The Meninist Manual Of Gaming

Brothers, the days of guilt-free gaming have long since departed us. To pursue our once hallowed hobby is to wade through tidepools of empathy—it was not enough for women to go from tolerated observer to player two; now feminism wants to be player one. They want their 60 hours of space zombies and digital death traps to be safer for their feelings.

Women expect to be paid to criticize games for their social and political merits—but we totally came up with the idea first! All this dirty feelings money, laundered on frivolities (like rent), is sullying our scene. A generation of well-meaning beta males are being ripped from our movement and taught to care and consider.

We are being robbed of a generation of reinforcements in this war, fought on a million pixelated fronts.

Soon they will insist on affirmative action for team death matches. Then it’s mandatory gender-neutral romance options, and then, once we are wholly fettered by their dictations, they will, rest assured, come and take our light guns.

We must go beyond “preparing ourselves” for our conflict with feminists. We must be ready to educate newly spawned men on real gaming, made by real gamers—men.

I have assembled what I intend to be the first chapter in a tome of forbidden knowledge. These games will, more than wile away the hours, affirm and reinforce your masculinity. Video games were originally not meant for mere “fun,” and though this glorious and enlightened tradition of men teaching men how to be men through branded, consumable media has lost its way, we will endeavor to set right what has been fractured.

Further chapters will depend on whether I receive adequate support for my Indiegogo project, a 5-hour documentary where I follow a woman around. (Note: I haven’t yet decided which woman and am open to suggestions!)

So man up and forego the emulators, brothers. Hunched over a computer, which everyone has nowadays, and playing this game for free is mayhaps the apex of cultural Marxism in effect. You go to the bodega and you get change for your dollar and you find a machine near you, in the proper idiom of the hunter-gatherer realized.

We bring you, the essential masculinity education of . . .

Joust (Williams, 1982)

Before the involuntarily celibate (also known as incel) betas like Mario and Link, men in video games were real men. And before then, they were crazed gentlemen knights careering into oblivion on the backs of birds.

Joust casts you as does the world—an otherwise helpless and alone dust mite who must systematically eliminate anyone who questions the virility of your strength of will. You are given an ostrich to aid you in this task, but this is merely an indulgence of narrative. In real life, every man must build his own wings.

Because ostriches can’t fly. PETA won’t let them.

You kill the other knights by colliding with them whilst your lance is raised higher than theirs. This was, in fact, how men could once settle their differences in a more gender-civilized society—the ones who succeeded and thrived were those who realized that you needn’t be bothered with height or angle if you can find a stepping stool or time your jump right. This is the original impetus for creating stepping stools.

Joust was ranked by the Guinness Book of World Records at #69 in cultural relevance and technical achievement. (Take that, feminists! Can’t stop the music!)

The game can be played with two players. If you are prone to emotional undermining, you can work together to defeat the hordes of enemy knights, but Player One would be well advised that Player Two does not ride an ostrich but rather a stork, which means they are tainted by profane displays of fertility worship. They will, in time, need to be destroyed.

If you are disinclined to exert Darwinism in a casual setting, you can always just make Player Two draw out and fight the pterodactyl, one of the game's most deadly opponents—much like my high school girlfriend used me to draw out the affections of some alpha male dickwad who wrote for the school paper. But! I have a blog now! And she’s building houses in Honduras or wherever it is they send women who dye their hair and are past optimal breeding age.

This aside serves as the catalyst for what I feel is the true source of this game’s wisdom: When an enemy knight dies, his corporeal form is folded back into a glowing green egg, a screaming sigil for fertility and feminization. By disarming a man, you make him innocent, new, womanly.

You must stomp this green egg before it can hatch anew—this is not philosophy, but rather advice based on the actual mechanics of the game. An egg will hatch into a new knight, who will return to his steed to outlance you.

Brothers, you were eggs once. You were fresh, delicate, neither feminine nor masculine.

You were, in that moment, developmentally and “genetically” female, whatever that means—but then you evolved. You are a man now.

And we must not allow ourselves or other evolved beings to return to that state of yet-unrealized potential. The world is a harsh, cruel place, and only we as we are now are properly developed to master it.

We must never again know the comfort of being warm, safe, and in need of protection. It is tainting, beneath us. You must destroy any man returning to his egg-state.

You do not like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

The colors are nice, too. And on each level there’s more lava, which is pretty cool. Being able to go so far to the right that you come back out on the left again adds an element of surprise and strategy that makes each game a singular experience and allows for a lot of “replay value,” as we would say, back when men could review games for other men without fear that a woman would be left alone with the Nintendo.

I believe we will get through this. We have the lives. So go forth and educate, brothers. Introduce Level 1 Men to their rich cultural heritage.

And to those who don’t understand where and how I’m being ironic and farcical, let me clarify: I know it’s not PETA’s fault that ostriches can’t fly.