Category: consumer behaviour | 消費者行為 | 소비자 행동

Consumer behaviour is central to my role as an account planner and about how I look at the world.

Being from an Irish household growing up in the North West of England, everything was alien. I felt that I was interloping observer who was eternally curious.

The same traits stand today, I just get paid for them. Consumer behaviour and its interactions with the environment and societal structures are fascinating to me.

The hive mind of Wikipedia defines it as

‘the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services.’

It is considered to consist of how the consumer’s emotions, attitudes and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, marketing and economics (especially behavioural economics or nudge theory as its often known).

I tend to store a mix of third party insights and links to research papers here. If you were to read one thing on this blog about consumer behaviour, I would recommend this post I wrote on generations. This points out different ways that consumer behaviour can be misattributed, missed or misinterpreted.

Often the devil is in the context, which goes back to the wide ranging nature of this blog hinted at by the ‘renaissance’ in renaissance chambara. Back then I knew that I needed to have wide interests but hadn’t worked on defining the ‘why’ of having spread such a wide net in terms of subject matter.

Crime – it’s a vibe
Along with immigration, and economic measures (like inflation, interest rates and possible growth); crime is likely to decide the next general election in the UK. The issue and the supporting data around it are complex and sometimes contradictory in nature.

It sits right on the fault line between social democrat and populist narratives to voters.

Crime is a hardy perennial of policy subjects

Labour’s political golden age of the late 20th century harked back to the transformation of the party that claimed to be ‘Touch on crime, tough on the causes of crime‘. While the phrase was popularised by Tony Blair at the 1993 Labour Party conference – it owes its roots to the opposition team assembled under former Labour leader John Smith.

The phrase captured Labour’s attempt to steal the Conservative position on law and order, combining it with a preventative approach to the social ills that drive the issue including homelessness and poverty.

Two decades later and David Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ depicted a country awash in social decay and by implication criminal behaviour.

So it’s natural, that during a time of social disruption and stubbornly stagnant economic growth that crime will be used as a political differentiator.

It fits into a wider perception of the UK being a country in decline. This perception was found by Ipsos to be one of the key drivers of political populism.

Ipsos also found that the perception of crime and violence being the number one issue rose from 18% of respondents to 23% from 2023 to 2024.

Crime is falling?

The statistical picture on crime is complicated. To summarise:
- Overall reported crime numbers are down. However, trying to get police to log a reported crime is much harder in previous times.
- The ‘decline’ in reported crimes across different types of offences is very uneven. Data from the UN Office of Crime and Drugs found that the UK had seen an unprecedented increase in the rate of serious assaults from 2012 – 2022.
As the FT put it:

“street crime” has risen rapidly. Over the past decade, reported shoplifting has risen by over 50 per cent, robberies (including phone and car theft) by over 60 per cent and knife crime by almost 90 per cent. Public order offences have almost trebled
- The police have become less effective crime fighters. Although police have less reported crimes to solve, less than six percent of crimes in committed in the UK resulted in a charge or summons in 2023. That compares to just under 16 percent in 2015. The UK government’s focus on increasing mass surveillance powers won’t solve the crisis in crime fighting. An example of the problems that the police face and failed to solve presented itself at the time of writing. There was a spate of phone thefts at the Creamfields festival. All the phones ended up at the same address in Barking. Cheshire police told those affected that:
  - “We have undertaken an assessment of your crime and unfortunately based on the information currently available, it is unlikely we’ll be able to solve your crime”.
  - Cheshire Police said that they couldn’t recover their devices despite knowing where they are.
  - Cheshire Police do not believe the thefts are connected to organised crime. Yet dozens of phones showed up at the same address after they were stolen…
- Trust in the public for the police to solve crime is declining. Policing by consent was no longer happening in many areas of the UK. Issues like ‘Asian grooming gangs’ in The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse indicated poliicing issues in recommendations to pay attention to vulnerable working-class children and their families when they come forward. Two-tier policing is more likely to run along class lines than political lines.
- While crime still lags behind the economy and health as concerns for voters. The percentage of respondents who felt that stopping or preventing crime should be the number one priority for politicians went from 14% in 2023 to 23% in 2024.
- While Britain needs foreign direct investment, crime is adversely affecting efforts to attract investors. Foreign business people are complaining to senior politicians they meet about British street crime they’ve experienced on visits. The UK now has a global reputation for violent robberies. 40 percent of all phone thefts in Europe happen in the UK. London alone accounts for 16 percent of all phone thefts across Europe.
Crime across generations

According to both Ipsos and the National Centre for Social Research, the current cohort of young adults stick out with regards their beliefs and attitudes towards crime:
- An increased belief that crime is caused by a lack of education
- An increased openness to committing crime, particularly fraud.
- Opposition to current frameworks for punishment.
All of which is at odds with the fact that much crime is organised, trans-national and violent in nature.

