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In his book, 'Vision of the Anointed: Social Policy As A Basis For Self-Congratulation', Professor Thomas Sowell discusses four stages of failure that necessarily follow when social 'experts'  or 'activists' attempt to bring about changes in a group or culture that result in failure.

THE FOUR PATTERNS OF SOCIAL POLICY FAILURE

“STAGE 1. THE ‘CRISIS: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a ‘crisis’ ….Sometimes the situation…has in fact already been getting better for years. 

STAGE 2. THE ‘SOLUTION': Policies to end the ‘crisis’ are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and ‘simplistic,’ if not dishonest.

STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z. 

STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as ‘simplistic’ for ignoring the ‘complexities’ involved, as ‘many factors’ went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently, [but wrongly], predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors.”

A collage of the coordinated rollout of the 'Gamers Are Dead' articles in gaming media that appeared on Aug. 28 2014. Click for larger version. 

In response to a consumer revolt among gamers that is popularly referred to as #GamerGate, Social Justice Activists in coordination with enablers in the gaming media made an attempt to drive gamers away & replace them with casual mass market consumers.  Probably the most overt example of this was Leigh Alexander's column that appeared at GamaSutra during the coordinated rollout of the 'Gamers Are Dead' talking point.   It was entitled "'Gamers' Don't Have To Be Your Audience'.  'Gamers' Are Over."

For several months, anti-#GamerGate and the social justice activists seemed to believe they were making headway in implementing this new policy for gaming culture.  Gamers were supposedly being driven off and marginalized while being replaced with a far larger and more acceptable audience.  As time has passed, it's become apparent they were deluding themselves.

We all voted, Bob. You're off the Island!

Now anti-#GamerGate has reached Stage 4: they have to explain why their attempt to abandon gamers & replace them with the broader mass market audience has failed.  They have to explain why gaming journalism sites are adopting the ethical and transparency disclosure rules they've claimed were unnecessary.  

The need for ethical transparency & disclosure by gaming journalists was the subject of my last column, which you can find here. 

What about the attempt to marginalize gamers? 

Mass market consumers who only buy and play games casually do not engage with gaming media on anything more than the most casual of levels. 

 Even if #SJW's got total control of the gaming media, because mass consumers don't read gaming blogs, don't interact on gaming message boards and don't attend GameCons, they wouldn't really have more of an influence on casual game consumers at all when it came to changing or molding their beliefs and their behaviors.

Succeed in putting out games that preach radical extremist #SJW views on race, gender and class and what will happen is the mass market of consumers out there who don't agree to or accept those views will stop buying your games.

Attempting to deliberately bypass those most passionately involved consumers closest to your industry to reach the mass market beyond them is a very difficult proposition.

Yet this is exactly what the social justice advocates in gaming media attempted to do in response to #GamerGate; dump the closest group of passionate consumers of the industry & trade them in for another audience.

In what universe could this have possibly worked?

The goal of social justice radicals is to create a monolithic collective that all shares the same views. Or at least, one in which it's members only dare to publicly EXPRESS the same views.  All the ships sail in the same direction in complete harmony.  Because the ships that won't have been sunk or driven off. 

In response to GamerGate's call for more ethical openness and transparency, the #SJW response was to attempt to jettison what it viewed as a small, troublesome subset that was unimportant in light of the need to begin going after the far larger mass gaming market.

The stunning blind spot is their belief that people OUTSIDE gamer culture will be more open to accepting the #SJW radical views &  politically correct scolding aiming at changing their behavior.

They aren't.  

News flash to the #SJW's out there in the gaming media: Pay attention to the next two pictures. 

These people.....

aren't any more interested in adopting radical extremist #SJW views on gender, race or class than.....

these people.  

YOU'RE WELCOME. No, no, don't thank me. It's what I do! 

The fatal mistake McIntosh,Sarkeesian, Alexander  and their type of social justice activist have made is that the broader mass market of gaming consumers out there isn't any more receptive to the #SJW extremism & radicalism than the gamer culture is.

This is why the attempt was doomed from the start.   And this is why #anti-#GamerGate is now at the stage of making excuses over their failures.