Moms Against Gaming

Submission 44,350

About

Moms Against Gaming (@MomsAgainstGam) is a Twitter parody account which sends out satirical tweets about the dangers of video game addiction among children.

Origin

The Twitter account MomsAgainstGam^[1] was created on June 27th, 2014, along with an ask.fm^[5] page where the anonymous blogger fields questions from the readers. Within a month the account has gained over 13,000 followers and has sent out over 2,000 tweets.

Precursor

In December 2002, Parsons The New School for Design student David Yoo created a satirical hoax organization called Mothers Against Video Game Addiction and Violence (MAVAV)^[6], which described itself as a group "dedicated to educating parents of the world's fastest growing addiction and the most reckless endangerment of children today." The website received nearly 100,000 unique visitors over the span of two weeks when it was debunked as a hoax by Penny Arcade and Slashdot. In 2006, the website was re-introduced as a social satire blog featuring commentaries on popular misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding the gaming subculture.

Spread

On June 30th, 2014, Kotaku^[2] published a post on the account titled "Moms Against Gaming Is My New Favorite Twitter Account." The post featured a roundup of satirical tweets from the account itself as well as replies by other Twitter users who understood the account is a parody account. The article also featured tweets by Twitter users who believed the account was created in earnest and took offense at the anti-video game message.

On July 1st, the account was covered by Lazy Gamer^[3] and NiceGamer.^[4]