Which is the most cancerous group in the gaming community/industry?
Speedrunners stick to their own games, that's why you see so many speedrunning shit like the Spongebob game. E-Sports athletes will only play games if they're "good enough", when the flood of shit esports titles happened many like Lawbreakers bombed (vid related), and CoD became very divisive. Halo even went down the toilet as a result of trying to pander to people without having them play the damn game. Streamer/eceleb cancer can also kill a game if people parrot their opinions, but they can't directly influence them to the same degree as "posting on a message board devs post on".
There was a theory that the whole Ion Fury drama was a false flag troll op, simply because the OP was found to have had an edgy internet past years ago.
A lot of people will argue the transgender boom came from two things circa 2015: the SCOUTS ruling on gay marriage causing lobbying in that realm to switch gears, and Bruce Jenner becoming Catilyn Jenner, leading to the infamous magazine cover. Given who Bruce had family ties to (the Jenner/Kardashian family, which was already a media circus), the tabloid media picking up hard on this.
The Vanity Fair cover was the point where it boiled over, but also it was several months in the making. While Jenner might not have had full on left wing/tankie views which hurt Jenner's reputation in that community (plus Jenner is AGP and was "tucking" even back in the day and telling spouses this), this was the first time many people learned about this.
One of the big things with someone coming out as trans was simple. The individual would make it his/her entire new identity, and as a result gets heaps of attention for it. But this is not solely a trans community issue, but rather one with many niche communities. What do I mean by this? Look at Sonicfox.
Sonicfox was someone who did the same gimmick as trans people but as a furry. Eventually Sonicfox would come out as "non-binary" and would shill trans ideology (which also coincidentally became really popular in the furry sphere), but that's besides the point. The point is, Sonicfox made his entire brand and identity as being "furry esports star" to the point of publicity photos using art of his fursona or his costume.
It both gave him instant clout in the furry sphere, but it also came off as a WWE gimmick to those who weren't in the furry sphere. But during his height he was everywhere, I heard how at the furry con I was at he was wiping the floor with people in the game room on fighting games, and many people lined up because he was "/ourguy/".
To someone who is attention seeking, negative attention is also good attention, and given that SonicFox won tournaments for at least one game (even if more people are playing different games), it was good PR for him and the furry scene.
@PurpCat
Admittedly, I don't pay attention to many of these niche communities so yeah the whole phenomenon is probably older than I thought. GDQ made it obvious because it seemed like every major speedrunner transitioned after Cosmo and the drama going on there was making it into drama channels and mainstream gaming press.
Though the final nail in the coffin wasn't GDQ, but that infamous hbomberguy stream because after Grant Kirkhope said "trans rights" in his DK voice, it inspired a bunch of other video game VAs to do the same as well as fan artists making "trans rights" art for every video game character in existence.
>To someone who is attention seeking, negative attention is also good attention
It's really no different than celebrities coming out as gay or bisexual when they were losing relevance years ago. Though, at least with that you can admit to it just being a phase and reverse, unlike transitioning where results can be permanent.
GDQ Dilation Stations were a curse upon humanity.