i think of demons posted:

I just didn't listen as I wasn't that interested and get irritated when anyone has anything but venom for Heidegger

Clibanarius posted:

There's some chud out there who has, like, 15+ hours of bitching about The Force Awakens (and TLJ + TRoS?). I think I'll just listen to that twice. It'll be less toxic to my brain.

Panzeh posted:

efap is something even worse- 11 hour streams of 6 people really badly joking around and sometimes vaguely being on topic about the title of the video, they call the format the superchat

this is used as a defense when you call them obsessive

fr0id posted:

gently caress JD Vance forever

quote:

After graduating, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps[15] and served in Iraq, performing public affairs activities.[16] Vance later received a B.A. degree in political science and philosophy from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.[8][17] At Ohio State, he worked for Republican state senator Bob Schuler.[18]

After graduating from Ohio State, Vance received a J.D. degree from Yale Law School. During his first year at Yale, his mentor and professor Amy Chua convinced him to write his memoir.[19]

After law school, Vance worked as a principal in a venture capital firm owned by Peter Thiel,[1] known as Mithril Capital Management.[20] In 2020, Vance raised $93 million for Narya Capital, based in Cincinnati, Ohio

Vance is a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute researching American society and culture, and the social impact of economic policy.

In August 2019, Vance converted to Catholicism in Cincinnati, Ohio,[29] in a Baptism ceremony attended by various conservatives, including Rod Dreher. In an interview with Dreher after the ceremony, Vance said he converted because he "became persuaded over time that Catholicism was true," and described Catholic doctrine's influence on his political views.

Goast posted:

wasn't one of the crictical roll guys a sex pervert but not in the cool way

quote:

Why do we not talk about Orion Acaba or Tiberius Stormwind?

Orion Acaba was part of the original cast of Critical Role, but left the show after C1E27, and due to his actions following the departure (through to the present), he is no longer welcome to participate in fan-run Critter Communities. Due to the nature of these actions (see section below), there has been much speculation regarding his departure, but at this point it doesn’t do anyone any good to speculate further.

Tiberius left Vox Machina because Orion left Critical Role, and the two conversations cannot be separated. Unfortunately, since nearly all previous discussions mentioning Orion or even Tiberius have devolved into speculation, the community admins and moderators have decided to minimize discussion of Orion or his character out of respect for the wishes of Critical Role’s cast and crew.

Why did Orion leave?

The cast and Orion have chosen to keep that information private. We do not know, and we will most likely never know.

Since Orion’s departure from the show, the Critter Community has put forth a large amount of energy and speculation on the subject, most of which is exceedingly negative and harmful. We do not recommend you go read it, but it is archived below.

Out of respect for Orion, for Critical Role’s cast and crew, and for the admins and moderators of all community spaces, we ask that you do not repeat these discussions and speculations, nor ask any questions. You are welcome to go read the previous ones if you would like to think on it for yourself.
Is Orion coming back?

Orion posted on his Instagram in 2017 regarding why he left and his desire to return to Critical Role. At that time, Matt responded on Reddit in support of Orion but stated "That being said, and in hopes of ending the arguments and discussions within for both our sakes and his, there are no plans for Orion to ever return to Critical Role."

Do not continue to ask if he is/will/could be returning, or say “I wish he would”. Do not tag him or the cast suggesting/requesting/wishing for it.
The Legend of Vox Machina

Question: Will Tiberius appear in The Legend of Vox Machina animations?

Answer: Tiberius will not appear in The Legend of Vox Machina. Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/criticalrole/critical-role-the-legend-of-vox-machina-animated-s/faqs

Is it a spoiler that Orion left the show?

No. The fact that Orion (the player) leaves the show is not a spoiler, as that is not an in-game event during an episode of Critical Role. (see the full spoiler policy)

Details from the show about Tiberius (the character's) actions or behavior are spoilers, as those ARE in-game events during an episode of Critical Role.
Why is Orion no longer a member of the Critter Community?

Due to his actions after he left Critical Role, Orion Acaba is no longer a member of the Critter community and the admin or moderation teams of the community spaces have removed him from participating in them. [Critical Role Fan Club] [Reddit]

Since leaving Critical Role, Orion has consistently demonstrated behavior that is the antithesis of the values upon which this community was built: respect, empathy, kindness, patience, understanding.

