• SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    22 days ago

    There's an argument to be made that GG was responsible for neo-fascism blooming in the west. In the very least it was a big push to getting Trump elected and establishing the alt-right.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      22 days ago

      I will make that argument. I was there, Gandalf, 3,000 years ago, when the strength of gamers fail. Looking back, we were 150% watching white male gamers being radicalized in to neo-fascism, but I at least didn't recognize the scope or importance of what was happening.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
        ·
        22 days ago

        Me too. I watched all the ingredients for an embarrassingly nerdy but still dangerous beer hall putsch mix together and form a fascist brew in real time.

        Show

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        ·
        22 days ago

        It's not a very unpopular argument, Steve Bannon even had his part in G*merGate.

    • jaywalker [they/them, any]
      ·
      22 days ago

      Even if GG isn't responsible, Bannon and others like him were absolutely trying to spread fascism through gamer outrage well before GG really started

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
        ·
        22 days ago

        Bannon's goldfarming business on World of Warcraft, by his own admission, gave him many of his pre-a-little-trolling regime political front ideas: specifically, that freeze-gamer were a bunch of easily led, credulous assholes just waiting for something to rally behind.

    • LanyrdSkynrd [comrade/them, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      22 days ago

      It says something about the state of America that you can't get people to care about politics by talking about health care, mass incarceration, housing prices, etc. But tell them woke is why vidja games are bad and they're ready to go for fascism.

      • Adkml [he/him]
        ·
        22 days ago

        Especially wild when the downfall of gaming is a ham fisted example of the natural conclusion of capitalism.

        Turns out when giant corporations just try to charge you a subscription for the same thing every year instead of improving or developing the product because Gamers pre order every piece of shit they wrap in foil paper you get shitty over priced cookie cutter games.

        Clearly what would solve that is being more racist.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      22 days ago

      The "nothing ever happens, propaganda has no effect on me" head-in-grounders crowd has claimed that freeze-gamer gate had zero influence on the election, but it was a squeaker, and even an upset for many in the ruling class that actually did put their money and expectations behind hillgasm . A nudge was enough.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        22 days ago

        And beyond that it's created a persistent, ongoing cultural shift in how media is viewed and evaluated. And it was 10 years ago, a lot of those gamegaters who were teenagers and young adults are edging in to their 30s, in to real big kid jobs where they have some degree of influence.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          22 days ago

          And it was 10 years ago, a lot of those gamegaters who were teenagers and young adults are edging in to their 30s, in to real big kid jobs where they have some degree of influence.

          And some are old enough to already be very, very divorced, and it shows, now shepherding the next generation into following them. heated-gamer-moment

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            ·
            22 days ago

            Reactionaries hated The Last Jedi because feeemale and political us-foreign-policy

            I hated The Last Jedi because Rian Johnson can make an entertaining whodunit movie, but "hehe GOTCHA! AGAIN!" is obnoxious and tiresome and out of place in the Star Wars franchise.

            We are not the same.

            • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
              ·
              22 days ago

              Walking out of the theater my opinion was just a resounding "blah" and in conjunction with Rogue One it killed my interest in seeing any more new Star Wars stuff

              • UlyssesT [he/him]
                ·
                22 days ago

                He couldn't even stay with his gotchas. "Oh the ancient texts are now destroyed GOTCHA no they're fine," for example.

                "Oh wow maybe Rey will join with Kylo after all NOPE GOTCHA" and so on and so on.

                • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
                  ·
                  22 days ago

                  Yeah, those were the more interesting bits but then those were just walked back or resolved before the movie was even over

                  Then you had the insanely convoluted hyperdrive chase premise forming the backbone of the entire movie, the sidequest casino planet and the movie's opening cutting from yo momma jokes to characters sacrificing themselves

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    22 days ago

                    There's a subset of the Star Wars fandom that assumes you're stupid if you didn't find all those gotchas and subversions le smart and therefore le good. It's the old liberals versus chuds thing, mostly, tough I'm sure some leftists also believe it to stick it to the chuds (and the treat critics).

                  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
                    ·
                    22 days ago

                    That whole chase made no sense, the First Order could've sent a bunch of fighters to attack them, since they'd be much faster than the capital ships they were chasing, or just send in ships from other nearby systems to intercept them (unless their entire fleet was chasing them, which'd be nonsensical in its own way).

                    At least there was great dialog like ”We are the spark that'll light the fire that'll burn the First Order down” amerikkka-clap

                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                      ·
                      22 days ago

                      ”We are the spark that'll light the fire that'll burn the First Order down”

                      POWER OF ONE 🍷 maybe-later-kiddo

                      POWER OF TWO maybe-later-honey 🍷🍷 maybe-later-kiddo

                      POWER OF MAAAAAAAAAANYYYYYYY maybe-later-honey 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 maybe-later-kiddo

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]
                    ·
                    22 days ago

                    "Oh Luke is about to confront Kylo GOTCHA he's just sending an illusion and he wasn't just killed OH GOTCHA he died because sending that illusion made him too tired or something. Enjoy your gradually fading and somehow now very important symbolic ghost dice, Kylo!"

