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Of all the loopy manifestos that this whole #GamerGate fiasco has inspired, I think this loopy manifesto, posted several days ago to the Men’s Rights subreddit to a smattering of upvotes, is probably my favorite.
Take it away, trudatness:
Think about what really went down in gaming journalism – not on the micro level, but on the macro level.
The most left-wing journalism companies happily filled the gaming journalism void. Think about it…
The most virulent lavender menace feminist laced industry on the planet began covering an industry whose target audience was comprised of somewhat socially awkward young men.
Hey what could go wrong?
Answer: Everything.
Woah, hate to be a stickler for stuff that actually makes sense, but if you’re going to use a homophobic slur to describe your opponents, make sure you pick the correct homophobic slur. The phrase “lavender menace” originated as an insult aimed at lesbians in the feminist movement; the term was later reclaimed by lesbian feminists. Whether as as a slur or as an honorific, I’m pretty sure the term is not a terribly apt description of the dude-dominated world of video game journalism, as dudes cannot actually be lesbians.
The video game online journalism industry hates gamers. They made no bones about that fact when they coordinated a drop of nearly a dozen articles eulogizing the gamer.
Er, a eulogy is “a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially a set oration in honor of a deceased person.” I think what you meant to say is that there were a bunch of articles proclaiming the death of the traditional self-described “gamer.” Most of these articles were not full of hate for games, or for people who play games, but only for self-proclaimed “gamers” who want gaming to be a preserve of adolescent (and overgrown adolescent) dudes.
If you hate gamers, then why cover gaming?
Answer: There’s only so much money you can make covering gay pride parades.
Not true. It’s a little known historical fact that John D. Rockefeller Sr. made his fortune covering gay pride parades.
Wait, I am being told that John D. Rockefeller Sr. actually made his fortune by founding Standard Oil, and that there weren’t actually any gay pride parades anywhere until decades after he died.
I need to stop getting all my information from IncorrectGayOPedia.
So these twisted totalitarianists decided they were going to take an industry – a humble hobbyist collective that had grown into a billion dollar industry – and simply evict the current tenants with bullying, shaming and sexual coercion. They were going to move in, via takeover, bringing all their talentless cronies in with them.
THE LAVENDER TOTALITARIANISTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR GAMES!!
What better way to deal with the gamers you hate, by shaming them into subservience? These 3rd wavers wanted to co-opt gaming and turn it into their vehicle of propaganda, dictating to designers what is to be produced.
Apparently mentioning that many games contain sexist elements is the same as ordering designers to replace Call of Duty: Black Ops with Call of Duty: Kill All Men.
Who the fuck do these people think they are? They truly intended to force gaming hobbyists into kowtowing and accepting their dogmas.
This is what feminism does.
It’s true. Feminism has always been about fucking with hobbyists. Who can forget Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Force Dudes to Play Sissy Facebook Games Like,You Know, Farmville or Some Shit?
Egalitarianism? Hardly? More like Machiavellianism. They want to control the masses and superimpose their value system onto people by force.
That’s right: Anita Sarkeesian has actually been using her Kickstarter money to fund the training of an elite core of feminist commandos who will soon be dispatched to mother’s basements across the nation to pry copies of Grand Theft Auto V from the hands of true gaming heroes.
They cannot let the truth of their message speak for itself.
Hard to do when all you do is front out lies. …
Look at the so-called game reviews… They aren’t game reviews. They are social justice critiques. Does the game get the feminist lavender menace seal of SJW approval?
I would actually love to see a Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of SJW Approval. Could someone draw me one?
Tsk, tsk, tsk… Those women have too big of boobs… Not enough “realistic woman” protagonists… That’s Sexist!
Pretty soon all games are going to require that all game characters are lesbian or trans-gendered and run around fighting the patriarchy or some dumb shit like that.
Yep. Soon all red-blooded young men will be forced to play all games as Lesbian Lara Croft.
Do you want to kill some zombies or get lost in an RPG fantasy? Play a little PvP? I hope you like tumblr-style fat-acceptance friendly avatars.
