Given what I saw in the last US election, I'm not too keen on letting the average low-info, TV-enraged person have the process of voting greased up for them any further. It's an imperfect process, but I would afford a minimum of respect to people who at least took the time to leave their home, get in line, and sacrifice a few hours of their lives for democracy. Those who are not physically able can make a similar gesture to request their own mail-in ballots. I would say this miniscule effort demonstrates and engenders more skin in the game than automatically sending every Joe and Jane a ballot just waiting to be filled out after a CNN story on a candidate gives them a frowny. It's not evident to me why their input - lazy as it is - should be given any due by default, or further enabled. I can't think of anything positive or constructive they contribute to the process, but certainly a few negatives.
Democracy has always suffered from the dilemma of "what if the idiots vote the wrong way", but maybe we can stave off the worst of it by putting up these bare minimum of barriers? Like, I see a future where people can vote for their presidents via their X accounts or a similar platform. I'm sure that would be amazing for generating 'skin in the game', and also be utterly horrible precisely because said skin doesn't exist. You laugh at a GIF of Biden falling down AF1's steps, then punch the button for Trump without getting off your couch. I would like to stall that as long as possible.
DTulpa
6mo ago
As indicated in the last part of my post, I'm pretty sure the actors and rappers doing the voice work didn't get roasted - just Rockstar. Whatever defense those assorted performance artists offered to R* might as well have not existed, precisely because acknowledging them would have completely blown up the "horrid white company forcing workers to depict minstrel shows" narrative journalists were going for. So just pretend you didn't see it. Like, Dan Houser shouldn't have given them permission or something, so it's still his fault.
See also RPS accusing CP2077 of being racist, the black creator publicly challenging them on that, and the confused, jumbled responses it elicited. Clear pushback that can't be easily dismissed with a strawman attack are greeted with a curious and embarrassing silence, then immediately forgotten, and the work continues.
DTulpa
6mo ago
Didn't the black VAs encourage using the word? I remember when some game journo outlet went after Rockstar with some headline like "Rockstar Needs To Take Responsibility For Its Depiction of Black People", because the casual use of 'nigger', referring to women as 'bitches', and all other sorts of vulgarity were demeaning stereotypes.
Except it turned out IIRC that the VAs thought Rockstar's original script and dialogue weren't authentic enough. It didn't feel 'real', and the actors were given discretion in their performances to punch it up, so to speak. And it worked because yes, people in that social rung in those areas with those cultures absolutely do talk that way, even if it makes progressives' skin crawl. Of course, that attempted rebuttal wasn't recognized in the slightest because "We literally gave the black actors the freedom to perform these roles as they saw fit, and they did so enthusiastically" was too inconvenient to even acknowledge.
DTulpa
6mo ago
That movie even had the self-awareness to mine humor from the varying perceptions of the Confederate flag circa '05, with neither view being promoted. Just acknowledged.
It is practically dispassionate in comparison to where we are now. And that's where I thought we stood maturity-wise as a nation. Northerners rolled their eyes and tut-tutted and Southerners told them to shove it, but it didn't seem to amount to much beyond the mundane neighborly squabbling endemic to any nation, state, or city. The kind of shit talking little different than that between New Yorkers from different areas, Western European countries between each other, or the Eagleton vs Pawnee stereotype that comes up in any given state.
Now this is being recast as an existential and moral fight to the death. A reckoning long overdue since we averted our privileged eyes from obvious stains of evil. And while I've long heard talk about the Union 'not going far enough' in destroying the Antebellum South, I chalked so much of this up to tough online posturing uttered by cowards that couldn't shoot a dog, let alone raze a town. Shame on me for not treating this with the full contempt it warranted, since I never thought this view would rank up to the level of legitimacy it sees now.
I find it hard to trust people who don't acknowledge this switch. It wasn't motivated by recently unearthed knowledge or a radical reappraisal of our understanding of the conflict. It was pure present-day vibes, and those come from now, and are only very tenuously connected to a long-gone war a century and a half ago. And it's why I'm not moved by anybody linking to historical and/or academic documents debating full removal of Confederate symbols, because people talk all the fucking time.
