ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
There Is Always Hope
User ID: 812
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
I'm still wondering what got Amazon hooked to a billion dollar disaster. After all initial (imo misplaced) optimism, analysts are finally coming out and saying the quiet part out loud: it is not the ground breaking masterpiece they need it to be. Even HoD is performing better and is better received. Both are prequels to very popular IPs, but Rings of Power should be pulling enormous numbers given how expensive it is, and how extensive its marketing was. Despite worsening performance with every episode, they just renewed it for season 2. This wasn't a small and calculated risk, they literally staked the future of their whole studio on this show. What made them think hiring subpar writers, rewriting lore, rewriting characters of one of the most popular fantasy IPs while simultaneously drafting off of the brand was a good idea? It feels like the motive isn't even to make money but solely to push an agenda, but who would do that? Given the sheer scale of the project, I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
10mo ago
Following up from my Reddit API post from last week, Spez (aka Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO) hosted a disastrous AMA yesterday clarifying on the updated terms of API access. Which means, starting from July the 1st, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app). They "promised" to talk with Pushshift to restore access to verified moderators, allow API access for bots and developers, third party apps, etc. However, apps like Appollo have announced that they aren't happy with the pricing and won't continue to operate anymore because doing so would now cost them $20 million. In reference to this, Steve replied to one of the comments, only to be exposed by Christian Selig (aka iamthatis), Appollo CEO:
Spez: His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.
iamthatis: Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission.
It turned out to be a bigger disaster than I'd anticipated. No one's buying the profitability claims, because most of this labour is carried out by unpaid volunteers and dedicated users for free. No access to pushshift means harder time for mods and academics who rely on it, as noted by user SarahAGilbert here. Over 3000 subreddits, including the big ones like r/videos, r/music, r/gaming and r/pics, are going on blackout. Some of them, indefinitely. Probably the largest blackout reddit will ever see. Boy am I glad TheMotte moved offsite.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
So, after all these weeks, Amazon's Rings of Power wraps up its first season. A section of mainstream media is still defending the show while others are somewhat calling it, we have a 2nd season coming, several retcons to the lore, and a very predictable Sauron reveal. Now we're supposed to expect a certain special someone from Galadriel's past that I'm shocked even exists in this canon. If there's one bit of character development in this whole debacle, it would be Erik Kain's diminishing confidence in the show.
I'm gonna nitpick a line from this piece:
As of this writing, House of the Dragon has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (with an 84% Audience Rating) and The Rings of Power has an 84% approval rating on the review aggregator (with a 38% Audience Rating, which should largely be discarded).
I don't know if Amazon Studios will face a crisis as was reported earlier, or if they intend to trot out a slightly less expensive season 2 before axing it altogether, or drag it all the way. But it seems, as several others had stated in last week's thread when I brought it up, this is really just a billion dollar gig for Bezos' ticket to the ultra-woke Hollywood clique to maximise his elite status after all. To that end, he likely has succeeded many times over.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Has anyone been following the scenes in China?
The government has changed the definition of a COVID death, apparently to slice the death statistics after relaxing zero-COVID and cases surge. Omicron emerged last year as it ripped through Africa, and that variant seemed less dangerous (although more contagious) than its ancestors. It's suspected that it could be a subvariant of that. Also worth mentioning that China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany, but only for German expats living in China. Too early to tell and we don't have the full facts yet, but I won't be surprised if the situation is grimmer than the PRC government is willing to disclose.
On the other hand, it's amazing how the western mainstream media has reverted to parroting COVID-regime talking points again, after months of calling zero COVID insane. It reads like they're using it as an excuse to justify bringing back more autocratic measures at home, the coming weeks will be very telling.
Anyone remembers (or even heard of) the Insidious? The supernatural series that hasn't made one good movie since the original, like most horror/slasher flicks since the 80s? Well, they just released another movie, one that I didn't even know existed until I went to watch Across the Spiderverse with a friend last night. And guess what, despite the teetering reputation and C+ reviews on Cinema Score, it managed to become a commercial success and knocked the Indy Jones finale with a much bigger domestic box office opening.
