The Auron MacIntyre Show - Working for BioWare： My GamerGate Origin Story ｜ 11⧸20⧸24

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00:00:30.200 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.740 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.340 I am Oren McIntyre.

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00:01:23.860 All right, so jumping in today, I wanted to tell you guys a little bit of a story.

00:01:29.580 Usually we get into some news of the day, maybe some political theory or some philosophy.

00:01:34.540 But this one was just too good not to touch on.

00:01:37.860 If you paid any attention to the world of video games, you know, of course, that Dragon Age The Veil Guard has come out.

00:01:46.680 And this is a game that has come from Bioware or EA Edmonton, as we used to call it.

00:01:53.500 And this is a studio that is well known through the years for having really interesting, in-depth RPG games across multiple platforms.

00:02:03.260 But also known, unfortunately, for being one of the foremost companies when it comes to pushing wokeness inside the video game industry.

00:02:12.880 Before it was cool or trendy for a lot of these video game developers, before they started jumping on the bandwagon and they got pushed into this from all these different consultancy agencies like Sweet Baby Inc., they basically got blackmailed in some cases.

00:02:28.380 But before all of that, Bioware was really setting the tone.

00:02:32.660 They were putting in a lot of characters that were trans or had gay relationships.

00:02:37.960 They were putting preachy sections into different parts of their video games.

00:02:42.880 And this has been a consistent theme throughout many of their releases, which their fans haven't always been a huge, well, fan of.

00:02:52.560 The funny part of this was I was actually working with Bioware at one point.

00:02:59.060 You know, being a teacher, a lot of times you have downtime.

00:03:02.600 There's a lot of extra hours, especially in the summer.

00:03:05.760 A lot of people get second jobs, and I was one of those people.

00:03:09.020 One of the things that I did along the way was get work for a company that farmed itself out as a social media manager for a number of different big organizations.

00:03:20.200 We did work for the NFL.

00:03:22.320 I think at one point we were doing work for some of the armed forces.

00:03:26.860 We handled multiple big video game companies and their social media, including Riot Games with League of Legends.

00:03:36.900 And the one I worked on the most, I worked on all of those different projects, though we had many, many more.

00:03:42.820 But the biggest one, the one I spent the most time on, was Bioware.

00:03:46.400 I was there when, let's see, it was Mass Effect 3 had come out, which had a lot of wokeness in it, but also was famous for its terrible ending.

00:03:54.900 Even though I think in general the game was rather enjoyable to play, and also Dragon Age Inquisition, which was really where the wokeness ball got rolling for Bioware.

00:04:09.140 So I was working as part of this company that was handling their social media moderation.

00:04:14.400 We did the forums, we did Facebook, we did YouTube, a lot of this stuff.

00:04:18.240 And so I was very unfamiliar with all of this when I kind of joined on.

00:04:23.580 I didn't know about Gamergate or Internet politics, all these different people who were discussing what was happening, the scandals that were involved.

00:04:31.380 This was all very new to me.

00:04:32.540 I had, you know, talk radio conservative, normie, but Republican politics.

00:04:37.940 I was completely unplugged from any of this.

00:04:40.560 And that's kind of how I ended up falling down a lot of the rabbit hole that I did.

00:04:44.480 So today I want to show you some of what is in Dragon Age.

00:04:48.980 Veilguard talked to you about kind of how this is infiltrated in and why this has become such a standard for Bioware.

00:04:55.040 I want to give you a little bit about my story and experience working with them and what happened and everything.

00:05:01.020 And ultimately why Gamergate was kind of the original ground zero for this recognition of what we would eventually call, I think, the total state.

00:05:09.680 The fact that this wokeness idea had penetrated every aspect of our culture that had taken over, how this ended up being the canary in the coal mine for a movement that has now culminated in the re-election of Donald Trump.

00:05:22.740 In a very strange but real way, Gamergate paved the way for the national politics that we are experiencing today.

00:05:30.200 So I want to get into all of that, guys.

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00:06:37.260 All right, so like I said, for those who are not familiar, EA Edmonton or BioWare was a famous video game developer.

00:06:48.680 They weren't originally part of Electronic Arts, but they were bought by Electronic Arts.

00:06:52.740 Electronic Arts is its own infamous name among kind of the video game sphere.

00:06:59.320 It's well hated at this point for its propensity for buying up a lot of small publishers and then closing them down or changing their direction.

00:07:09.220 People tend not to be a huge fan of kind of the cannibalistic manner in which they operate inside the video game industry.

00:07:17.180 But interestingly, when they joined with EA, BioWare was known for really their very complicated PC RPGs.

00:07:31.660 They were famous for the Baldur's Gate series, which is a Dungeons and Dragons video game, and they were known for Knights of the Old Republic, which was a really good spin on the Star Wars saga at that time.

00:07:45.020 These properties were not burned out like they are today.

00:07:47.700 You know, Star Wars was still relatively fresh.

00:07:51.240 You hadn't had all of the tarnishing that had come with kind of the newer movies.

00:07:55.820 So these were still properties that were well-loved, and the fact that BioWare had properly translated them into the video game format got them a lot of respect.

00:08:07.780 They were kind of considered to be a gamer's gamer's video game company.

00:08:12.420 You know, these were the people who understood the culture.

00:08:14.880 They knew how to take complex stories and worlds and flesh them out and make them real.

00:08:19.460 So this is a developer that had a lot of goodwill in a lot of ways.

00:08:23.580 And they were also famous in kind of the modern era for their Mass Effect series and their Dragon Age series.

00:08:29.960 One which was a fantasy series and one which is a sci-fi series.

00:08:34.780 Now, both Mass Effect and Dragon Age had elements that hinted towards perhaps an interest in kind of progressivism, a little bit of a political in here and there.

00:08:47.660 But the first editions of both of these were not overly woke in any serious way.

00:08:54.740 They still had elements of this stuff, but much of it was written off as, well, you know, this is an open world.

00:09:00.660 You're creating your own character.

00:09:02.740 You're being who you want to be and doing what you want to do.

00:09:06.060 It's all about choices, right?

00:09:07.520 And so some of those choices might end up falling inside kind of this leftist spectrum.

00:09:12.380 And so that stuff was there.

00:09:14.780 It was present, but it wasn't in your face constantly.

00:09:18.380 You weren't being lectured by it all the time.

00:09:20.820 And these were also pretty good games.

00:09:23.160 Mass Effect 2 ended up being one of the most well-loved games of all time.

00:09:28.040 One that I enjoyed playing when it came out.

00:09:31.220 Something that I thought was definitely an improvement over Mass Effect 1.

00:09:34.540 But again, we could see with each iteration, these politics were coming more and more to the forefront.

00:09:41.180 It wasn't just an option among many options you could choose in a world that was open.

00:09:47.520 But instead, it was something that seemed to be forced more and more into the main storyline.

00:09:52.680 You had to interact with these characters.

00:09:55.180 You had to have these conversations.

00:09:58.280 And more and more, it seemed like those characters were lecturing you about those interactions.

00:10:03.140 It wasn't just an option you could choose.

00:10:05.760 It was something you should choose.

00:10:07.440 Those things became less and less of one of the many ways you could pick through the buffet of role-playing.

00:10:13.480 And instead, something that was being funneled directly to the player.

00:10:17.080 It was very preachy, this kind of thing.

00:10:19.120 It really took off with Dragon's Age Inquisition.

00:10:22.360 And I remember because, again, I was working on the social media at that time.

00:10:28.280 And this stuff really blew up.

00:10:30.720 I want to get deeper into my experience in this.

00:10:34.460 But first, I want to show you what they are doing now.

00:10:37.140 Kind of what the modern Bioware game looks like.

00:10:41.100 Why so many people are saying, okay, this is absolutely insane.

00:10:45.600 We're talking about, in Dragon's Age, Veilguard, a game in which, of course, you have a trans main character.

00:10:52.940 Before, in Inquisition, it was a side character you could run into.

