Over on Return of Kings, one brave gamer dares to ask the question of our age: What will the world look like after the inevitable triumph of GamerGate?
I know, I know, just humor him for a few minutes. Because he has a rather, well, revealing notion of what triumph will look like, and it’s not one that’s compatible with the #NotYourShield propaganda that GamerGaters use to disguise its retrograde goals. Greendestiny, a veteran of TheRedPill and KotakuInAction on Reddit, sees in the video game “war” a new opportunity for gamebros to become Game Men:
It is my personal belief that, after GamerGate, video games will evolve to become a tool for raising a new generation of men. Our current education system fails horribly at providing real information on how the world works, what motivates people, and how to get laid.
Our education system is a disaster! Can you believe that not one college in the United States offers a major in Getlaidology?
More importantly, it pussifies men and turns them into starry-eyed believers in the Disney variety of life and love.
Huh. You know, there’s a cultural critic who’s made some interesting videos challenging the sexist tropes you can find in Disney movies and elsewhere in popular culture. Her name is Anita Sarkee… oh wait. Never mind.
The entire concept of sitting quietly and reading is meant for girls. Boys need the fight, the challenge, competition, and a test of their strength.
So why exactly are you trying to convince guys of this in a post you expect them to sit down and read? Shouldn’t your blog post be a video game or an arm-wrestling contest or something?
Games were always learning tools. Now they can become a tool for learning greater masculinity.
If by masculinity you mean “the proper sequence of buttons to push that will enable you to pull off an awesome combo.”
To become real men, boys must overcome challenges and find the true strength in themselves. Whether this is done in a virtual or real arena is irrelevant. By creating games that are consciously aimed at presenting a proper challenge, we can collectively make the world a better place for the next generation of men. And possibly help them get laid more.
“Hey, babe, I bet you didn’t know you were sitting next to a Level 90 Fire Mage.”
But seriously for a second: Yes, video games do teach gamers certain skills, and even something about the value of persistence. But why are the skills involved in, say, shooting dudes with maximum efficiency in Call of Duty any more intrinsically valuable, or “masculine,” than the skills involved in doing this?
At least those places produced people who knew real stuff about real life. It wouldn’t have been much use to a “lady of the house” if she couldn’t judge whether the housemaid was correctly blacking the grates or the boot boy properly polishing the shoes. (Something I learned recently was that boot polishing was actually quite risky. Instead of using ready-made polishes as we do, they had to use corrosive and nasty, smelly chemicals to make up the polishes themselves.) She was also taught about sewing up newspapers into blood/ fluid absorbing pads for the inevitable childbirths at home. She might not have done it herself, but she did need to be able to instruct the chambermaids/ ladies maids on how to do these sorts of things, and other home nursing tasks, properly.
Yes, the women had to learn how to be marriageable, not how to fuck someone.
@mildlymagnificent
Where did you learn that stuff? A book? Several books? Particular websites? I’d love to get the names of any of your sources. I’ve looked for sources on historical daily life and household crafts, but the easy to find ones tend to be disappointingly superficial and/or of extremely dubious dependability.
~*~*~*~*~*~
kittehserf sez:
Women’s ignorance as to fucking probably helped assure men that they had married someone chaste, too. Like the button on a jar lid.
I thought clicking on the wordsp1nner’s 8chan link would only lead to regret, but when these fellas roll up their sleeves and plot their super serious OPs, only hilarity ensues.
That’s certain to not fail at all, since the key to being a good undercover agent is having almost no understanding of how human interaction works and no workable knowledge of your “targets”.
They seem to think all progressives everywhere are really just several thousand near identical SJWs who all know each other and interact solely on Twitter, Tumblr and message boards. Again, I can’t stop being amazed how these lunkheads manage to avoid having even a glimmer of understanding about real life.
This is so pathetic that it’s adorably pathetic.
Crapshoes. Take two.
The other day, I made a snarky comment somewhere about women and feminists not being some sort of Nazi Borg Illuminati. One of the only replies outright said that I was wrong and that we are.
(sings, badly out of key)
I hope the SJWs love their children too…
Not knowing the cultural norms is always a surefire winner for people trying to infiltrate other groups. Worked really well for wartime spies (USA type) with impeccable language skills … until others noticed that they used cutlery for eating all “wrong”. Those blokes were literally killed for not learning some really basic cultural stuff.
A. Noyd
Sorry. When I say recently, I mean last coupla decades. I reckon the stuff about boot polishes might have come up in an episode of that worst jobs in history series. The stuff about other household knowledge is just dredged up from random fragments of memory — some of it might have been from old feminist writings about women’s work, even when it wasn’t working/servant/peasant class work but managing a household staff. Can’t begin to guess who (or how many) might have mentioned these things.
So… Basically what makes you a man is your choice of consumer entertainment systems. Interesting.
weirwoodtreehugger: “assorted white tears” – honestly never occurred to me about the race/gender, I feel I should go into training Bill & Ted style. After 18 months I’ll instantly be able to both notice it and produce vast spumes of outrage.
People are actually getting upset about it? Seriously? If so, then yes – I’m incredibly amused.
A. Noyd – yes, I started thinking of that particular irony after I’d posted!
mildlymagnificent – Tony Robinson gagging as he tramples fleeces in a vat of urine in Worst Jobs in History is one of my laugh-till-it-hurts television moments.
Glen H – and presumably, all the manly menz of the past (pre-video games) that they claim to admire weren’t men at all! O.o
@kittehserf
No, you see, back in the day, REAL MEN (TM) had to wrestle bears, climb a mountain, or build houses entirely out of their chest hair and the sinews of slain enemies to be considered worthy. Today you just have to be DeathJester the Weedrogue with a killstreak of over 5.