This fad has been going on for years but (to me, at least) it never stops being remarkable how big tentpole entries that raked hundreds of millions in the past just manage to fall flat. These franchises tend to be somewhat bulletproof, there's more room for failure and these brands usually wouldn't take a hit due to a few bad entries. Yet, here we are. It seems like Indiana Jones Dial of Destiny might not make back its PRODUCTION budget, let alone break even, that's just out the window. How do you get handed the keys to the most beloved IP's there are, with passionate fandoms falling over themselves to rain cash on you for merch, something that's effectively been a cultural icon for decades, and turn it into a hot pile of steaming crap that no one wants to get 10 yards within? They could make the Crystal Skull (which still raked good money btw) and get away with it. Now, all of a sudden, DoD is the final nail in the coffin.
Every time we pointed out the warning signals, the /r/IndianaJones circlejerk simply kept dismissing us as bigots still continue to defend it like it's some misunderstood masterpiece and the only ones who hate it are incels that can't handle strong women. It's the same theme every single time. We knew Disney was BS'ing nostalgia when it brought back Palpatine, not coming up with something "daring and creative". It hasn't been a full year since RoP, the excuses went from "they've only revealed the casting, we haven't even gotten a first look yet" --> "it's not even out yet, you've just seen the trailer" --> "you've seen one episode, how can you gauge anything from it" --> "most shows don't get good until the 2nd or 3rd season, give it a chance!" You just can't win here. It turns out exactly as terrible or even worse than what we'd expected, to the point where the brand name gets reduced to the same tier as any other obscure brand like Insidious. Yet, we always have the very same passionate circlejerk defending these movies on every fandom on social media. Nor will we ever see Kathleen Kennedy lose her job. I used to think it was plausible it was a grand conspiracy to fuck over the middle class by subverting our culture and values, then I thought it was just Hanlon's Razor, now I'm not even sure.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
11mo ago
And today, we witness another white supremacist attack by a person of colour
A U-Haul truck crashed into security barriers around Lafayette Square across the street from the White House Monday night, the Secret Service said. The driver of the truck had a Nazi flag with him when he was arrested, according to court documents.
U.S. Park Police on Tuesday identified the driver as Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, of Chesterfield, Missouri. Kandula appeared in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon, where he was determined to be a flight risk and a "significant risk to the community."
"There were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel and the cause and manner of the crash remain under investigation," Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi tweeted.
No weapons, ammunition or explosives were found in the truck, according to court documents filed by the U.S. Secret Service Tuesday and obtained by CBS News.
The officer then witnessed the suspect, identified as Kandula, walking around to the back of the U-Haul and pulling out a flag with a Nazi swastika and a backpack, the documents state.
In the interview, he made threats against President Biden, saying that he had intended to "get to the White House, seize power, and be put in charge of the nation," the documents said.
I cannot find it now, but I did see a study on twitter that geolocated 70% of all online wignats to Brazil, Mexico, India and Philippines. Perhaps the next casus belli against unfriendly brown autocrats shall be 'combatting white supremacy'.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
10mo ago
It's a little late, but I'm gonna talk a bit about the Reddit-Pushshift drama.
TL;DR: Pushshift is in violation of our Data API Terms and has been unresponsive despite multiple outreach attempts on multiple platforms, and has not addressed their violations. Because of this, we are turning off Pushshift’s access to Reddit’s Data API, starting today. If this impacts your community, our team is available to help.
