Scotty W
Gold Member
Given that Trump has formally conceded, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I can be a build back better ally, in order to show that I have been a staunch supporter of the Democrats all along.
Oh hey friendos, buckle up your seatbelts, because we have got a lot to unpack today. Everybody knows that videogame culture is loaded with bigotry and toxicity; but what a lot of y’all don’t realize is that videogame themselves are racist and perpetuate white supremacy. It is not just racist games that do this, regardless of their stated ideology, but ALL video games. Let that sink in. ALL VIDEOGAMES ARE WHITE SUPREMACIST.
Let’s start with a seemingly innocent seeming example. We all know the goomba, and by this point we probably all consider her/him/they to be a friend. But is they racist? Ding ding ding! Folks, they is. Think of the way in which the goomba is constructed- actually, look at it. Boot up Mario 1, and set your favorite white avatar in front of a goomba. What happens?
The goomba will essentially tell you, an infinite number of times, “YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!” And will then go on killing or at least assaulting you as long as there is electricity in your Nintendo. They are *literally* incapable of sympathy or empathy, or modifying their behaviour. Simply put, the goomba is a dehumanized killing machine incapable of speech, inherently unreasonable, and good only to be killed. Sound familiar? It should. The goomba is constructed from the same racist tropes used to dehumanize PoC’s. And so what does this lead to? Ding ding ding! Genocide!
Ok now, don’t let’s be silly, I’m not claiming that the lowly Goomba is a threat to all that is good and wholesome. What I am saying is that if you really think about it, it’s almost as if the goomba represents all enemies in videogames. The enemies are ‘other’ than us. We are better, they want to kill us. They hate us because of our freedom. So what this means is, hour after hour, year upon year, you in this community are imbibing unconsciously the toxic whites supremacist narrative which justifies the genocide of ‘others’ who are inhuman and incapable of empathy. The Germans didn’t think they were capable of it either, until what they had sitting in their unconscious made them capable of it. And even now, Americans are killing innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq because “They hate us for our freedom.”
This ties in with the history of games. Videogames were originally invented by white people, for white people. And like everything they have invented, it is impossible to use their invention without getting its taint all over you. As a result of this history, white gamers look at videogame space as being ‘white space’. This is why they are so anguished by the entrance of non-white, non cisgendered characters into their space. Just like Trump, in their heart of hearts, they just believe that if a wall could be built, videogames could be made somehow pure and white as snow.
Yikes! I literally cannot even begin to describe the harm that these narratives do to PoC’s. But don’t lose all faith in humanity just yet, because it is actually even worse than this. If you look at the way black characters are portrayed in games, that ought to be enough proof that videogames are white supremacist. We all know Barrett in FF7 is a black boogeyman designed to terrify scared whites- I means, he has a machine gun for an arm ffs. I can’t even… Then on the other side of the coin you have the weak black person, which is again an obvious whites supremacist fantasy, because he can be dominated or enslaved, which is all that all people want to do in this world. In between these two you have the so-called normal black person, ie who does not partake in the sterotypically white supremacist stereotypes which you find in games like San Andrea’s Gran Theft Auto and 50 Cents. In other words, a model minority, a black person who is not an ally, who is white adjacent, who has been tamed by white people, “safe enough to be kept indoors”, which is exactly what racist gamers want- the soft bigotry of low expectations. No matter how PoC’s are portrayed in videogames, it is racist.
Even looking past this, we really need to come to terms with the fact that maybe, just maybe, playing as a black character is digital blackface. But it gets even worse still, because playing as a black indulges the ‘colonialist white savior’ trope whereby a black person is saved and able to do good because they is controlled by a white person. I’m literally shaking rn.
