Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated by a machine via the service Trint and therefore are (very) buggy. If you are capable, please help us to create good quality subtitles: https://c3subtitles.de/talk/1004 Thanks!
[Music]
our next speaker is Angela wko she's an
artist writer and facilitator based in
the US where she currently is a
Wizarding assistant professor of art at
Carnegie melon
University Angela's work revolves around
mobilizing
communities and creating new forums for
discussions of feminism at places where
they do not exist or which are
frequently hostile especially toward
women her interventions performances
written words and video games about
which Angela will talk today in a few
minutes have been widely received and
are critically acclaimed Angela's work
has been presented in numerous venues
such as the LA Museum of Contemporary
Art the Museum of the mov in image or
the Rotterdam International Film
Festival this year she received the
impact award at indicate her work has
been covered by for instance art in
America the guardan the New York Times
Time Magazine and many many more to sum
it up we are very very happy to finally
have Angela here at Congress talking
about strategies for activism and
performance in hostile online
environments give a warm Round of
Applause for our next speaker Angela
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
was okay uh can you hear me all right is
this working my Britney sphere is
headset I'm very excited about it maybe
you can't see it because
it's invisible okay so um thanks so much
to everyone on the Arts and uh cultur
culture curatorial committee that's a
lot of C's um for inviting me tonight
I'm Angela Wasco and I'm a
research-based artist and activist
making um video games written works
performances and interventions often
within video game and multi-user online
environments I'm also um as you heard
upgraded from visiting Professor to
assistant professor of art at Carnegie
melon University so I now Fully live in
Pittsburgh um so today in my talk I'm
going to focus on um my projects
investigating uh Niche languages formed
in specific online communities and um my
activism driven feminist interventions
into the sociocultural byproducts of our
digital environments I'll mostly talk
about the game of the game a video game
I recently finished based on online
pickup artist communities and seduction
forums uh and we'll also have an
audience participatory playthrough of
the game at the end of my talk as well
so
participation um I'm laughing a lot but
uh there's actually some very difficult
content in this presentation and I'll
try to give adequate warnings to some of
that difficult content when we get to
it um but to start okay um I'm going to
start with this particular project to
give a sense of what kinds of processes
and politics we're performing the work
that I'll show after it um I started
playing the massively multiplayer
roleplaying Video Game World of Warcraft
in 2006 um a version of the game that
veteran Wild players here might know as
vanilla anybody no
okay or silent just keeping it to
themselves that's fine um after years of
playing in competitive guilds and
feeling frustrated with how my social
experience differed from men I regularly
played with in 2012 I decided to do
something about it I'd become tired of
being told to get back in the kitchen
and make male player sandwiches I'd
become incredibly uncomfortable with the
number of male players aggressively
soliciting me for sexual interactions as
soon as they realized I was a woman
after years of working in public
performance Grassroots activism and
Collective organizing I thought I could
use this background that I had um and
apply it to this virtual public space
and directly talk to players about why
the community had become so homophobic
misogynous IC and racist in its Public
Communication channels at least on the
US servers that I've been playing on so
from 2012 to 2016 I created performative
interventions inside World of Warcraft
so instead of killing enemies and
getting badass equipment like I had for
six years prior to its founding as the
Council on gender sensitivity and
behavioral awareness in World of
Warcraft I started traveling to highly
populated virtual towns in the game to
discuss the ways in which women were
treated in the game game space with
other players um again wow has had a
player base that at the time and and I
would say still um is notorious for
being quite hostile toward women members
of the queer community and people of
color um and this was again specially
true on the servers that I primarily
played on um in sessions with the
council players came together in these
public spaces to discuss inclusivity
entitlement who gets to ask questions
about the community's actions and
language um harassment um why certain
marginalized players were treated so
poorly in the space uh the feminism um
why the politics of everyday life ended
up so embedded in exchanges in this
otherwise fantasy landscape where you
can play as Orcs trolls and um cows uh
and so much more the project shifted in
intention from initially wanting to um
completely change the communal language
in the space to fit something that um
was more affirming to me um but
ultimately I realized that this was also
