A few days ago, racist skeezeball fantasy author Vox Day noted on his blog just how nice it would be to have a handy public list of all the people he hates. Sorry, a list of “confirmed SJWs.” It would be a handy resource, he said, both for SJWs looking to hire other SJWs, as well as “for those who wish to keep their organizations free of the creatures.”
You can probably figure out which of these two reasons is the real reason for the list, and which is the utterly transparent fig leaf.
Vox helpfully suggested that anyone seeking to make such a list could start with the names of those who signed a petition condemning a scheduled speech by programmer Curtis Yarvin at the upcoming LambdaConf, on the grounds that Yarvin, also known as Mencius Moldbug, is not only a programmer but is also “a founder and advocate of an ideological movement that promotes racist bigotry,” not to mention “an apologist for slavery.”
No sooner had Vox made this suggestion than a such a list appeared, in the form of a Wiki (archived here), featuring the petition-signers and a handful of other alleged SJWs. Vox claims not to have a direct hand in what the site rather misleadingly calls The Complete List of SJWs, attributing its sudden appearance to his followers — or, as he likes to call them, the “Dread Ilk.” But this is clearly the beginnings of the enemies list of Vox’s dreams.
So how does one get on such a list? The listmakers themselves don’t seem altogether sure. At first, they declare that
[t]he SJWs listed should be on the record supporting censorship of some kind (no platforming, government censorship, or disemploying people). This is not a place for grudges.
In the wiki’s FAQ, they reiterate this point, saying they will only include those who have
publicly called for someone to be fired, disinvited, shunned, no-platformed, or otherwise punished or silenced for refusing to submit to the SJW Narrative. The particular incident is linked to your name in the list.
Immediately after this pronouncement, though, they declare that the list will also contain the names of those who have declared themselves SJWs, as well as journalists who’ve published “articles that support the SJW Narrative” — whatever that means — “or an SJW attack campaign.”
So far they have not been following these rules very carefully. Some names appear on the list with no information given about their alleged “incidents.” Others are included, well, apparently just because Vox and his Ilk don’t like them.
The list also maliciously deadnames several trans women, attempting to justify this despicable policy by suggesting that these women are using “pseudonyms in place of their actual, legal names in an attempt to obfuscate their identities.” This is obvious nonsense.
So who makes the list?
The vast majority of the names on the list are simply people who signed the LamdaConf petition.
But there are some other, more recognizable, names. John Scalzi, a science fiction author who has long been Vox’s greatest nemesis, makes the list, naturally; the listmakers blame him for Vox’s expulsion from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, though it is perhaps more accurate to say that Vox was expelled for being a huge racist dickhead.
Cartoonist and memoirist Alison Bechdel is included on the list because, 30 years ago, she drew a comic strip in which one of the characters said she only went to movies that featured at least two female characters who talk to one another, at least once, about something other than a man.
This comic strip is the origin of what’s now called the “Bechdel Test,” but Bechdel herself never publicized the “test,” the idea for which (as she freely admits) she got from a friend.
Actor, writer and geek icon Will Wheaton makes the list for Tweeting comments defending actress and Geek and Sundry founder Felicia Day, a friend of his, after a Destructoid writer, apparently drunk, made some ignorant and misogynistic remarks about her. The writer was fired, as drunken dickheads who do stupid things when they’re drunk sometimes are. “This tweet exemplifies [Wheaton’s] SJW status,” the listmakers sniff.
Writer, and former Jeopardy champion Arthur Chu is on the list because he jokingly referred to himself as “a social justice stormtrooper” and because “he is alleged to have been responsible for the bomb threat that disrupted the #GamerGate meetup in Washington D.C. on May 1, 2015.”
That’s right” “he is alleged.” There is absolutely no evidence, or even a good reason to suspect, that he had anything whatsoever to do with the alleged bomb threat. Gamergaters essentially decided to accuse him of making the threat because they don’t like him. And that’s good enough for Vox’s listmakers!
And then there’s Carpenter Brut, a composer included on the list because he objected to his music being used without permission in a virulently anti-refugee “documentary” titled “With Open Gates: The Forced Collective Suicide of European Nations.”
This 20-minute propaganda film is essentially a collection of out-of-context video clips edited together into a melodramatic montage by an 8chan user who debuted it by posting it to the notoriously racist /pol/ board; it’s been pretty thoroughly debunked by, among others, Snopes.com (which declared it “deceptive”) and Vice (which described it as “a mishmash of comically fake and out-of-context footage, bad subtitling and Islamophobic propaganda”).
Brut objected to having his music in this piece of garbage, so now he’s on the list.
Perhaps the list should be renamed The Complete List of Really Pretty Decent People Who’ve Offended Vox Day by Being Really Pretty Decent.
Honestly, the worst thing about post modernism that I’ve encountered is that a lot of people who subscribe to it seem to be utterly INCAPABLE of enjoying anything unironically.
And on deconstruction works. They’re not always good. Take Watchmen vs Marshall Law. Both are deconstructions of super heroes. But whereas Watchmen is actually an interesting, developed world with 3 dimensional characters that explores what kind of person could actually BE a super hero in real life, Marshall Law is a boring, shallow piece of crap that spend so much time yelling at the audience for liking super heroes that it forgets to actually fucking say anything.
ETA:Also, Some people just prefer to have a beard on their face. My face looks really stupid and doughy without it, so I get self conscious when I don’t have it.
“Deadnaming.” So there’s a term for that.
Speaking of, how do I talk to people about Chelsea Manning, when most people only know her for her Pentagon whistleblowing pre-transition?
