Erik Kain, contrarian grifter
I'm your huckleberry.
Yesterday I got into a little bit of a Twitter spat with some of the wrongthink brigade and its nosy flock of vultures, ever waiting to descend on whatever potential corpse comes their way.
My sin? I defended Washington Post reporter Gene Park’s decision to talk with Colin Moriarty on his podcast and criticized the backlash Park received for it. A bunch of video game journalists and Twitterati showed up to criticize Gene, typically along the lines of: “I love your work but how could you associate with someone who has such awful views, does such awful things, etc. etc.”
Of course, none of these people ever actually point to any evidence of Colin’s misdeeds, but they sure do love to hate the image of him they’ve created in their minds. It’s fun—and socially lucrative—to have monsters and bogeymen to yarble about online.
In fact, this feels like a good time to share one of my favorite bits from John Cleese. This is decades old but applies just as much now as it did then.1
As Cleese notes, “the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good because it provides you with enemies.”
He goes on:
Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you. Attractive isn't it?
So if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway and you therefore enjoy abusing people then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons. And that if it wasn't for them you'd actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time. So if you want to feel good become an extremist.
After listing all the potential enemies you can choose from if you go hard-left or hard-right, he concludes:
Now once your armed with one of these super lists of enemies you can be as nasty as you like and yet feel your behaviors morally justified. So you can strut around using people and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth, a fighter for the greater good and not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.
Mind you, all of this was decades before Twitter, but Twitter just so happens to be the perfect platform to be as mean and nasty and extreme as you like all while pretending it’s justified by your moral superiority. This, dear readers, is one reason I’m so bad at Twitter. I often liken it to another Monty Python bit—Camelot from The Holy Grail. “On second thought, let’s not go to Twitter, it’s a silly place.”
Anyways, one curious line of attack that we’ve seen before is to call people “grifters” when their opinions differ from the hivemind. Remember when Hogwarts Legacy producer Troy Leavitt was singled out, bizarrely, by the jackals in the gaming press?
I wrote about it a while back. The whole thing was batshit insane. Leavitt wasn’t a celebrity game director or anything like that. He was just a guy working on the game and minding his own business. Activist Liam Robertson discovered his YouTube channel, mistakenly described him as the “lead designer” on Hogwarts Legacy, and decided to go after him because said YouTube channel contained lots and lots of wrongthink—including criticism of feminist Anita Sarkeesian, The Last Jedi and a defense of those ghastly deplorables game journalists love to hate: gamers. YIKES. hashtag-cringe
The smear campaign kicked off in earnest. None of these journalists reached out to actually contact Leavitt and get a comment from him (he says the one who did ended up not publishing a story on the matter). Instead, they engaged in what can only be described as a massive circle jerk, vastly exaggerating the content of his videos which none of them actually watched, and which were far milder than they would have you believe. (HE’S A NAZI FASCIST WOMAN HATER seemed to be the line of attack, despite nobody actually watching past the title screens).
But the one piece that stood out to me more than any other was at my favorite gaming website, The Gamer, penned by the site’s editor-in-chief, Kirk McKeand. McKeand had a pretty wild theory. He called Leavitt’s actions “classic grifter tactics.”
Apparently, Leavitt somehow manipulated the gaming press into going after him (McKeand doesn’t float the possibility that Leavitt and Liam Robertson were in cahoots, but this seems like the only way such a ploy could have taken place).
The theory:
Leavitt will release a video claiming he’s left to save the project - a selfless act to defend the developers there. You see, he aims to become a martyr in the eyes of his supporters. The video will likely demonise games journalists as the root cause of his problems, rather than being used for introspection or to admit that his actions had consequences.
Once he does this, the views on his channel will skyrocket, thanks to both his supporters and people who are morbidly curious. The algorithm will reward him for it and he’ll get back to putting out videos about why he hates Brie Larson or some other asinine shit. Along with people like Shapiro, he will become another cog in the hate machine on YouTube, his videos revolving around the algorithm and reinforcing the beliefs of people who already watch similar tosh. Either that or he’ll go the crowdfunding route and promise to lead development on a game “free of politics”, and the suckers will eat it up. If he was being assigned to a Hogwarts house, it would be Griftindor.
Leavitt did release a video explaining his decision to re-retire, not to ‘save the project’ but to go take care of a family member in need. He also criticized the gaming press, noting that none of them actually contacted him, an incredibly basic part of actually reporting on a story like this (especially if you’re being critical of a subject, and especially if that subject is not a public figure). He did not pursue fame or fortune on YouTube or Patreon. He has created just one video since then. It has 3.4k views.
McKeand did not update his post other than to note that Leavitt was not, in fact, lead designer but rather a Senior Producer on the game. No mention of Leavitt not running this elaborate grift was ever made. Why bother with journalistic integrity if you’re dealing with someone so tarnished by wrongthink? Truth is secondary to ideology, after all.
