This has to be one of the most retarded things I've read on reddit and I have read polycule and tranny shit on the reg in the general threads. What is this mental illness? Is it catalogued yet? I feel like it's new, overreacting this much over nothing has to be a new thing.
I can answer this. It's a big question that has a big answer though. You guys are probably gonna crucify me for this given this is the Games forum lol
It goes back even farther than this, but you can start at Gamer Gate where gamers decided that they were a demographic that were being oppressed. The mental gymnastics here to justify this are baked in at multiple levels, of which Gamer Gate is just one. Because a harassment campaign for "ethics in game journalism" when anyone who ever read a videogame review since the birth of the industry knows that paying for reviews was something that always has happened, but "gamers" specifically had to pick a woman who made a game about depression because gamers resent women who have sex (because they don't). (If you want to reply to this comment to explain what GG
really was, I genuinely don't care.
)
I've personally found this is the only idea I have that's been controversial on here and Reddit, which really only entrenches this idea for me. When you bring this up, even Reddiots send you DMs telling you to KYS; you know you're onto something. But the silver lining is that once you understand why people identify as gamers, it gets really easy to twist the knife when bullying them. it's also why Steve Bannon was able to use gamers as a tool and align them with the alt-right by platforming Gamer Gate on Breitbart. (Multiple people who worked with Bannon said he believed Gamergate showed the political potential of young, online, alienated men that could be used to mobilize a political base.)
Men are socialized to define their worth through
performance (skills, wins, measurable success). Videogames give people an outlet for that, even though it's all made up shit on a screen. If you're a NEET or underemployed-NEET adjacent, being “a gamer” feels like a place where you can
win and prove value. For a lot of guys, gaming is the first or only place they felt accepted in a peer group. “Gamer” becomes shorthand for
tribe membership, especially for men who struggle socially outside of games. It doesn't help that in the cultural zeitgeist it's popular to shame men for existing or being even remotely jocular. That's a post for another time. But my point here being a lot of men just get pushed into gaming because there is nowhere else to go. Or it's just the easiest, most friction-less solution.
These people literally invest more time in gaming, and participating in gaming related actives (like posting on Helldiver Reddit) than they do ANYTHING else. Over time,
being a gamer feels more real than their offline persona because it’s where they’ve invested thousands of hours and dollars. There's also the cognitive dissonance of having to face that everything you have in your life is nothing. It's easier to spend another day digging yourself another foot deeper in your nothing-pit, than it is to say "today's the day I admit I wasted the best years of my life playing with toys".
TL;DR to answer your question: That all culminates into an identity that feels more real than anything else they have going on IRL. Yes, it's exactly as pathetic as it sounds. That's why when you "criticize" a game, you actually criticize them. Their literal ego is tied up in a fucking toy. Gaming is their primary identity anchor,
any threat to that identity feels existential. That's how you end up justifying ruining someone's life over making a good faith donation.
It's genuinely not all that different from Chris Chan when he throws temper tantrums over changes in intellectual property that he literally identifies with.
