Weird #GamerGate Angle: ‘Emotional Fulfillment Through Love of a Robot’?

Posted on | December 30, 2014 | 75 Comments

What’s the most hateful stereotype of videogamers? That they are losers, retreating into a fantasy world as psychological compensation for their real-life failures. It’s kind of like the stereotype of feminists as ugly women who are angry because men don’t like them.

As we view the #GamerGate controversy, then, it’s interesting to see how these two groups interact. Of course, the liberal media have sided with the feminists — because ugly angry women vote Democrat — which means that conservatives are obligated to defend the videogamers. So it’s easy for me to decide which side I’m on, even though I haven’t been “into” videogames since I was a college junior feeding quarters into the Pac Man machine at the Red Rooster Pub. Also, fighting feminists on the #GamerGate front doesn’t mean I agree with every argument made by everyone else fighting feminists on the same front.

Which brings us to this comment, apparently from a gamer, naming feminist anti-gamer Anita Sarkeesian and . . . well, it’s weird:

As ridiculous as my statement is going to sound, I’m pretty sure that Anita [Sarkeesian] is trying to prevent us from experiencing the joys of 2D women. The kind of joys man Japanese men who’ve rejected the pig disgusting ways of 3D women already have.
There is nothing more frightening to these feminists than the idea of a man finding emotional fulfillment through love of a robot, or the idea of woman as opposed to an actual woman. Most of society is set up to shame men who don’t fall in line, also fall in love with a woman. Men who haven’t been approved by women are deemed other, and rejected from society.
The future waifus, and the Hatsune Miku occulus rift sex experiences take away one of feminism and women’s powerful weapons over the male gender. Their dominance over sexuality.
Once man is freed from the institutional forces which oppress him, and force him to find purpose in the approval of women, he will be free to pursue his own dreams.
Finally men will have no need to fight over women, as they will have something that replaces them the same way robots have replaced the male industrial work force of the world. Wars will be ended, and we will achieve world peace.
The masculine will be set free, allowed full creativity, and the world will enter a new enlightened age. We will explore Mars, Jupiter, and the furthers reaches of our solar system. Male and female will be united, working together towards a better future for humanity.
But only if we can free ourselves first.

Like I said, it’s weird, and some have speculated it may be a parody. Yet assume, arguendo, that this is an actual comment by an actual person who actually thinks that way. He is defending his own enjoyment of “2D women” — including animated characters and sex robots — by arguing that men are escaping oppression from “institutional forces” by their retreat into fantasy relationships.

Notice that the commenter uses the term waifu, which refers to a “fictional character . . . typically [in] an anime, manga, or video game” that a fan “is attracted to and considers a significant other.” This blurring of the line between fantasy and reality should raise alarms to any student of psychology, yet it is increasingly common. There are people for whom the characters in movies or TV shows are the most important people in their lives. There are fan sites devoted to, say, Harry Potter films or Orange Is the New Black, and some of these online fan communities have hundreds of members. Likewise, there are numerous sites devoted to Japanese anime series, where the members post their own drawings of the characters or write “fanfic” storylines.

The retreat into fantasy is increasingly common, as is the kind of blurring between fantasy and reality where fictional characters have a tremendous emotional significance for fans. This is really nothing new, nor is the phenomenon limited to males. Think about women who are obsessive fans of soap operas or romance novels, for example. Or think about people who are involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, which began with Diana Paxson and Marion Zimmer Bradley, both influential early figures in the feminist neopagan movement. It would be hard to find a more perfect example of a retreat into fantasy — escapist regression — than people whose devotion to Arthurian legend leads them to spend their weekends dressed up in medieval costume, or feminists whose rejection of modernity leads them to witchcraft rituals with groups like the Covenant of the Goddess or the Reclaiming Collective.

OK, some guys are introverted and socially awkward or are otherwise disadvantaged vis-à-vis the pursuit of female companionship. From the perspective of such a male, he is “rejected from society” because he is not “approved by women.” From his perspective, female “dominance over sexuality” (their ability to refuse relationships with “undesirable” males like him) is among the “institutional forces which oppress him.”

Does that sound crazy? Yes. Is it crazier than the radical feminism of Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Marilyn Frye and Joyce Trebilcot? No.

The difference between these two varieties of craziness, however, is that being an advocate of radical feminist insanity is socially approved. There are some 90,000 U.S. college students being tutored in Women’s Studies classes taught by fanatical ideologues who have been rewarded with prestigious degrees and faculty tenure for their skill in articulating feminist lunacy. Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency “is a 501(c)3 non profit charity,” contributions to which are tax deductible.

