But we can see an interesting trend: as the number of epidemics tails off, so – generally – do the number of major moral panics. We have the red scare, sure, and prohibition and the devil’s music, and filthy literature – but, generally speaking as the number of epidemics tapers off, the moral panics become fewer and slightly more grounded.
Read MoreOccasionally, we discuss genre, and largely this is limited to film and literature, but there’s a particular problem with looking at the use of genre in a ludic context. In short: video games handle genre in a decidedly weird fashion, and it’s worth commenting upon.
Read MoreWhat I have come to understand is that transience – that is, the state of being transient – is a problem. For the past decade or so, I have been transient to one degree or another. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, performing as I do a certain middle-class identity in my dress, speech, and profession, but that is what I am. This is what it means to be part of the so-called “precariat”.
Read MoreUtopia is a funny thing, and I don’t know about anyone else, but whenever I hear the word “utopia” I immediately feel my hackles rise: not because I don’t want the world to get better, but because it always seems to me that it’s used to mean its inverse
Read MoreCall it the participation trophy problem, after those little totems of insecurity that older people like to bring up – forgetting that they’re the ones who spent money on those trophies and no one my age cares about any of the participation trophies they received: because if everyone got one, that means that they don’t matter. We don’t feel that we earned them, we feel that none of them actually signify anything, and so praise is fake.
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