"If we view the act of play as a constructive one, then this tribe of men is building and rebuilding the same monument of gameplay and narrative experience in collaboration with the creator, again and again. Even if the right-leaning player is occasionally turning towards the camera for a wry comment and a smirk at the creator’s ideology, there is no mistaking who is the instructive master and who is the receiving slave in this situation."
This excerpt superbly points to more black pills than it cures. There is a concept known as the "male sedation hypothesis", that stipulates that the need to "play" is fundamentally a memetic drive for the intrinsically social animal that is man. "Play" creates and reinforces community bonding behavior through a reciprocal cycle of behaviors that serve as a form of simulcramated synonym for tribal behaviors such as warfare, group cohesion, status signaling, and genital grafting. Video games "hack" this intrinsic drive for action-oriented goal striving within men to force them to spend their energies within its self-exciting feedback loop; like the pubescent mormon and his mother's sock or the Turk and his particularly big buttocked boy, this innate drive for energy expulsion will go through any hurdle or bottleneck to see itself expressed. Videos, games, and porn can be filled to the brim with lizzo-fied females and portray all men of European descent as nothing but eunuchs and slaves for matriarchs and their morals, and men will still indulge in them—what else would we do? We need to release this energy somehow, and indulging in it with an ironic smile in solidarity with our brothers on how "woke" everything is gives us enough of a dopamine hit of clever criticism on the regime's hegemony without actually spending the necessary resources and time on choosing a path of "exit" and creating alternate forms of community and energy expression.
I'm granting you the Effort-Post of the Week Award for this one Gabe. Particularly for that Turkish burn.
But I fundamentally agree that the energy has to get out, and the drive to play is built into all of us - but most strongly in men it seems. There's actually a quote from later in the essay which I just couldn't find space for in my post here where he connects it with the concept of commodity fetishization:
“The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life; the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people's daily activities.”
And to your point here, the "capitalist/late stage liberalism/petroleum culture" ideology we grow up in masterfully deflects us just as you describe. But as this quote emphases, there is a place for critical thinking - in our milieu's view a more NRx type awareness of power dynamics.
Great thoughts as always, and your closing thoughts are precisely why I gave up on my PubLunch reviews. Offenses to the modern man are in every new book, TV show, film, comic book, and even albums of music. To resist eating from the trough is mandatory in this world.
As an aside, I have always despised Bethesda. I'm waiting for the day they finally sink.
Thank you and I had noticed that you weren't doing that series anymore but had not realized it was intentional/the cause. I respect the decisions though because it really is soul taxing, especially when you know you're suffering through it only to draw OTHER PEOPLE into the outrage. Author/YouTuber David Stewart had a good rant about this when he stopped making Star Wars videos while the new sequels were coming out even though it was making his channel grow like crazy.
And you know too well that my love for old Bethesda went beyond healthy, maybe that's why the recent drama really resonated with me the way it did.
Personally, I've tried to flew from gaming as it was a hobby that started feeling like an addiction: When you hesitate to stop doing something you don't enjoy and that's adding nothing to your life, that state of affairs is never a good sign. Nowadays, wherever I game I have to justify the activity with multi-tasked productivity... Play a vidya while you listen to an audiobook, play a vidya while talking with friends, play a vidya on a pointless zoom meeting.
Since I'm not big on gamer culture, I can't comment on wtf is going on in there, but your descriptions reminds me a lot of "right-wing" movie critics. They deride and shit on the products they consume, yet it only accentuates the irony that they're giving these products attention, thus free marketing, thus making it less likely that the corpos will keep doublin' down... I'm very guilty of this myself, truth is, stuff is way easier to destroy than re-build and/or discover new stuff from which to build from.
One of my still half-baked ideas is for fans (dare I say it, fandoms) to salvage the media they care about. Why watch the Star Wars Sequels when there are way better, more loving, and thoughtful fanfictions out there? A fan that cares about the media he consumes, presumably because it brings meaning to his life, should have no issue digging for what's good, true and beautiful within the realms of fandom.
Thank you for the kind words and I definitely had YouTube movie reviewers in mind as well as a bad example of this exact issue.
I really wish there was some way fanfiction/films could be sold to your point, there should be a whole industry of non-IP holder content with good incentives to filter the quality for the customer. Strange to think just how profound the effect of IP laws are.
