Right-wingers freak out about “woke” Xbox energy saving settings
Microsoft has recently announced a few additional energy saving settings to reduce the Xbox climate change impact. Rolling out over the next couple of weeks, these new options make it easier for console owners to regulate how much energy their Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S uses while they’re not playing.
This includes the introduction of a new setting called “Shutdown (energy saving)” – an alternative to the “Sleep” function. While the console takes a bit longer to start up when using this option, Microsoft promises it saves about 20 times as much energy as “Sleep”. For those who don’t want to miss out on those quick start times during hours when they play a lot, Microsoft has prepared an option to designate “Active hours”, in which “Sleep” and “Shutdown (energy saving)” automatically switch around depending on the time of day.
Automatic updates can also be tuned to prefer timeframes with a lot of renewable energy on the grid, further reducing the carbon footprint the consoles make.
A lot of this sounds very sensible, doesn’t it? Players save money and make their hobby a bit more sustainable for the small price of potentially having to wait a few more seconds when starting their Xbox, if they want to.
Of course, that reality is not what certain media outlets portray. Right-wing publications and politicians decried the introduction of these changes – which, it should be stressed, are completely voluntary and can be turned back off – as an attack of the “woke brigade” on video games. Waiting a bit longer to start up your Xbox?! Oh, the horror!
Naturally, the right-wing hivemind picked up this nonsensical line of attack broadly and quickly, mindlessly regurgitating the same phrases they spout about guns, gas stoves, and whatever else the conservative outrage of the day is.
Self-identified microtransaction whale Ted Cruz, who blames mass shootings on video games and probably doesn’t understand why people need to save energy instead of just flying to Mexico when the lights go out, claimed that “now they’re gunning for your Xbox” and Troy Nehls said that “now they want to take your Xbox.” As you’d expect, they can’t explain how exactly those additional options are bad, count as an attack, or take away people’s Xbox consoles, because all of these claims are just lies to generate more outrage.
