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Jul. 27th, 2024 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelavthere was a line in an article i read recently - it wasn't a bad article per se, mundane statistics about gamers and not too opinionated, though I thought a little culturally sloppy in that it liked grouping vast swaths of gamers together (regions/gender/generations/etc) -
- but there was a line in there with a jab at women with parasocial relationships with (game) characters, which is interesting because the topic doesn't even normally come up on the radar of most people in the news/academic circles. also interestingly this was the first time i saw it paired with a jab at male gamers who waste time on games (yay #equality amirite).
(i don't even mind it when the criticism is legitimate, just make it even-handed research, you know? anything in excess ain't good for you. too much excersising can wreck your body as much as too little, same as dedicating too much time to one thing while neglecting other areas of life. )
but anyway it's not the specific criticism of the former (it existed twenty years ago in a much more vicious way it's gonna exist twenty years from now lol sigh) as much as the hnn, gendered(?) tone difference that bothered me. something about the slightly off topic tone really reminded me of echos of historical criticism -- like for an article writer that positioned himself as ~*In*~ and ~*hip*~ it was jarring echos of something old and dusty in a skeevy way?
so i poked around a few 'history of criticism against women reading' articles (i really need to add a few of those books to my censorship pile), and damn. yeppppp literal exact same arguments/tone LOL. choose your poison of "damages women's mental health", to "distracts them from more important work" to the oh so classic "degeneration of culture" line. this downloadable pdf had the best quoted historical lines (also just a great read), though this slate article wasn't bad for a real quick wikipedia-level summary that had a more macro global take.
what's old is new is old etc.
- but there was a line in there with a jab at women with parasocial relationships with (game) characters, which is interesting because the topic doesn't even normally come up on the radar of most people in the news/academic circles. also interestingly this was the first time i saw it paired with a jab at male gamers who waste time on games (yay #equality amirite).
(i don't even mind it when the criticism is legitimate, just make it even-handed research, you know? anything in excess ain't good for you. too much excersising can wreck your body as much as too little, same as dedicating too much time to one thing while neglecting other areas of life. )
but anyway it's not the specific criticism of the former (it existed twenty years ago in a much more vicious way it's gonna exist twenty years from now lol sigh) as much as the hnn, gendered(?) tone difference that bothered me. something about the slightly off topic tone really reminded me of echos of historical criticism -- like for an article writer that positioned himself as ~*In*~ and ~*hip*~ it was jarring echos of something old and dusty in a skeevy way?
so i poked around a few 'history of criticism against women reading' articles (i really need to add a few of those books to my censorship pile), and damn. yeppppp literal exact same arguments/tone LOL. choose your poison of "damages women's mental health", to "distracts them from more important work" to the oh so classic "degeneration of culture" line. this downloadable pdf had the best quoted historical lines (also just a great read), though this slate article wasn't bad for a real quick wikipedia-level summary that had a more macro global take.
what's old is new is old etc.
