From October 2024 but doing the rounds on social "
Examining How **** Appeal Cues and Strength Cues Influence Impressions of Female Video Game Characters", a self-(insert)referential 'research' paper that starts from the (feminist/gender/race critical) asserted and unfalsifiable premise that "objectification" is bad, and conducted, as is nearly always the case, on university students that are far more likely to be 'sensitive' to that narrative/framing than the typical 'non-higher-educated' gamer (bias control filter?).
Reading through "
New research on female video game characters uncovers a surprising twist" we find, as is always the case with
critical studies, or
grievance studies as they actually are, this isn't "research", it is instead
carefully constructed unfalsifiable
political activism pulling an obfuscatory cloak of $cience around itself.
Now the well has been thoroughly poisoned...
The study essentially asserts that female and minority gamers hate ("****" in particular) "objectification" but will play an (sexually) objectified character if they perceived them to be powerful rather than not playing games with such portrayals like normal, well adjusted adults do; it's as if modern minority or female gamers have no discernment, none, and have outwardly facing boundary issues -
rather than leaving something alone they will instead insist that that something conform to their expectations that, unironically, is itself a form of 'objectification', an abuse,
the coercive control of others, they cannot see because they lack (don't care/could care less) the empathy of/towards others to notice.
In other words, the study ironically confirms that 'culturally sensitive' female and minority gamers (at least the studies student participants) continue to suffer the perineal "
first-person/main-character syndrome"; the, to many, inexplicable inability to detach themselves from a games main character such that they can play
as the protagonist instead of wanting to see themselves as that main character.
In other, other, words, the demonstrable upshot of this type of research only further cements, if inadvertently or unintentionally (some might argue 'subconsciously', the double-down irony of 'subconscious bias'), that
such individuals are severely lacking in "empathy", the striking inability to see a/the world through someone else's eyes; the world, even fictional ones, must instead render itself through theirs.
Is it any wonder so many people like this exhibit
abhorrent, aggressive and abusive behaviours when told "no".