MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
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User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I’m not going to deny the tech has a part. But I find the writing part to be a big turn off personally. No character in any story has any sort of real arc, the beats are nearly identical with only minor variations to accommodate the plot. I think part of what made the first Joker so interesting is that the character was different than the usual comic characters and rather than a story that plods along the usual tried and true beats of a superhero movie, it went in a different direction. Authentic and interesting characters, unique stories, and better dialogue I think would help a great deal. I think it would also help a great deal if the heroes of movies and their close associates didn’t have such strong plot armor. They just don’t feel like there are real stakes for a lot of reasons. Nobody gets hurt in a serious way that lasts. The characters aren’t personally invested in the outcome. It’s just watching CGI heroes do CGI stunts and I’m often left wondering why I care.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I think the rise of streaming certainly hurt movies, but I submit that it’s the poor quality of the films themselves that are killing the industry off completely. The writing is often boring and predictable, and the plots of most movies can be easily discernible by watching the trailers. The superhero movie is boring, nothing interesting happens in them, and so nobody gets excited to go see New Marvel or New DC because everyone knows the Brand and they know what the experience will be like long before they buy their (relatively expensive) tickets, popcorn and soda. The same can be true of other genres there’s just nothing interesting going on as movies converge on the same Save the Cat beat sheet with the same progressive philosophy and the same Joss Weaten “take nothing seriously” sensibility.
This comes about because of the insular nature of Hollywood. You want in, you have to attend film schools in one of maybe a dozen Big Name schools. You need a patron. You need to go to Hollywood where you get invited to the right parties. The expense and time sink necessary to make it pretty much precludes anyone who doesn’t come from money, and the constant need to network often accidentally on purpose weeds out anyone who isn’t on the liberal side of Woke Progressive. But since everyone involved comes from the same background with the same or similar life experiences, they cannot be creative. There’s nothing new brought in. You won’t ever hear the viewpoint of a mere middle class man, let alone a poor one. You won’t hear anything authentic to a religious person. These writers have likely never had a ten minute conversation with someone like that.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I’ll also point out that there aren’t a lot of alternatives right now with the reach and scale of Hollywood and as such it’s a lot like pro sports. Yes there are minor leagues, or maybe college sports but most often people only choose them when they don’t have easy access to the big leagues and almost no one would deliberately choose the small leagues when given the option to see major league teams.
In movies, a lot of this is based around intellectual property— there are very few space stories that you can do without tripping over something owned by a big studio somewhere. Most superhero types have something like them in either the Marvel or DC catalog. And on it goes. So you either go with small movie houses — either indies or Christian, or possibly foreign, made by people who didn’t quite make it, or you go see a blockbuster made by the usual suspects who will own all the rights to those kinds of films and shows until the end of time. If this iteration of Joker fails, who cares, we own the rights and in five or ten years we make a different Joker movie. Not like anyone else owns the right to make movies about evil clowns like this.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
No, seriously. I think you mis-read what was claimed, and projected previous / other experiences onto it. The hypothesis is not that 'the coverage is the result of Russian trolls.' The hypothesis is 'no matter what happens, there will be Russian trolls trying to make it worse.' Whether the Russian trolls succeed in significantly shaping the conversation, or originated the talking points, or are fallaciously conflated with legitimate grievance is irrelevant to a characterization of their (a) existence and (b) attempts.
Except that every time I’ve seen the claim made, it’s not really backed up by any evidence of trolling. It’s just a go-to excuse for the reports in question and circulated on social media. This isn’t remotely a good faith attempt at explaining what’s going on, but an easy off the cuff statement of “yeah don’t pay attention to this.” And I think at this point, the propaganda claims that Russia is causing or amplifying these stories by far outstrips what Russia itself is actually doing.
If you want to dismiss that, sure, but you haven't actually provided a grounds of disputing either supporting point. Which do you find non-sensible- that Russian troll farms like the Internet Research Agency exist?
Yes, troll farms exist, I’m not disputing that Russia, China, and pretty much every other country with internet access has some sort of troll farm. But if they aren’t capable of getting results and getting good results, then it kinda doesn’t matter. And given that it’s possible for us to track them, we know where the trolling is coming from, stuff like this is probably fairly trivial to block.
And to be clear my grounds for dismissal are pretty simple. First, this is the go-to story every single time a social media story contradicts or embarrasses the cathedral. It never happens that Russian Trolls are pushing the narrative of Project 2025, or calling Trump a danger to democracy, or calling Republicans fascists. That is never considered trolling. But when the story is something embarrassing to the establishment, that’s the trolls. Kinda interesting how one set of stories is always pushed by, started by, faked by, or amplified by Russia, and the other side absolutely never is.
