Friday, September 26, 2014

Gamergate Isn't Meaningless

I suppose that if Gamergate is going to drag out this long, I might as well explain my perspective.

Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades HQ gets it wrong:
Gamers (that is, the people who actually play the games) are grieved because game critics (that is, people who write about games for a living) and some online game discussion community administrators, do not like the same games that they do. These game writers and administrators think (or are accused of thinking, anyway) that mainstream games and gamers suffer from misogyny or racism or one of the many other -isms that dominate our modern grievance culture. There are also allegations of nepotism or corruption and generally a lot of bad behavior all around. 
The bottom line is this, however: gamers think that these game critics and community administrators are bad people who are trying to stop them from having fun. And these game critics think gamers are bad people who support misogyny or racism or whatever.
He goes on to make a point about the irrelevance of critics, a point which is irrelevant itself.

What's interesting and perhaps significant about Gamergate is that it isn't reducible to a principle or two. Zoe Quinn's sexual relationships with gaming journalists weren't matters of quid pro quo--orgasms in exchange for good reviews. Her liaison with her married boss wasn't protested in defense of traditional marriage. Her storied rendezvous with "five guys" isn't denounced because of adherence to monogamy.

The uproar is about the situation. Quinn is a type. She is a social justice warrior who has achieved her position--such as it is--because of her vocal opposition to her own industry. Rather than being an influential or prolific producer within that industry, she is an agitator, aggrandizing herself as a moral watchdog. Her status outweighs her contribution.

Video games have been a part of American life for over thirty years but the idea of a gaming community is still relatively new. The introduction of the first Playstation was the real beginning of consumers playing games as their primary form of entertainment. The concept of a game player being a "gamer" is even newer; most people that purchase video games probably don't label themselves as gamers.

What we're seeing in Gamergate is the Long March Through Institutions making a misstep. Gaming is not an institution yet. A major entertainment industry, yes, but not an institution. The community that identifies with it is still small enough to be sensitive to outsiders.

They are all the more sensitive because gaming's appeal has very little to do with meaning. It's only the lack of physical exertion that keeps gaming from being classified a sport. To most video game enthusiasts, the presence of a Zoe Quinn or Anita Sarkeesian criticizing and making demands based on the entertainment's messages are tangential. More than that, they are unwelcome.

And at the same time, Quinn also fits right into the red pill awakening. A not-especially-attractive woman, she cheated on her boyfriend with multiple men, only expressed regret once she was caught and has deflected responsibility.

Video gaming is also an immersive and time-intensive pursuit--just the entertainment for the not-very-social. The not-very-social are also those for whom the red pill is prescribed; it's them that are most susceptible to feminine manipulation.

It's not hard to imagine that a large percentage of male gamers have a Zoe Quinn in their pasts. Read Reddit's Red Pill forum or the comments on any similar website; most die-hard converts came from relationships of just the kind that Quinn's boyfriend described. His descriptions of tickle-truths and lack of accountability probably rang true to many.

The outrage of Gamergate is seeing a script play out in real time. A woman known more for attacking the industry than contributing to it is discovered to have engaged in personal and professional misconduct. She defends herself in just the way the red pill describes. The powers that be, out of cowardice or ideology, circle the wagons to protect her, just as the anti-SJW reaction describes.

But because the world of gaming is still so small, a large portion of gamers can cry out "Not in my backyard!" They've been inoculated, whether by the non-mainstream media, the red pill or just their own eyes, and can see that it is a script.

Zoe Quinn, in her actions and her position, doesn't represent an injury to the world of gaming, localized and isolatable. She represents an infection. It's the same infection that's spread all throughout Western civilization, a lack of personal accountability and an adherence to ideology over reality. Your average gamer, like the rest of us, can't change the world, but he can fight for his little corner of it.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The NYT Debunks a Non-Existent Myth

A few months back, I posted a piece about the LA Times' attempt to retcon Tom Cruise's PR disaster of 2005. (Incidentally, writer Amy Nicholson has since published a book praising Cruise's career.)

The key to the original piece was an interesting bit of semantic spinning. In order to debunk the myth, the writer first altered the myth in order to create a bit of wiggle room.

I'll summarize quickly:  The piece's position was that we all remember Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch. What "jumping" meant for Nicholson was what we non-professionals call "jumping up and down." Cruise did not jump-up-and-down but he did "leap" or "hop" or "spring" onto the couch. To be most precise, he propelled himself with both feet into a crouching position on the sofa.

Nicholson expected the reader to believe something about the public's beliefs. We were to understand that the public believed Cruise jumped-up-and-down on Oprah's couch like a child on a hotel bed. She then commanded us to look at the tape and see that he did not jump-up-and-down. Thus, our understanding of Cruise was faulty and thus her new narrative was the correct one.

It's a strangely sophisticated version of the Internet's favorite fallacy, the straw man. Sophisticated because it's supposed to operate within the listener's mind--the listener has a myth of Tom Cruise, the writer reshapes that myth and then disproves it. "You believe this, and you're wrong."

