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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29307 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Actually, neither a lot of leftists nor a lot of transgender people are boycotting Hogwarts Legacy. A small cabal of extremely online transgender activists (is this redundant?) are applying pressure against the game. You might think they failed in their stated goal, but the stated goals of activists are always exaggerated in order to arrive at a better middle ground.

So what did these extremely limited in number activists accomplish? They made “you can support the game and not support Rowling” a popular opinion online, which presupposes the immorality of Rowling, reminding the public of her ill repute. They spooked the game developers, who may have specifically added a transgender character at an important location in the game. The game developers may have also amplified the diversity as a defense against activism against them.

So, for such a small sliver of the population — perhaps 0.1% engaging in anything approximating a boycott — they actually had some influence on popular sentiment.

I disagree. I think by making this their hill to die on and then no one caring they have lost influence on future commercial endeavors the trans movement would disapprove of. Future producers will be a lot less easily frightened by activist underlings when they cannot point to this having tanked the biggest game of the year.

If it surrendered and wasn't tanked, that's not evidence against "failing to surrender gets you tanked".

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