BW Media Spotlight

Above (if still active) is the trailer for free DLC edutainment for “Good Trouble”, a game using Minecraft to teach kids about various civil rights movements. It sound innocent enough since Minecraft is a game for kids despite all the channels of adults playing the game. Unfortunately we live in a time when any kind of message that carries a whiff of social pandering and far-left prophelitising is receiving serious pushback, which is not what we discuss around here. It is one of the issues I hear people have with this DLC, which is free but not mandatory. I also saw a 6 minute  speedrun playthrough and it looked so boring I didn’t even finish the video. I’ll leave examining that to the culture warriors. I already had one nap today and I don’t need a second or nothing’s getting done today.

The other complaint I saw in X-Twitter responses collected in one article and in video titles while looking for this trailer and the map walkthrough (which was more like a runthrough) was that Minecraft is supposed to be escapism. Edutainment, which is a topic on its own to go over why most of it fails whether you’re teaching actual math, science, history, politics, religion, or anything else (even Christian media makes the same mistakes), isn’t a bad thing on its own. I’m not against educational games or even the idea of a DLC where you take part in the various civil rights marches (whether you want to or not as your player character–and I don’t know if the player created the crazy activist LGBT+stereotype design or not–is forced to move down the bridge as much as he/she/whatever is forced away from a school to give your report and can only go to a library to read up on civil rights movements around the world). However, players and watchers are fighting for escapist entertainment to be just that: an escape. So something like this just activates a sort of “fight or flight” response: push back or go do something else.

This is most of the problem with how current media is treated. The activists who want their message pounded into every waking hour of your life, and the elitists who think they’re being more “serious” directors and performers (this predates the current social culture, by the way) won’t hear of it. You can escape. You must be as radicalized as they are. Again, right wing media does this as well, but right now the big money and pop culture outlets are in the hands of one-sided politics. I’m including everyone in this because it’s all the same problem: we just want a break from your “real world” and enjoy ourselves, which apparently isn’t allowed anymore in entertainment…despite what the name actually means!

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