Jordan Bloom at the American Conservative — who I take it is a Bioshock fan — wants to make it clear that he isn’t one of those kind of conservatives, the kind who “rhapsodize” in ways unhinged and ill-informed, who “freak out” over what is just “a video game, for Heaven’s sake.” Writes Bloom:
What’s so funny about this is that neither [the Virginian or Goldstein] actually identify the game, “Bioshock Infinite,” which is the latest installment in a wildly popular and critically-regarded series. To anyone familiar with the game, dystopian alternate histories, religious cults, and provocative historical echoes are nothing new—there are clear references to Ayn Rand in the first two games. This blind spot seems especially unforgivable in Goldstein’s case, who apparently has some critical training. Quite a bit, in fact. Their hysteria doesn’t put them in good company.
To save you some time, that last link points to an article blasting “racist morons” who have a serious issue with Bioshock, so the implication here is that my “unforgivable blind spot” with respect to the deeper subtext of Bioshock puts me in league with unthinking racialists and hysterical supremacists. Which I guess is one way to try to diminish my credibility without doing the due diligence of understanding what I wrote.
But never fear, dear readers. For — lucky you! — you have choices:
Fortunately, there’s a younger generation of conservative writers with a more even keel. Mytheos Holt at The Blaze notes that Levine even toned down the anti-religious elements of the game, and points out that the Vox Populi—the game’s leftist movement—isn’t exactly portrayed in a flattering way. He writes:
So is Bioshock Infinite anti-Tea Party? No. If anything, given that it takes place in 1912, it’s much more an attack on the sort of jingoistic sentiments that motivated Americans at the turn of the 20th century, and that caused writers such as Sinclair Lewis to openly fret about America itself going fascist. Its Christian and Founders-oriented iconography is not meant to reflect the evils of Christianity or the founders, but rather how easily the concepts advanced by Christianity and the Founders can be perverted in the service of authoritarianism.
With that said, the game does arguably skew slightly liberal early on in the story in that the motivation of the Vox Populi for their form of brutality is clearly a reaction against the brutality of the Founders, whereas the Founders’ cruelty is not really explained except with reference to the evil of their leader, Comstock. In other words, the Leftist mass movement could come off mildly more sympathetic, though not much.
All well and good. But what does any of this have to do with my post? The reason “Bioshock Infinite” isn’t specifically named in my post is because I haven’t played it, don’t know it, and I used it merely as an occasional to discuss NPR’s fawning coverage of certain of its aspects for the purposes of selling a particular political narrative. Bloom writes,
What I find off-putting about the NPR report is not its alleged anti-Americanism or the high-handed evocations of Aristotle but how credulously they take Levine’s assertion that “Bioshock” is “art.” It’s an undeniably beautiful-looking game, and if the story in “Bioshock: Infinite” is as good as the last two, it’s got that going for it too.
But the critical vocabulary that would allow one to make a judgment one way or the other about video games is still in its infancy.
Bloom then goes on to quote his “TMT colleague Sean Brady,” whom we’re told “explored some of these issues in a fantastic series of essays for The405 recently,” on the question of whether gamers understand art — an interesting question, no doubt, but again, not one that has anything remotely to do with my essay or Bloom’s critique of my essay.
In fact, Bloom’s essay seems to be using mine as an occasion to separate itself out — Bloom, like a few others he mentions are all part of a younger, more thoughtful and less hysterical conservatism that is familiar with gaming culture and concerned with academic questions about art and theory, etc., about intellectual engagement and discussion, and don’t go in for the kind of sweeping, rhaposodical generalizing that I take it is supposed to describe the prose of some of we relics — a move that I can assure him from personal experience will not win him the reluctant admiration of his similarly-trained peers on the left he so desperately craves, no matter how hard he tries. Or, to put it another way, poor Mr Bloom hasn’t of yet been mugged by academic or intellectual reality.
But since Bloom raises similar concerns to my essay as did an academic who wrote me shortly after I posted it, I’m merely going to post my exchange with her(?) as an answer to Bloom’s criticism.