Secondly, we never seem to find out which Russian troll account starts or amplifies these stories. Can you name any troll accounts outed by the regime? Have they given any evidence beyond “trust us bro” for any such claims that a story has been deliberately seeded or amplified by a known Russian troll account? And this seems fairly telling. There’s almost never evidence presented to show these trolls did all the things they’re accused of. They are invisible and leave no evidence behind every time.
Very directly- what do you think the Russians use the Internet Research Agency for? Not how influential it is, not whether it's fair to tar Americans with guilt by association. What do you think the Russian IRA does, and why?
The Russian IRA does cyberwarfare, that much is obvious. To the degree it exists, it’s there to do various forms of cyber warfare in support of Russian military operations. And it’s not like I don’t think they’re occasionally effective. Honestly they might be as good as the ones in the CIA group we have. But again, if you’re going to issue a blanket statement that every anti-cathedral story on social media is based on something Russians are pushing, it’s simply not credible unless and until it’s shown to actually have been done by Russia.
To blame Russian trolls for every negative viral story is a conspiracy theory.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I think a big part of it is that the BLM and related leftward groups tend to have people on their side skilled at lawfare and so if a protester gets arrested, they can post bail, and any good lawyer can go into court and paint the guy as a saint. Plus if the guy arrested gets so much as a bruise the same attorney can get their clients lots of money for “police brutality”. Ordinary non-protesters don’t often have that kind of attorney on retainer and therefore the police are much less likely to be sued for stopping them.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
The government or at least substantial parts of it wanted the BLM protests. They aren’t going to call it trolling.
But again, very little of the stuff named Russian Trolls can actually be traced to Russia in any way whatsoever. They can’t find Russians behind the Laptop, election fraud, UAPs, or Q. They can’t because it’s not Russia.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
Now adays, any time there is a disaster in the United States, you should assume that there is a Russian social media effort to try and inflame and twist it. Sometimes a disaster doesn't even have to actually occur, and they'll just fake-news one. This is just one of the things they do, independent of any truth to any criticsm.
On the other hand, it’s a very very useful tool to hide incompetence and grift. Everything the government doesn’t want people talking about seems to be “Russian Trolls” and it’s become a sort of go to excuse for why people are saying things the government doesn’t want to hear on social media. Sure, sometimes it’s trolls, but by this point, enough ultimately true stories were officially dismissed as misinformation until they were shown to actually have happened that I no longer find the “Russian Trolls” story to be a sensible hypothesis. In fact, I’m trying to think of a story told in the past 2-3 years where it’s actually traced back to a real Russian whether working for the government or not.
I’m mostly with the steelman here. People who don’t know what they’re doing wandering about a disaster area are more likely to create situations where they need rescue than to do substantial good — unless they have enough knowledge to know what they’re doing. A bunch of rednecks coming in and sawing through things or chopping down trees or whatever might well injure people or need rescue themselves. Disaster areas tend to be dangerous and the dangers aren’t always obvious. Taking your John boat over downed power lines is pretty dangerous. So the government probably is turning people away because they don’t want to rescue the redneck brigades who have no experience rescuing people.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
You’d also have to compare it to the good available in allowing these things. Reduced speed increases the cost of business and increases the commute time for workers. Outlawing bookshelves above a certain size limits books.
Hard drugs provide no real value, and huge downsides. Alcohol has benefits is promoting socialization, but has drawbacks in drunk driving injuries, bad decisions, etc. fireplaces and candles provide backup heat and light when electric power isn’t available.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I think all of it is good. In elite circles the ability to curate an image of yourself is a critical skill to have.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I think I’m largely going in the same direction. Though I think part of the rot comes from the idealized democratic values being promoted and thus ideas like expertise, merit, and self-sacrifice are being lost as people choose to live out the ID experience because that’s certainly easier to do than work hard and achieve things.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I could make a case for the law not being a respecter of who stands before them. A person should not be seen as different before the laws because they’re really good at something. I wouldn’t want a person to get away with murder because he’s better at some skill than I am.
But I think somehow the idea came to mean that no one is objectively better than anyone else, and therefore nothing that those people choose to do is better or worse than anyone else. So you doing drugs all the time, not holding a job, and stealing is exactly equal in worth to my studying medicine, curing a disease, and giving thousands to humanitarian causes. I view self esteem as an outgrowth of that idea. If everyone is equally good, and all modes of behavior are okay, I can feel good about myself even though I’m doing bad things. Even criticism of other cultures as to whether those cultures promote good behaviors that will let people thrive is seen as evil.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I’m rather sympathetic to the idea. There’s just something that happened around the end of the First World War that just sort of shattered the self confidence of Western society. Where before we had no qualms about striding across the world stage and doing so in our own interest, of saying that our own values and ideas are of course true and right and that we could and would build a bright future for all humankind. I think the experience of war coupled with the technology disasters of the era (Hindenburg and Titanic especially) shattered our self confidence. Except that rather than simply learning from the mistakes we ended up deciding that we couldn’t be a force for good.
