Of those he listed, Bob believes that he is both an artist and intellectual. The trouble with his assumption is that artists actually produce content that comes from their own minds. Being the consummate consumer he is, Bob's entire "career" consists of him reviewing and critiquing the works of others. Hell, I would argue critics like Bob have a parasitic relationship with artists and vastly overestimate their value to the industry as social media makes it easier for word-of-mouth to spread and bypass the middle man/gatekeepers of public opinion. Even when he "produces" something like the Game Overthinker, it is pure bullshit and self-aggrandizement because Bob is the center of his own universe.
Sorry for the
fftopic::autism: but that pretty much describes the majority of game journalists. Plus it could apply to english professors, film critics, and other related fields. A great way to prove it is to ask "What would happen if game journalists disappeared" and "what would happen if games or developers disappeared".
If Bob disappeared, what would change? There'd be 1 less thread on Kiwi farms.
If films disappeared, Bob would be out of a job and have little in the way of transferable skills. He'd be working some dead-end entry level job or living on welfare.
If modern games disappeared, Bob wouldn't notice as he doesn't play anything aside from old Nintendo games. If they disappeared as well, Bob would have nothing to do aside from ranting on Twitter about obsolete mayonnaise ghouls.
There's a fish parasite that eats the fishes tongue and replaces it with itself. A fitting metaphor for how many of these so called "critics" operate.
As for being an intellectual. There's a saying I've heard attributed to Terry Pratchett. "To be a writer, you have to want to write. Too many people want to have written." I take this to mean that people want the status and social benefits of being a successful writer, but don't want to put the work in to get there and see said work as a barrier to that status instead of the reason for it. We see this with the likes of Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and to a lesser extent Bob. Zoe and Wu want to be seen as kooky indie devs, but have little interest in actually making games. Bob and Zoe want to be seen as authors, but have little interest in writing a book people might actually want to read. Bob wants to be an intellectual, but has no interest in all that studying, debate, and wisdom shit. That's just unimportant nonsense getting in the way of him wearing the 'smartest person in the room' badge.
This is why I find his hatred of Jordan Peterson so interesting. Regardless of your opinions about the man or his work, he is everything Bob wants to be. A massively popular pubic intellectual who spends a great deal of his time talking about the messages and themes in classic films, and talking about politics.