a colonial impulse um and started
shifting toward trying to create a
presence and public visibility for the
issues of exclusivity that players faced
in the space by meeting and talking
about it regularly um so we started just
kind of literally taking up space and
altering the game experience with these
um underrepresented perspectives that
were otherwise silenced within the
community um the project over time
gained a large in-game following um and
an intentional inclusive Guild was
created as a part of these discussions
on the primary server I operated on um
my biggest goal from the start was that
this project could create a prototype or
set of tactical guidelines for
productive performative um actions of
protest by others in wow and also other
multi-user virtual
environments um oh and if it wasn't
clear this is some um video document
ation from one of the meetings of the
council um this is sort of a fast
description of the project um there's a
whole lot of nuance and a lot of self-
criticality missing um if you are
interested in some of those elements and
some of the background and and politics
and process from the project um I wrote
an essay called uh why talk feminism in
World of Warcraft um which also has a
lot of uh video documentation from the
project as well and it's available
widely online writing is a big part of
my practice so every project I do
usually has some kind of written
component along with
it so um in the midst of that long-term
project I started another one uh which
was also focused on facilitating
dialogue um within Niche internet
communities that are not inclusive to
women and bringing together um very
disperate perspectives um so starting in
2014 I became interested in a figure
named r v um his writing and his
ideology started coming up during
conversations with Wild players who
identified themselves to me as men's
rights activists or members of the
manosphere in case you're not familiar
RV is a professional pickup artist or
now he's sort of reframed himself as a
professional seduction coach um but he's
been called the most infamous misogynist
on the internet um and he has a lot of
competition for that title as you might
know um thanks rushby spends his time
traveling around the world teaching men
how to perform in particular ways in
order to have sex with as many women as
possible across Geographic Language and
Cultural barriers as quickly as possible
he writes a series of Seduction Centric
travel guides called bang de bang bang
Iceland bang Poland and so on um one of
his community fans made this image not
me um after reading so much of his
writing for his devoted community of
followers one thing really stuck out to
me in R's accounts of his sexual
exploits the perspectives of the women
he's explicitly talking about in great
detail in his books and blogs are never
represented so I decided that I wanted
to create a web and Book Project through
which I'd hope to give um the
potentially hundreds of women R had
sexual exchanges with using the
extremely aggressive strategies outlined
in his books and blogs an opportunity to
anonymously report their
experiences
after pursuing mainstream media
distribution of my call for these women
it occurred to me that Ro knew about my
project as he wrote about it on his
Twitter
account his awareness of the project
changed it for me he became less of this
sort of abstract villain that I was free
to run a smear campaign on and more of a
complex person and more of a subject I
decided that I should stop mimicking the
shock media tactics that his own
Community would use for definitely
different ideological Purp purposes but
still um and moveed toward investigating
further into actually trying to
understand the tactics within his
community his personal motivations and
the appeal that he and his practice held
for his growing community of followers
and ideally come up with systems to um
respond to it um and many of this
community of followers uh later became
what's politically called um the
alt-right or part of it so I pursued
getting Rush V to do an interview with
me via Skype this took months of email
negotiating um the video interview ended
up being um unintentionally 2 hours long
and um was very exhausting um I'm going
to play two short clips from the
interview to give you a sense of what it
was like um I will say there is some
sexually explicit uh talk in this clip
so um if you're uncomfortable with
hearing uh bruv talk about female
orgasms um now would be the time to
leave because he will okay
I'm a
heterosexual Normal Man without any
alternative lifestyle meanings I'm just
a average guy and I feel you make these
buts yeah so can you can you just for
for the for an audience that may not be
familiar with the books that you've
written can you just describe a little
bit about um bang bang bang um iand
don't like Denmark and
so I love
Denmark each each book is just basically
trying to help men learn how to meet
women and initiate sexual relationships
how to start a conversation with the
woman how to build a traction with a
woman how to get her into bed if you
don't mind I I want to read a section
from bang that maybe you could sort of
respond to because I think based on what
you're saying some of the things that in
bang are maybe a more extreme version of
