Nerd culture — comics, board games, and video games — has been hijacked by a coalition of woke interlopers. The war against nerd culture (which is predominantly white and male) is yet another example how the forces of evil are undermining Western civilization from within. Good doesn’t change it’s nature; evil doesn’t change its nature either. Tolkien knew this:
Evil cannot create anything new, it can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made — J.R.R Tolkien
All organizations need to protect themselves from usurpation from without and from within. Much of the history of the Roman Catholic church deals with a never ending series of battles against heretics and schismatics who tried to subvert the faith. Every great civilization had to endure constant challenges such as war, unrest, famine, and disease in order to survive.
TL;DR – Freedom ain’t free.
A good culture is one that enriches and enlightens it’s citizenry. A bad culture is one that degrades and debases it. Today’s Western culture is the latter.
While I can speak to many issues that our society is facing, I am an expert on one subject: me. I’d like to relate my journey from young nerd to older nerd.
Here’s how I became a nerd. It wasn’t something I decided, it wasn’t my identity, I wasn’t a victim, I just fell into it…
The Nerd’s Journey
I guess I’m a nerd. Back in they day, the word nerd was a pejorative label. Nobody wanted to be nerd if they could help it. Being a called a nerd was one rung up from being called a loser.
Growing up I was always different. I was goofy and big for my age. Being shy and socially awkward and didn’t have many friends let alone any girlfriends. The real world was a brutal place for a lonely kid. For my own sanity, I would retreat into my own imaginary world of model trains to escape the brutality of home life and the bullies who roamed our streets.
My Love of Fairy Tales and Fantasy
Our small-town library was full of fairy tales from around the world and I read every fairy tale book from the library that I could get my hands on. There was something magical and timeless about the moral lessons in folklore handed down from generation to generation.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was a game changer, and it blew my mind. There was something strange and beautiful about his books about Middle-earth that provided a refreshing counterpoint to the banality of modernism and Hollywood popular culture. Tolkien’s universal themes of personal heroism and sacrifice, and the eternal war of good versus evil has resonated with millions all over the world.
During my teenager years, music became my other escape. The fantasy lyrics of trailblazing rock groups like Led Zeppelin and Rush were a natural fit for me and I became a fanatical follower of both bands.
I supplemented my rock music fandom by buying rock magazines. I never liked the subversive politics of Rolling Stone magazine, instead I gravitated toward showy but substantive rock mags like Circus and Creem. I even started reading pulp horror comics like Creepy and Eerie with Frank Frazetta’s masterpieces on the covers. These black and white graphic novels reminded me of the horror radio plays that I would eagerly listen to each night on my AM radio bouncing off the atmosphere from some remote location in the United States.
The Cultural Importance of the Newsstand
Long before the banality of Twitter and Instagram, the newsstand was the internet of its time. Like ordering a PPV movie today, it was an on-demand transaction. You could purchase a magazine on almost any subject at a well-stocked newsstand. The most desirable women in the world were on the covers of these magazines, especially those forbidden magazines up on the higher racks.
Then came the advent of video games. Games like Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale, the Ultima series and others introduced me to the idea of role-playing. Video games were seen as a harmful vice back then. People looked down at those who played them. At the time, pen and paper role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons had yet to become popular, so it’s a part of nerd culture that I unknowingly bypassed due to the bad timing of my birth.
The Lure of Fantasy Virtual Worlds
The decades passed and I continued to love computers and video games. Eventually the year 1999 happened and EverQuest was released: I was instantly hooked on the dopamine rush of a persistent, multi-player fantasy online virtual world. In that same year, Rob Pardo and Blizzard embarked on the development of World of Warcraft which shocked the video game world in 2004.
At the time, PC fantasy video games and MMORPGs were for all intents and purposes a hobby created by males for other males. Like knitting is a natural hobby for women, video games was natural a hobby for men. It wasn’t by choice, it just happened. Men made video games, and men bought those video games. People vote with their feet and gravitate to things they like.
It needs to be said that nerd culture was always male-centric and male-dominated. This was for a good reason: females wanted nothing to do with us, so we made our own hobbies. Nerd culture was like a boy’s treehouse. It was our space and it was our place. It was an oasis of escapism for us alone.