Needless to say, users who moderate subreddits were less than pleased, to say the least as it is a massive blow to critical mod tools like BotDefense and access to a comprehensive list of historical posts and comments filtered by subreddit, user, date, etc. It's also a blow to users who used to rely on it for academic projects to seek out precise information using certain keywords in the right subreddits. One of the comments from that post:
The thing that is most exciting about running Pushshift has always been getting to meet and know amazing researchers in the academic field. The Reddit Dataset paper that I co-authored has been cited a whopping 630 times and it constantly grows. I don't think Reddit fully understands just how much Pushshift is used in research and the academic world -- but when we speak to the admins sometime this week, we'll try and make a strong case to keep as much functionality as we can in the API.
I realise this isn't exactly "culture war" material directly, but I believe it's relevant if a massive website like reddit with an enormous left coded user base takes a hit due to terribly received decisions like this one. We might see more and more jumping ship if this remains a one-way trend.
You probably do not actually care about this and will not deviate from whatever plan corporate has set out. Reddit will probably not actually see that big of a blow to its metrics, but I can foresee a small dip and a lot of mods leaving, perhaps protesting / closing up shop on the way out.
You continually fail to understand that you have staked the operation of your entire website on thousands of unpaid and unmanageable volunteers, of which you're now pissing off continually in half-baked schemes to wring more money out of the site. Even if this doesn't kill the site, it will definitely lead to a decrease in overall quality as the people who care more about having good communities are pushed out in favor of those who instead like seeing numbers go up when they get to mod more subs.
It's really telling how TheMotte had to move offsite due to increasing hostility with reddit and in the past year or so there was too much nonsense showing up on my feed through ads and "popular on reddit" that I have zero interest in. It seems they're just actively trying to boost engagement with currently trending posts and chat. The reddit admin claims it is to protect privacy and sites like these and removeddit violate the principle. But even with that in mind, it doesn't look like most people are buying it.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Society would be much better off if incels had those needs met in terms of productivity via enfranchisement, less culture warring and societal friction and that's before you get to basic human kindness and decency in helping and accepting the unloved.
I agree. It's like that "red pill manosphere alpha male when he gets an ounce of female attention" meme. Many of them aren't just unable to find a female partner, they're unable to make and maintain normal companionships with other males. It may be difficult for us to fathom, but I personally know a few, it's always the simple gestures that make their days, like wishing them on birthdays/Christmas/New Years, sending a text checking up on them when they're sick, asking how their job interview went, etc. Mundane things, but ones that don't exist in their lives because they aren't a part of anyone else's. They can disappear tomorrow and quite literally no one will notice, let alone care. They're basically like ghosts, they exist and at the same time, they don't exist. That's a pretty crippling thought, and tragic if true. And so to them, someone reaching out to them and giving them their time is affirmation that they aren't ghosts and that someone does give enough of a damn. The solution "sounds" simple enough, more empathy and less shaming. Instead, we confirm their worst paranoia about society and probably resuscitate any bad experiences that they may have from high school, the last social landscape they were in.
Last week, Luke Pollard, the UK Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, yet again called for a "national incel strategy". According to him, it's vital that we do this to prevent another "incel terror attack" like the Keyham shootings.
