Full disclosure: This is purely an opinion piece however it is informed by the actions of the past.
When #GamerGate, The Quinnspiracy and the various events surrounding the Internet Culture War that spun out of it started two years ago, no one thought for a moment that it would last even a month. Now, however, Gawker is bankrupt, Twitter is dropping faster than a crackwhore, and the rest of the media sees gamers as perpetual boogeymen. Why is this? Because gamers won the battle long before they were even attacked the first time. I’m not talking about the abuses of the past few years. I’m talking since the original Senate hearings back in the early 1990s. I bet you are really wondering what I’m talking about here, so let’s analyze this from the beginning.
Before the video game industry crash of 1983, video games or interactive media was a rapidly growing industry because it stimulated creative thinking. Now if you ask most avid gamers they do tend to be extremely creative people who are successful in what they do. The all also believe in meritocracy, hard, work and support honest equality. Now even back in the early 80’s Warner Bros saw how this was going when they bought out Atari.
After the crash occurred I don’t believe for a second that any of the media moguls expected gaming to make any sort of comeback, much less in the way Nintendo pulled it off. In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the original crash was engineered because they saw so much free thinking coming out of gamers. In an oligarchy, such people are dangerous to the political and corporate elite.
Fast forward 10 years and the people in charge saw video games coming back with a vengeance, so they had to try and demonize and regulate them. Say hello to the ESRB and the senate hearings that led to them. Now they think they’ve put the cap on this powder keg that threatens their hold over the normies. What? This industry is still growing…we need a scapegoat! Here comes Michael Carneal, a bullied and unfortunate soul who ended up committing the first in a series of highly popularized school shootings that came to a head with Columbine. Just so you know when Carneal was shooting up Heath High School I was in a neighboring school district at Reidland Middle School, so I can count as second-hand coverage. So they find a new target with Doom, claiming it taught people how to aim a firearm. Anyone who played that game can tell you that’s ridiculous. By the end of all that we have the entire Jack Thompson debacle, and the media still couldn’t win against gaming.
The medium kept growing. Fast forward again to 2012 and several more attempts then it comes to them. “Wait, I think I figured out how we can make games evil to the public finally! We’ll say that they hate women!” Now if they tried this approach in 1990 they could have possibly destroyed the industry then because the research to disprove it couldn’t have been done. But now with the resources we have they can’t hide the truth. But now it has led to #Gamergate being the thing that frightens them the most. This is because they know that they have nothing to disprove us seriously and that they can’t control the truth any longer. The Mainstream Media has been complacent for too long and are now complicit in their own destruction.
In an attempt to demonize the most intelligent and unique thinkers of our age, the true revolutionaries, they signed their own suicide note because they know that such people only mean a true restoration of democratic power in the Western world and a fall to aristocratic and oligarchical rule across the face of the Earth. The collectivist populism of the 20th century has run its course and they know it. This is why we have won. We see that we are entering the age of individualist rule. We have the tools to encourage creative and positive thinking, to embolden people to live truly free from the controls of others, and to pull a complete Robin Hood on the power of the oligarchs. Take their power away and give it back to the people.
I say at the end of most of my articles to “Game Freely”. I say this because I believe in living free under one’s own flag, under one’s own state of mind. As such in my logo there is a black skull and crossbones, denoting the influence that the image of the pirate as an outlaw free of the bindings of the state has on my character. I live free under the symbol I use and under the symbol of the Honey Badger. This is a black skull and crossbones also because I will keep fighting until my bones are ash. That my spirit is indomitable, such a spirit frightens those in charge of the media because it threatens their weak hold on power. We don’t have that fear because we know the true source of our power and how it can’t be taken away. This is why we’ve already won: We are a symbol, an idea that people can live under that embraces and encourages their own personal control of self as well as the justice of self-determination.
