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#MetalGate, we hardly knew ye! Despite the earnest effort of a small army of opportunists to stoke the fire – some of them #GamerGaters, others “dark enlightenment” neoreactionarires – the contrived controversy that was #MetalGate has already lost most of its steam. All you need to do is take a look at Topsy to see how quickly the hashtag burned itself out.
This is hardly surprising, given that the alleged controversy was little more than an utterly transparent attempt by ideological hacks to breathe life into the decaying corpse of #GamerGate and to drive traffic to terrible “dark enlightenment” blogs.
So before #MetalGate becomes a fading memory, I’d like to take a moment to highlight the efforts of one notable neoreactionary to turn the faux controversy into a war against “Social Justice Warriors” – and pump up the traffic to his struggling video game blog.
I’m talking, of course, about werewolf impersonator and woman-hating pickup guru Roosh Valizadeh. Roosh was late out of the gates in his attempt to capitalize on #GamerGate by launching his hilariously clueless video game blog Reaxxion. But with #MetalGate he moved more quickly, publishing three rabble-rousing posts on the subject in three days.
I mentioned one of them in my last post. But it’s the two he’s published on Reaxxion that are the real winners.
Yesterday, Reaxxion’s “ethics officer” Sam Roberts – yes, that is a thing – delivered an over-the-top rant warning metalheads that “enemies of metal are upon us.”
These alleged enemies? Social Justice Warriors, the all-purpose boogeyman that strikes terror in the hearts of #GamerGaters, Men’s Rights Activsts and neoreactionary werewolf PUAs alike. Roberts defined SJWs as
far-left weirdos with nothing going on in their life, who try to inject their toxic, tiresome political ideology into every field imaginable. They’ve taken over Atheism, Science Fiction Books, and they were poised to take over video games until #Gamergate started roundly thrashing them. Now, with what’s being called #Metalgate, we’re finding out that they want to take over heavy metal too. …
If these people get their way heavy metal will be neutered to the point where you could play it on a school bus
The horror!
After attacking two critics of metalhead douchebros – one of whom he describes as a “preening sissy” – Roberts ends with this rather comical call-to-arms:
If metalheads don’t want to end up neutralized and pussified, they’ll have to fight back. Gamergate shows the way here: if the media starts pushing a lousy band because its bassist has a vagina, mock them relentlessly. If a magazine starts hassling you like a schoolteacher for using naughty language, boycott them. Spread the word: if you’ve got twitter, use the hashtag #Metalgate. Don’t think [sic] The worst thing you can do is assume that somebody else will do your fighting for you. The enemies of metal have arisen, and it’s time to cut them down like dogs.
Appended to the article we find this embarrassing correction:
Update: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Kerry King as the frontman for Slayer. He is a guitarist. Reaxxion regrets the error.
Oops. Totally not metal, dude.
Reaxxion followed up this post with one today from irate #GamerGater Steve Alexander, who fantasized about a mythical alliance between gamers and metalheads that will defeat the SJW menace once and for all:
GamerGate is actively uniting liberals with conservatives under the umbrella of freedom of expression. But SJW’s don’t realize this, and have now attacked the metal crowd. They’ll soon find out that all their strategy will accomplish is to unite hardcore gamers and the metal crowd into a righteous mob.
We will learn from each other—gamers will bring their knowledge of leveraging social media and e-mail, and the metal crowd will bring their extreme energy and uninhibited expression. Together, marching in step, some wearing Converse while others wear steel toe boots, we will crush this censorship of our favorite mediums.
Huh. I guess gamers who are also metalheads will wear Converse on one foot and a steel-toed boot on the other?
Let me know how that goes.
I suggest shoes made from Lego would be more suitable.
#Heavensgategate, #sacredgategate, #twelfthgategate…
LOL – this could go on forever.
Oh man, Rhapsody. So pretentious. Their one album I had also seemed cliched.
@Falconer
There’s an argument to be made that the episode of misogyny has some interesting subtext, with regard to William Shatner, a male actor, cooing seductively at another male actor. I found it in an essay in the book Enterprise Zones, and it was definitely thought-provoking for me.
I don’t think that compensates for the misogyny, or the canon-breaking. I actually consider the canon-breaking to be worse, because one can intelligently discuss and deconstruct a show with misogynist canon. Star Trek canon, up to that point, had some misogyny problems (for one thing, there are no less than TWO episodes in the first season that have as their plot “literally anything is better than a woman being non-attractive to men”) but you can tell that it was trying. Then that one ep undoes all of the hard work the earlier episodes did. Infuriating.
Voyager is incredibly bad for the first two seasons, but you definitely shouldn’t skip them. The badness is of the hilarious variety, the kind of badness that just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. Then after the resolution of the summer cliffhanger at the beginning of season 3 it starts to get really, really good and it’s very sudden.
And next is #operagate!!! The ebil SJW’s want to change the plots to suit their feminist overlords! They will prevent us from watching Don Giovanni because he’s a PUA!!
And also they’ll try to get feeeeeemales to sing op…. wait…. they have been doing that for 300 years… hmmmmmmmmmmmm need to think this through…..
@Policy of Madness: Trek slash is arguably some of the oldest slash out there. The cooing certainly doesn’t balance out the “women are emotional and irrational.”
