You're Apparently a Bigot if you Like Harry Potter Now
- Feb 7, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 9, 2023
A new controversy has stirred in the ranks of video gaming, that of Hogwarts’s Legacy. This game has released over the weekend, and has had some political controversy as it approached release. And now that that release is here, that controversy has escalated to a pitched fervor online. People are boycotting the game and lambasting anyone who plays it, some official review sites are not reviewing the game or some reviewers are publicly saying the review was given to them because everyone else in their office was too scared to review it. People streaming the game online are being blasted in their live chats, to the point where one streamer was forced to stop streaming while crying over the threats coming in. What controversy has sparked such vitriol to amass the social media hate train in such a way? Well, the game is based on the Harry Potter universe. That’s it. There is nothing more to this than the association with said IP.
Why is being part of the Harry Potter universe suddenly universally hated? Well, if you’ve followed JK Rowling’s twitter these past few years, the original author and billionaire of the series and IP owner, you may have some inkling. Starting in 2020, JK Rowling really went a bit hard off the deep end in her tweets, focusing mainly on trans rights and cancel culture. I don’t want to get into the specifics of exactly what she said here, but here’s a good write up:
Mainly, she wrote a long essay which reads like a laundry list of all the discredited fears that most anti trans people and the right bring up. But what she said or did is missing the point I’m trying to make. I fear this is just the latest example of how the “voting with your wallet” form of activism is being taken to its extreme to the point where it’s alienating people from the message itself.
We need to be OK separating the art from the artist, especially in this case where the artist is completely removed from the creation of this product and her views aren’t being represented within it. JK Rowling did no writing or any other work that I’m aware of with this game. The only thing she benefits from is use of her IP in a product. Is there anything anti-gay or anti-trans within the actual game of Hogwarts Legacy? No, there’s even decent queer representation in it and the developers were quoted saying they wanted this game to be inclusive to everyone in response to the controversy. It is also important to note this game has been in development for a long time, well before JK Rowling decided it was time to go hard on anti trans rights.
But fine, some have decided the game isn’t for them or they don’t want a single cent of their money supporting JK and her views. I get that notion, but this notion of "boycott activism" is starting to really become toxic when you extend that out to choices others make. We are to the point where even professionals who’s job it is to play these games are getting attacked and sent death threats and shamed online for simply playing Hogwarts and doing their job. I mentioned it earlier but a streamer was brought to tears by her chat over playing it. They were receiving death threats and being called a transphobic, even though the proceeds of said stream were going to a pro trans charity.
I don’t like the idea of slippery slope, but we are really seeing in real time where mob mentality is taking us. To the point where even a tangential association with a thing that benefits someone you disagree with is enough to receive mass ridicule on social media and being labeled a bigot. This type of response only fuels the hate and the anti “wokeness” the right wing likes to over sensationalize.
But another big point I’d like to point out is that this form of activism is basically unsustainable and massively hypocritical in our modern capitalist society. If you believe in most or any liberal polices like global warming, LGBT rights, abortion rights, freedom from religion, etc, chances are you are personally funding a lot of the things you are against. It’s the reality of globalization of supply chains and monopolization of industries. We enjoy cheap clothes and electronics on the backs of cheap immoral labor practices from overseas. It is impossible for these companies, even if they try to be more moral, to determine how ethical their supply chains are at every step. Chances some of the raw materials from your phone were mined with exploitative wages or slave labor somewhere in the world.
Companies like Home Depot, Disney, Chikfila, Nestle, GAP, Tesla, Atlas, Amazon, Burger King, Apple, Samsung, Meta, Gillette, DOW, H&M, FIFA, NFL, Buddweiser, Heineken, are just the tip of the iceberg on companies you probably shouldn’t be doing business with if you think playing Hogwart’s Legacy makes you transphobic. And if you really want to get into the nitty gritty, you probably want to change the bank you use as just about every major one uses your money directly to fund big oil and gas projects around the world. Oh, and stop using your car since you need to pay the big oil companies for that sweet gasoline. Can’t switch to a Tesla though, thanks to Elon Musk going insane. And probably need to stop using the electric grid altogether. 60% of it is from big oil companies and coal.
Ok, I’m getting a bit cheeky here, but the point still stands. If you really start thinking about the boycott with wallet movement and shaming anyone who doesn’t, it doesn’t really….work. Nor does it really make sense. Also, it’s pretty wildly ineffective at a macro scale. Your money is peanuts compared to the global capitalist engine that deals in trillions of dollars. And it’s not convincing enough people to make a dent by shaming them into not spending money on products they like. That’s not how humans or society work at a macro scale. Hogwarts Legacy is probably going to do just fine. Even if it doesn’t, I guarantee you JK is still going to be a billionaire for the rest of her life. The only thing people are accomplishing is alienating those on the fringe of opinions and giving ammo to the Ben Shapiros and Matt Walshes of the world to point and say, “See, cancel culture and woke leftism hits again!”.
I’m not promoting anyone just shrug and say, “Fuck it” in some nihilistic fashion. I just mean maybe we need to choose to funnel our outrage energy into more positive things. It’s super easy to NOT buy something simple like a video game and its’ also pretty easy to buy into the social media outrage engine that anyone who does buy it is a terrible person. It’s obviously much harder to put that personal moral spending policy into practice across a modern daily life in a 1st world capitalist country. Real activism and change starts at voting the right people in to represent us. Channel that boycott energy into your local and national representatives and their campaigns. Volunteer, make calls, hell, run for office yourself. It;s the best we got for change, at least until the Republicans really decide elections don't matter anymore. Until then, there's still time to try.
Voting with your wallet through these shame boycotts is mostly an empty gesture at best and hypocritical at worst, and just an easy out to convince ourselves we hold the moral high ground. If that’s all we got, we’re going to be selectively boycotting while the world burns around us and more and more people fall into anti woke rhetoric over the next few decades.
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