In any case, I bring all of this up because yesterday that word grift reared its ugly head again, though this time it was directed at your humble narrator:
I included some other tweets from Cian Maher, Game Journalist™, in my post yesterday. I noticed this one a bit later. “Still can’t get over this being posted by someone whose 10+ year career is founded entirely upon a constant stream of contrarian grifting,” this person whom I’ve never heard of before writes. I guess my reputation precedes me.
I discovered the genesis of this funny little thought later, when someone sent me this tweet made by Mitch Dyer, who has me blocked on Twitter:
I assume Mitch is referring to my criticism of Colin Moriarty during the Mass Effect 3 controversy. Colin had criticized the reaction from gamers and said some things I disagreed with quite strongly and I said as much in a piece I wrote…more than ten years ago in which I push back against the idea of “entitled gamers”.
At the time, I was arguing that gamers had every right to be pissed off about the disappointing ending of the Mass Effect trilogy. Colin had a different take—but guess what? We’ve talked since then and he said that I actually helped change his mind on the matter to some degree—and how cool is that? Being able to change your mind is a mark of maturity and intelligence and empathy. Stubbornly refusing to ever alter the way you think about something is childish and lame.
(For that matter, I’ve shifted my stance to some degree in the intervening years. Some gamers absolutely can act like entitled little shits and make the gaming community far more negative than it needs to be. I still believe being upset with broken promises, greedy microtransactions and rushed or buggy games is perfectly fine, however, and expressing this is not “entitled”).
Anyways, let’s unpack this a bit. Mitch and Cian seem to be arguing that ever since Mass Effect 3 I’ve built my career on ‘contrarian grifting.’ In other words, arguing for consumer rights, criticizing the gaming press and the video game industry, not being all chummy with Cian and his ilk, not only makes me contrarian (gasp!) but also a “grifter”—aka someone who is trying to fool you into giving me your money for a false product of some kind. I’m swindling my followers by . . . I honestly don’t know. I think this is actually just Cian copy/pasting Kirk McKeand’s ideas because it’s easier to parrot someone else than to have an original thought.
I launched this newsletter and a much-neglected Patreon last year, but that was after ten years of, well, not asking any readers for any money at all. I had to adapt a little with the times and financial realities, but I hardly make any money from Substack or Patreon—hopefully someday that will change and I’ll become more independent. Until then, I am an awfully bad grifter. Of course, you should totally sign up as a paying reader of diabolical so that I can grift you with more posts like this one (ha, suckers!)
It’s the contrarian part that really eats at the hivemind, though. The misuse of the word grifter says it all. They wouldn’t call someone they agree with a grifter for having a Patreon or a Substack. Lots and lots of woke content creators have Patreons and ask for money at the drop of a dime. Someone says something mildly offensive to them on Twitter and they start a GoFundMe. But apparently I’m the grifter . . . just because? It’s because I have wrong ideas and I’m not afraid to say what I think and mean what I say. That’s not allowed anymore. People are especially confused because I’m not a conservative or a Republican.
I also find it pretty amusing that “contrarian” has become such a dirty word in these circles. Where once the left prized independent thought and embraced a wide array of different beliefs and opinions, it has now narrowed down acceptable speech and ideas into the narrowest possible intellectual corridor. Now, having the wrong opinion is literally harm. If I say “I don’t think we should teach gender studies to kindergartners” that is literally harming trans kids. If I say “Hillary Clinton is a corrupt corporatist elite and I’d prefer to vote for Bernie Sanders” that is literally sexism and I’m a “Bernie bro”.
Sure, if someone is being contrarian just for the sake of it and doesn’t actually believe what they’re saying that’s annoying (or entertaining—Milo was a fascinating example of a contrarian who loved to get a rise out of people but almost certainly only believed half of what he said, and didn’t really care about any of it). But I am hardly some extremist spouting off all sorts of nonsense for attention. Many of the things I argue for are actually relatively mainstream.
If any of these people ever got off Twitter and went outside and spent time with actual people in the real world they’d realize that their views are deeply unpopular and the way they convey them to the world deeply unpleasant, and not because most people are bigoted monsters. Outside of their little Twitter bubble, extreme gender and race identity politics are not winning the hearts and minds of the masses (who are still more tolerant and less bigoted than at any time in history). Extreme ideas couched in the language of extremism espoused by people who will never compromise and who are so completely convinced by their own bullshit have very little hope of success among the general populace. People are pushing back because of course they are.
In fact, I’d argue that many of these media types and activists do more harm than good for their various causes since they treat their controversial beliefs as self-evidently true and good and will broker no dissent. Why bother trying to persuade? That takes work. Twitter is easy! Besides, they might have to actually talk to people they disagree with rather than just dogpile them on social media. The horrors.
