ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
There Is Always Hope
User ID: 812
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
3d ago
Said it before, will say it again. It's not uniquely Western or even Christian. An Indian Army general echoed the same thing nearly verbatim in 1988. Psychology calls it Martyr complex. I don't think wokeness is anything that sophisticated. It only works specifically for the interests of women, blacks, muslims and LGBT over men, straights and whites. The "oppression" bit is just moral cover for that fact. The biggest beneficiaries of DEI are white women, irregardless of income brackets. Western society and IMO human nature tend to be very gynocentric, that is why we care so much about issues that affect women, and causes that they care about generally.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
5d ago
To add on to @gattsuru's reply, it's much more an issue of networking and reputation than any commitment to wokeness. The Warhorse community mod claimed the MC was straight in KCD1 due to resource constraints. Then Vavra himself admitted they "avoided accusations of sexism" by having the gay scenes, despite posturing as a lifelong chudler himself. But taken into full context, you get a clear picture: not a single creator, even the most accomplished, most influential ones on the planet can escape it anymore. You either pander to the woke, or you don't get to make big budget entertainment. You also get blacklisted from casting agencies, performance capture facilities, award shows, voice acting guilds, and get dropped by your publisher. Not to mention bogus allegations (see Chris Avellone, Alex Afriasiabi, Alec Holowka, Ashraf Ismail, etc etc). All this matters a lot. Above a certain project size, they made sure you can't do woke-free games in the west anymore. Only games developed and/or published by eastern companies can afford it these days. I'm curious to see how the Yakuza 3 Teruyuki Kagawa controversy pans out, the loudest calls for his removal seem to come from the west mostly.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
5d ago
Woke isn't strictly oppression olympics, that would imply they have equitable empathy for all subaltern classes. It's specifically about furthering the interests of women, blacks, muslims and LGBT, at the expense of the male, white, straight, Christian demographics. The "oppression" bit is just a moral cover. Things like sexism and bigotry garner more engagement than the far more impactful class politics. Woke will always favour an upper class black girl over a homeless white man.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Yeah I'd suspect most people who play female characters are straight men as well. The actual "female gamer" demographic is likely much smaller than most would admit.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
I've heard that of Expedition 33, but I'm very vary of the sequel syndrome which most "unwoke" western IPs end up becoming. Everyone's excited for Blood of Dawnwalker, which is going to be a saga, and that alone has killed off most of my hope for it.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
IIRC wasn't Cyberpunk the first RPG to do the body type shtick? The Chromebooks do mention that tech is fully capable of swapping out male and female sexual organs, but the intent behind that line was to demonstrate the ascent of body mod technology rather than an LGBT allegory. Sure you could rationalise this as appropriate for the setting, but this still reflects real world 21st century politics which was absent in older cyberpunk literature. Now every RPG has done away with male/female binaries.
Re religion, again I agree but honestly, not surprised. Most modern media have been repeating the same screeds about the "evils of religion" for decades. It's a high schooler's understanding of depth. Deus Ex was much more cerebral IMO.
Going OT I don't know if you've heard of the standalone Forgotten City or the Skyrim mod, but I was similarly asking myself how THIS could've won writer's guild awards? It was literally just Dark City. I suspect the social justice rhetoric crowbarred into the dialogues played no small part in that.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Yeah and when it DOES work, I suspect it's usually more MEN bought the game than usual, rather than increased female gamers. I still stand by my point though. I would suspect corporate push to get young boys to play with dolls has a similar angle. But there probably are heaps of people in marketing who do believe gendered preferences are a matter of "socialising".
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Is wokeness really retreating from nerd culture? The political winds may be shifting in the west, but our cultural institutions are still run by woke activists.
Tomb Raider Catalyst looks "safe horny", the new Star Wars game is apparently another female lead.
Witcher 4 is going all in on feminism vs patriarchy, which was already a central theme in the previous titles and books (conveniently ignored by nostalgic "chuds").
Expedition 33 is touted as an industry rebel and yet, suspiciously, it sold 2 million copies in 2 weeks, was hyped up across games journalism, astroturfed online AND locked in a Hollywood film deal before it even launched.... all the makings of an industry plant, funded by an "indie publisher" with a paltry $120M investment from Netease, by a studio of teams and partners from diverse backgrounds, cultures and perspectives, that "suddenly" went woke with the sequel like the bait and switch Sony catalogues.
