https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlvMAS_20K4
This woman’s monologue is pretty fair as to what’s happening with regards to the psychology of recent social trends. She ties in internet culture as well which is how it’s relevant to video games & video game forums.
Basically men define their value by their role within society. Women have inherent value to society due to being able to make babies, which is why, for example, they aren’t drafted and sent to war. But she extends this analogy to more broadly define value as it is perceived by the male psychology. Marriage, for example, was a way that a man could define his value because it’s a role he could play that was respected and valued and honored. Today, it has less value because they can’t define their role with it when a woman can end the marriage on a dime and when the divorce court is so biased against men. Their investment can disappear in a puff of smoke and based on nothing but the whims of their partner. Marriage is then seen as a risk rather than a value-defining position. Add in the fact that men are constantly painted as totalitarian and controlling, and the role of father becomes even less appealing because, under this assessment, it is perceived to have negative value. Due to this, marriage declines, the population growth slows, and lonely women cry about “where have all the good men gone” on their blogs while reading erotic novels to fill the role of romance in their life.
She also analogizes this to work spaces that are traditionally male. Women encroach in these spaces, the women become easily offended by the stereotypical male environment, and the people in charge change the environment rather than telling the women to change their expectations. Since the environment becomes less and less male, it’s less rewarding to male psychology and it’s no longer a way a man can define himself. A corporate job is no longer a value-defining career, it’s a way to be constantly scolded by HR karens which, again, creates the perception of negative value. A career no longer defines you, it makes you a wage slave to your karen overlords.
Using this theory, she theorizes that men will retreat into spaces where they have the power to define the roles. They can use this to define their own value, which is why men retreat into video games. She was absolutely right, and 13 years in advance, because this mechanism played a very large role in the recent elections in america. These trends can be observed in other countries too with young men skewing towards the right politically.
The democratic party in america is quite likely toast as a result. They didn’t understand male psychology and how men perceive their value by their roles. They constantly attacked and demonized men for their roles, and reduced any institutional power that defined those roles, until the roles were basically worthless. Since men look to define their value through their roles, they stopped participating in roles like fatherhood & careers which are now perceived negatively through the male psychology. Now, roughly 11% of men in their prime working years are both not employed and not seeking to be employed. This is a colossal economic screw up because the average economic output of a man is 1.5 million dollars over his lifetime. There’s 17 million unemployed men multiplied by 1.5 million USD in lost economic productivity. That’s a reduction in 24,792,000,000,000 USD in economic output all thanks to insane anti male democratic policies. That’s not even accounting for the harm done to marriage and the reduced population growth as a result. It’s also not accounting for the loneliness and other psychological harm which is obviously very large since there are so many women crying about how lonely they are on social media. The total harm is quite likely so large it is undefinable.
The damage that the democratic party has done to society and individuals within society is absolutely enormous. To this day, they still haven’t figured out what’s happening and they continue to double down on their insane rhetoric. That’s why I think the national democratic party is dead. I don’t think they are ever going to win another presidential election in the next 50 years. There are lots of guys out there who love the idea of electric cars and clean energy and whatnot but they simply won’t vote for a party that hates them for being male and systematically discriminates them en masse. That’s just reality. If the democrats ever want to win another election ever again, they need to understand male psychology and stop stripping value away from value-defining roles. They no longer control the media & can’t use the media complex to gaslight men into adopting anti-male policies, so this problem is something they can no longer avoid. This problem now defines a major facet of american, and arguably world, politics. They need to shift their position to a more centered position and abandon their insane far left rhetoric. There are lots of dudes happy to vote for electric cars but basically none of them are going to vote for turning all of society into an HR safe space for karens.
As somebody who personally supports a lot of new scientific and technological research into alternative energy sources and new vaccines and biological research, I am worried the Democratic party has done lasting harm to these industries in a way that is going to be very hard to repair. Consider their crusade against red meat for example. This is a gendered issue because men definitely consume more red meat than women. So they are even attacking the foods that men like and trying to get it banned. That’s how deep this bias goes. It went mostly unnoticed until social media allowed people to coordinate and start to notice the patterns. It accumulated into the recent election that gave DRUMPF the presidency. If the democrats were serious about beating DRUMPF, and you can tell they aren’t, they would stop pushing away male voters.
Tying this back into these forums. These forums are an incarnation of the HR-karen attitude because people can report your posts for any reason and get you banned for any reason. People on these forums are so easy to offend that they will be offended by the mere length of a post. Under the framework previously established, men seek out places where they can define their own roles and their own value. On forums like these, there is no value because merely participating here is enough to make people hate you and get you banned. That’s why these forums are dead and nobody posts here anymore. It’s the same mechanism. Effort is perceived to have negative value rather than positive value. For example:
Case in point. Why put in effort when it’s punished rather than rewarded? That’s the exact question people ask themselves when trolls harass them on social media. Most of them decide it isn’t worth it and stop posting. That’s how you get a dead internet forum like this place. Fortunately for this place, I have an indomitable mind of steel and keep on cranking out new content. But it’s not fair to expect everyone to be as durable as I am. If you scored people on assertiveness and stubbornness, I am probably a serral in that regard. 99.999% of people simply won’t put up with the BS and will seek out a more friendly environment that values them.
