I was in that trench, too. I don't share your view of that period. Plenty of Christians condemned WBC, and this was casually disregarded as inauthentic or meaningless because we perceived very little daylight between WBC's stance on homosexuality versus Christianity on the whole. "WBC is disgusting, but at least they're honest" was the kind of thing you'd read (or write yourself) in a lot of those spaces.
Worth remembering that WBC was paid attention to primarily for its protesting of soldiers' funerals - an act that I'm sure you can easily imagine pisses off people of with all sorts of different politics and faiths, including Christians who were against gay marriage! The image of some Jesus-loving Good Ol' Boy passively accepting Phelps and co picketing his dead son's funeral is a bit hard to swallow.
And since we're comparing notes on history - I don't know why anybody should go hunting for the unicorns of consensus-bucking trans spaces when a lot of us here have spent the last 10 years watching their political movement steamroll nearly every forum and platform we used to be part of, and got to see first-hand how these spaces got captured, converted, and degraded. I am not lacking examples of what I see as the default MO of trans and trans-supportive spaces. If somebody wants to show me a trans space that goes against a lot of the current progressive orthodoxies, I'll happily peek at it. But then we will be clear that the thing making their lives harder isn't right-wing bigotry, but a prog-aligned media that doesn't consider them worthy of attention. I think you have a good point that perhaps they are reluctant to criticize their messengers out of fear that it may result in wave of Red Traditionalism crashing over them after tampering with the barricades. But I think if you're already subscribing to that dynamic on anything, it's too late. You're practically a foot soldier, whether you're enthusiastic about it or not.
DTulpa
6mo ago
Broadband was nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is now. Pornographic content was not as extreme or 'hardcore' as it often can be today. There's also a portaling effect where any one of the major video platforms (in a whole sea of them) can keep serving you up not just the one video you sought, but a dozen others loaded up to go on the sidebar or right beneath the player. I don't know how frequent the "Finish, close 30 tabs" meme came up back then, but it's surely more common now? Don't even need to get into video streaming quality, or quality in general. Live shows were a joke, in retrospect.
I dunno, man. I remember what it was like downloading porn as a teenager in the late 90s and early 00s. A lot of grainy 30-second clips, a lot of slow download speeds, a lot of waiting for Kazaa to finish up (sometimes days). Give me this evening and I could probably hoard and/or access more porn than I ever could during my entire adolescence. Maybe it was a gradual phenomenon that sloped real hard with the advent of 'hub sites. But that's still good enough as a marker IMO.
DTulpa
6mo ago
Fair point, but it's worth noting that issue is under the larger umbrella of concern regarding mistreatment and misadvisement of children. Are more girls seeking treatments and surgeries than boys? That could be enough to justify the intensity of the spotlight. And critics of the medical and educational institutions are clearly against the whole program. It's not like 'indoctrination and mutilation of boys' is expempted from judgment and ire.
Outside of that - and excepting a can or worms like Audrey Hale - when's the last time there was any kind of national furor or argument over a trans man taking a 'real' man's spot? The only time I see trans men given any kind of attention lately is in regards to how tough being a man is, apparently. Whenever these debates come up, they're given a kind of perfunctory acknowledgement before people go back to arguing about what's truly on people's minds: an uninterrupted parade of MtF Dylan Mulvaneys.
I think there's obvious reasons why this is so, but I'm guessing we're all somewhat aware of the talking points.
It's been remarked on here before, but it seems nobody particularly cares about FtM trans people. They blend in easier and - more importantly - don't seem to threaten anybody either in physicality or status. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable sharing a dressing room with one, but I wouldn't be eyeing an immediate exit either. The 'disgust' phenomenon seems mostly localized to MtF.
I think Silverdawn's question is assy. But as somebody who is more anti than pro on most trans questions, I don't think increased exposure to trans people will resolve my problems with the movement. My feelings are less 'Enemy Mine' and more 'TNG: Chain of Command' in that people are trying to make me digest and parrot what I regard as an obvious untruth. No amount of positive experiences with trans people will change that I do not see them as their declared sex or gender, and whatever positive experiences I accrue could be suddenly outweighed by negative ones should my stance be revealed and unmoved.
DTulpa
6mo ago
I used to be a big Harris acolyte, so my read on him over multiple podcasts, interviews, and books was something like:
"Pound for pound, the Old Testament may have more content we'd find objectionable than that in the Quran. Despite that, there are wrinkles in Islam such as the Hadith that are difficult (if not impossible) to detangle from the religion - a necessary component for its defanging and modernization. WWJD and WWMD entail very different behaviors, and the horrific negative consequences of the latter make Islam inherently and uniquely more problematic to deal with than any other world religion. Even if the others were 'worse' by several other metrics, none pose the challenges that Islam does, both historical and modern."
