You probably don’t know this yet, but you are an idiot. Not just your average generic brand idiot, but the worst kind of idiot -- the intolerant kind. The Internet media is never shy about letting you know this too, seeing how the canvas approach in tackling social issues these days seems to be just this: “Since everyone is so imprudent and intolerant, we the publication, as the sole warriors of social justice in a land blighted by bigotry and hatred, have taken it upon ourselves to educate its unwashed masses.”
Dealing with the inherent problems related to topics such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and the like, requires a modicum of tact -- a quality that is sadly starting to lose its relevance with each passing day -- and website headlines like “LGBTI characters in games are important. And here’s why” they do more harm than good since they alienate a good chunk of the article’s/website’s potential audience, not just by highlighting a complete non-issue such as this in a bold, rainbow-coloured coat of paint, but more so because they utterly fail to understand that there are members in the audience who are far from the banjo strummin’, sister humpin’ hicks who think “rationality” is something “cook’d up bah dem commies fruhm Russha” that the writer is clearly assuming everyone to be.
Not only is this sort of attitude a blatant insult to the reader’s intellect and good judgment, but it does absolutely nothing to bring any sort of public sensitivity towards issues that desperately warrant it.
However, that is not to say that there aren’t horrible people, and that the Internet is all peaches and cream when it comes to exhibiting simple human decency. One quick glance at YouTube comments is enough to remind you of the sheer amount of vitriol pumping through the veins of some folk, regarding any and all topic.
But for every instance of hate-speech being excreted over stuff like Feminist Frequency and GaymerX, at least ten or more genuinely rational minds are left with a severely sour taste in their mouths, entirely disillusioned by the high-handed condescension of the run-of-the-mill “plea for social justice” article published in websites such as The Verge or any of the Gawker Media affiliates.
Nothing commands people’s attentions more than trouble -- a fact which I assume most of us are quite familiar with, being Bangladeshis and all -- and it takes a despicably savvy mind to try and capitalise on that. And that is exactly what the Internet has devolved to nowadays.
Just thinking about the ad revenue that websites such as Jezebel, Kotaku, and Polygon managed to accrue during the whole GamerGate brouhaha last year, through the use of marquee-worthy headlines like “#Gamergate Trolls Aren’t Ethics Crusaders; They’re a Hate Group,” makes my head spin and my stomach churn.
What was once called “explanatory journalism” has now mutated into agendas being pushed, the most disgusting of which would be the agenda of grabbing people’s attention and profiting off of it, all the while leaving the audience in a noxious cloud of hostility, exasperation, and confusion. “Noble causes, ignoble means” would be a great way to explain what the writers and websites cut from this same cloth are doing -- that is, if their causes were indeed completely noble.
Sensationalism and click-baitery are common practices in an age where attention spans are at an all-time low and millions of knees jerk at the drop of a hat, but there is a stark difference between fattening up your website’s analytics graph and irresponsible smugness.