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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16878 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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There's nothing that inherently elevates fiction books over other forms of entertainment. In fact (multiplayer) video games are intrinsically social and communal in a way that books are not. I've done a lot of traveling and met a lot of people because of video games.

Of course this conversation is predicated on a distinction between "higher" and "lower" entertainment, and a distinction between "entertainment" and "work" in general. This distinction is dubious:

Time and time again, when questioned or interviewed, one is asked about one’s hobbies. When the illustrated weeklies report on the life of one of those giants of the culture industry, they rarely forego the opportunity to report, with varying degrees of intimacy, on the hobbies of the person in question. I am shocked by the question when I come up against it. I have no hobby. Not that I am the kind of workaholic, who is incapable of doing anything with his time but applying himself industriously to the required task. But, as far as my activities beyond the bounds of my recognised profession are concerned, I take them all, without exception, very seriously. So much so, that I should be horrified by the very idea that they had anything to do with hobbies – preoccupations with which I had become mindlessly infatuated merely in order to kill the time – had I not become hardened by experience to such examples of this now widespread, barbarous mentality. Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.

Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.

Imagine some guy lays this on you after you ask him about his hobbies. What an extraordinarily annoying and pretentious thing to say. Adorno’s dripping contempt for the “barbarous”, “horrifying”, “mock-worthy” common man, what he enjoys, how he talks, and what he thinks. All rooted in Adorno's resentment that the rube has again and again rejected marx’ bullshit.

“people are unaware of how utterly unfree they are, even where they feel most at liberty“ - thought bubble of guy in corner at party meme.

The teleology of the technology is completely different. Books (and inernet blogs) shape us to follow logical, thought out arguments. The teology of video games is different. Video games put you in the drivers seat, which can be extremely valuable (for example I don't think you could recreate the same thematic coherence of Dark Souls in a book). However, video games cannot put you in the head of someone else the way a novel can. The Medium is the Message.

Most of the games, yes. But some of games can certainly put you in the head of someone else: Disco Elysium, Mouthwashing, Pathologic series, Omori, Signalis. They are much more of an exception to the rule, though.

Most books are written by a single author and you get a look inside a specific person's head. Most games are written by committee and you are less likely to get a coherent psychology and theme. There are exceptions in both mediums.

Reading is a shared endeavor that the writer starts but is completed by the reader. The words the author provides are the building block for the imaginative experience the reader creates in their own heads, supplying the sights, sounds, smells inside.

Gaming is also a shared endeavor, but different. The game developers provide visuals and audio, the player makes decisions and solves challenges.

There is massive potential in both mediums, and I hesitate to say that one could be substituted for the other.

I agree, they can't be substituted and the examples I gave are specifically the exceptions to the rule.

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