My Hobbies
This one has been rattling around in my brain for quite some time. I've been putting off writing this piece for quite some time, but I don't think I can any more. I've been bothered for a while by the creeping invasion into my hobbies by armies of skanks.
I can see the strange looks right now. Over the Internet. Yup.
Let me explain. Would anyone be shocked if I said I was interested in things like electronics, computers, video games, anime and Star Trek? The intellectual enjoyment I get from these things is what keeps me interested in them. Electronics and computers are new and exciting, with new discoveries being made every day. Video games provide an interesting challenge of hand-eye co-ordination, and are often set in imaginative far-off worlds. Anime (or Japanimation for those who haven't heard the term before) regularly explore concepts and ideas that are simply too extreme or intellectual for the average Disney-fed American audience. Star Trek, the proverbial "Wagon Train To The Stars", set the standard in television science fiction for nearly 25 years until the franchise was milked dry after Gene Rodenberry's death. I love these things because they have pushed the frontiers of human thought and in some small way, have enabled me to feel like a part of it all.
So why in God's name do I see scantily clad women on the cover of every electronics magazine now? Why are there now so many video games about practically naked battle-chicks that have little to no gameplay merit? If the magazine sucks, putting some wannabe-supermodel on the front isn't going to improve readership. It might temporarily boost sales, but if you want to actually keep readers, it's the content that matters. Joe Sixpack sure isn't going to pick up the magazine just because there's a cute girl on the front; he can get Ralph or FMS for a much more satisfying "read" if he wants to look at girls. The same goes for your latest battle-maiden fantasy game. I can only imagine the discussion at the development studio going something like this:
Minion: "Well, the game's nearly finished, and we've discovered it just isn't fun to play."
Boss: "Really? Hmmm, well in that case, make the main character female, and make sure she's wearing something slutty."
Minion: "Genius! We'll get right on it!"
Please. You're insulting my intelligence. I don't play video games because I'm starved for female attention. I play them because I enjoy them. The female distaste for such geeky pursuits is a side effect that frankly, I couldn't give a damn about. I'm not going to give up the things I enjoy because some defective American woman's lip curls into a sneer at my choice of entertainment. The last straw came for me when I walked out of the newest Star Trek movie. I knew it was going to be bad, but morbid curiousity made me go and see it. They murdered everything about that fictional universe that was authentically Star Trek, but that's really beside the point. A gaggle of teenage girls jostled past me as I was leaving the theatre, and they were so damn loud that I had no choice but to listen in on their empty-headed prattling.
"Spock was so hot!"
"No way Janelle, Kirk was hotter."
"Spock's such an emo. He's all dark and shit."
"I don't know why they didn't just cut all that crap about why the face dude was mad at Spock. Who cares about that?"
I think I must have thrown up in my mouth a little bit as they surged onwards, oblivious to what they had just seen. Between the advertisements targetting teenage girls as some kind of untapped audience for new Star Trek flicks, the endless promotion of "girl gamers" as the new wave in gaming, the de-evolution of Anime from ground-breaking science fiction and cyberpunk to an endless succession of magical girl dramas and the chanting of feminists that science and logic are anti-woman (no seriously, look it up), I'm pretty much ready to take up cave painting as a hobby and ditch all the rest. We all know what happens once something becomes fashionable. Fashion is something that caters almost exclusively to women, and it usually leaves the root culture it took inspiration from a hollowed-out shell of its former self. The founders and original members of the movement head for the hills and rarely come out of hiding after that, scared that their hallowed pursuits will become yet more fodder for the unthinking masses (by which I mean mostly women to whom being "with it" matters).
Geek chic is definitely "in" now, but I'd say we're only at the beginning of this debacle. Batten down the hatches boys, because it's going to get a lot rougher. The army of skanks is on the march.
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"Only take advice from those who've done it better than you." -- Chrisvet
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