I've always thought of people who cared about gamergate as reactionary losers. And I mostly still do, but I now believe that it's important for young men to have a space where male preferences can exist without being constantly interrogated. Blow up bad guys and save the hot girl has something of a timeless appeal. And gaming was that space for a lot of young men. Which is why the reaction to feminist critiques in gaming was so intense.
But in any case, you're right, the real question is, where do we go from here?
Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from how Steve Bannon viewed the men of gamergate when he recruited them. Instead of seeing them as a problem to be solved, he viewed them as an asset. A group of angry and disaffected people who would be very useful to have fighting for him.
For Democrats, that means instead of thinking, "how do we make men less angry so that they'll listen to us," the thinking should be, "how do we channel that anger towards our enemies instead of towards us?"
I had my problems with Bernie in 2016, but he was right that the outgroup for democrats needed to be billionaires. Dividing up the electorate into specific demographics and writing a policy for each one doesn't work and I certainly don't think that adding men to the list of Who Democrats Serve would meaningfully change young men's opinion of the party. But having an enemy that they can coalesce around? That would be very helpful.
Going after billionaires is the populist move. And after seeing Trump dominate the last decade of politics with a populist movement, it makes sense to want to copy that. And maybe that could work. But it also might be trying to fight the last war. Whereas I assume that the next election will be more about technology and the role of AI in our society. But in any case, whoever picks the right enemy has the best odds of winning.
I feel like the thing that pissed people off about peak woke wasn't even the presence of more diverse bodies and people, but the immediate condemnation that rained upon people that weren't automatically comfortable with the social mores of college-educated, urbane, cosmopolitan America. Pop culture critical theory being shouted at normies from people they'd never want to talk to, let alone consider attractive or admirable, aggravated them into deeper bigotry.
In politics, the messenger is the message, and covering every topic in Intro to Sociology, esoteric bullshit irritated people into a place of complacence. Social media fosters a culture of "guilty until proven innocent" and watching unattractive, innumerate teens and 20-somethings scream at people about how racist/sexist/colorist/bigoted they were pissed off the general public so much that they don't give a shit about the bigotry of the GOP because at least they'll lower prices.
I suspect that the way Democrats win these people back is by attacking the woke hive and labelling them as overeducated irritating ninnies, but I don't think the party has the stamina to endure a fight with - let's face it - unemployed losers that have nothing better do with their shitty, socially isolated-lives. Shutting down social media entirely by destroying the servers might work, but life isn't a James Bond movie.
Regardless, the Democratic Party has to be meaner, and I don't think that's possible until they clear out the legion of passive-aggressive staffers that run the DNC and congressional offices. Gavin Newsom might be an amoral, serpent-demon from the pits of hell, but at least he's willing to be confrontational and rude in a way the base likes. Centrist moderates constantly choosing the high road might put them in a position where they end up losing the primary because base voters want a viper. I know that many of the centrists can adjust (Slotkin and Spanberger both seem like people that could embrace the venom needed), but mealy-mouthed, conflict-averse focus on policy is not going to fix this problem, and the ambitious Democrats need to avoid people advising them to be so.
Sorry for the rant, I have a lot of opinions on how the Democratic Party sucks and am just tired of rooting for perpetual losers. If I wanted to do that I'd root for the Portland Trail Blazers.
As an Ace guy, the circle of male friends I have is probably far from representative, but I honestly have never encountered this type/degree of sexism among men. It absolutely does exist, but I really do think social media distorts our sense of scale with just about everything. In the same way that progressives might wrongly conclude from social media that they're in the majority, it might very well be that the worst type of guy is overrepresented online, and that in real life, they make up a relatively small fraction of men. At least, I really hope that's the case.
I think the men who are radicalized by this stuff know that it's wrong, so they don't really publicize it around women and other men that will disagree. Moreover, birds of a feather flock together, and most men who are like, upstanding decent guys aren't really breaking bread on a regular basis with massive misogynists who want to throw tomatoes at women for weighing over 120 pounds
Another thing is that social media created completely isolated silos; people were having conversations & developing world views, across the world, with other like-minded people.