00:10:56.820 And you could have these conversations.

00:10:58.340 And they would lecture you about the pronouns.

00:11:00.320 And it was still insufferable.

00:11:02.560 But there are side quests where you would run into the, I'm persecuted for my homosexuality.

00:11:08.640 These kind of things.

00:11:09.760 But once you got to this game, we're now on the point where this is the main storyline.

00:11:13.660 These are mandatory scenes and lectures that you're running into.

00:11:16.780 And in things like the character creation, they have, like, top scars from trans surgery. 0.89

00:11:22.400 So you can include mutilation, self-mutilation, into your character as part of the game.

00:11:29.000 You know, obviously, again, you could still make the argument, well, they're just opening up these opportunities to roleplay.

00:11:35.640 These are things that you could do.

00:11:37.500 But that's the thing about fantasy, right?

00:11:39.820 This is a fantasy game.

00:11:41.840 You're not supposed to import your real-life politics into this escapism.

00:11:47.840 Now, there always will be some level of this.

00:11:50.380 I mean, sci-fi is famously a place where you can discuss real-world issues in a fantasy setting or a setting in which things are accelerated into the future, where they're distant but still connected.

00:12:02.840 But when you're entirely in different worlds, I mean, Dragon Age takes place in a completely fantastic universe.

00:12:09.520 It has no connection to Earth or, you know, any of our history.

00:12:13.100 It's not Star Trek where we came from this and this is part of our politics and who we are and we have these relationships even somewhere in the distant past.

00:12:21.320 This is completely unconnected.

00:12:21.840 And yet they still show up, but whatever, again, you could say, well, some of that is part of the selection.

00:12:27.340 But let me show you one of the scenes that is just particularly egregious from the new game.

00:12:33.380 I'll put it up here real quick.

00:12:35.900 It's parties.

00:12:36.820 All right, so to set the stage for this, I cut the clip a little short because I don't want to, you know, go through the whole thing.

00:12:43.660 It's a longer cut scene.

00:12:45.020 But they're having some kind of conversation about mates and telling everybody about what happened.

00:12:52.260 And someone misgenders someone in the middle of the conversation.

00:12:55.060 And we get an entire lecture about how terrible this is.

00:12:58.320 Well, Tash is pounding that snake's nose. 1.00

00:13:01.220 She's still holding the ruby in her other hand.

00:13:03.940 Maker's panties.

00:13:05.000 I was so proud.

00:13:06.820 Oh, um. 1.00

00:13:09.660 Ah, shit. 1.00

00:13:11.300 They. 1.00

00:13:12.020 They're still holding it.

00:13:13.640 Sorry.

00:13:15.160 What are you doing?

00:13:16.580 Pulling a barve.

00:13:17.880 Oh.

00:13:19.060 Okay.

00:13:20.020 A barve?

00:13:21.180 Tradition in the Lords of Fortune from one of our old members, barve.

00:13:24.660 Good guy, but like most of us, his plans went sideways a lot.

00:13:28.540 Bad blood among your crews, not good for morale.

00:13:30.980 But there's not always time for big drawn-out apologies.

00:13:33.480 So she is telling the story and she has misgendered one of the adventurers who, for some reason, has our notion, our current woke notion of gender identity imported into this fantasy universe.

00:13:48.560 And because she has made this error and she has been shamed by one of the other members, she has to stop and we go through an entire struggle session.

00:13:56.660 It's not enough to just say, oh, no, well, you know, you said the wrong word.

00:14:00.520 No, I need to, I need to do some kind of recompense.

00:14:04.120 I need to actually go through some kind of physical punishment so I can show, you know, that, that I, my, my contrition towards this person.

00:14:13.240 You know, this, this is kind of where we get started, but it only gets worse from here.

00:14:17.280 So when one of us screws up and we know we've screwed up, we do a quick 10 to put it right.

00:14:21.980 Pulling a barve.

00:14:25.940 Oh, there we go.

00:14:26.960 Oh.

00:14:30.520 Any reason you can't just apologize?

00:14:33.480 Sometimes people say, oops, sorry, and hope that fixes it, but they just want to get the whole thing over with.

00:14:39.440 Trust me, I know.

00:14:41.300 But pulling a barve, you sweat a little, makes you think about it a little more, shows the other person you mean it.

00:14:48.060 What if they mean it when they say they're sorry, though?

00:14:51.180 And that's the other reason.

00:14:52.760 Some people mess up and get all dramatic.

00:14:55.280 They make it about them.

00:14:57.200 Oh, you know, I didn't mean it right.

00:14:59.400 I'd never do that on purpose.

00:15:01.660 They feel so bad about it that it's on everyone else to smooth it over and make them feel better.

00:15:06.580 So this is just out of the worst HR struggle session. 0.94

00:15:11.300 This is just completely like the straight up gay race, communism, just Maoism right here, right? 1.00

00:15:18.640 So it's not enough that you've seen the faux pas and you've said you're sorry. 0.92

00:15:23.020 No, you don't really mean it because you're making it about you.

00:15:26.500 You're centering it incorrectly.

00:15:28.340 We need to know.

00:15:29.120 We need to see you struggle.

00:15:30.400 We need to see you hurt.

00:15:31.400 You need to sweat so we know that you really mean it, that you ultimately understand how deep your sin was and how you're willing to atone through it, not through just words, but through actions.

00:15:42.880 Really, if they just asked you to donate to some, you know, make a million dollar donation to some charity, this would be completely indistinguishable from a current media witch hunt from any given celebrity that makes some kind of faux pas.

00:15:56.360 Oh, oh, okay.

00:15:59.860 Yes.

00:16:00.280 Some people might do that.

00:16:02.140 Pulling above puts it on the person who screwed up.

00:16:04.960 They made the mess.

00:16:05.840 They fix it.

00:16:06.840 Done.

00:16:09.100 I'm glad the Lords of Fortune have Tasha's back.

00:16:12.460 Oh, Tasha isn't the first non-binary member of the Lords.

00:16:15.800 Really?

00:16:16.520 Of course not.

00:16:17.700 In this fantasy world, this completely new thing that popped up about 10 years ago and suddenly swept and completely consumed popular culture.

00:16:28.100 This has just been around for a very long time.

00:16:30.780 And again, this is how you do this, right?

00:16:33.560 This is how you write it into history for people.

00:16:36.340 Oh, this is very common.

00:16:37.680 This is not some insane thing that has taken over and completely rewritten our history.

00:16:42.580 No, this is, you can see in a fantasy game, this has been around for a very long time.

00:16:46.840 And of course, this band of adventurers is incredibly sensitive to this, this rough and tumble crew who runs around murdering and, you know, pillaging and, you know, pulling all kinds of hijinks and these kind of things.

00:16:59.580 They're, you know, they're, they're very emotionally attuned to this kind of thing.

00:17:03.480 They think very deeply about it and they make sure to guard themselves at all times.

00:17:07.680 This is a softer, gentler pack of armed killers.

00:17:13.020 It was a little before your time, but Horlicks was one of ours.

00:17:16.140 Huh.

00:17:17.720 Bastard looked better than I did in a dress or pants and out of them too. 0.99

00:17:22.560 Hmm.

00:17:25.740 Wow.

00:17:26.460 Okay.

00:17:26.960 Uh, anyway, let's get through this.

00:17:31.220 Isabella's apology worked for you, Tosh?

00:17:33.720 Yeah.

00:17:34.940 Just, I didn't expect the Lords to care about the stuff.

00:17:40.480 I got to make sure the apology works for you.

00:17:43.760 Is this acceptable?

00:17:44.520 Have they, have they, uh, genuflected properly in front of the holy visage of the non-binary deity? 0.99

00:17:51.660 You know, this is what we're dealing with.

00:17:53.380 This is, this is video game entertainment, right?

00:17:56.380 This is how you spend your time after dropping, you know, what, 70 bucks on this game?

