The culture war is a grift
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The culture war is a grift
How to not get sucked into all the dumb manufactured drama bullshit
If you’re chronically online (like me), you’ll have two distinct impressions from internet discourse:
Everyone is convinced that our culture is going in a bad direction and that it will lead to the world ending
Everyone is convinced that it’s all the fault of the “bad guys,” and that they are part of the “good guys,” who show how “good” they are by acting like children throwing a tantrum all the time
Well, I’m writing this to tell y’all the secret: It’s all bullshit. Outrage farming for clicks. Moral grandstanding theater for clout. Divide and conquer for power and influence. And none of us are immune to it, myself included.
Why? Because it works. Because it taps into our built in tribal instincts to think we are the good guys and the outside group are the baddies. But it doesn’t work for the most important thing - actually solving fucking problems.
Do I have any solutions for this? Somewhat - it helps to get off social media and unplug from all the pointless drama, you’ll find that it all literally doesn’t matter. If you’re reading this, though, you’re probably an internet addict (like me), so it’s a bit hard to get away.
But I will argue that we have way more in common than we are led to believe by all the bullshit. That when we look past the manufactured drama, we will see that we’re really all just people trying to navigate the cards we’ve been dealt - we’re all fearful of being hurt, we all want to make sure we can protect our loved ones and live a good, fulfilling life. And I’ll argue this by telling a story from my childhood - one that I believe parallels the world I still see as an adult.
The great 90’s console war and me
I grew up as a Nintendo fanboy. My dad bought me a NES for my 5th birthday - the stated reason being that I was spending too many of his quarters on arcade games - and it was all over after that. I spent practically all my time repeatedly dying to goombas and searching for triforce pieces. My sister and I would dance and make lyrics to all the video game songs. It was my entire world.
I would beg my parents to buy anything Nintendo related - when happy meals gave out Mario toys we would go to McDonald’s daily. I even watched “The Super Mario Brothers Super Show,” which by all standards was atrocious, but it didn’t matter - it had Mario in it, and that was enough for my eyeballs.
My best friend would come over and play NES games with me for hours on end. When I got to the last castle of Super Mario 3, I couldn’t fathom beating it without him by my side - I paused the game and invited him over, and waited impatiently for him to come so we could experience it together, and when we finally beat it, it was an incredible moment. Nintendo was our religion.
But then, something wild happened - the Sega Genesis came out, a 16-bit console that was way more fancypants than the less powerful 8-bit NES. And their marketing was aggressive. Nintendo was lame, they said. The Genesis has fancy things like blast processing, which the NES couldn’t do. Nintendo was for lame little boys, but the Sega Genesis was for the cool kids. You don’t want to be a lame little boy, do you? Stop playing your stupid Nintendo then, you dork.
This made me mad.
Probably because it hit home, since I was in fact a lame little boy. But still, to me, Nintendo was the king, and Sega was now the devil. How dare they say those things about Nintendo. And even worse, the marketing was working! People were buying the Genesis in droves! The gaming magazines I read started talking about games I couldn’t get! Why weren’t they catering to me specifically anymore! This was an atrocity! Outrageous!
My best friend and I would look through the magazines at all the aggressive Genesis ads and talk about how stupid it was. The Genesis games looked lame. The NES is much better. Sonic isn’t cool like Mario was. Mario can throw fireballs. All Sonic can do is run fast. Lame. We were never going to get a Genesis, no sir.
But then, something even more wild happened - my best friend’s parents got him a Genesis for his birthday.
Dealing with double-think
At first, I couldn’t handle this betrayal. He would invite me over to play, and I would refuse. He’d be like “Actually, Sonic is really fun!” That traitor. I couldn’t fathom how he would ditch our extremely important alliance and support the enemy.
But eventually, I relented and came to see this stupid terrible game on this stupid terrible console, to make fun of it, of course. And oh man, was it just terrible. Stupid Sonic would get hit and lose all his rings? Dumb. So dumb. And totally not fun. What’s the appeal? The controls are terrible, it’s all moving too fast. And he turns into a lame ball and zips through the stage, with this totally crappy and very catchy music playing. Lame. Ah crap, I died. Wait, you want the controller back? Er hang on just let me try this terrible game that I hate for a little bit longer. I can get past this part. No no, I still think it sucks. I just need to keep playing to see how much it sucks, you see.
This was very complicated for my little pea brain to comprehend - I was having a hard time admitting to myself that I actually was enjoying the game being played on the Genesis. That the graphics were in fact impressive. That the music was great! But I was still very mad at all marketing insulting me for liking the NES, and was having a hard time differentiating my hatred of the marketing with enjoying the game. I was still “Team Nintendo,” through and through. But then, wait, was I a traitor?
The realization: it’s all manipulative bullshit
For the next stage of my childhood, I got a Super Nintendo, and my best friend didn’t get one. So he would come over and we would play Super Nintendo, and I’d go over to his place and we’d play Genesis. We would have little tiffs about which was better, but slowly it dawned on us that it didn’t actually matter - both consoles had their appeal. Neither one was just flat out without merit (although I would still argue that the Super Nintendo was probably better). And eventually I got over being a fanboy of a specific console and just became a fanboy of quality games.
Because the drama was all fake. Sega just wanted to sell consoles, and had to differentiate itself from the dominant Nintendo. “Blast processing” was a nonsense made up marketing term that kids would attach to so they could act superior. The marketers didn’t care that they were causing friends to get hate each other over nonsense, they cared about making more money from us.
And this is exactly what is happening today. Outrage generates the most clicks. The marketers in this case are the politicians, the media, the provocateurs, and they all want your money, your attention, your following. And it’s incredibly easy to fall for it, and forget that you’re being manipulated. That most people are good people. That even if we disagree on some things, at the core, we mostly agree. There are bad things happening, yes, but that is not the norm, and in no way does that represent the real majority of folks.
We’re all just worried.
You have to ask yourself - who is benefiting from this manipulation? It’s certainly not us, especially if our real life relationships are being pointlessly hurt, if it’s causing us to spend our valuable time and energy pointlessly attacking strangers online. There’s no need for this. You can enjoy Nintendo games, you can enjoy Sega games. Try to hold back your biases and truly understand the other side. They just want things to be better.
The “bad guys” are not our fellow humans. The “bad guys” are those manipulating our tribal instincts for their own gain.
Ignore them. Open your mind. Play the games you enjoy. Find the common ground with people you think you disagree with.
If a lame little boy can learn this lesson, you can too.
The culture war is a grift
Wow this brought back some memories! I think most of us would have gone through this if you are around my age! I feel like growing up in the late eighties early nineties, it was simpler times. But then again, not sure if things are worse now or if they have always been bad? Maybe the internet/social media just makes us see more of how messed up the world is as opposed to the nineties when we didn’t really have as much access to people and information. But yeah... unplugging every once in a while is definitely a good shout! Great read once again.
Hah! Your console wars reference hit home for me. How might we create a new tribe that rejects the divisive tribal choices presented by the mainstream while embracing the common goodness desire by all gamers?