The Cancel Culture thread! WOO!

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

You guys heard about Caracoin?

Makes me secretly wish that Pinkie Pie would get cancelled.

[Sengoku Strider]

Have you all heard the news yet? Snape killed Dumbledore

"Cancel culture" seems to be an Ironic Production® of the Right in response to "Rape Culture," a phrase used unironically only at the westernmost cliff-edge of lefty leftism, even on Twitter. "Defund the police," which was taken at face value by a few more people than that, was still not very popular although arguably making it into the mainstream. "Cancel culture," on the other hand, seems to be as popular at Fox News as attempting to snort hamburger patties through a plastic straw - a daily occurrence. But whether "cancel culture" actually describes something that exists is questionable considering that the Right has been known to throw boycotts around as does the left. In terms of a shadowy cabal cancelling with abandon, I suspect Robinson had it more or less right. "Cancel culture" protests really aren't about influencing tech policy but about trying to appeal to people for purposes of launching political careers or lousy podcasts. To be fair, a lot of lefty people were celebrating Robinson's cancellation, so maybe I just didn't get the joke.

What certainly do exist are Terms of Service for Twitter, Facebook, etc., which caused the Far Right such harm that they wrote multi-part megaposts decrying the phenomenon of "being kicked off the Internet for having shitty opinions" and then promptly set up Parler, where you have absolute free speech so long as you're not a lefty troll!

And that is why I don't take Cancel Culture any more seriously than I took GamerGate.

I think it's very obvious cancel culture not only exists but is pervasive. The whole past decade has been spent ostracizing - or attempting to ostracize - people for offensive statements, past or present. The term "so & so is cancelled" wasn't a conservative thing, it came out of the pop music-obsessed corners of Tumblr & Twitter, a subculture where adults & teenagers are unironically worshipping Carly Rae Jepsen and calling Beyonce their queen. A significant portion of these adults are members of the LGBTQ+ community, so conversations tend to tilt toward the social justicey end of things. Not the least of which because pop music has just been one long ongoing corporate raid of black music, expressions & fashion for...I don't even know where to start with that one, the 1950s? But this phenomenon has been a thing since at least Lily Allen making an ill-conceived female empowerment video putting down twerking video hoes back in 2012, and refusing to consider any criticism.

That's kind of the thing, it got to this point for a reason. It's not just bitchy power-tripping narcissistic lefty millennials who've been granted an undeservedly large megaphone by social media and its most vapid users. Though yes, there is an awful lot of that going on, which this thread appears to be assiduously chronicling.

It's the fact that the general demographic of people being spoken against have been pathologically incapable of self-reflection for so long that they've left the non-garbage person world with exactly two options:

A) Put up with systemic exploitation, exclusion & general abuse forever by people who deny those things even happen while at the same time refusing to engage with the discourse in anything resembling a shadow of good faith, or

B) Have the collective social media Superman throw them into the cultural sun.

Sooner or later anyone who isn't a bitchmade doormat is probably going to conclude that there's only actually one option there.

[Mortificator]

I guess you could think that "cancel culture" is a thing, and that leftists are inflicting it on you.

I mean, if you were completely ignorant of the centuries of people being fired, shunned, disowned, exiled, or killed for such things as...

* having tattoos

* loving a person of the same sex or a different skin color

* becoming pregnant

* not publicly professing worship to the accepted god in the accepted fashion

* not being a frothing proponent of capitalism (or its predecessor, monarchy)

* existing while transgendered

...then you could think that.

[Sengoku Strider]

I guess you could think that "cancel culture" is a thing, and that leftists are inflicting it on you.

I mean, if you were completely ignorant of the centuries of people being fired, shunned, disowned, exiled, or killed for such things as...

* having tattoos

* loving a person of the same sex or a different skin color

* becoming pregnant

* not publicly professing worship to the accepted god in the accepted fashion

* not being a frothing proponent of capitalism (or its predecessor, monarchy)

* existing while transgendered

...then you could think that.

That's rather besides the point, though. It's not that anyone thinks this is the first form of ostracism to ever exist. But the phenomenon of ordinary people living very public lives - not just locally but potentially globally - in the social media era, and losing jobs and social standing over statements which have been well within norms until recently, is a new one worth designating. And it represents a tidal shift in Anglosphere culture toward the inverse of all that you've just laid out.

If Trumpism and its reactionary nature stems from anything, it's that very fact. They needed nothing so much in this era as a master social media troll to fight back; it's why they very explicitly see him as a superhero fighting for them.

[BryanM]

Yeah, the culture war is something the young can always feel like they're winning, even while the material front has brought us to DOOMSday. As hollow as "do old movies all over again but worse with some races/genders flipped around a little" is, well, it's something, I guess.

......... they're seriously never going to amend the 13th amendment to at least abolish domestic slavery, are they?

[ED-057]

Chris Hedges has it all covered https://scheerpost.com/2021/02/15/hedge ... es-to-die/

[BIL]

But trendy revanchism delivered at safe distance is delicious :O

Take that, racism

Spoiler

Tales From The Sidebar~

Hi. I am electric bodybuilder from Russia.

Instead, he went the route traveled by so many journalists desperate to save their jobs, deleting the tweets, groveling at the feet of his editor, and even asking for guidance from the Guardian on what was off-limits - only to be told there was no such code, just an “unwritten one.” Thus was Robinson sucked into the apology vortex that has destroyed so many upwardly-mobile political and media figures - including UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - who’ve dared to oppose the “war crimes” of a foreign country.