He has engaged in harassing and dangerous behavior publicly against both fans and colleagues including revealing the confidential personal information (doxxing) of one of his supporters. Other accusations levied against him include fraud or misappropriation of fan-provided funds on two separate occasions.

I have further questions, more links, more information to provide, and/or speculation I haven’t seen before…

The cast has asked the Critter Community very directly to please stop speculating or asking questions about Orion. By doing so, you are violating Rule #1 (Don’t be a dick). Please stop asking.

If you see someone speculating or asking, please report their post to the moderators and do not reply to it.

Should I watch the episodes that Orion is in or skip them?

That is entirely up to you. But The Slayer’s Take episodes (C1E18 - C1E21), and C1E24 through his departure do contain information that is pertinent later in the series.

Almost all of the drama was outside of the game, driven by the community, and occured after Orion left the show. With the exception of C1E27, there is no tension in-game.

C1E27: The worst of the in-game tension occurs immediately after the break. Skipping until 2h49m will avoid the tension, and will only skip one in-game week of preparation for the adventure discussed before the break.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, these are the Critical Role fan-run communities, for discussion and news about the show. Orion's personal behavior has nothing to do with the show.

The odds of hurting more people and dividing the community further by repeating the same drama and speculation over and over again are high. The small upside of potentially educating a few people who might have participated in his non-CR ventures is not enough of a benefit to outweigh the damage and stress to all parties that allowing current or future "Orion said/did XYZ" posts will bring.

Halloween Jack posted:

Jesus Christ, you don't have to give absolutely everyone the time of day because they said you "silenced" them or whatever on the Internet.

Ollie Thorn posted:

I've done a few videos about mental health, and very often people write to me saying that they've been helped by those videos or even occasionally that those videos saved their life, which is an awesome and humbling thing for someone to tell you. But some people will message me their entire medical history, often detailing their mental trauma at great length in rambling, unstructured prose like a Ulysses of suffering.

And obviously some people need therapy and that is okay.

God knows I do!

But when I get messages like that, I feel kinda weird 'cause their need is genuine and it's sad that they're in pain, but they've fallen too deep into a parasocial relationship to the point where they are begging for help from an unqualified stranger. One of the consequences of cuts to public mental healthcare is that people in pain will reach out to anyone that they can reach.

Number four, a particularly dangerous species, the Stalkers.

And I've had a few. The classic image of a stalker is a man in a trench coat calling you at three a.m. to breathe heavily because he wants power over you.

And I have had a couple a bit like that, but to be honest the majority of my stalkers, and certainly the most serious ones, are women who fall too deep into that parasocial relationship and think that I'm their friend.

So they don't even realize that it's weird to send me hundreds of messages, to volunteer to do jobs for me without being paid, to ask detailed questions about my sex life, to request pictures of my body, or buy me clothes that I didn't ask for.

All of those are things that a real friend or partner might do, but again, these people do not know me. They only know the scripted and edited version of me. And it's pretty wild that that's just become part of my life now. When I do live events I have to request additional security and it's bizarre how fast you adjust to that, honestly.

Number five, the Horny People.

And I've wanted to talk about this on the show for a while. Obviously I do make stuff that is pretty horny sometimes with the costumes and the jokes and the props.

It's actually a surprisingly good way of getting people to engage with the educational stuff. I get a lot of messages like, "Oh, that was a really sexy costume. Also, here's what I think about "the philosophy we were talking about."

Also, it is fun and I enjoy being desired.

So I do get a lot of horny messages from fans (and other creators!) and a lot of very positive comments about my appearance, the vast, vast majority of which is totally fine and okay. But I do just wanna highlight some of the bits that are less than okay.

First of all, I'm a man, I'm 6'1 and I'm pretty big. That doesn't mean that I'm invincible, and I have been assaulted before, but if somebody's being horny towards me, it's likely to be a situation that I can control. And if I report a problem, I'm likely to be believed.

Unlike a lot of my YouTube and acting colleagues who are women, if someone sexualizes me, it doesn't usually come with a risk to my physical safety, which is why I'm okay with the vast majority of thirst that comes my way. What does make me a little uncomfortable though is when people get too deep into a parasocial relationship and start asking me to abuse it.