            • Comp4 [comrade/them]
              ·
              edit-2
              22 days ago

              I gave the new trilogy a fair shot. It was just not very good sadly. (Blue haired women had nothing to do with that though)

              • UlyssesT [he/him]
                ·
                22 days ago

                They all sucked and the worst part was the back and forth narrative slapfight between Abrams and Johnson that lead from the thesis-antithesis of the first two to the clownish synthesis of the third and worst one of all.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          22 days ago

          Trump is no more a fascist than Biden

          berdly-actually 99% Hitler is still mathematically different than 100% Hitler.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              ·
              22 days ago

              Biden has killed like eight times the amount of people

              Explain what you mean with this. I have no idea what you're referring to.

              • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                ·
                22 days ago

                Ukraine war and Palestinian genocide are both on Biden, and more people died of Covid under Biden than Trump

                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  22 days ago

                  Maybe the numbers do add up there. Well, shit.

                  That doesn't make them equally Hitler, then. Makes one more accomplished as a Hitler, while one is more obnoxious, sloppy, and directly incompetent as a leader (which is arguably more like Hitler anyway under some metrics).

                  • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    22 days ago

                    my point is that America didn't just recently "become fascist" through some gamer social reactionary tantrum. America has always been a fascist state and was doing medical experiments on black people against their will and running slave penal colonies for hundreds of years. Westerners really don't understand that America didn't just "become fascist" it IS fascist at its core and always has been, and stuff like Gamergate are just tiny symptoms not causes

                    I really don't like it when people try to blame everything on Trumpism and act like it's an anomaly and we were less fascist beforehand. It's even done here, and in the "99% hitler vs 100% hitler" memes. Hitler was 50% as fascist as America. We are worse and more successful at being evil and fascist. Hitler looked to us for inspiration and failed to reach our level.

                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                      ·
                      22 days ago

                      I didn't say it was a solitary movement in a vaccuum with no precedent; I said it was a nudge further into a new development beyond what was already there.

                      • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        22 days ago

                        There's an argument to be made that GG was responsible for neo-fascism blooming in the west.

                        This comment from SorosFootSoldier was the one I primarily took issue with. Naive, idealist and really lib-coded comment if you ask me, and then you adding on agreeing and saying that GG caused Trump (which caused Fascism) is what made me mention how silly this entire "analysis" was. Biden is equally as fascist as Trump, all the anti-GG libs who are now zionists are equally as much fascists as their GG counterparts (See: Brianna Wu)

                        • UlyssesT [he/him]
                          ·
                          22 days ago

                          I wasn't going there myself. These things are intersectional, connected, and while they don't start in a vacuum, they also don't have singular exclusive causes or influences.

                          Like if someone just barks "material conditions" and completely ignores the effect of propaganda, they are clearly missing the difference between people of roughly the same economic conditions where one group has many more members that decide to embrace fascism than the other group. not-immune-to-propaganda

                          • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            22 days ago

                            at some point you are going to need to reconcile with reality that some gamers getting mad about boobies online and harassing some journalists is absolutely nothing in the world historical scale. You also can't respond to the "anti-fascist" anti-GG side becoming all pro-genocide libs now who are also fascists.

                            I wasn't just saying "material conditions" I'm pointing out exactly how both of your analysis is flawed because its saying that we became fascist or became more fascist, which never happened.

                            • UlyssesT [he/him]
                              ·
                              22 days ago

                              is absolutely nothing in the world historical scale

                              Sometimes a nudge is just that: a nudge.

                              Something can be small but outright dismissing it as nothing approaches thought-termination instead of analysis.

                              • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                                ·
                                22 days ago

                                a nudge towards WHAT?!? TRUMP = BIDEN. They are the same. They nudged nothing nowhere, America went from 100% fascist to 100% fascist.

                                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                  ·
                                  edit-2
                                  22 days ago

                                  a nudge towards WHAT?!? TRUMP = BIDEN

                                  6-3 decisions on the Supreme Court are directly worsening already bad material conditions for most people now living in the United States. A slow decay versus a fast decay is still a difference.

                                  Again, chanting about absolute equivalencies is just sounding downright dismissive and hostile right now. You're not even really doing analysis at this point, just being really mad at people.

                                  EDIT: Adding in what I meant by that.

