Another comment because now I’ve read the whole article. As a gamer myself, and a hardcore one that is, I’ve played way too many MMOs and such where you can create your own avatar. There once was a male character, we were in the same guild. In voice chat, one asked "dude are you a girl? Your voice is so high" and a simple "no“ was enough. Most just don’t care.

Is that The Hulk?

I still remember playing Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Seeing those slender elegant fingers (\*my* fingers) picking a lock gave me such a good feeling that I can still recall it up to today. Of course back then I was totally oblivious and didn't understand where that feeling came from.

That's nice. Even for the rest of us, I think it's just good for a person to experience other versions of "me". I'm a white dude, but games can give me hints about what's it like to be someone else, and it doesn't have to match my reality in any way whatsoever. Even more than books, games immerse me into the perspectives of others.

It’s so wild that media outlets **still** talk about video games like they’re some new fad that *surprisingly* makes a lot of money. It’s a multi billion dollar industry that’s been around since the 1970s. It’s literally older than the internet. Video games aren’t a disruptor. It’s been traditional media for decades now.

God I hate when books get all political and ham-fistedly shovel pro-dwarf propaganda into their stories. Tolkien should be ashamed! /s

It is also brings in fully twice as much revenue as the movie and music industry combined, but perceptions of it being for kids by older gens isn't quite shaken.

"Euphoria" has been popping up on my news feeds more frequently in the past decade or so. First jokingly, like the /r/atheism post that got a lot of mockery, "in this moment I am euphoric..." But now in a more traditional sense of the word in articles like this. It's interesting because I'd always associated it with intoxication, like it is a private experiential state that an individual has entered, so it had a slight negative connotation but obviously there are these positive situations for using the word too. A linguistics student should write a dissertation on semantic shifts for words online (I'm sure this has already been done by someone).

In this case it's according to the medical/psycholgical definition (in contrast to gender dysphoria) — it's not just a wording choice made by the writer

Agreed. Also any time I can be voiced be Jennifer Hale I'm down to clown

Whoa have you heard about _roleplaying_ I think you'll like DnD