I'm not talking about the people who comment, "Philosophise me, Daddy!" as a joke.

I'm talking about the people who send me explicit, lengthy fantasies of the violent sexual things they want me to do to them.

I'm talking about people who out of nowhere send me their dating profiles or their nude photos, which, by the way, I delete without opening.

I'm talking about the people who pretend not to know who I am on dating apps so that they can meet me.

I'm talking about the people who turn up to my live theatre shows in skimpy outfits, get into the changing rooms, and solicit me for sex.

And I suspect that some guys will be sitting there thinking, "Oh, wow, life must be really hard for you! Oh, the tears of the Chad! I wish I had your problems, buddy!" And if that's you, then that's a little creepy because you're essentially wishing that you had more opportunities to take advantage of people.

These are consenting adults and they are pursuing me, but they are making themselves vulnerable on the basis of a relationship that is not real, and I would not feel morally comfortable going there.

MonsieurChoc posted:

I've been meaning to check out Pynchon for years. Which one would be a good start?

Farm Frenzy posted:

he said theres no documented proof of the pop cultural depiction of trafficking where its children being snatched off the street and stuffed into shipping containers

MikeCrotch posted:

Also for reference lots of countries used the £sd system back in the day, often because they were colonies of the UK. The US decimalised 10 years after the country was founded i.e. 190 years before the Brits lol

Gio posted:

pure speculation, all just gossip but i kinda got the impression virgil was a bit of a punching bag behind the scenes and got fed up with it.

xtal posted:

I only just learned about NFT, what's NPR?

gradenko_2000 posted:

Wynn is trying to pass off those phrases as cliche and annoying

Orion is trying to say that it's bad people to appropriate these sayings that ostensibly came from black culture, and then turn around and discard them at the drop of a hat

uber_stoat posted:

every time Noah's name comes up i have to restate that he wrote an entire book about how people own him online. like a third of it was about Freddie De Boer.

some plague rats posted:

Yeah one of my favourite bits of Felix lore is that his ideal woman is a cruel blond WASP who hates him

Zedhe Khoja posted:

Zedhe Khoja posted:

goddamn yungchomsky

quote:

What is so intriguing about YC is that he represents the intersection of classic/vintage menswear and left-wing politics, at least in terms of his online persona. In reality, he’s just a Marxist who happens to be one of the best dressed people I’ve seen.

quote:

47:50- Dressing on The Left
48:05- “There’s this sentiment of aesthetics are bourgeois. That’s the implication sometimes, and I get that; you either need an excess of time or excess of money to really get into this stuff. If you have no free time and no free money, you cannot care about fashion. But then you can’t have any hobbies.”
48:50- “There’s the slogan we often hear on the left is ‘bread and roses,’ it comes from this speech of the worker needing bread but she needs roses too. The point being that we need to be able to survive – the bread, basics of living – but we need roses and that’s the beauty: that’s art, that’s love and laughter and mirth.”
49:20- “I get pushback of ‘oh you’re wearing expensive shoes, you’re not a socialist.’…We can talk about the shoes being expensive because they’re made domestically with labor conditions better than somewhere else, these pieces take a lot of work to make – don’t you think somebody should be compensated for making that? If I’m trying to get the cheapest thing possible, what does that say about paying the person who’s making it?”
50:15- “People on the left sometimes get into this reflexive attitude of being dismissive about things like fashion because they’ve been excluded from it, because they don’t have the time or money to get into it…I do not think it is good philosophically, politically to get the idea that caring about aesthetics shouldn’t be a part of our project.”

quote:

