The Irony Of Entitlement To Spaces

Two days ago I wrote something about the Games Journalism kerfuffle going on, shooting mostly from the lip about the way Zoe Quinn’s sex life and Patricia Hernandez reviewing the games of friends was some sort of collusion/corruption scandal that merited enormous outcry, protracted campaigns, and the changing of policies in a destructive fashion. I wasn’t really expecting much of it – it was a blog post to vent some feelings, a spit swear into the wind.

I was very surprised when my second attempt to tweet about it, and have it considered – mostly by my friends – lead to an explosion of attention. Literally hundreds of people have read that one, short little post, which is kind of like a big angry tweet. More interesting than that, to me, is that the attention was focused like a laser on that – very, very few people stuck around and checked out any other thing, not even my videogame reviews.

I wish I’d anticipated that and been in a position to better expand upon it, with links to the scale of outrage from the time, because man, the comments I’ve had since then have been funny.

I take a page from Matt Lees about his comments, which is, I don’t feel a particular need to foster them. I’m not totally in his direction on this – I do, after all, allow comments on my blog but they’re not a vital function of it and if you really want to talk to me about it, I’m very active on twitter. There aren’t enough people who can comment on blog posts to really make it worth being very involved. Sometimes a comment will earn a response, sometimes it’ll make me think – but broadly speaking, comments don’t go up ‘by default.’ They go up when I like them.

What’s fascinating to me then, is the quality of the comments I’ve recently thrown in the trash.

“I cared about those things!” protested one, adamant about his indie credentials. You did? You treated it more or less the same way you did this? Right? Then fuck off, I’m not talking to you (and your tizzied state makes me doubt you).

“We make fun of Dorito Pope all the time!” Sure, but did you try and get the guy fired for things that don’t exist? No? Okay, then fuck off.

The true prize, though, is the dickhead who decided to tell me to grow up and ‘take my whining like a little girl someplace else.’

He ventured this opinion on my blog.

My space.

Which he came into.

And then left without any impact.

This is the gamer entitlement that we talk about, folks. The attitude that you, by default, can tell other people to leave the space you’re currently in. The idea that all spaces around you are, in some way, yours to control and yours to judge. It isn’t. This is my little blog with my little writing and my little corner of the web. There aren’t ads, there’s no promotion – this is my blog, which you came to because you clicked my tweet that talked about my opinion.

And you want to tell me to leave?

“O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!” said Voltaire, and it seems it is so.