Similar posts to this here.

More information

How Labour and Reform frame crime in electoral fights | FT

Try telling Britain it ain’t broken – POLITICO

Do broken windows mean a broken Britain? FT

Organised Vehicle Theft in the UK | RUSI

Jeff Asher on manipulating crime data – Marginal REVOLUTION

Few Britons think criminals likely to face justice for minor crimes | YouGov

How our stolen mobile phones end up in an Algerian market | The Times and The Sunday Times

Operation Destabilise: NCA disrupts $multi-billion Russian money laundering networks with links to, drugs, ransomware and espionage, resulting in 84 arrests – National Crime Agency

Tax haven: how jacket thefts swept the UK – The Face

$56M in London property tied to alleged China crime ring — Radio Free Asia

Wearing your Rolex or Patek Philippe in Europe? Why you should be worried about London and Paris’ spikes in luxury watch theft | South China Morning Post

Brazen watch robberies fuel shock rise in violent thefts in London ITV News

London Watch | renaissance chambara

India’s business elite sounds alarm over Rolex thefts in London’s Mayfair | FT
September 13, 2025
Get lost in a book
I was judging global creative advertising awards, and I came across an Irish Libraries campaign to encourage readers to Get Lost In A Book.

Literature and reading is as Irish as the GAA or a glass of Club Orange. Over the years I have found it easy to get lost in a book. My parents may not have bought me every toy that I wanted from the Argos catalogue, but we had a house with books and I got a library card early on. When I would stay on the family farm, I would read a book on rare coins, old editions of The Reader’s Digest, Old Moore’s almanac, paperbacks of Irish folk tales and Irish history books. Facts About Ireland captured my imagination with its pictures of Newgrange and the Tara brooch.

Decades later and after I have written this paragraph I am heading to bed to get lost in a book before falling to sleep.

Reading as a pass-time for a good number of Irish people is something that we do. During COVID-19 in 2021, the Government of Ireland launched Ireland Reads month which encouraged people to read as it was considered to help with mental health and wellbeing. Its from this campaign that Get Lost In A Book sprang out of.

Reading seems to be on the decline in both adults and children. Of those that do read younger male cohorts seem to read more for ‘life maxing’ than for pleasure with reading material focusing solely on the works of self-improvement ‘experts’ who have varying degrees of expertise.
- Reading for pleasure has life long benefits.
- The Irish government highlighted mental health and its link to wellbeing.
- Increased vocabulary and mathematical reasoning
- A sense of personal confidence and connectedness
In 2006, The National Literacy Trust found that choice was a key factor in fostering life-long reading as a habit, allowing the reader to continue to get lost in a book. The problem now seems to be a surplus of choice via our smartphones and social platforms. Book recommendations here and here, more related posts here.
September 6, 2025
August 2025 newsletter
August 2025 introduction – duck and dive (25) edition

This is the 25th edition of Strategic Outcomes. The first edition was quickly bashed out in a hotel room. And people signed up, and kept coming back. As I write this August 2025 has been a weird month with the weather throwing all the seasons at once at us from storms to heatwaves.

The bingo call for 25 – ‘duck and dive’ would have been equally appropriate descriptor for 2025 to date – with massive changes across current affairs, the economy and culture. It seemed to make more sense than calling this a ‘silver edition’.

25 evokes memories a of childhood Irish card game played with my Uncle and Granny on the formica top of the farmhouse kitchen table. Something I frequently did during August nights after a day’s work cleaning up after animals, feeding livestock and other tasks.

For this month’s musical accompaniment I can recommend St Etienne Take Me To The Pilot produced by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll, which hits different to previous St Etienne records.

New reader?

If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.

