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!
I hate that too. It seems to be especially prevalent in STEM bros who think that they’re experts in the social sciences despite having no more than a 101 level sociology or psychology course under their belts. They tend to favor evo psych. Of course.
The ads are placed by WordPress, not David. He said he’s going to have more control when the redesign goes into effect though. I remember a couple of months ago there was a gross transphobic clickbait about Caitlyn Jenner up there.
As a Psychology major, evolutionary psychology pisses me off – because so much of it is speculation and cherry-picking data in order to “back up” an idea like, say, rape was a mechanism to ensure that someone’s genes got passed on when they couldn’t find a consenting mate.
It doesn’t help that so much of it involves projecting very modern day attitudes onto past periods that, in comparison, are practically alien culturally. We already have historians who go through records and put past events into a context that modern people can understand, but even they keep in mind that people in the 1400’s are not the same as those in the 20th and 21st century. I sincerely doubt the people living in the highly religious and technologically primitive environment of Renaissance Italy are going to have a lot in common with largely secular people living in New York City who rely on technology in daily life.
It’s common with right-wing libertarians to use the “turn back the clock” argument and try to reinterpret some aspect of history as “evidence” (i.e. anecdote without a source) that capitalism totally works all the time…even when capitalism didn’t even exist yet as a concept. All while, of course, trying to white-wash or dismiss any of the current problems associated with capitalism. ‘Cause that’d just be too inconvenient to deal with.
Along with his genuine disdain of gamer culture (he even hated the term “gamer”, because he pointed out no one who watches is called a “movier” or who reads book is a “booker”), you’d think he’d see GamerGate as a bunch of entitled fanboys whose grievances are imagined and making videogames as an artistic medium look bad as a result.
The fact he pandered and then catered to their sensibilities made me lose all respect for him. It was kind of like finding out that the leader of some workers union going on strike was offered money from their former boss to shut up, and showed no hesitancy in taking it.
This review proves only two things:
1. That you have to be completely out of your entire mind to think The Sarkeesian Effect isn’t laughably idiotic garbage.
2. No, seriously, like 100% insane, like Charles Manson eating fruit loops on your front porch insane.
@gosuamakenatek
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you commenting on WHTM before… surely you should be aware of the policy regarding the use of ‘insane’, etc, in the comment policy. Please do not.
The thing that cracks me up the most about the Totally Rational Stem Male Evo Psych Logic is that it’s not even scientifically sound. It’s not falsifiable and it’s not testable. I’m also a psychology major who was always skeptical of this theory. Even before I knew how often it was used to bolster scientific racism and misogyny.
I think my favorite evo psych argument that I’ve seen is that only current beauty standards are correct because contemporary advertisers have figured out what people truly find beautiful. Ancient art doesn’t count. Renaissance art doesn’t count. Because the artists weren’t reflecting beauty standards in their own cultures, they were simply too unsophisticated to know what true female beauty is. I really don’t understand how you could argue that. For one thing, many of the beauty standards that exist today – such as the super skinny with large fake boobs and shaved pubic area look popularized by porn – weren’t even possible back in the paleo days. For another thing, beauty standards have changed within our own lifetimes. They aren’t static since the advent of mass media. In the 80’s flat butts were popular for women. The rise of hip hop culture from the 90’s on has popularized the booty. For men, facial hair constantly goes in and out of style.
It’s just so incredibly obvious that culture effects beauty standards. I truly don’t understand how someone can ever deny that.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
It’s probably the same kind of logic that tries to divorce art and entertainment from politics – erroneously postulating that the earlier should be put in a vacuous bubble, and bringing up the latter in relation would thus be “pretentious” or “pushing an agenda.” It wouldn’t be surprising if not one of these people ever wrote fiction or even understand how storytelling works. Or, if they did, it would be terrible or boring or highly derivative (maybe all three).
I’ve come across plenty of people who think advertising has no effect on you…only to then desire the products that were pushed on them, or internalize the attitudes reflected within a commercial they saw. It’s like in Futurama where Amy Wong claims that people advertising in their dreams doesn’t “actually do anything” – yet, barely seconds after saying that, she get anxious enough (along with everyone else) to want to go shopping.
People like to overestimate the concepts of individuality and free will, especially their own, and delude themselves into thinking they’re immune to biases of one kind or another by being aware of an advertisement’s intent. However, we’re all prone to bring programmed in some way. It’s why babies eventually learn to walk and speak a language – culture effects us similarly as teens and adults, when forming a more complicated identity, the way parents teach their child to function on a basic level.
While I think Mad Men is a bit overrated (Masters of Sex handles many similar topics far better, especially on race) – I appreciated that it’s stated, many times over, the idea of advertising isn’t to push a product but a feeling that ends up associated with it.
