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On one hand, I can understand this, but on the other, I have to question the idea that somehow young, disengaged, skeptical men will respond positively if the Democrats only... checks notes... force paid advertisements into youtube videos, in-game video game ads, and sports and gaming podcasts.
These are three hobby spaces that are notoriously known for being escapist hobby vectors for people who do not want to be bothered with Serious Things. Paid ads are not exactly popular in any of them, and the anti-ad industry that, by its nature, is skeptical of establishment forces (that would prefer such bypasses not exist).
One of those spaces in particlar- video gaming spaces- was the subject of a multi-year culture war in which Democratic party allies circled the wagons against a non-trivial part of the consumer base who, among other grievances, felt their hobby space was being encroached upon by partisans who didn't care for them.
It really begs the question of if the person making the proposal had any awareness of Gamergate back in the day, or if they remember the progressive framing but think this is a good idea anyway, or... just what this is supposed to be besides a grift for a wave of blocked/skipped ads that people allready block/skip in mass.
Youtube will profit considerably. Between the Democrats paying for ads, and how many people get Youtube Premium for the first time to escape the ads...
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Many of the same strategy consultants who helped create the position are now in charge of climbing out of it. At least one quote from the end of that article seems closer to honest:
They will likely waste lots of money. The desire to build a network to reach men with a message is understandable. Although, the masculine thing to do is to man up and engage with the Rogan's if they'd like to reach or persuade his audience.
Reaching gamers might not be so strange. Don't political streamers like (Hasan and Destiny are names I know) stream on Twitch.tv-- a game streaming platform? They play video games, entertain, and talk politics. The problem with those guys and others, such as TikTok equivalents, is they are slaves to their fandoms. They can't turn on a dime.
A story I saw last month involved a case of progressive drama for something called the "Unf*ck America" tour. It was supposed to be a handful of trendy, TikTok Zoomer pundits following around Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA to different college campuses, playing spoiler to Kirk, owning the cons, and so on. The project ended after a meltdown due to the sensitivities and conflict of the progressive stack. I'd guess all the drama surrounding the failed project was positive for each individual TikTok streamer that attended. Drama means dollars. It's pretty terrible for recruitment though, assuming any disengaged young men were paying attention. Which you are probably right that they weren't.
Is GamerGate generally known to 18-25 year old gamers? It probably can be ignored, though that doesn't make such a campaign good or justified. If the video game industry is still as left coded as ever, then that's probably common knowledge even if GamerGate is not.
Destiny has been banned from twitch for a long time. No one knows why. Best guess is he called some people trying to cancel him that happened be trans "sub-human".
He streams on youtube and Kick.
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GamerGate isn't known to as many people as this board thinks it is. People act like it was some watershed moment in the culture war, but I was in my late 20s at the time and couldn't tell you now what it was about without looking it up. I remember hearing a story on NPR about it, and it was presented as some sideshow drama among people who didn't matter, having about s much relevance as an internecine dispute about racism in the stamp collecting community or whatever. Sitting here today, I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head, beyond the fact that some people who played video games made misogynistic comments or something. I doubt most of my IRL friends could tell you any more. I doubt my parents or many people from their generation have even heard of GamerGate. A search of my archives shows that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran exactly one article about it, and it was an op-ed that originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times. In the fall of 2014, that paper ran more stories on the coup in Burkina Faso than on GamerGate.
Oh, oh, let me try. I don't know how you can't know after reading the CW threads.
My understanding is "gaming journalists" had corrupt, incestuous relationships with industry developers. Which makes sense, because gaming journalism is a fake sect of journalism and always has been. Both journalists and the industry developers went pretty hard in the Social Justice paint. Gamers got mad about the ethics and the foreign culture imposed on them. Then, during the uproar some mad people said means things to Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn who are either indie* developers
or gaming journalists. Both names I impressively muscled from memory, though their profession I did not.Once people said mean things to the individuals, then that's the only story anyone in the industry, in gaming journalism, or in mainstream journalism talked about. This side stepped any other concerns which only made people more angry. Now painted as villains, this justified categorical bans and censorship of identified GamerGaters on [platform]. The basic dynamics of -ism'ing your way out of criticism was then put on loop for the following 8+ years. It spread to other media, such as movies, TV, and literature. I understand why people consider it important for that reason.
"Anita Sarkeesian" was another big character, but I was only reminded of her after writing via Wikipedia. I also remember a funny fact that moot, previous owner of 4chan, was dating, or was friends with one of these three. My city paper has 7 hits for " GamerGate" from 2015-2016.
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Probably not.
Even if you don't take the actual hobbies into account, concentrating on hobbies as a way to attract a male audience is utterly tone-deaf. When thinking about politics, men tend to be attracted to political tendencies that conceive politics, or world as general as a struggle - class struggle appealed very strongly to young men during the ascent of socialism, national struggle a bit later, individuals struggling to make a fortune in the market even later than that - and hobbies are what you do when you aren't struggling, even (especially) if they involve a simulated struggle, like video games and sports. "Fight for your right to party" is never an actual platform.
Honestly, politics encroaching on my fun is so much of a turn off that I think even if the men would agree with the content, the annoyance would make the message radioactive. This is exactly what happened in gamergate. Woke messages in gaming turned a whole lot of apolitical young men into sold out right wingers. I’m just rather amused by the idea that the left is about to spend 20 million dollars to resurrect Gamergate of all things, and guarantee that Gen Alpha is going to see even the center-left as scolds and unbelievably stupid.
It’s just mind-blowing. You lost an entire generation of young men by invading hobby spaces and gaming and other things those young men did for fun and to escape politics and life in general. So the solution is to do it harder?
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Interesting, this does seem to explain something I've noticed recently in how little purchase the "War on Porn" that the left and mainstream media seem to be trying make into a big thing has. Considering how many guys watch porn, you'd think they'd defend their access to it passionately, but it doesn't seem to get any reaction from the public. And I doubt that it's because the public at large has untangled the media's spin and can tell that it's not something to panic over, the public is rarely that sophisticated.
A left group did put out those cringe ads which amounted to “vote for us or they’ll take away your porn”: https://nypost.com/2024/10/28/us-news/x-rated-dem-campaign-ad-claims-gop-wants-to-ban-porn-nationwide/
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Isn't that like the Republicans saying "vote for us or the Democrats will ban abortion?"
No, it's the Democrat aligned media that try to make a big deal of Republican controlled legislatures that try to (futilely) put the genie back in the bottle and require age verification for access to porn.
... I'm not sure how that relates?
I'm asking why the contemporary Democrats would expect that to work in the first place. I think you've restated your first post?
Oh, okay, I musunderstood you
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It's weird juxtaposing how ubiquitous porn is with how much its consumers seem to hate it and the people who produce it.
Like even smokers defend their hobby more.
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Yeah, like, even if you're a guy gooning to porn, you don't generally want to be reminded of being a guy gooning to porn instead of having sex or doing something not involving being ruled by your gonads.
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