He had a long-running dialogue with Maajid Nawaz over this specific issue, trying to find a path forward for Islam and modernity. A decent effort, but I got the impression he was never particularly hopeful about its prospects. Essentially, there are features of Islam that preclude it from ever becoming sufficiently progressive in the way Christianity did - at least on a timescale or with the population numbers he'd be comfortable with.
DTulpa
6mo ago
Those arguments were what, again? GG is a force for evil on the internet and we all have an obligation to 'do better'?
I'm not sure exposing this person's dirty laundry qualifies as an ad hominem. Anti-GG mouthpieces made a big deal out of their moral superiority to their reactive, basement-dwelling, chuddish foes. Tearing off their robes and exposing them as mere creatures - and all the weirdness that entails - was practically a public good. But then I would think that given the level of disdain for them I carry, so take that FWIW. And if they wanted to circle the wagons for Nyberg because 'ad hominem' - to be understood as spotlighting a warped moral zealot as a problematic fraud - then double dumbass on them too.
Inseparable from the issue of medical care for trans children is the entire 'gender ideology' that some worry threatens to permeate every aspect of public life in a way school shootings don't, by definition. Obesity probably inches closer to that, what with the fat acceptance movement and the glamorization of unhealthy celebrities. But it's hard for anybody to take the fat man seriously for complaining he's being charged two tickets for filling two seats on a flight. Gender affirming care and the ideological umbrella it operates under is one of the few things where criticising or doubting it from any angle, in any context, to any degree can risk severe professional and often personal disadvantage in a way other political or social topics don't despite their polarization. The only other subject matter I can think of that prompts this 'zero-tolerance' treatment is race. By contrast, I don't think my employer really cares that much about how I feel about climate change, even if it annoys them. I'm not risking a lawsuit if I think the science is 'fake and gay'.
Given that, I don't think it's too surprising that trans issues will get more fuel because it's something we've found will raise its head anywhere and everywhere in due course. I haven't been to a high school or been a teenager for decades. Meanwhile, 'gender crap' is something I have to endure on multiple fronts both public, personal, and professional. And it can be this way even if a trans person only physically enters my orbit once a year.
DTulpa
7mo ago
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.
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
7mo 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
7mo 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
7mo 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
7mo 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
7mo 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
7mo 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
7mo 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
8mo 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
8mo 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.
It took decades for Left Inc to finally 'police its own' and issue denunciations when some of them unapologetically stated they had no issue with the externination of Jews - despite this strain of antisemitism being loud and obvious to anybody paying attention and who wasn't wrapped up in the coalition. And this just so happens to coincide with wealthy donors shutting their purses. Sure.
Ditto for the insistence that elite higher education was essentually unassailable, had no duty to accountability or obligation to explain itself to the plebs, and only caved when the extent of Ms Gay's fraudulence became too much to ignore - after bravely standing to her defense with a super-serious official Harvard letter and several weeks of articles accusing her critics of being anti-black.
Compared to the reflexive denunciation ritual every Republican or conservative has to partake in when somebody points to a Nazi and accusingly asks "DO YOU HAVE A COMMENT ON THIS?". Nope. You don't get to casually claim superiority on that front. Perhaps you are saddened that you see less of those denunciations 'over the last 8 years' than before, but it's obvious to me that this fruit doesn't have much juice left to squeeze, and that is entirely your fault.
EDIT: I don't know how I could have written that bit on Claudine Gay and completely whiff on the most odious part of her case: that her fraudulence went uninvestigated, unpunished, and was generally rewarded due to political interests in an institution that is supposed to value academic excellence (ha ha, I know, at least 'on paper'). Gay isnt a bad actor operating all on her own. She gets to her position with the aid of a corrupt system that will crow about their prestige and integrity every day of the year, right before they pivot to "actually, this is pretty normal, and uhh... we don't really need that kind of pedigree for something as boring and unserious as college president". And you consider her an 'extremist'? She's very normal to me, and my only surprise (which isn't, really) is that some Dems are belatedly unhappy with or embarrassed by a creature that is their own making.
Do you have a right-wing closet Nazi analogue you'd like me to condemn? Somebody who isn't a Substack writer, or a third-rate grifter on a platform thats probably throttled to hell and back if it hasn't been outright banned from the Play/Apple store?
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