Mark Driscoll is no stranger to controversy within Christian circles. Often, the animosity against him is related to the fallout at Mars Hill, as documented by the liberal institution Christianity Today, but the real issues surrounding Driscoll are his cringier charismatic antics and his hostility towards differing views related to charismatic gifts. He is notably Zionist, but despite this, he has a reputation for bravado. Driscoll’s bullish opposition on cultural issues and his terminology regarding the “Spirit of Jezebel” has rehabilitated his image in the broader culture, despite animus from discernment spheres.
At 55, Mark Driscoll has a boomer-minded take in his recent attack on video games:
Video games took a generation of boys who wanted to be adventurers and heroes and turned them into dopamine addicted losers who can’t escape their virtual reality of fake masculinity. Don’t waste your life. Seek real adventure. A real girl. Be a real hero.
Given his age, one could attribute ignorance to this gross mischaracterization of gaming culture. Gaming culture is largely socialized rather than just a loner in his cave on his PC all day. People are gaming with online friends, participating in group chats, and having some socialization, which has given way to the rise of platforms like Discord. While there is a push on the Right to transition from online to in-real-life, gaming is mainstream culture that is hardly limited to the World of Warcraft caricatures popularized by South Park.
There are some truths about dopamine addiction, which could apply to social media for women, but the notion of fake masculinity is a complete strawman. The average man does not look to video game characters as avatars of masculinity. Moreover, the Military Industrial Complex completely disagrees with the notion that violent video games are a counterfeit masculinity, as the Pentagon loves AAA games like Call of Duty that glamorize the military as a soft-recruitment tool. For decades, the Pentagon has partnered with Hollywood to glamorize the military, which includes films like Top Gun: Maverick. Contrary to belief, the propagandistic nature is good for military recruitment.
Ironically, Driscoll’s comments come at a time when the DHS is using Halo imagery to recruit for ICE. If various medians have their heroes, like novels, comic books, plays, movies, and TV shows, why not video games? Playing a video game is no more vicarious than reading a novel. Characters like Master Chief of the Halo franchise are aspirational heroes and the Halo storyline has many Christian themes embedded into the plot, including the protagonist serving as a messianic figure. Games like this resonate long after their releases where modern slop games do not.
Driscoll’s framing is neither masculine nor true but rather embodies the Longhouse. There is a tendency for women to hate or want to infiltrate male spaces. If there is one thing a feminist hates, it is men having fun. Women commonly perceive gaming as unattractive, unless it is a gamer like Henry Cavill. This could be rooted in the Genesis 3:16 curse, whereby a woman sees male leisure as a cause for distrust, but regardless, people are allowed to have their leisurely pursuits. One could say this about any masculine-coded hobby, like sports, but attacking video games is largely rooted in a generational divide.
This is not the first instance of Driscoll attacking men in Longhouse language. He similarly said, “It seems the only thing young men are better at than young women is killing themselves,” denigrating a generation of men who are leading the Christian revival in the US. He further ignores the truth that women and nonwhites are being systematically elevated in society at the expense of white men, the group that built America. The competency crisis is largely self-inflicted by not hiring qualified men or hiring H1Bs in male-dominated STEM fields, which now have higher rates of unemployment. The rest of the tweet compares video games to porn. The blight of pornography predatorily ensnares children before they are teenagers. These youths are being digitally molested by the porn industry, and the Church needs to recognize this dynamic to properly speak to the issue.
Gamergate
Between 2011-2016, the Woke came for the video games, often targeting the space for allegations of sexism and harassment in what became Gamergate. Gamergate erupted due to the collusion between liberal media and game developers in an effort to promote wokeness in video games. This has largely prevailed in newer releases being stuffed with DEI, but at the time, the collusion involved female developers trading sex for favorable reviews on terrible games. Although the graphics improved, the overall industry has declined in quality. The companies have themselves undergone consolidation or have been acquired (Microsoft buying Activision), rendering the unprofitable releases rounding errors on a corporate income statement. In their capture of the gaming industry, they ultimately lost in the long term and ruined the industry.