Where Winds Meet's character creation gives you "body types" in English, but the Chinese version says male and female.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was going to be the chud GOTY made by a pro-GG studio lead, yet it pinkwashes its two male leads and crowbarred an ahistorical Malian man into the main campaign.
GTA 6 is already putting the female lead front and centre, while the male lead looks like the sub. His writing and appearance is oriented to the female gaze, he looks like a billboard model unlike the "average looking" male leads of previous titles.
There's been a concerted effort to create a female fandom for all the male oriented IPs to expand their TAM, especially in gaming where the average budgets keep ballooning every year. The rationale is that male gamers (existing fandom) will remain loyal to the IP and get incalculated into feminism. But females need to be interested. So do away with the fratboy culture! Let HR screen the environment, kick out the milquetoast Gen X techbros and onboard woke millennial women. Accommodate all of their favourite social justice causes (BLM, LGBTQ). Fight the male gaze!
But men consistently remain gaming's biggest consumers. Despite the marketing push for the female leads in RPGs like AC Odyssey, Mass Effect and Cyberpunk heavily pushing the female leads into the marketing, the actual buyer demographic heavily prefer the male lead in all the games. Yet, people's tolerance levels keep going up as games get increasingly woke. In other words, some "tepidly woke" themes are ok because even "beloved classics" like Cyberpunk featured LGBT themes. Anti woke influencers and "trusted friends" promise up and down that condescending Malian and ahistorical synagogue in 15th century Bohemia was totally a creative decision, not ideological corruption. In 20 years, they'll be telling us that black Samurai lead in Japan is also perfectly acceptable.
The structural nature of the industry and investors expectations necessitates an indefinitely expanding fanbase. And the so called anti-wokes silently gaslight themselves so studios realised they can just make them happy by grifting away like Daniel Vavra.
In fact, I believe wokeness had its antecedents decades ago. I'm watching Star Trek DS9 right now. And when it's good, which is far from always, it's not good because it's racially diverse. If Sisko was white, it would not make the show any worse. In fact it would probably save you from bad preachy episodes like "Far Beyond The Stars". Set aside the nostalgia and compare it to the "woke" standards of the time, the "woke" creators of yesteryear fully back the "woke" creators of today.
We might be at least 40 years too late to expect a return to form (whatever that is). Maybe we'll simply just live with it like an amputated limb, occasionally recalling the good old times.
PS: Apologies if my post reads like a brain dump, I'm returning to TheMotte after a long hiatus.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
7d ago
It's true that an income based breakdown of birth rates show a U curve, because middle class families want at least similar levels of economic stability for their kids that they enjoyed when they were kids. But corporate also wants to maximise output per worker despite stagnant salaries.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
7d ago
But this still doesn't address the bread and butter issue. More men than women in Japan don't want kids. What do we do about the high costs and salaryman culture? Aspiring parents need to get on daycare waiting lists ahead of conception. FWIW this is as many people as our planet can take, maybe we finally set up those space colonies?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6mo ago
I may be in a bubble but New Zealand's lax sex worker laws reflect a noticeably different mentality. Many high end escorts here work high powered corporate jobs while offering intimacy services occasionally. Only to those blue blooded enough to afford their rates obviously. The mentality here is more that "sex workers' humanity is unquestionable but not that of the men who seek them". Re marriage, I find it hard to sympathise right there because we're literally living in a time where men's standards are at an all time low as more and more are being phased out of the dating pool. At least one of those nerds starved for female attention would be willing to put a ring on her. So it's all about expectations, no?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6mo ago
Let me preface that I haven't opened twitter in nearly 2 years and have no clue who Aella is. My moot just shares drama updates on discord and he thinks this was due to the fact that she appeals to the low value males, which pisses off radfems. But I don't understand the thought process behind openly tweeting sus pedo bait like this just weeks after the FBI came down on several members of the 764 group, some of whom were on twitter.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Frankly, the online left has sniffed its farts for far too long and crafted its own reality in leftist echo chambers like reddit. The popular vote is a key factor for sure, but Trump was a "phenomenon" in 2016. The media hysteria surrounding his first victory was quite a novel wave too, that would inevitably play a role in fragmenting society and its culture core. A lot has changed since then. People know what a Trump presidency looks like, it may not be very good, but he sure as hell isn't some fascist building para-military groups or rounding up gays and blacks in labour camps or turning America into the Handmaid's Tale. He is certainly not a war hawk either. Trust in media institutions is at a record low now. The left as a whole needs to reel in its media/social media game, it's giving them horrible PR at this point. The usual appeal to emotion and hysteria and "istophobic" shaming tactics are no longer working, not to mention they have COMPLETELY alienated young Gen Z men (the most lost generation of men by far) many of whom were in like 5th grade during Trump 1.0 and would spend the rest of their growing up years hearing the left demonise, blame and even mock men and downplay their issues. Basically, the left needs a platform that is more creative than anti-Trump.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
On the topic of Zionism and Jewish influence in American media, I came across a twitter long post that scrutinises the notion that Zionists effectively decide American foreign policy. There are three main highlights of this post.
