proceduraldialectics posted:I agree with everything that's being said about gamers being first world labor aristocrats with fascism as organic ideology, but as a gamer teen in the early 2000s I'm pretty sure I was radicalized by reading the Maoist Internationalist Movement's videogame reviews online (https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/vgames/ ), so there might be exceptions, I don't know.
Also I sell my labor as a game developer so if I want to organize my workplace and industry I have no choice, I pretty much have to talk to gamers. I can confirm first-hand that they have petit bourgeois brain and it's very frustrating, but I'm gonna keep pushing.
gamers are children with a stupid bro hobby and bro shit is reactionary and childish so theres some sort of feedback loop there. i don't think that its possible to compete with nazis for gamer recruitment because the fish hook used is literally "girls have cooties and are putting cooties on the games", which only works because literal children and culturally stunted childrenmen have extremely poor priorities. it would probably be more productive use of our time to break pewdiepie's legs or something
Ok. Look. I think we all at least understand here that "Gamer" isn't just the category "people who play video games," it's a chosen identity with its own cultural attachments and warped political ecosystem. When you have a subculture of people like this in which identity and self-perception of value as a person is founded on proud devotion to consuming capitalist mass media, as opposed to being a well adjusted human being who can just enjoy a simple leisure activity without orienting their entire life around it, sure you could salvage individual people by appealing to them as actual human beings, or through other broad political cleavages that can intersect with them. But attempts to appeal to Gamers specifically as a group are doomed to pointless and stupid failure. Gamers qua Gamers are useless, an entire identity predicated on rapturous commodity fetishism, just like those insanely creepy people who have Disney theme weddings or a temple of wall to wall stacks of Funko Pops. The particulars of the cultural identity aren't just "tainted" by violent misogyny, Dunning-Kruger superiority complexes, comically bad hygiene and slavish consumerism, they're the foundation and incompatible with good politics. The way to get better politics out of Gamers is for them to stop being Gamers, which has nothing to do with whether or not they play video games.
There's a reason you don't debate white supremacists, you no-platform them, it's the correct praxis for a fucking reason, and the same applies to these pathetic dweebs. Just because it's a lesser form of dipshit doesn't make you any less a sucker for engaging with them in good faith.
MarxUltor posted:kamelred posted:maybe its time to accept that prevalent political ideologies wherever you find them are not actually the result of "programming" and propaganda and other forms of mind control, but rather just sort of connect logically to the tabs provided by time and place. this lets you off the hook for debating anyone ever (good), and i guess organizing or doing anything else (bad), but its prevents this kind of misanthropic screed about all the dumbshit freedom lovers out there too stupid to be swayed by appeals to reason
Theres like 7 billion openly homo sapiens running around out in the world, many of which are not even nazis at all. So whats the value of debating with nazis and giving a shit about their worthless opinions over doing literally anything else?
Do you think you would learn biology better from an educated person explaining things with science books and answering your questions, or on a game show with someone from Alabama screaming that mitochondria is a satanic lie and mugging for applause?
i didnt say there was a value to it, i'm saying your take here is indistinguishable from the progressive consensus (which also recommends deplatforming and has failed miserably at it despite vastly more power and wealth than the far left, which has no platform at all from which to ban anyone), and anyway it reeks just as badly of snobby, half-assed expediency. my point was that you should be pretty rigorous and pretty thorough in questioning the value of consciousness-raising as a tactic, because the ordinary kind of marxist line, as i understand it, stipulates that class interest trumps evil/stupidity/insanity/propaganda anyway, which is actually bad news for the left because none of those five factors is ever really going our direction in the US.
im absolutely more than willing to concede debate is useless but lets turn that line inward instead of dropping these extremely lazy second-hand takes on synergy, who turned a put and important question mark on cars prescription of "talking to people, etc." and in return got the same chorus of dorky dunk contest theatrics he could expect in any somethingawful thread
kamelred posted:my point was that you should be pretty rigorous and pretty thorough in questioning the value of consciousness-raising as a tactic, because the ordinary kind of marxist line, as i understand it, stipulates that class interest trumps evil/stupidity/insanity/propaganda anyway, which is actually bad news for the left because none of those five factors is ever really going our direction in the US.
