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?
Catalpa, I love it! Baby Smaug haz a fierce but gets his nails clipped anyway. XD
And also too–do they really believe that the manly he-men of bygone eras (or hell, any time period) would look at them, sitting in climate controlled rooms with all the mod cons, their meals delivered or zapped in microwaves (what?), playing their videogames by the hour, and think that what they’re doing is somehow equivalent to actual hard work, cis-manly or otherwise?
The whole “reading is girly” stuff makes me laugh, because these same fuckwits would probably turn around and claim the credit for any literature produced by any man ever … or at least, MRAs would; I’m starting to wonder if GGers have reached a yet lower level, that of sneering at literacy altogether.
Oh, my gosh! YES! That video is so cute! And that girl has skillzors!
So, off to read the comments, now, and I just realized that I’m probably repeating about six other commenters, already.
@Ira
Aww, man, Ira! Why’d you have to go and use a girly-word, like that? Obviously, you need to stop reading, and play manly games, instead.
Because thinking is for girls, who don’t have the manly brains to handle “real” thinking, like STEM, and… wait…
OK, reading “soft” stuff, like classic literature and linguistic studies is for girls. Yeah, that must be it. Despite the fact that almost all classic literature and/or linguistic studies professors in popular media (TV shows, movies, plays, books) are male characters. Because… Ummm… because BACON! Yeah! Bacon is always a good reason.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants (Sorry, Ira, I couldn’t remember your whole name, but I’ve read BQS’s name enough times to remember it)
Since the ROK dudebro states that “getting laid” (with females) is so all-fired important for men, I have a question for the heterosexual women in the house:
Hands up, all you who got all hot and bothered for a heterosexual man who did well at music, drama, art and other academic achievements?
:WAVES BOTH HANDS AND A LEG (because I ran out of legs, and can’t wave BOTH legs, too) HIGH IN THE AIR:
Yeah, women through the ages have turned into squealing puddles of sex-goo for musicians because they were so… gladiatorial.
Oh crap, Buttercup, are you ME? I saw that for the first time when I was 16 and it scared the bejeezus out of me. Turned me into a peacenik for life, no tie-dye necessary. Incredible that just 6 years later, the Berlin Wall came down, and suddenly the movie was an anachronism. And it was what changed Reagan’s mind about nuclear war!
A few years ago, I saw the DVD in a local drugstore, so of course I snapped it up. And felt weirdly nostalgic, as well as terrified. Not for the Cold War mentality, which was awful and stupid, and I’m glad most people no longer suffer from that. Maybe because seeing this powerful movie was such a formative experience for young me, and every time I see it, I’m 16 again and painfully earnest, and desperate to do SOMETHING. I really can’t explain it, but there it is.
The Day After scared me too. I was only 3 when it aired so I didn’t watch it then. I think by the time I saw it the cold war was already winding down. But it still scared me.
Here’s the famous nuclear attack scene for anyone who hasn’t seen it or wants to relive it. It’s still scary even though the effects are old fashioned.
I remember a conversation at college regarding fears of thermonuclear holocaust. I admitted that my biggest fear was surviving a first exchange. An engineering student housemate asked, “Are you planning to live here in the Bay Area?” Yes, I said. “Don’t worry about that,” he assured me.
My kids have a number of concerns, but global thermonuclear holocaust is not one of them. For that, I am grateful.
@Lady Mondegreen:
Hear, hear.
That’s one of the things that always confused me so very much about the “boys can’t sit still and study” argument.
Monks spending literally years transcribing manuscripts in a monastery? Never happened.
Classical Greece philosophers having debates that lasted for more than ten hours? Never happened.
Hundreds and hundreds of people sitting in courtrooms, meeting chambers, cabinets and business places, holding meetings that run for hours? Impossible!
Ancient naval navigation trapping an endless list of males on tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny ships for months and years at a time? I ain’t never heard of that, nope.
Guardsmen on duty in watch towers, being actually expected to stand still and stare at nothing for days on end? Nope!
Military sharpshooters, who are expected to lie still for days? Who are them folks again?
Hunters tracking prey and lying in ambush wait for hours? Doesn’t happen.
People spending >10 hours sitting still in front of a screen, watching stuff or playing games? No no, they always run around outside.
Reading? No one has sat still and read a book for at least 200.000 years, chummer!
