Big question: Why have alienated young men, especially in America, found their home in the populist political right? Part of the answer is that the populist right takes video games seriously.
Mind the gap: Games have typically been treated as a bit of a joke by wider society. Long-held stereotypes about games being worthless, provoking violence or turning players into addicts has created a gap between the experience of the millions who play games and the perception of the medium in wider society.
The art of persuasion: For most of us who love games, our way of dealing with this problem has been to try to change minds. We’ve talked about games as an economic powerhouse. We’ve argued that games have cultural power. And we’ve sought to support research that’s provided a level-headed perspective on whether games make people aggressive (they don’t) or if they negatively affect mental health (again, a pretty firm nope).
Tunnelling down: But others reacted differently. A small number of ‘always online’ ‘transgressive’ young men, especially in America, have seen the rejection of games in liberal democratic culture as part of a wider betrayal of their personal and political identity.
Worrying development: And according to James Ball, Political Editor at The New European and author of The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World, those disaffected people have successfully been courted by the populist right and authoritarian governments - fuelling their causes with activism and energy that is helping dismantle the liberal order.
This is an incredibly stupid attempt to bring games into a situation or is not involved in at all.
Young men have been driven right because a portion of the left have been really bad with their messaging and like to generalize a bit much about men being the source of social problems, despite young men being just as much victims to the billionaires who have been buying up our politicians to undermine our rights for decades. Society still has an outsized expectation for men to be the providers, despite women overtaking them in college degrees allowing them to often earn more.
The right wing preying on these ostracized people who often frequent gaming communities isn’t them taking gaming seriously. It’s them recognizing a hunting ground for manipulatable desperate people who want some kind of change.
the rejection of games in liberal democratic culture
The fucking what? I’m sorry but in my experience playing video games since literally before I could read (Pokemon Yellow was a real struggle for me) the only people who have discouraged my passion for it are the conservative fucking boomers, and absolutely no one else.
The older I get the more gaming has become a legitimate hobby, accepted by more and more people. Older generations have accepted it as a much slower pace, but it’s still happening. The victimhood that these incels perceive is entirely self-imposed.
Yup. The author is juuuuust missed in identifying the issue. The alt-right doesn’t take gaming, or gamers, seriously. But they do see angry young men as recruitment targets, and understand that a lot of gamers are much, much bigger losers than most of us imagine, and that they have a lot of pent up anger at not being taken seriously.
The basement dwelling CHUDs don’t realize that Bannon’s brigade is laughing at them whenever they’re not in the room. They’re just that desperate for any kind of attention and validation, even if it’s painfully disingenuous.
Big difference between Neo-Cons and the alt-right, though.
This is possibly the stupidest thing ever written by someone who is not a Lemmy dev.
It’s so frustrating to see so many comments doing exactly what the post is pointing out, either deriding games as a medium, or “gamers” as some monolithic group of disaffected young men.
Games are a medium, same as books, movies, or tv. They can convey any message, and yes, many games do have Progressive (or even Leftist, see Disco Elysium) themes. But unlike TV, books, and movies, where there is a constant stream of political interaction from both Left and Right wings’ political apparatuses, there aren’t really a lot of Leftist political entities attempting to reach young men via videogames.
Name one Left-wing gaming influencer apart from Hasanbi (who it should be pointed out, many Democrats tend to hate on). I can list off at least 3 different right-wing ones off the top of my head (JonTron, Asmongold, Dr Disrespect), and I don’t inhabit those spaces, so I’m only going off the biggest names. And that’s not even beginning to get into the gaming-adjacent Rightwing influencers who those gaming influencers direct their fans to.
It’s a pipeline, and we don’t have one on the Left.
I remember the first time AOC played Among Us, and it was a huge deal for us on the Left, because it was possibly the very first time we’d seen a Democratic politician actually engage with games publicly.
Gaming is literally the largest entertainment medium now by a large margin (yes, larger than movies and tv), but we don’t see politicians putting out lists of games to play like they do books or movies. Instead, most times we see an article about a Democratic politician somewhere like Kotaku, it’s often because they’re trying to blame video games for something.
So instead we have largely ceded the gaming sphere (not the games themselves, but the areas of discussion around gaming) to the Right. They pull in disaffected young men, tell them women and ‘wokies’ are the reason for their problems, and then hand them off to overtly political folks who transform that general disaffection into right-wing political capital.
My immediate thought of leftist/progressive gaming influencers was F1nn5ter. I’m not really into that circle of content creation though.
I don’t inhabit those spaces, so I’m only going off the biggest names.
Obviously. The list you rattled off looks like you did a Google or YouTube search on “gaming influencer” and picked a few random names. Don’t spout off uneducated opinions about subjects you don’t know anything about.
Rich people tend to lean right. Is this the lesson you’re trying to illustrate here?