im absolutely more than willing to concede debate is useless
i'm pretty sure that people are just telling you that the context in which political activity takes place is important to its success or failure, not to suplex it all into the void. what you're proposing here isn't marxist theory it's some kind of bizarre neoplatonic chain of being because you keep taking people's reactions to a given situation and turning them into cosmic absolutes.
the marxist line is that the world is a dynamic and changing place, evaluate your environment, work strategically within the material conditions at hand, acknowledge that you and your comrades are finite beings and have to pick your battles because being Correct is insufficient to magically carry the day. of course class interest heavily influences political activity, the history of marxist struggle also repeatedly shows that it can at times be overpowered by other conflicting factors, both on a personal level and in broader social movements. and then other times, you think for a minute and choose not to show up to legitimize Milo Yiannopolous or whatever other flavour of the month ghoul doing his circus routine because you'd only be helping him. that's dialectics. the world moves, conflicts arise: assess, think, act. very carefully.
Edited by shriekingviolet ()
shriekingviolet posted:kamelred posted:my point was that you should be pretty rigorous and pretty thorough in questioning the value of consciousness-raising as a tactic, because the ordinary kind of marxist line, as i understand it, stipulates that class interest trumps evil/stupidity/insanity/propaganda anyway, which is actually bad news for the left because none of those five factors is ever really going our direction in the US.
im absolutely more than willing to concede debate is uselessi'm pretty sure that people are just telling you that the context in which political activity takes place is important to its success or failure, not to suplex it all into the void. what you're proposing here isn't marxist theory it's some kind of bizarre neoplatonic chain of being because you keep taking people's reactions to a given situation and turning them into cosmic absolutes.
the marxist line is that the world is a dynamic and changing place, evaluate your environment, work strategically within the material conditions at hand, acknowledge that you and your comrades are finite beings and have to pick your battles because being Correct is insufficient to magically carry the day. of course class interest heavily influences political activity, the history of marxist struggle also repeatedly shows that it can at times be overpowered by other conflicting factors, both on a personal level and in broader social movements. and then other times, you think for a minute and choose not to show up to legitimize Milo Yiannopolous or whatever other flavour of the month ghoul doing his circus routine because you're only helping him. that's dialectics. the world moves, conflicts arise: assess, think, act. very carefully.
it's the same ideological landscape, same material conditions, same borders, same currency, same sets of players and goals running with or against the same currents. you can object that a twitch stream is not a good venue but that's not really the argument. if the game is something like "altering political consciousness discursively" then philosophically the question is always gonna center on whether the words and ideas are causes or symptoms, i.e., whether it would have happened anyway, which seems to me to confound any critique of such efforts that is more narrowly applied than just "all of them". and again, fine, don't go on twitch, but let's come by this position honestly, because "(they) are crazy/evil/stupid" extremely doesn't cut it, and actually i think your characterization of the particular group in question (far right gamers) is way off base, anyway. in fact it reads as very, very close to what i understand to be 4chan et al.'s critique of the friendlier mainstream of gaming: shallow, consumerist, hedonistic, idle, etc. funkopop is normie catnip so some wires are definitely getting crossed, here.
also it seems worth mentioning that specific complaint about debate here is not actually that it could succeed or fail, it's that debate is actually counter productive, i.e., it legitimizes the far right, etc.. which i think you have to realize on some level is a ludicrous objection. who here wields such enormous power? i understand why the bourgeois progressive set frets about this possibility, since they actually do, but that's also that's why i find this line so suspicious: it seems to be on loan from the heavens.
Fayafi posted:wow this is as heated as the china discussion
i think in a terrible fever dream i thought i could put out the fire with gasoline
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead
Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running
Didn't make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do, so much to see
So what's wrong with taking the back streets?
