Get Caught Playing this Damned Fool’s Game
The sexual tension was thick. I’ve got a learning disorder which makes it hard for me to understand non verbal cues, and even I could see it. It makes the whole thing kind of hard to watch. But then, Isaiah Mustafa has made a post-football career out of over the top machismo.
Interestingly, he’s not on this show in his role as “Old Spice Guy”, but rather as a spokesmanly-man for (near as I can tell) Microsoft. This means that he’s not in his highly scripted parody of dadaist masculinity. Rather, this is Isaiah himself. Selling a product. And that’s where he sets his foot in it.
Old Spice Guy probably shouldn’t have said, “And now something for you guys” and then talked about XBL. Girl gamers don’t exist, right? – @ashelia
Yeah, he did that. We can argue statistics all day. He was shilling for Xbox when he said that, and more men that women use that platform. Or, we could just say that there are more female gamers than male gamers, and so he’s statistically wrong. That’s not what he said, though. At best he strongly implied that there simply aren’t women who game. At worst, he looked them in the eye an shoved them aside. So: Isaiah, meet Ashelia. She’s kind of hardcore. In fact, if you want to sell a phone that lets gamers earn Xbox achievements… don’t talk to me. Talk to her– she’s your audience.
Except he can’t talk to her. He can’t sell to her. He can’t sell to her friends or women like her. He just said that she doesn’t exist. He just told women like her that they don’t exist. He did that, while taking a break from flirting with the only woman on the show. And the only interactions he has with that woman are flirtatious ones. Take home lesson: women don’t (or shouldn’t) game. Women exist to be flirted with.
Remember when we talked about StarCraft racism? This is an example of that. I won’t make the claim that Isaiah Mustafa is sexist. I won’t even say that Microsoft is institutionally sexist. I will say, though, that he did something incredibly sexist, and he did it in the name of a very large corporation. Microsoft should probably fix that.
I’m gonna say one more thing before I get the hell out of here. Ashelia doesn’t need me to defend her. She did that herself, and quite well. She’s got a much larger audience on twitter than I do on this blog. And yet her twitter account and my blog have wildly different audiences. And so it’s worth me saying a few words alongside her, sort of off to her left. Agree? Disagree? Comment section is open…
