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I've often thought that plenty of people seem to 'play' reddit the way I used to play massively-multiplayer games, and they just somehow missed the more appropriate outlet for their energy which would have served them (and the rest of us) better. And this kind of thing we're hearing about with these activist signal chats seems to be similar, just spilling out into real life.
In the 90s/00s, I missed out on actual early MMOs, but played a text-based browser game called Archmage, with maybe tens of thousands of players around the world at its height of popularity. You would gain like 1 turn per 15 minutes, such that you couldn't really 'play' more than once or twice a day. So the game really ended up being more socially-interactive metagaming, where people formed guilds, mixed it up on public & private forums, hung out in IRC, etc. There was scheming, strategizing, wars, alliances, propaganda campaigns, spying & fake identities, all kinds of fun emergent creativity. Some people were the superstars who were actually good at the game, others were reliable at monitoring opponents' activity at different timezones, some people had the social skills for being good leaders & diplomats.
I think there's an inclination to suggest that people waste their time and energy on games like this, and should instead put it toward something real-world productive. But I guess I'm practically the opposite now, and think people who managed to miss finding a 'gaming' outlet for expending & refining this kind of social energy are actually shitting up the commons by 'playing' less appropriate venues. Team sports, fraternities, and large mixed-up workplaces are at least pretty good alternatives. Being in discord/signal rooms for subreddits or local activism, not so much.
I agree with you that being an IRL Reddit anti-ICE protestor constitutes “shitting up the commons thinking life is a video game”, but I am simultaneously self-aware enough to realise that I only think this because it’s an objective I disagree with. If these were right-wing Reddit LARPers going out to help ICE round up foreigners then I’d consider it a heartening efflorescence of organic civic virtue.
As Dilos said of the Arcadians: brave amateurs, they do their part
Yeah originally I wrote "local inane activism", to leave room for causes that might be more deserving, but then edited that out to remove the subjective animosity. Though that just leaves it implied, if there are causes that someone feels deserve social-game-like energy. In this example at least, I would consider it more of a civic virtue for energized right-wingers to just join ICE rather than scheming & organizing into roles in backchannels to help them. Maybe to those who view ICE as the modern KKK, where regular people join up to get agency to 'just do stuff', it's basically the same thing.
Ultimately my pitch is slightly different than people acting like real life is a video game: it's that many people have a kind of energy that online social games are the perfect outlet for in the modern world, and not knowing that & missing out on them (or at least team sports, scouts, something) to scratch that itch leaves people obnoxiously channeling that unrefined energy elsewhere (even if I agree with a cause, LARPing is obnoxious, and I even cringe at past antics we got up to which were thankfully contained in games/sports/frats). But that could also be totally wrong, and my case would be in shambles if it turns out Pretti or Good or some powermods were epic WoW raiders or something, back in their day.
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