Month: July 2015

vanillycake:

discovergames:

I mean seriously, consider the scenario that has to happen in order for the “fake gamer girl” thing to make sense. A woman would have to first encounter or learn about the gaming community. She would find (in the average or aggregate) a hostile, elitist, corporatist, anti-intellectual, hegemonic group full of angry, petty, whiny, sexist, racist, smug, disgusting, gatekeeping losers. And she would then have to say to herself, “Oh yeah, I gotta get me some of that.”

At which point, despite a total and complete lack of interest in videogames, she invests hundreds or thousands of dollars in games, consoles, peripherals, and materials for other activities like cosplay and streaming. And then she spends the great majority of her leisure time playing games, writing about games, talking about games, making games, making gaming cosplay, going to gaming conventions, writing and drawing fanfiction of games, streaming games, and participating in gaming forums.

She does this not only despite having absolutely no interest in games, but also despite the near-constant barrage of sexist attacks she must deal with on a daily basis. She has to deal with an industry and community that reminds her she is unwelcome at every possible opportunity, from marketing campaigns that assume women don’t play games (or worse, cast them in the role of the nagging girlfriend), to microaggressions in online play, to rape and death threats and even doxxing and swatting.

And some sweaty, pocket-mining basement-dwellers would have you believe that she goes through all of this, spending all this time, money and energy, and enduring all of this harassment and hostility, all without any passion, love or even interest in videogames. And all for what? To “get attention”? Oh yeah. That makes sense. I can definitely see women lining up around the block to get this sweet deal: “Step right up, ladies! For just a few thousand dollars, and the majority of your free time, you too could be eligible for (almost exclusively negative and violent) ATTENTION from angry men and boys without social skills, who believe your only value lies in sex appeal, and who will treat your very existence with suspicion and hostility! Yes, for the mere price of enduring a constant deluge of rape and death threats, you will have access to a steady stream of ATTENTION from the most unpleasant and undesirable people on the planet! You may find it difficult at first to spend so much time and energy faking interest in a hobby you don’t care about at all, but with a reward like ATTENTION from swearing teenagers and smug date-rapists, you can’t afford to pass up this deal of a lifetime!”