The Business: Russian Badger Demonstrates The Value of Escapist Entertainment

Russian Badger put out his year-end video yesterday.

And I could not be happier for the man.

Yes, he had a great year this year. He's managing to find a way to entertain a loyal audience that returns time and again to see what absolute insanity he and his boys get up to in videogames, and he's making a solid living doing this.

Take one moment watching any of his videos and you'll see why: Raw Escapist Entertainment.

Sure, his videos and livestreams are one giant shitpost with more memes per minute than anything else outside of the Chans, but his audience consists of Chan-familiar shitposting gamers (which is a lot of folks these days) so it works out.

Now compare this to the Oh So Serious people out there who insist that entertainment media must never engage in escapism. Nevermind propaganda, I mean relentless Muh Realisms because these people object to the fact that common people don't want to come home to see or read more of the same that they deal with first-hand. These people are nothing more than jailers, and jailers resent everyone who attempts to escape confinement.

Escape is a release value for pressure. Choke that off, and you instantly make it inevitable that seriously bad things are going to go down sooner than later because those under pressure have no other way to deal with it.

So yeah, if the current Narrative Warfare regime persists then we can expect Badger to get noticed by the Eye of Sauron and attacked because he gives people who really just want to play videogames the release and escapism that they're after when they can't play themselves.

Never forget that people want something other than their ordinary lives from their entertainment. It may be as plain as a love triangle resolving itself over Christmas, or as grand as a sweeping operatic epic played out on a galactic stage, but when that is over the audience goes away satisfied and relieved at the idea that there is more to life than what they deal with every day- and that allows them to go on dealing with that every day.

Mess with this at your peril.