Calling the practice of modding more empowering or resistive than other fannish practices is problematic because, use of technology aside, modding is not significantly different than the writing of fan fiction or the creation of vids. Modding is, essentially, the practice of taking the tools provided by an existing media text and twisting them to a different purpose. Just like other fannish productions, mods are created (both legitimately and within hacker culture) by game fans for other game fans. They are distributed and evaluated within the community and tend to perform the values associated with the
gender that makes up a majority of the population. In the case of gaming, the values being performed most often are those associated with traditional notions of masculinity: competition, broadcasting, aggression and the expectation that males repress emotions and do not engage in intimacy among other males. Just like fan fiction and vidding, modding and machinima perform individual negotiations of ideologies of gender and sexuality that vary in terms of their resistance to the ideological status quo.