Liberal Professor: Video Games Promote 'Toxic Meritocracy'

Reason.com ^

[proxy_user]

A rather interesting thing to say, given that video-game players are often depicted as losers living in their parent’s basement.

[so_real]

You beat me to it. Yes, conservatives favor meritocracy; liberals favor mediocrity. These are opposite sides of the same coin. Each is only "toxic" from the viewpoint of the other side. And in a civil war one side has the clear advantage.

[Telepathic Intruder]

You don’t get something for nothing. Something this liberal professor knows nothing about.

[Interesting Times]

Video Games Promote 'Toxic Meritocracy'

So does reality.

[Interesting Times]

Due credit for posting it first. :)

[Crucial]

This Professor sounds EXACTLY like a character out of Atlas Shrugged.

[Redleg Duke]

Liberalism is a mental disorder!

[neverevergiveup]

Don't know about video games, but I can tell you what most definitely causes a toxic-pseudo-meritocracy. Liberal households, largely secular (but not always), who buy in stupidly to the idea that ones worth and intellect is determined by ones scholastic pedigree. It's extremely destructive, leading parents to push their kids to take practice SAT tests every weekend in high school, and to judge the worth of their children by their GPAs, their participation in high profile extracurricular activities, and ultimately in this context - what university and professional schools they get in to.

This is a mindset that markedly stifles creativity, leads to group think, and ultimately decreases independent thought in society. It also supports the attitude recently espoused by none other than Hillary - essentially stating that the red-state areas are regressive and less thoughtful (i.e. less educated) than the blue state areas she received most of her votes from.

I would bet that this liberal professor believes that he is intellectually superior than others. For anyone who is into honest self-assessment, actually thinking you are intellectually superior is a very sure sign that you are not, and that you are actually quite restricted in your thought processes.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Well the Socialism video game would be the most boring one EVER!

[Crucial]

I used to get my ass routinely handed to me when I payed Halo. I never thought that those better players shouldn’t be better. It made me want to be better.

When I started beating them it felt good, a small sense of accomplishment for overcoming mild adversity. Life is the same way on a larger scale with more serious stakes.

[dsrtsage]

hmmm, a video game where you just start out maxed out in every skill and can do anything and go everywhere regardless of how much or how well you play. That sounds super interesting and fun (said nobody ever).

[simpson96]

[CaptainAmiigaf]

This IDIOT is concerned with the COLLECTIVE?
I always thought the BORG was a fiction of an old Star Trek program. We learn something new each day.

[Paradox]

They should play Overwatch.

[rjsimmon]

So is this meathead indicating that he got his professorship by lack of merit? And he wants to admit this? Something tells me he ain’t exactly qualified to teach... let alone play a video game...

[Mears]

“”All those things shape our expectations and focus players on individuals, rather than the collective,”

---

Sounds good to me-——worked well for thousands of years.

.

[gundog]

Grand Theft Auto rewards a criminal sense of entitlement, does it not?

[fr_freak]

I propose anyone be allowed to walk from the street into any university and immediately be hired as a tenured professor.
It can't really get all that much worse than it is now.

Your reasoning works if you assume that this sort of insanity is an accident. It isn't. "Professors" like this braindead moron are selected and promoted precisely because they either believe things this stupid and destructive to our society, or they can easily be taught to believe this nonsense. Then they pass it on to your kids, by design.

What this idiot is saying is completely opposite of the culture of the traditional United States, a country where "rugged individualism" was the prevailing standard. In other words, the nonsense that this fool is spewing, if believed and implemented by the youth which attend his classes, would destroy the very fabric of the USA and replace it with the same evil of collective thinking that has doomed every nation since the beginning of time.

This guy and all like him should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

[Da Coyote]

And of course, by his speech we know some things:
1. The “Prof” has no creditable academic degree.
2. They are most probably a quota prof.
3. They are ardent enemies of applied mathematics.
4. Dumber than dirt, of course.

[Made In The USA]

I think he’s toxic stupid.

Absent instances of favoritism or bad decisions, employers are a meritocracy. It’s called the real world. To teach younger people otherwise is a disservice to them.

Always disgusted by schools (at all levels) that promote flawed ideas.