00:18:01.080 Probably me being non-binary Kirkwall taught me about family.

00:18:05.520 If it matters to you, it matters to me.

00:18:07.340 I mean, to the Lords.

00:18:10.920 All right.

00:18:11.480 So this is, this is kind of where we're at.

00:18:13.600 This is what Bioware is doing today.

00:18:16.300 But the thing is, well, and by the way, it, I, normally I would just say, well, this, this

00:18:20.760 should just absolutely win me the bet a hundred percent between me and academic agent.

00:18:25.340 The fact that this came out in 2024 should itself make it very clear that the woke is

00:18:30.540 not going anywhere, but I will say that this has been around for a very long time.

00:18:34.760 This is who Bioware has been for a very long time, which is why I want to tell this story,

00:18:39.320 though it does kind of put the lie to the idea that people are just going to change course.

00:18:44.080 Oh, well, you know, all of a sudden, uh, Donald Trump wins and, uh, the, all the corporations

00:18:48.820 have chosen that they're going to go to the other direction.

00:18:50.880 I mean, that's just obviously not the case.

00:18:53.580 You can tell it right here.

00:18:54.600 They didn't go in and change this or cancel this.

00:18:56.760 They, they tripled down on all of this content and they will continue to do that because that

00:19:01.120 is who the Bioware staff are.

00:19:03.480 So, uh, I guess now is, is when I should probably explain, uh, my connection to this.

00:19:08.920 So, like I said, as you know, as a teacher, you have a lot of this open time.

00:19:12.360 You, you often have to get, uh, you know, second jobs if you, you know, you don't have

00:19:16.180 to, but, you know, you want to be industrious.

00:19:17.980 You don't just want to sit around all summer, do nothing.

00:19:20.560 Uh, you know, so have jobs like this.

00:19:22.840 And so this is where, uh, I ended up getting, uh, involved with this.

00:19:27.340 I didn't want to, to be clear at the beginning, I want to make really clear.

00:19:30.140 I did not work directly for Bioware.

00:19:32.760 You won't, you know, I was not a, a, a Bioware employee in their offices.

00:19:36.380 Um, I was not creating video games for them or anything like that.

00:19:41.260 I had no creative input into any of this.

00:19:43.660 So I wasn't like a video game developer.

00:19:45.340 I wasn't writing scripts or code or any of that stuff.

00:19:47.900 So when I say I'm working for Bioware, where I literally mean we were hired by

00:19:51.860 where Bioware to do a job on their stuff.

00:19:55.280 And this is what I primarily worked on when I was doing this job.

00:19:58.600 We had to inter, uh, act with them on a consistent basis.

00:20:01.840 We were emailing them, talking to them, getting their impact, taking, or getting

00:20:05.760 their input, uh, taking, uh, their notes and applying it to what we were doing.

00:20:09.880 They were the ones that set the rules for what we were moderating and what we

00:20:13.080 were pulling down and what was acceptable and all these different things.

00:20:16.560 So there, you know, is a lot of understanding of kind of the culture coming

00:20:19.920 down from the company and what they expected and what we should be doing.

00:20:23.800 So, you know, very familiar with where they were at.

00:20:27.040 And I also became very familiar with their attitudes towards what they were

00:20:30.820 making, but I was not directly involved in any, you know, I was not a video game

00:20:34.840 developer.

00:20:35.140 I was not creating the game.

00:20:37.080 So not, not taking any credit or blame, I guess, uh, there.

00:20:40.980 However, uh, like I said, because we were working on the social media, we had to

00:20:45.720 constantly be aware of what they wanted put out there.

00:20:49.440 We were controlling the message, controlling what people could see, what people could

00:20:52.980 say, what discussions could take place, what discussions couldn't take place.

00:20:56.200 We were doing this across YouTube and Facebook and the forums and all these

00:21:00.120 different things.

00:21:00.740 We, again, we did it for riot games.

00:21:02.600 We did it for the NFL.

00:21:03.780 We did it for, uh, you know, armed services.

00:21:06.660 Like they weren't the only client by any means.

00:21:09.360 This was just the client I worked on.

00:21:11.440 We even had, they even have multiple forums that people tend to work on.

00:21:14.840 Uh, but I was just, I was focused mainly on dragon age and mass effect.

00:21:19.540 That's, that's where the majority of my time was spent in their forums, on their YouTube

00:21:24.320 channel, on their Facebook.

00:21:25.520 This is where they kind of employed us.

00:21:27.820 And so I did not know at this time, anything about gamer gate.

00:21:32.520 I didn't know anything about online politics.

00:21:34.640 I had not been watching, you know, political YouTube.

00:21:37.920 I listened to, uh, you know, the guys that were on talk radio.

00:21:41.460 I listened to Rush Limbaugh.

00:21:42.400 I listened to Sean Hannity.

00:21:43.640 I listened to, uh, Michael Medved and Dennis Prager.

00:21:48.420 And, um, I don't think Ben Shapiro, I listened to Glenn Beck, of course, you know, there was

00:21:53.460 on there as well.

00:21:54.880 So this was kind of where I got my politics.

00:21:57.520 I didn't, I was not familiar with this.

00:21:59.160 I had worked, uh, for, uh, you know, Republican, uh, Congressman, uh, you know, I had had some

00:22:05.260 level of, of course, political education, uh, at that time.

00:22:08.940 Uh, but I w I was not plugged into what would become kind of the online writer, any of that

00:22:13.740 stuff.

00:22:14.000 I, I just didn't know anything about this.

00:22:15.920 And so I got this job and I thought, oh, I'm going to be working with video games.

00:22:19.920 That's really cool.

00:22:20.720 I like video games.

00:22:21.760 I got this downtime, so I'll go ahead and do that.

00:22:25.220 It's a nice, we were making a lot of money.

00:22:26.880 It was, you know, very low pay, but you know, you're sitting at home, you know, closing threads

00:22:32.080 and deleting comments and things like that's, it's not hard work.

00:22:36.060 So it's not something you have to give your full attention to.

00:22:38.540 It's something you can basically do in the background while you're doing something else.

00:22:42.320 So it's a nice way to make a little chunk of change when you don't have anything else

00:22:45.460 to do.

00:22:45.960 So that's what I was doing.

00:22:47.240 I had no idea what the wider world that would be connected to this.

00:22:51.320 So I joined in, you know, I start moderating this stuff.

00:22:54.360 And at first I think it's primarily just going to be again, video games.

00:22:57.300 That's, that's what it's going to be.

00:22:58.400 It's going to be discussions on video games.

00:22:59.820 Someone will post a nasty picture or they'll insult somebody or they'll throw around some language

00:23:04.480 that's gross and you'll have to, you know, close them, give them a timeout or something

00:23:08.720 for a while, something like that.

00:23:10.360 Right.

00:23:10.540 That's kind of what I thought the job was going to be.

00:23:13.780 But as I went through the complaints, you know, you, you get these lists of complaints

00:23:17.780 that come in the, the oftentimes, and this happened a lot.

00:23:21.960 It's not just people using it.

00:23:24.180 In fact, it's probably not even primarily the people using the forums or using the Facebook

00:23:29.640 or the YouTube or whatever that are putting in any kind of complaints.

00:23:32.400 It's mainly developers.

00:23:33.940 It was mainly the people who were active on the forums who were connected to Bioware, who

00:23:40.360 were complaining about people saying no, no words, touching topics that were foreboding,

00:23:45.900 going too far, these kinds of things.

00:23:48.020 And I want to be clear also, like people are nasty on the internet.

00:23:51.120 Okay.

00:23:51.480 I did remove plenty of genuinely nasty comments.

00:23:55.560 There were a few cases where full on threats were made.

00:23:59.280 We had to report those as, you know, things that law enforcement needed to know about.

00:24:02.980 So I want to make it clear, like not everybody on there was just saying innocent comments.

00:24:08.080 Like there was really nasty stuff.

00:24:09.700 There's really mean stuff that, you know, that did exist for sure.

