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Notes -
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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