Oof, OUCH, blimey! She were COOLD BLOODED~♫

I myself would not deploy the imagery of hitting one's knees and choking down the Cancel Cock in Robinson's case - it most definitely applies in Cannon's, my man sucked the cock and swallowed every drop - but bitches be crazy.

(while he is buff, I never thought Electric Bodybuilder looked like Terminator. He always reminded me of Bad Lieutenant. >_>)

Warning: Kosher Salami

Spoiler

[vol.2]

Cancel culture is nothing new. To even suggest that it's some new phenom is like suggesting that memes where a product of the internet.

As Mortifier so eloquently pointed out, people have been getting "cancelled" from group participation in society since the very beginning. Up until recently, it's mostly been religious institutions and powerful men that call the shots on who was cancelled or not.

Just like the meme, social ostracizing (let's just call it what it is) has found a medium in which it can truly thrive.

You can't stop human nature. Calling it a religion is grasping at straws for some tiny sliver of control to hold onto. Control that was never really there to begin with.

It's not that anyone thinks this is the first form of ostracism to ever exist. But the phenomenon of ordinary people living very public lives - not just locally but potentially globally - in the social media era, and losing jobs and social standing over statements which have been well within norms until recently, is a new one worth designating.

I think you're just kind of slightly missing the trajectory. The media is what's changed. The people are the same, and their behavior is consistent. The medium is what needs to be addressed and understood.

[BryanM]

only to be told there was no such code, just an “unwritten one.”

Pft. It's not even a complex codex: you can't go against your employer's capital interests. That means, no damaging the wars and austerity they have going on. Talking about murdered babies our country is partly culpable for? That's a paddlin'.

Robinson is in good company, with the likes of Phil Donahue. A man with the #1 show on MSNBC, who was fired for being against the Iraq war. Official reason given? "Low ratings".

Remember when Oprah was like "maybe we're rushing into this too fast" and she got made right instamediately?

[BIL]

Indeed is always the fuckin dollars Bryan! I learned well from Nicky Santoro and Paulie Walnuts, the former PWNED in a cornfield for costing his bosses with his antics, and the latter just an all-around dirty bastard!

Then the question comes [of] putting a government in place of the one you've just gotten rid of; you can't just sort of turn around and walk away — you have now accepted the responsibility for what happens in Iraq. What kind of government do you want us to create in place of the old Saddam Hussein government? Do you want a Sunni government, or a Shi'a government or maybe it ought to be a Kurdish government, or maybe one based on the Ba'ath Party or maybe some combination of all of those? How long is that government likely to survive without U.S. military forces there to keep it propped up?

Wow this guy is a smooth operator :O I wonder why he turned out to be a gaping war-criming cunt just like the US president at the time, and the US president at present, and Dubya's gurning catamite "Yo" Blair, and many more, all of whom it would be a shame to see laid out and run over by a pavement saw. Some obscure dark force must have corrupted them - and also cancelled the Dixie Chicks.

[Sengoku Strider]

Cancel culture is nothing new. To even suggest that it's some new phenom is like suggesting that memes where a product of the internet.

The colloquial 'meme' was a product of the internet. The term meme comes from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which he used to try and establish a scientific nomenclature for a cognitive equivalent of the gene, from the Greek mimēma, imitate, also the root of the word mime. By Dawkins' original definition, everything on the internet is a meme: design paradigms, internet social norms (such as they are), common terms, coding standards and languages, letters and characters that make up language, hardware architectures, etc. etc. None of these things are passed on genetically, but passed on they are.

The internet took this term and appropriated it to refer to viral images, phrases or animations which are almost uniformly used in the service of humour in some fashion. Ask your average person what a meme is and they'll tell you it's funny pictures & internet jokes. Certainly parodies and funny pictures existed and were spread before the world wide web, but they were not a broadly used transactional element of social currency in the manner they've become. The particular form this mutation of the term has taken has done a lot to reflexively alter human behaviour and our understanding of appropriate spectra of practice. Certainly, pre-internet grandma wasn't picking up a pile of stamps and mailing everyone in the family racist motivational posters every other morning. Politicians weren't doing goofy dance moves hoping to get caught looking silly in a bid to penetrate the popular consciousness.

Even the choice of the term 'meme' is a reflection of internet culture. Pre-smartphone, much of the web was the domain of the computer savvy and tech oriented. Yes, aunt Betty may have been getting fleeced for Beanie Babies on eBay, but the culture writ large came to be defined by young people growing up with chat applications & forums. A vocal atheist bent meant Dawkins, avowed enemy of stodgy Christian parents and elders everywhere in the name of British-accented science, made him a hero among this subset. Anthropology, various branches of philosophy, sociology, history, linguistics, psychology and cognitive science, many disciplines have equivalent terms to 'meme,' and many have been using them since well before Dawkins came along (the term 'mimesis' in philosophy goes back to Plato & Aristotle). So there's something very specific to the internet in popularizing this particular term for cultural qualia and distributed cognition.

Ironically, the notion of quantifying cultural transmissions as discrete units, certainly in the sense that a gene is, is kinda bullshit. end even Dawkins ended up distancing himself from its academic use. So the semantics of the colloquial meme are now the de facto inheritor of the term.

As Mortifier so eloquently pointed out, people have been getting "cancelled" from group participation in society since the very beginning. Up until recently, it's mostly been religious institutions and powerful men that call the shots on who was cancelled or not.

