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Video game journalism is very strange

Imagine that there is, let's say for example, a magazine about photography. This magazine reviews cameras, lenses and other products related to the hobby, publishes instructional articles and so on and so forth. Then one day this magazine hires a new journalist to write for them, but this journalist starts to trashtalk more and more about the target demographic of the magazine, ie. photography hobbyists. Not only does he start deriding and badmouthing these hobbyists online in social media, but in fact he also starts taking jabs at them in his articles which are published by the magazine.

Surely the magazine's owners, or chief editor, or someone in charge would rather quickly call this journalist and ask him what the fuck he's doing, and tell him to stop lest he get fired. And if he doesn't stop, he's summarily fired from his job.

Imagine the same for pretty much any publication dedicated to a particular hobby or other aspect of society, aimed at a certain demographic. Surely such a journalist would be quickly disciplined and fired, if he doesn't immediately stop. That would only make sense. After all, the magazine wants more customers, not less, and antagonizing, insulting and attacking their own customers is most certainly not the way to go. Not only is it completely inappropriate, it's also very bad business and PR.

Yet, there appears to be one hobby where this is rampant, and nobody is doing anything about it: Video games journalism.

And it's not like it's just one obscure publication somewhere that nobody knows about. We are talking about dozens and dozens major big-name publications with millions of readers. For years now they have been constantly attacking, deriding, insulting, antagonizing and accusing their own target demographic of all kinds of things. It's like they want a cultural war among this demographic. Many of their articles go to absolutely incredible lengths to insult their own readers and accuse them of the most heinous things. And this has been going on for years, and it's not showing any sign of stopping. No CEO, or boss, or chief editor is putting a stop to it and firing those responsible. In fact, it appears that these bosses are themselves on it, and want it to happen.

It's astonishing how this particular type of journalism has been getting away with it for so long.

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