Video games, SFF, politics, and contempt!

Yesterday Rod Walker posted about our little conversation on Harry Potter, political ideology, and SFF. I think Rod hit upon a key point, which I want to highlight here.

Generally, the best books are written by writers who appreciate human nature for its foibles without being contemptuous of them, and RW thinks that is hard for hyper-political people to do.

Indeed. He added in the comment section in reply to me:

Agreed! Contempt is a dangerous vice in which to indulge, because it distorts one’s thinking and causes one to make decisions based on incorrect premises.

Bingo. Perhaps this is the word or idea that I needed to complete my thoughts in the Harry Potter post. Contempt is a nasty thing. While it can galvanize a particular group against another, it can just as easily destroy one’s chances of conversion, repulse those who aren’t hardcore believers one way or another, or distance allies who feel it to be an unworthy or unfair expression of disagreement.

I myself do some shit-posting and trolling of Leftist or PC activities. And I comment on politics and culture. What’s the difference? Well, first off I’ve got to be careful not to elevate myself here. Perhaps I’ve been guilty of the very thing I’m complaining about. If so, feel free to call me out on it any time. But if you follow me on Twitter or scroll through some of our post titles, you can pretty easily guess what our shtick is here. So first off, we’ve got a target audience. If someone else wants to engage and tell me I’m a cuck or rightwing nutjob, feel free to drop a comment. Your level of reasonableness and civility may determine whether we actually interact, but there you go.

When it comes to entertainment, I may criticize the statements or actions of creators, but I try to keep that separate from the quality of a given work.

Increasingly my beef has become with sites that bill themselves as focused on something like, oh, I don’t know, video games, and then start injecting politics. And you can guess what kind of politics they’re usually foisting. Even that is forgivable in and of itself, though it is tiresome to the max. Writers have opinions on politics, sure. And sometimes they absolutely can’t help themselves and must talk about how phallically-shaped swords are another oppressive tool of the Patriarchy, or why the new GOP-headed FCC is going to destroy the internet. People who get tired of that crap can either push back in comments or stop reading. That’s why I don’t follow many gaming websites anymore.

The latest – Touch Arcade. I used to check in pretty regularly to keep an eye on interesting-looking iOS games. Their reviews were always timely and of decent quality.

But now we’re starting to see stuff like this gem:

So now that we’ve got a temporary moratorium on foreigners from 7 high-risk terrorist countries, the US is really becoming like an oppressive, corrupt superstate. And Touch Arcade felt this was an interesting thing to talk about.

Well, not all gamers are liberals, and not all gamers are interested in being sermonized to on political topics.

After Kaiju messaged me about this article, I gave it a quick look to see if there was any pushback. Well, the comments have bravely been disabled. How about on Twitter? Why yes:

https://twitter.com/Sicklefickle/status/829812335892103168

Touch Arcade, as you might imagine, is respectful of its readers and prepared to dialogue.

ok seeya

— TouchArcade (@toucharcade) February 9, 2017

I followed up, but it was about as productive as you might guess.

There you go. And so we circle back to “contempt.” If you want to start a discussion with your readers, that’s one thing. But if you want to spoon-feed them your ideology and spurn any opportunity for divergent opinion or dialogue, that’s another. So yes, TA may have only gotten two or three people voicing their dissatisfaction with this kind of behavior from a gaming website. It’s possible they picked up a few regular readers who thought to themselves “Hey I too hate Donald Trump and like mobile games – let me bookmark this site.” But there are also plenty of folk who clicked (there’s your stats), couldn’t comment, and didn’t feel like trying to find you on Twitter. If you don’t care whether or not you alienate these readers, then come what may. Some people don’t want to frequent sites that make them feel like they’re being held in contempt.

As you said Touch Arcade – seeya!

-Bushi