ESA: US gamers are highly engaged politically - Where do you stand?

I consider myself a socialist-leaning weirdo that doesn't identify with either party and the only appealing candidate for me at the moment is Bernie Sanders. Since he's obviously not going to win, whoever I vote for will almost certainly end up being a third party nobody.

I also find myself increasingly estranged from the Left in recent years for a variety of reasons.

@marokai: Is it because of how nuts the left has got in recent times?

I like to think of myself as independent as I hate political parties for more reasons than I care to explain, but I'm far, far more of a liberal democrat than I am a conservative republican.

Right now I'm voting Sanders. I really can't see myself going with anyone else right now. Don't trust Hilary and don't even get me started on the Republican candidates.

This pretty much sums my position up.

@marokai: Nuts? How so? I've been living abroad for the last five years so excuse my ignorance, but from what I've read from various news sources and shit, the right has back paddled so far into the shitter that it's barely the same party it needs to be.

Hear, hear.

Now to flee this thread before I get in too deep and forget that this is my favorite gaming site.

I consider myself a left leaning independent. I've voted in every election that i could since '04.

None of that matters though because my district hasn't elected anyone but Republicans since the early 1900's.

Yeah, as someone who grew up as a conservative, it's something that I always hated about my own political affiliation. I always found it very hypocritical that the same group so concerned about freedom would then turn around and try to prevent Marilyn Manson from performing in their community, or whatever. And now I'm seeing that sort of hypocrisy from the left, who complained about it from the religious right for years. It's unfortunate.

"This thing is offensive to women and minorities" / "this thing is offensive to God and decent Americans everywhere." Two sides of the same coin--however well-intended--trying to tell you how you should think, and trying to make everyone agree with them.

It's something that I've been increasingly frustrated with lately, but it's nothing new for either group.

"I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs!"

"I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking!"

"Hey wait a minute, there's one guy holding up both puppets!"

"SHUT UP!"

Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control."

@spaceinsomniac: Man, thinking back on controversial games in general just reminds me that Hillary Clinton was one of the many opportunists that leapt on the video game concern trolling bandwagon around a decade ago and now she's very likely to end up President. Bummer.

I consider myself middle, middle class. Republican or Democrats doesn't matter. Both will fuck me.

@marokai: I agree I dont think the "left" has gone off the edge completely but the representatives and leading voices in the party certainly have. Look at the craziness of "do all lives matter or do black lives matter", absolutely fucking bonkers. Whenever I see someone ask Hillary Clinton why she would be a good leader her answer is always "well im a women" bonkers. The right went of the fucking deep end years ago.

I'm mainly surprised to see how much of the GB community isn't from the states.

"ESA found that gamers that take politcal surveys are largely politcally aware"

I consider myself a "moderate" independent. That's because the right went off the deep end 8 years ago, and the left is slowly following suit at the other extreme. I'm still more than likely voting for a Democrat because they're candidates don't tend to espouse the lunacy of the fringes of their voting bloc, unlike the Republican candidates.

Can I just throw out a reminder that ESA are an organisation formed to represent the interests of video-game publishers. They regularly seem to put out surveys and press releases saying how well the videogame industry is doing, how pervasive videogames are among people in all walks of life, how videogames are a force for good, and so on. I'm not arguing that any of that isn't true - just saying that they do have an agenda to push with this sort of thing, so I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

I mean, the press release gives us quotes like “Gamers are engaged, informed and hold strong opinions on critical issues ... in every state across the country, they will influence the course of our nation’s future”, and "They say it’s about the game, this ESA survey tells us a lot about the gamers and how they could potentially reshape the political landscape in 2016". Doesn't it sound a little like ESA is looking for political clout?

I was very confused with the European Space Agency wanted info on gamers.

I'm a monarchist, so none of this matters to me. Elections? Phooey!

I write myself in. I'll never win, but at least I can go to sleep at night knowing I voted for the best candidate.

I'm not American but I am very engaged in politics in my own country (the UK). Possibly to the detriment of my mental well-being because holy shit politics often leads to horrifically depressing outcomes (regardless of the intentions of the policy originally).

I'm not a liberal. I'm a socialist, of a democratic socialist bent (as opposed to a social democrat, communist, etc), and I'd also say I am on the libertarian left, a lot of my political views are inspired by anarchism, though I have a bit of a reformist streak to me just because I'm too cynical to be a full blown anarchist. You might ask how you can be a left-libertarian & I'd simply point out that anarchism was called libertarianism a long time before propertarianism hijacked the term, and if you have more questions I'd recommend the Anarchist FAQ, which devotes a section to propertarianism & so-called anarcho-capitalism.

And yeah, I've voted in every election, local, Scottish, UK & European, that I've been eligible to vote in. I'm also currently a member of a political party I've never voted for in all that time, & that I find it hard to envision me voting for unless I move from where I currently am. Which I guess is kind of funny.