I think the first time I actually heard the word was around the time Todd Phillips' Joker had released. What I don't understand is this extreme alarmism of progressives surrounding incels, when they say the exact opposite of Islamist terrorism. An internet subculture of terminally online, socially disabled men who find themselves unable to order a Big Mac without feeling butterflies in their stomachs are such a big threat to our society that we need a national strategy to combat them? This to me seems like it's completely tarred by alarmism surrounding white supremacy and racial animosity. Granted, incels do hold on to ethno-supremacist views, such fringe ideologies always find purchase among those on... the fringes of society, often young, single men with no social life and no job/ a dead end job and having nothing to lose. They spew all the vitriol online because they tend to be non-confrontational in real life, they might claim to support violence but almost never have the stomach to commit violence themselves. They've locked themselves inside their heads, no one's allowed inside and they view the world, society and women through a tiny keyhole into the sewer that is the most toxic spaces on the internet. They aren't hurting anyone but themselves. But why are the "basement dwelling gamur incels" among the most reviled subgroups in the culture war? Is it simply because they spew the most bile against every 'vulnerable' demographic (women, minorities, LGBTs) online?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
I'm pretty sure the incel forums aren't even white dominated anymore. It's mostly East and South Asians and Middle Easterners living in the west, all races ranking terribly low in the SMV. South Asian men rank the lowest but "fortunately", so do their women. As such, and combined with arranged marriages, the problem solves itself after a while. East Asian men otoh lose out for real, also extremely low SMV while their women perform about as well as white women do and have extremely high outmarriage rates. Hence, seen plenty of Chinese and Korean men in their 30s making 6 figures who are still virgins.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Berkley Law School's Jewish free zones is causing some stir. The student group also wants to ban Zionist speakers. I wonder how this will sit with progressive Jews, who themselves are quite often found heading pro-Palestine activism in the US. Now these bans are trotted out by progressives, not alt-righters. Accusations of anti-semitism likely won't find any purchase in the vogue that's disillusioned with Israel. And I'm not seeing any sign of American Jews tilting rightward anytime soon.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
11mo ago
Compared to Neely I'm a force of nature. In a train car with a dozen people I doubt I could do enough damage to kill someone before being stopped. Maybe? Call it under 10%, fixating on one person with the sole goal of killing.
Okay but this is the comment you're replying to:
It seems pretty clear that Neely was a bad dude with a history of violence. While the people on the train likely didn’t know that, violent weirdos give off an aura.
Second his language certainly indicated he was willing to do extreme things.
Third, people read of crazy people like Neely doing crazy dangerous violent things.
Bystander effect aside, you can be an MMA fighter and still be paralysed by the fear factor in such circumstances if you've never been in one in the first place. Very important to keep in mind that one is a contained, monitored environment where everyone has to follow the same rules and medical help will be readily available when necessary. One the other hand, a young man raised in the slums of Rio and who had seen stabbings, people being beat to death, etc. and had to fight for himself a few times would still stand a better chance than the big macho guy who does MMA on the weekends if it was an unexpected, deadly encounter. Because he won't be as prone to hesitate or be paralysed with the fear response. And he will be be more prone to reflexively use his environment and to fight hard and dirty instead of trying to follow a mechanistic, paint by numbers system.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Its also worth noting that Galadriel was married to Celeborn in the First Age and their daughter Celebrian was born early in the Second Age, but looks like both of them have been retconned from the show. It may be one thing that the Elvish society has evolved beyond human borders of intimacy, and become far more comfortable expressing closeness in a platonic way, but the show doesn't sufficiently establish exactly what kind of relationship Elrond and Galadriel share, its just coming off like he's making googly eyes at her. They might as well be completely different characters then, given that Elrond is married to Celebrian in canon. So what then, Arwen and the Twins are "written out" too?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
The notion that men can be genuinely not guilty of some failure relating to relations of sexes – whether to score or to sire – is about as far outside the Overton window as HBD. ... [from the progressive point of view] It can't be that the solution lies in any conceivable change to female behavior, except even more emancipation, even greater triumph over toxic masculinity.
This reminds me of this CNN story from a while back about why men are leaving the workforce. They try to present a rosy answer: women are entering the workforce and smashing the patriarchy in male dominated fields, and they're so successful at it that they've managed to reverse gender roles to get their husbands to stay at home and look after the kids. But this is just a minority in millions. The vast majority of this trend is actually driven by low social status and decline in marriages. I often wonder if they genuinely believe this or if it's just damage control.
