this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Oh well in that case I prefer overtly political games. Like Mario, which is about rescuing the mushroom kingdom's head of state and driving Bowser's soldiers out of the territory they've occupied. You even lower Bowser's flag at the end of each level.
While I know you're joking, it does show how complex the thing is. The intention counts for a lot too. Someone inferring a political message from it would be different than intentionally trying to make one.
I'm not joking, I'm being 100% serious while using a totally incongruous example to make my point that tons of stuff people refuse to believe is political, is deeply political. My point further reinforced by the fact that you found it difficult to accept that I think Mario is political. People are LLMs, they don't understand the words they're using, they just regurgitate according to probabilistic association models. The word politics is associated probabilistically with seriousness, so people assume silly fun things like Mario can't be political. They don't understand the words they use, they just use heuristics. People aren't sapient creatures, they literally have the same intelligence as chatgpt.
Then you've just deeply misunderstood what people mean by those terms. I'm not sure if that's what people think has no politics at all, rather it's not what people mean when they use the terms non-political or political video game. It's not Super Mario they mean when they talk about political video games, but rather stuff with a lot more overt, direct and intentional message and topics.
Words are made up, what they mean depends on the context and shared understanding of them. When people talk about politics in video games, I think it's alright to get the inferred meaning and go with that. Pointing out that everything is political doesn't really do much.
If you're going to make Wittgenstein's argument that language exists only to fulfill a social purpose, then I am happy to engage you on that deeper level, but in doing so we must confront the purpose of the vernacular usage of the word "politics". If it's not a word based on representing some idea of truth, what is it for? As the Hard Drive has correctly pointed out, it's for complaining about minorities in video games. It's for racism. Personally, I think we should call out the use of racist tools, including social tools such as words. If someone complains about politics, we should call them a racist and move on with our lives.
Like I said early on, I think it can just mean “no overt political themes”. It’s not Super Mario they mean when they talk about political video games, but rather stuff with a lot more overt, direct and intentional message and topics.
Treating everyone not into overt political messages in a game as racist seems a bit, jeez. Should at least ask first what they mean.
Oh, we're backing away from the social utility theory and back into the argument that words have meanings, but now with a descriptivism argument? Okay, sure. I can't tell what you mean by overt, the game manual for Super Mario explains the whole political situation, I don't see how Mario could be more overt. So I'll assume you just mean direct (as in directed toward the player) and intentional, unless you can define overtness. In that case, whether a game is political or non-political depends entirely on the internal thoughts and feelings of the developers, not on the actual content of the game. I think the only way you could ever be sure a game was political is if the developers gave a press release stating the game is political. Otherwise I'm gonna go the skeptic's route and say all games that don't have developer statements of politics are non-political. According to your definition of politics, of course, which I don't generally agree with. But in terms of prescriptivism, 90% of the games people complain about politics can't be proven political. For example I would not be convinced Metal Gear is political at all until I saw an interview where Kojima directly stated he intended to change people's minds about politics. For all we know he's just a big philosophy nerd who wanted to ask a lot of cool questions in Metal Gear because he likes philosophical themes. That seems pretty on brand for him. So I'm gonna go ahead and deny that Metal Gear is political according to the common lexicon.
What in the world. I just mean that most people won't consider Super Mario political but if it was trying to say that monarchy was the best thing ever then that would feel political to people.
Okay, so that's not actually using a definition, that's what I like to call "vibes based meanings", which are largely useless and serve only to reveal that most people have no idea what the word political means and just use vibes.
Well yeah, that's how people are. Why would you even expect there to be a solid and shared understanding between all the people about something as vague as what makes a game "political"?
I don't. I literally just said the opposite. I said people have no idea what the word means, and then you asked why I expect people to have a shared understanding of the word. Those are opposites. If people don't know what a word means, then they can't have a shared understanding. This should be obvious to you, pay attention.
It just felt like early on you were expecting one and now are disappointed how people use the terms.
No, I fully understand that the word politics is a racist dogwhistle that few people use meaningfully, and I understood it at the beginning. You presented a bunch of different theories as to the word's meaning, I pointed out the problem with each of them, and we arrived back at the beginning, the headline of this article we're all replying to.
I use the logical definition of politics, which implies everything is political, as a starting point for these conversations which always end in the conclusion that people don't know what they're saying. I've had this conversation dozens of times.
I'll tell you why people don't know what politics means. It's because the rich don't want them to know. Those who own the government and who are threatened by democracy do not want people realising that participating in politics is a good thing. So they use the media apparatus to teach people that politics is no fun, leads to hurt feelings, and never fixes anything. And people swallow that trick hook, line, and sinker.
The ideal case for the rich is that most people hate politics, a select brainwashed few vote conservative while starting horrible culture wars, and nobody actually participates in democracy. And that's what everyone who hates politics is supporting. The end goal is simple. It's voter suppression. And along the way, there will of course be genocide as the cost of doing business.
Does it really seem like such a far-fetched idea in our so heavily politicized world that someone would rather just play a bing-bing-wahoo game without having to really think about politics for a moment? I feel like that's an obvious case where it has nothing to do with racism but just wanting a break from politics.
The reason they want a break from politics is racism. You're trying to tell me "they're not racist, they're just doing the thing racist propaganda wants them to do and feeling the way racist propaganda wants them to feel". That's not two different things.
All politics doesn't even relate to race. Sometimes people just get tired of politics.
That's only ever happened to people with antisocial personality disorder, because being sick of politics is a disordered and unusual mental state. It doesn't happen to neurotypicals. Neurotypicals always like politics. The ones that think they don't like politics, for any length of time, are wrong. Remember, all participation in society is political. And human beings are naturally hardwired to participate in society. When that hardwiring is damaged, we call it ASPD. Neurotypicals who think they're sick of politics are actually just sick of conflict, and have accepted a racist lie that politics means conflict.
Pac-Man or Pong requires at least working electricity and some practice at the game to reach higher levels, which requires leisure time - therefore it's a political statement that the poorest in the world can't afford the equipment, the infrastructure and the culture to play and therefore its very existence is a political statement