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The funny thing about Anita Sarkeesian is I don’t think I’ve ever met a 100% bonafide fan of her work. Even among my social circles, the members of which lean so far left they can be mistaken for Heather Mills in poor lighting conditions, the general response to her videos has been a resounding “eh.” I’m pretty lukewarm on her as a critic, too. The earlier videos were a bit milquetoast and restrained (the inherent goofiness of the damsel has been comic fodder for literally decades) while the latter episodes are marred by some very odd readings of certain games. I dig that the idea of the show is to strip these narrative decisions of their narrative context to look at the storytelling skeleton underneath, but occasionally I find myself wondering if we’ve been playing the same game.
But that doesn’t really matter in the long run, because Starship Sarkeesian is fueled by hate. It was the outpouring of seemingly genuine hate that made Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency newsworthy, and it’s the hate that’s kept her and the show relevant. It’s hate that’s sent her all the way to the United Nations and I strongly suspect that hate will be the reason I wake up one day to find out she’s become God-Emperor of the Universe and that spice prices are going up by $20 a barrel.
I guess the point is that for all our fear and condemnation of “hate mobs,” they’re actually not that effective. The bipartisan nature of modern politics means you’re really just creating a hero for the opposite side. I would totally elaborate on this, but my deadline was twenty minutes ago.
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