Dear Jeff Goldstein,
I read your post ( https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=48418 ) on the slide into liberal fascism as told by Bioshock. I think you're being unfair to the game, because the summary you link doesn't tell the entire story. Like most stories, Bioshock Infinite has a twist. I don't get the impression you're the video gaming type, but if you are - massive spoilers in 3...2...1....
See, the Columbia of Bioshock Infinite has liberals in it - revolutionaries campaigning for social justice. The game's narrative doesn't spare them either - when they acquire the weapons to become powerful, they reveal themselves as nothing more than murderous thugs and for the back half of the game are actually the more menacing and threatening group.
Now I agree that Columbia conflates things it ought not - a lot of religious revivalism wasn't associated with slavery and the south but with abolition and the north (and progressivism, for that matter). But that's the point - minus one character (Elizabeth, who actually does seem to believe in God) everyone in Columbia, including the player character in his past, are, if you'll excuse my language, assholes.
The 'founders' (the white, religious folks on the top of society) are oppressive, myopic and racist, although you encounter several, if you listen to the conversations, who think better of it. And the 'Vox Populi' (the mostly black and Irish underclass of the city) turn out to be killers even worse than the founders. Their leader has to be stopped (read: stabbed to death) by the one innocent character (Elizabeth) from killing a child. And those are the liberal stand-ins. Hell, for good measure, the Vox Populi villain actually says that the player character and Elizabeth need to die because they no longer "fit the narrative." They're no better than the lily-white founders, and that point is made, in as many words, by the game. Even the viewpoint player-character is far from innocent. The only innocent character is the one who has been locked in a tower for her entire life. All of the extremes are condemned.
This should not be news if you look at the previous installments in the series - Bioshock and Bioshock 2. In Bioshock, we had an Objectivist Ayn Rand style Galt's Gulch run as a dystopia - except that what made the dystopia fail was not the objectivism so much as the creeping tyranny of the leader-cult. Then Bioshock 2 flips the coin on its head - the villain for the second game, Sophia Lamb, is openly collectivist, and is just as bad, if not worse than the villain of the first game.
If the series has any particular moral or political compass, it isn't liberalism, but something along the lines of, "The Ends Do Not Justify the Means; Moral Action Supersedes Moral Intention; Ideological Extremes are Dangerous." All told, not terrible lessons.
Bioshock Infinite isn't perfect but give it credit: it comes a lot closer than a lot of what Hollywood puts out to actually being balanced and reasonable. And honestly, the lesson that no utopia justifies a mountain of innocent dead to get there is one worth teaching, since totalitarian ideologies of all stripes always seem to preach that over the next mound of dead peasants or kulaks or khafir or jews or kosovars or (you get the idea), paradise awaits.
Sincerely,
Aime
(Not my real name of course. I work in academia, so I ought not put a real name on thoughts like these.)
— to which I responded:
Thanks for the response. I have the first Bioshock but I haven't played through it -- I'm more a DeadSpace / Gran Turismo guy. Even have the racing cockpit and the higher-end Thrustmaster gear.
My post was based less on what Bioshock Infinite has to say than what the NPR reporter and her guest had to say about it -- which as I note in the post is in keeping with a larger, more widespread narrative I see being spread and nurtured.
If as you say the series has as its overarching theme "something along the lines of, 'The Ends Do Not Justify the Means; Moral Action Supersedes Moral Intention; Ideological Extremes are Dangerous,'" you'll get no argument from me, as my entire site is dedicated in one way or another to the inherent tyranny in such a worldview.
Where we differ, I suppose, is that I don't view our founding documents or those who wish to protect them as extremists, nor even particularly ideological. We believe in the need for a stable rule of law, and -- whether you are religious or not (and I'm not) -- that you accept the founding premise that something greater than man endows us with certain unalienable rights, be it Nature or god or God. Whether this is a social construct that we accept as a measure of our entry into the social compact that is the US, or whether it is a metaphysical truth, doesn't particularly matter. What matters is that we abide by it, because it is what keeps man from taking those rights from other men. It is the ultimate check, and it is at the very heart of the constitutionalist movement you're seeing rise up in opposition to the political establishment of both parties.