Things I’ve written.
- From the changing nature of motorsport fandom to do clients actually care about WPP’s organisational changes and new CEO?
- Hacks for moving city, from my time uprooting my life from London to Hong Kong and back again. These were and edited version of notes from an email I wrote years ago for a acquaintance who was moving to Shenzhen, soon after I had made the jump to Hong Kong. He is no longer with us, you may get some value out of them.
Books that I have read.
- I am currently reading David McCloskey’s Moscow X. The slow reading pace is more down to me rather than the accessibility of the book which is up to McCloskey’s usual high standards.
Things I have been inspired by.

Escalating trade tensions

GLG shared a discussion on escalating global trade tensions. I had a number of takeaways from it.

US trade war with China has devolved into a dangerous stalemate where neither side can back down without losing face.

The core conflict stems from China’s state-led industrial policy clashing with the rules-based system. The Trump administration’s rhetoric triggered China’s historical “century of humiliation,” making compromise politically difficult.

Key takeaways from the discussion:
1. China’s top demands aren’t about tariffs.
- Respect is paramount: China’s first demand for restarting talks is that the Trump administration speaks to them with respect and stops insults.
- Sovereignty is key: China insists on discussing Taiwan, which it views as its “most important and most sensitive issue”.
1. The U.S. is overstretched.
- Not enough negotiators: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has only about 250 total employees.
- Outsourcing is unworkable: Using pro bono law firms to assist raises problems with security clearances and conflicts of interest.
1. The non-China strategy is different.
- A softer tone: The administration’s approach to allies like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam is more ‘measured’.
- Quick deals: preliminary agreements with these nations that focus on tariff reductions, while punting more complex issues negotiations down the road.
1. Sector-specific US risks loom large.
- Technology: export controls on advanced chips and dumping of Chinese-made legacy chips used in cars and white goods.
- Autos: Highly integrated supply chains that cross borders, are very vulnerable to tariffs.
- Pharmaceuticals: Tariffs on generic drugs could become unprofitable and cause them to disappear from the U.S. market.
The state of AI in business

The Gen AI divide: state of AI in business 2025 | MIT was published and created an AI stock sell-off based on its top-line factoid: 95% of companies get zero RoI from GenAI.

But there was more interesting takeaways in the report that paint a more nuanced picture:

The “Learning Gap” is the real barrier.
- The primary reason AI pilots stall is that most systems don’t retain feedback, adapt to context, or improve over time.
- While 70% of employees prefer AI for simple tasks like emails and summaries, 90% choose a human colleague for complex projects because of the learning gap.
Buy, don’t build.
- Internally developed tools fail twice as often as COTS ones.
- The data shows a clear winning strategy: pilots built through strategic partnerships with external vendors are twice as likely to reach full deployment as those built internally (a 66% success rate versus 33%).
Companies are making misplaced bets.
- An estimated 70% of AI investment is directed at high-visibility sales and marketing functions.
- The highest and clearest ROI in underfunded “back-office” areas. Some firms are saving $2-10 million annually in customer service and document processing.
These three points are good news for consultants, productivity suite vendors and enterprise software companies that really understand their clients workflow pain-points.

Chart of the month.

Actually two charts. The first one is a decline in conscientiousness. Depending who you believe this could be down to our always-on lives thanks to social media and smartphones, OR, a victim of the broken social contract that young adults (aka generation z) feel has happened.

A corresponding decline in US consumers reading for pleasure tends to imply a smartphone-related effect rather than broken social contract as cause. Also broken social contracts are depressingly common generation-by-generation.

Things I have watched.

The Iron Prefect was a film that I watched purely on the basis of a talk Alex Cox gave as part of the special features on the Blu Ray. The film is an account of a Fascist-era official sent to combat the Sicilian mafia who ends up finding how endemic and self-defeating his mission is. It is based on the story of Cesare Mori and some of his most famous acts such as the siege of Gangi. Cox talked about its similarity to The Mattei Affair – which I can see to a certain extent, in terms of the themes explored. The film features Claudia Cardinale and Giuliano Gemma – two greats of Italian cinema. But the real star is the scenery.

Hong Kong Hong Kong is a tragic romantic triangle about mainland migrants with a social realism bent. It was shot in 1983, but didn’t have the escapism of more popular films in the Hong Kong box office at the time.

The film is similar in feel to the likes of the kitchen sink dramas of 1960s kitchen sink dramas like This Sporting Life, and John Huston’s boxing drama Fat City. It shows a different side to Hong Kong cinema than western audiences were used to. It came out the same time as Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Jackie Chan’s Project A. Hong Kong Hong Kong benefited from the free flow of rostered actors attached to TVB – the dominant broadcaster being able to work for Shaw Brothers film productions. Protagonist Alex Man, like other stars of his era including Chow Yun-fat and Simon Yam Tat-wah came through TVB’s acting school that nurtured talent from all walks of life from first-jobbers, to former models and policemen.