                                  What I was getting at is that the razon-thin margins (that even surprised the ruling class backers of the Clinton campaign) of Trump's victory meant that even small nudges of further interest and commitment to his cause were enough to secure him four years of court appointments. Judges in the US were already bad, but a lot of shifts in the court chemistry made a lot of once-unimaginable shifts in ruling precedent happen with, yes, 6-3 rulings for the most part up to the present day.

                                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                      ·
                                      edit-2
                                      22 days ago

                                      No.

                                      I'll answer in good faith even though the "lmaaaaaaoooo" thing suggests you're not offering me the same first.

                                      What I was getting at is that the razon-thin margins (that even surprised the ruling class backers of the Clinton campaign) of Trump's victory meant that even small nudges of further interest and commitment to his cause were enough to secure him four years of court appointments. Judges in the US were already bad, but a lot of shifts in the court chemistry made a lot of once-unimaginable shifts in ruling precedent happen with, yes, 6-3 rulings for the most part up to the present day.

                                        • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                          ·
                                          22 days ago

                                          I can just as easily claim gamergate was a nudge against Trump, by spawning a large number of more politically motivated left-liberals and leftists as it increased the political radicalization of people in general. There were a lot fewer people who identified as socialists or communists or left-liberals before it. Righties would've voted Trump anyway, GG or not. Lefties who wouldn't normally vote, started to participate because of the "Trump bad" fear.

                                          That sounds like more nudges, yes. Not all have to be in one direction, and they can do different things all at the same time.

                                          See? Another vague reasonable claim that can also be true.

                                          Are you going anywhere else with this? Being really mad at me is fine but if this is going to be a last word game about that, I already want out.

                                            • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                              ·
                                              22 days ago

                                              So to answer my question, no, you have nothing else to say except repeating yourself over and over again with even more anger.

                                              You can at least let your ten day old account age a little before going all-in on that sort of thing, you know.

                                                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                                  ·
                                                  22 days ago

                                                  Just about your entire post history is "not mad, lmao" posting toward me so far, 10 day old account.

                                                  Continue if you wish. "lmao."

                                                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                                      ·
                                                      edit-2
                                                      22 days ago

                                                      I said I wanted out. I had more to say after your "not mad, lmao" reply. I didn't say I disengaged yet.

                                                      Also, since I'm new here

                                                      Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

                                  • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                                    ·
                                    22 days ago

                                    i mean just come out and say you are a lesser evil electoralist and you support the DNC if that's what you're getting at

                                    • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                      ·
                                      22 days ago

                                      No.

                                      If you're going to conjure piles of straw, set them ablaze, then scream at them while cursing my name, I think this conversation has run its course.

                                      • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                                        ·
                                        edit-2
                                        22 days ago

                                        Your entire argument is that GG made the US fascist, and putting in red fascist judges instead of blue fascist judges is a huge thing we should care about. You westerners really just don't understand how evil ALL of your politicians are, going from one piece of shit to another isn't a huge terrible apocalypse it's business as usual

                                        • UlyssesT [he/him]
                                          ·
                                          22 days ago

                                          I suppose you didn't get the hint. I'll have to say it directly.

                                          I'm disengaging.

                                          • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                                            ·
                                            22 days ago

                                            I think it’s all just theater anyway and it doesn’t matter, the fascist uniparty of war will continue onwards either way.

                                            Just funny to see a place with a bunch of Marxists upvote such idealist hyperventilating lib nonsense like “GG literally caused the west to become fascist” which is so disconnected from history and reality and any materialist lens that it becomes absurd

                • Adkml [he/him]
                  ·
                  22 days ago

                  Fuck Biden but the reason more people died under Biden is because Trump literally encouraged the spread of it with culture war bullshit until thousands of people were dying every day at the start of bidens term.

                  Fuck him and he didn't do shit to stop it but getting a car up to 100 mph, jumping out of the drivers door and then blaming the person who grabbed the wheel for the crash seems shitty, even if the person that grabbed the wheel dumped it straight into the ditch.

                  I hate Biden and don't think he's any better than Trump but I think there's a bit of a tendency to overcorrect and act like Trump actually isn't that bad, which even if its lib shit the orange man is in fact bad.

                  • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    22 days ago

                    stop using nonsensical metaphors to understand reality. Look at concrete actions and results of those actions.

                    Biden is perpetrating a genocide right now against Palestinians, and started a war against Russia that has claimed over a million lives. Biden's policies if he were president in 2020 would be roughly identical to Trump's policies, and even less people would follow guidelines because there wouldn't be an anti-Trump culture war to make Liberals want to wear masks to show their moral virtues. Covid would have been swept under the rug even more quietly, with less pushback from the population.