By contrast, opposition to feminism is effectively forbidden within academia (Larry Summers was forced to resign from Harvard University after he dared to question feminist dogma), and the organizational resources available to critics of feminism are scattered across a handful of conservative groups, none of which gets the kind of enthusiastic publicity that feminists like Sarkeesian get from the mainstream media. When A Voice for Men held a conference this year, they were harassed by feminists accusing them of being a hate group.

Given the remarkable cultural hegemony of feminism, and the consequent marginalization of feminism’s critics, should we be surprised to find that some disadvantaged males are unable to articulate their personal grievances without sounding crazy? No, this is not the least bit surprising. The fundamental goal of feminism is to deprive males of social support, to reallocate society’s resources in such a way as to disadvantage men in order to create “equality,” a term feminists define to suit themselves. And it is here, as we examine feminism’s ultimate objectives, that we discover their totalitarian purposes.

No amount of actual “equality” shall ever satisfy feminists and any attempt to placate them is doomed to fail for the same reason that Neville Chamberlain’s concessions to Hitler at Munich did not result in “peace for our time.” Once he had the Sudetenland, Hitler next annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia, which was the prelude for agitation about the Danzig Corridor, precipitating the blitzkrieg of Poland. Hitler’s ambition of world conquest could never be satisfied by any partial concession the Western democracies might make, because his ambitions included the destruction of Western democracy, per se.

The same is true of feminism, an anti-democratic totalitarian movement that is no less fanatically committed to the destruction of Western civilization than was Hitler himself. No matter how fluently feminists may speak the language of democracy, their campaigns to silence opposition betray their totalitarian purposes, and it is not difficult to find evidence of their limitless appetite for conquest. Women are now 33% more likely than men to earn four-year college degrees, but has this de facto female supremacy in academia put an end to feminist demands? Of course not. Instead, we find feminists claiming (despite all evidence to the contrary) that women are experiencing a “rape epidemic” on college campuses, manufacturing phony statistics to support their anti-male propaganda, and perpetrating the Rolling Stone gang-rape hoax at the University of Virginia — feminism’s very own “Reichstag fire,” with the role of Marinus van der Lubbe played by “Haven Monahan.”

None of this analysis relates directly to the comment by the male who retreats to a waifu fantasy or dreams of “finding emotional fulfillment through love of a robot,” perceiving actual women as “institutional forces which oppress him.” Clearly, such a perspective reflects psychiatric disturbances analogous to the delusions of “PIV is always rape, OK?” Yet a clear understanding of what feminism actually is helps us understand why so many young men are unable to find effective help for their problems. Feminism’s implacable anti-male hostility excludes the possibility that any man could ever deserve help or sympathy.

Feminism is essentially a philosophical justification of merciless sadism, encouraging women to believe that males deserve nothing but humiliation and destruction, to avenge injuries suffered by women. Feminists thus demand as women’s most fundamental right the incessant slaughter of unborn children (more than a million abortions are performed every year in the United States), the death of innocents being the bloody tribute of their hateful revenge. Feminists denounce motherhood and marriage as oppressive to women, because they believe any woman’s fulfillment of the roles of wife and mother can be possible only by her subjugation under male domination.

No sane man would seek “emotional fulfillment through love of a robot,” but as insane as that is, it’s really no more crazy than a man pursuing emotional fulfillment through love of a feminist.

To see a dishonest hate-monger like Anita Sarkeesian celebrated as an intellectual, and to see a perverted freak like Brianna Wu similarly celebrated as an icon of heroic womanhood, surely must cause honest and rational observers to conclude the world has gone mad.

Insanity has now become so pervasive that perhaps the only question people need to ask themselves is, “What kind of crazy am I?”

Category: Feminism

Comments

75 Responses to “Weird #GamerGate Angle: ‘Emotional Fulfillment Through Love of a Robot’?”

DeadMessenger
December 30th, 2014 @ 2:48 pm

This sort of goes back to RKae’s comment the other day, about some men having enough porn on their computers, that, if printed, would fill a blimp hanger.