Obviously. The list you rattled off looks like you did a Google or YouTube search on “gaming influencer” and picked a few random names.
I didn’t Google for those, they were, as I said, the ones I do know.
Don’t spout off uneducated opinions about subjects you don’t know anything about.
I know quite a lot about the gaming space. That doesn’t require me to go look up every middling alt-right YTer or streamer.
If you have an actual take on what I posted, apart from my rw examples being too well-known or something, feel free to post it.
I thought it wasn’t necessarily due to a lack of attempt to reach them through games, but that they saw “woke” as a reason for why games or movies turned out bad.
So not necessarily a hey fellow kids we play games too, but outrage over the medium they like flopping or not turning out how they wanted.
Like the amount of right wing reviewers for Star Wars and so on blaming woke targetting for why their franchises turned bad, and turning it into a culture war.
they saw “woke” as a reason for why games or movies turned out bad
This only became a thing after the pipeline was established. This rhetoric is what the pipeline feeds them.
I remember seeing JonTron videos back in 2011, well before the 2015 gamergate era. Even back then he’d make offhand remarks about how tough it was being White, how badly women treat men, etc. Gamergate in 2015 largely caught the notice of the Right’s political apparatus, and they saw the opportunity to convert the casual misogyny and racism into feeders for their political machine. “Woke” didn’t really become a right-wing attack in the gaming and movie spheres until pretty recently.
I remember seeing JonTron videos back in 2011, well before the 2015 gamergate era. Even back then he’d make offhand remarks about how tough it was being White, how badly women treat men, etc.
You seem to mistake cause and effect. JonTron was an racist and misogynistic asshole because that’s who he was. He wasn’t doing that because he was trying to tap into some kind of audience as a trick.
And he has been largely forgotten because of his behavior and image. People ditched him and moved on. GameGrumps cut him out a long time ago.
“Woke” didn’t really become a right-wing attack in the gaming and movie spheres until pretty recently.
Even before that, there was this whole corporate wokeness marketing trope that really drove the concept into the ground, like Popular Movie But Female and adopting it as a business strategy. It’s like kids all running with this popular meme, only for parents to sudden adopt it and it’s not cool any more. So, right-wing spheres to pick it off of the ground, dust it off, and just carry that energy forward, which is unfortunately what they are good at. Leftists are shit at messaging. Like, really really shit at messaging.
And now, you can’t even tell if people are being critical of “wokeness” as a right-wing attack or as a response to corporate synergy marketing bullshit. Because the latter might actually be a good argument, but it’s so abused that most just now assume the former.
I think you’ve mixed up the timeline in my comment.
- Pre-gamergate era (2010-2014): channer-esque misogynists like JonTron are heavily popular on YT, but there is no political pipeline established. They are just voicing their own shitty thoughts, and their audience is almost exclusively young white males.
- Gamergate (2015): Right-wing politicians and shock pundits like Shapiro take notice of the large amount of misogynistic content that a lot of gaming YTers are spouting as GG gets national attentions, and think, “hey, those sound like people I can capture”.
- Early Alt-right pipeline (2015-2019): figures like Shapiro and Yiannopoulos start making content intended to target gamers, usually ‘shock’ videos with gamer-derived terms like “own” (the libs), and/or are interviewing right-wing-aligned gamer influencers, and the gamer->conservative voter pipeline is developing.
- Late Alt-right pipeline (2020-onwards): there are tons of right wing YTers, streamers, and talk-shows that target young white males, especially gamers, telling them that everything they dislike is due to ‘wokeism’, ‘DEI’, etc… you know the rest.
Even before that, there was this whole corporate wokeness marketing trope that really drove the concept into the ground
You’re using ‘woke’ unironically, in the way that the Right does. Neither of those things you posted are Woke, they’re just pandering. Woke means aware of the systemic biases in our social institutions. Your examples aren’t “wokeness”, they’re Feminist Capitalism (and Rainbow Capitalism also gets called ‘woke’ by the Right).
It’s like kids all running with this popular meme, only for parents to sudden adopt it and it’s not cool any more. So, right-wing spheres to pick it off of the ground, dust it off, and just carry that energy forward, which is unfortunately what they are good at.
No, that was never what wokeness was (and none of those companies ever called themselves that), it’s just that right-wingers started calling anything they didn’t like “woke”, despite their examples having nothing to do with wokeness.
Leftists are shit at messaging. Like, really really shit at messaging.
Leftists have great messaging. If you think messaging is a Leftist problem, I think you’ve confused Liberal, Progressive, and Leftist.
Woke became a simple label for people who blamed women and minorities for their entertainment not living up to their explanation. It became a label for them to use without specifically saying that they didn’t like depictions in the media they liked, which is a big reason they shy away from actually elaborating on what they mean by woke.
