As I recall the word you elided there is "anti-Semite", but "fascist" would work just as well. Anti-Semites are the oldest Q-Anon-ish conspiracy-mongers, and the modern versions frequently dip into anti-Semitism, and if you read the Italian fascist philosophers who backed Mussolini, they're very clear that they want to push reasoned debate _out_ of politics, in favor of a pure expression of will -- the strong man embodying a primal scream from the collective id of the populous (who by definition exclude various "human vermin" living among them). They hold in contempt the intellectuals who take ideas seriously, who want to reason together, rather than simply "playing to win". They are _entirely_ devoted to bullshitting, in the Harry Frankfurt philosophical sense.
I think this behaviour is basically the natural outcome of the 'DGAF' tic that preceded the 10-years or so before it. Remember how often characters/people were not the 'f--k giving type'? 'running out of f--ks to give' and so on, jadedness was the 'in' thing for some reason. It was lonely for most people who felt 'but I like caring about, fixing things, I like when things work and happen, I don't like when things break. We can create new things without making a mess!'. Jaded self-awareness literally makes it hard to care about the product itself, not unlike interviewing someone for a job only to have them say 'wahtevah!' to all the questions. The world is predicated on people who believe, try, fail, but try again! Thank you for this article.
"When I sign up to go to the mystical world of Athia, ruled by four sorcerous Tantas and cursed by mysterious blight... I'm here for the artifice! I'm on board for ominious rhyming god-queens, and I'm not sure why Frey—for whom this is not artifice, and instead is her life, is not on board for it."
As I recall the word you elided there is "anti-Semite", but "fascist" would work just as well. Anti-Semites are the oldest Q-Anon-ish conspiracy-mongers, and the modern versions frequently dip into anti-Semitism, and if you read the Italian fascist philosophers who backed Mussolini, they're very clear that they want to push reasoned debate _out_ of politics, in favor of a pure expression of will -- the strong man embodying a primal scream from the collective id of the populous (who by definition exclude various "human vermin" living among them). They hold in contempt the intellectuals who take ideas seriously, who want to reason together, rather than simply "playing to win". They are _entirely_ devoted to bullshitting, in the Harry Frankfurt philosophical sense.
I think this behaviour is basically the natural outcome of the 'DGAF' tic that preceded the 10-years or so before it. Remember how often characters/people were not the 'f--k giving type'? 'running out of f--ks to give' and so on, jadedness was the 'in' thing for some reason. It was lonely for most people who felt 'but I like caring about, fixing things, I like when things work and happen, I don't like when things break. We can create new things without making a mess!'. Jaded self-awareness literally makes it hard to care about the product itself, not unlike interviewing someone for a job only to have them say 'wahtevah!' to all the questions. The world is predicated on people who believe, try, fail, but try again! Thank you for this article.
Your opening example reminded me of a similar set of comments by Austin Walker talking about Forspoken:
https://www.clockworkworlds.com/post-cringe/
"When I sign up to go to the mystical world of Athia, ruled by four sorcerous Tantas and cursed by mysterious blight... I'm here for the artifice! I'm on board for ominious rhyming god-queens, and I'm not sure why Frey—for whom this is not artifice, and instead is her life, is not on board for it."