Friends With Benefits

Plausible Optimism and the Practice of Teabagging in Video Games

Bibliographic Data

ID3025671
AuthorsBrian Myers (0000-0001-7127-3143, University of Massachusetts Amherst, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume14
Issue7-8
Pages763-780
Publication date2019-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGames and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1555-4120 • E-ISSN: 1555-4139
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1555412017732855
OpenAlexW2763103729
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited30

Recent scholarship in gaming studies has challenged the field to investigate and critique the hard core gaming audience (stereotypically seen as straight, White, cis-gendered male gamers) in a way that does not reinforce either the perceived marginalization of gamers or broader social hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and class. This article demonstrates a way to acknowledge the complexity of this audience without dismissing its most virulent tendencies via practice theory and weak theory. Using data drawn from a qualitative survey of 393 self-identified first-person shooter video game players, this article looks at the specific practice of "teabagging" in online competitive gaming contexts. Ultimately, this article argues that drawing attention to the gaps and fissures that local gaming practices can produce in broader structures of gaming, sexuality, and class can help critical gaming scholars encourage and cultivate such practices as well as construct new, reparative alliances between different fields and communities

Class (philosophy · Construct (python library · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Human sexuality · Multimedia · Optimism · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Video game · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Psychology · Social Psychology

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