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The State Department and the Pentagon are far more powerful lobbies, and their support for Israel is given only begrudgingly.
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The increasingly high volume public statements that Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and therefore deserves American support actually signal the weakness of the Israeli lobby.
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Israel receives atrociously large aid packages because it allows Congress more latitude to manipulate through the budget process, and much of the aid actually ends up in the pockets of defence contractors or are credits to purchase American arms.
I can't verify all of these statements since I'm writing this before heading to bed, but I think this is the first time I've heard someone who isn't implicitly pro-Israel take the issue of lobbying and scrutinise the claims of actual Israeli heft in the American elite. One of the replies to the post brings up an article about Pentagon backed groups in Syria fighting CIA armed militias. It's very interesting to me how intra-American rivalry between various lobbies spill over in warzones, particularly the Middle East.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
I'm deeply suspicious of both too. Blasphemy and Israel are incredibly volatile topics for Muslims, I'm certainly not happy that someone's poked the bear yet again. Perhaps maybe possibly as these incidents pile up, we'll build the wall on our borders after all. Or at the very least, admit that multiculturalism is a failure and brown people probably have to become "coconuts" to fully assimilate in western societies.
Spend an hour reading the "decolonization" tag. They are telling you what they are, and like Noah Smith I am getting "sort of negatively polarized against these people."
With all due respect, I'm surprised more people didn't see this coming earlier. "Decolonisation" in its best form has always been one of those failed movements that inadvertently made way to more radical elements that are far less subdued in their hostility towards so called "western values", given the volatile nature of these polities and all around frustration stemming from within due to a lack of economic growth. It's like if the Ashraf Ghani government tried to "decolonise" and is shocked to find himself shaking hands with the Taliban. China did not really "decolonise" either, not any more than Japan or SK did, as much as they claim to be the alternative to western hegemony. The reality is the vast majority of Chinese in all major cities very much live as a westerner does. I'm sure both the government and the general public is well aware of this, though they may not publicly admit it.
That video of Hamas parading that woman's body and accounts of rape, child murders, etc., and several big Muslim names playing apologia, including a liberal Muslim journalist who used to write for Indian Express, might just be the straw that breaks the back for the hard left's camaraderie with 3rd world nationalisms.
And now, another killing.
I did once visit a gurdwara in Auckland a few years ago, it had an open donation box with call for support for Khalistan in Indian Punjab. No matter how dead the movement is in India, there does seem to be somewhat of a resurgence among the Sikh diaspora. I'm not convinced yet that the Indian government would pull this off on North American soil, but suffice to say that this really has seemed to have united all major political parties in India. I'd hardly call it a "Modi issue" anymore.
Either way, such a public call out is shocking, to say the least. Posting this from /r/geopolitics:
Also it’s common courtesy between so called allies that you do not name or call-out in public press conferences the station chiefs or the intelligence liaison of friendly nations that are posted in each other embassies and also actually known to the respective govts. Its mostly official communique done through the Ambassador asking for a recall and expulsion. These folks are generally present not to Spy on Canada but to run interface and share threat information , potential terror attack perceptions and/or any harm to citizens between the intelligence agencies of both countries. The Canadian FM went to a press conference and not only humiliated the diplomat by naming the expulsion but also exposed his intelligence alignment. Immature. When India did a tit-tat for expulsion , the communication only mentioned high ranking Canadian diplomat, though everybody would have guessed by know that he was the Canadian Intelligence station chief. Now all these intelligence sharing channels would have gone dark.