what you're practicing now you may want
you may be trying to play this out of
context type of game where you oh no
sorry I don't
want know let's see CU I know that's
what people have done in
support I just want well I'll let you
respond to it because I don't I don't
want you to you
know that's what I wrote it's it's this
is just called if you don't feel like a
creep you're not pushing hard
enough yeah this is a great start and
get like you know I'm not I'm not trying
to exploit you I'm
just she's not going to invite you
upstairs like in the movies she's not
going to tell you she wants to have sex
with you she's not going to grab your
dick and put
you must always be making the first move
and always be pushing if you're scared
she'll think of you as a creep that
means you're on the right path remember
that girls who like you are flattered
that you want sex with them so moving
quickly is an indirect way of showing
interest that can be helpful from your
relationships get to your place or hers
the same night you need her get her into
the bedroom take off her clothes and
keep going if she resists take a break
and start over again break her down and
bang her and then take her out and bang
her again and then on page 90 something
um pound away like a jackhammer until
she gets tired and gives in this isn't
an elegant approach but it works any
human resistance can be broken down with
enough pressure I just feel like that's
a little bit more extreme than what you
were explaining earlier how can I
not let's imagine that I do somehow find
20 women that have slept with you what
do you think these women might say about
the seduction process and your sexual
per I would um say that they would they
would probably say that I approach them
with good energy I didn't I didn't scare
them I made them feel comfortable I
didn't come on
really strong but at the same time I
didn't come out with such a low energy
that they weren't interested um I really
good at keeping the conversation going
even if the go is not even me a lot back
I make everything feel natural how I
touch and kiss and I mean it's never
it's rarely the point where a girl have
to stop and say no I don't like it touch
me there because I can read them I know
but based on how they act how they talk
how they move when they want me to do
the next step and after sex I get lazy
because now I already got most of what I
wanted so I just want to go to have the
lowest possible expectations so say well
I don't want to try so it's actually a
blessing and a curse to be good and dead
but I'm not so you mention your your
orgasm is of primary importance and that
you don't go down on women that's
true can I ask why we because Nature has
deemed the male orgasm to be more
important if the if right now a magic
cloud of gas surrounds the Earth and
infected girls and prevented them from
ever having a female orgasm again the
human species would go on still but if
this cloud of gas only affected men and
prevented the male orgasm what would
happen the human species is done is
freaking done therefore nature not me
nature has the de uh declare that the
male orgasm is essential to life to life
but the female orgasm is like a cherry
on top you know if she gets it hey
that's great yummy but if not it doesn't
matter so I'm just I I believe in what
Nature has has said about it all the
things that have been said in defense of
nature
um uh what is it the Xeno feminist
manifest if nature is unjust change
nature sorry okay un aside so um the
text in this video uh is from one of the
many emails that I got nearly daily over
the course of this project from rouch's
community members um the project ended
up taking a lot of unusual uh turns and
a lot of unusual forms um rch was
initially enthusiastic about my search
on the project in general um likely
because of the media attention it gave
him um something which I started to feel
quite UNC comfortable about um however
he and his community became increasingly
frustrated over time that the media
still had an overall negative view of
Roo despite me posting an unedited 2hour
long interview with him in mainstream
media his community began to harass me
and additionally sent me rape and death
threats over email social media comment
sections of mainstream news sites and a
massive and still ongoing comment thread
on the rushby community Forum um and
additionally wrote threatening
statements to collaborators employers
friends peers and colleagues in an
attempt to discredit what I was doing um
and I'm not talking about this issue to
play up a victim narrative is I
recognized myself as an artist with
agency who started this whole thing um
but as a perform performer who had seen
real impact on the space in world
Warcraft as a result of my actions as
the council I naively applied some of
the same logic and strategies to this
project without re realizing the primary
difference in my position in these two
spaces in World of Warcraft I was
recognizable as a long-term highlevel
member of the community with high level
gear only obtained through years of
commitment to the game clearly a
participant and not an outsider um by
virtue of just being myself on the
Baseline of a woman with a job uh I was
always going to be an outsider um in the
manosphere that I was going
