ILLUSTRIOUS'S PROFILE

I have a lot of respect for characters who portray manliness as a means of being good and productive. These traits were considered desireable because they benefitted most everybody and furthered society.

It seems there is a new school of manliness that is about being a thug. There is the Fight Club theory that says in this age of political correctness men have been "stripped of their masculinity". Some people mistranslate messages like this as "Boy, it is cool to be a douche". So now we deal with a lot of (particularly young) men who are IRL trolls hell bent on dishing misery onto others. Most often to those who least deserve it because they are seen as non-threatening or weak. IRL trolls fear other IRL trolls because they fear what happens if someone is prepared to fight back. Today, people who shout obscenities from their car to a passerby on the sidewalk and throw their trash at them call themselves masculine. The misconception: masculine men spend their time pissing other people off for no good reason. This is failure.

As I connect this to gaming, I feel like so many of today's game heroes are just that kind of jerk. Even less do anything that society can respect. When it's just a video game, I can handle this somewhat. Dragon Age contains about the limit of debauchery I would withstand.