This is not the same phenomenon for a few concrete reasons. The first is that establishment religion derives its authority from ontological fixity. Yes, regimes of power fiddle with that to their own ends, and ethical codes and their exegesis are living processes, but they maintain a core eternalist cultural transmission, ideationally reaching back before history and forward beyond it. These dominant narratives exist(ed) to serve elite groups and the coherence of a monoculture. Conversely, what's disorienting about cancellation to its targets is its chimerical nature.

10 years ago, the notion of 'deadnaming' a trans-person was utterly unknown; the term itself hadn't even been formulated yet, first appearing on blogs and message boards in 2012. Only two years later, ESPN's ombudsman was publicly apologizing for the "inexcusable" story Dr. V's Magic Putter, which appeared on their then prestige long form outlet, Grantland. It was written by a journalist with a past working on LGBT and gender issues, about an individual who in the marketing of their new golf putter had claimed scientific qualifications as an aeronautical physicist from MIT. Who had worked on the stealth bomber and DoD projects so classified their name wasn't even on record, and that they were a member of the prestigious Vanderbilt family at that. They'd made off with tens of thousands in investor dollars. In the process, the author discovered this person was actually a transgendered 60 year-old former auto mechanic named Steve. Not-Dr. Vanderbilt threatened the author personally and legally over the story, ultimately committing suicide before it came out. In the ordinary story of a con man, corrupt CEO or politician, this would have been a tragic outcome, but the likely popular opinion would have been one of them being unable to face the music for their fraud. Salacious details of their life coming out would have been seen as the price for attracting media attention the wrong way. Instead, here, a vocal section of the internet immediately attacked the author, site and company for deadnaming. The social media Greek chorus joined in as one with what was then becoming the usual refrain of "who would ever think that was okay?" about a practice they in reality had likely never heard of or considered a deviation from the standard colourful details that come out in crime reporting.

The same years saw a deluge of new terminology into the collective digital consciousness, social media-born or academic, which everyone was expected to have already internalized or, if a properly calibrated human being, never needed to have been told in the first place. Cultural appropriation. Misgendering. Ablesplaining. Microaggression. TERF. Pansexual. Tone policing. Cisethnic. Kyriarchy. Radical shifts in what constituted consent in romantic activity which rendered most relationships to have ever existed as sexual assaults. In order for all of this to meet the categorical comparison to past religio-cultural forms of group exclusion, you'd need to have Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with a new set of tablets monthly for several years.

Rather than the epistemological closure establishment religions seek to create, this instead led to the opposite - a near epistemological collapse in cultural meaning structures around issues of public self-identity. For some this moment of heterogeneity disrupting homogeneous cultural structures was empowering and life altering, but its character was founded on precisely that: maintaining heterogeneous disruption as an ongoing norm. Many of those pillars of terminological righteousness proved to be fleeting, and the nature of commodified intellectual production necessitated finding many of these concepts 'problematic' in order to prove the value of the thinker in the broader job market.

Continued because I've had too much caffeine to stay within the character limit...

[Sengoku Strider]

...sorry.

I think you're just kind of slightly missing the trajectory. The media is what's changed. The people are the same, and their behavior is consistent. The medium is what needs to be addressed and understood.

A paradigmatic medium shift is incredibly consequential to the style and content of communication which takes place across it, that was Marshall McLuhan's central thesis. You can also look to the work of Harold Innis in sociology, who outlined the massive shift in global human consciousness which occurred with the invention of the printing press inaugurating a sea change from what he called time-biased media (stelae, epigraphy, institutionally maintained documents) to space-biased media (printed materials which allowed ideas to be immediately and democratically widely spread in a manner impossible in the previous era which relied on trained copyists).

The iPhone will be regarded as the same thing. It put a computer in everyone's hand throughout much of the world, linked together in contiguous social networks unimpeded by geography. Think how many of these Facebook boomers didn't even read at all in their daily lives before social media. It was a staggering amount; during George W. Bush's second term 30 odd percent of Americans couldn't name the president, then one of the most notorious men on Earth. Politics was stodgy stuff about budgets & deficits that wasn't a part of the daily awareness of a great many people. At the same time, it allowed subcultures to form in real time with little regard to physical location. Furries and adult male My Little Pony fans could suddenly have public conventions, when in their physical communities they're likely pretty isolated in their predilections.

But most significantly, the capacity of the internet to blast reams of unpaid emotionally button-pushing headlines and personal shared posts onto someone's breakfast table, in a manner calculated by hired social & behavioural psychologists to be as addictive as possible, has had a very clear exacerbating effect on the tone, breadth and rapidity of evolution of cultural dialogues. There could never have been a Trump getting away with 14 public scandals a day before this era, with nobody but political trainspotters even remembering what he did 3 weeks ago. Nobody would be talking about decolonization because it would require reading hundreds of pages of Gayatri Spivak and nobody actually does that, they just pretend to. There have always been cultural mores and taboos which resulted in negative repercussions for their violations, but never the current and constant microscope on everybody everywhere about so many things at once, with such far reaching consequences.

[Mischief Maker]

Cancel Culture is the Old Man at OCP saying, "Dick, YOU'RE FIRED!"

Then Robocop says, "Thank you," and shoots Dick Jones through a plate glass window where he falls from grace.

Then Robocop does his gun twirl, affirms his name is Murphy, and strides out triumphant.

Then the Old Man fixes his tie, sits back down at the desk and says, "Good thing Robocop is still under Directive 4 and remains powerless to bring any executive of this company to justice without my express permission. Now then, gentlemen, back to evil!"