I'm not a relativist. I find "a pox on all their houses"-type critiques generally lazy. So while I agree with you that "all told," the series doesn't carry within its collective subtext, as you've outlined it for me here, "terrible lessons," I'd say that while that's most definitely a step above much of what Hollywood peddles, this third installment could have been really brave and taken a position that defends the classically liberal principles upon which this country was founded -- this being the one country in human history founded on the ideas of liberty, a healthy distrust of centralized authorities and their presumptuous plans for shaping what is better left to form organically, and a nation of laws and not men. Our Declaration and our Constitution should be celebrated, not cheapened, and the conflating of the (largely deistic) founders with a religious zealotry in their honor, or slavery with same (when it was the Christian abolitionists who led the charge against it), seems to me a cheap pander to the misinformation that's been fed the game's target audience.
But as I say, my chief beef isn't with the game. It was with the way the game was being trumpeted and luxuriated over -- at a time when the political left is in a hurry to demonize gun ownership as always latent "gun violence".
Thanks for the email. And as I left academia years back now, I can sign off using my own name. Which I have to tell you is very liberating.
Best regards,
Jeff
My post — and its critique — wasn’t aimed at Bioshock per se. It was, I thought I made clear, aimed at how NPR (and Levine, as presented) were presenting “Bioshock Infinite” — and then using that presentation of its themes (whether fairly or unfairly) to connect those themes outlined to high art, namely, the cartoonish portrayal of Founding Father worshippers.
I went on to note that this is part of a larger effort by the left to peddle this very cultural narrative, so for my purposes, whether NPR misrepresented “Bioshock Infinite” or the Bioshock franchise or Levine or art is relevant only inasmuch as it makes my broader point about the efforts of the left to frame conservatism and to work its narrative into the wider culture. That is, “Bioshock Infinite’s” deeper story structure wasn’t a concern; how the game was being described and added to the cultural noise surrounding Constitution fetishists was.
I should have thought someone claiming a heightened grasp of subtext would have understood that. But then, maybe I just overshot. Or maybe Mr Bloom didn’t pause long enough to consider that perhaps we hoary old embarrassments have the ability to do nuance, too — and that in his rush to separate himself from the “extremist” kind of conservatives like me, he has accomplished his mission, but only by dint of showing that he’s more eager to be accepted by the literati than he is to is to give the benefit of the doubt to conservative writers who have been at this quite a while and have a track record of being more than mere hysterics who rhapsodize to the dullards who still read him.
It’s amazing how those who claim to possess nuance and a grasp of subtext and subtlety miss said nuance when they think their ox is being gored, innit?
Sheesh. Maybe it’s not “funny;” maybe the game itself has nothing to do with the point.
As in, the kind who can read and comprehend…
I’m so tired of morons.
My prescription is less gaming, more reading.
What Pablo said. ^^
I posted a link to my response over there. It was awaiting moderation.
My takeaway was that you were going after NPR, not the game. I have the feeling that even if the game were overtly anti-conservative, you wouldn’t care very much. I know I wouldn’t. The reaction of the left to it, however, would still be worthy of study.
My prescription is less gaming, more reading.
With Gulliver’s Travels a right good place to start
If the game was overtly anti-conservative, it would join a host of similar games or shows, etc., that I don’t bother to comment on. My target was the way the game was being presented and to whom, along with why it was being done and how that operates in the context of broader cultural narratives.
Evidently, to a younger, hipper crowd of conservative writers, any implication that something they enjoy — however tenuous the implication — can be in any way tied back to anti-conservative sentiment, is grounds for a broadside that requires tethering their perceived critics to racism and rhapsodic, empty, ill-informed blithering.
Priorities!
Funny you mention that, because every time I see a conservative react the way Bloom did to something I wrote, I feel a burning desire to simply leave the house and go live with the horses in the stables.
I have had people try to prove stuff to me about history and who Americans are with novels and movies. This kind of stuff works with a lot of people. This new game like the old one will inform the political philosophy of quite a few people who are not aware that they have one.