Assuming that the geek’s comment above is not tongue-in-cheek, his “solution” is “naturally” the next step beyond internet porn. And for a generation that focuses more on false internet relationships in general than real ones, what else could we expect? How can someone become socially adept if they don’t socialize with real people?
Michael
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:10 pm

And this is a problem in Japan, too. A 2011 survey found that 45% of women and 25% of men ages 16-24 are either not interested in or despised sexual contact. (61% of unmarried Japanese men ages 18-39 weren’t interested in a romantic relationship.)

Think of that. 25% of young men in a society has no interest in real contact with the opposite sex, and over half of unmarried men of prime marriage years (largely because of the availability of flickering images on a screen). Any society like that is doomed.

Hell, when I was 16-25…. Well, let’s just say that contact with a female may have occurred more often in my imagination than in reality (at least until I married), but I certainly knew that reality was much more preferable of the two.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:11 pm

I had a dog like that once. That dog could find “emotional fulfillment” on the darnedest things.
RS
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:13 pm

Just the 21st Century’s take on Walter Mitty. The fact of the matter is, those people who believe themselves to be marginalized have always sought refuge in realities of their own making. I suppose most of us do to an extent, inasmuch as movies, books, amusement parks and so forth exist to allow us vicariously to experience many things we would never do in real life. For some people, however, it becomes a mental pathology.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:25 pm

The “2D love” subject has come up before. And as one would expect, the trend is most established and advanced in Japan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The subject person in the NY Times article claims that he once had an actual human female consort before he came to depend on the pillow.

As disgusting and repellent as you may find some of these nerds and gamers, their aims are ultimately parochial. When all is said and done, they probably just want to retreat to their rooms, apartments, or basements with their games, pornography, pillows, latex dolls, fleshlights, or whatever the next device is.

The feminists certainly would not like it if somebody would not let them retreat to their apartments with their cats, vibrators, and True Blood dvd’s. Sadly, they will not permit the nerds and geeks the same privilege they demand for themselves.
The Monster
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:26 pm

I keep saying this. The Left NEEDS a Reichstagsbrand to justify an Ermächtigungsgesetz.

And I don’t even think there’s anything the least bit crazy about this:

“Most of society is set up to shame men who don’t fall in line, also fall in love with a woman. Men who haven’t been approved by women are deemed other, and rejected from society.”

It’s true. How can stating the truth be crazy?
M. Thompson
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:31 pm

The idea of love of a robot is a semi-sane reaction to the Feminist Insanity, though. Get away from the problem as painlessly as possible. It’s not the ideal solution, though.

Also, Feminism is increasingly going in the direction of female dominance. Wait until the most highly praised scene in a movie is when the female protagonist kicks a man in the crotch, and it’s played as what he deserves.

And just for kicks, from “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”
‘On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.” ‘
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:47 pm

“Love of a Robot” sounds like it is still some decades away. But in the meantime, some people just resort to dolls.

http://documentarystorm.com/guys-and-dolls/
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/married-to-a-doll-why-one-man-advocates-synthetic-love/279361/

Visual and virtual reality simulation have made some strides with things like Oculus. Simulating physical or tactile sensation with electronic media and devices is still at a primitive level, with stuff like “teledildonics.” It probably will stay that way unless and until they have machines that convincingly hack into people’s nerve impulses.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/love-industries-digital-sex-669
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

Sounds like someone was doing a send-up of gender feminist ideology.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 30th, 2014 @ 3:59 pm

This is nothing new, think Stepford Wives
Mr. Saturn
December 30th, 2014 @ 4:06 pm

I’ve seen this a lot, not so much out of gaming, but in anime circles. It is hard to say if this is a joke or not but the “2D over 3D” (or fantasy vs. reality) mindset does exist among Japanese Otaku and frankly as a person who enjoys anime the mindset is weird. The presumption for these guys is that the 2D character, if real, would be accepting of the weird, awkward anime fans is prevalent. Mostly just delusion though.
NeoWayland
December 30th, 2014 @ 4:26 pm

Bride of Frankenstein
M. Thompson
December 30th, 2014 @ 4:27 pm

It’s Frunkenstien!
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 5:16 pm

Every hour spent inside is an hour not spent outside. That’s a pretty simple mechanism to understand, but I wonder how many people take it to heart. The view from the internet is probably askew. A world inhabited by morally insane people like Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti makes the world itself seem crazier than it actually is. At the same time, there is no doubt that moral insanity has trickled down into the culture.

In the late ’70s one smoked in classrooms at a college I know of. Then there was a smoking area and finally it was banned, not only inside but anywhere on campus. That’s not a statement on smoking, because it didn’t happen in a vacuum. It reflects a trend where we kowtow to the most offended among us who are determined not to live and let live.