DTulpa
6mo ago
Because those aren't what's being teabagged. It's modern day 'racist southerners', similar deplorables, and fellow travelers that are the true target, and the banishment (now celebrated destruction) of Confederate iconography is a good proxy for that. It is a flex not just over southern pride, regional history, and heretofore popular mythology, but also over anyone that doesn't like to see current progressives' thoughtless pursuit of cleansing art and media rewarded.
I have no ties to or love for anything Confederate. It's not in my family tree and I was bred Blue tribe enough to reflexively mock the whole modern shtick of it. Do you think I object to the statues' removal because Lee is a super cool dude and slavery was no big deal, or what?
DTulpa
6mo ago
They would never admit it, but it to me it was obvious Youtube removed visible dislikes because of the regular stream of Big Brand(tm) videos getting publicly tanked and the headlines that came with it. Game sequels revealing they were taking directions unasked for, trailers for movies heavy on The Narrative or nakedly vacuous in their creativity, cringey White House videos - all them and more were a subject to a routine phenomenon where the faceless public (or at least an engaged subset) could throw a big ol' pie the faces of institutions both public and private whenever they did something painfully stupid or miscalculated. And the power in that was knowing that when you thought something was bad, you could be sure you were not alone.
Probably only takes some polite requests to Youtube's management to curb that. And like so much else lately, it can be justified under some bullshit about protecting the little guy from hate - even though I don't think I've heard a single creator big or small being supportive of it.
DTulpa
6mo ago
The entire fervor for removing Confederate statues, flags, and other icons is one that has been revived within the last decade. And no, linking to some historical griping about it at any point in the last century prior to the 2010s doesn't mean anything. Their removal wasn't some natural conclusion long in the making after distance from the Civil War. It was an opportunity seized during a time when the country was already tilted sideways with Trump and BLM - a time when emotions were constantly overriding everybody's mental buffers. The Confederacy and its legacy were retrofit as the cause and explanation for modern day racial ills, and made a convenient target to destroy in a flex of political power.
Ten years prior you would see the flag on the car in the Dukes of Hazzard remake, and the film even has the playful cognizance to joke about what that means today. Since then, we have awoken to its evil power and must take drastic steps to not just hide it away in a dark vault, but destroy it behind people's backs? I don't believe it, and I would need a lot more than "it makes black people feel bad" (a point of merit) to be at ease with this given I don't trust or agree with any of their other newfound heuristics or behaviors.
His belief in creationism would have gotten me hot and bothered in the 2000s. In the time since, I have watched his 'betters' - people with no attachment to millenia-old superstitions and fueled only by the love of science and compassion for others - quite possibly exceed him in the strangeness of their beliefs and the ruination in their consequences.
I'm an unrepetant atheist who has nonetheless softened towards religion, if only because the notion I once held that "less religion = more good ideas can flourish" has been badly beaten (pending status on survival) and because I have been shown being non-religious isn't an antidote to stupid thinking. And no Young Earth Creationist of status is going to give me any lip about my white privilege or grease the wheels for a child's gender transition.*
I reckon it's a two-way street, but I feel like there's this endemic failure for some people to model the minds of people who are totally unphased by this, especially those of the 'smarty pants' variety typically seen here. 'Man walked with dinosaurs' is ridiculous to me, and it has practically nothing to do with any given culture war item today. And even if I may personally scoff at his beliefs, I'm betting he may be a more reliable ally against things I also oppose, even if our reasoning may diverge at times.
*Some indicators the speaker may not be 100% reliable on that front. But as to the question why his creationism isn't a deal-breaker or remotely a topic of my concern, the above still stands.
DTulpa
6mo ago
I definitely am discussing Reddit in general. The hot takes and easy karma shown in that thread appear any time Elon or any minimally right-coded figure pops up as a topic nearly anywhere on the site. You'll be browsing a sub for a video game or show you like and then one day there's a "DAE see similarities between Musk and the Dark Lord?" post sitting up top with 6 gold and thrice the upvotes relative to anything else.
