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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31423 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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I look forward to a future where everyone wears augmented reality glasses and can make the bench appear to them however they want.

This will never be allowed.

Do you remember the guy who modded the Spider-Man game to change LGBTQ+ rainbow flags into American flags (the game is set in New York City) and got his account banned for homophobia for daring to touch the sacred pride flag? That's right: users who bought and paid for the video game are not allowed to change the flag in the game they play on their own computer!

Also, did you know there is another mod for the same game that changes all the American flags in the game into LGTBQ+ flags, and this is perfectly allowed?

Given that, why do you think your augmented reality glasses (courtesy of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or another ESG-compliant mega-corp) would allow you to remove the mandatory pride colors from the bench, you fucking bigot?

The future in which no one cares what you think is the future where you don't matter to anyone at all.

In 1984 terms:

  • The inner party (top 2%). The ones who paint the bench and force others to accept it. (Amnesty)

  • The outer party (top 10%). The ones who must endure the bench being painted. (Hungary)

  • The proles (bottom 88%). The ones whose opinion is not strongly policed because they have no power or importance whatsoever. (Africa)

But that’s not the point of painting the bench rainbow-colored in the first place. It’s not just that the activists painting the bench would personally prefer to see a rainbow bench— they’re explicitly doing so in order for other people to see it. “We’re loud, we’re proud” and all that. If such augmented reality goggles emerged with an option to display the bench brown, then that would be tarred as homophobic.

In fact, this hypothetical almost perfectly recalls that actual time when mods for a Spiderman game that removed rainbow flags from the game were scrubbed from all mainstream modding websites.

The funniest bit is they just used the Middle East localization files, which didn't have the rainbow flags in the first place.

Yep, that’s the big irony. Of course, the most parsimonious way you can analyze it is as an out-group/far-group thing: Middle Easterners are the far-group, Anglophone anti-LGBTers are the out-group.

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