So Voyager grew the beard? Good to know. Took a little longer than Next Gen.
@Falconer (which is the name of a Swedish fantasy-metal band in itself!) – which album? That description sort of applies to all of them 🙂
@Falconer
Yeah, I know, but slash in zines is different from slash on-screen. Not that this was actually slash, but it was a bizarre exchange involving two male actors, and I doubt it was even intentional. It’s the unintentional messages that are, to me, the most interesting. No, it doesn’t balance the episode as a whole, but then again nothing could and I have to find my peace somewhere. LOL
Voyager does, indeed, grow a beard. By coincidence, Kate Mulgrew changed her hair style around the same time, but it really comes when the series finally ditches the incredibly boring and inexplicably-recurring antagonists from the first and second seasons. That’s not to say there are no problems after that. For instance, I started to create a drinking game where you take a drink when the Voyager is at impulse for no reason, or when the ship runs into something from the Alpha Quadrant, but I never implemented it because I would have killed myself.
@davidknewton:
I think it was called something like Dragonfire? Dragonflame? Something like that.
@Policy of Madness:
Like those two Ferengi from a Next Gen episode that was years old at that point.
Behold! We are Ferengi! We bring you business innovations and underboob!
http://www.treknologic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/falseprofits.jpg
Wow the resolution on that is awful. Sorry!
I think that was my first underboob viewing experience. It’s gotten a lot more common, seems like, nowadays.
No, the Ferengi at least made sense. It had been previously established that they had been marooned in the neighborhood. I’m talking about just random Alpha Quadrant shit, like human colonies. There’s always some bullshit explanation, usually The Borg Did It, but that’s like saying God did it.
I… oh, wow. Okay. Why would the Borg NOT assimilate anyone?
The Borg are mercilessly retconned in Voyager. It’s one of the series’ least endearing qualities. I don’t think that sinks the series (the series is fantastic) but whenever the Borg appear on-screen prepare to forget everything you thought you knew about them.
WWPBD?
(What would Pat Boone do?)
Wrap himself in the flag and denounce the left as anti-American? That’s what he’s been up to lately.
My wife and son are big sci-fi fans, but they’ve never been able to infect me. As a failed novelist, it always irks me at how they constantly solve plot problems by pulling something out of their asses. I understand that you have to accept certain impossible concepts to make interstellar travel even possible. You have to accept that it is possible to travel above the speed of light, that somehow a space vehicle will be able to carry or find basically unlimited energy sources and repair parts or materials and machines to make them, and that alien species will be able to communicate in some form that can be understood and produced by humans (for TV & movies, of course, they all have to be able to speak and understand English). To me, one of the most interesting parts of storytelling (books, movies, whatever) is how you create character by putting people into interesting, challenging situations. But when you combine a TV series and lazy or unskilled writers, you tend to get Alpha quadrant thingies whenever they run into a plot problem — the modern version of the deus ex machina.
As an SJW, I found the treatment of Ferengi society interesting, and I was willing to close my eyes to the question of where they come from — temporarily at least. But the writers need to come up with constant interesting character development without relying on a succession of contra-scientific gee-whiz plot devices.
“Wrap himself in the flag and denounce the left as anti-American? That’s what he’s been up to lately.”
If by “lately” you mean “at least the last 50 years.”:
@GrumpyOldMan: “The last 50 years” is lately when one of our political parties hasn’t let go of the 60s yet.
In light of what you want out of a story, I bet you won’t like modern Doctor Who.
I did watch TNG on Netflix within the last year or two, and by the end it just seemed like all they had to do to resolve the plot was figure out which of their doodads Geordi had to divert power to, and sit back and watch.
So far DS9 has mostly been about people.
Power of the Dragonflame 🙂 Complete with a video that I absolutely promise you is the genuine music video and not just someone on the Internet making fun of them with Windows Movie Maker.
This has proved quite a fun thread after all, considering the distressing source of it. Thanks, everyone 🙂
“But SJW’s…have now attacked the metal crowd.”
Right. They’ve attacked metal by listening to it and liking it and buying it and wanting to talk about it. That’s something the metal crowd is certain never to forgive. Oh, wait. You mean the metalheads don’t mind? Oops…
All fiction can fall into this trap, not just speculative fiction. How did it come about that Character B and Character C knew Piece Of Info X, or had Skill Y, that was necessary to resolve the plot? How did it come about that Character A was in a certain place in order to kickstart the plot? All of that is pulled out of the author’s ass, regardless of the setting of the story. Good writers are able to make this seem natural and organic, and poor writers are not, and the genre is only tangentially relevant.
There’s no such thing.
Speaking of Star Trek, sjw and women I just want to point out that Davis Aurini has a YouTube video called “Sluts, Whores and the Economy Of Star Trek”.
It’s…something.
If we’re all sluts and whores, why is he trying so hard to get with us, and failing?
@Grumpyoldman
Deus ex machina is one of my pet peeves. They get away with it more often in F&SF than in other genres but it is much too common.
The writing in the new WHO is abysmal. An occasional bright spot surrounded by drek with brilliant acting. What a strange thing is the BBC.
@Fibinachi
I bet he says something about the Federation economy being Marxist, or socialist, or communist, or some other -ist that he doesn’t understand, because: people don’t carry money. Am I right?