                    It's not that Trump is "better", that's not the point. The point is countering the radlib tendency among the left to overly freak out about "Trumpism" and "Fascism" as if it's some anomaly and every blame can be placed on Trump's shoulders. He's the scapegoat, and when you repeat this kind of naive idealist analysis that could only be done by like a 20-year old or younger, you are playing into the DNC narrative of Trumpwashing. THAT is the reason more hardline leftists downplay Trump being to blame for everything, because the squishy radlib left are trying to place all the blame on GOP/Trump, which is a narrative being fed to them by the DNC.

                    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                      ·
                      22 days ago

                      stop using nonsensical metaphors to understand reality. Look at concrete actions and results of those actions.

                      Their metaphor was pretty solid. Trump created the conditions for Covid that Biden inherited and didn't fix. It was a group effort to slaughter all those people, even though most of them died once Biden took over just due to timing.

                    • Adkml [he/him]
                      ·
                      20 days ago

                      That's a pretty one to one metaphor. I literally started the comment with "fuck biden" I'm not trying to carry water from him.

                      I agree the dems aren't better on any foreign policy issues and are trying to outland the chuds from the right on immigration but complaining that people are "try8ng to counter the tendency to freak out about fascism" is bad and is exactly what libs did for a year when they said everybody has to repect the office of president and people were being dramatic when they called Trump and Republicans fascist.

                      I live in a really rural area of a supposedly progressive state. There's half a dozen houses within a 30 minute drive of me proudly advertising they're ready to start rounding up anybody who doesn't support Trump. I'm not worried about "overstaying the threat of fasicsm"

                      Historically that's how fascism gets into power.

                      There's definitely a tendency to go past "the dems are also fascist" which I agree with into "the dems are actually worse than republicans" which is dangerous.

                      Democrats never proudly tell me how they'd like to burn down any house with a gay pride flag on it. I worked for a chud designing septic systems. He'd always talk about how we'll build the septic system above the well of any gay people or democrats so their water would be poisoned and they'd die.

                      • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                        ·
                        20 days ago

                        Libs weren’t respecting the office, they were freaking out and screaming fascism the entire 4 years. You and I have a very different recollection of events

                        • Adkml [he/him]
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          20 days ago

                          You're drawing a line between radlibs and libs.

                          All the elected officials were talking about how it deligitimizes claims of fascism to call them that meanwhile you had Goodwin coming out and saying his rule didn't apply.

                          Standard libs were still in the "when they go low we go high" mindset at the beginning and I've been saying for years the civility fetishist were getting them all killed.

                          I guess you're right we do have very different experiences except I know for a fact mine reflects reality sooo....

                          • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            20 days ago

                            incorrect, especially after January 6th and Charlottesville. Democrat elected officials were calling Trump a traitor, a Russian asset, a fascist, a dictator, saying he was going to destroy democracy. Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Bernie Sanders, all of them were and continue to say this hyperventilating nonsense. They were actually saying the words "concentration camps" at the border, which suddenly became fine once Biden got into office btw. The fascism is alive and well, as always.

                            Goodwin's Law is that comparisons to Nazis are not apt, him coming and out and saying it didn't apply was him saying it was fair game to call Trump a Nazi. This is another example of the hyperventilation. Bill Maher was having 1 hour specials about how Trump was alt right and fascist. MSNBC and Maddow are on the RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA express, and have called Trump an open traitor many many times who threatens democracy and all that.

                            Go listen to the podjons pods during the trump years, it was all hands on deck this is a fucking emergency for democracy 24/7 insanity the whole time. They were freaking the fuck out calling him a fascist and more.

                            I guess you're right we do have very different experiences except I know for a fact mine reflects reality sooo....

                            You could have not just said this smug passive aggressive horseshit. In fact, mine reflects reality and yours is only talking about centrist republicans.

                            • Adkml [he/him]
                              ·
                              20 days ago

                              K. guess it's just different lived experiences

                              • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                                ·
                                20 days ago

                                bill maher, pelosi, schiff, schumer, maddow, MSNBC aren't "lived experiences"

                                they are official party propaganda outlets that explicitly pushed these narratives, it's not a matter of opinion.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              ·
              22 days ago

              Pretty damn close, yeah, and only shifting in hitler-detector amounts categorically here and there.

    • Riffraffintheroom [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      22 days ago

      One thing that struck me about the Jan 6 riot is that, especially compared to the 2017 unite the right rally, everyone was fucking old. My read on that is that Facebook and it’s corresponding propaganda style has been much more fertile ground for activating reactionaries IRL than 4chan and Reddit has. There’s definitely millions and millions of gamer chuds, but they seem over represented online and underrepresented in voting booths, protests and riots

      • Adkml [he/him]
        ·
        22 days ago

        Yea the downside of trying to specifically radicalized antisocial NEETs is that they're pretty useless at anything other than calling people slurs from the safety of their troll cave.

    • GVAGUY3 [he/him]
      ·
      22 days ago

      I think it helped create a formula for right wing radicalization.