The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games, Chapter Two: “A Toxic Culture”

Seasonal Book Club is a new recurring feature here at No Escape, wherein I try to get through a book about video games, one chapter at a time. This season’s book club entry is The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst, by Christopher A. Paul.


Something about the gamer as furiously unkempt, downwardly mobile, pathetic, entitled, basement-dwelling white man is deeply terrifying to the average blue checkmark twitter media pundit.

Liz Ryerson, Beyond Gamergate

Hi folks. I don’t have anything interesting to say about this chapter that isn’t said in Liz Ryerson’s article above. Go read her piece instead.

Black lives matter, fuck anyone who says it’s too difficult to find marginalized voices in video game media, and use the ashes of this world to build the new one. We’ll be back with chapter three soon.


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