I think reacting to it is a good idea. If it is a slander then point out the falsehoods, assumptions, and prejudice that formed that slander. I do believe that the game is intended to suggest that “the right” are a few notches removed from being a colony of lunatic racists because we want the borders to be run like national borders. It is an attempt at suasion and it IS intended to propagate a cultural hostility towards the positions it distorts and those who hold them. I think that it is trying to put vile words and straw-man arguments in your mouth and unacceptable hateful “other” thoughts into your heads to form a cartoonish stand in for you that the low information voter WILL use as a model to engage with you.
People will play this game and when they hear that you want something like real border security they will call that a dog whistle stirring up hate against hispanics. They will assume that you are not very far away at all from advocating ethnic cleansing and slavery and that you are a religious nut who thinks that Washington was a god and that the late 1170’s to early 1800’s were a golden age.
They may not literally accept the game as true but I think that they will say that where there is smoke there must be fire. It will move some people to oppose border security on the grounds that border security is a racist language and leads to a dystopian mess if left unchecked.
I am already hearing people repeat the crap about how republican “whites” want black people back at the back of the bus. They don’t sound like they think that’s bullshit.
A lot of republican whites and the people making the charge were not even ALIVE during the Jim Crow laws or segregation era. Like me. But they love a good story that makes them out to be good and some nervous chump out to be bad.
There’s another Bloom who had a wider view than this young’un, and loved Swift with the manly love of an old and cherished friend. If I read this older Bloom right, he’d make to laugh at the younger, sillier one.
If the critics were steered here by sources that mischaracterize your point, it’s quite conceivable that those mischaracterizations colored their reading and caused them to “understand” points you weren’t even trying to make. (It would hardly be the first time.) I can only hope that such is the case here, and that those who were misled before they arrived here will aim their ire at those who set them up to misinterpret.
In any event, this second bite at the apple gives us an opportunity to reiterate plainly: it’s not about the game or the game producers, it’s about NPR’s delight in using the game (fairly or unfairly) to paint their hated Tea Party enemies as cartoon villains, just as they’ve been doing since 2010. They are so desperate to keep their “thoughtful, intelligent” audience from considering classical liberal principles in a fair light that they will never stop in their efforts to paint us as “beneath consideration.”
For myself, I’m planning to keep this episode handy for the next time they approach me for funds. I think it’s important for organizations you once supported to understand why you’ve decided to withhold that support. There’s a slim (okay — infinitesimal) chance they’ll learn anything, but any chance is better than none.
People are stupid is the problem I think.
So Bloom and your professor are missing the larger point of your post – this is about reinforcing the narrative.
Weeks, months, years from now these players are going believe some BS propaganda about the Tea Party, such them wanting to deport all immigrants from the last 100 years, and the kids will buy it – won’t know why they do, but it’ll just sound right. And at that point it won’t matter if the game designers intended to slander the founding fathers, or that they were only cleverly showing how their words could be twisted by others to justify bad things. The game’s players will have internalized the message that using the constitution to justify a policy= racists/bigots/evil people who secretly desire to enslave and stone others if given the chance.
Evidently, Mr Bloom, William & Mary class of 2011 and associate editor at the American Conservative, who — fortunately! — is in that class of young, sober conservative voices who offer a welcome relief to the tired rhetoric of dinosaurs like me, finds my rebuttal worthy of a “lulz.”
Move over, old timers. The l33t3rs are here to save the movement from the likes of us!
I don’t know about going to live in the stables, but I occasionally have reason to be glad I never got into those multi-user online first-person role-playing thingers.
Rule 34 would lead to the sorts of games that would make it impossible to play anymore…
Bloom, like a few others he mentions are all part of a younger, more thoughtful and less hysterical conservatism that is familiar with gaming culture and concerned with academic questions about art and theory, etc., about intellectual engagement and discussion,
Yeah, well I’ll have you know that unless you’re receiving public grants to create art, you’re not allowed to opine on the question of what art is and is not.
Ideological Extremes are Dangerous
And an “extreme” is defined by where the middle is located. Or said to be located. By the people who shout the loudest and are the most relentless and play the dirtiest.
Those who uphold Enlightenment ideals have already been branded as extremists without our having done anything wrong.
