Discussion Chuds, what can we do about them?

[Le Pertti]

So our passion for gaming has been infected by those ever negative and grifting chuds and it makes so many spaces of our hobby quite unbearable. But what can we actually do about it? Like how do we stop someone going down that brain rot path?

Also what is a Chud?

▸ noun: (chiefly US, Internet slang, usually derogatory) A person, usually male, who holds sociopolitical views seen as reactionary; strong connotations of being an incel with low emotional intelligence.

So how does it manifest in gaming, mostly it is about complaining about "woke", "DEI' "Sweet baby inc". Essentially they see any inclusion of anything other than straight white poeple in games as "forced political values". So ff anyone mentions those words unironically then they are on the path of becoming a chud.

Thankfully here on MC we dont have too much of a problem with that, but it does come up. But yeah anywhere else on the internet and they are under every stone, just waiting to comment.

 

[「Echo」]

Telling people what to do and feel just radicalizes them further and pisses them off so they hate your side even more. See: People getting fed up with "politically correct" culture. Folks just get tired of being told what to say and do. Era is especially bad for this because they ban/dogpile people left and right instead of trying to engage and level with anyone who disagrees. Which just forces them to seek shelter in communities where their opinions and biases will be reinforced instead of changed naturally via osmosis or through discussion.

As a young boy in the 90's and early 2K I'd say I was pretty edgy and "chuddish" on many issues, but now I'm left on every issue except maybe immigration where I'm more centrist. That change happened naturally as I aged just by hanging out in communities like this one and maturing. But the internet left is so quick to label, denounce, high horse, and infight you can have just one "fault" and be labeled a "fascist" or "chud" instantly. It happened to me on this very forum.

Not sure anything reasonable can be done about it at scale. Poor ideas will be drowned out in the marketplace of free ideas, and the same is true for games. A good game will sell well despite DEI complainers just by being a good game. How many DEI complainers do you think skipped Elden Ring because of the body type A/B thing? For all the bluster, they still won't skip a genuinely good game and for that reason I think their effective influence is actually greatly overstated.

Folks just need to wrestle with some inconvenient truths. Lefties should be asking what's leading to the rise and addressing those issues instead of going after individuals. "Chuds" will naturally die out when people stop being annoying twats about everything and the issues causing these people to feel disillusioned are addressed in society.

Leftist ideology and a general softening on inclusiveness would be a lot more palatable to the masses if it wasn't so often associated with preachy pricks. Again, an inconvenient truth for many but still, it's a hard pill many are gonna have to swallow. When I encounter people who are rough around the edges so to speak I just talk to them normally and ideological exchange can follow, slowly.

Many leftist policies and ideologies are actually super likable for a majority of people. You just have to not sound like a demeaning, holier than thou asshole when you talk about it. You also have to accept that maybe you can't mold every single ideological facet of a person. The left is awful for this, you can agree on like 90% of things but that last 10% is enough to just wholesale write people off?

Losing strategy. Take what you can get and work with it.

 

[Nebulys]

The chuds are actually quite widely disliked and when their political aims are met, people generally hate those too (see: 2025).

The problem is the right/chuds are willing to:

• lie
• give easy answers
• target specific grievances with lies and easy answers

In gaming specifically, when someone is dissatisfied with their hobby because prices are going up, nickel and diming DLC/microtransactions, and games generally feeling less ambitious and more catering to wealthy preening liberal nerds who want pretty graphics and nothing else (see the ResetEra crowd) then the right takes that discontent and uses it as a lightning rod to blame DEI and "wokeness" for why the hobby is going to shit, and not the whale culture that greedy executives have embraced.

You see this repeated all over the place.

Struggling to put food on the table due to billionaires cutting jobs and forcing a depression? Blame migrants.

Public services degrading to the point that they're useless due to underfunding? Blame lazy civil servants.

Planes crashing because your government just trashed the entire system, including air traffic control? DEI, obviously.

The left has a problem of not going into the gutter like the right, acting like preachy bitches and shitting on comrades because of manufactured sentiments like "electability".

What the left needs to do is play the blame game. Just blame the right wingers and capitalism for everything, even if it isn't true. Those motherfuckers deserve it and they play exactly the same game.

And just repeat it until it's true. It's vile, but we live in a world where vibes mean more than facts, and the only way things are going to get better is if we attach vibes to the problem and hammer it home.

 

[STHX]

The technology to punch someone straight through the monitor is still very far away, so currently there is no real way to deal with these individuals
Outside of what the other posters suggested (especially the part about how it's much easier to blame some intangible "enemy" compared to admitting the entire system is broken) I'll add my 2 cents: accepting that most of this outrage baiters are simply scammers or grifters and exposing them for this should at least convince some people (but not all because of the above points) that their time is better spent doing something else
So these guys like to highlight how there are too many blacks, gays, ugly women in games and how this is a problem. All right, so why don't they advertise the hundreds of games that release monthly that don't have these "features"? And I'm not talking about right-wing grifter games made by their kins. A simple look at Steam will pull multiple games that fit their imaginary needs (from all around the world, and from indies to higher budgets). Yet not a single time have I seen one of these grifters actually play or speak about one of these games
Yeah, because they're just outrage baiters. Positive speak does not drive views, and so it does not drive money. They don't give a shit about "hobbies", they only want money from easily scammed suckers. Even if they stopped talking about videogames they'll just move to the next grift, they'll just capitalize on something else
Don't give scammers views

 

[Ge0force]

I'm curious: am I a chud for boycotting devs/ publishers/companies because they do things I don't like? I see this as voting with my wallet which is always the best thing to do imo, but I'm not sure how other people see this behavior.

 

[Le Pertti]

I'm curious: am I a chud for boycotting devs/ publishers/companies because they do things I don't like? I see this as voting with my wallet which is always the best thing to do imo, but I'm not sure how other people see this behavior.

No chuds is specifically about far right stand points. I mean if you boycott devs because they have black people or women in their games, then maybe, but devs that are shitty should be boycott!

 

[STHX]

I'm curious: am I a chud for boycotting devs/ publishers/companies because they do things I don't like? I see this as voting with my wallet which is always the best thing to do imo, but I'm not sure how other people see this behavior.

No
There are hundreds of games I didn't buy for my reasons, some of these failed and caused the dev team to close and lots of people to lose their jobs
But in no way will I ever feel responsible. If I bought something simply to "own" someone now I would be an hypocrite
Let's look at AC Shadows. I didn't buy it, but I don't care about Yasuke. I didn't buy it because, deep inside, I just don't like modern AC. I like other types of games

 

[Futaleufu]

I think voting with your wallet is all you can do.

Sometimes this manufactured outrage sorts out itself, like in Assassins Creed Shadows.