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Notes -
FWIW, my comment wasn't intended to comment on the actual issue. I just wanted to point out that the DND topic was the least salient point raised by @AlexanderTurok, and that his remark on the othe other points still being relevant on the Motte had merit otherwise. A meta-comment, if you will. I don't know what discourse looks like inside the "Republican Coalition".
Now to comment on the issue itself.
Porn, vidya and DnD are all forms of escapism, and in my view escapism is clearly associated with the "weak men" phase of cyclical history and with the "wireheading ourselves to death" end of linear history. Maybe small doses of escapism can be used for good, but I reckon that most people will be compelled to describe as adequate whichever dose they currently allow for their addiction, going from "playing vidya for an hour a day helps me relax" to "of course I spend all my waking hours playing games, don't you know I'm disabled and thus can't be expected to do anything else, and also playing games is good for you here I cherry-picked a study for you, and also I'm an up-and-coming semi-professional gaming content creator (4 subscribers, one patreon patron who is his mom)". The justifications will scale to the addiction. Porn addicts will blame the feminists or structural androphobia or will just fling themselves off a figurative cliff of self-pity. So at least DnD is a social activity, right? No. If all that a social activity accomplishes is encysting you and a bunch of like-minded degenerates in a bubble of hedonism, then DnD is no better than being a striped-stockinged furry discord moderator on a vidya modding server.
And while we're bashing young (and not so young) men's bad habits, let's not let young (and not so young) women get off unscathed. There are also numerous technologically-enabled anti-social addictions that women dearly love. Infinitely scrolling web content. Social media. Pretending to be an "influencer" but actually just producing content nobody needs. Compulsive online shopping. Eating sweets until they grow so fat they dread leaving the house lest they be rightfully judged. Feeding their neuroticism with ever-new diagnoses and imaginary dangers. While we tell young men to cut the cooming and gaming, man up, make something of yourselves, flourish in actual society! we should also be telling young women to put the phone down, clean up the mess they've made of the house, actually pay undivided attention to the baby for once and stop stuffing their faces with sugary crap. Women can be degenerates entirely without onlyfans pages.
Having this diatribe out on the page, let's get back to your question.
Depends on how far down the rabbit hole they are.
The ones who can't muster the strength to pull themselves far enough out of their hedonism hole to even see the "real" world, the ones who have bought into their own justifications and rationalizations of their degenerate behavior, will probably react defensively to the message that actually, their behavior is bad, will feel "under attack" as you put it. But having those people on your side is bad optics anyways; they're nothing but sad sacks who happen to have a vote. A vote they will certainly use for whichever party promises more gibs for the unproductive - so why bother worrying about what message reaches them?
The more casual hedonists who still interact with society at large, who can hold down a job and can credibly claim that they have their addictions under control, those might be receptive to the message. But what will they do with it? I suppose these are the target audience, and the ones that might appreciate support and empowerment in their daily struggle to balance their addictions and their more pro-social activities.
Young men who do not spend every evening in pursuit of escapism, who aren't at risk, might still appreciate the message as validation.
But really now, for long-term political implications I think that unless you either
the wireheading-ourselves-to-death future is pretty much unavoidable. As technology improves, its ability to put claws into our brains and promote our worst instincts grows faster than its ability to help us get ourselves under control. The last 100 years of rapid economic growth and unceasing social upheaval have seen too much happen in too short a span of time for societies and cultures to learn how to deal with these new situations in sustainable and productive ways. An enormous amount of wealth that keeps most people afloat regardless of their bad habits, public welfare to sustain even the worst wireheads, and multiple generations of atomization and globalization to ensure that people are increasingly left to their own devices with their horizon limited to their personal pleasure, and technology ever evolving to make addictions go harder and faster...well where can it go?
lol i dunno
Also, I play too much vidya lately. Yeah I'm tired in the evenings and I have a cold and I just want to switch off and relax so that I'll be sufficiently re-charged for the next day, but if I take a serious look at myself I have to admit that I could just as well cut this relaxation phase in half and just go to bed earlier, get up earlier, and do something useful in the morning instead. Ask me tomorrow whether I actually did that.
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