site banner

Alternate Realities and the Overton Window

Figured I'd make my first-ever thread on this new site, so:

There's a Ross Scott video about a lawsuit that game developer/publisher Atlus has brought against people maintaining a server emulator for their dead MMO, SMT: Imagine Online.

One notable aspect here is that Ross approaches this with the attitude that there exists an alternative world where Atlus is instead on the business end of lawfare, a world where consumer rights is the dominant paradigm instead of our world, where corporate rights and welfare are given more priority. Notably, Ross even uses the phrase "Overton Window."

(Side bar: Compared to previous videos where he's talked about the subject of dead games (i.e. a game that has been rendered unplayable/inaccessible by a developer or publisher, typically in the form of MMOs and any other game that relys on an internet connection to a central server), this video feels a bit more "political" compared to those. Or, at least, it carries more of a Culture War scent than previous videos. Ross's discussion on these topics could have, and probably still could, be described as "apolitical" ranting not uncommon in the pre-GamerGate era, when dunking on gaming corporations was something that "tits-n'-beer liberals" could do without pushback.)

Now, I recognize that for many posters here, rejecting the dominant frame of the Overton Window is nothing new. It arguably goes back at least as far as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and in the modern Culture War, subscribing to different frames or substituting your own reality is a driver of the "two movies" effect. But Ross's more playful usage of rejecting the frame almost resembles a sort of role-play--it's just something he does, along the same lines as him off-handedly claiming to live on the moon in his Game Dungeon series. Now, of course, this is just Ross Scott's unique brand of weirdness, but at the same time, it got me wondering:

How effective/convincing could one be if they acted or lived according to the frame they wanted to live under? There's been discussions that have touched upon LARPing, cheap talk, and being the change you want to see in the world. I imagine most socialists/communists of today are already mostly there, casually throwing out memes of the left and not batting an eye. What other not-so-polarized/politicized issues, besides games preservation, could be pushed forwards by alternate-reality-mindset? Nuclear energy? YIMBY-ism? Or does everyone just know the hard difference between an is and an ought, and this post is mostly redundant?

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You didn't get much of a response but I enjoyed reading this post.

the pre-GamerGate era, when dunking on gaming corporations was something that "tits-n'-beer liberals" could do without pushback

Hate to bring this up, but having little contact with the meatgrinder I'm coming up blank for "obvious counterarguments". Is it just pure "only gamers would talk about this, therefore if you talk about this you are a gamer, therefore you are The Worst" suppression, or is there some actual rebuttal?

I'd say it's more that political polarization/division was less present in those times, it hadn't yet succumbed to the "you know what people haven't gotten angry about yet?" phenomenon from that one old Scott post.

I think you might be onto an interesting topic, but I also think that I may not actually have gotten your point. Could you write up a few more examples that do not require watching youtube videos?

You only need to watch the first couple minutes of the first link to see what I'm talking about. That being said;

Just as an extreme example, consider the person who unironically believes in lizard people. Now, if they wanted to be slightly more effective at convincing people of this than just ranting about it at the drop of a hat, they might structure their lives in such a way as if they do indeed live in such a world. Maybe they wear otherwise-functional hats with tinfoil on the inside, maybe they always give the Universal Greeting because they think it makes potential disguised lizard people more amenable to talk, whatever. If they keep up the act for long enough, maybe their neighbors will get used to it, and even start thinking maybe he's on to something.

Thanks, that clarifies it!

In my opinion this is already the common way to act for people who truly believe in alternate interpretations of reality. You mentioned leftists who have successfully done so, and I think they're a good real-life example to pick. The early Christians who subverted Roman paganism might be another one, I suspect. In both cases what made it work was, of course, numbers and institutional capture - a lone lizard-watcher who lines his beanie with tinfoil and throws out an unusual greeting will be ignored as an eccentric, but if you encounter them at every corner and they have the emperor's ear, or have an angry mob riled up that the police fears to oppose, then people who do hitherto did not believe but have the social sense to stay on top of changes must seriously consider switching to their interpretation.

Ross's discussion on these topics could have, and probably still could, be described as "apolitical" ranting not uncommon in the pre-GamerGate era, when dunking on gaming corporations was something that "tits-n'-beer liberals" could do without pushback.

I always interpreted the pro consumer anti bigcorp angle as the left-wing's default since anti corporate sentiment was the dominant GenX Lefty ideology, and hasn't really changed. If anything GamerGate was initially aimed squarely at harming indies and the press for daring to go after beloved products of bigcorps, and bigcorps only started to earn ire when they followed the Overton window left years later.