The former group mostly just writes a bunch of think-pieces and "alternative" reviews, some of which are very thoughtful, in-depth and well-sourced (although plenty of them certainly are not), to try to expose or explain concerns held by people from communities who have been unquestionably marginalized by popular media, sometimes deliberately but usually due to mere thoughtlessness. The latter have historically been people who have scapegoated media's violence and/or sex, blaming social ills like school shootings or teen pregnancies on Doom and Britney Spears videos. This is a twofer for them because they get to bash pop culture, which they perceive to be some kind of conspiracy to poison the youth's minds against their elders' traditions, and they also get to redirect policy solutions away from things that scare them, like gun control or sex ed in schools, and towards attacking Hollywood and MTV. This latter group is also the only one of the two for whom you can find many real-life examples of people pushing censorious laws which would ban or restrict access to "offensive" media for the good of the children or traditional American values or some other nonsense reason and frequently being taken seriously by press and politicians.

All you've done is identified two sets of people on opposite sides of the political spectrum with whom you disagree: people on the left whom you perceive to be overly sensitive about making sure everything's all nice and inclusive and respectful to every group under the sun, leading to them being whiny, pushy nags, and people on the right thumping Bibles and wrapping themselves in the flag, insisting that media should be more wholesome and patriotic, and then you've drawn an equals sign. Rather than get sucked into the comfortable "both sides do it" fallacy, you should be considering the logic, evidence and methods of different strains of media criticism on their merits. The only people who think that the guy reflexively saying, "a pox on both your houses" is the most reasonable guy in the room are the people whose assessment of the discussion is just as superficial as his.

LOL ^ Probably that is it.

Ideologically I'm more of a Classical Liberal more than anything, but I don't subscribe to the beliefs of either major political party, and have voted 3rd party from the beginning. I think both the Republicans and Democrats are a bunch of lying scumbags and I refuse to support any of them.

I feel like I'm way out there politically. I guess socialist would be the closest word for what I am. I think we should have a single government that controls the entire planet. 100% free healthcare and education for all. And all the money that currently goes to defense/military should go to the Space program. I guess what I'm saying is that I think Star Trek should be our reality.

I thought surveys weren't allowed in the forums...maybe I misunderstood.

I lean conservative. I did vote for Obama twice! ...but if I could do it over again I probably would have voted for Romney in 2012.

You should notice my reply was in direct response to a PEW poll stating an increasing number of liberals believe free speech should be allowed, unless they find it offensive to minorities, at which point the government should step in and stop it. Or just play the video, and you'll see liberals from 20 years ago talking about how offensive and harmful Night Trap and Mortal Kombat are, and how they have to be stopped.

If your not an independent your doing it wrong, aligning yourself with a party and blindly following their creed is literally what is wrong with the world.

@devil240z: That's closer to a Communist than a Socialist. Star-Trek was a Communist utopia.

I would consider myself a "Progressive," which I would place in the left-center of the political spectrum. This is based on my own personal conceptualization of political identification, which goes like follows:

Liberal----------------------------------------------------------Progressive----------Libertarian---------------------------------------------Conservative

Hipster Commie Pinkos ******************************************** Normal People **************************************************** Asylum Inmates

Basically, I would define Progressives and Libertarians as people who focus on practical solutions to real world problems as opposed to a bunch of wackos who base all their ideas on (a) automatically saying the extreme opposite of whatever their opponents say and (b) reading way too much Marx and/or Ayn Rand.

EDIT: Argh! Formatting in these forums! Save my spaces, dammit! They're there for a reason!

I am very progressive and liberal and I often finding myself agreeing with many of Bernie Sander's positions.

I believe that the biggest issue in American politics is the corrupting influence of uncontrolled political campaign finance. This system is making America into an oligarchy - akin to Russia.

I am somewhat conservative in regards to gun rights and don't even get me started on the Black Lives Matter movement farce.

What is the ESA and are these findings biased?

Also this line:

It turns out that gamers also vote more than the general public. 80% of gamers plan to vote in the 2016 election, compared to 75% of non-gamers. And 79% of gamers voted in the 2012 presidential election, compared to 69% of non-gamers.

Something about this seems off but I don't have the vocabulary to explain why.

@paulmako: word.

I am a political moderate and until very recently considered myself unaffiliated. However the odds of my voting for anyone who would run for national office on the Republican ticket these days are so vanishingly small that I feel like it's dishonest to call myself anything but a Democrat.

I'm Canadian. I vote for the democratic socialist party. I guess I'm a democratic socialist then, or left-libertarian maybe, but what I really am is opposed to totalitarianism in any form. I don't want a planned economy for every reason that the 20th century revealed, I just want a more regulated capitalist system that understands that capitalism and competition by its very nature means someone wins and someone loses. Generally about nineteen people have to lose everything so that one person can get exponentially rich. If you just throw those nineteen people in the garbage, all you're going to get is mayhem and violence. I want safety nets (I've been rescued by a few myself, I grew up eating out of food banks) and I want certain uncontroversial industries to be socialized and guaranteed for all people lucky enough to be citizens of my country. I think privatized health care is as sane as privatized law enforcement, or privatized military. I hated the American bailout because it's corporate socialism; it's profit when you succeed and taxpayer money when you fail, and it goes to whoever cronies up to the government. The notion that companies are too important to allow to fail but people are not important enough for the same treatment is the sociopathy of the business class. The other reason I can't have a planned economy is because there can be no art in a planned economy, there can only be propaganda and decoration. The only thing that expresses itself in a planned economy is the state and people who control it.

