Our old friend over at the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog is angry again. This time he’s mad at a legitimate target: National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre. But not because LaPierre is the head of an organization that has stood athwart every attempt at sensible gun control, making tragedies like the one in Newtown an all-too-predictable side effect of the easy availability of semiautomatic weaponry.
No, Mr. Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech is made at LaPierre because he thinks the NRA big gun has turned into a feminist. No, really. Noting that in the wake of the Newtown shootings LaPierre launched a transparently opportunistic attack on violent video games, Mr. PMAFT accuses him of doing the work of the grand feminist conspiracy against men and manhood:
The most important reason why LaPierre is wrong is because what he is doing is feminist. Video games are an activity predominately enjoyed by men. So are guns. Both activities are under attack from feminists (just like other predominately male activities like science fiction are) because men are interested in them and women are mostly not interested in them. LaPierre is shooting himself in the foot (pun intended) by alienating allies among the video game community and helping out feminists in their war on male activities.
Never mind that nearly half – 47% — of those playing video games these days are girls and women, according to the Entertainment Software Association. (I await the inevitable comment from a troll telling us all that whatever games these women are playing just don’t count because blah and blah.)
What LaPierre should have done is form an alliance with the video game community. While the Newtown shootings are being used against gun owners right now, the next target will be video games and other mostly male interests and activities. Both the video game community and the gun community are fighting the same enemy, feminism. They should be working together to point out facts like how the Newtown shooter was raised by a single mother and how homes where the father is kicked out lead to more violence.
Never mind that the shooter — like virtually all mass shooters — was a dude; a woman is always to blame.
The NRA is in a position of weakness now because they are attacking video games and not the real causes of the Newtown tragedy, single motherhood and feminism. The NRA is in the same boat as the Republican Party where it needs to become an explicitly anti-feminist and pro-mens rights organization to survive. (Lots of conservative and right wing organizations are in this situation.) Guns aren’t the problem here, but neither are video games. The NRA needs to realize this and realize that its only way forward is by fighting feminism. Anything else leads the NRA to irrelevance.
So one of the most powerful lobbies in American politics needs to team up with a Men’s Rights “movement” that can’t organize a single event that draws a crowd bigger than 8 people, or else it will fade into irrelevance?
I dearly hope the NRA fades into obscurity, and I am hopeful that public opinion about guns is beginning finally to shift in the right direction, but I’m not sure the NRA needs any pointers from MRAs on political relevance.
Noooooooo! I missed Pell! “Women don’t like gaming, but being a pro gamer totally gets me chicks.”
Splendid, Doctor/Councellor! Simply splendid!
Councillor? I think you where going for counsellor, but I like the idea of Pell being a member of some gov’n council (“You just took a council axe from a council van, and now you’re tearing up a council road! I’m reporting you to the council!” — Doctor Who)
I’m picturing this report going to Pell, and the reply being “but was she hot?” and since it was Rose with the axe… XD
I know I’m so late to this party and missed the meltdown, but I must repeat these numbers again:
47% of gamers are women
33% of all gamers play social media games
THAT MEANS THAT 67% OF ALL GAMERS ARE PLAYING YOUR SO-CALLED “REAL VIDEO GAMES,” YOU FUCKING TWIT.
This meme that women are only playing Farmville is provably false and your “common knowledge” is about as factual as most “common knowledge.”
And again, as an old lady who was around back in the ’80’s when we had to go to the arcade to play things like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Centipede and Duck Hunt, hearing guys today claim that social media games are not “real video games” just makes me laugh. By your definition, video games have only existed for the past ten years or so, because prior to that the majority of games were just as casual as any game on Facebook. And even when consoles became ubiquitous in gamer homes, the games people were playing were things like the Super Mario series and football.
But my guess is people like Pell are around the 18-20 age and simply weren’t there during the arcade days. To them, video games have always been complex and cinematic.
…that stupid fucking dog…
And that was when you’d managed to successfully wedge another cartridge in to hold down Duck Hunt.
Technically, I’m too young for Atari, but my parents still had one and I fell in love with some of those games — Adventure is still one of the few games I’ve never beaten. No saves, no checkpoints, no shiny graphics to make up for wtf you lack in game play…
Watch out for the dragon!
I guess I can really credit my dad for turning me into a gamer, because one of my earliest memories of the arcade is him holding me up to “play” Centipede — I was so young I was too short to reach the controls. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I wasn’t really playing — he let me spin the ball around while he shot. I guess it was kind of playing, because I was controlling the part that moved me across the screen. But I remember thinking I was SO GOOD at the game! HAHAHAHA!
And apparently the year that they bought my brother and I the very first version of Game Boy, he spent the entire Christmas Eve playing it.
Original Game Boy! My brother sold all our games a couple years ago, without asking my permission to sell mine, I’m still livid. My mother wants to know when I’ll get over this, and I’m thinking never!
I’ve kind of always loved the term “casual gamer” because it implies the “real” gamers are super serious, okay?? There’s nothing casual about the way they push buttons on their computers. Like, this isn’t just for fun, okay? It’s not a game! Except that, you know, it is. But still!
