Posted on 03/24/2018 6:49:02 AM PDT by davikkm
A professor at Seattle University argues in a new book that video games promote “toxic meritocracy” or the expectation that the most skilled, hardest working player should win. Christopher Paul, chair of the department of communication at Seattle University is the author of a new book titled The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst. Paul has a bone to pick with video game culture. Why? Because video games often promote the notion most prepared or most skilled player should win.
“Games are based on leveling up and getting stronger,” Paul said in an interview with Campus Reform. “We expect the most skilled, hardest working player to win. The typical narrative in a game is a rags to riches story where the player propels the character into a key role and perhaps even attains god-like status.”
“All those things shape our expectations and focus players on individuals, rather than the collective,” Paul added. “As actualized meritocracies, video games quickly become really toxic spaces where players are focused on individual glory, rather than creating positive spaces for interaction.”
A description of Paul’s book from the University of Minnesota Press reveals that the book will also cover how “video game’s focus on meritocracy” leads to “deep-bred misogyny” and an “endemic malice of abusive player communities.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
A very simple and necessary extension of the idiotic professor’s own argument is that there is no merit to his claim, and to acknowledge his claim in any way implies a meritocratic system.
He should also immediately resign and let someone with no higher education take his spot as a professor, since by holding the position he de facto espouses a meritocratic system.
He should also then be challenging the administration to abolish all interviews, and start staffing the University through a lotto system that includes every person in the world.
Then he should immediately ask for doctor assisted suicide, since nothing matters anyway.
Sounds like this “prof” is a quota prof.
And he’s now feeling guilty about the fact that in a merit based system, he’s down there at the Dorkbama level.
All of this babble reminds me of Robert Downey Jr.'s character in Back to School: “Violent ground-acquisition games such as football are in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.”
Perhaps the credentialed professor should step aside and let someone with an associate’s degree take his place. Just to be fair.
Toxic Meritocracy the battle cry of losers.
Those that can, Do
those that can’t, teach
The professor’s spelling is incorrect. The correct spelling should be:
“Promotes toxic mediocrity”. There. Now it’s correct.
The comments on Breitbart are great.
The professor is railing against survival of the fittest.
It's an immutable law of nature.
Those with the most skill should win?! I’ve never heard of such a thing - oh, except for the whole world of sports and business and debate and....
“Positive spaces for interaction”
What does that mean?
be a winner....... slay the professor
chair of the department
************
Presumably the professor rose to this position through some sort of merit based factors, which also determine the salary range of the position. Following his own “logic” and beliefs he should advocate for the random appointment of people to serve as the department chair. And pay them using a compensation system based on the average wage level in the state, not one based on the present academic meritocracy that governs his own paycheck.
The hypocrisy of liberals is breathtaking.
Toxic people hate the merit that they do not have.
Challenge to prof: Sink a big bunch of your own money into a video game where skill-building matters not, where results are just evenly divided among players. See how popular it is among your indoctrinated youts. Dare ya!
I propose that Meritocracy is productive while the Marxism he preaches is inherently destructive.
I suggest he test this theory by actually getting a productive job in the real world, instead of a deductive job in the halls of academy.
A Communist professor is upset a video game promotes self-reliance.
[“Positive spaces for interaction”
What does that mean?]
Playpens.
Those that can, Do
those that can’t, teach
***************
Teachers can’t endure seeing their ivory tower theories demolished by the competitive realities in the workplace.
Most teachers are talkers, not doers.
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