00:24:13.300 And I did have to take that down.

00:24:15.040 And that was the stuff I kind of expected to have to take down.

00:24:17.440 That's what I thought the job was when I got started.

00:24:19.660 It's like, okay, well, you know, these people, they're going to be discussing a video game

00:24:22.860 or whatever.

00:24:23.260 And then someone will go fly off the handle of their post, you know, I don't know, porn

00:24:27.200 or something.

00:24:27.620 And you have to go take that down.

00:24:28.980 Or maybe there'll be really nasty and use a lot of bad language.

00:24:32.100 And you have to take that down.

00:24:33.160 That's kind of what I thought was going to be the big part of it.

00:24:36.600 But it turned out that a good percentage of the reports that came in that we had to deal

00:24:44.200 with came from the staff themselves who often got into it with their own fans and ended up

00:24:51.200 finding that the best way to win arguments with their own fans was to ban them from talking

00:24:56.040 with or to completely censor them.

00:24:57.940 This is a pretty regular thing that happened.

00:24:59.860 And I was like, that's really weird.

00:25:01.460 Like, I did not expect the developers to be like on there actively combing the forums,

00:25:07.720 looking for wrong think and complaining about it and telling people that they had to shut

00:25:13.760 up and you can't use those words and you can't talk to us about this.

00:25:17.200 And we don't, you know, shutting it down.

00:25:18.840 And one of the most common things was misgendering any form of using pronouns that a developer

00:25:26.600 didn't like, uh, or expressing any kind of, uh, of opposition to the idea that this would

00:25:33.960 be something in a video game or, you know, obviously if you said it to a developer, you

00:25:38.240 were toast, like you were immediately removed, but even mentioning the wrong pronouns that

00:25:43.420 a character used in the game was itself considered a violation of the terms of, of using, uh,

00:25:50.860 these different social media platforms.

00:25:52.560 Again, I thought that was very odd up to this point.

00:25:55.220 While I didn't like that, these kinds of political things, these kinds of weird gender things 1.00

00:26:00.280 were making their ways into the game.

00:26:01.880 I like a lot of people, you know, I'd played fallout and I played these kinds of very open

00:26:06.140 world, uh, adult centered video games.

00:26:09.080 And I was familiar with the idea that people could do weird, bad things in video games.

00:26:14.900 And that was part of the ability in some of these role-playing games.

00:26:18.500 It wasn't something I was a big fan of, but it was always there.

00:26:21.600 So that's kind of what I thought about it.

00:26:23.020 It was just the, the background.

00:26:24.280 It was the consequence of having an open world game with a lot of role-playing, a lot of decisions

00:26:29.120 that you could make.

00:26:30.180 It didn't click with me because I hadn't really opened my mind to what I understand.

00:26:36.140 Now that these were deeply ideological things lodged into the game.

00:26:41.560 I kind of took that barstool conservative understanding, well, just let people do what

00:26:46.340 they want to do.

00:26:47.100 Keep my taxes low and that kind of stuff.

00:26:49.780 And we love the country, but otherwise, you know, the culture is what it is and there's

00:26:54.220 nothing we should really have to say about it.

00:26:56.200 I really was ultimately the way that I felt about, or at least, you know, I thought about

00:27:00.460 a lot of that at the time.

00:27:02.320 Maybe I didn't agree with it at the core of it.

00:27:04.420 Eventually, I certainly figured out it was the wrong thing and the wrong way to understand

00:27:07.840 things.

00:27:08.500 But at the time, that's the way that I looked at it.

00:27:11.240 What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue?

00:27:16.660 A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart

00:27:21.440 shopper and delivered to your door.

00:27:23.020 A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

00:27:27.920 Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.

00:27:32.060 Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

00:27:36.480 Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply.

00:27:39.900 Instacart, groceries that over-deliver.

00:27:42.140 And when I saw this, when I saw the way that they were consistently pushing and were so

00:27:47.280 sensitive about those particular topics, when there were many different aspects of the game

00:27:51.660 that people didn't like, especially, you know, when Mass Effect 3 came out and had the ending 0.99

00:27:55.540 that was just lazy and stupid. 0.94

00:27:58.040 Again, I overall liked that game. 1.00

00:27:59.520 I had a lot of fun playing it, but it was very clear that the ending was just garbage.

00:28:03.920 And they kind of acknowledged that by going back and redoing some of it and releasing

00:28:08.560 a more expansive version of it.

00:28:11.180 But ultimately, it still was not great.

00:28:13.400 But people, you know, bagged on that stuff all the time and sometimes it got heated and

00:28:17.200 we'd had to, you know, close a thread or take down a comment, which I expected.

00:28:21.400 But that was more what I expected at the end from the job.

00:28:24.740 I did not expect to be running around playing pronoun police for these people. 0.97

00:28:28.440 And yet that was the majority, it seemed, of the infractions that they really cared about.

00:28:33.880 That was the stuff that would escalate almost immediately.

00:28:36.460 And I thought that was very strange.

00:28:38.520 It started to put off the alarm bells in my head somewhere at the edge of my mind.

00:28:43.260 That thing started to tingle saying, why is that?

00:28:46.240 Why do they care so deeply?

00:28:47.560 Why is that the most important thing?

00:28:49.560 I thought this was just part of the role playing.

00:28:51.880 I thought this was just, you know, one of many options I could engage in.

00:28:55.780 And that was the justification for why it was in the game and why it wasn't political

00:28:59.720 and why that shouldn't set off alarm bells.

00:29:01.940 But you seem to really care about it.

00:29:04.300 Like, actually, that seems to be the most important part of the game to you as a video

00:29:09.180 game developer.

00:29:09.860 And that's very strange.

00:29:10.980 You care way more about pronouns than you care about, like, the ending to your multi,

00:29:17.460 you know, like hundreds of million dollar, you know, multi-year game that you built.

00:29:21.800 Why is that?

00:29:22.900 Why is that so important?

00:29:24.000 And the more I, you know, close these threads going through and everything, I started to

00:29:29.520 read more and more of them, pay more attention.

00:29:32.060 You know, I was, wasn't just saying, oh, okay, there's the report.

00:29:34.840 Got to close it, lock it down, move on.

00:29:36.820 I started actually reading more into what the people who were being silenced were saying,

00:29:43.440 you know, who am I closing out of this discussion?

00:29:46.560 Why are they being silenced out of this discussion?

00:29:49.340 And the more I did that, the more I realized that these people, well, again, some of them

00:29:54.540 were over the top.

00:29:55.340 Some of them were hateful.

00:29:56.240 Some of them were saying things they shouldn't have said.

00:29:58.820 Majority of them were just saying, this is not what I want.

00:30:01.560 This is not what a video game should be.

00:30:03.980 This is artificial.

00:30:05.220 And there seemed to be other places that they were discussing it.

00:30:08.020 They started to reference other issues in the video game industry.

00:30:11.340 And this is where I, for the first time, ran into the idea of Gamergate.

00:30:15.820 Now, I'm not going to recapitulate the story of Gamergate for you.

00:30:20.420 There are people who've done entire videos about the history of Gamergate and every aspect

00:30:25.420 of it.

00:30:26.180 There are literally entire channels dedicated to this.

00:30:28.640 So if you want to know all that stuff, by all means, go for it.

00:30:33.080 However, when I started looking into this, I discovered that, okay, there had been this

00:30:39.200 issue with this woman and she had been sleeping with video game developers to help make sure 1.00

00:30:44.260 that they got the people who slept with her, got better reviews or whatever, stuff like

00:30:49.220 that.

00:30:49.900 That was part of it.

00:30:50.980 And there was a corruption in games journalism.

00:30:53.480 But I didn't think that was a huge deal because ultimately, I understand what a hobby

00:30:57.020 press is.

00:30:58.000 I'm somebody who has had a lot of hobbies throughout my life.

00:31:00.660 I'm a serial hobbyist, I guess you could say.

