George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
54m ago
We all share that same hope, if I might dare a post that suggests consensus.
Yo, since you're calling me out: A) What post are you talking about where you "explained what the problem was"? I didn't see it or read it. Perhaps you're right that I could have or even should have. I didn't. You're assuming.
You're apparently pattern-matching me to someone who denies there's a problem with media. I do not deny this, as my post history indicates.
The initial post by @FaibleEstimeDeSoi was about video games and a black/white pairing, which didn't and still does not strike me as odd. The issue is not with one game. The issue is larger, as with the tide that goes out--it lowers all boats. For whatever reason I did not make that connection to the post and I felt the issue was with the interracial pairing in and of itself, not a symptom of a larger issue (i.e. focusing on one boat instead of the tide.)
Dase decided to go for it and get personal. That's what I take issue with--well, that and his general writing style, which I find tedious but not because I think he's a liar or cretin. I don't think either of those and he seems quite intelligent. He was also rude and thus far in his interactions with me does not seem to be interested in changing that tack. So be it.
I'm not blind and I'm not lying. I spent three years in Africa and most of my life in Alabama--black men with white women is a thing. That is the issue I was bringing up. I am not Gillitrut.
(Edit: I'm probably one of the most normie dudes in here and need to adjust my expectations. Absurd really how thin my skin is at my age.)
Strange to think that in a few years this space, too, will be a memory for most, possibly all of us. We'll move on to whatever (if we are lucky) and The Motte may or may not continue in some form, but not like this.
(edit: by "if we are lucky" I mean if we continue to live and have fulfilling lives where we interact socially)
Very first post I made here was on a related topic . I'm not blind to the idea of this propagandistic swing in media, not am I its defender in some sort of fair-is-fair way. I won't say "the way OP presented the point" because I seem to be the only one who misconstrued, rather "the way I took it" was a focus on one affair as a plot device that happened to be between a black man and white woman. That this has become a widely-played trope I have not myself perceived but I chalk that up to a certain isolation (obviously I don't live in a hole so not complete isolation). Mea culpa.
You may be right that this, along with my use of quotes, fired up a reaction. But so what? Part of the ethos here at least by my understanding is that we suppress the heat and aim for light, or at the very least keep it non-personal. I wasn't trying to piss anyone off despite suspicions otherwise, certainly not OP, who had the humility even to doubt whether his post was low effort (I think it was perfectly fine). Even here you've very clearly explained to me the issue with civility. In any case I've let this irk me way more than it's worth. Thank you for your input.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
The relevant point is that this appears to be widespread, and I apparently, to echo the OP's post title haven't noticed, but then I see about 85% Asian (Japanese, more Korean now than previously) in my print ads, my commercials, my news, my tv shows, the Youtubers my sons watch. My consumption of media is probably, compared to that of most here, therefore skewed, or at least not the usual. Thus my reaction.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
It may be that because of my physical distance from US advertising (I don't really have US commercials, do not see print ads or whatever is on billboards, etc.) I am out of touch to a degree on what is or isn't common in English language advertising.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I'm honestly not sure where your apparent hostility is coming from here. Obnoxiously obtuse? Jesus. I wrote a pretty benign comment that I didn't see how having a couple of characters where one was a white woman and the other a black man was in some way propaganda or odd. Were this everywhere, in every episode and story and book and TV show, sure it would be notably odd. Also, if this were a game made in Japan for Japanese people (a country where as you say I do live) I'd see it as a bit odd. The fact of the matter is, however, in the US and elsewhere (presumably the primary market for this game, Fallout, though I admittedly do not know and am assuming) these types of pairings do happen and have happened. It's not as if the characters are a trans woman and a gay man somehow finding love, where I'd think there'd be more of a point to be made.
While we're at it, your link to the tweet about IQs strikes me as dubious. Mankind Quarterly? Forgive me if I don't immediately rush out and subscribe. And hauling in the other ideas of propaganda re: girlbosses and dumb males (where I see the point, and agree) seems disingenuous of you. When I've read your comments elsewhere dealing with others you've seemed both better reasoned and more polite.
