There was a time, not long ago if you can believe it, when Microsoft could publish a news blog about its plans to make the Xbox greener and nobody would really turn a blind eye. The world would go on, maybe a little less polluted, and that would be all. But those times are over. Now, it seems, every humble attempt to improve the world, or improve the lives of the people who live in it, is being turned into yet another struggle in the conservatives’ endless rhetorical war against “wokeism.”
If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve probably seen real congressmen – including failed presidential candidates, Mobile gaming whaleand Texas Canadian Ted Cruz—blow online how Xbox is “waking up” or how liberals want to take away your gas stove. This, of course, is all bullshit intended to distract the gullible and distractible from the myriad of real problems facing society.
The latest explosion began earlier this monthwhen the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, a group independent of the White House or Congress, highlighted the potential health risks posed by gas stoves and proposed to ban or restrict gas stove production in the future because of these health issues. Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
When the furnace scare tactics came to an end…well, the gas, that The Republic culture war machine needed more fuel. Something that could expand the war and help spread their message against “wokeism” while it helps distract from the fact that most of them have no real plans or substantive ideas beyond hatred and fear. So, earlier this week, Ted Cruz comes inwith a warning: They’re coming to steal not only your gas stove, but your Xbox too!
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Why did he think that? Well, you can attribute it to the right-wing media website The flame
Here’s what Microsoft’s Xbox update actually does: It will reduce power consumption by up to a factor of 20 by changing the default Xbox console setting from “hibernate” to “shut down.” Microsoft promises that this update will not affect performance or gameplay, nor the ability to update the Xbox overnight. The main side effect is that it takes a little longer for the console to boot up. The new firmware will also be “carbon conscious”.‘ and try to schedule its downloads and updates to have the least impact on the power grid. And if for some reason you don’t like these changes, you can set everything back to how it was before.
Harmless. Good even. But after Cruz picked up on the tweet The flame‘s narration solved it a Wave of stories from Fox News and the same. According to them, not only has Xbox “woken up” to these eco-friendly changes, but it has fox and friends Hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Jimmy Failla suggested that Microsoft is “trying to get your kids involved in climate politics.”
“But again, what’s the point of video games? It’s for kids to be kids,” Faila suggested in a Tuesday fox and friends segment about Microsoft’s Xbox plans. “Now you sit down and you take a controller and they’re like, ‘By the way, the world is on fire, AHH.’ You know what I mean? You just want to play the game!”
Aside from the fact that kids aren’t the only people who play video games, that most Xbox consoles are bought and owned by adults, and that the Xbox update in question is something most people won’t even notice, it’s silly, that conservatives are so freaked out by kids becoming aware climate change. Partly because there’s little “danger” of a gas stove ban or some esoteric Xbox firmware update — or whatever minor event inspires the next storm in a teapot of incurable online conservatives — will do. But also because Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Donald Trump and the others are simply afraid to face reality.
Realities like gun violence as a problem, or gender not being as binary as they once thought, are something conservatives like Cruz are desperate to ignore. Not only that, you must also ignore it; get distracted by tweets about waking up Xbox or the dangers of all-female M&Ms. And not just because it makes a lot of them money as they soullessly struggle through the end of the world. But by getting more people to participate in the endless culture wars they are unleashing, they can distract themselves from reality, develop a narrative they can control and understand, and more importantly, distract their followers, so they can avoid having to actually answer hard, ask questions, or come up with real plans to fix what’s broken and make the world a better place. And having to face the reality of waking up more than Xbox or just existing trans people scares these scammers.