Personally I suspect Bitcoin Gold is nothing more than a false flag operation by the NYA crowd. They are actively discussing how to attack and destroy the Bitcoin blockchain after the hardfork (see https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/issues/135), which could require an emergency PoW change to counter to preserve Bitcoin.

So, according to my speculation, Bitcoin Gold is deliberately being presented as a poorly conceived half-baked effort with the same attribute - a PoW change to make Bitcoin mining GPU-based. This way when the NYA attack hits they can spread FUD and confusion by getting people mixed up between Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin w. the new algorithm, and by telling people "you tried to do that already and it didn't work."