For those in the crowd having a hard time understanding how this relates to SC2: these men are the ones playing all the video games. They are the kingmakers. They decide which games succeed and which games fail. Their influence is so profound they even exert significant sway over Hollywood and world politics. These men are counter-culture, meaning they seek for a way to express themselves, free from judgement or restraint of the system, and so any game infusing mainstream cultural or political ideas will be extremely offensive to them and your game fail and your company will go bankrupt. I think SC2 failed this litmus test because it pushed out figures like Idra, for example, which shows they embraced mainstream culture which by definition is not gaming culture. That’s why extremely toxic figures, like Destiny, did so well. He is obviously counter culture. He does and says loads of things that are offensive to many people. I think a large part of why SC2 failed is because gaming executives allowed politicians to gaslight them into adopting mainstream culture when what they should’ve adopted was punk / counter culture. The only people who have time to play lots of games are the ones who don’t have jobs and the ones that don’t have jobs are the ones who have a hard time integrating with society and those are the people who are punk. It’s really quite simple.
The next question is obviously then if corporations are even capable of producing punk content or if gaming corps are doomed for bankruptcy just due to the nature of beast. The only people with the money and power to develop large games are also the ones who are heavily biased against creating the kinds of content that gamers will buy. That’s how you end up with a Concord. A smart businessman would be able to set aside his own biases an produce a product the market wants, but to do that you must truly understand who they are and why they do what they do and why they want what they want. Consider the song by the counter-culture band called Lamb of God:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWyd_9LK75Y
Cold rain falls on my face
And the light in my hand
I’m turning inside out
I don’t know who I am
And do I want it to stop?
This is a classic hero’s trope. It’s the realization that the main character doesn’t like where he’s at and what he’s become. Let’s continue:
There’s a war going on inside of me
Questions echo endlessly
I paid a thief to steal away my one escape
I bought a broken mirror just to try and see my face
S(he)'s conflicted by the realization. He’s not sure what direction to head.
Cold winds blow from the hills
There’s eyes on my back
In sinking shifting sands
I don’t know where I am
He’s set off on a journey to a new location, but feels lost and insecure, as if danger could be hiding anywhere.
Grayscale eyes slide from black to white
Lived through dark days
Stillness in a crashing wave
Died in bright nights
Fall into an angry sky
Grayscale eyes slide from black to white
In a grayscale tide
In a grayscale tide
He finds the strength to push onward, knowing nothing can be darker than his past. This is the hero’s realization that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and so they charge forward into the unknown.
I thought I’d know better now
The world is upside down
I thought I’d know better now
The weight is crashing down
He’s in a new place now, but it’s no different than the last. He realizes it is the world itself that must be reshaped, and this is the hero’s call to action.
This is obviously a classic hero’s trope and punk men obviously identify with it which is why it’s a top selling album despite being a niche hard metal band. If gaming executives were smart, they’d study counter-cultural trends like this to figure out what it is gamers want.
It’s obvious how the punk culture would identify with a hero’s trope. The hero is a person who saves society from a great evil. That’s exactly how punks view themselves. Now, catering to them is extremely easy. Just give them a story about a dude winning against all odds. Copy the story of Achilles. It’s a trope as old as time. The hero fights a war and defeats endless opponents, but can he overcome his one weakness aka the Achilles Heel? Just slap an Achilles into the SC2 plot and, bam, you’ve got the product gamers want. Usually the “weakness” that is embedded into a hero is his lust for sensual experiences. Consider The Witcher for example. They are a distraction from his true goal, and it appeals to the horny teenagers / young adults. It’s a win win. You have your Achilles with his Heel, and it’s portrayed in a way that jobless men who hate mainstream culture will thoroughly enjoy. Now what is the evil that he combats. In a cyberpunk story, the classical trope is an “ai super power run amok” or “tyrannical mega-corporations have no checks on their power and its abuse.” That is obviously very applicable here as the gamers see themselves fighting against greedy gaming corporations who look to enforce ideological uniformity while cranking out lousy games, but are gaming corporations willing to crank out a storyline that is self criticizing? Probably not. They need another trope. That’s where war profiteering & endless conflict enters the picture. Achilles is then a hero who ends a war but dies trying (or loses something great, aka personal sacrifice). Ender’s Game is much along those lines and it’s a story of war strategy. They could obviously borrow some ideas from it. The answers to this problem have already been found & known for decades and somehow gaming corps keep getting it wrong, which is hilarious. How much do you think they pay teams of people to crank out lousy ideas. This is obviously culturally relevant too as the Ukraine war is being brought to an end and the warmongering Europeans are being told to stuff a cork in it.