• “Suddenly a generation of lonely basement kids had marketers whispering in their ears that they were the most important commercial demographic of all time. Suddenly they started wearing shiny blouses and pinning bikini babes onto everything they made, started making games that sold the promise of high-octane masculinity to kids just like them. By the turn of the millennium those were games’ only main cultural signposts: Have money. Have women. Get a gun and then a bigger gun.” – Leigh Alexander on gamer culture (via Ian Bogost).
• A soldier fighting in Afghanistan anonymously sent a GoPro video he made of a firefight to Esquire, writing: “I wanted to share the video with the world because I was sick of hearing all the ignorant things said about what we are doing over there. People need to understand what it’s like on the ground for the troops on the front line, and see what we have to deal with on a daily basis without some political spin on the story.”
• Developers hope to cash in with a new Philadelphia apartment building with a “mix of design sophistication and calculated grit,” so they “cleverly kept a rim of authentic graffiti around the wall of the spectacular roof deck, infusing the luxe space with real street cred,” writes Inga Saffron at the Philadelphia Inquirer, disdainfully. (All built with non-union labor, of course.)
• Hey, you know what we haven’t had much of on the Baffler blog lately? D.C. politics. Let’s check in on the latest analysis. “The 2016 presidential contenders are all basically Miley Cyrus,” reports the Washington Post. And over at Business Insider we have “The 10 Most Important Tweets About Obama’s Tan Suit.” (Via Emma Roller and Jared Keller.) Thanks, everyone, this has been great.