It’s a problem if the game condemns the Right and exalts the Left.
It’s also a problem if the game insists that they’re all equally corrupt. That’s not the truth.
The worst atrocities in human history occur when people believe a lie.
I work in academia, so I ought not put a real name on thoughts like these.
I hope you understand what a terrible statement that is: the very fact that your assertion is true proves that our society is on a rocket sled to hell.
And that any narrative such as occurs in Bioshock—with its performative/participatory aspect, instead of merely being a vicarious experience—is bound to have a frightening effect down the road, to the extent that people absorb the narrative as true.
Because if people saw the narrative as a filthy lie, they wouldn’t have the stomach to continue playing.
A lulz?
We’ve battled with this sort before.
I am far from the sharpest chisel in the toolbox (I view myself as more of a prybar), but even I got that your original piece was aimed at NPR, and not at the game itself. Sheesh.
“What do they teach in school these days?” — Professor Kirke, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
This is ignorant sophistry. How do you know it’s ignorant? While Lewis fretted, America went soft-fascist under FDR. How do you know it’s sophistry? What concepts can’t be perverted in the service of authoritarianism?
They may not literally accept the game as true
It’s possible to be perfectly clear that what you’re reading/participating in/watching is fiction fiction fiction and still accept the narrative as TRVTH, because that’s how fiction works.
Narratives, being linear, necessarily associate cause and effect. Narrative is how civilizations pass on their values; it’s how we make sense of the world, how we impose order on chaos.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve realized that I believe something false, simply because I’ve seen it on TV so often. How many Internet articles talk about “things you think are true but aren’t because TV totally lies,” such as the fact that a blow to the head that knocks you unconscious isn’t something that you can just shake off. Or that you can’t use a defibrillator to start a heart that has flatlined?
Those are fairly benign examples: someday I may make a list of the things I’ve had to unlearn after being an avid fan of M*A*S*H for so many years.
I work in academia, so I ought not put a real name on thoughts like these.
Just on account of the hand in hand aspect of matters like these, another book on point.
Rule 34 would lead to the sorts of games that would make it impossible to play anymore…
Rule 35: If it exists, there’s cake of it.
“What do they teach in school these days?” — Professor Kirke, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
What do they teach? Prepare for this-my high school senior is reading “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”
He’s begged me not to go and complain. Even worse, the English teacher thinks it is profound.
So, the next time you want to bash your head against the wall, believing that honest debate is missing because of some nefarious plot (for power positioning on the internet)- honestly, it’s because people are so fucking stupid.
Carin, People are not stupid, rather, people have become lazy. When the standard is “participation trophies for all” it removes any incentive to put forth the effort to excel.
A lulz?
Thats hipster douche for tl;dr
More response from Mr Bloom, who has taken his affected amusement to Twitter.
Yes, you are right. People are extremely intellectually lazy. They read “50 shades of Gray” and watch reality tv.
But I also think that there is a faux intellectualism that has propped up lazy/uninformed people into believing that carry some sort of informed view of the world.
In a day when “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” is TAUGHT in high school … honestly, I almost cried.
Visit any bookstore and see what books are selling. It’s sad.
Man, that’s sad Jeff (the Twitter stuff). I refer mostly to this:
“What I’m saying is you’re reaching to an absurd degree. The Constitution isn’t even mentioned in the NPR report!”
It isn’t even MENTIONED.
@@
Carin, the great thing is that the classics are now available cheap at used book stores. I picked up mint condition “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “Anna Karenina” for just a few bucks.
Wow. Talk about someone who needs to put down the console…
Many are available for free for the Kindle. Or really cheap.
But I’m not worried about you or I.
I’m worried about everyone else. Who don’t think that reading 50 shades of gray is rotting their mind, or believe that Mitch Albom books are “heavy” reading.
“Many are available for free for the Kindle. Or really cheap.”
Yes. Here, among other places:
http://www.gutenberg.org/
thank allan it is over 100 years old
Isn’t The American Conservative a Paleo-Con digital rag? (At least, I thought it was) If so, what’s a smart young FOWARD-looking conservative doing there? Somebody edge him out of an internship at NRO?
