this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Sino
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You misunderstand me.
It's not about taking treats away, it's about how you understand reality. If you go with video games as your entry point, you will inevitably have to contend with 'git gud' culture, which is logically and structurally reinforcing. This is because games are a super-structural entity that reflects the dominant culture. Our goal, as Marxists, is to understand, and help others understand, the base that creates this super-structure, not to explain the base using the metaphor of the super-structure, because that makes the super-structure seem natural, permanent, and inevitable, when it is anything but.
As such it works ONLY as an entry point, but then must be immediately discarded because it is a metaphorical construction.
We work best when we lay out these fundamental truths in easily explicable ways that accurately describe reality, and are believed not because we use good metaphors, but because we can accurately describe and explain a person's lived experience, and give a reasonable method forward. Our struggle at the moment is presenting the reasonable way forward, not accurately describing reality.
For example, you can say 'Use a better meta, join the union.' but that does not combat 'Fuck you, I don't need to play the meta, I'm just built different.' which is an incredibly common attitude among gamers because most gamers are complete shit at games.
If you instead go, 'Join a union, at least then you can know the face of the person that is fucking you.' that usually gets a better response because usually people know they are getting fucked, and think that they will also be fucked by the union, but if you present it as a misanthropic but clarifying action, they will be in favor of it. This doesn't work when people don't think they're getting fucked, but those people are a minority. It also is an entry point that fundementally misunderstands Marxism, but it at least sidesteps the issue of the super-structure.
Ultimately though it about who your audience is, I agree. If you are successful with it and manage to translate it into real understanding, I applaud you.
Trying to simplify "Join a union" is absolutely not a good idea. That's literally Pokemon go to the polls
type of stuff.
But the article isn't about simplifying marx into gamer speak. That was not my intention. Videogames are just as fake as the Economy, it's not difficult to pivot into real world problems from bideogame problems and arrive at the root cause of them and how to address them, because the root cause is ultimately the same, that's why gamers are so miserable and why they should stop gaming and join a union, because their life doesn't have to be filled with misery. That's it really. Like you said that is the only function they can serve.
But I'm not here to argue I just don't want to be misinterpreted. I don't have access to ADHD medication so it can be difficult, probably should quit doing commentary tbh it's happened to many times already. I'm grateful that people take the time to correct me and making sure I don't cause harm. I try to stick to just linking theory to people to read although it can make it seem like I'm being dogmatic so it's complicated. I just hope any of the orgs I reached out to respond, but they haven't so I just come here to try to be useful, but you tell me maybe I'm just doing more harm than good. I would gladly leave if I'm a net negative.
I don't think what you are engaging in is a net negative. Any engagement is good, though it would be better to be doing it irl, obviously. I'm the same way, it's not that what I view you doing as harmful, just not really theoretically correct. My thing is that it is basically one step forward, one step back. Now, maybe that step backwards is necessary to take two steps forward, idk, but I am personally arguing that it isn't and feels like we are making more work for ourselves in the future.