[BIL]

This is not the same phenomenon for a few concrete reasons. The first is that establishment religion derives its authority from ontological fixity. Yes, regimes of power fiddle with that to their own ends, and ethical codes and their exegesis are living processes, but they maintain a core eternalist cultural transmission, ideationally reaching back before history and forward beyond it. These dominant narratives exist(ed) to serve elite groups and the coherence of a monoculture. Conversely, what's disorienting about cancellation to its targets is its chimerical nature.

Good posting. Pardon me for bringing down the tone once again, shortly.

They'd made off with tens of thousands in investor dollars. In the process, the author discovered this person was actually a transgendered 60 year-old former auto mechanic named Steve. Not-Dr. Vanderbilt threatened the author personally and legally over the story, ultimately committing suicide before it came out. In the ordinary story of a con man, corrupt CEO or politician, this would have been a tragic outcome, but the likely popular opinion would have been one of them being unable to face the music for their fraud. Salacious details of their life coming out would have been seen as the price for attracting media attention the wrong way. Instead, here, a vocal section of the internet immediately attacked the author, site and company for deadnaming. The social media Greek chorus joined in as one with what was then becoming the usual refrain of "who would ever think that was okay?" about a practice they in reality had likely never heard of or considered a deviation from the standard colourful details that come out in crime reporting.

The same years saw a deluge of new terminology into the collective digital consciousness, social media-born or academic, which everyone was expected to have already internalized or, if a properly calibrated human being, never needed to have been told in the first place.

I'd not heard the magic putter story, or its aftermath - I'll enjoy catching up on that. Being a privileged rubbernecker who loves a big bunfight, I'm reminded of my nonetheless sincere interest in a particular flying treat.

In 2021 AD, I am still seeing articles decrying the abuse allegedly dealt by toxic gamers to Mrs. Brianna Wu - a former developer, and current Massachusetts senate hopeful. Having ran once, to poor results but generous backing, she has revived her purportedly techno-savvy platform - yet again extolling her enthusiasm for cyber security. A field of critical importance, to be sure, with the Russians always looking to subvert your democracy and steal your chips.

Wu, a self-accredited "software engineer," has none of the expertise she claims. The materials to back up this statement are extensive, and largely excess to this post's requirements. Her one PC game, which you can buy right now, remains incompletably broken five years on. This is due to an interface bug, incurred in its porting from IOS. It cannot be patched, because the game's hired coders have long since severed ties with Wu - the most prominent publically warning others off accepting jobs with her.

Unfortunately for the residents of the 8th District, to question Wu's professed tech knowledge, or business acumen, or work history, is to invite a fate identical to the one you describe befalling Dr. V's correspondent. It's worse, actually - as mentioned a paragraph up, there is no need to expose Wu on a personal level. The image of a wealthy fantasist and con-artist is apparent from a strictly professional standpoint. I suspect Wu is well aware of this, and thus knowingly conflates the professional with the personal - a handy vanishing trick for any scammer.

Regardless, to question professionally is to abuse personally. And so, to my knowledge, nobody ever has. Here is Cenk Uyghur, of popular internet news show The Young Turks, enthusiastically gulping down and regurgitating Wu's fantasies to his audience. Is that fear or opportunism? "Craven" prefixes neatly to either. If anyone would like to know more about Cenk's "Patient Zero in the right-wing terror attacks," someone he analogises with the murdered victims of the KKK, or if you wish to dispute anything I've stated here, do jump in.

"What do you care lmao, this is ridiculous, videogames?! grow up LOL" is the stock response from the woke brigade at this point. As with the English tradition of abusing red-haired children ("At least we're not racist!"), or my own country and its murderous, tacitly state-approved homophobia ("Muh Jesus!"), my response is that there is a principle here, and whether you are cowards, or zealots, or opportunists, what you are enabling is scum.

Spoiler

And also, on a lighter note, I enjoy watching you contort yourselves into grotesquely untenable shapes for the sake of such.

There have always been cultural mores and taboos which resulted in negative repercussions for their violations, but never the current and constant microscope on everybody everywhere about so many things at once, with such far reaching consequences.

This is why I suspect the small-time crooks, the Wus and the Zoe Quinns, may end up having a disproportionate effect on wider discourse. Why question anything when the most minor deviation is liable to cost you everything?

[vol.2]

I've already said most of what I wanted to, but I had a few lingering thoughts for public consumption:

IMHO, the paradigm shift is higher up on the dialectic. It is a grouping of social changes that appears in many instances of the mosaic, characterized in it's broadest sense by the ability of the internet to accelerate discourse, and the general ill-effects of people's overreliance of the internet in performing social functions for which it is not suited for.

The first is that establishment religion derives its authority from ontological fixity. Yes, regimes of power fiddle with that to their own ends, and ethical codes and their exegesis are living processes, but they maintain a core eternalist cultural transmission, ideationally reaching back before history and forward beyond it. These dominant narratives exist(ed) to serve elite groups and the coherence of a monoculture.

Patterns that repeat in social hierarchies. You can't just ignore clear patterns of human behavior because they were tied to traditional constructs of elitism. These same behaviors appear in all kinds of groups, in all cultures in the world. From the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea, to the elitist art warehouse communities in major cities all around the world. (Anthropology really cuts through that pretty quickly).

Conversely, what's disorienting about cancellation to its targets is its chimerical nature.

Replace "chimeric" it with "indiscriminate." Truthfully, though, I would soften that to "less discriminate."


Yes, he was talking about Television and not the internet, but the concept is largely compatible. Neil Postman, 1984:

"Therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations."

