The reviews are in!
Well, at least one review is in.
In a 5000 word review essay that is perhaps too charitably described as “rambling,” military obsessed blogger Freiherr Karza von Karnstein explains why he loves The Sarkeesian Effect so much.
While his, er, argument is too convoluted for me to summarize in a brief blog post, I have taken the liberty of extracting some sentences from it that I think would work well as blurbs to use on The Sarkeesian Effect’s DVD cover and in other publicity efforts.
I have also taken the liberty of adding exclamation points to all of the possible blurbs below to give them a little extra zing!
Specifically and concisely, I do not see government participation in business and tariffs/sales taxes as irrevocably evil, but rather as tools that can be useful, and I do not share Rand’s disdain for sacrifice, a behaviour common to many aviation and racing pioneers and a behaviour common to winners of the Knight’s Cross, the Grand Cross of Valour, the Victoria Cross and the Medal of Honour!
Yes, that is an actual sentence from the “review.”
On another note, I disagree with Mr. Owen on the biological necessity of “manspreading!” He has argued that “manspreading” is necessitated by the fact of male anatomy! Males have dominated the ranks of airborne troops the world over since the 1930’s! Paratroopers are trained to keep their feet, calves and knees together when they are about to make contact with terra firma, since “manspreading” one’s lower limbs will lead to fracture of at least one lower limb on impact, a situation which tends to be prejudicial to the proper functioning of a paratrooper! Not all males need to manspread! Only airborne-unqualified/airborne-incapable males need to manspread!
That one might be a teensy bit long for a blurb, sorry!
Specifically, while most Englishmen, it seems, have surrendered their right to fly the Union Flag without a fight, this is definitely not true of the Loyal Protestants of Glasgow and the rest of Lowlands of Scotland (the sheep-molesting animists once referred to as “Highlanders” but properly referred to in 2015 as Teuchters are another story altogether) and of Ulster, all of who are consistently putting up a hell of a fight to maintain the Union and the Union Flag!
Ok, while that is an actual sentence from the review, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the movie, or Jordan Owen, or anything even vaguely related to either. I’ll try to do better with the next blurb.
In this regard, The Sarkeesian Effect is essentially a 2015 cinematic version of Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne, of the First Day of the Somme!
I don’t know what on earth that means, but it does at least mention the name of the film, which is good, right?
Mr. Owen was right to do onto the manosphere element of the production what King Hussein did to the PLO in 1970’s Black September!
Hmm. That might be a little confusing. Maybe we could shorten it to just:
Mr. Owen was right … !
Let’s try another:
Twenty years ago, I remember Neal Knox trying to instigate a coup against NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, a coup that was halted when Soldier of Fortune editor/publisher Colonel Robert K. Brown, an NRA board member, publicly declared his support for LaPierre and condemned Knox!
Sorry! That one, which is also from the review, doesn’t seem to have any obvious connection to the film, so let’s forget it.
The Manky Bheasts are people who, in the time of Jane Austen’s novels, were quite likely to be hanged for stealing chickens or shoes, who, in Downton Abbey, would be footmen and stable boys like Barrow who knew their place and knew to only be heard saying “Yes, milord, no, milord!”
Crap. That one might not work either. Not even the exclamation point I’ve added can save it.
In objective reality, Canada is one of the lesser of Her Majesty’s Dominions, less important that Belize, the Falklands and Fiji!
Well, that might not work as a blurb for The Sarkeesian Effect. But it could be put to good work by the publicity departments for Belize, the Falklands or Fiji!
Let me try one more:
Long story short, when the Manky Bheasts and other feminists/SJW’s launch their video Alpha Strikes against Mr. Owen and The Sarkeesian Effect, know that they are coming at this with an agenda and a sierra-load of biases, unlike those who confirmed the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle!
I think we’ve got it!
There’s your blurb, Jordan!
You’re welcome!
@the TB talk:
Yeah, I respect his opinion on a lot of things in gaming, because when he’s not talking about “fantasy misogyny” and the like, he does make a lot of sense, but he’s still a gross misogynist, and his wife claims to be a “humanist” while nodding along with whatever he says.
And apparently he has cancer, so I’m supposed to feel bad for saying that. But I don’t.
Holy run on sentences, Batman!
Also:
Can we throw “YOLO” in there? I know it’s an acronym, but it still fits.
Oh, and any word that’s been parsed through “man speak” to make things “manceptable” to the menz. Like “brogurt”.
Cancer doesn’t mean you aren’t an asshole. Christopher Hitchens had cancer.
TB’s in remission, which is good! It’s just that his opinions are bad.