Make that FAT Lesbian Lara Croft.
This is the twisted fucking world they live in – and they want to make every single gamer out there accept their worldview.
It’s time for the tail to stop wagging the dog.
It’s time to full on evict SJWs from the gaming world.
Not if we sit on you first.
EDIT: Ok, ok, I fixed the terrible typo in the headline. But speaking of LAVENDER menaces, Leocigale has provided us with this wonderful Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of SJW Approval, which will now go in the sidebar. (There were several other excel
lent Seals of Approval submitted, but this one has an actual adorable seal it it!)
“What is it about letting others create the characters they want that makes these guys so mad?”
As far as I can tell, there’s a certain kind of gamer who thinks he’s discovered a new way to prove he’s a real man that doesn’t require being good at sports (damn jocks!). Games, bro. They think they’re rebels for gaming and not playing football. Gaming is the only time they feel remotely virile. The funny thing is, the characters they play are stereotypical manly men, not counterculture rebels. So, on one hand they hate measuring up to the athletic/ warrior/army guy stereotype in meatspace, but they obsess about being one when they game.
But if women or non-traditional men claim to like games, it threatens their sense of boyness.
It challenges the idea that only guys can be heroes. It hurts their fee fees.
But those game’s gameplay pretty much already is centered on killing all men of colour in a given stage.
@Shiraz Yup. And if one’s false mask is so fragile and so oposite to what they represent in real life, it has to be protected at all cost. They simply cannot allow other people to break the veil of manhood they’ve surrounded themselves with. Hence the shouting and fist shaking. It’s a distraction, after all.
No one likes bullies. Even bullies don’t like bullies. Hence the need to come up with some bullshit pseudoethical justification for one’s bullying so you can cast yourself in the role of the good guy underdog. “Anti-white genocide,” gays persecuting Christians, men’s rights, “game journalism ethics,” etc. Shame shit, different day.
It’s weird how you never see bigots saying “I’m at the top of the heap and I like it, so I’m going to kick everyone else when they’re down in order to maintain my unearned privilege.” I guess self-awareness and honesty aren’t really their strong suits.
I guess. But that’s not what people usually mean when they talk about “Lara Croft’s milk jugs.”
*rimshot*
I always thought it was a terrible pity that the gaming mags always focused on how HAWT Lara was instead of the fact that she was functionally a female Indiana Jones. She could have changed the videogame landscape years ago, but the dudebros couldn’t see past her…er…milk jugs.
These guys are so used to being the center of attention that they have a zero-sum view. They think that focus on other groups means their group loses what they love. But that’s not true, especially when it comes to video games. Video games are a gigantic thing, and it’s still expanding as an artistic and cultural medium.
Diversity will only make more games, not less. They’ll still have “Let’s Play War 15” and “Bouncing Boobage 7.” But other audiences being considered means more opportunity to try out new and fresh ideas. And when you bully people for doing something unusual, you discourage creativity. Not all ideas are going to be good. There will be hits and misses. But gamers need to stop building an atmosphere that makes people afraid to try.
And before any gamebros cry hypocrite, there’s a difference between criticism and bullying. Criticism is supposed to encourage improvement, bullying is meant to silence.
—
On a more positive note, I recently heard of Lethal League. It’s like a fusion between Super Smash Brothers and Pong.
I read Mcwhatevers comment in a whiny monotone. And I only read the first sentence.
I’m a really casual gamer, but I would love to play a game with lesbian protagonists or trans people as protagonists. I would also like it to have dinosaurs, loads of modding options, side-quests and sassy talking animal sidekicks. So how do I ask the Lavender Menace to get me that? Is there a Menace-signal or maybe a suggestion box??
Also, I second zoon echan logan. This “socially awkward young men ” just can’t admit to privilege, so they come out with crybaby arguments. They aren’t socially awkward at all, they’re arseholes.