00:31:02.980 I really get deeply into things.

00:31:05.500 That's kind of how I ended up doing this now.

00:31:07.560 This is the thing that really stuck and became professional.

00:31:10.080 But when I see something I find interesting, I dive into it.

00:31:15.300 And so I've seen a lot of hobby presses throughout my life.

00:31:18.420 There's a lot of fluff pieces written in these things.

00:31:21.300 And it's not a big deal to me that that was part of it.

00:31:25.140 But it was clear that there's a wider issue going on here, that it wasn't just a corruption

00:31:30.860 of some journalists, these kind of things.

00:31:33.180 But that it was really important to people to interject the politics and the culture aspect

00:31:39.660 into every one of these.

00:31:41.700 And I started seeing some of these names like Sargon of Akkad and Milo Yiannopoulos.

00:31:49.060 I did not know who these people were.

00:31:51.460 But as I started closing more and more of these threads and I got more and more curious about

00:31:55.720 these comments, I decided to start, you know, saying, what is this about?

00:32:00.620 What's going on here?

00:32:02.200 And so I started watching some videos.

00:32:04.940 It turns out that this guy, Steven Crowder, had talked to both Milo Yiannopoulos and Sargon of Akkad.

00:32:11.560 Same thing with this guy, Dave Rubin.

00:32:13.720 You know, I started going down a rabbit hole at this time.

00:32:17.180 This is how I ran into Jordan Peterson and Computing Forever, you know, and a lot of the guys

00:32:23.480 who, for many of you who are familiar with these online spaces, will be very familiar.

00:32:29.240 You'll know all of these names.

00:32:30.400 But I didn't know anything about it.

00:32:31.840 So I was kind of running into these people one by one.

00:32:35.780 And so as I learned about Gamergate, I also learned about this wider world of people who

00:32:41.780 were disaffected, not just with video games, but kind of a very, a whole nexus of entertainment,

00:32:50.060 right?

00:32:50.300 It's movies, it's books, it's comic books.

00:32:53.460 This, this message seemed to be everywhere.

00:32:56.860 It seemed to break into everything.

00:32:58.840 Now, remember, this is like what, 2014, 2015, it's leading up to the Trump election, but we're

00:33:04.720 not quite there yet.

00:33:06.680 Donald Trump hadn't quite come down the escalator yet, but there was this movement bubbling

00:33:11.400 under the surface saying something is wrong with not just this one popular entertainment

00:33:18.840 product, but it has ramifications across all kinds of dimensions inside our culture.

00:33:26.020 And that seemed very odd.

00:33:28.020 And so I started expanding this, right?

00:33:30.520 I started watching the Steven Crowder guy and more Sargon of Akkad. 0.98

00:33:34.260 And funny enough, at some point, Carl Benjamin, who I've now met multiple times and I'm very

00:33:39.340 friendly with a great guy.

00:33:41.340 Uh, but at some point he had a debate with this guy, Dave, the distributist.

00:33:46.540 It wasn't really a debate.

00:33:47.380 It was more just a discussion at the time.

00:33:49.540 And when I listened to Dave, the distributist, I said, man, uh, this guy really knows what he's

00:33:55.620 talking about.

00:33:56.300 Like he, like he had, you know, Sargon was a pretty smart guy.

00:33:59.900 Uh, Carl was a very smart guy.

00:34:01.520 Uh, but he was still somewhat immature at the time.

00:34:05.480 I mean, today, Carl has really delved into philosophy.

00:34:08.860 He has educated himself thoroughly.

00:34:10.560 He's become a very impressive individual and he was, you know, still saying smart things

00:34:14.880 at the time, but he didn't kind of have the intellectual firepower that he has now is more

00:34:19.080 kind of mocking the videos.

00:34:20.660 If you guys remember kind of the SJW reaction videos and things that kind of dominated YouTube

00:34:25.540 at the time.

00:34:26.140 Um, and so I went down the rabbit hole of, of Dave's, the distributist stuff, because man,

00:34:32.440 this guy really seemed to know what he was talking about.

00:34:35.560 He, he had considered questions that Carl Benjamin had just never asked.

00:34:40.380 And also he was a devout Christian.

00:34:42.520 I was also a Christian.

00:34:43.840 This was a problem I had with a lot of Carl's content at the time because he was still billing

00:34:49.880 himself as a liberal.

00:34:50.980 Like he, he was starting the liberalist party, right?

00:34:53.460 Like, yeah, now today he has completely abandoned liberalism.

00:34:56.580 He said, look, liberalism has a lot of serious flaws.

00:35:00.060 And I, I, you know, he, he has learned a lot about that, but at the time that was still

00:35:04.220 how he's billing himself.

00:35:05.260 But Dave, the distributist came from a very different place.

00:35:08.480 Uh, and funny enough, Dave, the distributist also talked a lot about this guy called Menchus

00:35:14.220 Molebug.

00:35:15.320 Now at the time, Molebug had only written under that name.

00:35:18.500 We did not know it was Curtis Yarvin.

00:35:20.100 Uh, Curtis Yarvin, a few years later would actually start revealing his real name and

00:35:25.200 talking about it.

00:35:25.780 But at the time he was just some internet blogger who was completely anonymous.

00:35:29.260 Now at the time I didn't pay a lot of attention specifically to the mold bug content.

00:35:34.920 I was more interested in Dave's cultural videos.

00:35:37.620 He had a lot of insights on, uh, you know, families and community and how people could work

00:35:43.540 together things that were adjacent to conservatism, but things that I had never really thought

00:35:49.520 more deeply about.

00:35:50.780 Again, I had a very talk radio version of conservatism.

00:35:54.360 Yeah.

00:35:54.480 Church is important and family is important, but ultimately it's all about liberty and

00:35:59.280 freedom.

00:35:59.720 And, you know, uh, we're moving towards kind of more, more libertarian understanding of

00:36:03.920 the right.

00:36:04.340 And this is what's going to bring people together and ultimately really make the right.

00:36:09.120 What it is, uh, that's what the future is for the Republican party and these things.

00:36:14.000 And I'm a Republican, so that, that makes sense.

00:36:16.060 Right.

00:36:16.720 But the more I listened to Dave, the more I realized that there was a much deeper and traditional

00:36:22.180 understanding of culture that I needed to grasp.

00:36:25.600 And then obviously everything happened with, uh, Trump, uh, we had, uh, everything going

00:36:32.420 on there and ultimately we, we started moving towards the madness of 2020.

00:36:37.320 And that's when I said, okay, uh, around like 2018, 2019, I was like, I need to start paying

00:36:42.500 attention to this mold bug guy because this Curtis Yarvin guy, we'd kind of learned his

00:36:47.000 real name.

00:36:47.540 He'd kind of started to come back and write, uh, under his own name at that time, the very

00:36:51.720 beginning of the gray mirror blog.

00:36:53.340 Um, I said, okay, this is the guy who, who is laying out a lot of these political predictions.

00:36:59.920 And so, uh, there was, there was a YouTube channel that, and I don't even remember what

00:37:04.200 it is at this point, but they had recorded through kind of the robot voice, the way that

00:37:08.560 skeptical waves does now all of his content, shout out to skeptical waves, go, uh, go, uh,

00:37:14.100 support him and subscribe to him.

00:37:16.300 But, uh, before skeptical waves, there's this guy who had a uploaded the entirety of kind

00:37:20.800 of the open letter, uh, and a gentle introduction, these kinds of things to, uh, uh, to Curtis

00:37:26.900 Yarvin's work.

00:37:27.800 They were like seven hour videos, eight hour videos.

00:37:30.260 If you listen to them, uh, at like double speed.

00:37:32.820 And so I started speed running that stuff.

00:37:35.300 I listened to each of those multiple times to try to grasp them.

00:37:39.640 Uh, and then, uh, Nick lands dark enlightenment.

00:37:42.720 Like I would just go on walks and listen to these things over and over and over again,

00:37:47.000 trying to make sense of the world around me, what was going on.

