Technoconservatism, political extremism and young people identified as MGTOW who participate in gamer communities in Brazil

Abstract

The article proposes an investigation about the circulation of technoconservative discourses with masculinist bias that are produced and disseminated in gamer communities in Brazil. Through an analysis of the profile of young contemporaries identified as MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), we sought to understand their relationship with radicalization processes, polarization and political extremism currently operated in several profiles of different digital platforms, fostering hate speech, supported by misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, but driven by an articulation of theoretical references anchored in scholastic thinking, neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology. From the observation of posts in the gamer forum Outer Space, the study identified the production and dissemination of a diversity of discourses with anti-feminist contents, which vehemently reject marriage and family law, relentless criticism of both progressivism and the belief in the existence of a hypergamic human nature associated with women, as well as the female gender. The research was carried out from the adoption of ethnographic procedures applied to digital platforms, also conducted by the lurker (peeping) technique, aiming to understand how young people identified as MGTOW use discursive strategies that reinforce male victimisation and the reversal of gender oppressions, promoting a reactive vision to social changes. Moreover, the gamer culture, historically dominated by a competitive male identity, presents itself as a fertile ground for the dissemination of this type of extremist content, especially in a context of resistance to diversity in the gaming industry. The study shows how digital spaces can catalyze extremist discourses, emphasizing the need to understand the impacts of this technoconservative subjectivation.