{"id":28396,"date":"2014-10-26T00:02:06","date_gmt":"2014-10-26T04:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28396"},"modified":"2017-04-15T13:47:44","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T17:47:44","slug":"andrew-sullivan-on-the-end-of-gamer-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/10\/26\/andrew-sullivan-on-the-end-of-gamer-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Sullivan on the end of gamer culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan<\/a> carefully dips his toes into the #gamergate war:<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/a><\/p>\n

Many readers have warned me not to dip a toe into the gamergate debate, which, so far, we\u2019ve been covering through aggregation and reader-input. And I\u2019m not going to dive headlong into an extremely complex series of events, which have generated huge amounts of intense emotion on all sides, in a gamer culture which Dish readers know far, far better than I. But part of my job is to write and think about burning current web discussions \u2013 and add maybe two cents, even as an outsider.<\/p>\n

So let me make a few limited points. The tactics of harassment, threats of violence, foul misogyny, and stalking have absolutely no legitimate place in any discourse. Having read about what has happened to several women, who have merely dared to exercise their First Amendment rights, I can only say it\u2019s been one of those rare stories that still has the capacity to shock me. I know it isn\u2019t fair to tarnish an entire tendency with this kind of extremism, but the fact that this tactic seemed to be the first thing that some gamergate advocates deployed should send off some red flashing lights as to the culture it is defending.<\/p>\n

Second, there\u2019s a missing piece of logic, so far as I have managed to discern, in the gamergate campaign. The argument seems to be that some feminists are attempting to police or control a hyper-male culture of violence, speed, competition and boobage. And in so far as that might be the case, my sympathies do indeed lie with the gamers. The creeping misandry in a lot of current debates \u2013 see \u201cAffirmative Consent\u201d and \u201cCheck Your Privilege\u201d \u2013 and the easy prejudices that define white and male and young as suspect identities (because sexism!) rightly offend many men (and women).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an atmosphere in which it has somehow become problematic to have a classic white, straight male identity, and a lot that goes with it. I\u2019m not really a part of that general culture \u2013 indifferent to boobage, as I am, and bored by violence. But I don\u2019t see why it cannot have a place in the world. I believe in the flourishing of all sorts of cultures and subcultures and have long been repulsed by the nannies and busybodies who want to police them \u2013 whether from the social right or the feminist left.<\/p>\n

But \u2013 and here\u2019s where the logic escapes me \u2013 if the core gamers really do dominate the market for these games, why do they think the market will stop catering to them? The great (and not-so-great) thing about markets is that they are indifferent to content as such. If \u201chardcore gamers\u201d skew 7 -1 male, and if corporations want to make lots of money, then this strain of the culture is hardly under threat. It may be supplemented by lots of other, newer varieties, but it won\u2019t die. Will it be diluted? Almost certainly. Does that feel like an assault for a group of people whose identity is deeply bound up in this culture? Absolutely. Is it something anyone should really do anything about? Nah. Let a thousand variety of nerds and post-nerds bloom. And leave Kenny McCormick alone. This doesn\u2019t have to be zero-sum.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan carefully dips his toes into the #gamergate war: Many readers have warned me not to dip a toe into the gamergate debate, which, so far, we\u2019ve been covering through aggregation and reader-input. And I\u2019m not going to dive headlong into an extremely complex series of events, which have generated huge amounts of intense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,28,13],"tags":[262,987,186,303,43],"class_list":["post-28396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming","category-media","category-usa","tag-culture","tag-feminism","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-sexism","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7o0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28398,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28396\/revisions\/28398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}