Sigh.
Yes, they have — that is part of what a moral panic looks like. There were also news stories about public school children having blowjob parties when that moral panic was going around. News coverage in and of itself is not proof, particularly when that coverage takes the form of op-ed articles (which is what the New York Times coverage happened to be).
From first principles: there are two types of sources — primary and secondary. Primary sources are a form of direct evidence — they tend to be communications from the people involved in a thing about that thing. Secondary sources are at least one step removed — they are somebody who is not directly involved in a thing writing or talking about that thing. A primary source is compelling proof. A secondary source can only be considered proof if it is directly based on a primary source.
We know that in August 2014 the GamerGate movement made a concerted effort to destroy Zoe Quinn — and the reason we know that is that she was able to get onto their IRC chat and record their discussions as they planned their next steps. She provided a primary source as evidence.
The New York Times has no primary sources for their information that I saw in their articles (can’t speak for the Washington Post, as I haven’t read those). Likewise, you also have no primary sources. And there is not a shortage — the GamerGate subreddit is still very active as a discussion forum, and anybody can go and read it. I imagine it wouldn’t take much doing to locate what remains of their IRC chat, if that still even exists.
Without being able to point to primary sources, you have proven nothing. And the fact that you haven’t done your research beyond unverified secondary sources shows — you make claims that GamerGate holdouts are attempting to claim that the movement is dead to avoid a bad reputation. Five minutes of reading their subreddit shows that this is just not true — if anything, they are in denial about their movement having run out of steam, and consider their bad reputation to be unjust and undeserved.
All you’ve got right now is a conspiracy theory that is powering a moral panic, and furthermore, it’s a conspiracy theory and moral panic that does not withstand scrutiny. Speaking as somebody who is sick and tired of moral panics being levelled against the gamer community, I’d really appreciate it if you’d do your damned research before publishing.
