I didn't reach fascism but I stuck around for a while because I was a privileged kid who really only had videogames in my life.
"Why the hell were these sjw's so bothered by this? Literally all I did was exist and somehow everything is my fault?"
Is what I would tell myself. Basically with no knowledge of how to separate myself from these critiques I really felt like I was being told to internalize those criticisms, and I rejected that. I knew not to be shitty towards women, so what harm was it if I I played these games? To me it felt like the "videogames cause violence" panic.
After a while I started to realize something felt off and my mind opened up a bit. For one thing, it was seeing brazenly transphobic rhetoric that gave me an "are we the baddies" vibe. Like it never made sense to me why people could be so shitty to trans people, when trans people just wanted to go about their lives.
Anyways It took a few years of being around women more and listening in to their discussions (also there were some good Reddit posts, like one that explained toxic masculinity did not mean all men are inherently bad) which got me to realize GG was this giant self-sustaining bastion of ignorance that I had naturally taken to.
I didn't reach fascism but I stuck around for a while because I was a privileged kid who really only had videogames in my life.
"Why the hell were these sjw's so bothered by this? Literally all I did was exist and somehow everything is my fault?"
Is what I would tell myself. Basically with no knowledge of how to separate myself from these critiques I really felt like I was being told to internalize those criticisms, and I rejected that. I knew not to be shitty towards women, so what harm was it if I I played these games? To me it felt like the "videogames cause violence" panic.
After a while I started to realize something felt off and my mind opened up a bit. For one thing, it was seeing brazenly transphobic rhetoric that gave me an "are we the baddies" vibe. Like it never made sense to me why people could be so shitty to trans people, when trans people just wanted to go about their lives.
Anyways It took a few years of being around women more and listening in to their discussions (also there were some good Reddit posts, like one that explained toxic masculinity did not mean all men are inherently bad) which got me to realize GG was this giant self-sustaining bastion of ignorance that I had naturally taken to.