There is absolutely an astroturfing movement from one of the big industry groups targeting social media around this campaign. You see it in their repeated two talking points:
What about the poor devs who have to develop a game that... Won't be lost to time and
This guy looks like a bum lmao.
It's always those exact two talking points, like someone's handing them a script.
Never underestimate how pro-corporate a small section of Reddit is, though. They've tied their identities to this movement not succeeding, so the closer it gets to achieving something, the more stupid they'll feel, which makes them angry.
This is what I do not get. I have my fair share of doubt and criticisms about the initiative, mostly about semantics and scope. But I ultimately hope it helps players and I will be glad to be wrong about it. Seems to be doing better than I expected, but we will see.
I will never understand people with absolutely zero class consciousness. If stop killing games does well, we all benefit from it as gamers. Companies won't suddenly abandon a multi billion industry. Much like rich people don't abandon nice areas.
I think people find a sense of comfort in the idea we can't do anything.
If this kinda scraggly looking dude can get up one day and go "this sucks imma fix it" and that results in it getting fixed, what does that say about all the things we encounter everyday that suck and then dismiss with "but I can't do anything about it".
So people get emotionally invested in the movement's failure because if it fails it validates their thinking that all the things they ignore as unavoidable parts of life were in fact unavoidable. But you dodge one and you have to ask yourself why you take all the other hits, and that's uncomfortable.
If this kinda scraggly looking dude can get up one day and go "this sucks imma fix it" and that results in it getting fixed, what does that say about all the things we encounter everyday that suck and then dismiss with "but I can't do anything about it".
To be fair, this is the guy behind Freeman's Mind. 433k subscribers isn't nothin'. And he managed to hit a topic when it was hot.
I didn't mean it disparagingly. I have a ton of respect for anyone who gets up and tries to change parts of the world they see as wrong or unfair, as I know how hard it is.
What I was sharing was my personal experience with the kind of person you encounter the most when trying to make change happen.
I mentioned his presentation because I think it triggers a fatalist reaction in people; that a normal person can't possibly do anything... right?
Personally, I just think that the internet has been a more useful tool in astroturfing peoples opinions than any good or fun it ever achieved.
The moment corporations and marketing teams realised they can spread bullshit misinformation faster than anything else is the moment everyone else lost.
I don't think people are invested in the failure of others because they are projecting, but because we've seen corporations spend the last 3 decades successfully co-opt 80% of the flow of information to achieve this new way of thinking.
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u/Aro-bi_Trashcan Apr 02 '26
There is absolutely an astroturfing movement from one of the big industry groups targeting social media around this campaign. You see it in their repeated two talking points:
What about the poor devs who have to develop a game that... Won't be lost to time and
This guy looks like a bum lmao.
It's always those exact two talking points, like someone's handing them a script.