It makes! No! SENSE!
@Cyberwulf
QFT!
I don’t think it’s so much that girls are naturally better at sitting quietly than boys. I think that by the time they enter kiddie-prison, they have simply had more practice at it, because toddler boys are encouraged to play and run and be rowdy, while girls are told to play quietly with their dolls, and “be ladylike,” meek little doormats who will not express a will of their own. This is what they are taught, practically from day one.
I was so happy when my niece, as a toddler, decided that she loved bugs and reptiles so very much, and always wanted to play in the dirt. And I’m still happy that she still loves that stuff, and isn’t a doormat. Yeah, there have been some annoyances when she brought the creepy-crawlies into the house. But hooray that she doesn’t subscribe to the belief that she must “perform femininity” to be a valuable woman.
@wwth
Same thing with knitting, actually. At one point, knitting guilds were male-only, and women were forbidden to learn the art.
Although, I have to give a shout-out to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who almost singlehandedly brought the popularity of romance novels to massively high levels, because while she was locked in her tower, she read, and actively hired people to write for her, and her taste ran mostly to romantic novels. She was one of the few women (people, actually) who could read at the time, and made the pastime, as well as the genre, popular among her sympathizers.
This is according to my college literature teacher. But what would he know about books? He’s a manly man.
Greek myths are exceedingly manly! After all, they are filled with gross brutality, ravishings beyond count, and gave rise to a video game series where the protagonist devastates the Earth through killing the Olympian gods and is an awesome dude for doing so.
Also he beat his origin story to the punch by killing his own family before the game could.
And has copious sex with women despite being a horrifying monster in human shape.
I was born the year Hiroshima was published. When I was nine we had an air raid evacuation drill. When I was 13 we read Hiroshima at school. Sixteen and already a news junkie when the Cuban missile crisis was negotiated. I was an adult when Reagan made the idiotic recommendation of digging a hole in the ground and covering oneself with a door.
Watching Maru videos makes me want to order stuff online, just to get the boxes.
Someone could make a good profit, selling boxes in a variety of sizes, packaged together with crinkly paper, and shipped out in a bigger box, with a kitty-logo on the side.
Ahahahahaha, yes!
And Eleanor is also rumored to have had an affair with a troubadour named Bernart de Ventadour. You know, one of those sissyboys who play the lute, compose poetry, and look sweet in tights. Mmmmmmm, TIGHTS.
I’m sorry, what were we talking about, again? I was just picturing a troubadour in an elaborately embroidered codpiece. A very large codpiece.
Holy crap, WWTH, that is an intense five minutes. I’d forgotten how terrifyingly ugly the mushroom clouds were, and the people at the epicenter who literally turn into X-rays. The saddest was the mother holding her child, both vanishing together.
Seeing it again, though, I wonder…wouldn’t Jason Robards have gone blind, since he was sitting in his car looking straight at the flash?
@Bina – hey, we’re the same age! Maybe we are the same person (or at least, the same ferret inside David’s catsuit). I was a peacenik too during the “No Nukes” era (even went to a rally in New York in 1982), but seeing the horrors of nuclear war on the screen forever cemented my beliefs. Supposedly, it even persuaded Reagan to open negotiations with Gorbachev.
Any gamers who hanker after the apocalypse are idiots.
@tiko72
http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-06-27
http://sinfest.net/btphp/comics/2011-06-27.gif
I hope one of these embeds.
In 1989 I was 42. Whippersnapper fail, Kittehserf. [Bows to Thebewilderness.]
I was 15 in the fall of 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, and I remember looking around my high school classroom and wondering if we’d be around the next day, let alone long enough to have lives and families of our own. Fortunately, Kennedy was a very sly and devious man, who could talk a great tough-guy act in public and privately bargain with Khrushchev to take our missiles out of Turkey in exchange for him backing off on the missiles in Cuba, and K was sane enough to take the bargain even though it would almost certainly cost him his job (he was forced into retirement two years later).
How much of the fear was justified? I felt afterward that the Russians were severely hyped as madmen when they were quite reasonable (however unpleasant they might be), and knew all too well what the outcome of nuclear war would be. We know now that fear tends to disable our ability to think calmly and rationally, which is why politicians who have no policies other than catering to the rich and powerful prattle on about the dangers of immigrants, blacks, Muslims, Ebola, etc. etc. etc. Having everyone afraid of the Russians made us much easier to push around. I always remember the final line of the parody of instructions for seeking shelter during a nuclear attack: “Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.”