I don't think that this applies to the entire "internet." In fact, I think that there are clearly parts of the internet that must be held as distinct and capable of differing degrees of subtlety in discourse. But the concept holds true for the bulk of this conversation. Social media (in general) is not suited to taking the place of serious social discourse as-is. The danger, of course, is that to dismantle it would undoubtedly result in a situation much less equitable than the one we have now.

[BryanM]

The Diablo 2 official reskin is doing bad things to my trigger zone. Some complain about the characters' faces, hair, clothes etc...

What bothers me the most? It looks like someone made the models based on playing Diablo 2 with their monitors set on widescreen, not knowing the game requires one to set it to 3:4. All the characters look very short and very thiCC around the waist line, when originally they all were pretty wasp-like in the torso area.

Play a game for a few thousand hours, and the silhouettes of your avatar kind of get burned into your brain. Even though this product isn't meant for me, I'm still going to #cancel it.

(What's really weird is the art for Diablo 4 is absolutely beautiful and far more faithful to D2's body ratios. It's weird man.)

(I'm seriously convinced it's a monitor ratio problem on their end, and not them trying to be more "realistic" or "inclusive". Because that's the kind of thing I expect from them: able to recreate the garlic hanging in the kitchen that's nearly invisible in the original game, but incapable of porting the character models that are very visible, constantly.)

Radical shifts in what constituted consent in romantic activity which rendered most relationships to have ever existed as sexual assaults.

I once posted some whimsical speculation that vaguely amused me: "It took gay people hundreds of years to finally be able to marry in our culture. While if we ever have human-like androids, marrying them would be legal in years."

There were angry people. Oh yes. "The robot is basically a slave, it can't give consent! This isn't a real marriage!" <- Stuff along these lines.

A more on the ball sort observed "What do you mean? That's just what marriage has traditionally been."

Nobody would be talking about decolonization because it would require reading hundreds of pages of Gayatri Spivak and nobody actually does that, they just pretend to.

Oof. When a leftist is demoralized, feeling depressed, or just wants to feel like they're doing something, they always get told to "read theory." It's much like being told to go read the bible when a practitioner needs comfort or direction.

Even with the internet, I didn't realize slavery was still legal and protected by our constitution until I saw the Slavery By Another Name documentary on PBS during a black history month. (A video and topic, shockingly!, not promoted on youtube during Google's use of the month for advertising purposes. It always seems like they want to create the impression that such things were in the distant past and therefore irrelevant to the present.)

During the tail end of the Bush 2 administration. What a fun time that was.

[orange808]

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... d=89051115

It's a fast read. There's a reason there was one paragraph in the history book about "Reconstruction", because we didn't want to talk about it.

[vol.2]

Also highly recommend "The Education of Blacks in the South," by James D. Anderson.

It describes the struggle that Black communities faced in creating their own education system, just to have it ripped out from under them by hostile local officials who saw their incredible early progress as a threat.

Important stuff to know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Educa ... %80%931935

[Blacksheep]

I think you're just kind of slightly missing the trajectory. The media is what's changed. The people are the same, and their behavior is consistent. The medium is what needs to be addressed and understood.

Patterns that repeat in social hierarchies. You can't just ignore clear patterns of human behavior because they were tied to traditional constructs of elitism. These same behaviors appear in all kinds of groups, in all cultures in the world. From the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea, to the elitist art warehouse communities in major cities all around the world. (Anthropology really cuts through that pretty quickly).

As a rule, it's not conducive to proclaim that humans are like XYZ. (History really cuts through that pretty quickly).
At the end of the day, such thinking is ideology and counteracts open-mindedness.

[vol.2]

As a rule, it's not conducive to proclaim that humans are like XYZ.
At the end of the day, such thinking is ideology and counteracts open-mindedness.

I made zero proclamations about "all humans all the time." I made a dialectic statement that recognizes a far-reaching pattern in human behavior.

I'm not sure if you're just not trying, or you simply lack the ability to understand my comment, but that's clearly not what I meant at all.

[Blacksheep]

I made zero proclamations about "all humans all the time." I made a dialectic statement that recognizes a far-reaching pattern in human behavior.

I'm not sure if you're just not trying, or you simply lack the ability to understand my comment, but that's clearly not what I meant at all.

You're now doing to me what you mistakenly thought I did to you. I did not claim that. For starters, my previous post does not contain the word "all", except within your own writing which I quoted.

[BIL]

The Diablo 2 official reskin is doing bad things to my trigger zone. Some complain about the characters' faces, hair, clothes etc...

What bothers me the most? It looks like someone made the models based on playing Diablo 2 with their monitors set on widescreen, not knowing the game requires one to set it to 3:4. All the characters look very short and very thiCC around the waist line, when originally they all were pretty wasp-like in the torso area.

Play a game for a few thousand hours, and the silhouettes of your avatar kind of get burned into your brain. Even though this product isn't meant for me, I'm still going to #cancel it.

I was browsing TEH TUBE, and idly watched the trailer for the PS4's Arcade Archives Neo Geo: Metal Slug X, which as a hardened, cheeto dust-scarred veteran of the MVS cartridge, I can assure all Hard Gaymers is incredibly fucking accurate.

Like, if you offered me a million bucks to distinguish one from the other in a blind playtest, BUT I had to personally sniff Harvey Weinstein's gangrenous micro-pen0r if I was wrong, I would have to think long and hard about it.

Glanced at the commentariat only to see: "UGHHH THOSE BLACK COLUMNS ON THE SIDES OF THE SCREEN, YUUUCK, NO BUY LMAO"

...

Chances are that same numbnuts, or his little cousin who didn't know any better, was on the Diablo 2 remaster team.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think it's very obvious cancel culture not only exists but is pervasive. The whole past decade has been spent ostracizing - or attempting to ostracize - people for offensive statements, past or present.