To reinforce this opinion and show why I’ve embraced being a Men’s Rights Advocate I want to make a suggestion. Nothing extreme, I just wish to suggest that everyone watch something that has highly influenced my views in life; the anime Arcadia of My Youth. It’s a Japanese subtitled-only work really, as the My Youth in Arcadia dub is agreed to lose the entire point. But it shows I think the true empathy, compassion, and beauty of men, nay, of humanity! There is one scene in particular half way through that to this very day no matter how many times I watch it I cry. I cry because it shows what it truly means to be a man, because while sad it is also uplifting and beautiful. It also shows the true heart of geek culture and why the mainstream will never accept us. With that I will end this with a statement from the end of Arcadia of My Youth:
”We will not pray for anything, nor will we seek help from anyone. Never again will we fight under another’s flag. We will keep on fighting, only for what we believe in, only under our flag, for as long as we live. Under my flag!”
- Breaking the Narrative Episode 124: Nice Try Kotaku! This Won’t Work Though! - July 8, 2019
- Breaking the Narrative Episode 123: We Shouldn’t Go Straight to Mars! How Anime Got Space Right! - July 1, 2019
- Breaking the Narrative Episode 122: You’re Reviewing What Now? The Dissenter Web Browser! - June 10, 2019
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I must say… it’s so much more hopeful than the kind of stuff I’ve produced. Then again, without some muscle and might behind the mind, we’re nothing. Talk softly. But carry a big stick.
Great article but one presentation error I found in paragraphs 2 and 3:
“After the crash occurred I don’t believe for a second that any of the media moguls expected gaming to make any sort of comeback, much less in the way Nintendo pulled it off. In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the original crash was engineered because they saw so much free thinking coming out of
After the crash occurred I don’t believe for a second that any of the media moguls expected gaming to make any sort of comeback, much less in the way Nintendo pulled it off. In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the original crash was engineered because they saw so much free thinking coming out of gamers. In an oligarchy, such people are dangerous to the political and corporate elite.”
Hope this helped. 🙂
The torch was kept alight by us Brits during the Home Computer revolution – with the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts96J7HhO28
Please stop bringing up the ZX Spectrum. She was my first computer. I get all misty. Now you’ve done it!
Thanks. This seems to be a glitch that happens occasionally in which the beginning of a paragraph gets duplicated, usually during the process of saving the article. It’s easy to catch when it happens then, but occasionally it occurs at publishing, and isn’t caught until after.
Still trying to figure out what causes it. I suspect that it’s happening due to a browser app I use to assist with spellchecking.
I get what you mean, and it’s all very inspirational and the like, but this article has a tinge of unfair generalisation and/or projection. I mean, it’s actually hard to think of a less homogeneous group than gamers, other than perhaps atheists – and there only because being an atheist essentially means nothing at all. So when you say things like “most avid gamers do tend to be extremely creative people who are successful in what they do. They all also believe in meritocracy, hard work and support honest equality” – I can’t help but roll my eyes a little. Putting aside the fact that you could never prove such a thing, there is also literally never any circumstance in which one can legitimately claim “they all also believe” about any group, unless it’s a group which explicitly subscribes to that particular belief – all Christians believe in Jesus, for instance. I know it may seem semanticist, but qualifying your statements so that they don’t appear to be (or are in fact) absolutes, particularly when regarding vast quantities of people with very little in common, is a general courtesy that all can enjoy.
Having said that I generally agree with the rest of the sentiment, and I happen to think it’s more than just gamers – it is the internet generation in general which has somewhat overturned past methods of control (though new varieties arise daily). Technological advancements in information technology in general have enabled a new era of individualism that the bulk of history could only look on at in envy. That is why preeminent in all of our minds, in present & future, ought to be concern for the unscrupulous attempts by governments around the world to censor and control the internet.
I would say that on some level the must be a belief in meritocracy as it is an inherent part of game mechanics in that the gamer is trying to compete with other gamers and/or the game itself.
This may however not extend beyond games or even be conscious.
I am speaking from experience as not just a gamer myself but as someone who has always had gamer friends no matter where I’ve lived and am married to a woman who has also grown up as a gamer. Most people who I’ve known to embrace video games on the whole the past thirty years have been creative thinkers and valued people for their abilities as opposed to their visual aesthetics. Their skin, gender, religious identity, weight class, politics don’t typically matter in a gamer space from what I know. Remeber I did preface this as an opinion piece informed by past experience. Your mileage may vary.
That being said I do agree that gamers are a very diverse group of individuals.What I’m mentioning is a mindset, nothing more.
