There is something incredibly perverse and funny seeing the pronounjak crowd appropriate left-wing activist language and slogans and applying them to their culture war talking point du jour

spoiler

If you have don't have any clue what this word salad is, Sweet Baby inc is some video game story consultancy firm that gamers have decided is reaponsible for making every character gay, trans and ugly. Someone started a curated Steam collection for games they've worked on so freeze-gamers can boycott them

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      ·
      7 months ago

      a classic Gamergate Moment was when notorious anti-video game culture warrior and disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson came out against Anita Sarkeesian and they immediately ate it up. Ridiculous people.

      • ashinadash [she/her]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Maaan remember when Jack Thompson was the bad guy cuz he wanted to ban GTA San Andreas over the hot coffee thing or whatever?

    • Wheaties [she/her]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Yes! The internet has altered the phenomenon a little, though. Today's panics have the nationwide presence, but no longer hold as much space in the national consciousness. So, instead of everyone being aware that there's An Outrage over jazz or Elvis Presley or D&D or heavy metal or 'satanic' preschools or M rated games, it's just pockets of people - smattered across the anglosphere, yet networked together - who are deeply outraged. Everyone who isn't immediately the target is kinda oblivious.

      There's your perennial capital-gee :freeze-gamer: outrage, a near inexhaustible eddy of consumerist vitriol with nearly no understanding of the labor or processes that go into production (thank god for Stephanie Sterling, doing the lord's work). There's also a running effort to ban books from [and/or] outright dismantle the public library system. Mostly driven by older crowd, disseminated through facebook groups and preacher pulpits. Whole lotta transphobia and homophobia there, plus the usual pear-clutching over sex-ed. A few months back there was a "zombie outbreak" style panic over a test of the national alert system. Just a decade ago, that was the kind of thing you'd hear jokes about on the radio. Today, you have to be either in the panic or actively spectating it to even hear about it.

      I'm sure there's more i'm just not aware of.

      • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        But these 4chan/gamer types are just so incoherent. They're all terminally hentai-brained perverts who crave and love all kinds of filth, like most of their outrage is specifically about video game ladies not being sexy enough for them to jack off to, but then also parrot this Pat Robertson-style conservative Christian pearl clutching culture war shit

        Like which one is it, pick a fucking lane

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          7 months ago

          It's what happens when a bunch of turbonerd reddit atheist types fall for the gamergate stuff and then fall in line behind the Ben Shapiros and Kermits of the world. People who pride themselves on being "free thinkers" but actually only want to feel smug and hate some imaginary enemy, which conservative Christianity is perfect for.

          So you get this weird thing where they pearl clutch like a conservative Christian about the "downfall of society" but still have all their edgy redditor ideas about women being sex objects. So they pearl clutch anytime they see a woman in fiction that isn't like the ones in their hentai.

        • Wheaties [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          ¿Por qué no ambos?

          They're conservative Christians (and "atheists" who've never reexamined their own protestant assumptions), angry that it's not socially acceptable to treat women as things and even more angry that the popular escapist toys don't pander to their desire to treat women as things in fictional spaces.

          • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
            hexagon
            ·
            edit-2
            7 months ago

            It's just funny that the people who campaigned against Dungeons & Dragons, heavy metal, horror movies and pornography AND the nerds who liked those things are now in the same camp politically

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      What makes this extremely bizarre is that you can guarantee that 99% of these people grew up playing violent video games, watched family guy or South Park or horror and action movies when they weren’t allowed, and probably browse the gore and violence and crudeness of 4chan or related sites and accounts.

      They’ve simultaneously become more fascist while also artificially disliking the shit they once enjoyed, not out of maturity or natural disinterest, but because the unironic AVGNs on YouTube told them it’s not traditional family values. Dudes who are 35, at best, pretending to be mature old men. It’s not different than a child who sits at the adult table and pretend to be sophisticated by nodding his head along with the adults. But none of them are adults, they’re all the same age or younger