I think one of the times the internet failed women the hardest was with Gamergate.

What's that?

Gamergate was a online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash on different topics such as feminism, diversity and progressivism in video game culture. It was rooted in misogyny and was conducted using the hashtag #Gamergate between 2014-2015. Women in the gaming communities were targeted with doxxing, rape and death threats, based on the claim that they were going against the true 'Gamer' identity. While the number of exact supports in the Gamergate community is unclear, a study by 'Deadspin' estimated that there were over 10,000 supporters based on reddit chains, many of which were alt-right (and a lot of them Trump supporters, if that tells you anything). It was organised through anonymous message boards such as 4chan and Reddit, but it was the most prominent on Twitter, as its design made it so that people could easily flood comment chains and make it hard for a user to individually block everyone.

It's honestly quite difficult to understand the true purpose and motivation of Gamergate. I feel like for a lot of the people involved, it was just an excuse to be misogynistic online without any consequences and with people supporting you. But the women that were targeted have had to suffer the terrible consequences.

Yeah, I heard that they claimed one of their main reasons for their behaviour was because of complaints against gaming journalist ethics, and the relationships between female gamers and male journalists. Apparently that was debunked though, with someone posting screenshots from 4chan showing that these complaints were only brought up after the abuse, to distract from their actions.

My point exactly.