Something changed after 2010. It was around that time that nerd culture was starting to be invaded by so-called female gamers, LGBT types, and social justice warriors. Inevitably, all these uninvited interlopers were demanding to be catered to and represented in popular culture and video games.
How Facebook Social Games Skewed the Gamer Demographic
The rise of the female gamer is partially attributed to the popularity of social games in Facebook. Predatory games like Zynga’s Farmville were specifically created to appeal to stay at home women. Suddenly, new stories came out how there were more female gamers than male gamers. But not all gamers are the same. There is a universe of difference between Farmville and Quake.
Seeing these numbers, feminist social justice grifters saw an opportunity and started demanding more female friendly games to be created by a largely all-male video game industry. The Gamer Girl identity was born. These “brave” girl gamers found it amusing that that they were invading and occupying a male space. Any resistance from males resulted in knee jerk protestations of “harassment” and “misogyny.” It was a perfect scam that worked on an unprepared bunch of marks: men. Heads you win, tails I lose.
The Invasion of Advocacy Journalists
The internet media at the time was full of newly graduated journalists — most radical feminists and beta males — that saw male gamers as convenient malefactors and boogeymen. Modern journalism suddenly transformed into political and social advocacy that’s sole purpose is to champion the cause of the oppressed and marginalized. These virtual signaling frauds were only too happy to take up the cause of women, minorities, and alphabet people. The male-dominated world of video games was a green pasture that they could not resist.
Sadly, many males buckled under the pressure. They were completely caught off guard by the well-orchestrated Marxist assault on their pastime. Other males, saw the problem, and stop up to the bullies. So #Gamergate was born, and the rest is history. Unlike most of my counterparts in the MMORPG blogging world who fled the battlefield and even conspired with the enemy, I became a reluctant warrior for western culture.
The Coddling of the American Mind
On the societal and demographic front, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt noticed a similar change in 2013. Newly arrived university and college students demanded safe spaces and trigger warnings. As noted in their breakthrough piece on The Atlantic, suddenly, everything was racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and problematic.
The spoiled and coddled children of over-protective boomer parents had arrived and made their odious presence known in the culture. Their hippy parents indoctrinated them to become Marxist activists who believed that Western civilization was systemically racist, sexist, etc.
It was the perfect storm. The storm has been raging ever since with horrible video games and unwatchable films and TV shows. Most of the entertainment industry is woke and despises their customers. Ultimately, this colossal farce is unstainable and cannot continue indefinitely.
All we ever wanted was to enjoy our hobby in peace and be left alone.
The straight white males that invented this industry are now seen as villains and are no longer welcome as Marxist diversity, inclusion and equity hiring policies have infected corporate America. As you sow, so shall you reap. And they will reap the whirlwind that is coming.
Culture Warrior Extraordinaire Paul Chato
Originally, I just wanted to make a few comments and provide my readers with the link. After watching the video a few times, I thought a lot about my own life and growing up as a nerd and decided to write down my recollections.
The following video is one of the best polemics about the current state of Hollywood and woke culture that I have ever seen. The author of the video is Paul Chato. Paul is a wise and brilliant entertainment veteran who’s a rare voice of reason crying out in the wilderness. His candor and thoughtfulness are needed now more than ever.
Here’s Paul’s follow up video:
Bonus video:
Was ‘no girls allowed in the treehouse’ nerd culture ever really healthy, though? To be honest, I think men – particularly young men, even teenage boys – are better off mustering their courage and interacting with women instead of hiding away. There is nothing more cringy (as they say nowadays about second-hand embarrassment) than a nerd who loses his marbles just because there’s a girl on voice chat.
Culture drifts. Always has. That’s just how it is. The nerd hobby safe space is going the way of the old British gentlemen’s clubs and male-only golf courses. According to your own estimates, we’ve now had about a decade of this, and I certainly see no inflection point in the demographic trends. Men clearly aren’t annoyed enough to abstain from games or boycott these developments en masse.
What I do see is that most raid groups, even at the Mythic (WoW)/Savage(FFXIV) level, usually have two or three girls in them, they do their jobs well, and nobody gives a damn anymore. Women end up managing community sites (like Perculia with Wowhead) and even creating popular raid mechanics videos (like Hazel in WoW and Mizzteq in FFXIV). Additionally, of course, they’re prime targets for cosmetic fluff and collecting which are increasingly the revenue lifeblood of all online games.
