What is the gate in #ThingGate?

[Bob_McMillan]

You know, #BendGate, #HairGate, and the one that shall not be named. Why gate? What does a gate have to do with anything? The closest thing I could think about is the Watergate scandal, and I don't even know what that is, except that Nixon or whatever was involved (evidently, I'm not from the States). I have never used a hashtag in my life, and I stay away from Twitter and Tumblr, so things like this I have no clue about.

Captcha: "do more sit-ups" Even captcha wants me to get off my ass this summer...

 

[MerlinCross]

You know, #BendGate, #HairGate, and the one that shall not be named. Why gate? What does a gate have to do with anything? The closest thing I could think about is the Watergate scandal, and I don't even know what that is, except that Nixon or whatever was involved (evidently, I'm not from the States). I have never used a hashtag in my life, and I stay away from Twitter and Tumblr, so things like this I have no clue about.

Captcha: "do more sit-ups" Even captcha wants me to get off my ass this summer...

-Gate, is sadly something we in the States love to put at the end of either a noun,verb, or name that's related to a controversy. Another example is #DeflateGate. This was based around one football(rugby?) team, New England Patriots? alleged use of deflated footballs towards the team?s advantage during their American Football Conference (AFC) Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in January 2015. The accusations of foul play has prompted an investigation from the National Football League (NFL).

Welcome to America naming things. We're bad at it.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Yes it's from Watergate where Nixon was found out to do espionage on the democratic party and tried to cover it up.

 

[TakerFoxx]

It was Watergate. The scandal was big enough that it became the go-to comparison for all other major scandal.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, as mentioned, it was Watergate, which was really serious business.

No idea why it's the one that people have got stuck on, as opposed to all the other crimes. But, stuff like "contra" doesn't flow, I guess?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Internet, no more gates! We have enough gates! All the fences have gates now!

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Yes as people pointed out it was something media outlets did to try to relate stories to Watergate. That's the scandal about the Watergate hotel, not a scandal about water.

 

[L. Declis]

You know, #BendGate, #HairGate,
...
I have never used a hashtag in my life

Dear Sir, I believe you now have. The hashtag key on your keyboard has finally lost it's virginity, it's now like the Num lock key or the PgUp button, it may be alone with five cats, but it HAS been used.

Congratulations.

Yeah, as mentioned, it was Watergate, which was really serious business.

No idea why it's the one that people have got stuck on, as opposed to all the other crimes. But, stuff like "contra" doesn't flow, I guess?

Well, it was bad enough to get an American President impeached; I can see why it stuck in the mind of America.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

You know, #BendGate, #HairGate,
...
I have never used a hashtag in my life

Dear Sir, I believe you now have. The hashtag key on your keyboard has finally lost it's virginity, it's now like the Num lock key or the PgUp button, it may be alone with five cats, but it HAS been used.

Congratulations.

Yeah, as mentioned, it was Watergate, which was really serious business.

No idea why it's the one that people have got stuck on, as opposed to all the other crimes. But, stuff like "contra" doesn't flow, I guess?

Well, it was bad enough to get an American President impeached; I can see why it stuck in the mind of America.

Eh, I haven't used it in the way that hashtags are used for, at least I think so. Aren't they supposed to be like links to your post in twitter or something?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Any widespread scandal gets dubbed with the suffix "gate" because of Watergate, which as I've explained in the past consisted of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee HQ at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement, leading to a constitutional crisis and resulting in the most powerful man in the most powerful nation resigning from presidency, something that had never happened before, hasn't happened since and you won't see happening ever again, Adrian.

These days you might as well disregard anything that gets "gated". All it takes is for a guy to wear a shirt.

 

[Seishisha]

When i read this thread i was sorley dissapointed it wasnt related to john carpenter's the thing, i was expecting some bleeding heart drivel about how the monster is depicted as evil because the backstory is never explored.

Please can we make an actual ThingGate and use it to describe blantant discrimination of monsters in the film industry, it't not evil it's just missunderstood, wearing your internal organs as a hat is a formal greeting on it's home planet!

 

[Erttheking]

The word gate needs to be euthanized already. The poor thing gets thrown onto everything by people who are trying to make their whatever sound important. Just put the poor thing out of its misery already.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

The word gate needs to be euthanized already. The poor thing gets thrown onto everything by people who are trying to make their whatever sound important. Just put the poor thing out of its misery already.

At this point I would not be surprised if you asked someone what Watergate was about they'd reply it was a scandal involving bottled water suppliers.

 

[Olas]

Don't know why people gate the "gate" suffix so much. Seems fine to me, regardless of it's origin.

Also, this is the kind of thing you could probably just Google.