00:37:50.140 And then I ran into guys like Clossington and I ran into guys like Charlemagne who were

00:37:55.280 doing more supplementary work on, uh, you know, the work of both Nick land and Spandrel and,

00:38:00.820 and also on Curtis Yarvin.

00:38:03.320 And I was really opening up.

00:38:04.880 There's another guy, uh, his name is escaping me at this time.

00:38:08.140 And I wish I could remember it because he, he doesn't put out videos anymore, but I want

00:38:11.400 to give him credit cause he was really good.

00:38:12.780 But all of a sudden it's, it's a skip to my mind.

00:38:15.480 Uh, he had a Thomas Carlyle, uh, you know, avatar, uh, for, you know, for a very long time.

00:38:20.700 But anyway, uh, the point being is this is kind of what led me down this road, right?

00:38:26.540 I started running into each one of these different people.

00:38:30.380 And so in a very strange way, but a very real way, uh, Gamergate unlocked this

00:38:38.060 whole other world.

00:38:39.940 And I didn't spend a lot of time on Gamergate content itself.

00:38:42.860 Like once I kind of knew what it was and I had listened to Carl and a few others, I was

00:38:47.380 like, okay, I get it.

00:38:48.300 This is bad.

00:38:48.860 This is a problem.

00:38:49.940 But like I said, the guys like David distributes really kind of seem to have a firmer grasp.

00:38:55.320 And especially when you get to a mold bug and, you know, his story of the German cat,

00:39:00.320 uh, that one explains what happened, how we got the total state, how this woke ideology

00:39:06.360 came to consume every aspect of our culture.

00:39:09.560 It infiltrated into every one of our institutions that were just really laid out things in a

00:39:15.000 very real way.

00:39:16.360 And so it's really interesting.

00:39:18.440 Not only, and I'm really not the only one, right.

00:39:20.920 Gamergate was, was a pivotal moment in helping me to discover a whole new understanding of kind

00:39:26.600 of where politics was going and what the underlying problem was and all of these other, uh, places.

00:39:31.880 And once I discovered mold bug, I started going down his reading list and I was reading Burnham

00:39:35.880 and Carlisle and Pareto and Schmidt and Mosca and, uh, Joseph de Maestra and Bertrand de Juvenal

00:39:42.360 and all of these guys, uh, that I had just never known existed before.

00:39:45.800 And that blew my mind because I had majored in political science and my focus had been political

00:39:50.440 theory.

00:39:50.920 Uh, if I had stayed around one more semester, I could have had a double major in philosophy,

00:39:55.240 but I was like, no, it's okay, man.

00:39:56.600 I, I don't think I'm going to, uh, spend another, you know, go, go into debt to, uh,

00:40:01.400 get a second degree that no one's ever going to care about.

00:40:03.640 I don't see myself going into a job interview and then saying, well, if you had had that

00:40:08.600 double major in philosophy, we would have hired you.

00:40:10.760 But unfortunately we're going to have to pass.

00:40:13.000 Yeah.

00:40:13.240 I just didn't seem like a value proposition at the time.

00:40:17.000 Uh, but it's amazing to me that this kind of led me to this wider understanding of political

00:40:24.040 theory, one that I just never grasped when I was getting a formal education in political

00:40:28.680 theory.

00:40:29.400 Uh, you know, I certainly took political science and focused on political theory,

00:40:32.920 and yet I had never heard of pretty much any of these guys.

00:40:36.360 Uh, and the fact that that is just completely devoid from education right now is absolutely

00:40:42.440 insane.

00:40:43.320 And my experience is far from, uh, you know, unique, even though I probably went more down

00:40:49.480 the political theory side than most.

00:40:51.160 And I probably went further down the rabbit hole than most when it comes to, uh, reading

00:40:55.000 mold bug and deeper into kind of a neo reactionary theory and all of this stuff.

00:40:59.560 Ultimately, I know a lot of people who were kind of made aware of the world around them

00:41:08.040 and how deeply it had been infiltrated by this ideology.

00:41:11.320 And they could never have put a finger on it, right?

00:41:13.800 Previous to Gamergate, they could have never said, what exactly is this problem?

00:41:18.920 Where is it coming from?

00:41:20.600 Why does everything feel fake and wrong?

00:41:24.040 What exactly is it?

00:41:25.160 I can't, I know I don't like this in my video game.

00:41:27.320 I know I don't like this in my movie.

00:41:28.680 I know I don't like this in my comic book, but why is that a problem?

00:41:32.600 And the fact that Gamergate was a watershed moment for so many people to recognize this

00:41:38.040 issue is fascinating because it really does mirror the larger understanding of what Trump

00:41:43.480 represented.

00:41:44.120 Um, Trump didn't have any of these particular ideological currents attached to him directly.

00:41:50.600 He, he's not a philosopher.

00:41:52.840 Uh, he wasn't grasping the cultural and sociological problems attached to these issues.

00:41:59.560 But for the first time, a lot of people who were waking up simultaneously, uh, politically

00:42:08.120 we're looking for a figure, right?

00:42:09.880 Someone who would address the wider problems that had not been addressed by any of the politicians

00:42:14.600 that had basically put them to sleep before.

00:42:16.760 Right.

00:42:17.160 These are guys who are not going to get excited about Mitt Romney.

00:42:19.800 They didn't care about George W.

00:42:21.400 Bush.

00:42:21.960 I was the kind of guy who did that sadly.

00:42:23.880 Like I was the guy who was knocking on doors for George W.

00:42:26.840 Bush and part of the young Republican club in college.

00:42:29.480 Like that's who I was.

00:42:30.680 So I was always politically aware in that sense, but ironically, I was politically aware

00:42:36.360 more than most people politically active, more than most people had even worked professionally

00:42:40.840 in politics to some extent, but I did not know the things I needed to know.

00:42:46.120 I did not understand the political issues at a deeper level.

00:42:49.960 And so in a hilarious way, this Gamergate experience moved me further down that road.

00:42:55.800 Uh, for a lot of people also, interestingly, the Gamergate phenomenon also helped break them

00:43:03.400 out of many of these kind of bug, man, man, child behaviors.

00:43:08.680 I know personally, uh, you know, the fact that all of this stuff was going woke

00:43:13.640 made me less and less interested in it.

00:43:16.200 Now I want to be clear.

00:43:17.080 I still play some video games and I still, you know, engage in entertainment.

00:43:21.880 Uh, but the, the kind of consumption that was going on, you know, just focusing the majority

00:43:27.640 of my life on a lot of the, these, uh, consumer products, uh, was just gross, but I didn't know

00:43:35.320 at the time, like I didn't understand why that was a problem.

00:43:38.760 And again, I'm very far from being the only one again, again, just look at Carl Benjamin,

00:43:42.840 look at his commentary has gone from, why can't I just sit around and consume all of my product

00:43:48.760 all day to how can I read more Aristotle and how can I lift more weights and how can I have

00:43:54.680 a family and how can I be more virtuous and how can I improve my community and how can I care deeply

00:43:59.960 about, uh, my posterity and the future of my nation and my peoples.

00:44:04.360 And these things matter deeply to me.

00:44:06.600 Like as these, uh, as the pause entered into all of these bug man hobbies, it actually has

00:44:14.840 a positive effect.

00:44:15.800 Like, yes, it's sad to see some of the things that you loved die, but at the same time, the

00:44:21.160 fact that they became so cringe, so unbearable, it's like, do you really want to spend another

00:44:26.680 few hours watching this movie? Do you really want to devote another 30 hours to this video game?

00:44:33.000 Or do you want to go work out? Do you want to read a, some of the classics? Do you want to go

00:44:38.840 out and try to find a wife, go to church? Like, do you really want to spend the rest of your life

00:44:45.880 consuming content that is at every step, woker and woker and woker, right? There's a magic.

