They don't want to get rid of it. If they got rid of it they would have a much harder time keeping their own people in line by raising the spectre of external threats. Similar to how they don't seem to actually want to get rid of Hamas in Israel.
I think the core push of what started movements like Gamergate have lost their initial thrust
Well, mostly the best and brightest have moved on to more important matters. Gamergate exposed one of the beast's tentacles, but it reaches much farther than just entertainment.
Damn, I was going to link to that comic, but I can't seem to find it anymore.
Yea, but do any of the male leads spread their legs too wide on the subway? Checkmate GoomerGoobers!
I still remember once while checking out female targeted erotica to see what gets them off, and finding a manga where the female lead is kidnapped and chained to a bed in a diaper to be used, then after escaping some time later she returns to capture her attacker, cuts off his arms and legs, and keeps him in a cage in her home to use as a pet in as many depraved ways as the author could imagine. I swear I am not making this up.
Sure they do, but not because they go looking for a fight. They're more than happy to party with them too if the chance arises. One of the major points of One Piece is the distinction between the real world full of unique individuals and the politics of the World Government.
It's the difference between our instincts which teach us how to live in the natural world and our ability to adapt to the artificial world which we have created. I'm convinced that "base" instincts get a bad rap largely because people tend to self-destruct if they can't find a way to adapt, but that really puts an onus on us to make sure the world we pursue is as unintrusive as possible, which leads me to have a very huge problem with the way some people are trying to alter every facet of human life through the use of technology.
Bingo: The narrative that our "base" instincts are something terrible to be overcome appears to represent the world view where things created by man are superior to natural things, imagining that we ourselves are something outside of, and greater than, the natural world.
isn't this what mainstream thought thinks cults do?
That was yesterday. Today's cults like to keep their members trapped through deep personal bonds like family, or life long friendships. Didn't you hear about how it all changed back in the great switch?
Money.
He may fuck up over and over and over, but people online keep giving him money for it. I would imagine that a lot of our problems stem from people promoting self-destructive behaviour over the Internet by paying those who are willing to debase themselves.
I guess the part which confused me the most was where you talked about people running low damage builds. I was picturing people deliberately building low damage specs for some reason, but you were just talking about people who don't know enough about the game to actually bother learning how things work?
It's funny to me, because I actually held the world record for top dps in WoW:TBC, but after that I spent years playing with many different types of players to try and understand why some people exceed while others struggle, because I didn't think my innate abilities were THAT much greater than others. My conclusion is that it's largely about priorities, which you seem to have also noticed. Some people had good priorities, such as family taking their time and attention, but many more seemed to simply not try, because they told themselves they weren't good enough for one reason or another. The one that sticks out in my head was a particularly talented girl who was convinced that her hands were too small to reach all the hotkeys.
All that aside though, there is another dynamic I've noticed which plays a significant role in how and why gaming has become what it is: People have been wasting entirely too much time with it. I believe quite strongly that much of our problems today stem from talented people spending their time playing games rather than engaging in the other roles important to the continuing function of society. Now, no small part of that can be attributed to how our society currently functions, in my mind, where the demands imposed upon people who seek to perform such important roles have become immensely more onerous at the same time as entertainment media has become much more engaging. Yet still, we do need those who are able to actually take on these challenges if we intend for our civilization to survive the turn of the age.
Frankly, for as many bad actors that take advantage of our state of affairs to push their own short sighted agendas, I can also see much reason for good people to feel disdain towards those who decline to participate in more important matters because they're occupied with games. So while I definitely can agree with how terrible this state of affairs is for gaming, and I do believe rather strongly that it has a greater negative impact upon society as a whole than what is reasonable, I think that people need to recognize that gaming should not be a way of life for those who are actually capable of serving society in a greater capacity. Recent generations have grown up with the mentality that technological automation will "free" us to spend our time however we choose, yet that is not how things have worked out in actual practice. Instead we have just seen a mass abdication of social responsibility leading to opening up doors for anyone with a motive to seek power in the vacuums which now exist, and wicked who can not rest lest they be set upon by good people who take exception to their depravity are gobbling up all the opportunity.
the players are new-gen gamers running low-damage gear/builds; some of the most egregious anti-gatekeepers in all PC gaming since 2017
For someone who hasn't really touched social gaming in a long time, can you explain what's up with that?
The stupid thing is this automatic censorship stuff never actually works as they imagine it. It ends up making things a pain in the ass for regular users, while offering a facade of false security that can be easily circumvented by anyone who actually intends to misuse the platform deliberately. They don't even think, or try to understand the technology at all. They just hate that some people they don't like can talk to each other freely, and reach for the first, simplest, answer that pops into their heads so they can get back to their pizza parties asap.