This would be like if someone left me a letter at my doorstep, which claims to be from ISIS but they don't write much glorifying Islam and Allah and fighting in His name, but just me calling me an infidel and themselves a "violent Islamist group". Plenty of suspects in my neighbourhood, all of them annoying teenagers. I too have an interesting anecdote: a friend of mine approached an escort and requested a quote, but left once she gave him one he couldn't afford. A few hours later, he got a text message from a guy claiming to be from the Sinaloa Cartel. Apparently, they ran the escort service and he demanded that he pay them $1,500 for wasting their girl's time or he was gonna die. That he had 1 hour to look for the money. My friend played around melodramatically acting like he's been scraping rock bottom for several years now and lives with a family he now hates, so they're free to take him. He asked them to send a picture of the girl to make sure they actually had the right guy because he didn't want to waste their time, but never got a reply. He's been waiting for over a year.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
women are picky
their overall attitude about women
Both these statements can be true though. Most loveless men don't turn out like Elliot Rodger. For all the vitriol online, they tend to be very non-confrontational in real life (and perhaps this inability to express themselves explains their online activity, since it has no checks and balances). You see nearly nothing about their personality and mentality, except that they're very anxious. Flouting even a single minor social norm by accident would send them into panic. The mentality is certainly a problem, but imo the problem lies in how they see themselves, not how they see others.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
I'm flirting with a rather incendiary view.
Over the COVID era and the recent excessive developments in the LGBT movement, I've been looking into radical feminist worldview where my gripes with a lot of society overlaps with some of theirs. At least, a section of theirs. I can't help but think that they are at least partially correct in their analysis of gender dynamics, regardless of the solutions they purport. I also agree with them that men are by default degenerates that need tons of rigorous external tempering to get right. And that access to porn is a bad idea, I've personally seen what crippling porn addiction can do to a man. Now I don't buy into the rest of the grift attempting to promote what they regard as feminine features in men, and indeed such attempts at social engineering can be pretty disastrous. I watched this video last night about what it means to be a man in a sedentary, urbanite lifestyle that doesn't really key into our more primal instincts like before, say, the Second World War. A lot of cult classics like Fight Club and Taxi Driver had already impended signs of a male crisis. Combine with this the growing wealth inequality. The consumption of various media that bring to life our escapist fantasies across all genres like high fantasy or superheroes or science fiction or even highly romanticised high school dramas, actually serves to remind them exactly how mundane our life really is. Going forward, I think it'll only get worse as it festers with no easy solutions. Worse still, we're pursuing the wrong solutions by regurgitating the myth that all behaviour is socialised and not evolutionary, that we could get men to "unlearn" masculinity and "learn" femininity. In the end, such attempts will not only push the rejects over the edge, it might also risk creating more rejects. In many ways, I see Tyler Durdan as the "proto-red pill" media in how the persona gives the rejects what they desire and giving them an opportunity to pursue hightened competition in dominating in actual fights. The more woke the culture gets, and the more progressives freak out over the "red pill media" gaining traction and blame it as the source of "male entitlement" rather than a symptom of something a bit more complicated, the more these rejects' perception of society will overlap with the red pill crowd's. I realise the second part of my comment seems completely contradictory to what I'd said in the beginning, but what I'm trying to say is that radfems are correct in their analysis that the "degenerate phase" is the default phase of men and it requires significant external pressures to correct. Part of the problem could be that young boys being coddled might potentially give way to the mentality that life is a template where a series of events fall into place like they're a given like so: school -> girlfriend -> college -> job -> success. But if the habit of actively working towards your every goal isn't imbibed into you since a very young age, once reality confronts you, you become a doomer and just give up like you could do nothing about it. Like you were just born in the wrong household/class/society/whatever. I don't think the mainstream media is ever going to address this head on without being bogged down by what goes within the overton window of the culture war.
I know its a rather chaotic hodge podge stream of thoughts, but I hope I made sense in getting my point across.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
It's always the "cultural heterodoxy" that campaigns for free speech to accommodate as many dissidents as possible and freely criticise the regime, the left used to be the champion of free speech as early as the 2000s and now that they've ascended to "orthodoxy" status, they treat it as a far-right dogwhistle, their own rendition of "heresy". And of course, the right has been guilty of censorship for the longest of times. It just shows that you're either in control or you aren't.