Why else would a company make commercials that are stylized to either feel inspirational or hip or free-spirited? Hell, that Ridley Scott ad for Apple computers doesn’t actually address what it is selling and why – it’s promoting the idea that buying Apple products would be “rebellious” in of itself. Taco Bell did that recently too, and I sincerely doubt they’re less of a corporate entity than McDonald’s is, that makes out eating their food is somehow “rebellious.”
Evo psych is filled with a bunch of really bizarre studies that misinterpret data that may or may not have been collected using a rigorous methodology. Sometimes it seems like the authors assumed that talking about cum will get them published.
@weirwoodtreehugger there are standards of beauty which seem permanent – but it’s all to do with symmetry. I think we’ve always found symmetrical faces beautiful.
What about rakish scars? Roguish crooked smiles?
Yeah, even the symmetry thing is exaggerated – it is true to a point, but faces that are too symmetrical quickly plunge down the Uncanny Valley.
If you know anything at all about the Northern Ireland conflict, you know this is just WRONG WRONG WRONG!! As in Donald Trump wrong.
This guy is quite clearly jacked up on speed or amphetamines or similar. He must also be living very deep in the Protestant Ghetto in Belfast to have an opinion that extreme. I know the US Army used to give their soldiers amphetamines to stay awake for days at a time (which explains a lot of UFO encounters in the 50s and 60s). I didn’t know the Brits did it too.
@WWTH:
STEM people weighing in on fields they don’t understand really annoys me too. I don’t even understand fields of physics other than my own, let alone engineering or chemistry; for me to believe I have entirely different fields of human endeavour sussed out would be completely absurd.
@rugbyyogi:
The only anti-symmetry fashion I can think of were those stupid dresses from Game of Thrones which left one boob unclothed. You know the ones which assume that everyone in their culture must be perky and under thirty in order to avoid it being very uncomfortable?
@hipsterminator:
I don’t know that much about Irish politics, so I’ll take your word about the Protestants in Belfast, but I’d be interested in hearing your reasons for diagnosing this fellow as “jacked up on speed” when “rectal-cranial impaction” is a perfectly valid, and far simpler diagnosis.
I many assume people gave up on the review after the 47th reference to Northern Ireland that is impenetrable to outsiders and missed the endless championing of “civilized speech”. Obviously the British lower class needs to escape the “pathological embarrassment” of their lowly origins and stop speaking like “council flat apes”, but the Queen’s English is imperiled in the Colonies as well.
Apparently von Karnstein had a bad run in with Canadian television in around 2006.
Like Kenneth Branagh, Owen has shed his regional accent shackles and achieved elocution excellence. (Branagh, the son of working class Protestants, was born and raised in Belfast, hence the mention.)
Because nothing says civilised (sic) quite like this:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZeTw0IYRebE/hqdefault.jpg
I really don’t want to add more Northern Irish political shenanigans to this thread, but “Protestant ghetto”? Really? Come on…
I’ll drop in one of my anecdotes about the joys of Ulster political sensibilities.
I had occasion to be doing some work in Belfast. This was for the military so I was trying to adopt a low profile.
I stayed in Carrickfergus at a very nice place called The Dobbins Inn. I later learned that was a corruption of De Boyne, so maybe that should have been a clue.
In order to keep my cover that I was just a tourist I went for a lot of walks. After one of them I returned to the bar and was quizzed by the locals.
I gave a full account of my visit to the local castle. They asked me what I most enjoyed about it.
“Well there was (various tales of Castle bits) but what I particularly loved was the pirate”
“Huh?”
“The statue of the pirate in front of the castle ”
“What are you talking about!”
“The statue, big fellow, floppy hat, boots, flintlock, sword etc. That pirate”
“THAT’S KING WILLIAM!!!!”
Ha! Fabulous 🙂
Describing William of Orange as a pirate may not be entirely far off the mark…
Uh, yeah: “In objective reality, Canada is one of the lesser of Her Majesty’s Dominions, less important that Belize, the Falklands and Fiji. This is evident in the fact that the BBC and The Financial Times rarely even mention Canada and do so with nowhere near the frequency that they mention Pakistan and India, two of Her Majesty’s other Dominions”.
India and Pakistan were not even separate until independence, and never were Dominions (in the Balfour sense), a term reserved for British territories that met a certain threshold of — what else? — whiteness (or at least a white elite, like South Africa) that British India never met. The term itself became obsolete in the fifties, with decolonization and the advent of the Commonwealth.
I just come from reading this thinking the guy is a troll. Or, given the name he’s taken for himself, one of Moldbug’s monarchically fixated minions. If that’s the case, I don’t want to delve deeper.
Seriously, what is with all those exclamation points? They make this garbage almost unreadable. I’m always surprised by how much such excessive use of exclamation points hurts my eyes. I would abridge the right to free speech just to prevent people from ending every sentence with an exclamation point.
Considering that William of Normandy basically won the English crown by killing Harold and taking his stuff…
William of Arrr-ange? Sorry. *gets coat*
TEP, I actually added all the exclamation marks, just to add a bit more surreality to it a. I mentioned this in the OP but a few people have missed that.