Yeah, I loved my Game Boy. I spent ages playing Final Fantasy on it. Mine eventually broke. 🙁 Now the Game Boy is in color and has all these bells and whistles.
Poor broken Game Boy! Man I used to know every trap and every hidden block in Super Mario Land…lol, just looked up the end to that and still can’t figure out why Daisy has a mustache.
Yeah, in the worst case scenario (where ALL social game players are women… which is obviously false because I play SongPop and Marvel Avengers on FB) that means out of 100 gamers, 33 are women social gamers, 14 are women hardcore gamers and 67 are men hardcore gamers. So *at minimum* rougly 20% of hardcore gamers are women, which is only a 4 to 1 ratio, which is far, FAR from /b/-style “there are no women on the Internet” misogyny. And in reality the ratio is much less lopsided than that.
Sorry. 17% and 5 to 1 ratio. Forgot to do an addition. For shame.
Still, not exactly an order of magnitude.
My experience is a lot of ‘casuals’ are people like me, who did hardcore video gaming in their youth and just don’t have the time or energy to do it still (not to mention that a lot of the ‘hardcore’ games are so similar to stuff I played 10 years ago that my obsession about these games ran dry a long time ago). In fact, technically I *still* do hardcore gaming… I just switched my obsessiveness over to collectible card and miniature games, and board games… deckbuilding games in particular (Puzzle Strike, Ascension, Marvel Legendary… not Dominion, I hates it).
“You see the new costume yet? The Scavanger (fitting really)”
I like it, but I wish it looked a wee bit less like the Rat Queen costume.
Re: gaming – I play MMORTSs multiple times a day, and I go through phases where I play a hack and slash style MMO and I go through phases where I play Zynga games for a few weeks. Am I a serious gamer because serious, or does my involvement with Zynga cancel out all of my other gaming? (Not to mention the console gaming I do, but I don’t do Xbox?)
“I like it, but I wish it looked a wee bit less like the Rat Queen costume.”
I’m torn on this, if she wears it for 4 O’Clock and does the Rat Queen, it’ll fail at #dontmakeitweird It is a standard plague mask, and Stockill is noted as wearing one, so I guess my thoughts will depend on where it fits into the show (I’m going to the Boston one btw)
Putting aside the allegations of sexual sadism on my part, I now feel somewhat vindicated in my conclusion that much more often than not, human women are drama queens who really believe that they’re the martyr heroine in some soap opera melodrama i.e. the Lifetime Channel syndrome.
What amuses me is the idea that a “casual” gamer is defined by the genre of game they choose to play. I have a child who lives and breathes Minecraft (to the extent I allow computer time) but is apparently a casual gamer because she’s not on Halo or whatever the cool new FPS is.
I don’t game much, but when I do it’s things like Spore or Sims because I’m lacking the Y chromosome. 😉
Figures I miss the hilarious troll. Damn.
“My experience is a lot of ‘casuals’ are people like me, who did hardcore video gaming in their youth and just don’t have the time or energy to do it still.”
I’m about the same. That troll’s rant has some very strong “gaming elitism” in it. I think it’s always weird when people try to separate “real” gamers from “casuals.” It seems to me like gaming has more of a huge amorphous spectrum of different gamers, rather than just two sets.
For instance, there are some people that would say that competitive FPS players like that troll from earlier aren’t “real gamers” because they only play one type of game. Also, what about me? I play lots of games, but not a lot of FPS games. Am I casual? I like Pokemon, phoenix wright, and Final Fantasy, and Legend of Zelda, all games that take many hours to beat, but they don’t fit into this guy’s idea of “hardcore.” What would I be?
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents on gaming elitism 😀
And as you say, women are not 100% of social gamers, so the overlap is even bigger than that. I know, anecdote time, but I like the HOGs on Facebook. So I can see what Facebook friends play that game because I can see who sends me game requests. And there are a lot of guys playing HOGs and other social media games on Facebook.
“Figures I miss the hilarious troll. Damn.”
That was a Pell Incident, they occur every couple of months, if not more frequently, you’ll get your turn to play with him eventually. He really is a fun one to bat around though — an expert on everything who clearly knows nothing.
“an expert on everything who clearly knows nothing.”
Seems like it. When I read his posts about how he is allegedly a top-ranked MLG player of Call of Duty and Halo it reminded me of a video I watched where a guy was going up against a little kid on one of the Call of Duty games and the kid said “You can’t beat me! I’m a major league gamer with a youtube account!”
Katz keeps a biography of Christopher Pell.
A youtube account? Watch out, we got a badass here!
“Katz keeps a biography of Christopher Pell.”
I read the whole thing. Just awesome! Who knew that piecing together posts from a troll would create such a brilliant piece of satire? XD
“A youtube account? Watch out, we got a badass here!”
Later in the video he said “I’m gonna use my hacks now!”
This reminds me, here are some awesome videos I found that make fun of Call of Duty montage videos (seizure warning, especially for the last one):
http://youtu.be/rulElJITIVY
http://youtu.be/gEJHrmliVQw
http://youtu.be/-bRjOVN6h7g
http://youtu.be/bhNFrPtbKGc
GET ON MY LEVEL!!1