Few are immune to smug convictions. But there is something stupefying about the particular thing they are convinced of. I'd frankly find it more tolerable if they accused him of being a grifter, a conman, a snake, or even evil. But dumb and incompetent? It's this reflexive tic among leftitsts where surely your opponents are just straight-up retarded; as opposed to you, brilliant cat man shooting for the 6 figures with your journalism and poli-sci courses (assuming they're even taking those and not just posing). And it's not just Reddit. I dont think a week goes by where I don't get fed an article about how Musk is doing something crazy or inscrutable. Just this morning I was reading about his digs at Wikipedia, and the article hintingly framed this as mental instability.
This started to feel tryhard with Trump, and it's doubly so with Musk.
Is there anything more singularly obnoxious than a Reddit thread of smug shots at Elon Musk? According to them, apparently he doesn't know electricity and servers cost money. And firing most of the worthless staff at Twitter was the worst self-inflicted wound anybody could have ever made!
You ask why this causes bafflement, but do you really think these idiots know something he doesn't? That they have a better grasp of tech and its funding than the man who has a history with payment processors, cybercars, rockets, and now social media - and Elon is just bumblefucking his way to success? I'll grant that he is human and more error-prone than his godly 4d troll image would have some believe. But give any one of his businesses to a chump in that thread (or a group of them) and watch it go belly-up or taken away from them under their noses.
Maybe Musks's single qualification over these people is that he doesn't post on Reddit. A lot of Musk criticism clearly comes from a type who thinks they could do the same job he does even better if only the world had been more fair and gave them the opportunity to do so. It's laughable and contemptible in equal measure.
DTulpa
7mo ago
Jesus can die on his cross. A bit much to expect the same of all Christians.
DTulpa
7mo ago
And most people would probably be with you in punishing J6ers if the previous consensus on violence hadn't been utterly thrashed by progressives and fellow sympathizers. So yeah, they're not judged as harshly because the standards changed. We weren't aware they had changed, but media consensus dictatated otherwise. And this is somehow incomprehensibly alien to you? Come now. That's a pose.
So you would be willing to throw the book at J6ers because you feel they objectively warranted it. Congratulations; now what? I am more interested in fair treatment than I am justice as a terminal goal, because I think that's the superior algorithm for a host of reasons. So what if I think J6 qualified as violent by some technical metrics? So does play-shoving a friend, and I'm not going to entertain anybody calling that violent just because Webster says so.
So if BLM wasn't violent, then neither was J6. As I said before, this is indeed partly cynical. But is also deadly serious. I refuse to call J6 violent because of the valence of that word, much in the same way I don't consider assimilation to be cultural erasure, that taxation is theft, or that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is ethnic cleansing, even though any of those could be considered technically true. This isnt being cryptic, or hiding behind a mask. Why do you assume this some deliberate, self-inflicted partisan error?
DTulpa
7mo ago
People aren't oblivious to the logic. Well, maybe some are. I dont think most people here. But you said this take was out of step with a community thats supposedly grounded to reality. I think from the responses you can maybe see that it is based in reality - such as it is.
One of the consequences of institutions playing favorites with mob violence is that it causes many individuals to second-guess their own definitions. If the BLM riots didn't qualify as violence in popular sentiment, then who is to say J6 should? Am I being cheeky, or am I being serious? Could you even tell? Honestly, I'm in limbo between both states. Where does 'reality' have a say? That's a socially mediated phenomenon, as demonstrated quite clearly since 2020 onward.
'Violent' is one of those fuzzy terms that can mean anything from a playful shove, to murder, to mean insults. We probably had more national consensus on the thresholds for qualification in prior decades, and then that was wrecked in 2020. That you now see so many (what you regard as) peculiar opinions on this subject shouldn't be too surprising. And while it's hard to often tell if this is sincere or troll-ish (just reacting to progressives 'reality'), I think its often both.
DTulpa
7mo ago
I thoroughly enjoyed ME2 enough to go through it at least twice, but there were lingering odd feelings I couldn't articulate until reading Shamus' ME retrospective - which is probably one of the best long-form critiques I've ever read, and one I couldn't agree with more. Every complaint he makes with ME2's story and tone had me going "Yes! That's why X felt so off or out of step with the first game!".
