Monday, February 27, 2012

Is This, At Last, The Bottom?

If I was asked to sum-up the thing MOST wrong with "geek culture" in general and gamer culture specifically, it would be three simple words: BETA-MALE MISOGYNY - the general sense of angst-driven entitlement among a sizable chunk of geekdom's dominant white/hetero/male demographic that it's somehow "justified" for them to engage in the casual hatred/debasement of women (and minorities and gays while we're at it) because they were (or at least percieve themselves to have been) slighted by women in the past/present.


You see this manifest everywhere, from the absolutely brutal woman-hatred that afflicts shut-in havens like Reddit or Tumblr, to say nothing of the toxic environment fostered in online gaming communities... and, of course, the wailing about criticism of such spaces in the form of "Aw, c'mon! This is the ONLY place left where it's okay for guys to talk like that!" - as though the fact that there shouldn't be a place where that's "okay" has NEVER occured to them - and now you can see it in Kotaku's most-recent brain fart: Giving over article space to a "comedic" memoir by a self-professed "ladies' man" detailing his Tucker Max-esque 'challenge' of getting women to have sex in his Sonic The Hedgehog themed bed.

Okay, so... pretty vile. Congratulations on the traffic Kotaku, you've more than earned it - but can I ask if this can please be the BOTTOM now? Seriously - Gamer Culture? Can we let this be "it," the last worst thing "we" do to make ourselves look like the degenerate lumps everyone assumes we are to begin with? Or do we have further yet left to sink...

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