• Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    The propaganda used in the gaming space is very similar to the propaganda used to agitate people against migrants. The right has recognised that gaming has had a specific type of audience for some time and is going through a sort of audience-change process as it grows. What they identified was that they could agitate among the audience that has already been in gaming for some time by posing those coming into the medium in the same way that migrants are posed, a force for bad that is changing their medium in a negative way that affects them.

    EDIT: Expanding on this, the freeze-gamer is essentially the agitated white man angry about the foreigners invading his country and taking his jerbs, except it's mildly changing things in videogames. Couple this with the fact the industry is getting worse due to the monetisation and corporatisation and the explanation for why everything is getting worse ends up being "the immigrants" instead of "the CEOs".

    I probably sound partially mad for making this comparison but w/e it makes sense in my head. Most tactics the right uses are modifications of existing tactics.

    • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago

      You aren't crazy. A lot of the Alt-Right intelligentsia cut their teeth on Gamergate, and would translate that experience to 2016 and beyond.