America has become a pot-o’-gold of moral insanity. Out and out racists and hoaxers get institutional protection at Brandeis U and UVA and a guy who spoke at a conference 12 years ago gets hauled out for a keelhauling. The country is full of David Dukes posing as feminists and activists but only David Duke actually counts. That is a failure of morality and intellect and as that goes, so goes the nation.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 5:26 pm

They didn’t need to dig up the yearbook pictures for us to know that “Brianna” Wu was a tranny. But at least now we have the proof.
Dantes
December 30th, 2014 @ 5:31 pm

To think I once thought the birds and the bees were difficult enough to grok.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 30th, 2014 @ 5:45 pm

Do you think a deficiency in Vitamin D makes all these people bat shit crazy?
robertstacymccain
December 30th, 2014 @ 6:26 pm

And you know, so what? Live and let live. But to have such a person — a spoiled brat, really — presume to lecture others about their alleged moral deficiencies (“heteronormativity”! the “male gaze”!) is simply too much to tolerate. The lunatics cannot be permitted to run the asylum.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 6:58 pm

I don’t think Wu was ever much into “live and let live.” “She” won’t be happy until “she” forces the whole world to rub the lotion on its skin.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:08 pm

So Wu is a neckbeard dudebro mansplaining women’s issues when it fact it should have a giant ear like all men and the Moties.
Wombat_socho
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:14 pm

As Erick Erickson was saying today on the Rush Limbaugh show, “You will be made to care.”
Wombat_socho
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

Considering how a lot of female characters act in anime, yeah, that’s a really questionable assumption. Headcanon at work, I guess.
K-Bob
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

Gamer Tan is pretty similar to Studio Tan.

On another note, you HAVE to check out the Google image
search for [ Zappa Studio Tan ]

I’ve never seen an image search return like that.
Wombat_socho
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

That is AWESOME.
Wombat_socho
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:18 pm

Well, if we’re okay with cyborg love (and as Glenn Reynolds jokes, “Once you’ve tried metal, you’ll never settle!”) accepting robosexuality can’t be too far away.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:19 pm

That is a question I often ask myself. What’s in the water? When younger I knew NO people outside of the odd UFO enthusiast as dumb as the people I routinely see on media. I mean, these folks are award-winning dumb. And they are almost unbelievably bigoted while passing themselves off as anti-bigots. Even Sherlock Holmes would go back to the needle before pitting himself against this asylum.
K-Bob
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:30 pm

Properly freaky.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:36 pm

More dreadful, ominous words have never been spoken.
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:52 pm

“Or think about people who are involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism…”

Or Civil War reenactment. Or Revolutionary War reenactment. Or buckskinners.
Matt_SE
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:54 pm

As Eric Erickson says, “you will be made to care.”
Quartermaster
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:55 pm

Fleshlight? Nevermind, I don’t think I want to know.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:59 pm

What Wu, Sarkeesian and the rest of these SJW bigots don’t get is this: they are essentially running into an ethnic neighborhood and yelling ethnic slurs. They cannot complain about being “bullied” out of that neighborhood. If you claim to have issues about video-games, probably asserting the equivalent of blacks are stupid racists, women daffy drivers and homosexuals spiritless sex-phobes isn’t the way to get your point across.

Naturally there is going to be pushback. If I go into a neighborhood yelling slurs, saying the neighborhood is a pack of racists isn’t going to carry much weight. I’ve watched Wu on video: he’s a self-centered idiot with overblown feelings of persecution besides being a racist and sexist bigot. I’m surprised anyone even talks to him.
Matt_SE
December 30th, 2014 @ 8:00 pm

I didn’t scroll down to this. I quoted EE up top too.
Matt_SE
December 30th, 2014 @ 8:05 pm

It seems that when women start gaining equality, if not superiority in a culture, that culture’s days are numbered.
Which is terribly unfair, and I wish it weren’t so, but that’s what I see.
joethefatman
December 30th, 2014 @ 8:29 pm

That is a whole lot to think about right there. Thanks McCain.
RS
December 30th, 2014 @ 8:35 pm

Every hour spent inside is an hour not spent outside.