India and China who have fought wars never did that to each other. Even India and Pakistan who fought 5 wars have never done that.
There are certain unwritten diplomatic protocols that you breach only deliberately to pass a message .
The language here is very hostile, equally aggressive was the MEA's response and the aforementioned Shashi Tharoor statement. I feel like what people gleamed from what they see of India/Modi from the media has at least partially allowed this to erupt to this extent.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
I suspect it's because most of the calls for boycott had very little to do with the writing, technical and mechanical aspects of the game but JKR. Nevertheless, I'd still remind folks that the game was lowkey woke. Congratulations! You too can be a Black transgender pure blood wizard Nazi!
Yeah I do have suspicions many of these spaces are being astroturfed, the fanbase for these IPs are big and passionate enough to usually allow a bad entry to succeed, only slightly less. As for gatekeeping, we've long since accepted that it needs to return. We threw open the gates for those who wish to subvert the IP and mold it into what they like it to be because they never liked what it is about it that made the whole thing popular in the first place. Then they kicked us out and now gatekeep us. "Make your own Star Wars" "Cishet white male tears are so sweet"... you know how it goes. I think this also applies to the recent Assassin's Creed games, that have just divided the fanbase altogether. In trying to chase the ghost of Witcher 3 and Geralt of Rivia, they've chucked out what made AC Brotherhood and Ezio Auditore so beloved to the brand and I daresay even gaming in general.
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
2yr ago
Indian Americans have a tendency to overcompensate to try and "fit in" to the vogue but it backfires and they just come off as jarring, that's how you get the Mindy Kaling types going over the top woke than anybody else that even her white liberal comrades had to keep their distance after Velma. And then you have the constant race warring on twitter between mainland Indians and Black Americans... yeah after that if someone told me the "real" founding members of the KKK were actually Indian, I'd believe them. There were some LARPers but more than a handful of handles that I follow and know are actually Indian (usually HinduNat) were spitting slurs I doubt any Klansman has heard since the last century.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Specifically, the dynamic is different because pre-1991, countries could get away with things the US didn't like as long as they were willing to suck up to the USSR.
The opposite is also true, states that sucked up enough to the US did get away with committing such atrocities, for instance Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
2yr ago
Growing up, I've always associated the bully with the fat, loud guy who sucks at sports and has a bad social etiquette and rep with the teachers, not really desired by his female classmates. He thinks he can assert his dominance by picking on the weaker guy. But the jocks who are already desirable don't have to assert their dominance, they already know their worth and so does everyone. This happened a lot with this particular nerdy kid in my class who was sometimes chatty but was seen as scum by most girls in our class. The bullying he'd faced was pretty standard, being shoved and kicked around, not the extreme stuff like being stripped or getting shitty swirlys. He had a very bad temper though. Inevitably, the day came when he was truly pushed off the edge and went completely feral with no care in the world for the consequences, but fortunately he was tamed before he could get that far. Interestingly enough, this didn't raise his status. He was still seen as scum who (ironically) starts trouble, but worse: he was a feral scum who's tasted blood now, and therefore shouldn't be given the reason to do so again (read: can't be messed with without a bloody nose in return anymore). Can't say he wasn't eager to embrace this new reputation though.
The topic of Muslim conservatism has been talked about to death for years now, and I keep posing the same query: am I to be elated that this intersectionality grift keeps collapsing like a house of sand? Should I care if, amidst a home invasion, one burglar beats down another? Both men wish to fleece me of my belongings, any "shared interests" I might have with the former is a fleeting one, if anything. Not a 1:1 comparison, of course, (and no, I'm not calling migrants "robbers") but this "gotcha" stuff is only good enough as a meme generator for "cringe lib gets owned compilation #314". Reactionary politics cannot tilt the vogue in my favour.
take a page out of America's right-wing playbook
Again, what is the American right's playbook? I see this brouhaha about how "The Right is now the counterculture" but virtually all hardcore leftists believe they're still the counterculture and do all the countercultural work in the media, entertainment, etc. Sadly, I think rightists are taking the wrong conclusion, that like some law of historical thermodynamics, these views and policies will change.
People only start noticing things from around the time they became politically aware. See how many people think America is especially more polarised now that it's gonna have Civil War 2. The gender pay gap myth has also been explained by economists since at least the 80s, the fact that we're still having that conversation is surreal.
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