into here we'll let this uh play out for
a
[Music]
second
um if you're not familiar with the
acronym wnb that's Would Not Bang so
thanks mem all right um so uh normally I
say more about this but um if you do end
up trying to follow me on Twitter you
might find that my account is now
private this is all um related to this
and now you know um but I'm sure that
all of you will make it through my
vetting process so follow okay um so
toward the end of this bang project my
individual pursuit of this somewhat
suficient exchange with rushy and the
online manosphere community felt riddled
with the symptoms of the Artist as hero
/ saavor complex perhaps internalized
from formative years spent working for
male tactical media artists who I admire
like the Yes Men I became more and more
critical of my own processes and instead
of ignoring the blind spots I decided to
fold them into the project acknowledging
them in a variety of project
manifestations including multimedia
storytelling performances art
installations videos an interactive
Dungeon Crawler video game and quite a
lot of
writing um and this shift in politics
and self- criticality led directly into
the research and form for the game the
game toward the end of the bang project
something I felt was getting in the way
of the work was my my own performance
role the project became very much about
my personal experience operating in the
field um despite my somewhat bad
experience I haven't abandoned this
field as you'll see in this project I'm
just putting myself out of the spotlight
and making the project less about my
personal mediation of and intervention
into the space and more about creating
an embodied way for people to digest
experiences from and IDE ideologies of
these manosphere seduction communities
there's so much information so many
micro micro communities and a lot of
inaccessible lingo in this field and a
lot of the tactical information is very
painful to process especially if you're
a woman and so with all of the
experience I now have mapping this field
as a researcher I felt like I was able
to put myself in the position to filter
it all into a game scenario so that one
might actually walk away being able to
make sense of it without having to spend
as much time as I have and potentially
develop strategies to respond to
it um so this brings me to the game the
game um which we'll play through
together in a moment at least part of it
um after the bang project followers of
other seduction gurus reached out to me
to tell me that Ro V's variety of pickup
art was much more extreme and much more
misogynistic than other types that they
argued were more focused on teaching men
self-confidence um encouraging them to
pursue self-improvement to help level
the dating playing field I thought that
this was a valid point and that
something like this should exist um so I
decided to take a deeper look into the
variety of pickup artist gurus or
professional seduction coaches and the
differences between the types of pickup
art they're teaching and then ultimately
make a playable experience or video game
about them um I'm just going to say the
the rest of this talk on there are um
definitely mentions of practices that
look like sexual assault and definitely
evidence of non-consensual behavior um
so if you're sensitive to or experienced
trauma around these things and want to
leave at any time um I won't be offended
at all and I completely
understand um so the Project's title the
game that the game is a play on the
best-selling book by Neil Strauss the
game um which was the first mainstream
um primer into this world which
originated as a couple of guys with a
web 1.0 online community Forum sharing
tips with each other on how to pick up
women and ultimately turned into a
seduct sorry a lucrative seduction
coaching lifestyle for some um so I made
sort of a playable version of um of the
game but looking at the entire field um
and also the field as a emerged today in
more recent um internet technology um so
not just the pickup artist represented
in that book in developing the game the
game I present the different seduction
techniques of famous pickup artists and
allow those pickup artists to speak for
themselves through their work and put
players into the situation of
interacting with them in the most common
location for pickup bar a
bar players regardless of personal
gender identity are put into the
position of experiencing a common
scenario that fem presents presenting
people experience having their personal
space invaded when it's unwelcome by men
who feel entitled to
it the first pickup artist you encounter
in the game uh the game the game is
Julian who is designed primarily from
research material from Infamous pickup
artist Julian blanc's first major
multi-dvd training program
pimp um this is what the program costs
today now at a drastically reduced
price all of the dialogue by the pickup
artists in this game is constructed from
their actual word forword advice written
by these pickup artists in their books
websites um DVD programs and video
conferences and also situations from
their own hidden camera footage that
they sell to their devoted followers
online a lot of these coaching materials
are prohibitively expensive and not
available in full online I hypothesize