“Jesus isn’t even mentioned in The Prince!”
Well, thanks be for that.
Now my response was a “cop-out”: Mr Bloom will tell me what I really meant to criticize, and that was the game, which is super deep and super awesome! And if I wasn’t like, so old and shit, I’d see that.
Can he possibly fathom that we don’t give a shit about the game?
Can he possibly fathom that we don’t give a shit about the game?
It doesn’t appear even Mr. Bloom is actually concerned with the game itself at this point: rather, he’s currently in the business of dust-chucking to salvage what he can of his own self-respect.
well you were critizing the “game” just not that particular one
Mr. Bloom: Intellectually dishonest or intellectually dense?
Unrelated, dicentra, your cake collection is scrumptious.
You appear to have pinned some pictures of cats in it, though. Not that I don’t like kitties and cake together.
Patterico, is that you?
And, Blake, why does it have to be either/or?
I would like to apologize for conservative gamers everywhere.
As a long-time lurker I read the original post, and found it brilliant, and recommended it to friends. I just had to register to point out that some of us got it.
Hint to Mr Bloom: NPR is neither a publisher, nor a developer…
Thanks, mondamay —
Funny how a post that begins thus:
— is said to be copping out when it claims its intent was the coverage of the game — and how that maps on to a prevailing and well-detailed (here) narrative. It seems to me, when the opening subject is the media and its slipping pretense of objectivity, that’s a pretty straightforward introduction to what we in the business might call a theme.
What do they teach? Prepare for this-my high school senior is reading “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”
He’s begged me not to go and complain. Even worse, the English teacher thinks it is profound.
I can top that: a buddy of mine, and godfather to my middle daughter, reports that his son was taught this year that the Da Vinci Code interpretation of “The Last Supper” was historical fact. And the Principal told my buddy that he was being a gripy pants for complaining about it, and that nothing would be done to correct it. That’s a Metro Detroit public high school–your tax dollars at work. In a heavily Catholic suburb.
It fits a narrative, so it will be allowed. No matter how offensively stupid, ahistorical and bigoted it is.
This is going to end badly.
When you are engaged in establishing worldwide, evangelizing for, converting heathens to, the one true religion of your heart and soul, all actions/words, which advance the glorious day that all humans are joined with you, are permissible. Indeed they are required. Especially when you project your own ruthlessness onto your hated enemy.
You appear to have pinned some pictures of cats in it, though. Not that I don’t like kitties and cake together.
Zoinks! Mischief managed!
Pinterest makes it really easy to mis-pin things and then difficult to move them to a new board (made even more difficult by the removal of functionality in the latest UPGRADE. I told them to fire the programmers that used to work at Microsoft: they understand the term “upgrade” entirely backwards).
Also, the mom who made her kid this cake is the best mom evar.
Wait a minute. Dicentra, The cake is a lie!
The cake is always a lie.
Hence the tragedy of this generation. They always think it’s real.
*sigh* True that.
Which is weird because I told him what you were criticizing before you ever mentioned his piece, and probably before you saw it. Then again, I’m even older than you, so what do I know?
Um, Bioshock isn’t even mentioned in Jeff’s post.
/derp
“this year that the Da Vinci Code interpretation of “The Last Supper” was historical fact.”
See also: Al Gore’s fantasy masquerading as “science” and any number of Michael Mooron vehicles.
In the old Soviet Union everyone knew that Pravda was bullshit, but these people actually believe the propaganda.
It isn’t “propaganda” it’s dogma.
” Somebody edge him out of an internship at NRO?”
David Frum was over quota on bootlicking sycophants, I’d wager.
“Hence the tragedy of this generation. They always think it’s real.”
Mice and other wild animals learn pretty quickly that the “free” bait in the trap is a lie. Too bad people are apparently incapable of doing the same.
I’d send that to him, but he’s since been counseled, I’m sure, that with the likes of me it’s best not to engage. It’s best just to ignore.
When did you contact him, Pablo? I saw it this morning and was up responding a minute later. Couldn’t believe it, frankly. And yet I could believe it only too well, IYKWIMAITYD.
