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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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It really begs the question of if the person making the proposal had any awareness of Gamergate back in the day

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?

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/

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

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.

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.