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In honor of GTA 6 coming out this year. I'd like to talk about the fake progressiveness of the games industry, particularly, of Rockstar. They apparently have removed content that makes fun of the transgender community in GTA 5. But fascinatingly enough, they dont seem to extend this progressive attitude towards their workers or staff. According to a former employee:
They have had these complaints in the past and were have thought to have gone through a restructuring, apparently according to this new report & some others, that is not the case. I know that at the end of the day they are a corporation that only cares about the financial bottom line, but one thing that bothers me a lot about this kind of progressive outrage is why its so.... selective? Why give more heat towards someone making fun of the LGBTQ+ community in comparison to say, someone being underpaid at the company or not getting the right amount of maternity leave? Things that are arguably much more important? Along with the (quite regressive id argue) decision to make the game completely digital. Is this just a problem with the public caring more about culture war issues than economic ones? Or perhaps they are just more responsive to the culture war outrage because it costs them nothing to adjust?
Progressivism makes a lot more sense when you model it as basically a game.
Certain groups are considered by progressives to be "lower status" or "oppressed" in their perception of world outside progressive spaces (this doesn't necessarily need to bear much correlation to actual reality, as progressives consider first world women to be terribly oppressed, despite them being one of the most coddled and pampered groups throughout all of human history). Because progressivism is characterised by kneejerk contrarianism to the reality most of us live in (I have a lot of thoughts about how people turn to progressivism simply to distinguish themselves from the crowd), those lower status groups become high status in progressive spaces. The more highly regarded a group is in progressive hierarchies, the higher the point multiplier you get for advocating for them.
At all times it is important to maximise the point value of your performances. Routinely in progressive spaces, those who accrue insufficient performance points are rounded upon by the rest of the group and either quietly exiled or, if transgressions can be found in their past, excoriated and loudly denounced as a source of more points. It's sort of like an elimination race; you just don't want to be near the bottom of the scoreboard or it could cost you all your social circles and maybe your career. If you have skeletons in your closet it's important to be close to the top so nobody has any reason to go looking for them (but not at the very top because that's also a reason to go looking, taking down a high ranking progressive with a successful accusation of secret racism or something also scores very highly.)
I basically agree, which is part of the reason why -- in my opinion -- it's impossible to come up with a set of core principles of progressivism. Because it's not an ideology but rather a process by which people compete for social status.
In my view it's roughly analogous to fashion in clothing. The basic rules are (1) to be safe, copy what most other people are doing; (2) if you want to get ahead, you need to go a little further than what other people are doing; and (3) sometimes it's worth the risk to try to be a trend setter. If you don't follow the rules, you can expect to be ostracized.
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