You'll never know if you don't go
You'll never shine if you don't glow
Hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play
Hey now, you're a rock star, get the show on, get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold
It's a cool place and they say it gets colder
You're bundled up now, wait till you get older
But the meteor men beg to differ
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture
The ice we skate is getting pretty thin
The water's getting warm so you might as well swim
My world's on fire, how about yours?
That's the way I like it and I never get bored
Hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play
Hey now, you're a rock star, get the show on, get paid
All that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold
Hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play
Hey now, you're a rock star, get the show, on get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars
Somebody once asked could I spare some change for gas?
I need to get myself away from this place
I said yep what a concept
I could use a little fuel myself
And we could all use a little change
Well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running
Didn't make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do, so much to see
So what's wrong with taking the back streets?
You'll never know if you don't go (go!)
You'll never shine if you don't glow
Hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play
Hey now, you're a rock star, get the show on, get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold
cars posted:close this thread please, it was always a bad idea and I thank the Gamer zoo crew for killing it dead. Thank you and thanks
filler posted:Sorry, just saw this thread now, did we ever figure out if China is all that communist after all?
Turns out it is a land of contrasts.
it was a depressing conversation.
drwhat posted:i had a long chat with my chinese friend tonight where we got down to brass tacks about this and now i think the answer is: no, not at all, and we are all dupes for even imagining that a place could exist that isn't thoroughly capitalist 1mm below the surface
it was a depressing conversation.
How deep do I have to go to get to the capitalist part of Cuba or the DPRK?
problem solved, now we just work on that. and all the other countries that ain't communist enough.
JohnBeige posted:Speaking of gamers, watching Destiny smash a bunch of half-baked Socialists in Twitch debates has convinced me that most left organizations have absolutely shit education, and that most leftists, at least in the west, have barely thought through their ideas. Debate is good for exposing this if you're honest (and not doing it with Nazis) but if your command of Marxism is so weak that a strawman of a liberal gamer can crush you how can you possibly think you can persuade anyone? Organize instead. At least there you can start on the common ground of community and/or class self-interest.
I've only ever seen Destiny lose arguments and look incredibly dumb. Caleb Maupin actually shit down his throat.
jansenist_drugstore posted:cars posted:cars posted:close this thread please, it was always a bad idea and I thank the Gamer zoo crew for killing it dead. Thank you and thanks
Planks not tanks @sammyjcomedian #SammyJ pic.twitter.com/mgwI8VsZ96
— ABC COMEDY (@ABC_COMEDY) September 19, 2019
drwhat posted:i had a long chat with my chinese friend tonight where we got down to brass tacks about this and now i think the answer is: no, not at all, and we are all dupes for even imagining that a place could exist that isn't thoroughly capitalist 1mm below the surface
it was a depressing conversation.
i have had this discussion with many, many chinese people from a variety of backgrounds and opinion, as would be expected, is diverse. some people scoff at the idea china is building socialism, some think it was and could again but has been on the wrong track, others are true believers in socialism with chinese characteristics. i take these conversations as they are, because obviously there are a lot of people who have a lot of thoughts on this question. however, the fact i have and will continue to have this conversation with lots and lots of people and each has a well-defined and supported opinion on the matter tells me a great deal in and of itself. it says socialism and marxism are still widely discussed, even among those who see their mandatory marxist-leninist education as farcical. the ideological apparatus has done its job on them as much as it has the cpc loyalists.
but on a purely visceral level, going to rural villages that were newly built in the anti-poverty campaign and seeing posters of mao and xi up in houses where people who now have electricity, hot water, internet, etc. really puts things in perspective. you don't really have to ask if chinese socialism has worked for them, but if you do their response will be a resounding "yes." which, ok, maybe that's the success of a cynical campaign to maintain the allegiance of the peasant base which won the revolution. but if you're viewing things that way you're no better than the china-watcher types who claim the government is minimizing unemployment for the sake of "social stability" rather than keeping people employed. sometimes things are as simple as they seem.
Edited by Guyovich ()