If you are not convinced by this… there’s even more. People might think a game like Tetris or Candy Crush Saga could not possibly be racist. But the fact that people do not see this is simply and can only be proof of how deeply ingrained their racism is. All of these games are about one thing only: overcoming our limits and the limits of others. Not coincidentally, this is also the ideology of National Socialism, of Hitler, of the Nazis. If you and I are equal today, and I become ‘better than yesterday’ tomorrow, it follows that I will be better than you tomorrow- and it is only a small step from this to biased attitudes, to acts of bias, to discrimination, to violence, and finally to genocide.
Even games like Flower are guilty of this because they perpetuate the myth of a care free existence where one simply enjoys one’s leisure. This creates a false equivalence which justifies racism. Even further, this class, of which all gamers are members- are complicit in racist leisure. This is equally true of PoC’s who have internalized racism and are thus unable to recognize it. It is a pernicious myth that black people are able to play videogames and not develop self hatred. That is because games always carry their source with them, but internalized. So when PoC’s play games, they are internalizing white supremacy, whether they deny it or not. The very violence of their denials must be taken as proof of how deeply ingrained this self hatred is.
Let’s unpack this, so just shut up and listen: what does a videogame INDUSTRY and a leisure class presuppose? Oh hey, it’s capitalism, sweet summer child.
As the magnanimous Karl Marx wrote in his magisterial That Kapital, “Any, so to speak, accumulation- whether inherited from one’s forebears, which may have accumulated through hook or crook, or got via the so called tillage of tierra, as it were, or the exploitation of the proletariat- of capital, so to speak, as it were, qua capital, interest notwithstanding, attempts with greater or lesser vigor (and the gentle reader is enjoined to notice that the past few decades had invariably brought forth what might be termed greater vigour in addition to the post mentioned preservative capital mechanism) to preserve and increase itself over and across that which we might, almost completely-yet still almost (false appearances notwithstanding), term time.”
The videogame industry was created by a capitalist economy to make and sell goods to the leisure economy, in order to further concentrate wealth in the hands of the owners of the means of production. Why is this problematic? Because these owners are almost entirely white. And what is the largest demographic in the leisure class? Whites! The entire capitalist system was set up by whites, and enriched by slave labour. The whole system was set up by and for whites. Why are there so few African game developers? or developers from India, or the Middle East, or the equatorial région of South America?
Perhaps you will say that technology simply has not reached these places deeply enough for a gaming industry to grow up. But this again is another white supremacist trope used by those who try to explain the economic status quo. They say that just because things were bad in the past, we should be patient as economic equality improves. So *yeah* another racist trope. Had it not been for colonialism, AAA games would be pouring out of Kenya, Somolia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea. The fact that so few gamers care about the gaming industry in these parts of the world is further proof of just how deep their white supremacy runs.Racist white gamers are so busy with their toys that they have never even bothered to notice if there are developers from these places. PoC’s have internalized white supremacy by playing videogames, which makes the third world invisible to them. The gaming community’s silence on this issue is thunderous. And silence is complicity, it is violence and it leads to genocide.
But the white supremacy goes even deeper than that. After the white philosopher Leibniz culturally appropriated binary from the Chinese, it was quick to infuse itself with industrialism, capitalism and colonialism. It is what first enabled patriarchy. It is what first allowed whites to say “I am one, you are an other.” Binary is literally discrimination in its purest form. Even worse, as is clear to any dispassionate observer, math itself is racist, and guess what? Ding ding ding! Your computers console and games are doing math all the time. Games are code, code is math, math is racist, thus games are racist.
Oh boy, so let’s review. So you have a product invented by a racist economic system for a racist market, built of appropriated and racist technology, a system which excludes third world developers, and which uses over and over- as one uses a slave- tropes taken from racist, colonialist, and ultimately white supremacist language which as we have seen leads unfailingly to genocide. Oh sweet summer child, I know how you love your games, but if you play, buy or steal (a colonialist activity) you are engaging in white supremacy. THERE IS NO GETTING AROUND THIS BY SAYING “I’M NOT A RACIST”. If you game you are engaging in white supremacy. Full stop. It is necessary, for the world not to be a shitty place, that you stop playing video games. Full stop. Do the work. If you want to be anti-racist, you must quit playing videogames altogether.