That’s very optimistic. While I do agree that gamers are more inclined to be free thinkers, most of them have not recognised the media for what it is. For some people gaming is just a pass time and they are still susceptible to collectivist thinking. GamerGate is definitely a success, but the fight is far from over.
I agree, the fight is far from over. We shouldn’t even begin to waver. Thats why I wrote the next to last paragraph is written how it is. I want this article to be shared, if only to wake more gamers up. To help give them the confidence to fight against collectivist thought.
He that stands with me shall be my brother – #GamerGate Victor
lul.
It’s not that the main stream media is scared of you. It’s just they don’t take you seriously because you write stupid shit like this article.
Ok then, if you think you know them so well why do you think the MSM has been shitting on gamers for 30 years?
I don’t know them. But what I do know is writing articles that make you sound like some crusader when in reality your just ranting and raving about something insignificant like video games when there is so much more things in this world getting all worked up about sure is not helping change their minds. It’s part of the reason I just lost the urge or passion for video games. The people who play them are so toxic and entitled that I just don’t see the reason to defend them as art or play them all together.
And honestly I get why you’re so defensive. You and must be one in the same. We went through some really rough patches in life and we found refuge in video games, anime or whatever else you’d see getting lost in. Fantasy worlds are by nature private, and people can get very resentful when other people come in and tell them how things should work in their fantasy world. They lose the control they’ve been craving. They lose what they wanted in the first place, a world where social problems don’t come to haunt them. They feel attacked on the inside, in the place they thought was safe.
But like every other fantasies, dreams or escapism hobbies. Real life comes knocking and eventually you’ll have to have wake up. So maybe if you took a step back and deep breath you’d see that maybe writing what is really nothing more then a glorified ego trip for yourself is not going to get your hobby any better of a public image.
That or you’ll just disregard everything I say and call me an SJW or something like that.
Let me approach you this way then. If you think this is so ‘insignificant’ and such a ‘power trip’ then why did you bother reading it?
To be honest it makes logical sense to me. Video games are competition to traditional mainstream media. If you are playing a deep RPG thats upwards of 3 to 5 days worth of your time that you aren’t spending watching their opinions and the ads that give them money. This means less money for them and henceforth less they can do. Logically if ( were the big dog on the block and I had a plucky upstart competitor I would do everything within my power to sabotage them. This is basic competition logic. Not some crazed conspiracy theory.
To see an example of what I mean look up SOPA or CISPA in relation to having it where the Cable companies have higher control over internet traffic. If you think of it from a purely capitalistic perspective its simple
Sheep.
“In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the original crash was engineered because they saw so much free thinking coming out of gamers.”
This is just about as delusional as you could get.
Is it really? I mean if you think about it logically at that time if you were playing video games you weren’t watching the MSM and giving them what they desired.
TBH, dude…..I’m an actual free-thinking gamer…..and this article just plain sucks.
Firstly, do you actually believe that GamerGate took Gawker down? LOL…..no. Gawker died because of the Hogan sex tape, and because crooked Peter Thiel sought to game the legal system for his own personal benefit. And don’t even get me started on how GG quickly became a culturally authoritarian movement of it’s own, shutting down, or worse(including some of it’s truly out of control adherents sending in death threats), to anyone who dared disagree with them, especially if that person was a woman, and or an “SJW”.
Don’t get me wrong, the industry has had it’s issues…..but GG, in no small part due to the circumstances of it’s birth, was never going to be anything more than a tragic mess.
And it’s even sadder to see that you’ve adopted the “Men’s Movement”, too, a known assembly of “anti-feminist” sexists & misogynists, whom, despite their oft-repeated claims of standing up for men and boys, rarely ever do anything but slander and otherwise s**t on women, and people who stand up for women’s rights(whether they call themselves feminists or not).
Ummm…. first and foremost you do realize this is a “Men’s Movement” website right? I mean really, have you only been reading my articles? That is not the best idea. Secondly you do realize also that this site is primarily pro-GG. I am open to further discussion but from what I’m seeing here we probably aren’t going to come to an understanding. I’m simply using pure logic to feel this out. Video Games as a whole are competition for the MSM because if you are playing video games you aren’t watching MSM sources. This is a simple truth. But again I am not sure you are willing to actually listen.