“this year that the Da Vinci Code interpretation of “The Last Supper” was historical fact.”
The NY Times’ Mortifying Easter Error: ‘Resurrection Into Heaven of Jesus, Three Days After He Was Crucified’
At least they didn’t have Jesus coming out of the tomb and seeing His shadow.
Jesus only sees his shadow every four years.
(scratches head)
When I first saw the initial piece here, the first thing I noticed was that it was about press narratives. The second thing I noticed was NPR (big surprise), and the third thing I noticed was that the article consisted largely of quotes from NPR and responses thereto.
Apparently, Bloom didn’t notice *any* of these things. That’s almost interesting.
I have noticed that there is a “brand” of gamer that is so into gaming that it becomes kind of a “real world” to them, I think that’s why “fan” is derived from “fanatic.”
I tend to think that the philosophical underpinnings of games are almost always underdeveloped and simplistic (Bioshock or Skyrim) or completely nonsensical (Far Cry 2), but even when they aren’t they tend to collapse or trail off into nothing or one of the above (Mass Effect).
But that isn’t *the world*, that’s video games. They’re toys. Everything isn’t about them, and they are isolated fictional constructs that don’t have to comport with reality in any meaningful way.
So when a “fan” goes off in defense, it is both a little funny and a little disturbing.
Back to the original point – it was obvious the article was about NPR, and the narrative NPR constructed.
I’d send that to him, but he’s since been counseled, I’m sure, that with the likes of me it’s best not to engage.
You might publicly best him, and then he’d have no other choice but to Google-bomb your archive.
s year that the Da Vinci Code interpretation of “The Last Supper” was historical fact. And the Principal told my buddy that he was being a gripy pants for complaining about it, and that nothing would be done to correct it. That’s a Metro Detroit public high school–your tax dollars at work. In a heavily Catholic suburb.M.
@@. Which burb? Honestly – I’m sorry to any teachers who read this blog, but the public school teachers I meet IRL are some of the least informed folks I know.
Least informed or Misinformed.
I’m in the comments of his post, Jeff. I may still have been in moderation when you wandered over there. And on that note, you’ll be happy to know that “Your characterization of the game that inspired the NPR and Virginian pieces is simply false.” And further, that “given the number of people who read your original article and understood it essentially as JB characterized it above that perhaps the problem is with your writing and not with our ability to catch all that nuance that you are evidently slinging.”
The stupid is almost as think as the pretentious over there. Were Pat Buchanan to return, he’d clap them all upside the head.
Now wait just a doggone moment! Does this mean the Master Chief ain’t real?
Master Chief is always real.
Perusing the AmCon website, I noticed Rod Dreher – he of Crunchy Con fame – is an Editor and featured author.
That was all I needed to know never to return the site.
According to the author of the Bioshock response, he finds it “funny” that Jeff accuses him of being sloppy when, gasp, Jeff misspelled his (JB’s) name. Missing the entire point of the article vs. a typo?
I’m becoming increasingly convinced he’s Patterico’s bastard love child.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5876f2aced/don-cheadle-is-captain-planet
I sense a grim seed of truth hiding in this “parody”.
Oh, got it.
I suppose I shouldn’t mention the emails I got from people thanking me for writing it. Nor mention their names.
Also, the Virginian piece is what inspired my post. It having been written first and emailed to me. But facts are tricky things, I guess.
“Which burb?”
Warren. Still mostly a common sense place, but not like it used to be.
His reading comprehension difficulties are your fault, Jeff. QED.
He bids you good day, sir.
I posted this over there, having read through the comments. I’m posting it here in case it doesn’t make it through:
This is a conservative site? No wonder we’re fucked.
Something to chew over: if a full-throated defense of our constitutional system of republican representative government is embarrassing to you, you might not be a conservative / classical liberal / libertarian to begin with.