And given what a huge platform Twitter is and its ability to influence culture, given that it so easily enables mob rule like I said, I do think it is a W for the right now that it's veering closer to them.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
What would a China-led world order look like, in cultural terms?
Its a hypothetical, so let's set aside the probability of such a future for the moment.
Part of what made the US so uniquely influential over the world was that its primary language is widely spoken across the world. And American books and movies feature events and histories from across the world. These two factors have allowed the US to transmit its culture and values far and wide. Americanism is now the de facto culture of the Western web, and it has shaped the cultures of countries as diverse as India, Australia, Israel, the UK, Philippines, etc. Hollywood, comics, animations even back in the rubber hose and classical Disney era, were very popular globally.
But right now, Chinese culture is largely closed off from the outside world. Chinese books and movies are mainly about China. Furthermore, few people outside of China speak Chinese. However, this might not necessarily be a barrier for China to project its cultural capital. Hong Kong films have been very popular outside China too. Kung Fu icons like Bruce Lee left a lasting impact on Hollywood. While this seems to have retreated as a trend in recent years, the mainland Chinese developer Game Science Interactive seems to be intent on marketing Black Myth Wukong to the global audience. And of course, there's Japanese anime and video games, Kpop and Kdrama that have penetrated into the western market despite lingual barriers. Films coming out of mainland China are targeted at the Chinese audience, so they'll likely maintain some form of insularity? The Battle at Lake Changjin and its sequel were extremely successful, easily held up by their massive domestic market. I think HK films will also increasingly rely on the Chinese market as the Kung Fu magic isn't quite working anymore.
Furthermore, if China does compete in cultural hegemony, would the US finally be forced to roll back on its own excesses re wokeism? Or would China continue to be inward looking and be content with its economic weight, and the US would remain the cultural hegemon?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
We see litters of articles and papers from liberal media that democracy is globally dying. While I don't believe this is happening right away, could most democracies become less so in the future?
The German YouTuber Kraut some time ago had suggested that the political turmoil in liberal democracies is largely a result of the collapse of the USSR and with it, the Cold War consensus of combatting communism which unified various different groups.
I don't think American liberals are particularly holding up democratic principles in their own domain either, with how they deplatform and censor their opponents. Essentially, they're really just consolidating their electoral power while trying to protect the thin sheen of freedom in America. This bias extends across the US establishment. If you look at the highest-earning zipcodes they've all flipped massively to the democrats over the past few decades. Same is true if you look at the Ivy League. Seen in this light, the FBI was merely following the trend when they raided Ryan Kelley's home and other such harassment campaigns will not face scrutiny because a large portion of the US elite agree with the FBI targeting their political opponents. This is why they refuse to let Jan 6 die, it was certainly a riot, but nowhere close to a coup. We know what a real coup looks like from the recent Sri Lankan crisis. In South Korea, gender wars and the excessive divide over feminism has effectively become a major electoral talking point, although President Yoon Suk-yeol is married to a career woman himself who doesn't wish to be addressed as First Lady and has 0 kids with him. The state of the Koreas, one being a depressing totalitarian state and the other being a depressing, hyper consumerist protectorate of the US almost feels like an ill fated destiny. Even in India, the progressive pressure has generated a lot of culture wars of its own, where the ruling BJP's base perceive liberals as being sympathetic to Pakistan while levelling every epithet against India which would also be relevant to their archrival, and have reacted strongly. Couple with that the malthusian growth rates and the neoliberal decay preceding their rise to electoral power from being just another one of many parties in the country. But Russia and China, the "authoritarian competitors to the free world", are both strong societies, I can't imagine something like 1CP being done away so quickly if it was instituted in the US. They don't have to deal with electoral politics and do not have to deal with culture wars. And with an ascendant China, its proximity to China might tempt India to remodify its political institutions to have a shot at uplifting its hundreds of millions from poverty.