As we move more stridently into a media-saturated culture, expect to see more and more of this. Pay particular attention to our conception of "The Fifties," which is morphing farther and farther from reality.

The original, Baby Boomer conception of The Fifties was a boring time of conformity, an era that wished to stifle all that's potent in free in mankind. As far as our current chattering masses are concerned, The Fifties are America's equivalent to Nazi Germany, the culmination of all of the nation's racism, sexism and capitalism, and the decade of which we should always be ashamed.

But the technique is more succinctly displayed in NYT's article of last week, How Gary Hart’s Downfall Forever Changed American Politics, by Matt Bai. Here's the relevant excerpt:
The Hart episode is almost universally remembered as a tale of classic hubris. A Kennedy-like figure on a fast track to the presidency defies the media to find anything nonexemplary in his personal life, even as he carries on an affair with a woman half his age and poses for pictures with her, and naturally he gets caught and humiliated. How could he not have known this would happen? How could such a smart guy have been that stupid?
The first question:  How important to the Hart myth is it that he challenged reporters to discover his illicit acts? Is that the core of the story? Or is the story about how a presidential front-runner shot himself in the foot by cavorting with women during his campaign?

The key to this kind of semantic manipulation is blowing up a minor detail into a major, disprovable one. Bai is irrelevantly focused on Hart's "challenge" to the press. Here's the oft-repeated quote:
[NYT reporter E.J.] Dionne discussed a broad range of topics with Hart and then reluctantly turned to the rumors of affairs. Hart was exasperated and he finally told Dionne: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”
Bai seems to think that it's important that Hart said this to Dionne, not the Miami Herald reporters who uncovered his affair. Is that an important distinction when discussing Hart's downfall?
The Herald reporters published a front-page article about Hart’s purported affair. At the end, they referred to a statement in which Hart challenged reporters interested in his personal life to follow him. Hart couldn’t have known it at the time, but his words — “follow me around” — would shadow him for the rest of his days. They would bury everything else he had ever said in public life.
As it turns out, the NYT article with Hart's "follow me around" quote was published the same day as the expose about his affair. Bai doesn't want to admit that this means that Hart was sleeping with Donna Rice at the time he was being interviewed by Dionne.
Hart said this in an annoyed and sarcastic sort of way, in an obvious attempt to make a point. He was “serious” about the sentiment, all right, but only to the extent that a man who had been twice separated from his wife and dated other women over the years — with the full knowledge of his friends in the press corps and without having seen a single word written about it at the time — could have been serious about such a thing. Hart might as well have been suggesting that Martians beam down and run his campaign, for all the chance he thought there was that any reporter would actually resort to stalking him.
Oh, you see, Hart said it but he didn't mean it.
The difference here is far more than a technicality. Even when insiders and historians recall the Hart episode now, they recall it the same way: Hart issued his infamous challenge to reporters, telling them to follow him around if they didn’t believe him, and then The Herald took him up on it. Inexplicably, people believe, Hart set his own trap and then allowed himself to become ensnared in it. (When I spoke to Dana Weems [who tipped off The Herald], she repeatedly insisted to me that she had only called The Herald after reading Hart’s “follow me around” quote, which was obviously impossible.)
Is this the least bit important? At the very least, Hart's challenge to the press was a lip service, an easy lie that he never expected to be outed.

Hart had a credibility issue before the Rice fiasco. Dionne asked him about the affairs--however "reluctantly"--because this was on the public's mind.

The fact of the matter is that Hart's greatest political weakness was his rumored infidelity. Even knowing this, he expected the press to cover for him as he donned a "Monkey Business" sweatshirt and posed with a young, leggy woman on his lap.

Bai would like us to question--for God knows what reason--whether it's reasonable to condemn a politician for infidelities. However, he won't simply come out and say it; he's more content to make us feel stupid for believing some insignificant detail about the narrative.

He also wants to make the players look stupid. There's a great deal of character assassination at work in his descriptions of Dana Weems and Herald reporter Tom Fiedler. The latter is a bumbler and the former a delusional harpy.

The saddest part of the article is that it could have made for a very funny story if Bai wasn't so hung up on defending Hart and making a case that it's okay for presidents to commit adultery. The whole situation is stupid and smarmy and pathetic. The description of Hart facing the Herald's reporters (after escorting Rice and friends out the back door) is particularly funny.

As it turns out, the funniest thing about the article is that it seems to be calling for a more complacent press. The days of Watergate-era swashbuckling (or at least the media's self-congratulation of such) are definitely over.

Friday, September 5, 2014

The Kind of People Who Want to Know What Kind of People They Are

I recently read Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos and have since been looking at the world through the lens he introduced.

Percy's argument is that the fundamental human problem is that we are subjects trying to be our own objects. That is, we are frustrated by our attempts to define ourselves--as a species and as individuals--the way we define everything else.

