The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
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!)
THnaks!
I’ve been gaming for 20+ years (back when you could hire a Sega Master System from the local video store! Pac-Mania and Sonic represent!). I wouldn’t consider myself “hardcore”, but I’d certainly say I’m more than just a “casual” gamer – games have been a big part of my life.
Anybody who claims I’m part of their “legions” of gamers crusading against corrupt games journalism, but only in this instance, can
FUCK
RIGHT OFF
INTO THE SUN
I grew up on Sega, have played Tomb Raider (the original and the reboot, thankyouverymuch), own over half a dozen gaming machines and am getting really pissed off with these bastards trying to claim they represent the average gamer. I personally love having games that buck the stereotypes of helpless damsels and muscly uber-macho guys (almost always white guys, naturally). It’s a peculiarly specific age band associated with this “games are boy things and girls should leave them alone!” mindset, I think.
I despise the idea of games getting soft-pedalled because of corrupt journalists, because it means the games companies don’t have any incentive to make better games – not because it gives me good cover to assassinate the character of a particular woman I dislike.
@katz
That video reminds me of Robot Unicorn Attack.
Hell, I’ve been playing video games since I was a pre-teen with an Atari 2600. I kind of yearn for the days of 8-bit graphics because it was a lot harder to sexualize the characters than it is nowadays when you have gross brogrammers and their boob jiggle physics.
I play a lot of the AAA games, but in recent years, I’ve really got into Indie and other smaller name games.
Currently, I’m obsessed with The Cat Lady http://thecatlady.co.uk/
I especially appreciate the way they portray suicidally deep depression and themes of acceptance and redemption. Plus, the soundtrack is wonderful. I got turned on to Tears of Mars because of this game.
Five Nights at Freddie’s is freaking me out and frustrating the hell out of me. Has anyone here cracked it yet?! If so, HINTS!
The Novelist is a story heavy game. It can get a little tedious but if you can stick with it, it’s pretty good.
The Stanley Parable is trippy and a little confusing, but the narration kind of reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with all the dry, British wit.
And you’ve seen me talk about Goat Simulator. I love that thing!
Oh and of course Dear Esther and Gone Home.
I’m rather glad that shitty gamebros don’t consider these games as worthy of their attention. It would kind of ruin them if they did.
I actually REALLY annoyed a gamebro by saying Five nights at freddies has barely any more gameplay than Depression Quest
@LBT
High five!!! I’m fresh off of a Lucas Arts nostalgia trip myself. I really wish we could get some more games of the Monkey Island/Grim Fandango ilk and humour
@theladyzombie
Don’t obsess over the cameras. In the first two nights, you don’t need to use them at all, just the lights. Keep checking them, close the door when Bonnie or Chica show up and you’ll be fine. In the third and fourth nights, you need to use the cameras only to keep an eye on Foxy, because he’ll make a run for the door if you don’t. It’s only in the fifth night that you need to use the cameras, to keep track of Freddy. Don’t lose him, or he can get inside your room even with both doors down.
Is there any particular reason our seal is a fur seal instead of a true seal? It’s absolutely adorable, regardless!
Oh my gawd my seal’s on the page! I am honoured this is so awesome!! 😀
I can’t play any games on the computer because I haven’t downloaded adobe yet and I have other problems too, which really stinks.
I played demos on my brother’s playstation 3 like Fear, Devil may cry, wolverine, overlord and another one that I can’t quite remember. It had two main protagonists, one of them is a woman who tries to find her mom and another is a man who is a journalist. They go to a world with strange monsters called ID I think? I don’t know.
I’v heard of games like cry of fear, it’s a horror game that has a man who deals with depression and anxiety and finds himself in danger with monsters after him.
I think it would be pretty cool if we made our own games.
Because it’s a Furrinati seal, natch.
Ah, very true.
Furrinati seal is all the win. And all the lavender. No lavender seals for Dudebros: lavender seals are too cool for that. 🙂
Night, all!
“twisted totalitarianists” New band name – called it.
I’ve been hooked on this mobile game called Clash of Lords II. It’s a strategy game where you build your base, fight other players, train your heroes, etc. At any rate, I run the top guild in my server. One thing that strikes me is how many girls and women are playing this game. The gender split is at least 50/50. And the other thing that strikes me is how easy it has been to find a good group of people. I haven’t had any of the problems I’ve had on MMOs. People who are racist, sexist, etc are easily booted from the group — many times they are chased out by my guildies before I can even get back online to kick them. And the teen girls in my group talk about how they play Call of Duty and all the other games that the “real gamer doods” claim belong to them.
At any rate, among the gaming masses, things have changed. I think that’s why these guys are so very hateful, and sadly, so very dangerous as they target harassment against anyone who they see as emblematic of those changes.
That seal is probably one of the best things I’ve seen.
Also… really, just what? Do these kind of people just get a “generate words from the dictionary” randomizers, press the button a few times, throw together the results, and use that? I swear half of the terms or things I see just seem like utter gibberish.
I love the seal, but you’ve got SWJ on it instead of SJW.
I’ve never encountered the term until now, but thank you for introducing me to “virulent lavender menace”.
Kim, yeah, I should ask Leocigale to fix that.
Since there’s been some discussion of Lara Croft as a character and the nature of the reboot I’m curious about opinions.
I played the reboot, it was the first Tomb Raider game I’ve played since the second one, and it made me really uncomfortable. There was something about the way Croft was gleefully subjected to incredibly brutal violence that really bothered me. I suppose that could be kind of the point, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with a male protagonist who was abused the way Croft was in the reboot. The pseudo-sexual assault just kidding it’s actually a murder by strangulation scene was disturbing to me as well. I’m not sure how I feel about the game as a whole, (I did beat it, which is rare for me), but the whole experience left me feeling uncomfortable.
I really wish there was a version of Bioshock Infinite that cut all of the combat. My favorite parts of the game were the wandering around exploring the city segments, and I would totally have played a Gone home-style Bioshock. The violence was too over the top for me, especially given how it seemed to contrast with the narrative.
I played the reboot, it was the first Tomb Raider game I’ve played since the second one, and it made me really uncomfortable.
I was actually kind of uncomfortable with the Laura Croft reboot too, but I only just got to the first campsite. I was told it gets a lot better, and it certainly does get a lot less “quicktime event”-y.
I really wish there was a version of Bioshock Infinite that cut all of the combat. My favorite parts of the game were the wandering around exploring the city segments, and I would totally have played a Gone home-style Bioshock. The violence was too over the top for me, especially given how it seemed to contrast with the narrative.
I KNOW, RIGHT.
I love the Bioshock/Infinite universe but I absolutely hate, hate, hate first-person shooters. I would give my left leg to play a Bioshock where the gameplay was somewhere in between Gone Home and Mirror’s Edge. (Mirror’s Edge being that parkour game). I would probably ragequit at every single exciting running bit, but it would be So Cool.
…hello blockquote monster, nice to see you again.
Also, shut up, Woody.
I know I’m probably being stupid for asking, but can someone explain the “Shut Up Woody” thing to me? I’ve been seeing that in some threads and I’m not entirely certain… who you’re talking to.
There was a troll named Woody around and, well, people told him to Shut Up in almost every thread. And when he got himself on moderation/mod challenge* the “Shut Up Woody!” remained. (Actually he was still posting some weeks ago, despite being on moderation so only boring the poor mods.)
* he will be allowed to post again when he successfully does the challenge to prove that he actually reads the threads he posts in.
ACK! Here’s a fixed version:
http://imgur.com/0wg8zBQ
@Malitia
Oooh, I see. What’s the challenge?
@leocigale
I love that goddamn seal so much.