People focus so much of their ire on ME3's end, but I think it's clear the problems start with ME2. They just aren't as obvious without hindsight and actually revisiting the middle part of the trilogy with a fresh perspective. The first game still feels really special to me.
If it's your kind of thing, I would definitely check Shamus' series after finishing the games! Shame about his passing this year. He was good at what he did.
She's part of a league of voice actors with a lately very overinflated sense of importance that has thrown their weight behind various progressive cause celebres. I wouldn't be able to recall anything specifically to her name, but the few times she showed in my Twitter feed was the kind of right-on, fuck-the-other-team hot takes that conform with the rest of her field.
I'm a little surprised to see her 'canceled' over what seems to be a very mainstream take that isn't clothed in the usual pro-Palestinian sentiments often displayed by her 'team'. But I'm not sure what else it could be.
Regardless of how I feel about 'cancel culture' overall (which is irrelevant) or the reasons why she may have been booted, she doesn't engender my sympathy. But it's just one gig and she has a large fanbase cultivated over many years. I'd wager this is a blip and she'll survive fine with all her other work and with no long-term consequence.
DTulpa
7mo ago
Imp always seemed more direct with his disdain. darwin would couch his with the sort of "Have you considered" plausible deniability wrt the rules, but transparently just calling people assholes. That or just terminating a convo with evasiveness.
I think there is some value in reflecting on "Maybe you just suck?". But I don't expect many people to do it when asked, and it was noticeable that despite being a sometimes quality poster, Darwin's effort levels would evaporate by the time he was issuing those queries.
Of no particular import - I also pegged guess as a darwin alt just because the posting style seemed so familiar. Not that I have a problem with it.
DTulpa
7mo ago
Understandable, and a fair enough play. Despite my last post, I'd probably do the same.
One does lament, though.
I'm not sure it is inconsequential. Moreso if there's any plans for children and one would like a partner who could help guard against their kids getting sucked into this zeitgeist and not compromise with beligerent forces.
I wonder if the last decade of "Who cares, like it really matters, this doesn't affect anything" line IRT LGBTQ issues has led us to this fractious and confused state, where it's been revealed that of course it's consequntial, and in ways big and small affects sports, schools, prisons, women's spaces, law, dating dynamics, corporate duties and expectations, etc. And while that boulder was probably coming any way, I think its mass and power could have been shrunk a bit if more people in their various personal relationships were adamant in calling it as nonsense, and not treating their brain as a private refuge to keep hidden from others in order not to rock the boat.
IME many women I know are very receptive to LGBTQ framings - their husbands and BFs less so. But the men just kinda shut up about it. I know some very Trumpy anti-woke ex-mil guys who allow their wives to take their children to BLM protests and Pride painting sessions, and all they do is grimace and bite their tongue "as long as she's happy". This is simultaneously wholesome and admirable, and also infuriating. Infuriating because this feels too similar to the larger societal pattern of rolling over on LGBTQ issues because somebody (usually a woman or a minority) might be made uncomfortable, with predictably negative consequences.
He can weigh his own scales after this event. I don't think he should take any advice here going one way or another too close to heart. On some level it seems silly to consider breaking up over (ugh) politics, and I'll assume everything else about their relationship is going swimmingly, more or less. Then again, she's basically accused him of having bigoted opinions, and that's awfully close to being a bigot proper. I'd be wondering if there's anything else touching this topic that might prompt this reaction. This is either a trifle or the tip of an iceberg, and you won't know which without more time running into it.
Are they anticipating where the market is going, or where the ADL, NYT, and advertisers are going? Of course any CEO is going to factor them into their business proceedings. But it leaves the very likely possibility that the CEO is not demonetizing people or terminating deals because he's worried about his userbase rebelling against him and jumping ship, but because he's worried about a hit piece, ad networks getting the willies, or being subjected to all sorts of extended, motivated muckraking if they decide otherwise. CEOs are also not a separate species from humans; they socialize, fret, have principles with about as much 'integrity' as anybody else, and are subjected to many of the same social pressures most other people deal with, even if their venues and peers are gilded upper-class. I don't think they mind losing some money if they already have a lot, somebody else is willing to cover their losses with ESG funds, or if they can sit in security with no viable competition. And this should go without saying, but they too can be stupid.
