Botond173
15hr ago
Progressive stranglehold on video game culture or video games themselves?
Botond173
15hr ago
Who is the wife?
In this case, nobody. I didn't claim that the game wholly represents the typical male fantasy in the eyes of Blue Tribers, only that it feeds into it. In other words, it goes into the same mental bucket.
Botond173
16hr ago
How confident are you that this extends beyond the Extremely Online?
Not at all. Then again, Gamergate wasn't that different in that regard, was it? I view this as a small and delayed aftershock of Gamergate.
Botond173
16hr ago
According to the results of a search right now, there has been no discussion here of the Pragmata controversy so far.
(There is no Wikipedia article on it, at least not yet.)
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.
Botond173
17hr ago
It seems there were two separate things going on. One: these regimes generated more internal dissent than non-communist dictatorships. Two: they reacted to existing dissent in more extreme ways than non-communist dictatorships normally did to the same sorts of dissent.
Botond173
17hr ago
In East Berlin pretty young women were known to throw themselves at any travelling West German or Western foreign men at hotel bars, just to have a small hope of escape.
This was exactly the same in Hungary as well.
It's not like the situation in the Baltics was that much better though. If we correct for the negative effects of the Yugoslavian war, that is.
Botond173
17hr ago
The population of USSR and Warsaw pact was roughly 500 million
I checked Google and it seems I was indeed mistaken. I’d add, however, that 2rafa’s argument is still basically correct: the collapse of the ‘90s did not affect all former Soviet satellite states to an equal degree, and the same applies to former Soviet republics.
Botond173
21hr ago
Half a billion seems to be a massive overstatement. Otherwise I mostly agree.
There were also related changes of the same nature. A massive drop in fertility, the rise of suicide rates, a massive rise in alcoholism and drug addiction rates, the reappearance of contagious diseases that were considered to be already eliminated etc. The latter was the result of the utter collapse of an already shoddy and underfunded healthcare system, as was the decrease that you mentioned.
Botond173
21hr ago
I wouldn’t be certain about the former. The state response to Bolshevik terrorism and agitation in the late years of Czarism was, when compared to similar policies of Western nations, actually mild on average. The sheer difference between that regime and the Bolsheviks in terms of the number of people who were sentenced to forced labor or internal exile is also rather telling.
Botond173
1d ago
I’d go further. Let’s suppose the trans son of an average white bread family is offed and there is reasonable ground to conclude that it was his transness that provoked the killer. I’d argue that in the post-2012 or so world, his family trying to conceal this fact would in fact invite more potential outrage, ostracism, censure, cancelling and mobbing than them doing the opposite.
Botond173
3d ago
I think it's legit a good joke. Sometimes the absurdity of the world reaches such levels that humor is the only valid response.
Botond173
6d ago
I was referring to the social norms before the Sexual Revolution, not the era of the early Church.
Botond173
6d ago
s to why you can't discuss looks productively with women, it's because attractiveness is core to female self image and requires immense kayfabe to avoid the crushing reality.
I think it should be pointed out that this is a relatively new development. Back when early marriage and Christian monogamy were the norm, women's lives were basically similar, regardless of their looks.
Botond173
6d ago
Women are aware on some level that the costs will be borne by them on this time-scale. But the only remotely reliable way to ensure similar long-term male commitment is through intimacy, strong emotional ties and deep social affiliation.
You seem to be insinuating that men don't bear costs and have reliable ways of ensuring commitment.
Botond173
6d ago
where I live women care very little about men's looks
That's generally the case everywhere, so it's not surprising. (It's also true however that men's looks rise in priority if their provider ability loses priority due to rising female economic independence.) My point is that disparaging men's looks is largely considered socially acceptable but doing the same to women is not, except for extreme cases (like when an otherwise ugly woman is revealed to be a thought criminal or heretic, racist etc).
Botond173
6d ago
like I read about a female doctor that expected to be a hot commodity but was then surprised most men cared about looks, agreeableness, etc. over her career and that all her hard work didn't make her good prospect.
She’s not entirely wrong.
If she has a good career, savings and possessions while not being exceedingly ugly, unpleasant or old, all this makes her a good marriage prospect within her upper-middle-class social circle (we can assume), because her male peers do prioritize such attributes within the context of modern assortative mating.
But I stress: these attributes make her an attractive wife – not a great girlfriend, situationship partner, fling or sex partner, but wife.
Botond173
6d ago
(1) women LOVE discussing looks, like giving advice and disparaging people with suboptimal looks.
'Giving bad advice on purpose and disparaging men with suboptimal looks' is a more accurate overall description.
I'll probably regret asking, but how is the robot daughter in the game 'loli-coded'?
More options
Context Copy link