that this is not only to make a bunch of
money off of them but also to keep
people who aren't looking to learn from
them from finding out about them um but
I got some grants so I bought so many of
them um
so thanks University um anyway I really
mean that but anyway um I'm going to
show an example of an excerpt from one
of Julian blanc's videos including an
infield hidden camera um video uh I'm
just again going to give a little bit of
a warning about this um it's not graphic
um it's not overly um sexual or
pornographic it's just um Disturbing
non-consensual Behavior um so I'm just
going to put that out there um so this
is a short excerpt um from
pimp so when I'm like you know what
after party let's go I'm going to thr
the word now okay like you know what
after party now boom and I will order
and command now now okay listen you
don't have to if you don't want to but
let's go now okay we get along right
after party now Adventure now let's go
now this seconds now this second now
okay I'm going to hammer that [ __ ] in
I'll also do like you know what's after
party cuz otherwise I have to go AKA it
has to happen now okay so keep that in
mind take the responsibility off of the
girl and create a sense of urgency me
we have so in do we have what you mean
the connection we're just
like see I hide it I have massive
shoulders she won't see get out of time
that's what she said okay real fast real
fast oh my God oh my God a real kiss sh
she's gone okay we're already kiss it's
too late give a real kiss redemp
Redemption it's like a video game
Redemption are you going to cheat on a
sh kiss
no that's a good point am I going to
cheat on a shitty K you already cheated
you already cheated you cheated on a
fiance on a shitty kiss is that really
what you
want where you guys come from can I hug
youby I'll hug youby you give me a hug
okay come here kiss me two minutes no
minutes two minutes okay
kiss no no
no can't see my friend's talking to her
stop it so this pretty much covers you
know like aligning the emotional side of
her brain with the logical side of her
brain
sorry um so I showed that video to
illustrate that this moment presented in
Julian's hidden camera footage is
represented in the game as a player if
you continue to engage with him to the
point that you end up outside of the bar
and are invited to leave the venue with
him even when you push back you may be
physically moved around and touched
sexually without your consent um this is
not me inventing what Julian is like in
any way but presenting him and his
behaviors in the way that he has
presented them himself and has suggested
them as a template for his many hundreds
of thousands of online fans to follow um
it's really important that in the
context of um this DVD program this this
is packaged as a success this is a this
is a um this was a good interaction this
is um you know proof that this kind of
practice Works um so if you can imagine
the many hundreds of thousands of of
people that are that are following this
practice um you know it's it's not a
great feeling especially if you've had
experiences that um resonate with this
um this dedication to accurately
representing the strategies and language
of each pickup artist is also why the
game the game took three and a half
years to
make um
just some images um after each
interaction in the game you're prompted
with a series of options um generally
the options include a tonal range from
um being enthusiastic or going along
with it to being snarky to being polite
um to resorting to being aggressive in
your
rejection each option results in a
different outcome illustrating how the
pickup artist has described ways of
handling the different ways that um
women respond to them each pickup artist
handles rejection and uh women's
attitudes
differently um for example and this is a
bit of a spoiler alert um but if you
play through you'll notice that Julian
will persist until you physically push
him away so as we play through together
if you um if you want Julian to go away
um as soon as you uh physically push him
away he will so um as a safety for for
all of you playing through um that's a
way to get him away uh whereas even the
slightest hint of attitude or confidence
will signal to Luke uh that you aren't
submissive and therefore aren't worth
his time and he'll leave you immediately
um and Rush V is called Luke in this
game because he was caught by talk show
host in Russia using a pseudonym name of
Luke so I honored that in my
game um structurally the game the game
follows the mystery method M3 model
originally designed by Eric Von marovic
a pickup artist also known as
mystery so all of the pickup artists in
the game of the game have adopted
mystery's M3 model in their own
practices and coaching materials and
they've each tweaked it a bit to
establish their own brand on it and then
sell it um this diagram um is breaks
down the model um and I'll talk about a
little bit so you can um understand how
it guides the game's timeline when we
play it so broken into three stages
attract comfort and seduce this model
outlines a pickup art hypothesis of
structurally what needs to happen for a
successful Conquest to take place so in
the game the game the attract phase
includes pickup lines and a quickly
establishing the pickup artist's quirky