This is really reflected in political polling. Before, you could take someone's race, age, level of education, what church/Union you were a part of & where they lived and you knew how they would vote. The 2012 GOP primary was the first time traditional polling wasn't really working. Brexit & Trump was when pollsters knew the game was changed. Nate Silver caught onto this early
I've always thought of people who cared about gamergate as reactionary losers. And I mostly still do, but I now believe that it's important for young men to have a space where male preferences can exist without being constantly interrogated. Blow up bad guys and save the hot girl has something of a timeless appeal. And gaming was that space for a lot of young men. Which is why the reaction to feminist critiques in gaming was so intense.
But in any case, you're right, the real question is, where do we go from here?
Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from how Steve Bannon viewed the men of gamergate when he recruited them. Instead of seeing them as a problem to be solved, he viewed them as an asset. A group of angry and disaffected people who would be very useful to have fighting for him.
For Democrats, that means instead of thinking, "how do we make men less angry so that they'll listen to us," the thinking should be, "how do we channel that anger towards our enemies instead of towards us?"
I had my problems with Bernie in 2016, but he was right that the outgroup for democrats needed to be billionaires. Dividing up the electorate into specific demographics and writing a policy for each one doesn't work and I certainly don't think that adding men to the list of Who Democrats Serve would meaningfully change young men's opinion of the party. But having an enemy that they can coalesce around? That would be very helpful.
Going after billionaires is the populist move. And after seeing Trump dominate the last decade of politics with a populist movement, it makes sense to want to copy that. And maybe that could work. But it also might be trying to fight the last war. Whereas I assume that the next election will be more about technology and the role of AI in our society. But in any case, whoever picks the right enemy has the best odds of winning.
I feel like the thing that pissed people off about peak woke wasn't even the presence of more diverse bodies and people, but the immediate condemnation that rained upon people that weren't automatically comfortable with the social mores of college-educated, urbane, cosmopolitan America. Pop culture critical theory being shouted at normies from people they'd never want to talk to, let alone consider attractive or admirable, aggravated them into deeper bigotry.
In politics, the messenger is the message, and covering every topic in Intro to Sociology, esoteric bullshit irritated people into a place of complacence. Social media fosters a culture of "guilty until proven innocent" and watching unattractive, innumerate teens and 20-somethings scream at people about how racist/sexist/colorist/bigoted they were pissed off the general public so much that they don't give a shit about the bigotry of the GOP because at least they'll lower prices.
I suspect that the way Democrats win these people back is by attacking the woke hive and labelling them as overeducated irritating ninnies, but I don't think the party has the stamina to endure a fight with - let's face it - unemployed losers that have nothing better do with their shitty, socially isolated-lives. Shutting down social media entirely by destroying the servers might work, but life isn't a James Bond movie.
Regardless, the Democratic Party has to be meaner, and I don't think that's possible until they clear out the legion of passive-aggressive staffers that run the DNC and congressional offices. Gavin Newsom might be an amoral, serpent-demon from the pits of hell, but at least he's willing to be confrontational and rude in a way the base likes. Centrist moderates constantly choosing the high road might put them in a position where they end up losing the primary because base voters want a viper. I know that many of the centrists can adjust (Slotkin and Spanberger both seem like people that could embrace the venom needed), but mealy-mouthed, conflict-averse focus on policy is not going to fix this problem, and the ambitious Democrats need to avoid people advising them to be so.
Sorry for the rant, I have a lot of opinions on how the Democratic Party sucks and am just tired of rooting for perpetual losers. If I wanted to do that I'd root for the Portland Trail Blazers.
As an Ace guy, the circle of male friends I have is probably far from representative, but I honestly have never encountered this type/degree of sexism among men. It absolutely does exist, but I really do think social media distorts our sense of scale with just about everything. In the same way that progressives might wrongly conclude from social media that they're in the majority, it might very well be that the worst type of guy is overrepresented online, and that in real life, they make up a relatively small fraction of men. At least, I really hope that's the case.
I think the men who are radicalized by this stuff know that it's wrong, so they don't really publicize it around women and other men that will disagree. Moreover, birds of a feather flock together, and most men who are like, upstanding decent guys aren't really breaking bread on a regular basis with massive misogynists who want to throw tomatoes at women for weighing over 120 pounds
Another thing is that social media created completely isolated silos; people were having conversations & developing world views, across the world, with other like-minded people.
This is really reflected in political polling. Before, you could take someone's race, age, level of education, what church/Union you were a part of & where they lived and you knew how they would vote. The 2012 GOP primary was the first time traditional polling wasn't really working. Brexit & Trump was when pollsters knew the game was changed. Nate Silver caught onto this early