And that’s just MMOs. There’s a huge, huge, spectrum of games between the extremes of Quake and Farmville. Countless RPGs of all stripes, Minecraft, Fortnite, Pokemon, Harvest Moon clones, dating sims, lighthearted reflex games (like Cook, Serve, Delicious), party games, absurdist cult favourites, metanarrative hits like Doki-Doki and Undertale, mood and horror games, retro platformers, CCGs. Do you really think women don’t play (or shouldn’t play) all that stuff? That any of that content is inherently “manly”? I know I’ve remarked on this subject in the past, and it’s not my intention to troll, but you can’t blame corporations for expanding markets. That way lies madness and worse.
I really appreciate your perspective. I’m not saying that women should not be playing video games. What I am saying is that feminist ideology has been urging females to play more games and get into male spaces. We also have many Girls Who Code organizations that are trying to do this as well. This is not an organic thing, this is a well orchestrated ideological push to infiltrate, dominate, and destroy a male space.
Personally, I have no problem with most of the women I have played with in MMOs. For the most part they are awesome people and good players. There are many women who are allies to the men’s rights movement and women who are not activists.
But once the radical feminists show up, they are demand that men change their behavior and that the video game studios start creating content that they like.
Something similar happened to the Roman Catholic church in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. The pope made a decree that allowed girls to be altar boys. When this happened many boys no longer wanted to be altar boys, so the renamed them “alter servers” and most of them are girls now. They chased the boys out. Being an altar boy was a pathway to becoming a priest. After 40 years of this, there is a priest shortage. Most churches have become feminized and men don’t want any part of it.
Another example is recent and more troubling. The US military became woke and now men don’t want to be any part of it. Enlistment is at all time record lows. Heck, we can’t even muster a military now because of wokeness. If we don’t have a proper military we can’t defend our nation.
Imagine would would happen if a Chinese person showed up at an Italian restaurant and demanded that the cook prepare Chinese food for him? If the cook refuse then he’s called a racist. That’s exactly what’s happening in video games and the entertainment industry at large.
Boys and girls naturally gravitate to things that interest them. Both are hard-wired to have different likes and dislikes. Even in the school yard at recess, girls played with other girls and boys played with other boys.
About 30 years ago, you had all these “brave” feminists suing golf clubs and gentlemen’s clubs for the right to be a member. I believe that was terrible mistake. Men need separate spaces where they can be men and peruse man hobbles free from female hectoring and the sexual tension that they bring to both the workplace and private clubs. Women need the same thing. Now we have the women-owned business scam and even private spas and fitness clubs for women only. Do as I say, but not as I do, comes to mind.
Manliness and other manly virtues like courage, are in short supply in our culture. We’ve got to this point because of weak, ungodly, and cowardly men.
Since the women’s rights revolution, men are being told they are inherently toxic and that they are worthless. This has to stop. Look at the crime and poverty in the black community here in the USA. That is all a direct result of young males having no fathers around.
The video game industry is large enough that it should be making games exclusively both men and for women. Why does every video game have to have this “all are welcome” ideology foisted on their players?
The problem is when all are welcome, the needs of the tiny number of high value people (females, alphabets, non-whites, and others) become more important than the needs of the majority (i.e. males).
Go into any shopping mall and you soon see that most of the shops are serving women exclusively and that’s fine because these are businesses fulfilling a need. If woke video games ran shopping malls they would ensure that both males and females need to be “represented” and would enforce an oppressive Stalinist system based on sex.
Why can’t video game companies make video games specifically tailored for men and have the stones to openly say it?
They can and they should.
In the end this is all about greed. Blizzard is on this trajectory. They want everyone to be “included” now and that really means “we want more money” by broadening our demographic reach. Nobody was ever excluded but they use this specious language anyways. It’s all about keeping the shareholders happy.
Men allowed this to happen to their hobby because it happened incrementally, like the frog in a pot of cold water, slowly reaching the boiling point. Men were totally unprepared for what has happened. Look no further than Blizzard Entertainment. Mike Morhaime and Rob Pardo are prime examples of men who were unprepared for the culture war. One completely capitulated and the other one got steamrolled.
