Narrative Warfare: Virtual BattleMechs Have No Sex. Hustling Crooks Do.

Tracer is not gay. Tracer is not straight. Tracer is not female, British, or even alive. Tracer is a fictional avatar controlled by a player in game about objective-focused arena combat. Tracer is nothing more than a virtual BattleMech.

That's what I find most bothersome of this non-news about the sexuality of a character in a first-person shooter, a genre of game wherein most players could not--and do not--give a shit about anything that does not directly impact gameplay. They aren't reading comics. They aren't watch lore videos. They aren't reading threads about anything but playing the game because the game matters and everything else does not.

So, I'm with the others rolling my eyes over SocJus cultists jonesing for another hit of the Outrage drug. I don't care because Tracer is a robot, and all I care about with my robots is that they do the job that they are designed to execute. There's no story in a combat arena shooter, so all the lore is pointless bullshit; it's as relevant as it is in DOTA 2 or League of Legends (i.e. not at all)- and man, Tracer's been shipped with Widowmaker since at least the Beta, so where the fuck have these shitstains been?

Thus, I find that there is something else at work here: building a brand.

@stillgray @Blaugast Hell, I doubt that they think so. They just say so, but that's just another lie. Spot on about the brand building.

— Bradford C. Walker (@MrBCWalker) December 21, 2016

Tracer is gay, and *suddenly* nobody finds her pose problematic. Why was it a problem when you thought she was straight?

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) December 21, 2016

We've been on this wild ride to know long enough when someone's lying and when someone's blathering like they've seen Cthulhu. When it comes to the crooks fraudulently passing as "journalists" and "critics", they're lying. Yes, even #FullMcIntosh. It's never enough for them because they've built a brand upon being outraged, so they can't ever be satisfied or it damages their brand and thus their ability to function. (It also damages their identity, but that's part of the issue in tying your brand to your identity; don't do that.) That's why the ride doesn't end; they need to be outraged or everything about their lives collapses.

The narrative push here is to gaslight people into thinking that something that doesn't matter actually does. The pushback is to point out the bullshit and then show by example that this is irrelevant. Meme Masters and Shitlords, you know what to do. Have at it.

I'm done with this cult. Time to bake them like we do the Clams.