other places. I don't think we'll see anything like it again.