I agree with your whole comment, but the above quote, or more precisely, the philosophy of rejecting the artificial for the real, is why I never took my kids to places like Disneyland. When we had vacations, it was out West for 2 plus blissful weeks of hiking mountains and deserts. Taking in the view after 10 miles along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon beats the heck out of a plastered faux Matterhorn with people in mouse suits aggravating you every ten minutes.
RKae
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:12 pm

My parents took me to Disneyland when I was 7. It was crowded and noisy. I just wanted to go home.

My wife made me go there when I was about 30. It was crowded and noisy. I just wanted to go home.
Phil_McG
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:12 pm

I think it’s a parody, but a good one. Like all good parody, it contains an element of truth.

There are lots of poorly socialised, awkward, shy young men out there. In previous generations most of them would have overcome their introversion through male bonding – with their dads, friends, or through military service, or college, or the workplace, or whatever.

But now? More boys than ever before have been raised in fatherless households, which takes a terrible psychological toll on them. The culture is increasingly intolerant of boys being boys – look at the number of kids forced onto Ritalin, or forced out of school for pretending to play with toy guns.

The internet makes it possible for shy people to avoid real social interactions altogether. Schools, colleges, workplaces, and even the military are increasingly feminised.

And what about the women? Girls have never, as a whole, been fatter, cruder, and more self entitled than this generation of Millenials. Why go to the effort of chasing after a Lena Dunham clone?

So to a lot of young men, who never knew their dad or saw him divorce-raped and broken by their mother, who have dubious employment prospects thanks to immigration and outsourcing, and who are expected to take on a huge burden of student debt just to go to a college where they’re treated as potential sex offenders, the idea of getting married and having kids with the low-quality spoiled princesses they encounter seems ludicrous.

They’d rather have casual sex, and if they’re too shy to get casual sex, virtual sex appeals to them more than settling down with a chunky, loudmouthed harpy with tatoos and facial piercings.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:15 pm

At the risk of being repetitive let me put this another way: imagine one white man in a room full of white men doing something objectionable and someone then saying “What’s wrong with you white men?” Of course the entire room is going to object, giving the false impression they are defending the objectionable action when in fact they are defending their right not to be sexually and racially smeared and profiled.

This is the same issue in Ferguson and science fiction. People reacting to being unfairly profiled are being cast as anti-women and pro-racism by people who are themselves too stupid to understand they are lighting up millions of people at a go rather than addressing specific individuals. The irony-frosting on that stupid cake is this is being done by people who are supposedly against racial and sexual profiling. When you’re that dumb what am I supposed to do?
RKae
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:16 pm

Robot love toys is a bad road to go down.

Will it be legal to make robot love toys that look like children? Or, rather, how could it possibly be illegal?

I was bothered by that assumption while watching the movie “A.I.” I thought, “The people who would really want to buy a robot boy are not lonely wanna-be mothers, but dirty old men.” That cynical thought pretty much ruined the movie for me – that and the fact that the movie was a sloppy mess made from a lousy script that had no idea how to end.
Phil_McG
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:17 pm

I’m hoping for an army of killbots.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:23 pm

My view exactly. I like pop culture droning as much as the next guy but if you go to Disney without a leavening of standing in front of the seated colossi of Ramses at Abu Simbel or watching thunderheads coming in from the over the Bali Sea the same height as you atop Agung Volcano at dawn then their are problems built into that.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:30 pm

First the women surpass the men.
Then the old surpass the young.
Then the dead surpass the living.
Phil_McG
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:33 pm

Civilisation is the triumph of masculine virtues.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:40 pm

I think the name is explanatory enough.
richard mcenroe
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:47 pm

That’s what the demon-squid suit is for.

Someone told me that.
richard mcenroe
December 30th, 2014 @ 9:49 pm

I STILL haven’t been able to get Stacy to dress up as Ned Ruffin for the Ft. Sumter anniversary…
Adobe_Walls
December 30th, 2014 @ 11:02 pm

Well if he’s having sex with 2-D creatures he probably doesn’t need a condom. As opposed to having a conversation face to face with a feminist, in which case I’d recommend a level 4-biohazard suit.
Adobe_Walls
December 30th, 2014 @ 11:13 pm

True but is that worse than having sex with a feminist on their terms, isn’t that a form bestiality?
Adobe_Walls
December 30th, 2014 @ 11:45 pm

And a proper homage to one of the worlds most gifted musical artists. Guitarist, songwriter composer, conductor ans stage manager. I had the opportunity to catch him live at DAR Constitution Hall in the early/mid 70s. One was wholly immersed for two, three hours. I’m imagining it’s like the experience some have when visiting their first quality opera.