Yeah I’ve heard a lot of complaints about Sims 4 but most of the features people were upset about were stuff I never used or never liked (like toddlers, or swimming pools, or being able to go anywhere without a loading screen). But I must say I was really disappointed with no makeup for dudes. There are a couple eyeliner options and a couple (neutral color) eyeshadow options, but no lipstick, and no blush. And there’s no facepaint for any sim anymore, either.
Anyway I haven’t found a good mod yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. I’ve already found a body-hair-for-females mod.
Pushback about social change makes sense. I just wish people wouldn’t care so much about what other people do. I just… I really don’t understand. Everyone in the world has felt the pain of being judged by others. Why is it so hard to use that experience to build empathy?
I guess I just don’t have any empathy for the empathy impaired 🙂
Haha, yup!
The last shooter I ever played (Bioshock Infinite) was also the first shooter I had played in a lonnnnngggg time, and I was a little concerned about the carnage I was causing while trying to save some girl and redeem myself for some unspoken crime in my paste. I murdered hundreds of people in that game, mostly men.
Where are the MRAs? Isn’t men being victims of violence a thing they care deeply about?
@deniseeliza: they care deeply about those murdered pixel-men as a counterpoint to misogyny in games. Yeah sure you can beat up hookers in GTA but what about all those grunts you shoot in CoD, huh? !!!!!MISANDRY!!!!!
Yeah, they care about men’s problems* only as a rhetorical response to people talking about women’s problems. Pretty much the MRM in a nutshell.
*Some real, mostly made-up.
Hmm..I keep reading leocigale as ‘Legocide’
Would that be death by lego ?
Or the killing of lego ?
I’m kind of intrigued by the 48-inch diameter pizza, myself.
Video game criticism: it’s misandry to care, and its double-plus-misandry to care about something other than men.
@deniseeliza
Hey, at least Bioshock did feature women as enemies, as background characters who had a hand in shaping the city and the add-on even had big mommas. It felt like it actually used to be a society of the not MGTOW-sort.
That you have to virtually kill ways too many humans is a general problem with shooter games that pretend to have a story, but it was especially vexing with the recent Lara Croft one. Especially since the first three or so games worked just fine with very little combat.
Perhaps dudes cannot be lesbians, but I known a number of lesbians who would be quite annoyed to be told they couldn’t be dudes.
I don’t think the bit about Incorrect GayOPedia came out quite right.
Must… stop… giggling.
That humble hobbyist collective just happened to grow into a billion dollar industry? And so one small portion of the world’s population should have exclusive rights to a ‘friendly’ experience with it? In other words, it should cater to young white ‘socially awkward’ males alone?
When does asking for inclusion become a take-over? How is Anita Sarkeesian bullying anyone? By listing (dry) example after (dry) example of outdated tropes, still used to death, done to death?Anyone who’s been paying attention can say “No, I wouldn’t want to be portrayed that way time and time again.”
A few indie games by people who don’t use those tropes—this is part of a takeover too? Really, if someone with ovaries walks into the room, it isn’t a takeover.
They’re just so emotional. 😀
MacTavish: Baw some more, bro.
These whiny dudes need to go take a walk, pet a dog, read a book, anything, really. I do not understand how these manage in their day to day lives with this much anger.
I liked “lavender menace” so much that I made an avatar for it! See, she has devil horns because she’s an EEEEVIL feminist, and a toga because obviously evil progressive decadence or something. Look, she’s spraying gayness! Run!
Also, I am back after only being in two comments sections because sometimes I forget to check websites. But I am back now, yay?
“A humble hobbyist collective” was my favorite bit. D00dz trousers spontaneously combusted when he typed that.
Every game trailer in the future.
@andiexist, your avatar is teh cute!
“This is the twisted fucking world they live in – and they want to make every single gamer out there accept their worldview.”
Ah, so all the gore and violence prostrayed in videogames is perfectly fine.
But don’t you DARE think about having a chubby or fat woman in a videogame! That would make their world TOO TWISTED for poor poor gamers!
Dear wordpress app, you say there are new comments. Yet no new comments are showing up, and I cannot navigate between comment pages. >_<
@Unimaginative Thanks! (Seems that the wordpress app is out of the question for me right now. :/ )