The problems that arise from this are endless but most relevant in modern America is everyone's need to define what kind of person they are.

A few weeks ago, New York made the connection between Jonah Peretti, the critical theorist, and Jonah Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed. Critical Theory has a rundown here.

It seems that Peretti wrote an article for the journal Negations that predicted the future web sensation, albeit in anti-capitalist terms. "Late-stage capitalism" produces consumer "schizophrenia," is the basic idea. The takeaway is that what companies and consumers end up exchanging are identities.

Think Apple vs. Windows vs. Linux. Or Starbucks vs. indie coffee shops. Or, dating back generations, Ford vs. Chevy. One's consumer choices define what kind of person one is.

The reverse can also be true. If one is the type of person who cares about social justice, of course one is going to buy Fair Trade certified products. If one doesn't, then obviously one isn't really that type of person. The consumption and the identity are indivisible.

I've discussed before how this is working politically. The populace is divided into smaller and smaller segments, each of which is positioned against a perceived majority. If one is the type of person who is kind and considerate, of course one is going to support teaching children safe ways to have gay sex. The identity and the moral choices are indivisible.

Buzzfeed really has mastered this element of modernity. Every five-minute quiz is based around viewing oneself as a fixable object in the cosmos. Who am I? Well, if I were a member of One Direction, I'd be Harry. I'd be happiest living in a Tuscan cottage. I'm definitely an 80s kid and my spirit plushy is a Pound Puppy.

But Buzzfeed's attitude is basically harmless, except in its perfection of shallow distraction. If Percy's description of the human condition is accurate, then Buzzfeed is like trying to stave off hunger with an endless supply of potato chips. Buzzfeed gives the reader a tiny definition, then a thousand more in the hopes that it will satisfy the desire for one complete definition.

The happy truth is that most Americans aren't "smart" enough to be ruined by Percy's existential misery. Irritated, manipulated and lost, maybe, but not ruined.

Take, on the other hand, NYT's article on Jill Soloway, creator of Amazon's transgender drama, Transparent:
In college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she tried her hand at playing the ideal college student — “makeup, hair, cute clothes” and “dating horrible, gross dudes.” She even tried to pledge a sorority, but a poorly timed dermatologic event pre-empted this. One day she was taking a walk on the shore of Lake Mendota in Madison with some of the friends she’d made, still very much preoccupied with cuteness, when she saw a bunch of people — “like hippies, feminists, demonstrators, political kids, people who fought” — wading in the water, just having a good and un-self-conscious time. These, she realized, these were her people.
Emphasis is, of course, mine, but it should be obvious that Soloway is acting precisely as Percy describes--she's trying to find a definition for herself first and be herself last. Finding that perfect definition, she will find freedom, or at least the absence of self-consciousness.

[A side note:  Percy's arguments help make sense of Esther Vilar's definition of love in The Polygamous Sex. She explicitly states that love "defines" an individual "completely." If the definition is incomplete, then it is not truly love. Percy would probably agree to her terms but point out that the only complete definition can come from God, who loves us more completely and more truly than any individual human ever can. This would cause Vilar to vomit.]

Lest the reader think that Soloway was simply having a typical college-age "finding oneself" moment, consider this recent event:
Soloway was greeted heartily by workers around the back lot as she made her way to the set of “Transparent.” She had mixed feelings about all the chumminess: Yes, it’s only hello, but sometimes you just want to get to work. She said “hi” back, of course, because what are you going to do, but even a small exchange like that can lead Soloway to rant on gender roles. “I don’t have the privilege to just stand there and go, ‘Hi,’ ” Soloway said, mimicking the men.“ ‘Look at that walking by. I’m trying to have sex with that.’
 Here's another:
Soloway has managed with “Transparent,” which is part cutting-edge TV show and part gender-studies utopian experiment, to keep alive the questions that have preoccupied her for years: If we are living in a post-gender-binary world, what is all this talk about feminine and masculine styles? How can you be a good feminist and also love watching beauty pageants and “The Bachelor” and the “Real Housewives” franchise (which Soloway does very much)? If gender isn’t important — if it’s just a construct — why is it so important?
And this:
 “I have the same problem with alcohol that I do with femininity,” she says. “With alcohol I can’t figure out how much to drink before I feel drunk. With femininity, the moment I put it on and see that I look like Daisy Fuentes, I’m a real estate agent and I have my own bus bench.
Can there be any doubt that this woman is broken? Percy would describe her as having a "reentry" problem--she spends so much time transcending the real world with her intellectual theories and artistic translations that she can't handle saying hello to a group of blue collar men. She's so wrapped up in the objective identities she's defined for herself that she can't enjoy the Miss America pageant without hours of self-reflection. She can't do anything that comes natural to her without comparing it to the definition she has for herself.

It's people like Soloway that give me hope. Their path is a dead end and their misery is proof. Keep trying to make it work and the absurdity will only become clearer.