Memes

Look, just don't bring your damn politics to my game about war and politics. We are just here to shoot ̶b̶r̶o̶w̶n̶ people and relax. I don't want to think about the implications behind the media I am consuming.

This is unrelated to gamers.
There are plenty non-gamers who think like this.
There are plenty of gamers who don't.
This is just a subset of people.

It's not just games anymore. Hence all the chuds losing their minds about "The Odyssey".

That's conservative logic, not gamer logic. Some rather loud and obvious conservatives happen to be gamers. I know plenty of gamers that are extremely progressive.

~~Gamer~~ Right winger

dont direct the blame toward gamers, direct the blame toward conservatives, whose views these actually are

I play video games, but my "identity" as a "gamer" is not important enough to me to care about defending the label.

If someone says "gamers are trash," you either know exactly the type of person they're talking about, or you are the type of person they're taking about.

I have no desire to argue "well I'm a gamer and I'm not like those people" because I don't give a damn about the "sanctity" of such an arbitrary label. Also, not only are there tons of toxic gamers who are guilty of all the -isms, but there are also a lot of gamers who are all-to-eager to minimize the shitty actions of the former group and I don't want to be associated with them either.

"That's just how online gaming is" or "You think that's bad? You should've seen call of duty lobbies back in the day" are common refrains from people who may not be hyper-toxic themselves, but they're completely adjusted to bigotry being the status quo for the hobby and they don't even see it as a problem to be corrected.

Also, I'm white. Seeing people criticize racism in gamer culture and jumping to the defense of the label as if that's the problem feels very on brand for the way that white people tend to prioritize things. The bigotry is a much bigger problem than my "right" to call myself a gamer without the extra baggage. It feels a bit like still trying to defend twitter. I play video games, but yes, gamers are trash.

i don't want colored folks in my historically accurate game about dragons and wizards!!!

Some conservatives play games.

They do not constitute gamers as a whole.

Now, did Epstein help orchestrate gamergate and the rightwing ideology into gaming spaces on reddit and 4chan? Absolutely. I mean, look at Asmongold and his botted audience full of non-white, self-hating, conservative, cuck, MAGA, often non-American "gamers."

I, for one, have found many welcoming communities and lifelong friends through gaming who couldn't be further from these ideologies.

But, just as you have billionaire tech idiots who misinterpet scifi, purposefully or not, you also have gamers who try and claim that gaming, and art as a whole, isn't political. Or if it is, it's woke. And I can't understand how they can lead such an unexamined, non-self-reflective life other than that they really are just...less intelligent. Which, apparently the pinhead Marc Andreessen himself says he never does any self reflection so...guess that tracks.

I'm sure some of them out there have said things like Wolfenstein are woke cause you kill nazis. And they're anti-antifa after all. Or because a black woman becomes a leader. Take your pick, if they were smart enough to read between the lines it's just as woke as Superman to them. Can't have empathy, only selfishness under neoliberal capitalism.

But, for those of us that love to understand the references and message art is trying to tell, I mentioned Wolfenstein and I love video game essays on the topics, so here are two. One showing how fucking weird and batshit insane the Nazis were (dyk: they believed the Aryans race was descended from the moon) and another going into just how comfortable the Nazis would be in America, almost like they idolized America or something...oh wait. I'm sure that's not topical at all right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QydfhmIy9pw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIIglIWwwj0

To me, growing up with gaming, I've always felt that gaming has been a microcosm for society at large, often experiencing some of the same cycles just earlier and at a more rapid pace. Gamergate and mainstreaming rightwing bullshit, microtransactions, live services, an all digital future where you own nothing.

We've got rightoids here in gaming unfortunately. There's unintelligent people in most walks of life. Don't be afraid to call them out on their BS and emasculate them. A trick white leftist men should learn is to use your privilege to amplify the voices of those without. Because boy howdy, nothing is more submissive than a conservative white man to another, more dominant white man. What point is there to privilege if not to use it to lift others up? Honestly, that's the most "manly" thing to do, use your strength to protect and embolden others and as someone in a white body in this society we have a lot of power that we often don't even recognize just within conversation. Shut those fuckers down and they'll turn tail when they can't "master debate" their way out. Gosh knows I've done that here and I'm pretty sure that's why I was on the Tesseract list.

Eject those fuckers from society, shame them into the shadows where they belong so gaming and its wonderfully diverse creators and communities can flourish. Gaming has always been a refuge for those of us that have been outcast, all the way back to the days of tabletop. Just look at the "satanic panic" and how we were conjuring up demons because we wanted to have fun with our friends and use our imaginations together. Anything that might break the status quo, oh no, can't let that stand. They might be talking about things like equal rights, or fighting against corrupt governments and politicians in their political intrigue plotlines! Don't let the fact that it's being mainstreamed allow us to assimilate to their ideologies. Just like we're seeing with the massive backlash towards Sony and ending physical media. Keep the fight going. Amplify the good voices and stomp out the conservative and corporate controlled voices. We're gamers, we should know how to solve puzzles, how to keep fighting and defeat insurmountable odds. How many times have we fought gods after just leaving town after fighting rats in a tavern the week before?

Sorry for the long rant, I'm feeling that revolutionary fervor more and more each day lol.

Do you realize that you're currently doing precisely what you're trying to mock? — Discriminating and generalizing a group of people based on their hobby.

playing Dark Souls 3

EVERY time a female character, npc, or even artwork appears

without fail

message on the ground

woman therefore beating to a pulp required ahead

200+ likes

I feel like there's a lot of white dudes in here that are like "what do you mean? I've found it so easy to avoid the toxic minority of chuds. Must be a you-problem? If anything, YOU'RE discriminating against ME by bringing this up."

Don't forget:

"conventionally attractive" and "ugly and woke"

It is a very offensive and exaggerated meme for the gaming community, by the way.

The only way to make a game with brown people or queer people in it is to have made it more than 10 years ago. New thing = woke. Old thing = not woke.

I think it's undeniable there are a lot of very stupid people, and many of them are loud gamers.

One of the problems is humans are social creatures. Facts don't change minds. In-group pressure changes minds. (And sometimes horrific trauma, but only sometimes*). The typical person, confronted with an idea that contradicts a non-trivial belief, will evaluate primarily if the person presenting the belief is in-group. The same kind of message delivered by different people has very different outcomes.

With the Internet, idiots and assholes can find their own social groups to reinforce their shitty beliefs.

If we want to fix this, we'd have to do the long, expensive, and thankless work of getting them to see us as in-group, and getting them to then adopt better ideas. Incidentally, that's how the right wing has been operating.

Laughing at them for being fucking morons is satisfying, but it's like picking at a scab. It's not going to heal.

Is this about chess?