#Metalgate

Overview

#Metalgate is a hashtag campaign used on Twitter to counter the stereotype that fans of heavy metal music hold ultra-conservative values and political beliefs. The campaign was promoted by GamerGate supporters as an offshoot of the movement in December 2014.

Background

On December 12th, 2014, the music blog Spin^[3] published an article titled “The 20 Best Metal Albums of 2014,” which claimed that the metal genre had “deep-seated conservative values”:

Metal is still dogged by the issues that arise from its deep-seated conservative values, but thanks to an increase in conversations about racism, politics, and feminism, those on the right side of history have gained solid ground.

The same day, Death Metal Underground^[1] published an article by writer Cory Van der Pol titled “#metalgate,”^[1] which criticized the Spin article and those who attempt to use metal to push their social agendas.

Notable Developments

On YouTube

The next day, YouTuber and GamerGate activist Sargon of Akkad uploaded a video promoting #metalgate and analyzed several articles, including an opinion piece from the metal blog Metal Injection^[5] about the use of the slur “faggot” among metal fans (shown below, left). The video subsequently gathered more than 40,000 views in the first 48 hours. Meanwhile, YouTuber MundaneMatt uploaded a video titled “WTF is #MetalGate?”, which described how the hashtag came to be (shown below, right).

On Reddit

Also on December 13th, the /r/metalgate^[11] sub-reddit was created, which was subsequently banned and replaced by /r/MetalGhazi.^[10] Meanwhile, a post about the hashtag was submitted to the /r/KotakuInAction^[12] subreddit, where it gathered more than 460 votes (91% upvoted) in the following 72 hours.

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the #metalgate campaign, including Servile Insurrection,^[6] Return of Kings,^[7] Medium,^[8] Metal Sucks^[9] and Reaxxion.^[13]

Search Interest

External References