John Wayne was the General in the Cancel Culture Wars, young man. And Duke was in it for SHIT REASONS too!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon#Reception

As far as "modern" Cancel Culture goes, I submit to you there are a few people on the Left who get their jollies out of Exposing Thoughtcrimes and The Media doesn't really have a handle on how to deal with that because the bigger they are, the harder the ratings shore up. But The Media also catered to Donald Trump's strategy of totalitarian news cycle domination even before he was President - them's the breaks. The average Leftist Thoughtcrime Policeperson isn't automatically awarded the clout you seem to assume they are. But being a prominent person and going to a Klan rally can still have consequences, regardless of whether it was a Twitter rando with pronouns in their bio pointing it out, or their mother made an unfortunate remark in front of the news cameras. The ordinary person probably doesn't have too much to worry about.

[BIL]

I can't forgive Teh Duke for BROWNIN UP (STOP BROWNIN AROUND ) to play a famous genocidal mass-rapist. What were they trying to say exactly? Then again, the same picture got everybody killed by cancer, like Stalker except shit.

I read the Magic Putter story, and the editor-in-chief's subsequent apology, and the stern rebuke from GLAAD - and I have to say, I broadly concur with the latter two. There was no need to bring up anything besides Dr. Voskonovitch's professional standing, or total lack thereof. Let alone in terms recalling mid-90s wronguns BUFFARO BILL and Crying Game. You know, the lady with the tadger. >_> REALTIME EDIT: OH JESUS FUCK GRAHAM LINEHAN, HE VERY SELF NOW I TOO AM THE NAZI

I always feel like, somebody's waaatchin' me ~ (AND I got no privacy)

Anyhow, yes - precision is of the utmost. I am reminded of this affair, "OPERATION NIP CLIP: PWN DEAN TAKAHASHI AND HE ALLIES." (God damn it. Out! OUT, GHOST OF BROWN JOHN WAYNE >_<) I joke of the ISM tactical suicide vest and its myriad charges, but tbh, the story is true! A Shumps Friend was obliterated in that exchange, when he went full Internet War Crime on one of the packages.

I am a big weenie who doesn't like seeing people suffer, I noticed this when I were four and this old granny rigged up her bath taps with towels because she couldn't reach them, TLDR, scalded herself and died. I cried and fucking cried. But even if you've no such weakness, or love a bit of the old ultraviolence, or are an outright sadist - when dealing CYBER JUSTICE to your scammer of choice, you would do well to stick to the relevant facts. EG: Celebrated Game Developer couldn't develop a fucking cat, and the Massachusetts Death Race with CMDR Stryker was a work*.

If for no other reason, so the inevitable accusations of you being Hitler Come Back To Life Again don't distract entirely from the emperor's sagging ass cheeks. "Hey, sup, the lady offering to take your apartment complex bid flunked outta trade school and killed a family and their unborn baby when her shitty building collapsed on them." "OMFG ITS HITLER QUICK CALL HIS BOSS" <- this is a decent outcome.

*Wu had not only acknowledged admin confirmation that "Stryker" was a long-running Kiwifarms parody of "core gamers," a year before deciding to cash in on the character (cf The Internet Ruined My Life) - the Commander was also in Tel Aviv at the time of the alleged incident, rescuing Tupac from the Rap Bunker.

Spoiler

Dumb bitch.

[Sengoku Strider]

I
Patterns that repeat in social hierarchies. You can't just ignore clear patterns of human behavior because they were tied to traditional constructs of elitism. These same behaviors appear in all kinds of groups, in all cultures in the world. From the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea, to the elitist art warehouse communities in major cities all around the world. (Anthropology really cuts through that pretty quickly).

Oh, I wouldn't deny the pervasiveness of hierarchy in human interaction at all. In fact I think the core problem all of humanity's utopian political projects have faced is that we're functionally unable to avoid it. Even in this (or any) discussion, in trying to decide what is "true" we're setting up epistemological hierarchies which unfortunately and usually invariably become tied to individual egos.

What I would do here is point to the work of Matt J. Rossano: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.103 ... 0.10.4.346 . He has done what I think is an excellent job outlining how religion is an evolutionary adaptation which has persisted because of how supremely useful it is to survival. What's unique about religion compared to other systems of ethics or understanding is that it supercedes any individual's value hierarchy within a given culture. This means that in those historical moments when states or other social structures fail, there's something outside of the realm of contingent every day human opinion which maintains cultural cohesion, like a failsafe system. Cultures with strong religious institutions throughout history have been far more resilient than those without.

I'd say it's why you've seen religion as such a prominent driving force in resistance to both transnationalism and capitalist imperialism. When America comes along and drops multiple screen-clearing bombs on your Middle Eastern country, its governing institutions and infrastructure, what else have you got to fall back on to rally around? Looking at the still fractured & ungovernable state of Afghanistan & Iraq even after 20 years of the finest in cutting-edge technocratic military colonialism, I think it's even safe to say it's winning.

So what's different about the culture of academically-inflected social justice which defines the current era in the West is that it doesn't quite function that way. It has in fact evolved to valourize the individual uber alles, and produced a heavily culturally atomized environment. And rather than stability, it's characterized by rapid flexibility to new evidence or social opinion. Whether this is for good or ill I'll set aside, but I do think it is a different sort of beast.

The average Leftist Thoughtcrime Policeperson isn't automatically awarded the clout you seem to assume they are.

