Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
I am actively attempting to deradicalize myself. I dislike puritanism and intolerance. DM me if you want my Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
User ID: 1719
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I'm technologically illiterate, but I would pay good money for someone to do a bot spam of things with my name everywhere, if that's what you're describing.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Crossposting about finding work in an age of public shaming, because Reddit sucks and isn't helping me.
https://old.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/xq7bhs/do_employers_google_previous_names/
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I've never heard of Zero Dark Thirty, but based on your description of the film, the ambiguity of the characters' motivations would be impossible to achieve in a musical. Characters in a musical can be as morally complicated as characters in anything else (go watch Into the Woods if you don't believe me), but they are required to narrate (sing!) their thought process, by nature of the medium. The only alternative would be to have an omniscient third person narrator sing the entirety of the show, describing the actions taken by the characters in mostly literal terms. I guess that would be more of a concept album than a musical, actually. And then there's the issue that music inherently informs people's emotions, so you might not be able to include any music while giving the audience emotional ambiguity. If you play cool music during the action scenes, then sad music at the end, the message will be clear, but the audience would rightfully feel like the film was holding their hand. I'd still love it, though. There are few concepts that I don't think would make for an enjoyable musical.
So, I don't agree that moral ambiguity requires subtlety, but I see your point that there are some stories that are best told with a level of subtlety that would confuse kids.
Have you seen Synecdoche, New York? That's an adult film I enjoy, but even though the plot is deliberately confusing and, at times, nonsensical, the motivations and personality of the main character are always clear. This isn't true with Charlie Kaufman's most recent film, I'm Thinking of Ending Things. I was so bored and confused that I turned off that movie partway through and read a summary. The central concept is brilliant, but if you don't know what's going on, the behavior of the two leads makes no sense, making it impossible to empathize with them. The movie didn't drop nearly enough clues for me to figure out what was going on, hence my distaste. >!I thought the janitor stuff was an unrelated subplot going on at the same time. I didn't even notice he was played by the same actor as the male lead. I think the movie should have implied that the date scenes were a flashback to the janitor's youth, that he was mourning a failed relationship as he worked his menial job. Cut the fake out horror movie stuff, focus on the mundane conversations that gradually reveal his insecurity. The anachronisms in the story would make it possible for the audience audience to figure out that these scenes never actually happened to the janitor well before the reveal at the end. Would that make it a kids movie?!<
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Could you name some of your favorite things from that 10%?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Oh, absolutely. That's what I explained in my long-form post. But I still generally go for media that's made for younger audiences.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I do want movies to "loudly announce, with musical cues or exaggerated expression and body language, what characters are feeling and what viewers are supposed to feel." I don't like simple conflicts or black and white morality, though. The former is useful for me. The latter is stale and unrepresentative of the real world, where people routinely commit atrocities while believing they're the good guy. (I want to CW so hard right now.)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I am letting it inform my worldview. I think A Series of Unfortunate Events has good insight insight into human nature, as do a number of Pixar movies. But Breaking Bad does too, and I know that's for adults.
Whenever I consume media, I come to be entertained first and foremost, but I only fall in love with it if it says something.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Until my late teens, I avoided live-action material entirely because I had trouble reading body language. The sitcoms that aired on children's networks were sufficiently over the top in direction that I could understand them, but they were also all terrible (except for Drake and Josh).
As I've aged, I've gotten better at reading body language, but I still have trouble making certain types of inferences. I did not pick up on the sexual tension between John Travolta's character and boss's wife in Pulp Fiction until he said outright that he needs to last until he can masturbate, and I was like "Where did that come from?" Apparently that was supposed to be obvious when they were dancing, but I was just bored by what appeared to be nothing happening.
My two favorite entertainment mediums are animation and musical theater. Most English-language animation is either made for kids or so stiff that it may as well not be animated at all. Musical theater is theoretically for all ages, but literal theater kids are the functional tastemakers. (Hamilton is about adults, but Dear Evan Hansen is about kids and Beetlejuice is Hot Topic kitsch.)
I got into the MCU when I was 17, and I do still enjoy some of it, but Endgame was a letdown for me, in large part because the characters rewrote the rules of reality to get out of the consequences of their actions, something they can now theoretically do at any point in the future. They could go back, get the stones, use them to revive Tony, and then return them. The only person they can't bring back is Black Widow. I mean.. people would say that these movies were made for kids because of all the toys, but I denied that because they were PG-13 and had references to sex and drugs. Now I understand why that doesn't prove anything.
Also, a post from a dead blogging site was recently sent my way, and while I don't agree with or even understand all of it, some passages hit close to home for me. (Ctrl+f "Deadpool.")
https://www.tumblr.com/hotelconcierge/167221016499/young-adult-fictions
As for why I don't like media about kids doing kid things, there are two reasons. The first is that it makes me feel old, because I'm not a child anymore. The second is that I might be reminded about things I missed out on as a kid and will never get to experience.