Man brought experience from television and stage roles to his film performances which makes Hong Kong Hong Kong more powerful.

Finally 1980s the city of Hong Kong itself plays a fantastic role to the drama. From the opening tracking shot taken somewhere above Kennedy Town to the composite buildings and Shangri-La Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui – to migrant slums that were being dismantled as public housing improved. Hong Kong has continually changed from an architectural point of view, though the pace has slowed recently. Some of the shots pulled at me deep inside as only a home you deeply cared about can.

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty featured Alex Man as a classic wuxi swordsman. The star is Pat Ha Man-jing who would have been 18 or 19 at the time. The film feels more ‘Japanese’ chambara romance than your usual Hong Kong film. Ha’s cleavage is on display – which is unusual as the Hong Kong film industry is more socially conservative. Violence is ok, but risqué films like Sex and Zen with a category III rating often had Japanese actresses in them like Mari Ayukawa and Rena Murakami. The Japanese actresses appeared because of the stigma in Hong Kong society affected actresses careers more than their male counterparts AND the ongoing popularity of Japanese adult films in Hong Kong.

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty shows the two sides of Shaw Brothers productions: great actors and inventive cinematography on one side, together with cheap skating on set design like giant marine plywood panels.

Shaw Brothers had been wounded by the founding of Golden Harvest, he power of the studio system was waning, the Hong Kong new wave movement was taking off and soon ‘mainland collaborations’ would dismantle much of the ecosystem that made Hong Kong cinema great.

I really wanted to like Butterfly on Amazon Prime Video. It had a great cast including Daniel Dae Kim, Piper Perabo and Charles Parnell. It was shot on location in South Korea. It had an interesting take on the privatisation of intelligence operations. But it felt empty and definitely less than the sum of its parts, which is a shame given how well Amazon did on its Tom Clancy adaptions. Butterfly was let down by poor storytelling.

Useful tools.

Yet another LLM. Anara was something I have trialled a little and found useful due to its heavier weighting towards citing research papers compared to the other main LLMs out there. Useful for account planners as another tool in our arsenal to be used in parallel with the more mainstream tools out there, rather than as a substitute.

The sales pitch.

I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

More on what I have done here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my August 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward for an indian summer, despite some of August already feeling autumnal.

Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

Get in touch if you have any tips or thoughts.
August 28, 2025
Motorsport fandom + more things
Motorsport fandom is strange. Back when I was a child motorsport fandom was a bunch of anoraks – literally. There was a category of clothing that you could buy from mail order catalogues and retailers like Demon Tweeks called a rally jacket. This was a coat good enough to deal with some cold wet weather branded by a car company or a tobacco brand.

Motorsport fandom, in particular single-seater race series are starting to see very different types of fans who learned their supporting ideas from the K-pop armies which are a symbiot of the artist promotion machine. While both promotion machine and fans are separate with very different tactics, they were united by a common goal to a point.

This isn’t the first time that media has brought in new fans, gaming created fans in the past. But the current motorsport fandom is interesting because of the cultural friction that it brings for drivers and legacy fans. From hate campaigns and death threats against drivers to ‘idol’ style objectification – women are demonstrating traits that would define toxic masculinity. All wrapped up in pastel tinted social media posts and Etsy products – so that makes it all fine, doesn’t it?
Beauty

‘A marker of luxury and arrogance’: why gravity-defying boobs are back – and what they say about the state of the world | The Guardian

Business

Microsoft saved $500 million last year thanks to AI. This year, it’s laid off 15,000 employees | Quartz

China

Thinking Through Protracted War with China: Nine Scenarios | RAND and Trump is enabling Chinese power – by Noah Smith

Consumer behaviour

More than “I do”: Legal status and cultural distance shape marriages and separations | CEPR

The evolution of stupid | FT – this reminded me of the debate about calculators in maths and physics exams when I was at school

Design

Why carmakers need to bring back buttons

How Renault is speeding up car development to match Chinese rivals | FT

‘When was the last time I saw one of those?’ Car magazine – on the consumer’s obsession with screens over driving experience

FMCG

Japan’s mayo king calls time on baby food as inflation bites and births fall | FT