5:40- Aesthetics
6:55- “There’s an idea that the left is not cohesive or not fashionable in general. It’s a microcosm of the structural barriers or difficulties of the left movement, where the right-wing conservative movements have institutional support.”
9:30- (EW) “When I think of the Left, it’s always very nerdy/punk. When you look at the Right, they’re trying to portray themselves as the establishment; they love authority, wearing the suit…”
12:20- “Discipline and cohesiveness are good values for a movement to have, but on the other hand, inclusiveness and openness are also kind of left values, and those can come into tension.”
14:15- “When you have a mass movement of people in the streets, I think that if there was some kind of aesthetic – not a uniform – it would help build a group identity. It helps build solidarity amongst people who might not have thought about it before.”
19:45- “We’re trying to make a change in society, trying to convince people and change minds. This is a form of communication. So if we can reach people more effectively by having a certain look, then that is certainly worth considering.”
24:00- Menswear/Vintage Communities
25:05- “This community tends to be white, wealthy, and therefore reactionary.”
26:55- “When we’re talking about vintage stuff, we’re into the aesthetics and it ends there. There’s definitely a cohort of people where for them it’s about this false, fictionalized nostalgia. They bring ‘vintage values’ into it, ‘the fifties,’ trying to get back to the social order of decades past, not just the clothing.”
30:30- “If you’re into this whole idea of dressing up, it can come from this infantilized mindset of ‘well I’m going to be better than other people,’ like putting other people down instead of an expression of personal style.”
33:40- “There’s so much anger and resentment…things aren’t going well for anybody right now. If you grow up in a society where you’re supposed to live a better life than your parents – inherit the world – and you don’t, people get angry. You have to reach them before bad people do.”
35:10- Reclaiming & De-Contextualizing menswear
35:10- “There’s an element of reclamation for some of us. I’m Jewish and you know my grandfather wouldn’t have been allowed into the country club, where the wasps would have dressed the way that now I think is cool to dress. For those who are a visible minority – Filipino, black – I think that is a much stronger type of reclamation, but I do think it’s kind of fun to think of it that way.”
39:20- “One of the defining features of the postmodern era we’re living is that there is no more monoculture. Everything is accessible all the time. And so that applies to music, art, style…it’s such a cool feature of this moment in time that you can be constantly referencing everything at once or multiple things from different periods and not stuck in one time or place.”
45:35- “What I want to be saying about myself with my clothes is that I am someone who cares about my presentation, I put stock into silhouette and color, patterns and shapes and that is what I want to communicate.”
46:45- (EW) “I hope that when you look at my Instagram you think that it’s okay to be multifaceted, you can be different than people expect you to be, and it’s cool to have a bunch of different overlapping interests.”
48:20- “Something that is very cool about menswear is that there’s just so much you can pull from historically…we look at things like ‘oh this is Italian style, this is American Ivy’ but then to other people they just see a suit.”
50:20- “The Left has retreated into subculture and part of subculture is having signifiers that show to other people that you’re part of it. That’s when you can get into this stuff where you’re being very explicit in your appearance.”

xtal posted:

This is the most literal example of boot licking in this thread yet

MeatwadIsGod posted:

Liz is right about the New Soviet Man ideal. Read theory and lift weights

THS posted:

i really dont get the nick land stuff

Nick Land posted:

While I generally seeks to spread dismay whenever the opportunity arises, I cannot pretend to a huge obsession with what might be described as ordinary racism. When perusing the thought-crimes of the mainstream racist community, it is continually afflicted by a sense of overwhelming unreality. This is not (of course), because races do not exist, or do not differ significantly, or … whatever. The most politically incorrect cognitive position on almost every point of this kind is reliably closer to reality than its more socially-convenient and comforting alternatives.

The problem with ordinary racism is its utter incomprehension of the near future. Not only will capabilities for genomic manipulation dissolve biological identity into techno-commercial processes of yet-incomprehensible radicality, but also … other things.

First, a sketch of the existing racism-antiracism contention in its commonplace or dominant form. The antiracist, or universal humanist position — when extracted from its most idiotic social-constructivist and hypocritical alt-racist expressions — amounts to a program for global genetic pooling. Cultural barriers to the Utopian vision of a unitary ‘human’ gene pool, stirred with increasing ardor into homogeneous intermixture, are deplored as atavistic obstructions to the realization of a true, common humanity.

Races will not exist once they are reduced, by practical politics and libidinal indiscriminacy, into relics of contingent historical partition.

In contrast, racial identitarianism envisages a conservation of (comparative) genetic isolation, generally determined by boundaries corresponding to conspicuous phenotypic variation. It is race realist, in that it admits to seeing what everyone does in fact see — which is to say consistent patterns of striking, correlated, multi-dimensional variety between human populations (or sub-species). Its unrealism lies in its projections.

