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Sunday 16 October 2016
Classic Rant: The Pseudoactivist Swines’ End Game
Someone asked: just what is it that the pseudo-activist Swine hope to accomplish? I mean, they know there isn’t some government resource or board or censorship they’ll just be able to take over that would let them ban all the games they don’t like; so how do they really hope to be able to force gaming companies to do what they want? Even moreso, how could they possibly force indie or small press publishers to do what they want?
Well, the end game is twofold: first the Pseudoactivist Swine want to take control of language and of the fundamental assumptions of discourse, so as to create an environment of conversation where certain things are taken for granted; that is to say, make certain things appear as ‘facts’ and forbidden to be even questioned.
Second, they want their own particular group of collectively-approved elites to be the ones who get to define by “consensus” (false consensus) what those unquestionable truths get to be; so that they can declare “you can’t have RPGs with x” or “RPG X is clearly racist” and it will be indisputable (in the sense that anyone crossing them will automatically be viewed by the “unwashed masses” they despise but seek to manipulate as being incorrigible racists/sexists/homophobes/monsters/ for even daring to doubt their declarations).
So its pretty much the exact same tactic they attempted to use to get GNS pushed through as a default concept in the RPG hobby, only they’re now hypocritically using “Activist causes” as their theatre of operations, tugging on emotional triggers (i.e., “you’re a GOOD person if you agree with us, and a terrible person if you don’t”) rather than intellectual ones (i.e., “you’re a clever intellectual if you agree with us, and an incoherent brain damaged idiot if you don’t”).
Thus, the end result that they hope to achieve is a gaming hobby where they get to control definitions; and in that way make the hobby what they want: scaring or manipulating publishers in general into only publishing things they want, and cancelling the games (or firing the people) they don’t want. And marginalizing those small press games that they oppose, while promoting others on the basis of their approval.
This is what they mean when they say they want to “change the culture”; they want to impose their vision on the gaming culture by trying to marginalize all opposition to their agenda as being the work of racists, sexists or homophobes, even though their vision has precious little to do with real activism. They just want to get to define what the hobby looks like and who is in charge of it (them, obviously).
Can they actually achieve this? Not if I have anything to say about it.
RPGPundit
(Originally posted August 10, 2013)
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I keep seeing these twitter screenshots on Zak's blog of assholes talking smack about the OSR. You should shine a light on that basket of deplorables.
ReplyDeleteI don't read Zak's blog as a rule, it's boring. Do you have a link to a specific place?
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