Repression Quest

INTERNET — The video gamer atmosphere was heavier with repressed sexuality than ever before, and positive reviews of a video game called Depression Quest kept flying off the pages of game review publications. “A game that you have to read? And when you read it, its intention is not to make you have fun, it’s to make you feel depressed?” Few gamers paid Depression Quest any attention. After all, it was a game that was never intended for the exponentially growing demographic of pale, sexually repressed young men locked inside their houses.

Meanwhile, millions of gamers were fermenting their semen in the safe chamber of video game fantasy worlds where no one ever turned them down, but somehow they were still denied sex. It didn’t make sense, except as purposeful torture. Some latched onto a growing subculture of men, “Red Pillers” who broke out from the sex-deprived Matrix of female persecution by keeping score of “sex market value” and leveling up their physique. They didn’t date women, but rather gamed plates, the goal being to keep as many plates spinning as possible, like a juggler manipulating as many women’s emotions as their manhood could handle.

Depression Quest had no explosions and no sex, and the post-pubescent gamers were, as usual, balls deep in some violent first person shooter on a hot killing spree, perhaps shouting “rape!” in celebration. But everything changed when the ex-boyfriend of Depression Quest’s designer blew the lid off of his jilted case of personal repression. He’d been in the “sex zone” of Depression Quest’s cute nerd girl designer — every repressed gamer’s shock-blue-haired big titty wet dream. But somehow, he found himself cut out of the world of sexual gratification, and what was worse — he hadn’t been her only sex partner. It would not do for him to slink back to fantasy land with his engorged penis painfully bouncing between his legs. He would find a way to package his libidinal excesses and market them to his fellow gamers in pain. He would blow a hatenut that would launch ten trillion tortured sperm.

He did everything just right. He made all the connections and packaged them into a novel-length series of blogposts that showed he was not simply blaming and shaming his ex-girlfriend because she no longer touched his penis. Rather, it was a grand conspiracy involving all the largest video game bloggers and reviewers out there, and reading it I imagine that on the nights before Christian holidays bad game designers like his ex-girlfriend stuck video game controllers between their legs and flew off to a global black mass to have wild satanic ritualistic sex orgies and set the agenda for who would succeed in the gaming industry and who would not.

The collective libidinal discharge would personally target Depression Quest’s buxom designer while espousing an ideological rationalization that “Social Justice Warriors” were corrupting “Video Game Journalism” with feminist critique, which was not only unwelcome, but oppressive and evil. The shallowly concocted verbal tricks some used to paint their mass freakout as a moderate and sensible movement in opposition to a corrupt industry were so transparent only a pale, bent troll with eyes dazed from constantly staring into screens could think they were sound. Meanwhile, they traded nude pictures of Depression Quest’s designer and sent them to her friends, family, coworkers, and employers. They issued death threats, hacked her various social media accounts, and did whatever else they thought might provoke a reaction in the effigy that represented all their unsatisfied desires.

Some believed that something so monstrous could simply not happen, preferring rather to believe that it was only a small conspiracy of a few dastardly bandit hackers with thousands of sockpuppets that just made them appear as a multitude. But that’s putting too much faith in humanity, and taking the frenzied flock of screwy gamer sexuality at its word.

If they’d truly thought Depression Quest’s designer was ugly or truly hated her for being a feminist, there’d have been no pleasure in it for them. They didn’t care for one second about her game, the industry’s integrity, or any of the watery soup of bullshit they’d cooked up. And to be fair, there were probably just as many frustrations and inadequacies motivating them as there were people throwing abuse her way. But the witch hunt for Zoë Quinn was that special kind of sour grapes hate crush that’s familiar to any jilted ex-boyfriend. They zeroed in on her vulnerabilities, and any response from her, especially pain, must have triggered a masturbatory reverie among thousands of gamers.

As is so typical, they showed their hand when describing their imaginary opposition: “If you’re defending her, you just want to get laid!”