I contend that when people refer to the free market, they usually mean a decision or assessment gleamed by the aggregate, collective spending decisions of consumers en masse - if a plurality of citizens respond positively or negatively to a product, as expressed by how much money they threw at it, and if it's enough to keep production going. You are pointing to a small cadre of Lords and Tastemakers who either step in before the product hits shelves - or has them removed because Sprint Mobile doesn't like having a booth next to it or whatever - while using that same term. These are clearly very different things. And if you insist on using that framing with justifications such as "Well, of course CEO anticipations and decision making are part of the market!", that's... fine, I guess. I can't even say you're wrong on any technical level.
But be clear. Because this always comes off as a low-effort gotcha. If the stuff I want to reward or patron are being removed from the menu by executive or committee's political fiat, the free market did not operate as most people would understand it. And yet, many progs will insist it did, if only for the cynical retainment of the feel-good glow around "every voice must be heard" and "power to the people" sentiments you need to half-heartedly pay lip service to so people don't see what's really going on.
I said 'new', as in recent. What does a 'refinement' of #metoo in regards to wrongfully accused men look like? What does a refinement of antiracism in regards to making the OK gesture look like? If we're already admitting that some of this stuff in the zeitgeist has gotten unreasonable in its zeal, what are the 'sane' rollbacks we can all soon expect? And do you honestly expect progressives to acquiesce and go along with them?
I also do not share your take on the historical progressive stances being moderated over time. I would say many of them started moderate, or at least had a prior moderate incarnation it eventually arrived at (gay people are normal folk just like me and you wouldn't even be able to tell, dont judge somebody by their skin) and only got more extreme with their ambitions once they settled in and enjoyed the comfort of their power (drag shows for children, venerating blackness as unique and special).
Perhaps this is the 'refinement' you gesture towards? They've certainly done a magnificent job of grabbing the reigns of media and ensuring their takes are the only acceptable ones. That is a success story, in a way. And yet it does nothing to address any of my concerns with the fundamentals of their arguments and ideologies. I want them turned back, not grandfathered into respectability they'll proceed to exploit.
I think we were more sane and moderate about these things in previous decades, and progressives ruined that. Why should I wait for them to sort themselves out again?
Something that increasingly sticks in my craw is modern socprogs appealing to the "invisible hand of the market" whenever something like this happens - that is, when they're not accusing free markets of being corrupt, predatory, immoral, unsustainable, and demand more "ethical" dictats to be handed down from authorities.
If the accusations against Brand are made public, and his audience decides to give him 0 dollars the next morning, that is the invisible hand at work.
If a group of journalists, activists, and politicians bypass audience response and go straight to spooking management to cut him off, that is preempting feedback from the market. You are not letting the hand do its thing; you are calling God and demanding he intervene precisely because your faith in letting the market decide doesn't exist.
As if the decisions and personal preferences of Youtube, Rumble, Amazon, Steam constitute 'the market', and all the rabble like you and I don't count. As if those people (their CEOs or their beuraucratic layers that weigh in on these controversies) are what we are referring to when 'let the market decide' is invoked.
"Jeff Bezos doesnt like Confederate flags because racism, and now he has banned their merchandising on his storefront! See, you free-market right-wing capitalists? The market decided! You have literally nothing to complain about unless you're a hypocrite. Consumers are rejecting your racism."
That's been a decade-long refrain by now, and it has not gotten less idiotic or obfuscatory (by intention, I've come to believe). I'd wager that all these attempts to cut people off from their sources of income, to appeal directly to a storefront's management to have something taken off the shelf, to algorithmically suppress 'bad content' and 'bad people', are actually driven by fear. The fear that if you went hands-off and let the chips lie where they fell, progressives would have to face the truth that their shit is not as popular as they think it is, and oh gawd these peddlers of hate, sexism, racism, PUA-ism, COVID misinformation, election denialism might have more appeal than us! Or at least enough to make us sweat.