Looking at East Asia, I kind of see how we could have been. China has no qualms whatsoever in trying to promote Chinese interests. They absolutely promote the idea that they are good people and that their ideas are good and right and should be supported and respected. China isn’t self flagellating. And for that matter neither are the Japanese or Koreans. They are allowed to be the good people. And the thing is I think they’re much more healthy as a culture than we are.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
Most of academia works this way outside of the sciences. I suspect a couple of things lead to this.
First, most of these topics are literally useless outside of the academic world. Nobody who isn’t majoring in a particular branch of the humanities gives any thought to the subject. And to an extent, they’ve always more or less been something like what they are now — useless subjects studied by essentially nerds who are just really into the subject. And much like there’s no need for serious rigor when a bunch of Star Trek nerds discuss the Trek canon, there’s no real rigor in discussions about English literature. (This is somewhat better in a history class which still requires that a description match up with primary sources) if Shakespeare has a queer reading, it can be anything you need it to be. Nobody outside the subject is going to interrupt because seriously, who else is reading these papers?
The second is that because these subjects are useless and worthless, nobody who is smart really chooses to do them. If you’re a smart individual looking to study something, you’d go toward things that actually matter. Studying physics can unlock the secrets of the universe. Chemistry can let you invent some new materials to solve real life problems. Accounting can be used in business. So immediately you have a problem because the people doing the work are people who don’t really have the intelligence to recognize bullshit. In fact, they’re constantly making their works difficult to understand with absurdly complex vocabulary to hide that they’ve said nothing interesting. Philosophy especially seems to be really bad about spending hours debating the meaning of every word used that it obscures the fact that the papers rarely make any sort of claim with implications outside of academia. In other subjects, jargon is used to describe things happening in the field and to make it clear what my results actually mean. When I redefine common English words in philosophy, the point is quite often to make a simple argument sound profound.
And as a final point. Because of the first two problems, it tends to create bubbles. The people in these subjects are not moonlighting in attending physics symposiums on quantum mechanics, or reading books outside of the field. They’re in one world, and thus to them, these silly papers about nothing sound intelligent to them.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I’m firmly of the persuasion that in all honesty you absolutely shouldn’t move with a person that you’re not full on engaged to. And personally I think you make a clean break of it as quite often LDRs are more theoretical than real without a very strong and exclusive relationship (AKA actually engaged with ring and date).
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I’d argue that on a low level we’ve been worshiping AI and before that computers. The number of times I’ve seen someone ask AI a question and just assume AI is correct is pretty darn high. They’ll ask ChatGPT a question and post the answer as though this is all that’s needed to know the answer. That’s pretty close to divination— ask a question, get an answer from the gods and then just go with it. And before that, you could find the same thing with making computer models or researching on the internet. You’d get an answer from a computer analysis and never ask what assumptions are in the model, it was done on a computer after all. With punch cards and everything. It has to be right. Or once we had internet, any information found by Google search would be assumed correct. It’s just built in, I think, that if you think the box in front of you is intelligent, you assume it’s right and simply accept that what it says is true.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
Actually as a sociological phenomenon, I find UFOs rather fascinating. More properly, I find the changes in the descriptions and speculations about UFOs and their missions to dovetail pretty clearly with our understanding of physics and our desire for contact with the spirit world once we ditched traditional religions. When we were deep in the Cold War, these things were very physical phenomena with scientific and very real things like computers and engines and were made of materials at least something like what was used in planes. They wanted to prevent nuclear war. Once the Cold War was over, they took on a much more of a spiritual mission, to enlighten humans for the shift in consciousness. They stopped being so physical and mechanical and started to resemble angels or spirits or pagan gods. I suspect a widespread understanding of the speed limit of the universe and how long a light speed trip from across the galaxy would actually take as well as the failure of SETI to find any signals fueled the change as well. Them being actual spacemen no longer fits what we know of the universe. Them being inter dimensional spirit beings does.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I often think that “hiding one’s power level” often drives the narrative forward. If you have every conservative hiding their power level, and every liberal flaunting theirs, it’s going to keep the myth alive.