The fear may have been cultivated, but we were really scared at times. I think some of the rebelliousness of the 60s originated in the feeling that if we might be turned into crispy critters any moment, we might as well do what we wanted now.
Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach” was the nuclear holocaust novel of our generation.
Kitteh – that dream sounds really interesting. I’ll bet it would make a great episode of one of those scary shows, like American Horror Show or Night Gallery, or some such.
Another episode of “Please write this as a novel or short story, because I want to read it, and more details, please.” I get that show every time I talk with my dear friend, and she mentions her marriages to “Dumbshit 1” and “Dumbshit 2.”
Also, I agree with Bina. Manospherians couldn’t compete with EITHER Mr. K or his brother. I don’t care how many combo-keystrokes you know, you won’t take down royal renaissance men.
Michelle:
QFT and also ROFLMAO value.
Pardon my Anglo-Saxon but FUCK YEAH
(even if he’s bi rather than hetero)
Don’t you also love the way these binary-brained idiots always think different interests or tastes have to be mutually exclusive? Like, no front-line soldier and dedicated hunter could possibly be an artist, composer and dancer as well. If you listen very closely, you’ll hear a sound like a cap-gun: it’s the GGers’ teensy tiny brains exploding.
Kitteh
Having fools in the ruling class.
Pro: You know how to avoid their uncreative, repetitive attempts at treason
Con: You can’t have any progress, unless you do it yourself, because they are uncreative, repetitive, and apparently too foolish to learn how to avoid the death penalty.
Pro: The next generation will rise to power faster, due to their fathers being beheaded for treason. Maybe?
Con: You’ve got that whole “ruling” learning curve to deal with. Lots of turnover in any sort of business is problematic, but especially in the middle-management section, because the poor peons have to keep dealing with changing expectations.
Another Con: It’s just a big gory mess for the poor serfs to mop up. Yuck.
Everything is a gory mess for the poor serfs to mop up! Except for Constitutional Peasants!
Sorry for too much MP, but I love these guys!
Button on a jar lid – snerk!
Oh, my gosh – they really think they’re 007, don’t they? It’s fools like this who write the movies where the geo is running from the real spies, and they TAKE THIER CELL PHONE WITH THEM. Or the “veteran” body-guards check in with each other on radio, and when someone doesn’t respond, they shrug and move along, rather than calling out “ABORT!” because their security has been breached. And lo and behold, they are all killed by the one who breached their security.
Stuff like this. Aaargh. Whenever I watch a movie that makes these kinds of mistakes, I just get twitchy. Probably because of the way I was raised. I was taught how to think about security issues, so that if I ever really needed to bug out, I could do it, physical restrictions, and all.
But these tools planning their sneaking is just soooooo laughable. If only it didn’t hit that particular trigger that makes me just want to get on their chat and EDUCATE them. But I do have enough self-control not to educate the enemy.
And they are bullying a woman about her dog dying? “Man’s best friend,” unless the owner is a woman and we hate her.
As for books about life in Jane Austen’s time, and what a marriageable woman needed to know, I highly recommend “Georgette Heyer’s Regency World” by Jennifer Kloester. A lady was expected to know how to manage the household with economy, as well as being up to date with all the fashions, including culinary fashion, and have a firm hand on the staff, as well. Marriagable did not include “sexy,” but it did include “attractive,” and the husband was supposed to teach his wife how to be the sex-object of his desire. But they don’t really get into that part of life much in this particular book.
OK, back to comments.
GrumpyOldMan:
I bow to your superior decrepitude skillz! 😛
Michelle:
I don’t know how they’d show it, really, because it was just them walking through courtiers, in broad daylight; there was nothing visible, just knowing, like being able to see atmosphere in my mind’s eye. Hard to describe and not really possible to depict. The scene was laid out a little like Bosse’s picture of a court ball; imagine everyone standing, and rather than a couple dancing, Louis and Gaston walking between the lines of courtiers. Louis was stalking rather than just walking; he never liked being at court. The colours were just as bright; it was just knowing how much death there was around them.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VXznNU8A0ps/hqdefault.jpg