TIL that language is fixed forever, like a fly in amber, and nobody is ever allowed to make up new words to describe things that exist but which did not previously have a word attached.
http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/The-more-you-know.png
Okay, now that I’ve finally tracked it down… This is the grossest thing TotalJackass has said:
He does claim that he “Apologised” for this, but that’s only if you consider “CONTEXT! CONTEXT!” repeated a thousand times to be an apology. I don’t. Especially since the only context in which this could possibly be okay is… Well, if you’re blockquoting what some #Gater dickweasel said. =P
Examples of toxic femininity could potentially be cliqueshness or gossiping. However if you really pay attention, you’ll notice that men do these things just much. It’s just pointed out more often when women do it.
And yes, Bain is a gator. He has dissembled about this point, claiming to be a “neutral” and offering to be a peacemaker; but if you look at the people he associates with, the talking points he’s raised, and the causes he’s discussed, then it’s one hundred percent gatorade.
Hell, the man had the indecency to slam Quinn for not entering a civilised dialogue with all her
harasserssock puppet harassers, and then tried to claim that mass sealioning isn’t harassment.Nobody deserves cancer, but Bain needs to speak less and, if possible, apologise more.
Gross. Gross. Gross gross gross.
http://i.imgur.com/kSPu6Ye.png
(Because there’s either an XKCD or a SMBC for everything.)
Didn’t expect so many to respond, thanks.
Now im definitely going to avoid him.
Bain’s reviews do tend to be pretty good. He goes into detail about what the games are like and gives his opinions of them without assigning a numerical score. But he needs to just shut up about political and cultural issues.
I can’t tell whether he’s been fooled by the more sociopathic gators or not. But he definitely knows how to sealion in comments sections.
My personal favourite man-product is DUDE STICK (the chapstick made for MEN).
http://www.dailydot.com/lol/dude-stick-manly-chapstick-kickstarter/
High-lights include:
I’m not 100% sure whether it is sincere or a parody of man-products, but either way I love it. Just a bunch of manly-men rubbing DUDE STICK all over their mouth to moisturise their lips.
@chronically lurki:
Oh God, those people are the worst…
I also had a buddy I used to hang out with who, once he started taking college courses as a business major, wouldn’t shut up about how awesome Milton Friedman was. One day, I asked him if any of his classes dealt with Keynesian economics – and he just looked puzzled as to what I was talking about. I mean, he tried to act like he did in order to save face, but it was obvious whoever was teaching him economics was a free market absolutist and leaving out anything that contradicted it.
This former friend, along with just parroting a lot of corporatist libertarian talking points, also expressed the rather heinous sentiment that the Confederacy should’ve won the Civil War. ‘Cause, y’know, “States’ rights” and all that nonsense…
RE: TotalBollocks
I can’t go near the guy’s work after hearing about his support of GamerGate, followed by disingenuous bullshit when it came to distancing himself from them while nonetheless supporting them.
Like, that quote about Anita Sarkeesian? How the fuck can I enjoy anything from a guy who doesn’t get what a death threat, but whose point of disbelief is that the person receiving them is alive? He could have the most well-made videogame reviews and it still doesn’t distract from the fact he’s another self-aggrandizing white guy who hides his bigotry under “objectivity.” It’s the same reason I can’t stand Ben “Yahtzee” Crowshaw – though, in that case, it’s worse because he used to bring up gender issues in games but abandons that in order to white-wash and falsely equate like every other GamerGate cretin.
Honestly, I don’t understand why someone like Jim Sterling – who is a genuinely enlightened videogame critic – is on friendly terms with either of them. If I was in his position, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves and never speak to me again.
I’ve been thinking about how nerd culture seems just so much worse than even mainstream society in terms of inherent misogyny, and I’ve decided to blame the 80s. There’s two key things that went down in that decade, and both have led to the culture that exists now.
1: The console game crash. Back when Intellivision and Atari were kings, video games were marketed as family fun–most ads featured boys and girls in relatively equal measure, and often included the parents. But poor quality control led to a state of complete market meltdown. By the time the dust cleared, Nintendo emerged as the dominant (almost sole) console maker–and their advertising was entirely aimed at young boys and male teenagers, exclusively. So the most enjoyable ‘in’ to the just-about-to-explode computer science field was set up as a No Gurrls Allowed He-Man Club at just the wrong moment.
2: Revenge of the Nerds. This movie… If you’re a ‘nerd’ and anywhere from 40 to 50 years old, you were the target for this film. It was a kind of clarion-call among my peers from that age. And how do the ‘nerds’ treat women? Creepshots, revenge porn and rape. All justified because the women are evil harpies, or because nerds are just so good at sex.
And yet, RotN is a film that will be named in almost any discussion of favorite films by older geeks, because it happened to appeal to the feelings of resentment that naturally come from being bullied.