To be honest, at best I think most “smart liberals” are actually over educated mid wits who know how to game the education systems to get good grades and pats on the head from teachers. The problem, obviously is that one can grade grub and be a moron. In fact, it probably helps. To win that came, you have to be smart enough to figure out the answers the teachers want you to give, and have the skills to research and produce a paper giving the correct answer. On the other hand, you have to be dumb enough to accept these narrative at face value and to have few original thoughts in your head. To me, this is actually a great tell of lesser intelligence. Just ask them what they disagree with the authorities on. Ask them to come up with an answer where there’s no establishment answer. They absolutely have no idea how to do it. They cannot think through a problem and come up with a real answer to the question.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
"Legalizing gay marriage was not just 'allow different people to do their own thing' it was, 'change the basic way every child is taught about the basic institutions and building blocks of life.'"
I keep thinking about the rot here, and I think it goes back to in a certain sense that modern WEIRD people have a really hard time — for whatever reason— settling serious boundaries around things that should be obvious. Gay marriage is the last in a very long line of those kinds of decisions, but far from the only one. We can’t really say “no” on deconstruction of our heritage, the denigrating of our heroes, or the insistence that other people’s history or culture be taught alongside our own. Even among ourselves, for whatever reason, it’s rude in most circles to criticize others for casual sex, excessive drinking, or drug use. It’s really a strange thing that doesn’t happen in other places.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I mean thinking about how we define political eras, it’s almost always the political forces that are making changes or doing big things that get the notice of historians. Lincoln is important because he ultimately freed the slaves and saved the union. Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts. FDR did the New Deal. Even in the revolutionary era, the ones that got eras named after them were the ones making things happen.
Trump is somewhere between Napoleon and Teddy Roosevelt. He believes in things he wants to do, he wrestles with the institutions of American government to get things done. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks about his ideas. That’s the kind of thing that gets your name on an era of American politics. Doing things that leave a mark on society.
Kamala has some hype. But if you look at her, she doesn’t have any influence, no big signature ideas, no changes to the direction of the country, nothing really to set her own mark on the institution. She’s just a run of the mill democrat.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I think politics is exhausting. And I’ve said before, if the systems were working as designed working fairly well, I really think most people would be really tuned out most of the time. It’s just that I believe that we’re in the late Empire period of the Anglican-American Empire (which I content started with the sinking of the Spanish Armada) so none of our systems actually work properly. We’ve become a decadent society and our state’s competence and capacity have shrunk enough that you are stuck trying to wrestle a system you into something like competence just to get the basic things done. And I don’t think it will get better quickly because most of our systems (including BTW the institutional church) are weakened and often barely functional.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I mean how much Islam is going to change the calculation here. Depending on the rest of the makeup of Europe, 11% can be a good sized voting block. Especially if the rest of the population isn’t vocally pro-Israel (and secular people generally are at best indifferent and at worst pro-Palestine). That 11% is laser focused on Israel, and will absolutely insist that any party that wants its vote must support Palestine over Israel. If the rest don’t care enough to make this conflict the center of their voting decisions, then Europe will likely support Palestine simply to capture the Islamic Vote.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
Look I’ll just cut in here and say that really the reason I worded that name as I did was that I was aware of the fact that the name had been changed, but wasn’t precisely sure what it had been changed too. The sources of the information were still calling the base Fort Bragg. I figured that was more clear than googling the new name and having everyone confused about which base I’m referring to as most people would likely know Ft. Bragg is an American military base in North Carolina. If I’m creating confusion, I’ll edit if needed. I tend to go for clarity over anything else.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I just can’t believe she’s the focus on a movement. Trump definitely is, as he represents something different from the status quo. In pretty much every way imaginable, Trump is just built different from other political leaders. He isn’t lawyered in his speech, mincing words and using “technically the truth” statements to lie. He’s loud, proud and brash. He’s not an institutionalist. He does things and if the state apparatus doesn’t like it, so much the worse for the deep state. That in a nutshell is why Trump ever got so big — he’s not like anyone else in the political class, he doesn’t act, think or speak like they do. He’s his own thing.
Kamala is the status quo. The biggest difference for her is her race/class and her age. If she were a white male democrat, nobody would be excited for her. She’s not special, she talks and acts like anyone else in the field. Her positions are the same as Biden’s, except girlboss.
Future history will consider this the age of Trump, because like him or not, he’s the zeitgeist of our era. He’s the one calling the shots whether by advocating things or by causing extreme reactions in his opponents.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10mo ago
I mean it depends on the propaganda. If they can continue to paint the GOP as Nazi authoritarians who hate minorities and women, I think you could keep most immigrants on the D side. Most are coming from regimes that are authoritarian in some form or another and aren’t keen to have that happen here.
I don’t think that makes much sense. Simpson’s didn’t help that image, but there are a lot of big scary images of nuclear weapons being used, scare propaganda about the aftermath of nuclear war, which certainly don’t help the public image of nuclear power. Add in a few disasters (Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3-mile Island) and as a power source it has an image problem that long predates Homer Simpson.
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