MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Sneaky Little Hobbitses: How Gamers Transformed The Culture Wars.
Despite the common stereotypes of gamers as losers, nerds and shut-ins, gamers proved to be the perfect opponents for cultural authoritarians. The left relies on destroying the reputations of their opponents — but how do you destroy the reputations of people who have been ridiculed as often as gamers? When you’re already hated by the left, the right, and the media, the only way to go is dank.
Gamers also benefited from being one of the few genuine grassroots communities, with few leaders and no official structures. Unlike the tedious “movements” that regularly emerge from college campuses – whether Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) or Slut Walks – the gamers have no radical ideology.
They are ordinary, in some cases really quite apolitical, people, brought together by a shared hobby. They have no grand social objective beyond protecting the medium they love from authoritarian scolds and they cannot be neatly categorised.
The more you try to paint gamers as basement-dwelling straight white nerds, the more paraplegic black lesbian World of Warcraft addicts come tumbling out of the woodwork. (Is that offensive to dykes? I have no idea. Nor would the lesbians in GamerGate give a flying toss.)
One of the features of GamerGate is that it includes people from every background imaginable. A survey on GamePolitics found a broad mix of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Gamers don’t care if you’re black, white, gay, straight, or disabled. All that matters is that you know how to game. They’ll even welcome right-wing bastards like me.
That kind of diversity and tolerance — the genuine kind — frightens cultural authoritarians, not just because they are so mercilessly intolerant to their opponents, but also because it undermines their view of the world. Gaming is that most hated of words in identity politics: a meritocracy. Who you are is unimportant. All that matters is what you know, what you can do, and if you’re being honest with yourself and others about those two things.
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