Even for hyper-masculine rhetoric, that’s a step down.
Lord Crowstaff, ROFL! How could I have forgotten these things?
A. Noyd Mrs Beeton’s Household Management is useful check Chapter 41 The boot blacking recipe is listed in paragraphs 2240 and 2241
@Another Holocene Human
…so, you are now actually seriously comparing gaming to *literal* drugs? When people say that, they tend to be joking.
Oh, and… seriously? Claiming it would cause depression, too? And acting like gaming has side effects like *actual drugs* do? Well, no, doing something-anything, except sleeping- for 10 hours straight out of each 24 isn’t going to be a good thing. And some small percentage of gamers do do that.
But most don’t. And acting like gaming is comparable to drugs just because some people aren’t affected by drugs? Those people are in the minority. Gamers who don’t play constantly are in the majority.
Yes, as far as I can tell, most gamers play a bit of *something* every day. For the same reason lots of people watch a bit of TV, or read a bit, or go for a jog, or garden, or do some DIY, or practice sports, or skateboard, or…
Sorry for the teal deer. I just. Gah. Cannot even.
I don’t know why this was what made me go off into the realm of the teal deer, but I just *cannot even* right now. >_<
And if all of this sounds completely stupid to other people, I'm sorry. I am bad at typing today, I think.
@andiexist: No, I agree with every word you wrote.
If you play games so much that it becomes a personal problem, then you need to cut down and get help, but the same could be said for any activity. And comparing gaming with illegal drugs makes no sense. The reason those drugs are illegal is because there’s no such thing as a safe minimum dose. No analogy to video games, where only a few people exhibit symptoms of addiction.
– a female gamer
It’s not just you. I saw the “if you spend 10 hours a day playing games that’s unbalanced and unhealthy” and thought that it’s unbalanced and unhealthy to do just about anything for 10 hours a day every day. Ask anyone with a repetitive and unfulfilling job if they feel totally balanced and healthy at the end of the day.
Did anyone point out that Anita has actually written about Disney on multiple times before she did the tropes on gaming series?
http://www.feministfrequency.com/tag/disney/ (although it’s just one article, it’s a good jumping off point.)
“A level 90 frost mage? How adorable,” said the level 100 shadow priest, quietly readying three of her five shadow orbs.
Seriously though, that 8chan operation — have they already forgotten #YourSlipIsShowing? I mean, okay, they think SJWs are villains straight out of Saturday morning cartoons, so they’ve somehow deluded themselves into thinking that it will be easy to convincingly pose as one. I can kind of understand that level of cluelessness. But do they understand, even in the slightest, how any human works?
Who is going to look at a Twitter account and say, “Oh wow, this account has been around for a whole week, and tweeted, like, ten other times before it began accosting me! This surely can’t be a sock.” Who is going to turn to a stranger on the internet and go, “OHAI, I’ve seen your user name around for TWO WHOLE MONTHS, let’s be BFFs and I will share with you all my darkest secrets!”
These GG kids will need one of these for the end times
http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/style/costumes/muscle-suits.asp
Remember how when you were 6 years old, the wait between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to be an eternity? And being at school for 5 hours was the longest. day. ever?
@Christina Nordlander
@Policy of Madness
Thanks. Yeah, I don’t deny that there are people who game 10 hours a day and have personal problems with gaming and such like that. They just aren’t the majority of gamers.
I can think of *one* day I might have come close. It was the first day of summer, and a minecraft server I liked had just released a new creative subserver. But the next day, I was minecrafted out and wanted nothing to do with it for a bit. So yeah, a lot of gamers probably overdo it once in a while, but so do people with other hobbies.
But thank you for confirming that it’s not just me. Due to some bad therapy stuff, I have a hard time figuring out when I’m just blowing something all out of proportion. 🙂
@wordsp1nner
Holy sweet hell, I love the bit at the end where they acknowledge that we can see them scheming out in the open and try to play it off like it’s only beneficial to their plan. x’D I can’t get enough of the hilarious stupidity these guys provide while they dig themselves further into irrelevance.
Jane Austen? Let us review:
Lady Susan – Frederica Vernon runs away from school in London.
Northanger Abbey – The Morland daughters are what would now be homeschooled. We don’t know about the Thorpes. Eleanor Tilney, then thirteen, was “away from home” when her mother died; she presumably would have said “at school” had she been there.
Sense and Sensibility – Mrs Palmer did spend seven years at a great school and left without much to show for it. Here there is some emphasis on education, but on the male side; Edward was tutored while his brother Robert attended public school, and which of the two was better (Miss Austen herself would have said best) served by his education is open to interpretation.
Pride and Prejudice – The Bennet girls appear to be what might be called unschooled. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a great believer in governesses, and recommends them to everybody. Georgiana Darcy is privately educated.
Mansfield Park – The Miss Bertrams (and thus Fanny Price when she comes to them) have a governess. The Price boys attend school but not the girls. I’m not sure about Mary Crawford.
Emma – Perhaps the most education-minded. A former and a future governess are both major characters, and we have Mrs Goddard’s school, decidedly not a seminary or any sort of fancy establishment, but a place where a reasonable amount of accomplishments are sold for a reasonable price, and girls so inclined can scramble themselves into a little knowledge without leaving as prodigies. Harriet Smith may be the most prominent example of a school graduate in Austenia and is perhaps not a shining example, but Mr Knightley does amend his opinion of her considerably in a favourable direction.
Persuasion – Anne Elliot is the only heroine who went to school (where she formed a reasonably worthwhile friendship with the future Mrs Smith), as did her younger sister Mary and the Miss Musgroves. This is most likely to be the sort of education mentioned in the previous post