Jim Sterling used to work for The Escapist (he quit over how it handled GamerGate). His contract might say he’s not allowed to publicly criticize other Escapist hosts (like Yahtzee) for a certain amount of time. It might be similar with TotalBiscuit (content networks and such) and he probably shares a considerable amount of subscribers with both of them. Yahtzee and TotalBiscuit are, unfortunately, two of the most popular gaming personalities on YouTube, and there would be backlash if you told your subscribers to boycott them.
ALL the really hard core far right Libertarians I know think they’re economics geniuses because they took some non-technical introductory economics class at a community college. None of them ended up majoring in something economics or finance related.
I think I found him. 🙂
@freemage Nintendo actually started off (through the early 1990’s) marketing video games to families and a relatively gender neutral audience. What really changed in the 1980’s was Reagan removed broadcast restrictions on TV programs and advertising directed at children. So in the 1970’s it was illegal to broadcast a show based on a line of children’s toys and there had to be a certain amount of educational programming on network TV, but Reagan told the FCC to allow networks to show whatever they thought they could make money with. Shows that traditionally had a more gender neutral audience, like Scooby-Doo, were also becoming less popular for various reasons.
The result was a bunch of low budget toy tie-in shows like Transformers, GI Joe, the Care Bears, M.A.S.K., He-Man, My Little Pony, etc. Since the toys were already marketed in a gender specific way, this led to more gender segregation in which TV shows kids watched. So, by the mid 1990’s, it made more sense to market video games specifically to older boys and make them increasingly violent and sexual to hook in a target demographic.
Never said anything about boycotting, just not associating with them on any level.
It just gets annoying when I’m watching one of Sterling’s “Let’s Play” videos and he brings up TotalBiscuit in some fashion.
It’s the same thing I hated about the recently-retired Confused Matthew’s latter-day reviews, because he kept quoting Yahtzee. The worst was when it was in relation to why Khan Noonien Singh wasn’t non-white in Star Trek Into Darkness – as if a white guy from Britain who lives in Australia, a country with a ton of racial problems, should be some kind of authority on representation in media. The guy’s argument as to why the issue of misogyny was “overblown” in videogames is because…of the covers of romance novels? Why should anyone take his opinion on anything, other than how much he did or did not enjoy a videogame, seriously?
I’m kind of tired of this idea that having expertise or being eloquent on an issue means that they should be considered experts on every other topic. It is why we get this ignorant, entitled bullshit from the likes of Richard Dawkins or the late Christopher Hitchens – who both, outside of expressing their support of atheism, come off like completely uninformed assholes.
Of course not, because economics and finances do not work the way Ayn Rand and her proponents make it out to be. Once they realize that the reality involves a lot of inevitable ties to government bureaucracy and how much people decrying “government regulation” get a ton of benefits because of that regulation. Doesn’t help that – for all the “government is evil” nonsense – many companies are often employed by either local, state, or federal government agencies.
Speaking of videogames: there’s no better example of why uber-individualistic capitalistic practices don’t work than Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights. I saw a Breitbart article that uses him as a source claiming that most developers support GamerGate, which is weird considering the guy is a complete failure as a creative director as well as just a businessman. He regularly lied to his staff, his business partners, and mismanaged certain projects so badly that the company had to shut down. Why? He had an overwhelming ego and, despite lacking the skills to make a videogame, still acted as if he knew better than anyone else.
Point is that he, Daikatana-era John Romero, and Brenden McNamara formerly of Team Bondi are perfect examples as to why the “rockstar” mindset in the business – even videogames – is actually counterproductive. When it only caters to the demands of a single individual regardless of how unsound their decisions are, everyone from the employees to the investors to the consumers get screwed.
Here’s the final blurb as a drumbeat: http://typedrummer.com/06q90b
You’re welcome.
When/why did comics start getting marketed to boys only? It wasn’t always that way.
http://40.media.tumblr.com/28a4687989aa9c95045951f577ac12cc/tumblr_mvotkcX6A01qz4txfo1_1280.jpg
@EJ (The Other One)
Yes.
And not only is talking about [X] rude, it’s dangerous. So to stay safe, you don’t notice that his dick in your ear is rude. Or even that it’s happening.
It’s a game of Psychic Twister.
Yahtzee’s weigh-in on GG was so disappointing. So disappointing. I haven’t hit the Escapist since. I actually felt betrayed, because the way he’d commented on gender in video games before made me confident that he would come down on the right side of it. And then he didn’t.
So disappointed.
Mr. Futrelle:
Why, oh why, are there ads for “People” magazine on your website?
I read only the “Wall Street Journal.” And the “National Review.” (I certainly miss that Bill Buckley. There was a mansplainer with class.)
I assure you that I have no wish–none at all–to read about Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kris, Kendall, Kylie, or even Caitlyn. Please see to this problem immediately.
Sincerely,
A Disgruntled Reader