Joystick Jargon and the Hijacking of Tech News
June 23, 2025•307 words
By God, can we clear the digital smog for one darn minute and talk about technology—real technology? Not the latest pixel-pushing, dopamine-dripping, loot-box-laden video game slop that’s been slathered over every so-called tech news feed like grease on my grill.
Yes, yes, I hear the chorus already: “But video games are tech!” Sure. So is a microwave. So is a chainsaw. That doesn’t mean I want to read about the new Call of Duty skin pack when I’m trying to learn about AI ethics, data privacy, or the latest surveillance scheme cooked up by Systems (read: Big Tech) in their glass towers of algorithmic control.
Let’s not confuse the tools of creation with the products of consumption. Video games are entertainment. Tech is infrastructure. One is a sugar rush, the other is the power grid. And yet, every time I open a so-called “tech” site, I’m bombarded by breathless dispatches about fictional worlds, fictional guns, fictional economies—while the real-world tech systems tightening around our necks go unexamined.
The Systems love this. They’d rather you argue about console exclusives than question how your data is being mined, sold, and weaponized. They’d rather you debate frame rates than investigate the black-box algorithms shaping your reality. Distraction is the opiate of the digital masses.
I’m not saying games don’t matter. I’ve wasted a few good nights in pixelated bliss myself. But let’s call a spade a spade: video game news belongs in the arts and entertainment section, not under the banner of technology journalism. Mixing the two is like stuffing comic books into a physics textbook and calling it science.
So let’s reclaim the word tech from the joystick cult. Let’s talk about the machines behind the curtain, not the puppets dancing on the screen. And let’s not let Systems off the hook just because they’ve figured out how to sell us fantasy while they build the future without us.