I wouldn't say any given individual does have that much clout, the signal to noise ratio doesn't allow it, and it still requires a capacity to influence people who have to choose between a whole lot of other things to be outraged about. I also wouldn't say the efficacy of these cancel movements affects whether they exist or not (not sure if that's what you're saying here, but it's a critique I've certainly seen thrown around). For sure there are plenty of people who are insulated from it for one reason or another, or simply have enough social capital to weather the storm.

[Sengoku Strider]

I read the Magic Putter story, and the editor-in-chief's subsequent apology, and the stern rebuke from GLAAD - and I have to say, I broadly concur with the latter two. There was no need to bring up anything besides Dr. Voskonovitch's professional standing, or total lack thereof. Let alone in terms recalling mid-90s wronguns BUFFARO BILL and Crying Game.

Well, but that's just it. You just listed two key cultural bellwethers as to how the issue had been perceived in the popular imagination up until then. You can toss in Eddie Murphy's career being utterly derailed for being caught with a transgendered prostitute in '97 for good measure. Somehow in the time it took us to go from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 3, we'd transitioned from a world with zero (out) LGBTQ+ celebrities (or much of anything, really) in the mainstream, and Steve Gunderson being publicly outed by an opponent on the floor of Congress, to a world in which it was supposed to be universally understood as inexcusable to out a transgendered person.

I read the Dr. V article when it hit, and I remember it being more salacious than it is now, IIRC even implying that V had romantic relationships with some of the men the author tried to interview. I thought it was exploitative, but I didn't think it outside the realm of what I usually saw in mainstream reporting, which has always loved a sex scandal, the more unorthodox the better. In hindsight the critics were in the right, but mental health issues and suicides among transgendered populations were not widely understood at the time (I don't even know how much research had been done on the subject at the time). Heck, it was only in 2019 that transgender identities stopped being considered mental disorders by the World Health Organization.

[Mischief Maker]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned yet how CPAC (where Trump will be the keynote speaker) cancelled one of their speakers over a couple teeny tiny ragingly antisemitic tweets.

And the theme of this event?

Spoiler

[BIL]

I don't follow US politics much MM-san, pls give name and/or tweets, you know we are lazy on the internet :O As a down payment for your help, I will spot you this cracking photo of newly-imprisoned amateur rape extortionist Christopher "Crying Nazi" Cantwell No, you silly geese! He's not been cancelled, FFS! He done a crime, and now, he doing time! However, it were he words what done 'im in - always cases worth reading, imho!

(he'd better hope nobody enacts upon his cheeks what he threatened he would upon those of his hated foe's wife - in front of their children, even! he might become... Christopher CantGetWell! <- BOOM! prison rape AND HIV jokes right outta the gate, or as I call it: THE HBO DRAMA COMBO. oh you mad? you best hit that report button son, you know I a RuffNEC man on the shumping streets them, madder than Chuck Norris - one blow and yuh raasclat BUS IN TWO )

And just to retain sharp partisan lines in this veritable pressure cooker of ideological warfare, I will play the part of Literal Nazi forced to disown, with agonising difficulty, my fallen idol.

Aight, fuck it! Imma do it! Who it is this time?!

Spoiler

NAW! Thas my man!
("Thought I was your man...")
BUT THATS MY NIGGA!
("BUWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!")

Christopher "Rapeman I.R.L." Cantwell best snag some classic X - bork! bork! - and hook up with the brothers. Although I hear Aryans surprisingly lenient with even snitches (strength in numbers), and he hairline do resemble Himmler

Well, but that's just it. You just listed two key cultural bellwethers as to how the issue had been perceived in the popular imagination up until then. You can toss in Eddie Murphy's career being utterly derailed for being caught with a transgendered prostitute in '97 for good measure. Somehow in the time it took us to go from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 3, we'd transitioned from a world with zero (out) LGBTQ+ celebrities (or much of anything, really) in the mainstream, and Steve Gunderson being publicly outed by an opponent on the floor of Congress, to a world in which it was supposed to be universally understood as inexcusable to out a transgendered person.

Things have changed in mainstream Western culture, inarguably. I suppose Ace Ventura would make a nice Trans Horror Trifecta, though there's got to be at least a dozen more from the 90s alone. I remember seeing the Third Naked Gun in the cinema, and at the big reveal, I was so busy looking at the character's tits I completely missed the enormous bent cock (w/diving board "boing" Foley - obviously), as the place blew up.

Didn't Hugh Grant get "busted" similarly? (EDIT: Oh wow, this is fractal of fucked - you know when you pun, but it was a genuine accident? "Busted" scare quotes meaning "Look at this Literal Hitler enjoying consensual activities with another adult!" But unfortunately, ALSO conjuring the image of Notting Hill Man with a face-full of egg whites. All up in he nice floppy hair! I'm leaving this in - that's what he said, phwoaaar! ...born too late, Sengoku-san, I was born too late to make a killing writing shitty trans horror comedy )

This shift in mainstream sensibilities isn't what interests me. I would say "isn't what perturbs me," but I am scarcely perturbed by even the most outlandish excesses of left or right Western discourse. I will weather the reduced profile of surprise comic/horror cocks in blockbuster films, if that is the price to pay (disappearing existing, "problematic" works is another matter - I am against that on principle). At any rate, I go between the West and the Wild Wild West aka Great2B.STR8sville at my leisure.

Rather, it's the theoretical overreach, to the point that questioning *coof* privileged individuals about *anything at all* is branded dishonest at best, murderous at worst. In her tick-like manner, everyone's favourite award-winning indie game developer and GamerGate survivor has granted a test case par excellence.

