le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

i cant ever get divorced because i am dogshit at flirting, just absolute garbage, i'm a Bioware character with two conversation options so even in a situation as unambiguous as "woman at the gym comes up to me and says i have nice abs" my only two thoughts are "*awkward factual acknowledgement*" or "would you like to lick my cum off of them"

that really sucks im sorry

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

'Gamers are dead.' That phrase is enormously traumatic to gamers. Why?

"For decades, a classic joke has been circulating among Lacanians to exemplify the key role of the Other’s knowledge: a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do their best to convince him that he is not a grain of seed but a man; however, when he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back, trembling and very scared — there is a chicken outside the door, and he is afraid it will eat him. “My dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man.” “Of course I know,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken?”

-Slavoj Zizek, "The Parallax View." P. 351 (my italics)

In gamergate, 'journalism' fills the role of this chicken. Gamers know that they are alive, obviously, but do the journalists know? That's the terrifying uncertainty. "Gamers are dead" means being gamers are dead to the powerful symbolic institution of videogames journalism. It is a source of validation, but it's crumbling.

Games journalists have been, traditionally, a direct conduit to the major corporations that make and sell games. They are given review copies directly, get all the latest press releases... And remember: gamers worship corporate entities as gods in a very sincere way. It is good that gamers no longer believe in games journalism, because it's awful. But instead of accepting that games journalism was never good, they indulge in conspiracy theories about a shadowy cabal (jews) who stole the purity of the institution.

That is why gamers are now communicating directly to the corporation via twitter, skipping the middleman. The priesthood of gaming is 'corrupt':

"A wide scope of phenomena - the resurgent ethico/religious "fundamentalisms" which advocate a return to the Christian or Islamic patriarchal division of sexual roles; the New Age massive re-sexualization of the universe, i.e., the return to pre-modern, pagan, sexualized cosmo-ontology; the growth of "conspiracy theories" as a form of popular "cognitive mapping" - seem to counter the retreat of the big Other. These phenomena cannot be simply dismissed as "regressive," as new modes of "escape from freedom," as unfortunate "remainders of the past" which will disappear if only we continue more resolutely on the deconstructionist path of historicisation of every fixed identity, of unmasking the contingency of every naturalized self-image. Rather, these disturbing phenomena compel us to elaborate the contours of the big Other's retreat: The paradoxical result of this mutation in the "inexistence of the Other" (of the growing collapse of the symbolic efficiency) is precisely the re-emergence of the different facets of a big Other which exists effectively, in the Real, and not merely as symbolic fiction.

The belief in the big Other which exists in the Real is the most succinct definition of paranoia, so that, two features which characterize today's ideological stance - cynical distance and full reliance on paranoiac fantasy - are strictly codependent: today's typical subject, while displaying cynical distrust of any public ideology, indulges without restraint in paranoiac fantasies about conspiracies, threats, and excessive forms of enjoyment of the Other. Distrust of the big Other (the order of symbolic fictions), the subject's refusal to "take it seriously," relies on the belief that there is an "Other of the Other," a secret, invisible, all-powerful agent who effectively "pulls the strings" behind the visible, public Power. This other, obscene, invisible power structure acts the part of the "Other of the Other" in the Lacanian sense, the part of the meta-guarantee of the consistency of the big Other (the symbolic order that regulates social life)."

-Slavoj Zizek, "The Big Other Doesn't Exist"

Of course, this is exactly what we are seeing take place. Gamergate follows perfectly the logic of religious fundamentalism and conspiracy theory - but, as Zizek says, we cannot simply dismiss this paranoid rants about liberal-jew-feminists as merely 'regressive'. It's something that will only get worse as liberal ideology becomes ever-inescapable. The only hope is for gamers to truly accept in their hearts that games have never been, fun - and, accordingly, to accept that games journalism has never been pure.

The purity of games journalism has not been stolen from you. It never existed.

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

i cant ever get divorced because i am dogshit at flirting, just absolute garbage, i'm a Bioware character with two conversation options so even in a situation as unambiguous as "woman at the gym comes up to me and says i have nice abs" my only two thoughts are "*awkward factual acknowledgement*" or "would you like to lick my cum off of them"

let me talk to her. your wife i mean. she should know about this