I remember seeing the first photo of the Blizzard WoW dev team. There was one women in a sea of men. Imagine if Blizzard had an all female dev team at the time. WoW would have been a different MMO entirely and you know what? It would have sucked and failed.
I’d like to see women create their own video game studios. Women should design their own games and hire only women. Then we can finally see how brilliant they are. But they will never do this. Instead the prefer to be performative parasites on an industry created by males for males.
Feminists, please fuck off and build your own video game industry and leave us the hell alone.
When the culture focuses on identity politics, people should not be surprised that straight white males will also play that game too. I’m 100% pro-male and an anti-feminist.
Yes, culture changes and it not always for the better.
One of the best written comments I have ever read on the subject. This goes for the film franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, comic book super hero movies, The Terminator, Rambo, etc. Being a female fan is absolutely fine. Having female characters in the movies is also absolutely fine. But to water down the above franchises to appease feminists and SJW’s just ruins it for everyone, including the female fans. If feminists want their own movies about them then they should go to film school and make their own movie franchises.
You sent me down memory lane!
I remember when I started, it was not Everquest or the later WoW, but Ultima Online. I also liked Ultima Underworlds and the games of the Ultima series.
They were heroic and made me think. Themes likes racism, discrimination, sexism and other things were topics. But not in the combative way it is nowadays. The Eight Virtues of this world derived from the combinations of the Three Principles of Love, Truth and Courage.
Online I made lifelong friends, in the early period. I noticed I made friends during Ultima Online, early WoW and Guild Wars. Later years WoW, Guild Wars 2? Nope, not one acquaintance.
It was also the high time of MMO blogs. That’s how I found your blog. We discussed systems, lore, so much. Compare that with Twitch nowadays. Live streaming is just terrible most of the time.
I also think playing as a character without voice and “hiding” behind a char/avatar and just communicating by text worked out better for people who are a bit shy with strangers. It helps them grow social skills. Or not. And heroic characters remain heroic when you don’t hear the voice of the very young player. 😉
Nowadays the stars are self-exposers, often with issues. Asmongold e.g. has quite some, sometimes staying a bit more anonymous and working them out and letting the TOPIC/SUBJECT being of prime interest rather than the person, that’s something that declined with blogs over time.
I see how games went mobile over time, what a monetized bull the latest Diablo is, how little creative power there still is at Blizzard and how they destroyed the company. Which wasn’t the result of criminal wrongdoing but a clash of cultures between the old guard and young hypersensitive weirdos new to the show.
Journalists and CEOs often thought it is their job to become mouthpieces and pay along, see Morhaime and Brack. Gaming journalists, there were a few ones that cared about games and design. The new guard can do that, too, but they are leftist and feminist oriented almost all the time.
See universities, from places of education and research to cadre training units. Once Gender studies had wormed themselves in, it spread like a cancer and poisoned the rest. Now they need safe spaces, thought policing, students remain aggressive, loud and violent children. A shame for universities and a danger to society. Similar things happen to journalists at journalist academies and most West European TV stations are extremely leftist as well.
About boy groups and girl groups: It isn’t a result of a patriarchal uptight society. When I was young I rather played things BOYS do with other BOYS. And the girls did the same. And we were a bit awkward when confronted with female ideas what is fun to do and rather played with boys, but we grew up and we played together and don’t discriminate women or girls, do not molest and rape them or rob them of job opportunities because they are girls. That’s quite a difference to the Arabic groups flooding Europe right now…
Nowadays the idea is to turn boys into girls… and it does terrible things to them. Leftist female teachers dominate education by now!
Excellent comments by Tom and Charles, btw. I want to pick up on companies expanding markets: Yes, there is nothing wrong making games that are for women and women only, or games that cater to both.
What is happening today: Trying to make decidedly male things female. FEMALE THOR, for example. I worry that Warhammer/Warhammer 40K get the feminist treatment as well. Which would destroy it. These games/universes are male power fantasies. Such attempts are either weird (see the rainbow unicorn stuff at Ubisoft and Everquest etc.) or totally destroying a franchise or work. Fingers crossed that the Rings of Power doesn’t become focused on rewriting it into “Sauron BAD WHITE MAN” and “Galadriel GOOD FEMALE” and all that. The reactions are worried and split. Let’s see how it will turn out.