It's true I don't use terms like "miscegenation" and to me it's not something I give much thought to. I probably should assume that there is at least a certain number of posters on the Motte who think I'm dirtying the gene pool (presumably of the Japanese). It's a bit close to home for me to feel like having that conversation, however.
Barring that, however, normally, as people do on this forum, I'd be interested in discussing the topic with you. But as you're now suggesting I'm a liar and probably a cretin, you're probably right that conversation is hopeless.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Sure, but has anyone suggested that this is the most common or ideal pairing?
The white woman/black man "pairing" as you put it is not, as far as I am aware, a particularly new concept, though you may be correct in suggesting it has not long been mainstream in terms of characters in film (or games, or whatever, though I am out of my element there.)* In other words, while I do not deny that there may be propagandistic moves made by popular media in the service of progressive goals, and that often these moves are ham-fisted and disrupt story narrative, this does not seem like such an example to me. I agree with @Gillitrut in this regard, unsure where the propaganda angle is, unless seeing such an interracial coupling itself is jarring to you. (Again, based on my ignorance of this and pretty much all games I can't speak to how odd it is in that context.)
*Edit: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was released in 1967 and was presumably a shocker then.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
What is it that allows some of us to remember names and faces? In university I was roommates with a guy who had his own band and was very gregarious and beloved. I would regularly be out with him and people would approach, I'd whisper ("That's John Johnson you met him last year at X's party, he's with Debbie Debson she's Y's friend) and my friend would proceed to say their names at their greeting and thus become more beloved (I myself was not remembered by said John and Debbie).
I have been teaching for more than 20 years and I can name every student in my first class in Japan in 1998. I am not exaggerating. I have upwards of 300 students now and although classes began on April 2nd I know probably 60% of their names. I saw a girl (woman I suppose) whom I used to teach probably in 2010 the other day and although I would not have summoned her to memory had I not randomly run into her, I knew both her first and last (maiden now) names, and said them immediately. She did remember me by name, as well, but it's not so hard to remember the guy who stands up and lectures for 90 minutes twice a week.
Prosopagnosia is when you cannot recall faces. I suppose there's a lite version as well. I am whatever the opposite is.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
Have never heard of this. Was this another splinter site that happened concurrently with The Motte's leaving reddit?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
Okay we'll stay away from taste, I guess.
Far be it from me to force anyone into a discussion they find tedious. I would suggest that although I'm doubtless shaped by my American somewhat egalitarian upbringing in the 70s and 80s and therefore am steeped somewhat in an individualistic worldview, that doesn't make me blind or delusional. And it doesn't wipe from discussion the argument that individuals should have value outside their collective group. In any case cultures, like people, change. They're both fluid, at least over time. Presumably you agree with this. That doesn't mean you're not without a Russian identity (or whatever, I am assuming Russian), but I would suggest we are not intrinsically defined by nationalist or even cultural traits. You may reject this ability to transcend culture, I don't know. That's a big suitcase to unpack.
I live in a highly collectivist culture where people routinely fall back on Nihonjinron concepts and declare that Japanese are unique, for the same reasons you're describing. I know a girl who was born and raised here and speaks Japanese with the same degree of nativeness as her Japanese peers, but is also blonde and blue-eyed due to her parentage (both caucasian). The various arguments against belonging here (can't speak, weren't born here, don't understand Japanese culture, etc.) do not hold for her (although Japanese "blood" is also a criteria often suggested, Brazilians of Japanese parentage are often denied membership for the reasons of the previous parenthetical list, as are any children who do not have two Japanese parents, e.g. if one is Zainichi Korean). The lines always change, as the tribalist winds fluctuate for whatever is needed to keep the lines drawn. It's tiresome. I stopped caring long ago, though such attitudes still do, or will, no doubt affect my sons (whose mother is Japanese.)
The sort of essentialist view you're suggesting wipes actions and character from the equation, does it not? And in answer to the "what of it?" well, on the small scale quotidian stereotyping of people with whom you daily interact (not you, but one, with whom one daily interacts) and on the largest scale: War without sympathy for your enemy because fuck the Other.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
I took it as a metaphor.
Not me, only because it's been 13 hours and I feel like a reply is only polite.
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