~Serving Hot Loads Of Steaming Bullshit and Calling You Nazis For Declining To Dig In since 2014~

Spoiler

What happens when the cost of a sacred cow's scam is not a broken videogame, but a suspension bridge, or pacemaker, or airbag? I'm willing to charitably call these outlandish scenarios "overreach" and not "arriving at destination as intended, holy fuck knows for whose benefit" - though as noted, I've the liberty of Doc Browning back to the fifties, if it turns out this was all a plan not to have sex, but to make good-faith statements such as "X (arf! arf!) is a documented liar with none of the capabilities they profess to have, you have been warned" a hate crime. I hope it all works out, and none of you Anglomericano shumps friends get it given 2 you. I am very fond of you.

(Here's a REAL hate crime: Lumping my darling Juanita-chan in with The Other Two! ¦3 Juanita's not a scammer. She's a snake oil saleswoman, and a pretty capable one. While TOT siphons cash off gullible retards, Juanita gives her flock real, tangible amenities they crave - like shallow commentary on Batman's ass-cheeks, and Mandalorian bub-bub armour. You might as well chuck in Billy Graham. "But she dun deliver on time!" Bitch, you see the M2 Toaplan ports anywhere? You gonna throw them under the bus too? Grow up son.

Also, while TOT makes my testes pre-emptively retreat, like a cartel snuff film - I'd happily bring Juanita off a dozen times while diligently RegalSinning her little Eurasian pussy, AND share my Cheetos with her after - confirming the traditional sexual dynamic of provider/receiver, firmly established in the preceding rogering! - while enjoying pillow talk about Batman's realistically flexing ass-cheeks, in Sunsoft's 1989 walljumping masterclass. So cool it with the Armenian Holocaust denials, ok Pigs)

I'd hit this like Batman hits criminals in the face

Spoiler

I read the Dr. V article when it hit, and I remember it being more salacious than it is now, IIRC even implying that V had romantic relationships with some of the men the author tried to interview. I thought it was exploitative, but I didn't think it outside the realm of what I usually saw in mainstream reporting, which has always loved a sex scandal, the more unorthodox the better. In hindsight the critics were in the right, but mental health issues and suicides among transgendered populations were not widely understood at the time (I don't even know how much research had been done on the subject at the time). Heck, it was only in 2019 that transgender identities stopped being considered mental disorders by the World Health Organization.

I have always been grateful for the instruction that when litigating, excess is lethal. If it does not aid your case, leave it alone. Like any truism, this requires on-the-fly adaptations once it hits air, but it's served me well in my pointless, happy little life.

I think I've impugned the Dr. V writer, as (by his EIC's telling), his story's very pitch was "I took a wacky dive down the rabbithole of late-nite putter infomercials! You won't believe what happened next!!" In which case, I concur, salaciousness is to be expected. Much like a swift death at the hands of an unfamiliar coin-operated videogame, that is the business model (needless to say, a spectrum exists here).

It's not like he pitched a disciplined expose on the fabricated credentials of the scammer behind the Magic Putter. It sounds like those stories are a dime a dozen, going by what's written about the golf club industry in that article.

So my question becomes: "Did this story need to be told as-is?" And I'll give a reserved "No." Not because it's creepy tabloid schlock, although that's not a great look, but because it's red meat for certain very similar scammers' Patreons.

[Mischief Maker]

I don't follow US politics much MM-san, pls give name and/or tweets,

Here's the timestamped coverage on Wednesday's Majority Report (they haven't clipped it yet):

https://youtu.be/6y_czdyncaM?t=4254

Things have changed in mainstream Western culture, inarguably. I suppose Ace Ventura would make a nice Trans Horror Trifecta, though there's got to be at least a dozen more from the 90s alone. I remember seeing the Third Naked Gun in the cinema, and at the big reveal, I was so busy looking at the character's tits I completely missed the enormous bent cock (w/diving board "boing" Foley - obviously), as the place blew up.

It's really blowing up recently because the Harry Potter author just published her trans-panic detective novel. Lindsay Ellis had an interesting rundown of the history of tran-panic in entertainment in response.

[vol.2]

It's really blowing up recently because the Harry Potter author just published her trans-panic detective novel.

This is one of those things that you just can't make up. Something like life imitating comedy imitating life or what have you.

What really blows my mind isn't the book, it's the fact that she wrote and released the book after first making public comments about the matter years ahead of time. I can't remember the exact timeline of the thing, but JK basically said in a public press conference that "woman are people who have menstrual periods" and whatever else bookended that but you get the point.

So we get the idea that she's got some kind of very specific, conservative, pro-sis view about gender identity, but that's it for awhile. If she stopped there, it would have been a weird blip on the map that lost her some fans and then probably nothing. But no, she's got a mission, she actually writes a book where the main focus of the whole thing is a trans person who sneaks her way into women's lives and murders them.

I never really thought there was much strength to the philosophical side of the Putter books, but if there's one point it looked like JK repeatedly attempted to cram down our yaws, it was some variant of McCarthy era commie witch-hunt fever and how wrong that all was. I really feel like she just took all that and flushed it down the shitter.

I guess since she's richer than god, she just don't care what anybody thinks anymore and is writing whatever garbage comes out of the abyss. I just don't get the dire need to make this happen for her. Most crazy rich people who want to make a difference do stuff like cure measles or something (you know like bill gates). I'm not saying it's always successful, but at least it's something positive. What's the deal with spending all the cash on a witch hunt against trans people, or anything so negative like that?
Just so very disappointing.