It’s about being a decent human being.
Oh hey friendos, buckle up your seatbelts, because we have got a lot to unpack today. Everybody knows that videogame culture is loaded with bigotry and toxicity; but what a lot of y’all don’t realize is that videogame themselves are racist and perpetuate white supremacy. It is not just racist games that do this, regardless of their stated ideology, but ALL video games. Let that sink in. ALL VIDEOGAMES ARE WHITE SUPREMACIST.
Let’s start with a seemingly innocent seeming example. We all know the goomba, and by this point we probably all consider her/him/they to be a friend. But is they racist? Ding ding ding! Folks, they is. Think of the way in which the goomba is constructed- actually, look at it. Boot up Mario 1, and set your favorite white avatar in front of a goomba. What happens?
The goomba will essentially tell you, an infinite number of times, “YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!” And will then go on killing or at least assaulting you as long as there is electricity in your Nintendo. They are *literally* incapable of sympathy or empathy, or modifying their behaviour. Simply put, the goomba is a dehumanized killing machine incapable of speech, inherently unreasonable, and good only to be killed. Sound familiar? It should. The goomba is constructed from the same racist tropes used to dehumanize PoC’s. And so what does this lead to? Ding ding ding! Genocide!
Ok now, don’t let’s be silly, I’m not claiming that the lowly Goomba is a threat to all that is good and wholesome. What I am saying is that if you really think about it, it’s almost as if the goomba represents all enemies in videogames. The enemies are ‘other’ than us. We are better, they want to kill us. They hate us because of our freedom. So what this means is, hour after hour, year upon year, you in this community are imbibing unconsciously the toxic whites supremacist narrative which justifies the genocide of ‘others’ who are inhuman and incapable of empathy. The Germans didn’t think they were capable of it either, until what they had sitting in their unconscious made them capable of it. And even now, Americans are killing innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq because “They hate us for our freedom.”
This ties in with the history of games. Videogames were originally invented by white people, for white people. And like everything they have invented, it is impossible to use their invention without getting its taint all over you. As a result of this history, white gamers look at videogame space as being ‘white space’. This is why they are so anguished by the entrance of non-white, non cisgendered characters into their space. Just like Trump, in their heart of hearts, they just believe that if a wall could be built, videogames could be made somehow pure and white as snow.
Yikes! I literally cannot even begin to describe the harm that these narratives do to PoC’s. But don’t lose all faith in humanity just yet, because it is actually even worse than this. If you look at the way black characters are portrayed in games, that ought to be enough proof that videogames are white supremacist. We all know Barrett in FF7 is a black boogeyman designed to terrify scared whites- I means, he has a machine gun for an arm ffs. I can’t even… Then on the other side of the coin you have the weak black person, which is again an obvious whites supremacist fantasy, because he can be dominated or enslaved, which is all that all people want to do in this world. In between these two you have the so-called normal black person, ie who does not partake in the sterotypically white supremacist stereotypes which you find in games like San Andrea’s Gran Theft Auto and 50 Cents. In other words, a model minority, a black person who is not an ally, who is white adjacent, who has been tamed by white people, “safe enough to be kept indoors”, which is exactly what racist gamers want- the soft bigotry of low expectations. No matter how PoC’s are portrayed in videogames, it is racist.
Even looking past this, we really need to come to terms with the fact that maybe, just maybe, playing as a black character is digital blackface. But it gets even worse still, because playing as a black indulges the ‘colonialist white savior’ trope whereby a black person is saved and able to do good because they is controlled by a white person. I’m literally shaking rn.
If you are not convinced by this… there’s even more. People might think a game like Tetris or Candy Crush Saga could not possibly be racist. But the fact that people do not see this is simply and can only be proof of how deeply ingrained their racism is. All of these games are about one thing only: overcoming our limits and the limits of others. Not coincidentally, this is also the ideology of National Socialism, of Hitler, of the Nazis. If you and I are equal today, and I become ‘better than yesterday’ tomorrow, it follows that I will be better than you tomorrow- and it is only a small step from this to biased attitudes, to acts of bias, to discrimination, to violence, and finally to genocide.