Gregory Cochran suggests that space colonization will inevitably function as a highly-selective genetic filter, unless extreme political intervention is taken to prevent this:

quote:

"One generally assumes that space colonists, assuming that there ever are any, will be picked individuals, somewhat like existing astronauts – the best out of hordes of applicants. They’ll be smarter than average, healthier than average, saner than average – and not by just a little. [...] Since all these traits are significantly heritable, some highly so, we have to expect that their descendants will be different – different above the neck. They’d likely be, on average, smarter than any existing ethnic group. If a Lunar colony really took off, early colonists might account for a disproportionate fraction of the population (just as Puritans do in the US), and the Loonies might continue to have inordinate amounts of the right stuff indefinitely."

As a scientific sort, Cochran is exploring this scenario as a potential source of compelling hereditarian evidence (anticipated through thought experiment). What, however, of the prospect itself, as the illustration of a mechanism that lends itself to theoretical generalization? One might discuss it in terms of ordinary racism, as a zone of disparate impact (which it would almost certainly be). Yet this is only to scratch at it, hazily and superficially.

The most prominent model of such a filter is found in the theory of assortative mating. Strictly speaking, the racial-preservationist culture advocated by ordinary racism is an example of assortative mating, with a criterion of genetic proximity filtering potential matches. This is not why the idea has such currency. It is assortative mating on the basis of [Socio-Economic status] that has lifted it to prominence, both because it seems unquestionably to be happening, and because the implications of its happening are extreme. (Crucially, SES is a strong proxy for IQ.)

Assortative mating tends to genetic diversification. This is neither the preserved diversity of ordinary racism, still less the idealized genetic pooling of the anti-racists, but a class-structured mechanism for population diremption, on a vector towards neo-speciation. It implies the disintegration of the human species, along largely unprecedented lines, with intrinsic hierarchical consequence.

The genetically self-filtering elite is not merely different — and becoming ever more different — it is explicitly superior according to the established criteria that allocate social status. Analogical fusion with Cochran’s space colonists is scarcely avoidable. If SES-based assortative mating is taking place, humanity (and not only society) is coming apart, on an axis whose inferior pole is refuse. This is not anything that ordinary racism is remotely able to process. That it is a consummate nightmare for anti-racism goes without question, but it is also trans-racial, infra-racial, and hyper-racial in ways that leave ‘race politics’ as a gibbering ruin in its wake.

Neo-eugenic genomic manipulation capabilities, which will also be unevenly distributed by SES, will certainly intensify the trend to speciation, rather than ameliorating it. On the sweetness-and-light side, racists and anti-racists can be expected to eventually bond in a defensive fraternity, when they recognize that traditionally-differentiated human populations are being torn asunder on an axis of variation that dwarfs all of their established concerns.

Danger posted:

Aberration in the Heartland of the Real

edit: here’s a good teaser
https://twitter.com/bth_bill/status/1369843240057397251?s=21

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/ByYourLogic/status/1378398426530988036?s=19

quote:

In order to pass the Bechdel test, fiction films have to meet the following three criteria:

There have to be at least two women in the film
Who to talk to each other
About something other than a man

It's not a perfect system, but the point is to make sure films show women as fully realized human beings, independent from men.

quote:

It’s also where numerous selections pass the Bechdel test (movies like Christine and Sand Storm, in which two women talk to each other about something besides a man) and, in honor of the director and Sundance alumna Ava DuVernay, what might be called the DuVernay test, in which African-Americans and other minorities have fully realized lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories.

quote:

The "Mako Mori test", formulated by Tumblr user "Chaila" and named after the only significant female character of the 2013 film Pacific Rim, asks whether a female character has a narrative arc that is not about supporting a man's story. Comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick proposed a "sexy lamp test": "If you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft."

quote:

The "Vito Russo test" created by the LGBT organization GLAAD tests for the representation of LGBT characters in films. It asks: Does the film contain a character that is identifiably LGBT, and is not solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would have a significant effect?

quote:

Contemporary shows are either essentially all-male, like "Garfield", or are organized on what I call the Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined (...) The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.

Halloween Jack posted:

It's funny how much stuff in these "activist" circles comes from a random Tumblr post.

