Alright I'm gonna say some stuff about Wizard Game or well, the response people are having to wizard game that I probably wouldn't be willing to have anywhere else, but by golly co-host seems to handle nuance so lets see how this goes.
Before I go off saying the obvous. Rowling sucks. Shit that gives her money sucks. Even if you were to separate Rowling's shitty politics and look at the game by itself, it's still a game about weirdly antisemitic caricature goblins, invoking blood libel and shit. It sucks, people should yell about it, people should guilt their friends who bought it or want to play it, don't support the nasty, nasty ass woman. I think we're probably all on the same page here?
The problem for me came when I saw someone post a little applet to check if a streamer has streamed the game or if anyone on someone's friends list had and my first response was 'oh no this sucks'.
That might seem weird, given the rest of what I wrote above but there are two aspects to this that play into each other
First is "Kay's theory on why leftist kids are awful to each other". Rowling is an unfeeling, rotten piece of dead wood. You can't hurt her feelings, as she sprawls out on her bed of riches. She is insolated from actions and benefits despite herself and BOY do we all, rightfully hate this. But the response a lot of people have frustrating issues like this is
"Well if I can't hurt this person who is hurting me, who can I hurt?"
And many of us lash out, disproportionally, against people who... are honestly doing something wrong, but not in ways aligned with their misstep. The urge is to shred them like we wish we could shred those who are truly responsible. This leads to very bad mob justice where targets are chosen not by the extent of their crimes, but by their ability to suffer. Cause yeah, you can argue that finding which big streamers are playing the game and maybe giving them hell, because they have an audience, is good, because they have influence. But when that doesn't work, when the chat goes into followers only mode and they all get banned, IF EVEN THAT, then what? Big Time Streamer doesn't seem to feel either. Guess we'll go scream at the person with 20 followers who played the game once until someone told them they shouldn't. Lets go yell at them. They might actually cry on stream.
If they don't cry, how do I know I'm helping?
We lash out at those who are vulnerable because those with power who can hurt us make us feel powerless. It's a desperate attempt to validate that we can leave an effect on the world, that our efforts aren't futile. So even if someone deserves a talking to, or even if they're being shitty about it, as a group, we can't be trusted like that. We can only be trusted with those who are beyond redemption, and those who we have at least some compassion for.
... Which goes into the second part of this. Because it's not just about "Shitty person playing the shitty wizard game might have their feelings disproportionally hurt". It's bad for YOU. It's unhealthy. It's bad to feel so powerless that you run a bot just to find people to get mad at. The people you're mad at are no more or less guilty based on how you find out, but homie, it's bad for YOU. It's unhealthy for YOU and your mental health. It's bad for you to seek out enemies to battle with your soul cast aside.
A lot of us will all gladly and proudly type ACAB, and it's true. Even a good person, with the right intentions, who even mostly does the right thing... the position, the pressure, the entitlement, the power... that will turn them into a bastard. Just a group of violent thugs who claim they're helping.
The problem is, this doesn't just apply to cops with badges. This behavior of policing other peoples media has the same effect. People justify it to themselves the same way cops do. That type of power over other people brings nasty things out of people... and granted, most of us, on this website, are older. We're probably not the ones directly doing this stuff anymore. But how we talk about these things is important, because if you look at how afraid say, teens on tiktok are about screwing up and getting chanced over anything, and the amount of policing they're trying to do to signal that they're good? The responsibility for that is on many of us who are older, who through our desire to "see change" often attacked people cruelly and set the stage for an even more paranoid and vindictive generation. Policing those who have too little influence to effect anything does nothing but erode the soul and a lot of us grew up LOVING to do that shit.
So yeah idk people should be screaming about how shitty the wizard game is and talking to their more oblivious homies about shit but please don't let shit like this slide. Don't act like this is normal or good. If you see kids posting about tools that can be used for mass harassment, tell them that's not cool. Not just for the people who may or may not deserve to get owned on the internet, but for the souls of the kids getting their hands dirty. It's like sending kids to war and expecting them not to come back with PTSD.
So yeah fuck shitty wizard game, but don't become a monster trying to fight monsters.
Edit: Let me put this here because bless me I can.
This isn't about defending people who want to play the shitty wizard game. I'm really sus of anyone who wants to play the stupid thing despite... literally everything. This isn't about protecting big streamers or w/e. The only reason this is even about Shitty Wizard Game is because it's the current thing going on right now.
This is about the self destructive cycle of paranoia that does, in fact, come back around and hurt queer people too. Like god the amount of queer kids or even adults afraid to just publicly like or post anything? Even in the replies to this post? That is a problem. This shitass game doesn't need defending. But we can't destroy each other in the process of trying to tear something down.
That shit floats down stream. It poisons the drinking water to hurt those who may not even notice.
And if you think I'm full of shit and it's worth it here? You know what, fine. I sincerely, SINCERELY get it. If there was a time to go a little overboard, maybe it's now. But remember all this when the situation ain't as clear cut. because this behavior ends up getting turned inward all the time.
I'm glad i kept it in my imagehost.
(Mind, the original text has more to do with tumblr folks weaponizing progressive language to bully each other, but the core thesis of "refocusing to hurt people you have the power to affect" is as universal a take on Discourse as I've ever seen. Please be kinder to each other.)
tl;dr for the below: This kind of thing isn't just bad because it's not nice, but also it's utterly ineffective even if you don't care about being nice.
I must admit I'm less interested in "be excellent to each other" than what is actually likely to be effective. The stuff everyone else posted is true but it's also just not likely to have the desired effect for a number of reasons.
Above a certain size, streamers can't really be communicated with by the community in any meaningful way. A large audience for a live performance depends on the show but can be up to tens of thousands for really massive festival or arena shows; the largest streamers have direct audiences an order of magnitude larger and they can never turn it off. There's no real equivalent to going to the bar with the band and a couple of the roadies and someone you ran into from the local crew who seemed cool; the audience is still there (unless, of course, they actually do go to the bar or whatever and log the fuck off for a while). The only way to communicate anything is a successfully aggressive critical mass which is basically the same as getting booed offstage if the people who booed you offstage also stayed around booing you and throwing shit forever. There's just no effective way to communicate anything if you're not inner circle with folks. This is even worse for non-English first language streamers who are less likely to be clued in to JKR's perfidious bullshit because, as we all know, capitalism.
The effective upshot is that it's only people with smaller audiences who are going to be able to be gotten through to this way, and those are exactly the people who are, a) going to eat the most shit from having the proverbial torches and pitchforks at the door, and b) actually in a position that the audience could communicate with them reasonably and actually give them a real chance to make a good decision. Instead, you just end up with folks being bewildered that they touched a third rail (viz. Pikamee) or smugly crowing about the Fags Trying To Cancel Them Kek.
Philosophically I have zero problem with violence. The western left doesn't use nearly enough, and when we use even the smallest amount we get victories and build support, see 2020. But it needs to have a purpose and be strategic and there's just no avenue here that works better to get a positive outcome than "just talk to people who can be talked to and otherwise take your viewership away from people who won't or can't listen".