Out of Gamergate, many millennials were activated on the American Right. Jordan Peterson’s rise to popular acclaim can be attributed to Gamergate, as those millennials were the ones who took a liking to him. Even internationally, figures like Carl Benjamin of the Lotus Eaters arose. This new wave of influencers became the stepping-stones for the rightward drift amongst men being experienced today. Where many were libertarian minded, perhaps growing up atheists or hedonists, the events of Gamergate served as an awakening moment where everything was made political, and the fruits of the New Atheism they once believed were found irrational and unnatural. This had a subtle, yet important, impact in the 2016 election as Trump was the response to progressivism. In subsequent years, men went down the libertarian to right-wing arc, which then correlates with the return to Christianity being seen today. The Woke tried to capture gaming, and in doing so awoke the sleeping giant and spelled its own demise.
This means the new right wing in America will have gamer-coded imagery, which should be embraced, not berated by the likes of Driscoll. Just as Trump platformed Hulk Hogan with Trump-a-mania (which Megyn Kelly did not like), appealing to the boyhood icons of the 1980’s, so too should Master Chief be an icon of the Right.
Conclusion
The Bro Revival is entwined with millennial gamer culture. Gamergate led to the erosion of New Atheism which collapsed under the weight of sodomy and feminization. Though easily overlooked by older generations at the time, this was a pivotal moment in millennials, while Zoomers have only grown up in a totally political world.
If Mark Driscoll wanted to build men up, he would not be denigrating them with longhouse attacks against male hobbies. He is acting like a scornful woman. That is not tough love. A football team will run through a brick wall for a coach who genuinely cares about them, regardless of how mean he is in practice. Driscoll is not demonstrating genuine concern but is making short-term, cheap shots at the expense of building the long-term future.
5 Responses
I personally have watched 3 lives destroyed by additions to gaming. One lost a promising career, one destroyed their marriage and the other fell into an online gambling addition as a direct result of gaming. I’ve watched otherwise well-behaved teens fall apart in fits of rage and cursing during their “social interactions” online. There are many studies related to “digital dementia” and the impact gaming and social media addictions have on the still developing brains of children and teenagers. I would never defend Mark Driscoll, but I agree with him in this instance.
I’m with Mark on this one. Video games destroy the productivity of otherwise ambitious men, distort their reality, and turn them into sloths. I say this as a 25yo guy who works with computer nerds all day.
Driscoll is right. Seems he struck a nerve with the writer of this article. I’m in my early 30s so not a boomer mindset here. This is a poor attempt at defending gaming. Be a man and build in the real world. I have seen so many of my peers live bottom of the barrel lives due to gaming. They suck at real life. They are poor providers husbands and fathers. I have yet to meet someone that is into gaming that is thriving in all areas of his life. Most people I know that are thriving in most or all areas of their lives deny video games for themselves. There’s always the exception to the rule, but generally speaking. Grow up. God made a big beautiful world for us to conquer. VR is fake.
Rare EDW L, I just recently retired from gaming culture and I am just astounded at the amount of time that I wasted on my 20’s pursuing gaming. And it did not destroy my marriage or limit me from giving sufficient provision to my family, not even close to anything that would be considered “addiction” and even then I feel I completely wasted my time and would have been better served gaining a skill or having any type of real life hobby. I dont say it with hate or with ignorance. I understand that you may feel that you are being longhoused because women dont like gaming in general, but regardless of their motivations, this one is true. Actually, it is better for the longhouse to keep you placated playing games and uselessly talking on discord (and sending memes that can then be exploited for struggle sessioning). When I left gaming, it was not because of nagging, I could easily withstand the nagging for years. I left gaming because it was limiting my ability to be a man. I will spend the rest of my life helping young men stay away from the mistakes I made
I’m going to provide a much different perspective since all the haters came out of their dens to post on this article. My friend group and I grew up gaming a lot and continue to game on a regular basis together. ALL of us are 27 or under, own our own business or have a full time job with a side business, are all happily and healthily married to amazing women, many of us have kids, are all active members of our church, and we STILL game regularly together and more on our own. People will demonize gaming and put it on the same pedestal as porn or drugs just because they personally think it’s a waste of time. That’s a massive strawman argument and is frankly coming from a place of unreasonable hatred and disgust. Everyone has something in their life they do for leisure and relaxation that can be criticized or picked apart for various reasons (Reading, sports fandom, composing or playing music, etc.), just because you don’t like that persons activity of choice doesn’t necessarily make it bad and gaming 100% falls into that category. Just because YOU had an issue with gaming, doesn’t mean other people do. There are tons of people out there that aren’t addicted and don’t let it ruin their life. Again, just because you let that happen or you just don’t like gaming, doesn’t mean it’s this horrible thing that destroys everyone’s life and wastes their time. You all sound like a bunch of insufferable women.