Tumblr is a place where children of varying ages just sort of think out loud while they figure things out. In Lacanian terms, it's imaginary. That's fine. But there needs to be a barrier between that stuff and, say, establishing ethical standards, for the same reason that a functional adult has a barrier between their brain and their mouth.

quote:

Posts endured for years, bouncing around the site to be polished, well, like gems in a tumbler. Often this replication made the images and memes funnier or more interesting. But this also meant that many posts were argued over and annotated with each reblog. Even stranger, the annotations rarely ran on forever, as one might expect. Eventually, the various sides in the dialogue reached a consensus and what was then reblogged was like a rabbinical commentary, a settled piece of cultural law.

[...]

Adults reading this book may remember trying to “figure it out” as a teen, sifting through competing ideologies of television shows, parents, bands, and friends. Defining yourself meant coming up with a moral system: what to believe, what was right, what was wrong. Then, once that was settled, a new question arose: How do you go about fighting for it? Tumblr allowed all of this to take place on a scale of not tens or hundreds but millions of teens. Tumblr’s project was no less ambitious than all this: all of its users would develop a code of laws. Collectively they would agree, disagree, edit, refine, and append until a consensus was reached on what was cool and what wasn’t cool, what you should do and what you shouldn’t, and what’s right and what’s wrong.

Such a philosophy naturally focused on issues relevant to adolescents. Young people struggling to find a group that accepted them created groups that championed “radical acceptance”—their creed, everyone should be accepted for being different, unless of course you didn’t believe this, in which case you were out of the group.

In a beautiful recursion loop (or, less charitably, a short circuit), teens used this core belief in the right to define oneself (and the software’s invitation to do so) as their system of defining themselves. Those who believed that they were free to define their identity any way they pleased became a member of that clique. Indeed, subscribing to this belief determined their identity. Those who took issue with portions of the canon (for example, the rejects of 4chan) were shunned and condemned. Depending on how you looked at it, teens had either solved their problem with their problem or dug their escape route back into their prison.

quote:

The same dynamics occurring on Tumblr are perhaps best shown in its relationship to an episode of the dystopian science-fiction TV series Black Mirror titled “San Junipero.” In the piece, a young interracial couple fall in love in a montage of hyper-real retro settings, pitch-perfect replications of the glamorous backdrops from classic movies of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And here’s the twist (spoiler alert!): they are meeting in a networked virtual reality simulation. Though they appear as teenagers, in real life they are very old and using the fantasy realm to explore their sexuality in ways that were not possible in their own lives. The story ends when the two lovers, facing death, upload a copy of their consciousness into the simulation. There, the computer replicas of their brains endure together forever, dancing and partying in paradise. To inform us the couple are enjoying an afterlife of truly eternal love, the 80s ballad “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” blasts over the scene.

Or so it seems at first. The last shot is terrifying. The camera pans across the vast reaches of a humming computer, where, beneath an inhuman blinking node, we view how their souls are stored in a corporation’s mainframe. As much as the creators would like us to believe the ending is happy, this last image presents an equally likely scenario: that the uncanny replication of the lovers in a false world is the fate of nightmares. The characters might be trapped in an unreal purgatory that will eventually be erased or glitched into oblivion when the corporation decides to pull the plug.

But in the Rorschach test of interpretation, the Tumblrverse rarely acknowledged this second possibility. When the episode premiered in 2016 it was celebrated across Tumblr in a cascade of reblogged fan art, quotes, screenshots, and gifs. And as usual, the media began to echo the memes. Vulture wrote that the episode “interrupts … the cynical gloom of the rest of season three of Black Mirror like sunshine breaking through the clouds (or rants about the Cloud).”

That the disturbing ending was ignored underscores what is so unsettling about Tumblr. As long as carefully cultivated corporate fantasy worlds accommodated demands for racial and sexual parity, users rarely noticed the downside of being dumped into a fantasy world for all eternity. Moreover, if the values of the fantasy world were just (if the simulation accepted your sexuality, identity, and so forth), it often didn’t matter that the real world was run by morally ambiguous technocrats who accommodated each person by assigning them a slot on their fantasy-generating servers.

Xaris posted:

is that book any good?

quote:

Those agitating for radical change believed they were affecting reality, when in fact they had received (and were often satisfied with) radical change only within the confines of a simulated fantasy world.

Perhaps the best example of this is the recent blockbuster in the Marvel franchise, Black Panther. The film explores the problem of racial injustice in America by presenting the story of an African superhero who works with the CIA to prevent a black radical from fomenting revolution. In this sense, it is an upside-down retelling of the story of the radical 1960s Black Panther movement.

