Gaming

It's so frustrating to see so many comments doing exactly what the post is pointing out, either deriding games as a medium, or "gamers" as some monolithic group of disaffected young men.

Games are a medium, same as books, movies, or tv. They can convey any message, and yes, many games do have Progressive (or even Leftist, see Disco Elysium) themes. But unlike TV, books, and movies, where there is a constant stream of political interaction from both Left and Right wings' political apparatuses, there aren't really a lot of Leftist political entities attempting to reach young men via videogames.

Name one Left-wing gaming influencer apart from Hasanbi (who it should be pointed out, many Democrats tend to hate on). I can list off at least 3 different right-wing ones off the top of my head (JonTron, Asmongold, Dr Disrespect), and I don't inhabit those spaces, so I'm only going off the biggest names. And that's not even beginning to get into the gaming-adjacent Rightwing influencers who those gaming influencers direct their fans to.

It's a pipeline, and we don't have one on the Left.

I remember the first time AOC played Among Us, and it was a huge deal for us on the Left, because it was possibly the very first time we'd seen a Democratic politician actually engage with games publicly.

Gaming is literally the largest entertainment medium now by a large margin (yes, larger than movies and tv), but we don't see politicians putting out lists of games to play like they do books or movies. Instead, most times we see an article about a Democratic politician somewhere like Kotaku, it's often because they're trying to blame video games for something.

So instead we have largely ceded the gaming sphere (not the games themselves, but the areas of discussion around gaming) to the Right. They pull in disaffected young men, tell them women and 'wokies' are the reason for their problems, and then hand them off to overtly political folks who transform that general disaffection into right-wing political capital.