00:44:54.120 The gathering is a game that I love to play. Uh, I, I still play it, uh, from time to time with

00:44:59.800 friends on the tabletop when we all get together in person, uh, you know, as a, like a community

00:45:05.320 group, but it's certainly fallen off. Like I used to play tournaments. I used to be a judge. Like I

00:45:10.280 used to do all kinds of stuff. Uh, I was very involved in it. Um, and recently the game has been

00:45:16.280 getting worse for a long time, but recently, uh, they, they opened up this product to, uh, what they

00:45:22.200 call other worlds. This used to be like a fantasy game that everybody, uh, kind of played because

00:45:27.240 it mirrored a lot of dungeons dragons and this kind of thing. It had a defined world, a defined

00:45:32.760 aesthetic. Uh, it was very interesting in that way. It wasn't just the game that the game was very

00:45:37.480 enjoyable. Uh, it was also the world it created and the story it told. Uh, but over time they've

00:45:43.080 gotten lazier and lazier and they've injected some wokeness, but mainly the thing has been

00:45:48.600 that the game just got lazy and started putting every other media property in there. They started

00:45:54.600 making transformer cards and my little pony cards and everything else. And a few of them were cute,

00:46:00.760 you know, with like the 40 K stuff came in and that was cool. They had fallout. Okay. Maybe that'll be

00:46:05.800 fun, but they've started to just inject every trope throughout all of pop culture. And now they're

00:46:12.440 taking like over half the magic sets are just going to be other media properties, all of which pretty

00:46:18.360 much have gone woke. So it's just slop on top of slop on top of slop. It's the layers of slop are never

00:46:24.520 ending. And in a way that's sad because magic was a thing that I enjoyed and loved. But at the same time,

00:46:33.240 if I'm going to spend less time on that, and instead I'm filling my time with more books and more, uh,

00:46:40.280 you know, trips to the gym and more time at church volunteering and more time with my family,

00:46:46.520 then I'm actually becoming a better person specifically because my hobbies got woke.

00:46:52.120 Like actually the, the hobbies going woke, driving me from them, spending my time on these things

00:46:58.040 actually ends up being, you know, it gets, I become a better person because those things got worse and

00:47:04.760 they drove me away from them. And again, I'll probably always play video games to some extent.

00:47:09.560 I'll probably always, you know, I've still got my 40 K stuff over there. I still, you know,

00:47:14.600 play magic with my friends that I had a great time with, because that is still a bond that we share.

00:47:20.360 Um, and we've shared so much of life after that, that, you know, when we get together, it's still

00:47:24.280 a fun thing to do for a little bit, but will I ever be dedicated to those things? Where will I ever be

00:47:30.360 a fan in the sense of fanatic? Will I ever, will that, that fandom ever consume large chunks of my

00:47:37.240 life where I don't do other more productive things, uh, that make, you know, that make a difference in

00:47:43.560 the real world and create a legacy and actually push me towards being a better person? No, I won't.

00:47:50.760 And a big part of that is because those things became so insufferable because they, they became 0.91

00:47:56.760 so woke and so garbage that I don't want to be involved in it anymore. And so I guess the point 0.72

00:48:02.360 of this story is that this strange, small, which should seem like a blip on the cultural radar had

00:48:12.280 a very big effect on, I think the young men of my generation, they pushed people away from a lot

00:48:20.200 of pursuits that otherwise would have consumed their lives. And they made them aware that there

00:48:25.080 was a problem at the heart of their culture that was much deeper than whatever entertainment they

00:48:30.040 were consuming that day. And this has led to wider cultural awareness and to a wider political movement.

00:48:37.640 And more importantly, you know, across all of this, I think a spiritual movement, one that I think for a

00:48:44.360 lot of people pushes them towards Christianity, which I think is great, but in general pushes them towards 0.97

00:48:49.480 maturity, adulthood, an understanding of the good and the beautiful and the true.

00:48:54.440 And I think that's critical. I think that, you know, if you're still sitting around 15 years later,

00:49:00.600 spending most of your time complaining about why are my video games still filled with, you know,

00:49:04.840 whatever characters, well, you missed the point. The point isn't to sit around for 15 years and,

00:49:10.200 and talk and complain about this. The point is to grow. The point is to realize that ultimately,

00:49:15.480 well, a little bit of these pursuits can be fun, right? That making them a part of your personality,

00:49:21.560 like so many people had, making them a huge part of your life, dedicating so much of who you are to

00:49:27.080 these things is incredibly dangerous. And the fact that these things became very unenjoyable

00:49:33.880 and filled with a message that was nauseous and harmful, in many ways, while it seemed bad at the

00:49:40.440 time actually moved us to a better place because it allowed us to grow as people. It allowed us to

00:49:45.400 separate from things that otherwise would have dominated our lives. And if you're still someone

00:49:50.280 trying to do that, if this is still something that you are addressing, then let me encourage you.

00:49:55.640 Let me say to you that life is good. And through all the things that are happening and all of the

00:50:01.480 difficulties that you face in our modern world with connection and meaning and truth and dating and

00:50:07.400 spirituality and all of these things, ultimately, God has created a beautiful world and has a purpose

00:50:13.080 for your life. And you should spend your time embracing that becoming a more virtuous person,

00:50:20.440 person, investing in a community, making connections, building skills, becoming, you know, stronger

00:50:27.960 physically, mentally, spiritually. And that doesn't mean that you can't have fun. I'm not here to be the

00:50:34.280 fun police. I know there are people who are running around. Look, man, I'm still going to play

00:50:38.200 a video game at some point. I'm still going to break out. Maybe I haven't played 40K in a long time,

00:50:42.920 but if I can catch a game of 40K, maybe I'll do that. I'll still play a magic deck with my friend

00:50:47.720 from time to time. I'm not here to tell you, don't have fun. Don't have hobbies. Never do anything

00:50:51.960 fun. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is there is a real and amazing world out there for you

00:50:59.000 if you will invest in it. And as much as you invest in it, you will find others who are moving

00:51:05.800 the same direction and that will improve your life and it will improve their lives and improve

00:51:10.280 the life of the community. You will level up, you will create a better world around you. And that is

00:51:15.720 ultimately the true meaning of life is to pursue God, pursue the divine, pursue his purpose, and to

00:51:23.240 dedicate yourself to becoming a valuable member of something that is real. And so ultimately,

00:51:31.080 I think that while some people got stuck in the gamer game slop forever, a lot of people moved

00:51:37.160 beyond that and became better people. And I think we should all be grateful for that. We should all

00:51:41.400 recognize that. And while it seems silly that this is the origin point of a movement like that,

00:51:46.280 I think we should recognize how important it is because ultimately that is really what life is all about.

00:51:51.720 All right, guys, we're going to move over to the questions of the people real quick. I appreciate

00:51:57.400 you hanging in there with me for story times with Oren. But let's see here what people have to say.

00:52:06.920 Nogard says, one way this crap got in was the millennials who were more interested 0.99

00:52:12.360 being a game developer than they were in developing games. And they were the employees who signed a George 0.99

00:52:18.840 Floyd petition in 2020. It's all about status. Oh, that's certainly true. Right? I mean, one of those

00:52:23.480 things that happens and you've seen this with any niche hobby that becomes a multi-billion dollar

00:52:28.360 industry is going to start attracting people who aren't really interested in it. Right? And that's okay.

00:52:35.480 There's a certain level and anything that achieves popularity is going to do, and you can get angry at

00:52:42.440 that. But ultimately you're right that there are so many people who came into that space

00:52:49.000 who didn't care about it that it was really more about injecting their personality or their politics

00:52:54.200 or whatever than it was about making something good. Now that said, like I just went on about,

00:53:00.680 ultimately that ended up being a good thing because it drove a lot of us away from a life sink that

00:53:05.720 ultimately I don't think is very productive. Like, you know, if you're a grown man spending,

00:53:10.520 uh, you know, 80 hours a week on video games or something, then that's insane. Like you, you gotta,

00:53:14.840 you gotta figure that out. Um, but, uh, but yeah, you're, you're absolutely right that this was a,

00:53:19.400 a point at which, uh, things pivoted. Uh, let's see here. Uh, burning cherry says, uh,

00:53:26.360 protein empire did nothing wrong. Uh, let's see here. Uh, Lord, uh, chronicler says we just wanted to play

00:53:33.960 video games. Yes. Uh, the, the classic, uh, classic last words of the woke, uh, jihad,

00:53:40.520 they crashed against the shores of, of the guys who just wanted to play video games.