Health

A Close Look at Auxiliary Prescription Labels | Inconspicious Consumption – interesting intersection of regulation, consumer experience and design

Japan

Alimentation Couche-Tard drops its $46bn pursuit of 7-Eleven owner | FT

Luxury

LVMH’s Loro Piana placed under court administration over worker exploitation | FT – it seems to be a feature of the LVMH management ‘system’ rather than a bug

TikTok won’t grow your luxury brand in the long term | The Drum

China could give luxury titans a run for their money | FT – this was only a matter of time. See also Swatch activist ups pressure as profits plunge over China weakness | FT

Marketing

WPP has its next CEO – but what do clients make of heir apparent? – It’s not indifference. It’s pragmatism. Marketers like this don’t want to buy into the idea that a leadership change signals sweeping transformation. After all, Rose doesn’t start until September. Until then, they’d rather stay focused on the present, not the promise.

Ryan Kangisser, a bellwether for client perspective thanks to his proximity to them as the chief strategy officer at MediaSense, expanded on the point: “I do think that often the industry cares more about these sorts of appointments than clients do. Especially if clients have got a really solid client lead, or business lead, then they’re the people who they feel are the ones driving their business.”

Cindy Rose is the right choice for a CEO (but maybe not at WPP) – The Media Leader

WPP turns to Microsoft executive as AI threatens ‘Kodak moment’ | FT

Cindy Rose WPP: Why Cindy Rose will lead WPP to recovery, ET BrandEquity

Is Accenture interested in all or some of WPP? – More About Advertising – it would make sense for Accenture to do their due diligence at the very least

Why Nike Quietly Launched on Substack

Media

Apple TV+ Became HBO Before HBO Could Become Netflix | Spyglass

Amazon Breaks Up Wondery Podcast Studio, CEO Jen Sargent Departs | Hollywood Reporter – issues with the business model for audio offerings, curious to know if Vox will follow suit? The shows that moved to SiriusXM are interesting, SiriusXM is a subscription-based satellite and internet radio service

Online

Google, Microsoft and Amazon face pressure over data sovereignty – Rest of World

Shitposting as a National Asset – DARC

Is Everything a ‘Humiliation Ritual’? | GQ and Humiliation Rituals | Protein – on the nature of social media rewards, but could as easily apply to many unscripted TV formats.

Reddit at 20: A Look Beyond the Upvotes – 3 Quarks Daily

Chinese police crack down on young women writing homoerotic fiction | Le Monde – this is interesting because its been an area of Chinese online culture which has escaped censure so far despite the government’s concern about traditional family values under the Xi administration

Disinformation warriors are ‘grooming’ chatbots | FT

Retailing

China falls for American-style bulk buying at Sam’s Club despite US trade tensions | Ft

Security

Data Warfare – DARC – interesting theory.

Axios Future of Cybersecurity: 1 big thing: A tale of two generative AI futures – differing opinions from Defcon in Vegas on the impact of AI on hacking and cyberdefence

From Tactical Trench Killers to Strategic War Winners: Doctrine, Operational Art, and Tomorrow’s Drone-Enabled Maneuver Warfare – Modern War Institute

Building Trust in Military AI Starts with Opening the Black Box – War on the Rocks

The Innovation Imperative: Why Tactical Ingenuity is Not Enough | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University

Israel Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Iran From Within — ProPublica

Software

Nikkei Asia podcast on how the Korean media industry and gaming developers are using AI – South Korea pushes limits of AI in gaming and entertainment – YouTube

Axios AI+ 1 Big Thing: AI’s elusive coding speedup – small sample but interesting study. Part of the problem might be the corpus that would underpin coding for open source projects.

Five things I believe about actually-existing AI today | Dave Karpf

Technology

An OpenAI Acquisition Turns Into a Google ‘Hackqusition’ | Spyglass – hackquisition is the new acqu-hire

Telecoms

Broadband’s tiny barbarians gather at BT’s gate | FT
August 23, 2025
Gaming as politics

This post on gaming as politics was inspired by a Taiwanese adventure game played on mobile phones. The game in question is considered a national security risk by the Hong Kong government. (In China, it wouldn’t be able to be downloaded anyway).

Reversed Front: Bonfire – banned in Hong Kong

Chris Tang, the current secretary of security for the Hong Kong government said that having the game on your phone or playing it was a national security law offence. The game was an act of ‘soft resistance’ designed to corrupt Hong Kong’s youth.