It doesn’t matter what is true anymore, of course. It’s all about pushing the narrative, scoring points within the clique and making sure you’re not sullied by associating with someone diabolical like me or (worse) Colin. We provide people with our own unique takes and these differ from what you’ll typically see in the video game press and for that we are apparently grifters. Personally, I think if you have a product people want to buy, you should sell it. Maybe people are tired of all the sneering sanctimonious bullshit and would like to try something else out for a change. Besides, I don’t care if you agree with me or not or if we share the exact same political, cultural and religious views. You’re free to be who you are. As Ben Harper sings:
my choice is what I choose to do
and if I'm causing no harm
it shouldn't bother you
your choice is who you choose to be
and if your causin' no harm
then you're alright with me
Now, I’ll cop to being a no-good dirty bastard, a scoundrel and a barbarian, perhaps even a knave. I’d rather be all these things and worse than part of the JournoList clique. I’ll take their scorn any day of the week before spending a single minute in that nest of vipers.
And yet, I’ll still talk with them if they ever want to talk. We can try to, I dunno, discuss and debate ideas rather than just one another’s character—or rather, the caricatures of one another we’ve created in our minds. I know I do it too.
I should note that there are still many great game journalists out there, often the ones who don’t make the most noise on Twitter, but work hard editing and making guides and writing great stories and not sitting on their pulpits casting judgment down on the lowly and unwashed masses. I hear from them in my DMs as most are too afraid to speak publicly about any of this stuff, rightfully fearing that they’ll be blacklisted and run out of the industry. I have been blacklisted for so long now—for the audacity to have mild, mainstream-yet-contrarian opinions—that I suppose I carry on without fear. Perhaps even with a glimmer of hope. Hope that things will get better and change. And hope, too, for the comeuppance when this house of cards comes crashing down.
And it will come crashing down. There’s only so long that these bullies and cowards, these spineless little men and bitter women, can hang onto this much influence. If they don’t eat themselves then the rotten edifice of their movement will simply succumb to time and decay.
I’ll quote perhaps my favorite of Freddie deBoer’s passages once more, because he says it best. Noting that the woke movement has a chokehold on media, academia and social media, he points out that reform will not come from on high, not from angry Republicans or from pundits or “contrarian” thinkers like us. We will not “talk the world out of it” or “convince elite society to believe in freedom and nuance and forgiveness again.”
But:
There is a second front, in this war, a hidden battlefield on which the social justice movement is slowly losing to the forces of… not liberalism, not reaction, not conservatism, not civil liberties, not plain ol’ common sense, but anarchy, resistance, revulsion towards piety, the desire for revenge, the death drive, animal spirits, the id, the unheimlich, Jungian impulse, and most of all utter and total moral exhaustion. These are chip chip chipping away at the arrogant command of our moral betters. There are forces arrayed against the piety and vengefulness of social liberalism that cannot possibly meet it on the open field but which every day wage guerilla warfare and, slowly, the great shaggy beast is bleeding out, that creature of preening righteousness slowly crippled by its hubris and arrogance. What looks like the inevitable and impregnable demands of history right now will look in time like the decaying aristocratic mores they are. An army of grinning goblins marches against the woke, and they take up their knives and syringes with glee while the forces of social justice trudge on, miserable, one more joyless day after another, hating themselves and each other. I am not saying the forces of opposition are good; they are, indeed, bad by their elementary nature. But still, in the conflict ahead I have my money on chaos, the ever-turning gyre, and the will to disobey. Tomorrow will not be like today, and the ones who now indict the unclean and issue verdicts and dole out punishments and deny every application for parole will wake up one day and wonder where it all went wrong. The witching hours approaches, the rabbis will be chased from the temple, and no one can say how the wheel will spin. Take shelter and tremble, or better yet, enjoy.
And it’s true. I can see the buckling in the frame, the splinters and the cracks. People are getting so very, very sick and tired of being scolded and ‘educated’ all the time. We don’t want to “check our privilege” every goddamn day. We checked it and it’s here and we’re aware of it—are you?
I hear the growing rebellion when I talk with my daughter and learn a little about the spark of revulsion toward the most pious among her teen peers. “You can’t cancel Eminem,” she scoffed one time, noting that a good portion of her classmates would like to try.
Perhaps we should think of it like a metamorphosis rather than something black and white. Out of the husk of the woke movement, some good will surely come. More tolerance, perhaps. More acceptance of people who are different. Gender activism has, weirdly, reinforced old gender stereotypes in new and perplexing ways, but if we emerge from this moment in history with more acceptance of “gender fluidity” I’d call that a win. We children of the 90s were already comfortable with sexual fluidity, and we’d long ago given up the idea that there are “girl things” and “boy things” anyways. Less transphobia and more acceptance of our fellow human beings in general? I’ll take it!
Anyways.
This contrarian grifter has more grifting to grift, contrary to what you might think. I have rings to Eld and noobs to pwn. Season 3 of Warzone and Call Of Duty: Vanguard launched today and I must shoot and kill and shoot and kill. It’s the only way to keep my toxic masculinity in check. And I’m 150 hours into Elden Ring and still haven’t beaten the damn thing. I blame this less on completionism and more on FOMO—but is there really a difference?
Perhaps not.
Anyways, you’re all lovely people. Be well, my droogies. Peace and love!
I mean, what more is there to say.
You terribly, dirty, contrarian, you.
*salute*
What is it with these people having to tag some negative classification onto other people with such ease? It all feels so immature.