00:53:46.120 Uh, Trey 50 Daniel says, always remember Gamergate is their Reichstag. Yeah. You know,

00:53:51.160 it's, uh, it's funny because the, even though they would never put it the way I just put it,

00:53:56.520 a lot of leftists recognize, uh, this aspect that you'll still see them, you know, uh, mainstream

00:54:02.040 magazines who have nothing to do with video games, writing, you know, articles about the

00:54:06.440 Gamergate phenomenon, uh, a decade later at this point. Uh, and it's kind of insane when you think

00:54:11.720 about it, but yeah, it really does live in their minds and give them justification for what they

00:54:16.040 want to do. Uh, perspicacious heretic says I love self-flagellation in my, in my game personally.

00:54:23.160 Yeah, man. Well then you are in luck because there is so much of it. Uh, let's see. Elijah

00:54:29.480 Tymon says in 2011 for me, uh, for mass effect three Bioware, let people vote for fem shepherds 0.82

00:54:35.960 default look with lots of diverse options. People voted for the blonde option by two to one journals 0.98

00:54:41.400 complained until Bioware held another poll. Yeah. Though that's the great thing about democracy,

00:54:45.400 right? You just keep voting until they get it right. Uh, and yes, they were again, I wasn't

00:54:50.680 sitting through developer meetings. I wasn't in a building. I wasn't even an official Bioware

00:54:55.800 employee in the sense of, uh, you know, I was hired by an outside company to work on their product,

00:55:01.320 uh, for a long extended period of time over a couple of years, I think in totality. Uh, but

00:55:07.960 you know, we did interact with these people on a very regular basis. And this was absolutely, uh,

00:55:13.480 the attitude, uh, from every developer I ever interacted with any corporate stuff that came down

00:55:19.640 to us, uh, that they were very much deeply bought into this ideology. Bioware is, is deep in this.

00:55:25.800 I don't, you, you, you would need an anti-woke, uh, like, like almost an anti-fascist crusade,

00:55:31.560 an anti-woke crusade to kind of pull the woke out of Bioware that that is what that company is at this

00:55:37.000 point, which is why I was kind of joking. Um, you know, at some level it should prove my bet with,

00:55:42.280 with, uh, with academic agent, but I will give him credit. The fact that this, this

00:55:47.080 developer has been woke for well over a decade and has made it their core personality and all of

00:55:52.840 their hires have been selected because of ideology at this point. So that is not going anywhere. You

00:55:58.120 basically have to nuke that company from orbit, uh, to get the woke out of it. Uh, George W. Heyduke

00:56:04.600 says, uh, when did nerds become the group that was a horniest nerd was, has become a synonym with 0.97

00:56:11.000 sexual deviant polyamory, uh, uh, novel sex identity orientation. Um, I think the reason 0.96

00:56:19.240 is that video games are a medium that allows you to play this out in a very real way that doesn't

00:56:25.960 exist anywhere else. Right? Like if your hobby is football, then you don't really, you know,

00:56:29.320 you can't really explore that stuff in football. I mean, to be fair, uh, you know, uh, films will do

00:56:36.120 this too, which is, you know, to be fair, Hollywood is also known for its perversion. So it's not,

00:56:40.840 you know, famous for its abuse and, and, and all kinds of terrible people there. So maybe,

00:56:45.080 maybe there's a level of overlap when the creative medium allows you, uh, to make these fantasies

00:56:50.360 real, you'll see more and more people who are desperately obsessed with making them real going

00:56:54.760 into, uh, those, uh, those industries. I think there's a very real, uh, connection there.

00:57:00.920 Let's see. Uh, Adam doll says, we just need Trump to tweet about gamer gay. It's coming. 0.96

00:57:05.560 It's coming, man. It's only a matter of time. What one point, uh, at one point, uh,

00:57:09.720 Trump will be pinning medals onto gamer gate veterans. Uh, make, make no, uh, mistake about it.

00:57:17.080 Uh, Brahms window says, thank God for gamer gate made me into a healthier, successful person. Yeah,

00:57:21.240 no, I really do believe that. I think for a lot of people, uh, it certainly drove them out of, uh,

00:57:27.960 this mode of consumption constantly. It's funny. There's a very real pipeline of like video game

00:57:33.480 consumption to gamer gate, anti video game creation, consumption content consumption.

00:57:39.080 But then there's another, another, uh, mode where you get completely out of the consumption and you

00:57:43.080 say, okay, now I'm actually going to improve myself. And I think, again, you see this, you

00:57:47.000 look at a guy like Carl and others who, who made this journey. Of course, not everybody made this

00:57:51.400 journey. They're a part of, you know, Chris Reagan is still out there somewhere talking about,

00:57:55.160 you know, leftism or something. But, uh, I think, I don't even know. I don't, I remember that's just a

00:58:00.520 name I pulled out of the hat. I don't know. Maybe, maybe he's become a great guy. I really don't

00:58:04.040 know. Uh, but, um, the point being is I think there are a lot of people who made this journey.

00:58:09.000 And I think you're, you're far from the only one who, uh, so many of the content creators

00:58:13.080 who were talking about video games, uh, you know, started talking about things that make you better.

00:58:17.080 I think about PewDiePie, right? PewDiePie is a guy who started, uh, talking about what,

00:58:21.000 like call of duty. And then he started like doing meme reviews. I remember when Ben Shapiro showed up

00:58:26.120 on meme review, that was very strange. Uh, but then like he started talking about Aristotle and

00:58:31.160 like got married and had a kid and you know, so like people who started consuming that content to

00:58:36.840 watch video games, inevitably came to the point where they were consuming that content that was

00:58:42.040 telling them, go read, uh, ancient philosophy and become virtuous and get married and find God.

00:58:48.520 Um, and so a very, it's a very weird road, but it's a very real road for a lot of people.

00:58:53.720 Uh, burning cherry also says, I understood that leftists think it, uh, in the colored,

00:58:59.800 uh, white friend, enemy distinction after seeing the media literacy takes on, uh, Ronok. Sorry.

00:59:07.000 It's been a while, uh, since I played mass effect three. So I don't know how to pronounce all the

00:59:10.760 names, the arc in mass effect three. Yeah. Again, the, the people lecturing you about what you're

00:59:16.440 supposed to take from media is probably my favorite type of media. Uh, there's so many on the left who

00:59:22.120 talked about death of the author and how nothing actually means what it's supposed to mean. And

00:59:26.520 it's all up to interpretation. And then like, as soon as they started writing the media and, uh,

00:59:31.880 their, their messages were being put in there, it turns out actually, no, the messages are very real

00:59:36.200 and you have to believe exactly what the media tells you and you can't have your own interpretation.

00:59:40.200 And there is no death of the author. What the author wrote is sacrosanct. And you have to believe

00:59:43.640 that it's funny how, as soon as something you agree with is in there instead of something you want to

00:59:48.040 subvert, all of a sudden the author's intent matters. Uh, and is actually the only thing that

00:59:52.040 you can consider. So, uh, not a shocking move. Turns out the left is, you know, it's hypocrisy.

00:59:57.560 Who knew? Uh, but you know, uh, no, no reason to belabor that point. All right, guys. Uh, looks like 0.90

01:00:03.320 that's all of the questions for today. Thank you everybody for joining me. If you would like to

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01:01:12.040 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - November 20, 2024

Working for BioWare： My GamerGate Origin Story ｜ 11⧸20⧸24

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