A recent op/ed argues that gamers are uniquely vulnerable to recruitment by white nationalists. Here's why that's not true.
Writing in the opinion pages of the New York Times, Megan Condis wonders if white nationalists are using video games to recruit new initiates into their ideology of hatred.,"make for an ideal recruiting venue. Why? Because they come equipped with an easy-to-understand narrative of the unwelcome “invasion” of “our spaces” that, in the right hands, can readily be expanded beyond the world of gaming.
This is a complicated argument in that I can see both sides of it and it's not exactly the usual"games create monsters/shooters/satanists" piece we so often see after mass shootings. Blaming games for violence is as commonplace as it is absurd. But that's not exactly what Condis is arguing, though as I'll get to in a minute, her argument still fails to convince.
It's an argument with little substance, in other words, however much sense it makes in a certain light. Certainly there is some overlap between gaming and the darker corners of the internet. Then again, there's some overlap between many other hobbies and professions and industries and the darker corners of the internet.Most gamers don't even go on forums or get involved in the latest stupid controversy.
"Our failure to take games seriously provides the companies in the games industry an excuse not to invest the time, effort and money that would be required to moderate their communities properly," she writes. Or maybe our failure to take games seriously means we constantly misunderstand what the gaming community is actually like, or where to draw the line between actual gamers and actual trolls.
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