- Joined
- Feb 3, 2023
The core opinion of every troon who doesn’t want somebody to buy Hogwarts Legacy, whether they know it or not, is this. They don’t want people to buy the game because JKR upset them. That’s it. That’s all the nuance there is. Literal elementary school levels of logic and reasoning.What we're seeing here is a bunch of terminally online people not understanding why certain tactics were adopted by historical activists.
The purpose of a boycott is to inflict economic damage on a target until they cave and stop "doing the thing". They're forced to chose between being financially sustainable or giving up the thing.
This doesn't work with JK Rowling or Warner Bros (of which the game studio is s subsiduary) because even if nobody ever bought a single copy of the game ever, it would not harm them, because Harry Potter is such a profitable IP and already has generated obscene amounts of money. Boycotting or not boycotting the game exerts zero pressure on JK Rowling, and purchasing it does not enable JK Rowling to "spread more transphobic hate" because she can do that for the rest of her life with the money she already has, even if she never received another royalty cheque.
"It will make more people aware of JK Rowling" is also stupid because everyone's already heard of JK Rowling and Harry Potter, and if they hadn't, they'd have heard about her from trans twitter screeching.
Additionally, this game is harmless. There is no transphobic message in this game, it's actually very inclusive, so they can't claim the game spreads a negative message.
So all that's left is "Boycott the game because TERF lady bad", which has no material impact on anything. That's why any materialist argument that comes up is ridiculous - "Playing Harry Potter means terfs will feel more powerful and murder trans people" is stupid because getting a bunch of pixels to cast Wingardium Leveosa is obviously not going to lead to trans murders. "If I see my friend suddenly gets a butterbeer achievement on Steam, I will be immensely triggered and then kill myself" is too abstracted from cause and effect, and also is far too transparently "if you don't do what I say, I will kill myself".
Boycotts that are pointless besides virtue signalling moral purity do not achieve anything, and therefore very few people will engage with them. Besides, as trans twitter likes to very frequently point out - there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism
All the talk about it harming trans people, all the talk about it being bad for the Jewish population, every comment about it giving money to Rowling who will use it to fund firing squads to kill trans people, and even troons saying it’s offensive is all a front for their childish view that Rowling makes them upset and they want to upset her in return.
They make think their doing something important or effective, and that they’re ushering in a new age of diversity and trans rights. But at the end of the day they’re doing absolutely nothing. Just making more people buy the game while making themselves look insane and childish in the process. They might actually be harming diversity due to the game easily being one of the most naturally diverse ones in a while.
And the cherry on top of this lolcow milk sunday? Wanting to hurt somebody because they hurt you is one of the most primal masculine displays of masculinity there is.