According to a statement by the National Security Department (NSD) of the Hong Kong Police Force, Reversed Front: Bonfire is

…a game with the aim of promoting secessionist agendas such as “Taiwan independence” and “Hong Kong independence”, advocating armed revolution and the overthrow of the fundamental system of the People’s Republic of China established by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. It also has an intention to provoke hatred towards the Central Authorities and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Imagine an anti-communist version of Myst that’s more text driven, built by diesel punk anime and waifu fans and you have a good idea of what Reversed Front: Bonfire is.

The developers at ESC Taiwan do not hide their views. It is a great example of ‘gaming as politics’ with gameplay referencing key slogans of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

The Hong Kong government is probably sensitive about dissent through gaming when protests went virtual on Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons – when COVID restrictions made real-world protests impractical.

Gaming as politics beyond Hong Kong

Gaming as politics in Hong Kong is only the latest place where the medium as been used to press a political ideology.

As video game graphics have improved video game footage or machinima have been used to create footage that has been passed off as war footage. As it has got better, it has been easier to convince the casual observer on social media. Examples include HAMAS and Israel, Israel and Iran, Russia and Ukraine and Russia in Syria.

A Ukrainian research paper Video Games As Deep Media: challenges during the Russian-Ukraine war outlines how both sides have used video games as a propaganda channel. Ukrainians have skilfully used tools like customised gaming maps and conversations on online games to directly address Russians about the truth of the war. Gaming provided a space largely unmediated by the Russian government, at least at the beginning of the war.

On the flip side, Russia has pumped propaganda efforts into platforms like Minecraft and Roblox.

Political satire in games

Gaming as politics lent itself well to political satire. These are usually developed by independent software companies. For instance Bundesfighter II Turbo was based on caricatures of candidates in the 2017 German federal election. Hong Kong 1997 was a Japanese developed game based in a fantastical version of Hong Kong SAR – it also has the distinction of being considered one of the worst games ever.

Gaming as politics and as a political culture

Online radicalisation of gamers has become prevalent and the International Centre for Counter Terrorism provides advice for games design teams.

One issue that I have with the ICCT is that there is a lack of proportionality in what they talk about. I can understand that this is partly because even a small percentage of people can cause a lot of carnage. And like other emotive issues being absolutist tells a great story, which will help with everything from grants to getting meetings with politicians. One assertion they make is quite interesting:

…the relative opaqueness of video game spaces provides an attractive opportunity to meet online and outside the watchful eye of law enforcement. Moreover, the presence of many young people who may be vulnerable to extremist messaging efforts creates ideal circumstances for exposure to extremist viewpoints. However, we argue that particular aspects of gaming culture may also have a hand in the proliferation of extremist beliefs. In the study by Kowert, Martel, and Swann, “[identity] fusion with gaming culture is uniquely predictive of a host of socially pernicious outcomes, including racism, sexism, and endorsement of extreme behaviors.” Examples of how such tendencies surface from time to time are numerous.

Their view is supported by academics, Political Psychology published a research paper on how far right organisations use online gaming as a pipeline to grow their numbers.

The example provided by ICCT is the Gamergate scandal. I would argue that Gamergate is part of a longitudinal trend amongst a proportion of young men towards social conservatism including ongoing misognystic expressions of their beliefs. Do I approve of Gamergate – no, do I believe that the blame is purely around the medium of gaming – also no.

KZ manager

Gaming as politics is a concept that predates the internet. KZ manager was a series of games with an anti-semitic theme. It was first published in 1988 for the Commodore 64 alongside other home computer platforms at the time. it was distributed from player to player by disc or dial-up bulletin boards. By 1989 it was banned in Germany, but kept being maintained and republished up until 2000.

Nihilism and gaming as politics

Nihilistic terrorism has now become enmeshed in gaming as politics. Nihilism implies the act for its own sake, without any ideology challenges the political nature of terrorism as a concept. Alex in A Clockwork Orange fits this nihilistic definition to a tee. The medium for living out the nihilistic fantasies has changed over time. From books, to exploitation films, shockumentaries such as Faces of Death. Connecting with other ‘like-minded’ individuals was transformed in online spaces. Gaming was just another media form adopted by the nihilists. It is still only a very small number of them that put their fantasies into any form of action.

More related Hong Kong stories here, and more on gaming here.

July 19, 2025