At the end of the film, the problem of racial inequality is addressed by the victorious hero, the conservative Black Panther. The penultimate scene shows the superhero establishing schools and mentorship programs in underserved black communities in Los Angeles, just as the real Black Panthers did in the 1960s. In doing so, Black Panther decides to share the wealth and fantastical technology from the secret realm from which he hails, an African Shangri-la called Wakanda. Thus, in both the fantasy of the film and in real life the problem is addressed and solved within the confines of the fantasy world. The movie’s solution to America’s racial inequality is to apply healthy gobs of unreal fantasy (the wealth and technology of the mystical realm Wakanda) to the problem.

Just as with so many other fantasy products, Black Panther took people’s unhappiness and frustration and sold it back to them as a brief snippet of relief. Viewed from one perspective, Black Panther was a victory for representation. But zoom out and it might be better regarded as a simulation of a victory.

In Baltimore, where I taught in predominantly black, underserved public schools for years, only a slim minority of my students would ever have the chance to enter the middle class. Against this grim backdrop, Black Panther was welcomed with a wave of euphoria. Local campaigns (#BlackPantherChallenge) were organized to bus children from their underserved areas to see the film. It was hard not to delight in the kids’ joy. But it also felt like a trapped-in-the-holodeck moment; the film fooled people into believing they had won a victory at the cost of a $14 ticket. Or more simply put, it was a play—a moneymaking scheme. It took something popular—Americans’ desperate desire for racial equality—repackaged it, and sold it as a commodity that audiences could buy by the hour.

Indeed, using fantasy to sate the very real and desperate longing for social justice worked a little too well for Black Panther’s owner, Disney. Whereas in so many other entertainment products this dynamic goes ignored, the film’s runaway success made the shocking disparity between the real and fake embarrassingly visible. People noticed that the corporation had pocketed $700 million worldwide selling a fantasy of social justice. In response, an embarrassed Disney hastily announced on Twitter that it would donate 1/700th of their $700 million to “advance STEM programs for youth, especially in underserved areas of the country.”

Pirate Jet posted:

tumblr was never actually that popular, it was bought by yahoo for 2 billion and then sold for like 20 million. it was just a hot target for internet mockery because its users were especially silly and dumb. dashcon is one of the funniest ways the internet has ever broken into real life, but it’s odd that the lesson that people take from it was that tumblr is this massive corrupting force and not that it was a minority of crazy people too small and too stupid to handle a convention center for a weekend

blaming anything on a massive cultural scale on tumblr feels like you’re still blaming ctrl+alt+del for the death of culture or whatever. the reason young people are so bad at activism is because their capitalist culture has co-opted it and turned it into a form of marketing, not some crappy social media site mostly occupied by fanatics of CW shows and youtube cartoons

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

hasan is hot tho

crazy eyes mustafa posted:

vaginas are gross. me, I only suck dick

lumpentroll posted:

just nothing but stav laughing

Gripweed posted:

That was a pretty funny combination of making a really lame tweet to your self-selected terrible audience. One of the Mcelroys was like "Harry Styles is so cute! Everyone thinks I'm bi but I'm not even though I'd be really good at it tee hee" and an hour later had to publicly apologize for doing bi erasure and being a bad ally.

THS posted:

on an aircraft carrier

Malleum posted:

the reason the video is so long is because she goes through some insane person's twitter thread that catalogued all the supposed injustices that she got away with and while thats insane, so is compiling a huge list of specific grievances from 10 years ago

some plague rats posted:

Quickly before I get probed again someone tell me the single best cumtown ep

Deified Data posted:

In podcast-related news Robert Evans was weirdly insistent on driving home the anti-semitism of Marx and the left of his time in an episode about the right-wing conspiracy theory, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

MeatwadIsGod posted:

"Please don't read these texts or you might realize Jacobin sucks"

Halloween Jack posted:

Is there some straightforward argument that cuts through this bullshit, or is it like libertarians with the crony capitalism thing, where it's an article of religious faith?

i say swears online posted:

wikipedia > wookieepedia

Mr Hootington posted:

https://twitter.com/intellegint/status/1388602852499628036?s=19