"If we view the act of play as a constructive one, then this tribe of men is building and rebuilding the same monument of gameplay and narrative experience in collaboration with the creator, again and again. Even if the right-leaning player is occasionally turning towards the camera for a wry comment and a smirk at the creator’s ideology, there is no mistaking who is the instructive master and who is the receiving slave in this situation."
This excerpt superbly points to more black pills than it cures. There is a concept known as the "male sedation hypothesis", that stipulates that the need to "play" is fundamentally a memetic drive for the intrinsically social animal that is man. "Play" creates and reinforces community bonding behavior through a reciprocal cycle of behaviors that serve as a form of simulcramated synonym for tribal behaviors such as warfare, group cohesion, status signaling, and genital grafting. Video games "hack" this intrinsic drive for action-oriented goal striving within men to force them to spend their energies within its self-exciting feedback loop; like the pubescent mormon and his mother's sock or the Turk and his particularly big buttocked boy, this innate drive for energy expulsion will go through any hurdle or bottleneck to see itself expressed. Videos, games, and porn can be filled to the brim with lizzo-fied females and portray all men of European descent as nothing but eunuchs and slaves for matriarchs and their morals, and men will still indulge in them—what else would we do? We need to release this energy somehow, and indulging in it with an ironic smile in solidarity with our brothers on how "woke" everything is gives us enough of a dopamine hit of clever criticism on the regime's hegemony without actually spending the necessary resources and time on choosing a path of "exit" and creating alternate forms of community and energy expression.
I'm granting you the Effort-Post of the Week Award for this one Gabe. Particularly for that Turkish burn.
But I fundamentally agree that the energy has to get out, and the drive to play is built into all of us - but most strongly in men it seems. There's actually a quote from later in the essay which I just couldn't find space for in my post here where he connects it with the concept of commodity fetishization:
“The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life; the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people's daily activities.”
And to your point here, the "capitalist/late stage liberalism/petroleum culture" ideology we grow up in masterfully deflects us just as you describe. But as this quote emphases, there is a place for critical thinking - in our milieu's view a more NRx type awareness of power dynamics.
Great thoughts as always, and your closing thoughts are precisely why I gave up on my PubLunch reviews. Offenses to the modern man are in every new book, TV show, film, comic book, and even albums of music. To resist eating from the trough is mandatory in this world.
As an aside, I have always despised Bethesda. I'm waiting for the day they finally sink.
Thank you and I had noticed that you weren't doing that series anymore but had not realized it was intentional/the cause. I respect the decisions though because it really is soul taxing, especially when you know you're suffering through it only to draw OTHER PEOPLE into the outrage. Author/YouTuber David Stewart had a good rant about this when he stopped making Star Wars videos while the new sequels were coming out even though it was making his channel grow like crazy.
And you know too well that my love for old Bethesda went beyond healthy, maybe that's why the recent drama really resonated with me the way it did.
Such talented writing.
Personally, I've tried to flew from gaming as it was a hobby that started feeling like an addiction: When you hesitate to stop doing something you don't enjoy and that's adding nothing to your life, that state of affairs is never a good sign. Nowadays, wherever I game I have to justify the activity with multi-tasked productivity... Play a vidya while you listen to an audiobook, play a vidya while talking with friends, play a vidya on a pointless zoom meeting.
Since I'm not big on gamer culture, I can't comment on wtf is going on in there, but your descriptions reminds me a lot of "right-wing" movie critics. They deride and shit on the products they consume, yet it only accentuates the irony that they're giving these products attention, thus free marketing, thus making it less likely that the corpos will keep doublin' down... I'm very guilty of this myself, truth is, stuff is way easier to destroy than re-build and/or discover new stuff from which to build from.
One of my still half-baked ideas is for fans (dare I say it, fandoms) to salvage the media they care about. Why watch the Star Wars Sequels when there are way better, more loving, and thoughtful fanfictions out there? A fan that cares about the media he consumes, presumably because it brings meaning to his life, should have no issue digging for what's good, true and beautiful within the realms of fandom.
Thank you for the kind words and I definitely had YouTube movie reviewers in mind as well as a bad example of this exact issue.
I really wish there was some way fanfiction/films could be sold to your point, there should be a whole industry of non-IP holder content with good incentives to filter the quality for the customer. Strange to think just how profound the effect of IP laws are.
Completely agree I hate Anita Sarkeesian and I love gamergate! Go gamers! thanks again Tooky's.
[This user, and his entire supposed continent, were banned for this post]