Civilly-liberal fiscally-conservative Is what I usually say.

As much as I try to stay the hell away from politics, that's not really possible in today's society. It all frustrates the hell out of me, but gun to my head I'd probably say I'm a Liberal Democrat. They at least suck in the way that all political parties suck, as opposed to being run by literally insane people.

@spaceinsomniac: That Pew survey generically asks about speech that is "offensive to minorities," which is pretty vague, and you'll notice that the people among whom there is greatest support for limiting such offensive speech are minorities themselves. That kinda makes a whole lot of sense because it's really easy to take an absolutist stance in favor of allowing speech that is offensive to minorities when you know you won't be subjected to it. Also, how is 'offensive' defined in this poll? It isn't, really.

An older person's concept of offensive speech might be the 'n' word or a tasteless joke at the expense of gay people or Chinese people or whomever else. A younger person's concept of offensive speech might be anonymous death and rape threats or a flood of unsolicited neo-Nazi memes and other harassment being sent their way because they accidentally said or did something that made channers angry. What kind of authority are we talking about ceding to government in order to limit offensive speech? We don't know because the survey is extremely superficial.

Think about the extent to which, for young people, discourse has increasingly moved online, which is great on the one hand because now anybody-- even people from historically marginalized communities-- can share their experiences without having to seek permission from old establishment gatekeepers, but is terrible on the other hand because it's an equally great tool for reactionary psychos of all kinds to dogpile, harass and intimidate people anonymously and with impunity.There's a lack of accountability to online interactions that has created problems that didn't exist when people had to have their identity out there in order to go out and promote their retrograde, hateful invective. I think the vast majority of people can agree that there is a problem. I'd say it's very reasonable to say that the appropriate solution is not for government to create new laws limiting public speech, even offensive speech targeted at minorities. However, it's also undeniable that existing laws prohibiting terroristic threats, incitement to violence, conspiracy to commit crimes against minorities, and harassment are not currently being enforced in an effective or satisfactory way. So, is it necessarily crazy and censorious to respond approvingly to the generic assertion that government has a role to play in policing this kind of speech that is designed to cause harm?

That survey result only shows a tiny fragment of a much, much bigger picture. It's only useful on its own in that it can be used to support unsophisticated scaremongering about "PC culture," which has always been and continues to be barely more than panicked whining from people who are used to saying and doing whatever they want while being shielded from any real criticism.

The primary principle that I would say guides my political views is the belief that people are far, far, far too confident about their ability to design human society. That plus the belief that for any moral rule to be valid it has to apply to all people equally.

I'm also often quick to stress the point that behind every law stands a gun.

I'm liberal-ish. When it comes to treating people equally and well, I'm liberal. When it comes to a few particular things, I'm more conservative.

I'm a member of the common sense, not being a total ass hole party.

I'm fairly progressive in my views. For instance I don't want to create a Muslim American database and I don't want to deport entire Mexican families (including their US citizen children) because the parents don't have the proper paperwork.

@rongalaxy: preach.

Yes. End of sentence. I know you tried really hard here to dress your big long post up, but that doesn't disguise what you're actually asking, which is "Do you think the government should police what people say?", and frankly it's ridiculous. I don't care if "Ohhh it's offensive and attacks minorities and shouldn't be said!", it's an extremely dangerous slope. Hell, I'm on the LGBT scale myself, and I still don't think it should be illegal to say homophobic slurs, or that the government should police speech of that nature. If anything, having people be allowed to say that kinda stuff just lets you single out the jerks that much quicker.

Used to consider myself a liberal, but I've been drifting (pushed would probably be more accurate) further and further to the right in recent years.

@thebadyetiman: The "slippery slope" argument is generally considered to be a textbook fallacy. You need to actually explain why the relatively benign thing you're arguing against will lead to harmful consequences and what those consequences would be. Also, not really loving the slimeball tactic of 'translating' my words into the super-scary, nefarious thing I supposedly really mean. What do you think about robustly enforcing existing laws against threats, conspiracy, harassment and other non-protected speech in the online space, as opposed to allowing the current Wild West-ness of online communication to continue?

I'm pretty center with a slight conservative lean, but none of the candidates seem appealing in the least bit, so I plan on writing one in.

John Cena, the dark horse candidate that no one can see coming.

I like to think I'm moderate, but that said I probably lean conservative. I don't align with any political party because I have this crazy idea that I should vote for the person I think will do a better job, not the person who has a "D" or an "R" by their name. Of course, by "do a better job", I mean "who is going to screw up less."