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The Knights of Gamestop

Seems all I do now is write about coup attempts.

The last one was pitiful. The most recent one, however, is not.

Storming the gates of Congress doesn’t seem to have made a fraction of the impact of a much larger horde of barbarian traders outmaneuvering hedge fund managers. No action scenes from the Capitol, just pasty folks swiping smartphones, but all the classic takeovers were accomplished with coordinated bureaucrats, so it’s fitting.

The company, however, is not. Gamespot is an antiquated storefront that has no realistic value in 2021, or even early 2020, the last time when a responsible adult could walk into one without a face mask. Not that there was any reason to do so. Everything they sell can be gotten far easier and cheapest online, and most of the console gamers have moved online as well thanks to applications in their consoles. Their PC presence is long dead, too, thanks to Steam. Unlike board gaming, which actually has a sustainable niche model for a storefront, Gamespot has no more future than the 1995 Blockbuster store that Carol Danvers crashed into early in Captain Marvel. The name has nostalgia value, sure, but not at $300 a share.

But hey. I am all for a legal redistribution of funds from the rich to the poor. This suggests a glaring logical discrepancy, then, in the name of the company Robinhood, whose app had a hand in making the short squeeze happen. The mechanics of their suspension of trading seem to have more to do with a glaring lack of financial preparation for a run on a single stock than the guts to empower their user base, but that reputation hit was a doozy. Errol Flynn to Eric Idle in one press release. It’s hard to recover an edgy stance after having gallantly chickened out.

There are bigger coups out there, of course. Brave Sir Robin is only one of the many technological knights pursuing the Holy Grail of transforming all humans into electrical conduits for profit. Facebook and Twitter, having reduced Donald Trump to a limbless social media torso that cannot acknowledge its electoral defeat, are marching on, regardless of what progressive Europeans think of their elderberry-smelling policies. The would-be autonomous collectives currently propping up Gamestop are just peasants mucking about in the mud and dung. Arthur has his eyes on the prize; Lancelot, more on ancillary carnage. C’mon, map them to who you wish; it’s pretty easy.

Needless to say, the end of that film is its most fantastic and unrealistic element. Having summoned a ragged army from nowhere, the shit-covered Arthur announces a frontal assault on a castle in a bog without a single piece of siege equipment handy. Cue the constables, who quickly round him and the knights up, hustled possibly to asylum care.

Does anyone seriously think the boldest and most dogged antitrust lawsuits could accomplish this with Facebook or Twitter or Amazon? In our world, the castle has long fallen. We are not even the French guys on the battlements, clucking disapprovingly and launching a cow or two without much enthusiasm.

No. We’re the peasants in the muck, ineffectually whining about the arbitrary nature of authority. Meanwhile, well-organized corporations took what they wanted, mostly because we gave it to them freely, accepting the growing tech feudalism with more enthusiasm than any historical serf. Broadband internet, a LCD TV, a smartphone and a game console, and you can take whatever you want from us.

Still, the film and legends do have one thing in common. The quest is a pointless one that leads only to tragedy and farce. Seeking immortality or a technological singularity helps no one. Even Indiana Jones figured it out in The Last Crusade, choosing family over glory.

I wonder if the knights of Gamespot will figure it out, too, or they will be like the fools of the Jan. 6 riot, a rogue wave trying to shatter a hydroelectric dam. They will not be the ones sitting at the right hand and left hand of the throne of the coming kingdom. Those seats are currently reserved for Google and Facebook, with a long and largely predictable queue just behind.

But don’t bother looking in another castle, Mario. The princess isn’t in this one. Or any other.

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