General Vibe um also during the attract
phase they do value demonstrations by
showing how unimpressed they are by
their targets so this is also known as
something you may have heard of called
negging um and also providing proof from
other people in the room that they're
socially valuable so finding a
stereotypically attractive woman in the
room and um establishing that they know
them somehow um the pickup artist then
Waits um for their target this is their
language um or the woman uh to show an
indicator of interest in their world
this means touching their hair making
sustained eye contact starting to
initiate conversation rather than just
answering the pickup artist's questions
um being receptive to being touched by
the pickup artist um and ignoring their
friends to talk to the pickup artist
things like this after that the pickup
artist will try to move into the Comfort
stage by physically isolating their
target so moving them away from their
friends to a farther part of the bar
sometimes even physically um convincing
them to go to a different location with
them like another bar a diner um or a
madeup after party that just ends up
being their house um and starting to
physically connect um via a term that
they call Keno um which basically just
means repetitive touching that becomes
more sexual in nature over time so
moving from a shoulder touch to hugging
to handholding to kissing and so on um
after they've isolated their Target in a
comfort building location um they
attempt to bounce them to the sex
location um which could be their their
place their Target's home a bathroom a
vehicle Etc and then the final stages of
Seduction occur a very large amount of
pickup artist writing is devoted to
overcoming what they call last minute
resistance which is basically the moment
in a sexual exchange when the target
says they aren't comfortable with what's
happening AKA a clear no um each pickup
artist has their own strategy for
getting past that moment and plowing
through to sexual
intercourse so following this structure
as a player and as a target of pickup
artist attention you can make a broad
range of decisions in the game the game
from opting to hook up with different
pickup artists in multiple locations to
attempting to get away from them
immediately in constructing the game I
didn't want to make the point
necessarily escape and I hope that
players if they aren't traumatized by it
do experiment with seeing what a
successful Conquest looks like from the
perspective of each of the pickup
artists um the game never [ __ ] shames
the player by any means and also allows
you to turn the tables and pursue the
pickup artists
yourself um I've tried to depict not
only the breadth of the field of pickup
art in the game but also the extent to
which each of these gurus copy their
moves from each other highlighting how
community- based and internet driven the
men's seduction field is each pickup
artist has his on his own online
community Forum where participants share
their experience es using the strategies
proposed by these pickup artists um so
here you have the old my TV is working
but we could use the computer in my
bedroom
routine and then you have Julian's
version um which involves a Vampire
Diaries video you should see um and
mystery or Eric Von markovic's version
which is I wanted to show you something
in Google Earth um which says maybe date
this a little bit um but yeah as you
play through more and more exchanges and
interact with more and more pickup
artist artist it becomes clear that each
pickup artist is really building off of
the content of another one's materials
and tweaking them um the game was made
from hundreds of handmade and digitally
manipulated
cyanotypes can see some
here um this is what it looks like when
they're combined and altered uh
digitally and then put into Python and
renpy I really wanted the game to have a
feel to it that was consistent with the
emotional and psychological weight of
the experience so I brought back some of
my background and more um traditional
art process processes rather than
employing the All Digital Sprite based
RPG look I originally planned um also
the band shushu composed the soundtrack
to the game the game so it has this dark
and intense musical score um which I
think enhances the tense claustrophobic
nature of a lot of the interactions and
environments which you'll get to hear in
a minute um it's been shown primarily in
art exhibition and Festival context at
this point um but the goal has always
been um widespread online distribution
through a platform like steam um which
is still um in the
works um and I also want to say despite
the heavy way I've described the work um
it's actually also at times quite funny
um for example Julian is obsessed with
Twilight and the vampire diary series
and a great deal of his pickup lines are
vampire
oriented and Rouch has this odd story he
tells about living off the land and
growing only butter lettuce and organic
watermelons um it's important to me that
the game doesn't just highlight the
danger embedded in these scenarios which
I think it definitely does but also the
absurdity of some of the tactics as well
the game gives you an opportunity to
slow down these practices and examine
them closely something one definitely
