#Blaugust2024 Day 17 – About capital-G “Gamers”, and escaping the pit of hate – Words under my name

I love video games, I love them, but I detest capital-G “Gamers.” You know the ones, the ones who spend 25 hours a day on 4chan, marinating in hatred for anything that isn’t a cisgender, straight white male who looks like Adonis or the digital equivalent of a blow-up doll. The ones who scour Steam to “point out” which games are “infested by Woke.” Those types. The Asmongolds of the world, the Endymions, the assholes who wouldn’t leave their mom’s basement for anything. But their chicken nuggets or to poop.

I despise them, because I know I could have… been them. I know how they think, because I could have been them, a foot soldier for Project 2025 and the erosion of human rights for anyone with a heartbeat, especially people from vulnerable minority groups. I know I could very well have fallen into the pit of hate that they wallow in, and I’m glad I didn’t. Because I know there wouldn’t have been much of a way out, because I would have been so paranoid that someone “woke” was out to get me that I wouldn’t have been able to see the forest for the trees.

I know that as an awkward, lonely teenager or young man I could have been influenced and all my insecurities and self-loathing could have been turned against people whose only “crime” was being who they are. Do some research on that, Steve Bannon helped build GamerGate v1 by recruiting young, lonely men who loved video games and were insecure about themselves. The bastard made a nice nest egg selling gold in World of Warcraft and built an army of red hatted hate mongers who walked around in goose step and had humanity in the situation they now find themselves in. And I know that I could have been influenced by someone who played on the insecurities of a younger Blockade85 by convincing me that it was someone else’s fault why I was the way I was.

But I didn’t fall for it because I had people around me who kept me from falling down that rabbit hole. I’ve been aware of politics since about 2006 and have always been forced to not only blindly believe, to trust, but to verify. I think it was that “awareness” and the way I was raised that put me on the path that I am on. would follow. Empathize with the (really) oppressed, stand up for my fellow man, make the world a little bit more just and fair for everyone, not just people who looked like me. You know, fat, unfit white guys with a permanent frown on their face.

The university and online games also helped a lot, because I met a lot of people who not I have my background, who weren’t backward country bumpkins with more guns than teeth. People whose backgrounds and perspectives helped broaden my own, because where I live, up until the last few years, the average skin color was “mayonnaise.” I didn’t get a lot of different perspectives up until then. But meeting people from different backgrounds, from different places, with completely different life experiences, has shaped me as a person. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out my political leanings, but interacting with people who didn’t have the same experiences as me has helped me determine that I want to support progressive causes.

It shouldn’t be such a ‘radical’ thing to want rich people to pay their taxes, to want children to be fed, to want people to have the right to love who they want, to show how they are best represented, and most of all, not to want anyone shot in the head. If that makes me a ‘radical leftist’ then (forgive my French) so fucking are it. Liberty and Justice for all is not just a saying in my mind, that’s just trying to be a good person, treating everyone right, the things that I was taught growing up. I know I’m not the nicest of people, but I want everyone to have the same rights and opportunities, from top to bottom.

So, for these Capital-G “Gamers” to bombard anyone and everyone with someone who isn’t a cis straight white dude, doing circle-pulling with claims like “DEI Detected”, “Woke”, “Sweet Baby Inc. Detected” feels like a bunch of insecure man-children being conned into being the foot soldiers for the hardest right wing (again, French) assholes to fight a culture war that they quite frankly lost a long time ago. The world has never been what these dudes thought it was, and it never will be, there are eight billion people on this planet, there is room for everyone to be given opportunities to succeed, for everyone to see themselves in characters as ideals. I can never truly have the perspective of someone of a different race than myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have empathy for their struggles, for the things they’re dealing with that I’ve never had to deal with. If that makes me a woke leftist, then I’ve been called worse by better people many times.

I haven’t played Assassin’s Creed in a while yearsbut playing as Yasuke in the new Shadows game looks really cool. “But it’s not historically accurate!” Shut up. Was it historically accurate when I beat up the pope in Assassin’s Creed 2 in high school, then had a bad trip with aliens and went “Who is this Desmond!?”? Yasuke was a real person and was considered a real Samurai, being a samurai in Assassin’s Creed sounds cool as hell, and so does the ninja lady whose name I don’t know. Is the “Gamer” too much of a wimp to play as a black guy or a Japanese girl? I thought you were the “alpha male” bro? Because playing as one of them sounds really cool to me.

I’m not so insecure that it short-circuits my brain to play as someone who doesn’t look like me. So, it seems to me that the Capital-G Gamer isn’t comfortable enough in his own skin to feel empathy for people who don’t fit into what if you asked Chat-GPT to spit out a composite of every action movie star from the 80s and make them all look like one dude. I’m not so insecure about who I am that being asked what pronouns I prefer is no big deal, it’s a quick “oh yeah, it’s he/him”, it’s not like it’s the Battle of Stalingrad to be asked what I want to be called. So, maybe the guys whining about “woke pronoun mafia” are just projecting their own insecurities onto you, me, and the pole because they’re uncomfortable in their own skin?

I have a few opinions on this, first of all you have to fight fire with fire to push them back. But, that you also have to be able to pull these guys off the edge, pull them back to being sane people. It is not the fault of marginalized people that your life is not what you thought it would be. But that the first step to fixing your own situation is to get comfortable with yourself. Like, you have to throw cold water on them, but then offer them a towel to dry them off. Otherwise they will run back to the well of hatred because it is comfortable for them, it gives them someone to blame their problems on, instead of putting them on the path to fixing themselves.

I guess I’m asking for empathy, from these goose-stepping assholes to the people they blame for all their problems, but also for them when the cold water of reality is thrown over their heads. That “bro, you got scammed by scammers looking for a useful foot soldier” has to go hand in hand with the “bro, you’re a fucking idiot because they think marginalized people are to blame for why You are afraid to play as a black man”. Maybe I’m trying to appeal to the humanity that these guys have put in a closet, but in my eyes, you should lend a hand after you punch them in the back when they attack you. But maybe they also know it’s a racket that makes them a lot of money, so they willingly dive into the hole because it pays well. So my attempts at empathy fall on deaf ears.

Anyway, GamerGate v1, v2, all these scammers, hard right movements, I think it needs to be a one-two punch to not only fight them back, but to offer a lifeline back to reality for those caught up in it. I’m not asking them to be the most progressive people in the world, because not everyone will be, but rather to break through the wall of noise they’ve built around themselves and offer a way back. I sympathize with them because I see a world where I myself may have fallen into that well of hate, giving my problems to everyone who isn’t me. I sympathize with them because I want them to rise above the noise and see the world for what it is, not what they’ve been lied to and conned into believing.