That must be psychically turbulent to experience, so best take steps to avoid that scenario. Just cut off some heads and say "Consumers were begging me to do it! Nothing unnatural occurred at all. Im just following the will of the people". And it really explains everything between the night of Trump's 2016 win and what we see today.
DTulpa
8mo ago
Of all the new progressive-led 'ways of doing things', are there any examples of one that got 'refined' and dialed down a bit from its prior fervor?
Will this refinement entail not trying to cut off people from their income based on public accusations made under anonymity and that nobody attempted to bring to court?
I sympathize with your vexation here. I'm not sure how productive these discussions can be if we have to regularly pause for interjections of "you haven't assigned enough (or any) blame to my outgroup". I think he could have made a better post than that.
At the same time, I also think we would be remiss to completely talk around a very obvious link between female promiscuity and popular progressive feminist messaging. A certain subset of men may benefit the most from modern dating/hook-up college, but this culture has never been broadly or enthusiastically condoned by men, at least out loud. A man may be happy that prostitutes exist if only to satisfy his base urges, but he's not exactly proud of it. And since humans aren't consistent, principled thinkers - while he may be happy that some women sleep around if only for the opportunity for him to get laid, he's probably not thrilled to find out his wife/girlfriend had dozens of partners prior to the current relationship. "X in the streets, Y in the sheets" kinda sums up the attempted propriety.
By contrast, it is feminism that has railed against "slut-shaming", argued that women who sleep around are unfairly judged compared to Chads, whitewashed sexual exhibitionism as personal exploration, and so much more since at least I was in Jr High. I'm not even interested in blaming anybody for our current state of affairs - just an admission that there is an obvious (if not clear) relationship between the dashed expectations of young women and this ubiquitous ideological memeplex. I don't think you can assign more culpability to men for herding women towards the Sex Party - gently pushing against their backsides and reassuing them to not worry, this will all be so fun - versus an industry of Grl Power media that is assumedly produced mostly by women.
As such, I am not interested in curbing or punishing legions of cheating/insistent men that potentially threaten the structural integrity of our society. Not until we dial the lens out far enough to indict a few other groups. Zero interest in "getting men to play by the rules again" when both sexes have defected from them (with women running the full sprint, one could argue), and when the fairer one routinely acts like it never has any agency in these affairs whatsoever - which is unacceptable when you've spent decades trumpeting how you know what you want, you are self-empowered, you don't need anybody to hold your hand or 'mansplain' things to you, and being chaste is just an insecure demand from the patriarchy.
Short of actual rape, there's a lot I'd give amnesty to until this conversation space starts looking halfway reasonable. But I'm not optimistic, and it is for that reason I reluctantly agree that this wound may not heal. All the "stitching up" has to happen on the men's side, and women act like they're just oblivious passengers that never saw the dozen road signs warning "POTENTIAL LANDSLIDES AHEAD".
DTulpa
8mo ago
Your first paragraph is the interesting bit. That many people who are negative on these newly-dominant strains of our culture may have inadvertently paved its way previously - and enjoyed the ride up until they didn't - is a thought I have reflected on a fair bit recently. I myself am torn between renouncing some of my previous sensibilities or arguing for their selective defense in contrast to 'wokeness'.
That's a neat thread to pull on, and also nowhere in goodguy's post, and so I am not sure what compels you to defend it against downvotes. It's like you're reading a superior argument they did not actually make, and then using that as an opportunity to dunk on some ignorant detractors for reasons I don't fully understand.
I remember reading that Hemsworth was tapped for a US adaptation of The Raid films. I didn't think it would work because American fight choreography wouldn't capture the appeal of silat.
Suddenly I'm watching a prison fight in Extraction 2 that feels very similar to Raid 2's. And it works! Sure, the protagonist has merc gear and guns, and it dodges direct comparisons to the Indonesian films since it's not an adaptation. But without knowing anything about Extraction's production history, it feels like vestiges of the old pitch made their way in.
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