cannot do when they're experiencing them
in an actual
bar I frame the field in this heavy way
for my talk because sometimes this Fe
field seems easy to dismiss as is not
real and when I talk about the field and
the work I wanted to share with you some
of the gravity of it by seeing it in
practice I'm interested in exploring the
complexity of these spaces and not
flattening them or oversimplifying them
in the way that mainstream media does
and instead mapping them out and making
their complexities more
accessible by making these pickup art
practices an embodied experience and
putting players into the position of
making decisions and walking through
interactions I think there are insights
to be gained that wouldn't be gained by
for example writing a novel about the
field the game comes in at 97,000 words
and if you played through every possible
scenario it's the length of a 400 page
book so maybe that was an option but um
for me there's something important about
being put into the position of
experiencing these practices rather than
reading about them from a distance um
this is how I'm thinking about tactical
embodiment which was also the title of
this talk a strategy of positioning
players into an embodied experience that
may give them knowledge about this male
seduction field by moving through them
in a way um through which it will sink
in differently than um reading about it
in the
abstract I think that understanding
these practices and why they're so
appealing and perceived as NE a
necessary antidote um for so many men is
instrumental in trying to dismantle them
there's a lucrative industry devoted to
providing men with answers on how to get
women to interact with them
unfortunately many of these pickup
artists have a monopoly on providing
these answers as they strategically
Market their products on online
bodybuilding forums and men's
self-improvement sites knowing where to
find these desperate clients who they
then bleed dry while promising quick
results uh these pickup artist practices
fundamentally disregard consent and
women's agency and also rely on very
outdated ideas around biological
determinism making assumptions about
what women are naturally like that that
undermine the wide spectrum of ways that
people present live and perform okay so
now I'm done with the Talking part we're
going to play through it together and
I'm going to walk you through uh I think
I have hopefully 15 minutes um to walk
through this oh yeah nice you have just
held up a 15 okay so I'm just going to
set my timer for 15 minut minutes and
then I'm going to um load up the game
the game for us um and again if we won't
really get to um play through any of the
truly um sexually explicit scenarios so
um and I already gave you some hints on
how to avoid Julian Blanc so um there's
that okay timer
okay I'll actually make it a little
shorter we'll do like 13 minutes okay
going to open it
up one
second I have to duplicate my dis
[Music]
display
okay don't look at my
[Music]
desktop okay
cool here we
go it's going to happen all
right I'm just going to check the
preferences really quick so this is the
shoo soundtrack that you're hearing um
already setting you up I'm going to turn
it down a little so I can talk over
[Music]
it okay it's dramatic
okay okay so um the game right away
opens with a um a a little bit of a some
context to help you understand what
you're about to get into I never want
somebody to play this um without some
idea of of what they're going into
so um so how we're going to play this
together I when we get to a sort of
branching narrative Point like this I'm
going to say one two or three and then
all over you are going to yell
out thank you for deciding to continue
this experience that would have been
really anticlimactic if we didn't okay
um so and just yell out if I'm going
clicking through a little too
fast one or two oh no oh Steam oh that's
embarr how many embarrassing things can
happen to me in a talk tonight okay one
or two one thank
[Music]
you
one 2 three or
[Applause]
four I heard some very enthusiastic
threes it's that kind of
night
and this section is really to help you
understand the interface and how to play
in a certain
[Music]
way
[Music]
yeah
one two three or
four a lot of
[Music]
four 1 2 or
[Music]
three
[Music]
one 2 3 or
four
four one 2 three or
four
three one two three or
four
[Music]
four
1 2 three or
four two
okay one two three or four
[Music]
two one two or
three all right
three
one or
two
[Music]
okay
[Music]
1 2 3 four or
five that was pretty
unanimous one two or
three a lot
of
get
sh
[Music]
one two three or four two
[Music]
okay
[Music]
one 2 three or four four
[Music]
four
[Music]
so
n
[Music]
one 2 3 four or
five one
okay
[Music]
one 2 three or four
[Music]
three
[Applause]
[Music]
1 2 3 four or
[Applause]
five
[Music]
one 2 three four or
five
[Music]
three
[Laughter]
w 1 2 3 or
four four
four one two three or
four
time's
up that's not really working I thought
it
would no
okay um thanks for
playing
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
see for
me unfortunately no time for the q& a
but you will be here I guess mhm yeah
all right okay let's give another warm
Round of Applause for our speaker Angela
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
Wasco oh