Trump’s Sick Campaign to Gamify Violence |
Trump’s Sick Campaign to Gamify Violence
Young men are isolated and lonely. Trump’s exploitation of internet culture has made that trend worse.
“They said, ‘Skeddadle!’ The word ‘skedaddle.’”
Last November, during his address before McDonald’s investors, President Donald Trump—as he is wont to do during public speeches—went on one of his weird tangents. “And that plane went ‘pshh,’ like this,” he continued, diving his hand downward in an accompanying gesture. “You know, when it drops a bomb, it goes down very steeply, because that gives it a better angle, and, you know, more speed for the bomb.”
It was a characteristically glib illustration for Trump, as he narrated the experience of watching military planes drop bombs on Iran. The planes were described not in terms of the damage of their payload but rather by the sound they made as they levered inexorably downward. By now, we’re used to the way the president’s mind might lock onto something loud or shiny he sees on a screen, especially if those images provoke his enthusiasm or anger. But his play-by-play descriptions of bombs bursting in air is actually something his administration and his allies have long encouraged Americans to do: view their biggest atrocities through a gamified lens.
One demographic may be particularly susceptible to this kind of incitement, one for whom targeting an otherized population is viewed more as a game than as state-sanctioned violence: lonely, angry young men.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump made a concerted effort to market himself to this cohort. He appeared on multiple podcasts popular in the “manosphere,” a community that promotes misogyny and (often white) male supremacy. Since taking office a second time, Trump and his allies have continued to gamify many of their policy decisions, in a campaign to encourage their audience to transfer their online anger to the real world.
As they are increasingly siloed online, it becomes easier for young men to distance themselves from others, viewing all other perspectives as illegitimate or unimportant. If your experience is the only true version of reality, then other people become NPCs, or “nonplayable characters”—not individuals but mere background actors populating the scenes in your everyday life.
“You’re the protagonist in the same way that a player character in a game might be,” said Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor of communications at American University.
This perspective is frequently encouraged by the administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given his missions names such as “Midnight Hammer” and “Southern Spear,” phrases that sound more like weapons in a game than actual military operations. (Hegseth also has a tattoo that reads “Deus Vult,” a slogan adopted by the far right that was popularized by the grand strategy computer game Crusader Kings II.) And Trump, of course, continues to enthusiastically describe military strikes with the use of sound effects, as if he were watching an action flick rather than bombs dropping on human beings.
Characterizing military or law enforcement service as a video game–style activity can be an effective way to attract young men. Historically, recruitment efforts by the military have been intertwined with video game culture, encouraging this perspective—from the Army releasing its own hugely popular video game in the early 2000s to its use of esports to reach young Americans and encourage them to join up.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has enthusiastically adopted the strategy of explicitly appealing to gamers through distinct visuals and coded language. One recruitment poster shared by ICE on its Instagram account last year harkened to the video game series Halo, encouraging potential recruits to “destroy the flood.” In the Halo series, the “flood” is a parasitic alien life form and one of the primary villains of the franchise—the administration is thus comparing undocumented immigrants to an existential threat to society that must be eradicated.
“It is easier to be able to dehumanize an immigrant, if........