I'm currently fixated on A Series of Unfortunate Events. The storyline does play off how kids have no real control of their lives, but beyond that, it's allegorical and people of any age could have comparable experiences. Evangelion is also one of my favorite works of fiction, and I relate to Shinji more than any other fictional character. Watching Gravity Falls has gotten harder for me, though, because I'm farther away from the ages of Dipper and Mabel than I was when it came out, and watching Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy has become outright depressing, even though I love the slapstick. When I was a kid who never went outside and had no friends, I saw that show as aspirational, about something I wanted to have. Now it's about something I never had and never will. Even if I develop a completely functional social life, I'll never build a cardboard city that everyone in the neighborhood shows up to, our imaginations getting carried away as though it's real.
I kind of regret going all therapy mode here. I do have an actual therapist and could be talking about this with him. But this is CW-adjacent, right? It's about something that a lot of terminally online people relate to, so hopefully you guys can get something out of what I'm writing here.
(Final tangent: I never got around to reading Harry Potter as a kid because I didn't like reading, and I want to read it now, but I'm worried it'll remind me that I missed out on whatever cool high school stuff Harry does. Does he go to a wizard prom? Does he experience teenage wizard love?)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Do you guys think that a preference for children's media over media targeted toward adults is a sign of emotional immaturity or psychological issues?
I'm in my late 20's and I still primarily consume media made for children, but I'm not likely to enjoy it unless the protagonists are adults or the situations are allegorical enough that I can relate to them regardless of the characters' canon ages.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I found this disappointing, but not infuriating, until I realized that NIH is a taxpayer-funded organization. Why can't this data be in the public domain?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I know that they didn't want to share schools or restaurants with black people. What I am having trouble understanding is was why. I don't know what leaders of the day said, I only know what memes I learned in high school history. With that said, your explanations do make sense and I am currently internalizing them as part of my world view.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Due to the lack of contextual awareness, it wouldn't surprise me if this comment was removed by an AI moderator. AIs moderating discussion of AIs sounds like it'll lead to hilarious things.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Cheezus. You're right, I didn't know the full extent of Jim Crow. This is nuts and I appreciate you telling me about it.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Thank you so much! This explanation makes the most sense to me. It is very thorough and I'm going to use it as a guide for further research.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I thought states started adopting Jim Crow laws almost immediately after the Civil War ended.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
I thought anti-miscegenation laws were separate. Was the idea that people might be tempted to break those laws without forced separation?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
Based on my experience asking these sorts of questions, I figured that at least some people would assume that I'm acting in bad faith. I appreciate you answering my question in spite of this assumption.
Slavery has an obvious economic incentive in that it's profitable for businesses to make people do unpaid labor at gunpoint. When you say that the purpose of Jim Crow was to maintain the subjugation of black people that started under slavery, you seem to be implying that subjugating people was an end in itself. Slaveowners, for the most part, weren't people who found human suffering an inherent positive. They were indifferent to human suffering, which means they would gladly enable it for the sake of profit. To my knowledge, Jim Crow was not a way for white businessmen to make money, and so it did not serve in any way the same purpose as slavery. If there was a way for Jim Crow to be used for profit, then that would change my understanding of this period in history.
Telling me to read books doesn't work unless you name specific books. I don't trust my own education, or anything I'd randomly pick up at the library. I'm well aware now that any issue relating to race will be skewed in the present-day news, and I have no reason to believe this would be different for books about historical racial issues.
In addressing your last paragraph, I know that some racists of the kind that you describe exist, but I have no idea how numerous they are now or how numerous they were historically. I only know that I, and many others, have been falsely accused of being this kind of person, no matter how much we champion liberal values or equality under the law, and the amount of false positives does make me wonder how common the real deal ever was. If I take your description of historical racism as the truth, and I try to imagine how that would work with my understanding of tribalism today, I suppose that historic racism would poor whites treating poor blacks as their outgroup and rich whites as their far group. That would be comparable to things I'm aware of.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3yr ago
It occurred to me recently that I have no idea why Jim Crow laws existed.
I know from life experience that white flight isn't the result of racist white people wanting to avoid being near people who look different from them, but rather, reasonable people wanting to avoid black crime. I could extrapolate from this that the point of Jim Crow laws was to keep black criminals away, but that makes no sense. Black people had been enslaved for their entire time in the new world, so they didn't have the opportunity to become a criminal underclass. White people would not yet have any basis for the claim that black people are dangerous to be around, would they?
I'm talking about cringe fetish stuff and/or spicy political takes getting posted on Kiwifarms and/or Twitter. I figured that was specific enough.
Wait, my SSN doesn't give them access to my government records? I thought that was the entire point, because that was how they did criminal background checks. This gives me optimism. Quora does make it sound like it's not fool proof, but it is a hurdle I can create.
https://www.quora.com/Do-previous-legal-names-show-up-on-background-checks?top_ans=395229319
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