Steve fucking Bannon wanted exactly these kinds of men. He helped push the gamergate thing and wanted to cultivate a group that he called “rootless white men.” He utilized anger within the gaming community and focused it on right wing talking points, now that shit has spread like wildfire. Check any steam discussions forum for any reasonably popular game and you’re guaranteed to find a “is this game woke?” Thread or “stop with the fucking pronouns!”
I swear the Steam discussion threads for any new game have at least a couple chuds in there going “I can barely even see any labia through this character’s costume! When will this censorship madness end? Absolutely unplayable!” Like, dude. Some of us aren’t playing Stardew to jerk off to.
Maybe we’re in different spaces, but those kinds of sexist posts don’t usually do very well / don’t seem to gain much traction.
The steam discussion forums shouldn’t exist. Steam doesn’t want to moderate them and neither do the developers. Absolutely garbage feature.
Seriously lol monster hunter wilds was pretty frustrating with that shit… Like ok Olivia isn’t traditionally “hot” but wtf not every character in a game needs to be a supermodel for you to jerk to. I kinda like the strong woman theme anyway, she’s attractive in a different way.
Let’s not forget that Russia was playing both sides. As soon as GamerGate started, a bunch of games “journalists” all posted garbage articles like this, in the same day, pushing this shitty “gamers are now dead” message, fanning the flames even further and basically just pissing everybody off.
Sorry, I’m a gamer. I’m still alive, even ten years later. Gamers ain’t dead.
And then CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and the rest all ran with it to treat it like a horse race, which is exactly what the Russian experiment was trying to achieve.
Articles like this sound a lot like that garbage back then. Stirring shit in the wrong directions without proper context or thought, using dubious connection points.
Something I’ve noticed is how right wingers who “take games seriously” actually don’t.
They’ll create spreadsheets of games that are “woke” and then cut themselves off from engaging with those, never attempting to understand what this piece of art is, what it’s trying to say, or even just enjoying a fun game.
Attaching the labels of a ginned up culture war to games that you never cared about and wouldn’t have interacted with otherwise is not taking games seriously, it’s cheapening them both as art and experience.
You don’t need to take these people at their word. They have nothing worthwhile to say on this subject.
I think you’re misunderstanding what “taking games seriously” means in this instance.
The Right takes the political power of games seriously. They understand that games can be tactically used as an access route to young men, to influence their politics. They know that it is just another medium like TV or movies or books, and don’t eschew interacting with them for political purposes like Democrats traditionally have.
That’s why it was such a big deal when AOC played Among Us (and later, her and Walz streaming various games). It was a politician on the Left actually ‘deigning’ to interact with young people in a platform that they inhabit, and not belittling it.
The closest equivalent person we have on the Left to people like JonTron or other YTers who mix Right-wing talking points with games to draw young men into their pipeline, is Hasan, and Democrats treat him like he’s practically Ted Kaczynski in waiting.
All you need to notice is that the painfully politically neutral people making content about games (e.g mandalore) literally never mention this. Because that is a stale, pointless debate that never adds anything to a game’s analysis.
Premise is a bit silly isn’t it? Everyone talks about games nowadays, and progressive / woke themes are very popular, especially in the indie space.
Tbf, there’s also been a large online culture against those exact things in games - we live in a post GamerGate society, and there’s a frighteningly large online presence of “antiwoke” people ready to brigade any game they perceive as “woke”.
I mean, all you have to do is watch any new game’s discord, voice chat, or even Steam “curators” - there’s even a dang spreadsheet
I’d argue that this is a symptom, not the cause.
The real issue is that these guys are what most people would call “losers” who sit at home, isolated, playing video games and browsing the internet all day. The right noticed this and targeted them specifically with a bunch of propaganda telling them that it’s not their fault they’re losers, it’s the fault of the left, women, and immigrants.
I used to game with two guys who fall into this category, and over time, their language got more harsh and militant until I couldn’t take it anymore. They always had someone to blame like “SJWs” for their own personal decision to sit at home all day rather than work on their shortcomings. They expected attractive women to want then even though they’d do absolutely nothing to make themselves attractive to others. They’d have wild opinions on far-flung groups that they never actually interacted with personally since they’d cut themselves off from the real world. I saw Steve Bannon’s tactics playing out in real time in their words.
This was the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read.
Dudes a gamer and act like he doesn’t exist.
Just selling tickets to his d
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Huh I thought the right were blaming gamers for taking benefits from single mothers, the elderly and disabled.
"No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who’s duly owed—what we’ve talked about is returning work requirements, so, for example, you don’t have able-bodied young men on a program that’s designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled. They’re draining resources from people,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson last week.
“So if you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money, and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing videogames all day.”
Get back to work gamers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQLMo2A1ous
Men aren’t finding their home in the political right because of their love of videogames, they’re being manipulated by companies like Cambridge Analytica and losers that complain about not having sex on their weirdo podcasts
