Professor Angela Washko’s lecture was probably the most engaging to me of the lectures so far. Her work deals with a lot of contemporary topics that I brushed against in my early teenage years on the internet, like pick-up culture and World of Warcraft. I very easily could have fallen down the hole that led to the manosphere and alt-right that Washko was harassed by. Professor Washko’s experiences dealing with these people reminds me of some of the people I have watched and interacted with on the internet.

Professor Washko’s Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft immediately grabbed my attention in the way it took an existing online platform to create discussions about feminism. This kind of appropriation of existing online platforms to push a message is common in a lot of digital interventions. The Council of Gender Sensitivity reminds me of works from some of our other lecturers in the way that Professor Washko uses existing platforms to reach communities, specifically Professor Washko’s work brings to mind Professor Navab’s work with Zanan Disruption. Where I feel like Zanan Disruption might fall short as a digital intervention, because it doesn’t necessarily cause people to engage with the questions Professor Navab was trying to ask, the Council of Gender Sensitivity actively promoted discussion and it was accessible even to those outside of these subcultures. Toward the end of the lecture, Professor Washko stated that the Council of Gender Sensitivity became a bridge for more traditional art and feminist communities and male-centric gaming communities. This allowed these communities to not only become aware of each other but provided a framework for future projects that try to engage with similar demographics. 

I think Professor Stalbaum brought up the Velvet-Strike project in one of his questions, which led me to do some research on what Velvet-Strike is. Velvet-Strike is a mod for the original Counter-Strike that allows players to upload custom anti-war and anti-machismo images that could be sprayed as graffiti on each stage. The project was met with criticism by a Counter-Strike community where “right wing ideology was living an extreme,” said Brody Condon, a contributor on Velvet-Strike. However, in contemporary art communities, Velvet-Strike was met with praise. This is just another example of how out-of-step art communities and traditional gaming communities are.

What I found interesting is the similarities in the execution between Velvet-Strike and The Council; both projects ignore the primary goals of their base games to engage with the players on a more critical level, with Velvet-Strike questioning and challenging the explicit actions of Counter-Strike, and The Council questioning and challenging the misogyny of World of Warcraft players.

    One of the ideas that I have been exposed to since joining the Speculative Design major is that art pieces don’t necessarily end. Pre-UCSD I thought about art pieces as these things that were worked on until completion, but this idea that art pieces around a specific topic can continue being worked on indefinitely is really interesting to me. This is why Professor Washko’s work on and leading up to The Game: The Game was the most engaging for me to learn and think further about. The origin of The Game: The Game is rooted in Professor Washko’s other work, Banged. Banged is a play on Roosh V. 's book series, Bang, where he writes about his sexual exploits and the techniques he uses to coerce women into bed with him. Before it was discontinued, Banged was a series of interviews with some of the women Roosh V. had “conquered.” The project was concluded with a two hour interview with Roosh V. after he became aware of the project. However, the work on Banged wasn’t totally in vain after Professor Washko discontinued the project. Her research on pick-up artists and pick-up artist culture led directly to her work on The Game: The Game.

The Game: The Game is a critical look at pick-up artist culture by taking real quotes and likenesses of influential pick-up artists and presenting them in the form of a dating simulation game. In the game, you are pursued and dehumanized by various real pick-up artists using their patented techniques; the player can either give in to these men or they will quickly lose interest and stop pursuing the player. On her website, Professor Washko writes that The Game: The Game, “allows you to tactically explore, expose, and defuse [the techniques used by the pick-up artists].” The medium that Professor Washko used to present this idea is really important to the effectiveness of the work. A text-based dating simulator in which the player has control over the progress of the story allows for a deeper analysis of the situation by the player, something that might not be allowed to happen in any other context, like if it were to happen in real time. This also makes The Game: The Game an invaluable teaching tool, as players can become well versed in the techniques that men might be learning from these programs. 

Professor Washko’s work in these digital spaces sheds light on some of the darkest and most misogynistic corners of the internet. These spaces have been allowed to fester on the internet for at least two decades without any mainstream opposition.

Professor Washko’s work provides a framework for new projects opposing the alt-right and misogynistic forces that are starting to become legitimate problems in the twenty-first century.