Gamers Rise Up Analysis
The time has come, all true gamers rise up!
Gamers Rise Up has been a phrase in the memetic lexicon for years, but it just came to fruition in the past month with the GameStop squeeze. Let’s look at some of the memes that manifested this outpouring of internet magic.
We’ll examine Gamers Rise Up, the gamer-joker, and old gamestop memes, and what they can tell us about current events, the internet, and the human mind itself.
The Gamer-Joker
The symbolism of the Joker is of the utmost importance if you want to understand the psychology of Gamer memes. The Joker is the antithesis of Batman. Batman is firm, moral, and reasonable, the Joker is mercurial, immoral, and insane. This dichotomy is that present between Wojak and Pepe. Which is to say, Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian energies.
The Joker is a very clear form of Dionysus, just take his prominent colors, the purple of wine, and the green of nature. He is a Dionysian satyr, a Green Man.
Dionysus is the God of Intoxication, and what is the Joker associated with? Gang Weed and Gang Alcohol. The very phrase emanates Dionysian vibes, the gang, the collective mob, what Nietzsche deemed the seat of Bacchus. And the Intoxicant, the spirit that invokes the Great Spirit.
What’s important to keep in mind with this sort of symbolic chain of Dionysus-Anon-Pepe-Joker, is that they signify the outpouring of energies repressed by civilization Thus the antipathy between society and the gamer. So keep in mind that we live in a society, as we’ll be getting to that in a second.
GameStop
GameStop has been a presence in memes long before the stock market squeeze. Back in 2007, 4chan users were calling their local gamestop to preorder BattleToads, the SNES game. This became a popular memetic prank, expanding beyond gamestop and 4chan, to bothering various establishments about battletoads.
This meme is hyperstitionally linked to the GameStop squeeze, this is to say, a meme prank related to gamestop that involved heckling establishments using video games, would make itself manifest again, only the gamestop stock took on the role of battletoads, and hedgefunds were the various establishments the gamers were heckling.
Gamers Rise Up
This transition is significant. The “establishment” for gamers used to be stores at the mall. Today it is hedgefunds with billions. How did this occur? Why did the Gamer Rise Up?
The gamer was initially a pleasant child, kept to himself, in a pleasant little world, content to play their games, troll the web, and lust for gamer girls. An insular way of life. It wasn’t until 2014, and the GamerGate event that the Gamer would be thrust from his cocoon of pleasure, and into a radicalized political landscape.
The gamergate fiasco was sort of the inverse initiation into adulthood, where the gamer, caught in the midst of an older political battle became memetically radicalized. GamerGate, to summarize quickly, was video game journalists sleeping with devs and rating their games well. Par for the course. The trouble is the backlash against these allegations were demonized as misogynistic.
For the gamers, having been raised online, natural born trolls, this was not an allegation but an invitation.
The Gamer meme became a hyper-hateful yet oppressed victim form.
The energy of their internal online memes was now ready to make itself manifest in the world beyond.
This narrative is not new, but in fact is the archetypal Dionysian journey.
Dionysus is born a son of Zeus and the human Semele. When she explains her pregnancy this way she is mocked and subsequently killed by Zeus’ wife Hera. Dionysus’ family refuse to accept his divinity. After having amassed a cult of worshippers, he returns to his home, drives the women mad, and has them murder his royal cousins.
An African proverb tells this story in a single line:
“A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”
The Gamer, denied his self perceived divinity, strikes out against all who he feels oppressed by. Namely the society in which we live, women, minorities, reality, his parents,
You get the point. The list is endless. And while the meme is generally ironic, it is playing with a very real type of young person.
In short, the political radicalization of gamers and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
When Dionysus was but a babe, cared for by the Old Satyr Silenus, all was well. But God, when he got a taste for blood, he exercised his wickedness upon all who opposed him.
The shift from The Dark Knight’s Joker as an impersonal agent of chaos, into the 2019 Joker as a very clear figure transformed by parental, economic, and social traumas, one who even mentions the “we live in a society” meme, is a clear illustration of the power of the Gamer Meme.
To end this analysis, I will give a bit of my reading of these dynamics. The Gamer, as he stood, was impotent. The typical racism and misogyny are not deep felt hatreds, but merely an aesthetic, a very powerful means of opposing the prevailing culture they felt wronged by. When the political right read this as a victory over the youth, they quickly found young disenfranchised people *have no real beliefs*. Just a rebellious spirit. There is no political alignment of todays energetic youth, and as different forces, establishment media, and alternative radicals fight to politicize and moralize the outbursts of chaotic youth, it will be up to the kids to refuse these ideological shackles.
Therefore, shed the skins of ironic hatred, embrace a love of life and chaos, not a hatred of order.
Memes are the weapons with which new psychic wars are being fought. So we must remember, Memes Matter.