Thomas Shey
Legend
Have in private spaces for a very long time now at this point.
Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
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Have in private spaces for a very long time now at this point.
trappedslider
Legend
trappedslider
Legend
Ruin Explorer
Legend
We're obviously the worst-paid writers here, that's why we have to be so verbose! Luckily I type very fast!
Spiraling Out Of Control: This Man Spends 90 Minutes A Day Online
Ross Harper seems like a normal 24-year-old. He loves Parks And Recreation, has a close group of friends, and considers himself a “total foodie.” But…
clickhole.com
I mean, maybe I'm stating the obvious, but the point of the satirical Clickhole article is that what it's describing is entirely healthy and reasonable, and it was in response to other articles from that era (2015) being very alarmist about people spending much time at all online.
That's not really the main issue though. If you read calm, even boring critical analysis of videogames, you'll see gamers responding in truly ludicrous and completely hyperbolic ways, like immediately dismissing a reviewer accusing them of being paid (if the review is good or even just not super-negative), being "woke" and trying "force [whatever] down our throats!" (if the review is positive about a game with, say a black person or LGBTQ person in it), or being an "vicious attack" or similar by a "total hater" who has "always hated" games like this (if the review is even mildly negative).
With TTRPGs it's not quite as bad, but a lot of people are still keen to accuse critics of product of just being haters or people praising it of being lickspittles and so on.
Compounding the issue are two things:
1) Gamers (including TTRPG gamers to some extent, though again it's less severe here) seem to want every game to be trash or treasure, and nothing in-between. This causes them to exaggerate the views of critics/reviewers/other games so that they're saying "trash" or "treasure", and they then react to these exaggerated imagined views. So they both make and take criticisms in very extreme and personal ways.
2) Clickbait - This is worst on YouTube by far. Text-format reviews increasingly rarely tend to be clickbait because if you wanted clicks, you'd be on YouTube. But YouTube's algorithm rewards being as ridiculous and extreme as possible. If you want to get a million views, you don't make a video saying that a game was a slightly disappointing 7/10 and lacking in these ways but decent in these others. Oh no, you make a video that wildly exaggerates the flaws of the game, pretends it's being completely objective and honest whilst carefully curating the worst footage you can find/make, and then post "[Game studio] failed and dying? Is [game] their worst work yet?!" and maybe depending on your audience you find a way to work "woke" into there somehow. If a game looks like it's going to be very popular/successful, you instead make a video about how it's the best thing ever, and then equally wildly exaggerate how good it is. If you made a negative video about a game that turned out to be popular, you quietly delete the first video, then make "I was wrong! [Game] is amazing and you should play it!", where you barely acknowledge that you even made a negative video, and then act like it was just a preview and you were confused, and actually [game] is amazing - you can even do this if you called it "woke", just say "Well [game studio] did [whatever elements you called woke] right! They didn't force them down my throat!". BG3 is all timer for this last kind of video. A bunch of creators, before release and even some a little after, churned out "LARIAN DEAD?!!? GONE WOKE?!??" (with a shocked reaction face in the thumbnail)-type videos which were about how BG3 was terrible and was going to be a huge flop, but when BG3 got massively positive reviews and it was clear "gamer culture" as a whole was going to regard it positively, there were world record levels of quiet deletions and people suddenly making videos about how amazing it was.
3) Gonzo culture - This is less of an issue now, but it created this situation (and I was part of the problem, at least at one point, to be real). Basically from the very late 1990s to nearly the 2010s, the easiest way to get attention and engagement in game-related spaces (including TTRPGs), was to write in a very showy and excessive fashion, with clear opinions and no attempt at objectivity, vaguely inspired by the tone and style of writing of gonzo journalism, but obviously not actually on that level. This really started with places like Something Awful (and attendant stuff like Old Man Murray), but even before that it was kind of around. It's also a fun way to write, but requires a bit more like, thought and effort than a lot of people were willing to put in later, so naturally devolved over time into people just being as extreme as possible, and then a generation (now 20-something) being raised on this and not really appreciating what was going on, so thinking you just had to be extreme to be cool. Also it was surrounded by a lot of toxicity, including a ton of "joke" homophobia and misogyny which really wasn't a joke for a lot of the people involved (especially younger or less thoughtful ones). I will say though that at least it tended to be recognisable and didn't pretend at objectivity for the most part, which is different to modern-day approaches.
The TLDR is though that it's any criticism at all that gets reacted to as if it was directed personally at the poster/their family, whether the criticism is as mild as "Family Guy is kind of a boring show" or as exaggerated as "Everyone who watches Family Guy is a serial killer in the making!". The difference in how insulted a lot of people (particularly the dreaded "gamers") will act between those two is hilariously tiny.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Oh, for the days when writing assignments paid so well!
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