Gamers, go to Washington

Have you ever had a moment of clarity and realization? Ever had something come to pass that made you and other people involved realize you can’t sit on the sidelines anymore? More often than not, that something is a direct attack, or maybe just your feeling of powerlessness culminating into a ‘wait, I can fix this. I have to fix this. Or at least fight it’.

For #GamerGate that was the day the ‘Gamers are Dead’ articles dropped but now? Now we’ve gone even further. I remember when we started, outraged and demanding a more ethical conduct from game journalists. But we couldn’t stop there because they didn’t.

Now there’s no two ways around it: gamers have to go to Washington.

Ladies and Gentlemen, many of us are at the crossroads of several online movements that stand at the center of a culture war. We have posed a real threat to these cultural ideologues, not because of any possibility of violence, but because we’re standing our ground against them.

But they have made use of avenues that we have not. Almost all of them in the real world, by fundraising for their initiatives, by lobbying congress, by forming social groups in high schools, universities, by forcing myopic diversity quotas into the hiring practices of big business. And now they’re trying to affect the legal system itself, doing away with such trivialities as presumption of innocence.

Again, enough is enough. There’s only so much that can be done online. I’ll be as clear as possible: we need to move offline.

These words are from the Rat King article/proposal by EJ Spurrel, owner and content creator at Black Trident Media, and considering what we are faced with -and what many people of all ages are facing in the current climate-, I can’t help but agree completely.

Except I will be even more precise and direct: it’s not enough to just start doing stuff offline. We need to face these people on their same turf. We need to get involved in politics.

Not even a week ago a pretty infamous duo has appeared before the UN to present their case on ‘Cyberviolence’, and if they had just come and presented 1984 as an instruction manual it would have been less surreal. But what you have to ask yourself is: how the hell did they land an audition? How the hell did one land an audition with the US congress?

Sure, the UN is known for bad decisions and ridiculous pursuits -like appointing Saudi Arabia at the head of a Human Rights Commission– but for all their boasts and loudness those two are political nobodies. One is a mouthpiece for a crazed existence full of hate for… What, exactly? I don’t know. But the point is, they had no power on their own to make that audition.

Someone granted them that opportunity. Just like someone at Google Ideas granted a collection of some of the worst harassers we met the opportunity of preaching about harassment prevention. It wasn’t thanks to these loud, angry, ugly -in soul first, and body too for some- minds’ own power. It was someone with political power who granted them that privilege.

It’s always like this. People will flock more easily to those who can show you an enemy than to those who will talk to you about a project. Look up the entire history of mankind. Witness how many surfed and tsunamied waves of outrage and hate, turning the support of every single fish in that poisonous sea into a new step to the heart of the political mainland.

We live in an age where it seems to be okay to deny science and facts as long as it doesn’t make you feel all warm and cuddly. Higher education is being neutered, scientists get mocked for being scientists or attacked for eccentric t-shirts, and you should be accepting of all races and sexes except whites and heterosexuals. Or those who don’t agree with that line of thinking.

And above all this, as always, are those pouring gasoline on the inferno to warm their own Grimesque ovens. Eventually, it’s to those figures that we must bring the fight because many times a cultural revolution has been squashed by those who misuse the law.

“To form high school and university activism clubs. To form NGOs, advocacy groups, anti-abuse initiatives, charity organizations, counselling groups, industry advocacy groups. To plan and engage in events, talks, debates in the public discourse” says Spurrel, and it’s a great plan but if we move online just to target these screaming trees and miss the forest, it will be in vain.

Ouroboros or… You know.

I give my whole-hearted support to Operation Rat King, and I personally want to get involved with it and fight this culture war but remember: defeating the zombies is useless if we don’t get the Lich in the last room. He’ll just get more braindead monstrosities and get them more auditions.

The UN and Governments influence each other. We have to break that Ouroboros of a cycle.