Now I'm not saying culture wars will end democracies, but its probably a symptom of decadence in democratic societies combined with the rise of social media highlighting our differences with millions of our own countrymen. Maybe I'm young and only speaking from my own limited experience? Curious to know what others think.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire?
Well, dating dynamics still don't favour Chinese and Korean men in the west despite pulling a hefty paycheck. Many are virgins even in their 30s. Ditto with Indian men, but arranged marriages and the low desirability of their own women ensure (heh) the problem fixes itself after a point. Feminists are very bent on subverting "unrealistic standards of female beauty" in the media, yet are perfectly fine with unrealistic standards for men, part of the intention is to artificially lift their status in the sexual market. I suppose that somewhat explains why South Asian and Black women in the west tend to be the most woke. They're both minorities in a largely white culture, but they have no equivalents to the yellow fever.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
10mo ago
A big part of it is really just hypergamy, it allows them to become extremely choosy. I've met so many young liberal men who are displeased with modern feminism. I do believe that decades of affirmative action and the expansion of the dating pool for women via dating apps has finally taken its toll, and as more men become partnerless or end up with a less desirable partner, they're going to agree that society has had "enough feminism". I do not see a solution to this, even if we were actively working towards pushing for policy designs to raise the TFR like "three child policy" and improve male SMV through "masculinity training" like China is currently doing, I'm not optimistic about their scale of impact.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
He said it was due to them doxxing his live location. Do keep in mind though that last month right after he bought twitter, he said he'll keep Jack Sweeny's ElonJet account (which tracks Musk's private jets in real time) on twitter even though it does track his live location, only to change his mind two days ago.
EDIT: It seems he's also suspended Donie O'Sullivan for tweeting a police statement.
I realise I'm a little late to the party, but I want to talk about Tolkien and RoP.
One of the themes of Lord of the Rings is the idea that the smallest, the humblest person can change the destiny of the world, and become a hero. The Hobbits represent small, humble, ordinary people. They don’t lust for power or fame, or aspire to do great deeds. Thus the Ring can’t corrupt them in the way that it would corrupt Boromir or Galadriel, although it can make them covet it as a possession. We see this when Sam willingly gives it back to Frodo, even though we have seen others kill for it having been exposed to it for far shorter periods. Bilbo manages to give it up, after having owned it and been subjected to its influence for 60 years, and Frodo manages to bear it right into the heart of Mt Doom, with the Ring fighting him all the way.
The Ring works by tempting its owners, offering them ways to get what they desire most. The Wizards want to make the world a better place. The Elves want to stop the decay of the world. Men desire power and the ability to defeat their enemies. Dwarves desire treasure. All of them want something they don’t already have, therefore the Ring has something to work with, something to offer them. While Hobbits are content creatures: “But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of all things that grow. And yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”
Galadriel was never some paladin of light. She is the ultimate redemption arc. Someone who had many of the same flaws as Sauron, but who came back. Sauron had a chance for redemption, but couldn't follow through due to his pride. Like Galadriel he was told to come back to Valinor. He didn't want to leave his powerbase or his pride behind however. The character who some consider to be the ultimate hero of the tale, who gets the last scene is not Aragorn the King or an immortal elf. It's the family man with scars, who lost his friend, and who comes home to his family and does the best he can.
It seems Amazon Studios never bothered to understand when they decided they'll make Galadriel a sort of "girlboss" claiming to save the world but with the writers' focus being on her path to glory like most woke cape blockbusters these days. Given how literarily significant Tolkien is world over, its so bizarre that they'd try to pick apart his legacy and crap all over him. Within my reading circle in India, LOTR is a favourite. The supposed racism doesn't even register. The last RoP trailer in regional languages here also got ratio'd on YouTube. I don't know what Amazon was thinking. They said this is the most expensive show ever and that the future of the studio itself relies on its success, and yet they decide to check the woke quotas instead of giving Tolkien fans what they want. Did they really just not expect this level of blowback? Its so unfathomable to me that the answer is that simple, could it be something else?
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