I am not going to re-litigate GamerGate here. There were people who were genuinely concerned about ethics in games journalism, sure. But it did not become the defining event in the online-political sphere of the mid/late '10s simply due to genuine concerns about ethics in games journalism.
Correct, because a large portion of the public has no idea what indie games are, or how the software industry works, but they know that angry nerds are funny.