MMGC’s Rob Gallagher will be giving an online talk for De Montfort University Leicester’s Media and Culture Research Centre on March 9th. Titled “All Will Be Converted”: NPC Memes as Gamer Politics, it will explore what happens when terms, tactics and concepts from gaming culture seep into politics, asking why there seems to be such a significant overlap between gaming fandom and right-wing political subcultures.

The talk will draw on work Rob has been doing with Birkbeck’s Robert Topinka on tracking and analysing the development and spread of the NPC meme, which developed out of a post on 4chan’s videogame’s board before being picked up and politically weaponised by Trump supporters on Reddit.

For more on the Robs’ work on digital culture and politics have a listen to the Reactionary Digital Politics podcast series, which Rob has been blogging about for MMU’s Digital Politics blog: https://digitalpoliticsmanmet.bloggi.co/tags/robgallagher