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According to the results of a search right now, there has been no discussion here of the Pragmata controversy so far.
Wikipedia talk page
(There is no Wikipedia article on it, at least not yet.)
Summary on Know Your Meme
Shoeonhead's video
Forbes review
Slant Magazine review
I’d put forth the following arguments:
It seems the Blue Tribe generally views Gamergate as a propaganda defeat because they see it as a long-term contributor to the MAGA/alt-right phenomenon but at the same time I don’t think they concluded that they themselves are even partially to blame. Therefore they are looking for opportunities to fight back, and are now including the pedophilia accusation in their attacks on evil gamers. As far as I can say, this was generally not yet the case back in 2014.
I’m also noticing something that eluded me so far, namely that the probable reason why both the original Gamergate (the Zoe Quinn controversy) and the current controversy proved to be effective ragebait to the Blue Tribe is that they are fueling two of their grievances at once.
One: they generally believe that toxic loser men are aiming to police women's sex lives out of resentment and hatred. I don’t think they have anything specific in mind. (I once asked here what this stuff is even supposed to be. I only received one answer: ‘compelling or aggressively encouraging women to not be floozies.’) It’s just a general vibe that makes them feel the ick. It’s why they think Quinn was unjustly attacked.
Regarding Pragmata I think their train of thought is the following: this sleazy game feeds into the typical male fantasy of being the protector and patriarch of a nuclear family where he is supposedly owed sex, affection, food, services etc. His subjugated wife is the idealized woman who is virtuous and yet hot, basically a personal slut. And it’s not like these dudebros are making any effort to be the supportive, emotionally intelligent, suave etc. male ally that is worthy of a relationship, instead they want to realize their fantasies by curbing women’s freedoms. It’s just terribly gross.
Their other usual grievance, of course, is that toxic males want to appropriate hobbies and cordon them off for women, turning them into their own toxic ghettoized playgrounds.
I honestly don't see how any of the three points you cite, and gamergate writ large, are in any way relevant here. Pragmata's Diana is a 1) robot 2) child that has no possible sex life to police, the "typical male fantasy" bit swiftly evokes the meme but otherwise AFAIK there's no wife to speak of so the entire point is moot (in fact I'd posit that feeling threatened by a rather ordinary fatherly-protector dynamic, or projecting any "wifely" duties onto the robot child, are both rather embarrassing self-owns), curbing a child's freedom to an extent is pretty much the definition of parenting, and A Plague Tale exists so child-deficient women are welcome to enjoy the medium at their leisure.
As for the cause of screeching, I think it's pretty obvious:
and funnyyoung femaleheh, MAPsvery neatly onto the evergreen "ackchyually she's a 500 year old dragon" tropeIt feels weird saying this as an admitted degenerate, but the entire """controversy""" feels like a complete nothingburger to me - unfortunately in the age of the gooner no petite/underage character is safe from uoh-posting and pedo
projectionsallegations, judging by the badge brouhaha even normies seem to have caught on the :crying_emoji: dogwhistle. I agree with @PutAHelmetOn that, since racism doesn't hit the same way anymore, pedophilia is very likely next up for a ride on the outgroup insult treadmill; as any sort of public-facing figure you will, or already do, have to be performatively disgusted by anything remotely "loli-coded" or be branded a closet pedo. As a gachatard I'm vividly reminded of the recent ""drama"" about Tiphera, a CZN character that had the temerity to be petite and almost-flat (while explicitly not a child) among a sea oftitcowswell-endowed characters, and accordingly has been the subject of much handwringing from the moment she was showcased, immortalized by a memetic Reddit mod melty and subsequent closing of ranks (why is it always Reddit mods?). To be entirely fair, unlike Diana that one also flashes you every time you choose her cards in battle, but she's also not a child, and that's really the norm by gacha fanservice standards.I'm actually surprised that this is the direction the internet decided to take with Pragmata, instead of what I assumed to be a more obvious and less explicit angle of relentlessly Shinzo-Abe-posting about blatant, egregious Japanese birth rate propaganda and emotional exploitation (seriously, you can't tell me that as a man you can look at things like this and don't feel a faint warmth in your chest). Alive internet theory continues to lose ground. I grant that some design choices stand out, as described above, but I feel like this is mostly done to give the robot child a distinctive/memorable outline and a certain degree of uncanny valley, at which IMO it succeeds.
Ironically, I think Pragmata and what I've seen of the discourse may have once again confirmed to me that I'm not well-suited to being a parent. Looking at Diana, I feel nothing at all, other than slight annoyance at some of her antics. I'm not some deranged child-free lunatic raving about "crotch goblins" every other hour of the day, nor am I an anti-pedo crusader looking for nonces under my bed, but I honestly don't think I've ever seen a child below the age of like 10, fictional or otherwise, behaving like a child would, whom I didn't find mildly unpleasant and annoying.
You're not from a culture that emphasizes and values quiet children. It's a discipline process that is best started early and needs reinforcement now and then. It makes things easier for the adults, but is arguably not so great for the children.
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Oddly enough, I feel that I'm protected from this game's superstimulus by interacting all day every day with a hyperstimulus in the shape of my own baby daughter. But I do admit it does look pretty cute.
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