Even games like Flower are guilty of this because they perpetuate the myth of a care free existence where one simply enjoys one’s leisure. This creates a false equivalence which justifies racism. Even further, this class, of which all gamers are members- are complicit in racist leisure. This is equally true of PoC’s who have internalized racism and are thus unable to recognize it. It is a pernicious myth that black people are able to play videogames and not develop self hatred. That is because games always carry their source with them, but internalized. So when PoC’s play games, they are internalizing white supremacy, whether they deny it or not. The very violence of their denials must be taken as proof of how deeply ingrained this self hatred is.
Let’s unpack this, so just shut up and listen: what does a videogame INDUSTRY and a leisure class presuppose? Oh hey, it’s capitalism, sweet summer child.
As the magnanimous Karl Marx wrote in his magisterial That Kapital, “Any, so to speak, accumulation- whether inherited from one’s forebears, which may have accumulated through hook or crook, or got via the so called tillage of tierra, as it were, or the exploitation of the proletariat- of capital, so to speak, as it were, qua capital, interest notwithstanding, attempts with greater or lesser vigor (and the gentle reader is enjoined to notice that the past few decades had invariably brought forth what might be termed greater vigour in addition to the post mentioned preservative capital mechanism) to preserve and increase itself over and across that which we might, almost completely-yet still almost (false appearances notwithstanding), term time.”
The videogame industry was created by a capitalist economy to make and sell goods to the leisure economy, in order to further concentrate wealth in the hands of the owners of the means of production. Why is this problematic? Because these owners are almost entirely white. And what is the largest demographic in the leisure class? Whites! The entire capitalist system was set up by whites, and enriched by slave labour. The whole system was set up by and for whites. Why are there so few African game developers? or developers from India, or the Middle East, or the equatorial région of South America?
Perhaps you will say that technology simply has not reached these places deeply enough for a gaming industry to grow up. But this again is another white supremacist trope used by those who try to explain the economic status quo. They say that just because things were bad in the past, we should be patient as economic equality improves. So *yeah* another racist trope. Had it not been for colonialism, AAA games would be pouring out of Kenya, Somolia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea. The fact that so few gamers care about the gaming industry in these parts of the world is further proof of just how deep their white supremacy runs.Racist white gamers are so busy with their toys that they have never even bothered to notice if there are developers from these places. PoC’s have internalized white supremacy by playing videogames, which makes the third world invisible to them. The gaming community’s silence on this issue is thunderous. And silence is complicity, it is violence and it leads to genocide.
But the white supremacy goes even deeper than that. After the white philosopher Leibniz culturally appropriated binary from the Chinese, it was quick to infuse itself with industrialism, capitalism and colonialism. It is what first enabled patriarchy. It is what first allowed whites to say “I am one, you are an other.” Binary is literally discrimination in its purest form. Even worse, as is clear to any dispassionate observer, math itself is racist, and guess what? Ding ding ding! Your computers console and games are doing math all the time. Games are code, code is math, math is racist, thus games are racist.
Oh boy, so let’s review. So you have a product invented by a racist economic system for a racist market, built of appropriated and racist technology, a system which excludes third world developers, and which uses over and over- as one uses a slave- tropes taken from racist, colonialist, and ultimately white supremacist language which as we have seen leads unfailingly to genocide. Oh sweet summer child, I know how you love your games, but if you play, buy or steal (a colonialist activity) you are engaging in white supremacy. THERE IS NO GETTING AROUND THIS BY SAYING “I’M NOT A RACIST”. If you game you are engaging in white supremacy. Full stop. It is necessary, for the world not to be a shitty place, that you stop playing video games. Full stop. Do the work. If you want to be anti-racist, you must quit playing videogames altogether.
It’s about being a decent human being.
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