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After fulminating about the crisis of Marxist Feminist M&Ms and Big Government coming to take away your gas stoves because childhood asthma is a lifestyle choice, the Excitable Right has found a new culture war object of outrage that’s even stupider: Microsoft’s Xbox video game consoles. You see, Microsoft announced earlier this month that as part of an overall Microsoft goal to become a “carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste company by 2030,” it would be tweaking the default power settings on Xbox consoles so the things would consume less electricity when not in use.
Basically, it involves a software patch that will reduce power consumption by putting the consoles into “shutdown” mode instead of the now-standard “sleep” mode, and where the data is available, scheduling automatic software updates and game downloads at times when local grids are more likely to be running on renewable power. The company says that Shutdown mode can cut power use by as much as 20 times the energy used in Sleep mode, and notes that users can change the settings to whatever works for them. The only real difference users are likely to see is that certain older models, like the Xbox One, will take longer to boot up from Shutdown mode, although that’s not the case with the most recent Series S or X.
Instead of the 13 to 15 watts the boxes consume in Sleep mode, the Shutdown power setting only draws .5 watts. That adds up, as parents everywhere yell at kids who leave the lights on.
My god, the horror. On Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends,” anchor Ainsley Earhardt followed up a brief segment on the “pause” of those dangerous M&M mascots with the frightening news that Xbox is now pushing climate ideology on children, Mandrake, innocent children. We’ve cued the video to the bit where Earhardt and radio host Jimmy Failla pretend to be shocked at this corruption of the innocent:
Failla: It’s crazy what they’re doing, but we understand what this is. It’s not that it’s actually going to offset emissions. The level of reduction is infinitesimal. But they’re trying to recruit your kids into climate politics at an earlier age. Make them climate conscious now.
Earhardt: You’re right, they’re going after the children.
Failla: But again, what’s the point of video games? It’s for kids to be kids! Now you sit down and pick up a controller and they’re like “By the way, the world is on fire, AHHH!” You know what I mean? You just want to play the game!
Vice helpfully points out that the largest portion of gamers are adults aged 18 to 35 (36 percent), while only 24 percent are under 18, and that, no, there’s no onscreen messaging about climate at all.
But at least Ted Cruz was able to seize the stupid, tweeting that somehow an adjustment to power settings — which, again, users can change — means that the woke leftists, having already stolen your gas stoves and your coffee, are now “gunning for your Xbox.”
Not to be outdone, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) fretted that “they” are actually going to start confiscating game consoles, because that’s how “they” do:
They want to take your guns.
They want to take your gas stoves.
And now they want to take your Xbox.
What’s next?
Probably your peener. Isn’t that obvious? It’s unclear whether Fox News will now counsel parents to demand their kids leave the lights on when they leave the room, or to leave the door open in the summer so they can air condition the whole neighborhood.
Yr Wonkette is tempted to see if there’s a market for “anti-woke” gaming sets, which would consist of an Xbox plugged into a gasoline-powered generator, so that Fox-viewing Call of Duty fans can maximize their energy inefficiency. We would of course include a prominent warning label telling users not to run the generator indoors, so that buyers would have one more thing to rebel against.
[Fox News / Vice / Microsoft / Image generated by DreamStudio Lite AI]
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