the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad pragmata discourse
MAGA rage farmers are trying to make a new hit game with many classic sci-fi beats a culture war meme.
A well worn trope in science fiction, mystery, and fantasy stories is a lone wolf full of trauma and depression, cut off from the world, gruff to the point that it's less of an adjective and more of a diagnosis, finds an adorable child he doesn't want, but has to take care of until accepting his role as a father figure. It's supposed to make world building easier since children don't know how the world works so getting an info-dump from a main character seems natural, and shows us who the good guy of the story is supposed to be, while adding Instant Manly Depth™ up front.
Hell, just look at The Last Of Us, where a Max Rockatansky inspired Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, takes Ellie under his wing. And The Mandalorian, where, oh hey, would you look at that, also Pedro Pascal plays an interstellar warrior who rescues and raises Grogu, an alien baby with a natural talent for telekinesis. Suffice it to say that if the same trope is employed by the same actor in multiple franchisees, yeah, it's pretty much a cliche at this point.
Pragmata, the new perfectly polished high budget game from Capcom, seems like it would follow the same pattern given their penchant for characters who are too traumatized to function, and will often take someone under their wing, even if only temporarily. But surprisingly, it doesn't.
Hugh, the adult male protagonist, is not your lone wolf with the kind of PTSD that makes him talk as if he has to pry the words out of himself with pliers after he re-learns the entire language. He's a socially and emotionally well-adjusted engineer who was an orphan, but had a functional, happy childhood. His little robot charge D-I-0336-7, or Diana for short, is built to resemble a child and can hack nefarious robots on a lunar base that's been destroyed by not one, not two, but three classic sci-fi tropes.
The entire struggle of him becoming a parental figure to Diana is him saying that he doesn't normally babysit, but since Diana is not a human kid, it should be okay. As the game unfolds, he teaches her about life and Earth, between killing murderous bots, and she sits on his back, hacks the robots so he can kill them faster, and the various computer terminals so they can unlock new parts of the base known as the Cradle to discover all the bizarre experiments being conducted with a mysterious ore refined into a material called lunafilament.
So far, so wholesome, right? A nontoxic, easy to relate to male lead. A cute kid as a mascot for the game in a typical Japanese kawaii style – lest we forget that Capcom is a Japanese company – and she's highly encouraging and helpful to the player. In similar games, the assistant is often a walking ball of snark and condescension, so Diana is a breath of fresh air and beloved by a lot of players. There's even a sound explanation why she and her counterpart Eight are built to resemble tweens.
Now, this is normally where the discussion would end, or flow into a review of the game itself, but no, we can't have that these days. This is why the ragefluencers of X Marks The Klan Meeting are currently having themselves a good, old fashioned public meltdown about the very notion of a man taking care of a child who isn't his own progeny. Their message? To men, children are either property or prey, so any male who is kind to kids is obviously suspect.
Obviously, these people are never beating the allegations, accusing every man of being a predator in waiting while trying to win a gold medal in the 10,000 Meter Backpedal when it comes to the Epstein files and QAnon. Their opinion on this is disturbing and disgusting, and a net negative to public discourse, but it's a game, and a major release at that, so they're not actually talking to those of us who care about the storytelling, meaning, and literary mechanics.
No, they're talking to the dysfunctional, perpetually angry incel gooner Gamergate demographic, trying to feed into the biases of the community that came up with a mascot named Pedobear, and whose biggest complain about games is that there's an inexcusable deficit of fuckable NPCs and characters. They are also not big fans of a non-white lead, and they need the world to be just as broken as they are, and it makes them feel better to have their toxicity affirmed by someone, anyone.
Social media algorithms then amplify this ragebait and MAGA influencers share it in group chats to amplify each other in hopes of manufacturing a new culture war meme they can milk for a few weeks. Do they actually believe this? Who knows. Who cares? I think they probably don't care at all, given by their aforementioned campaign to "bring all those monsters in the Epstein Files to justice" turning into heated debates about the age of consent and definitions of pedophilia when given the order from the White House.
And ultimately, that's the problem. Because the web today incentivizes us to be our very worst selves and lavishly rewards letting the intrusive thoughts win, rage bait influencers are going to keep trying to come up with increasingly problematic takes and noxious posts in an attempt to keep going viral. We are not allowed to just like a game that tries to subvert some expectations in a wholesome and fun way. Just enjoying things is bad for business. No, we need to be miserable, angry, and find a problem with everything because that's what gets clicks and subs.
Instead of giving games, movies, TV shows, and novels the benefit of the doubt, or realizing that creators often want to challenge us instead of giving us easy to digest parables of right and wrong, we have to assume the worst. The rage farmers won't stop until we look at the most innocent, cute, and fun things, and our thoughts sink to disturbing depths, expecting abject horror and depravity from others, or dread what we know will be an obligatory rant from them.
That's the end goal of today's internet culture. To ruin everything for us with their obnoxious stream of nonstop toxicity until we can't even look each other in the eye without a nauseating wave of dark suspicions.
Worse yet, it's working. A majority of Americans now assume their neighbors must be morally awful people, topping the results of an international survey. A nation of low trust lone wolves who coexist and somewhat tolerate each other rather than a functional society is a recipe for misery and woe. But also profit, if you're fine with putting on a MAGA hat and fanning the flames of culture wars in bad faith about literally anything while lacking the moral fiber to stop yourself...