Also, just so you know, I corrected the o/a typo in “Jordan.” Now you (and I suppose Andrew) should go about correcting the entirety of this post, which misconstrues the target, takes aim at one who has spent years speaking and teaching on language and intent, and proceeds from such basic misunderstandings as cause and effect: the Virginian piece inspired my post, not the other way around, eg. It was emailed to me, and I used it as a jumping off point from which to tie the NPR piece in with a host of others I’ve covered, all of which seek to diminish the usefulness or force of the Constitution. The subject of my post, as others have noted, is right there in the introductory sentences, and the post spends the majority of its time addressing that greater cultural dialogic.
This post could have been written this way and it would have been precisely the same: “I happen to find Bioshock, like, really freakin’ cool. And very thinky.”
At least that version would be stripped of all the pretentiousness that’s followed.
Oh. And you probably should be interested in the “outlaw’s” view on language. I pointed to the piece on Hot Air from a few years ago, but there’s an entire section on my site that deals with it. You can find those posts categorized under intentionalism on the left sidebar.
That Mr Bloom would be so quick to dismiss it — based on what he takes to be my (I suppose) non-ironic use of “outlaw” on occasion — once again shows me that he didn’t bother to learn about me or my site before he decided to choose me as a target of what is at most a pompous fanboi post defending a video game he’s played, probably since he was 16 or so.
Fortunately, there are older, more seasoned conservative writers and readers to turn to should you find the kind of ostentatiously “nuanced,” quasi-theoretical explorations of video game subnarratives as those in evidence here, rather a waste of your limited time.
Good. Plus, thanks for toting your response back here too, since I doubt I’d have revisited The American Conservative anytime soon and therefore would have missed it.
That’s going to leave a mark.
That’s going to leave a mark
Mushroomed-shaped, I’ll wager.
As I’ve found this incident rather dispiriting — not surprising, just dispiriting — it’s also depressed my desire to comment.
But… I find it worth pointing and laughing once in a while:
This is how things look when you’re young and not particularly insightful. Cycles and cycles of history and this young man seems to think he’s lucky enough to live in an age when so much is unique and nearly incomprehensible and thereby requiring a new lexicon and yet another critical structure.
Or, as he might best understand my sentiment, lulz.
[Yes, I know the game is essentially off-topic but that still cracked me up when I read it.]
Da Vinci Code is being represented as factual? They do realize that book was written by a guy who claimed in one of his other novels that antimatter is a source of energy, no?
The Da Vinci Code has to be true man! Brown ripped of Holy Blood Holy Grail and there’s like a documentary and everything to go with that book!
there’s a new davinci thing coming to starz I guess
yeah it comes out in a week or so
I don’t have starz
but maybe you do
bh,
Uh-oh. It looks like the gamer community has not quite discovered Art Bollocks , but are on the very cusp…
—Pardon me sir, or madame as the case may be, but your obstreperous deployment of ‘vapid and bizarre jargon’ has failed to impress me. Kindly gird your mental loins so they flap about less. —-
It probably won’t fit on a t-shirt though. Maybe a business card?
I guess I get skeptical about throwing the word “art” around to legitimize/delegitimize various forms of entertainment. I will say I’ve enjoyed the stories in some video games (Mass Effect, SWTOR, etc.) which I guess is good enough for me.
Of course, I also enjoy playing krogan kits from Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer section, which hardly counts as art and is more running around headbutting/knocking opponents off the map. While laughing madly.
It is not possible to write something clearly enough that no one can misunderstand it.
But then, we knew that.
It’s easier to misunderstand if to misunderstand is the intent of the reader.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
You should apply over at AmCon. Sounds like you’re perfectly suited for the job!
I’m sure he’s being ironic.
On purpose, even.
…which, the on purpose part would be a DISqualifier.
So — in an attempt to stir it up — which is the irenic one again?
I’ll just say good night…
Tell it to Gracie.
Now cut that out!
Can he possibly fathom that we don’t give a shit about the game?
Hell, they cannot even fathom that the discussion of a single representation of the game might be nothing more than one element of a larger, ongoing discussion.
One they plainly and embarrassingly missed, so simply refuse to acknowledge, much less engage.
Shallow, with the attention span of gnats; it’s the new severely conservative.
My prescription is less gaming, more reading.
Or again, if not reading, then listening to music, say, for instance, another version of Columbia, rendered circa 1901 — close enough to 1912 for self government work.