I am falling behind in the times:
like most elders I didn't know or care a lot about Gamergate, where the woke tried to reform the game industry, the incels fought back on line and the left exaggerated their trolling as being an extremist right wing conspiracy instead of guys just wanting their games to continue to be fun and who liked ridiculing the gaming equivalent to nagging girlfriends aka Karens.
To me, gaming seemed to be just another shoot em out thing like wrestling or John Wick, where the good guys fought the bad guys but since gamergate overlapped with other trends trying to destroy free speech it caught my attention.
Essentially we saw censorship: done by cyberbullying of those whose opinions are not politically correct. But it went beyond mean tweets: by libeling those who disagree with them they marginalized their opinions, and this influenced the industry and led to the woke Karens taking over the adventure/superhero stories to use them as propaganda instead of entertainment. Of course, it also led to the customers not using the product anymore, and financial problems for the gaming (and later comicbook and film industry) but the woke Karens didn't worry about such things.
So Gamergate and sad puppies in sci fi, was a precursor to the destruction of Hollywood franchises, e.g. the destruction of Star wars etc by woke... and a similar fight could be seen after covid hit, and we saw not the Karens but the government censoring qualified medical data on covid by libeling true experts as anti vax crazies (something that continues to this day).
so how to fight back? Humor and satire.
Trolling with memes is a big way to fight back, and the left wing hysteria of the experts to being trolled is laughable.
But the censorship was worse when it came to science: some prominent physicians not only were censored but punished.
And since the usual methods of discussing things was being censored, a lot of folks drifted to alternative sites: true, some are crazy but some were just saying things that some people in government didn't want to be said.
But with Trumpieboy taking over, the hope is that the push back will include free speech, and that means that mature types will be able to take over the culture wars before the crazies do.
This freedom of speech means letting us discuss medical illnesses and treatment. You know, we used to do this in our hospitals, where we had meetings discussing and analyzing journal articles. These published articles were often biased or laughable, but back then, aside from a letter to the editor, which was slow and clumsy, we had no way to push back against what was being published.
Now we can discuss our questions and tweet our objections without being censored.
A lot of the MSM/government monopoly was destroyed not just by crazies but by pushback: thanks to podcasts and the twitter files.
And this is good.
the destruction of the woke censorship complex goes beyond medicine, and goes beyond politics, but into culture itself.
Because I have worked in various cultures both in the USA and overseas, I have an interest in mythology and how mythology and psychology impacts culture (and religion). Jordan Peterson has a lot of lectures about this, People forget that he started on the internet by posting to discussion boards answering questions for boys, and saw the need to teach boys to be mature men.
But then something unexpected happened: Trumpieboy won, and suddenly things changed.
The culture wars, which appeared to be lost on many levels, has seen a revival of traditional ways of looking at things.
Fast forward to Kekius maximus, an icon that Elon Musk is using on Twitter/X.
I know Kek from the Q conspiracy pages, and Maximus is a bow to the Gladiator I character played by Russel Crowe.
But not being into gaming, I was not aware that this meme had many other connotations.
The catchphrase "Kekius Maximus," used in a way similar to "lol" to react to something funny, is a portmanteau of "kek" and an Ancient Roman name such as Flavius Maximus.
"Kek" originated as a translation of the acronym "lol" when written by members of the Horde faction and viewed by Alliance members in World of Warcraft and became a popular alternative to "lol" in the late 2000s and early 2010s, primarily on 4chan.
Kekius Maximus likely references Maximus Decimus Meridius, the main character in Ridley Scott's film Gladiator, and has been associated with imagery of gladiators and soldiers of Ancient Rome for many years. Additionally, "Kekius" translates to "the greatest" or "largest", with the phrase therefore literally translating to "the greatest kek" (while "great kek" is itself a common expression).
more details at link.
But it also has to do with a game that is now being released: Path of Exile 2.
I saw a discussion of these games on a Joe Rogan podcast that mentioned these games are ways to relax the mind for geeks.
These multi layer games are not just shoot em ups, but include strategy and planning that overlap into war gaming, which is a way to teach people to think strategically.
Hmm... sounds interesting.
Wonder if they are using this to teach medical students to think? thirty Years ago, we did have a primitives game to teach us about CPR, and apparently there are still games being used to teach thinking.
So if nothing else, Elon Musk's using Kekius Maximus is not just a troll, but a heads up to we old folks that this gaming subculture exists and like movies and books can be used for good or bad ends.
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