• barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    12 days ago

    First off, I get that it’s a joke, but somebody playing Wolfenstein on “gigachad big penis difficulty” is ime going to be way less problematic than somebody who plays an online FPS like CS or CoD. These days the main source of difficulty discourse is the Soulslike genre, and those don’t have difficulty selectors at all.

    Second, and almost entirely unrelated, I always find it interesting to see this kind of backlash to the nerd-jock dynamic of the internet (yes this is simplified but it’s about a meme so whatever). Something about resentment toward whoever’s viewed as being on top of the hierarchy of the “world”, whether that be real or internet, perhaps.

    • Originally, nerds are demeaned IRL while jocks are valorized
    • Online becomes the domain of the nerds, nerds demean jocks and valorize their own hobbies
    • Online becomes increasingly mainstream and we see the beginning of a flip where the nerds, who have been elevated on the internet up to this point, are now occasionally demeaned while jocks are occasionally valorized

    Kinda similar to the modern rebuke of “reddit atheism” followed by the acceptance of religious beliefs.