@Dustinzeit
“Right” libertarianism is the only libertarianism; “libertarian-socialism” and its assorted Bakunin/Chomsky-flavored variants are bullshit, so far as I’m concerned.
Libertarianism can only be a broad spectrum, by definition. Each to their own.
Lots of left-libertarians out there. Kropotkin wasn’t the first to point out that mutual cooperation was enlightened self-interest. Far at the right end of the spectrum, there are the lone, self-regarding ego-maniacs, like Anders Breivik. Donald Trump/Drumpf, for an example, is obviously a bit more towards the right-end of the spectrum. Hopefully not as far as Breivik, though.
We’ll have to wait to see if he gets his hands on the ‘nuclear football’ to find out.
Where do you think you fit along that spectrum?
@ banned
The examples I’ve seen suggest something along the lines of “Chelsea Manning, formerly known as….” Or “Caitlyn Jenner (born Bruce Jenner).”
bluecat: The name on the fool’s official document’s is Theodore Beale. I make a point of not using his nom de plume because it’s just so fucking pompous.
ehh, I have no objection to calling him Vox Day if he wants to be called that – he uses that name everywhere, it’s the pen name he now works under, etc. Calling people what they want to be called is I think a good general default. My entire objection to him is what he says and does.
@Lkeke35:
I figure it’s like my daughter, who had dessert after dinner last night and then wanted a piece of chocolate. No matter how much we explained that she just had chocolate, she kept asking, and when we finally just flat-out said no, she started screaming and told us that we’re mean.
These guys think that they get to do anything, and if anyone else stands up and says, no, this is my space and you can’t use it for your tantrums, they get all up in arms.
@Dalillama
I saw someone on Tumblr actually type the words “knowledge cannot exist in a context of censorship.”
@David Gerard
I just…wow. “We can’t do something that would make women, people of color, LGBTQIA, etc. feel safer because it might upset the cishet white men!”
@FrickleFrackle
I must be hard of thinking, or lack the requisite attention span, because I’ve played MGS 1, 2, and 3, and stalled out on 4, and I have no idea what’s going on with anything beginning as early as “which one of you creche mates has the recessive genes.”
I’m an Xbox peasant so have only played MGS 2,3, V, and MGR. I focus on the cool stuff but I don’t mind the smart stuff. One of my favorite scenes is when Snake gets his 1911 Custom in MGS3, but holy shit the scenes at the end of 2 are so damn effective IMO. I think it gets a bit long in the tooth, but it still does a good job of critiquing the player IMO.
My thoughts on postmodernism (or at least how it can go awry) can be summed up with this review of 12 Oz. Mouse. It’s only about 10 minutes long, and I think it’s overall a good analysis.
Rotgut sucks.
Good beer is frikkin’ lovely.
Sincerely,
Someone who’d love to enjoy fine wine but gets an insta-headache from most reds. No – in my case, it’s not caused by histamines, tyramines, or sulfites and neither B6 nor allergy meds do a thing.
And it’s not down to amount – I’ve literally gotten a crushing headache half a restaurant serving into a Cabernet.
If your beard is your identity, then yes, it sucks. I have mine because it keeps life easier and my wife likes it.
Batman is cool when people remember that there’s more to him than Frank fssking Miller. He sucks when he’s reduced to that one interpretation.
Bacon is tasty, but if you’re using it to taunt someone for being a vegetarian, please feel free to go step on a Lego.
Also, please–no ablist slurs (lame, in this case), per the comments policy, thanks.
Finally, more broadly: Yes, most superheros are pretty silly. They’re empowerment wish-fulfillment escapist fantasy. You have to be willing to buy into the general ideas of the setting in order to accept them–chief among them being the idea that vigilantism can be a good thing, and that the best way to use a superpower is to stop street crime.
(Note that, intriguingly enough, Marvel’s cinematic universe largely eschews this idea–the superheroes in the movies mostly operate against ‘cosmic threats’ or act in self-defense against attackers with a grudge, rather than acting as a police force replacement. This makes the premise of the upcoming Civil War movies considerably different than the comics, where there are literally scores of people running around in masks and spandex busting gangbangers.)
I’m sure the “good” men and women at One Million Moms who spend a LOT of time trying to get people disemployed and no platformed are going to make this SJW list. Right, Vox?
Ew ew ew to that Guardian article. It even starts off okay before taking its hard right turn into asshole-ville. But it pointedly dismisses horrible redpill shit as “blowing off steam”, uncritically parrots that Morpheus fellow’s salespitch (Hey, he’s in an LTR, so that must mean he’s an okay guy!), and uses the whole Ghomeshi cluster-badword to throw as much ambiguity and obfuscation as possible into a situation that has precisely nothing to do with him in the first place. He bounces around from one tired cliche (All men in their twenties talk about breasts in private settings because they’re fixated on it!) to another (Having a daughter turns those boob-obsessed twenty-somethings into feminist thirty-somethings!) and wraps up the turd sandwich by admonishing everyone for not being more supportive and understanding of those poor sex-obsessed boys. Because they can’t be held responsible for their self-actualization.
Also, that comment about his friend thinking about his wife’s cleavage while she’s firing him was a little… specific.
@Prof Snug,
I didn’t get the same thing out of that article! I got a lot of the obfustification and irritating boys-will-be-boys, for sure, but the takeaway I got was that these men need to broaden their horizons and stop acting like sulking teenagers. Get some perspective and treat people like human beings. That’s also how I interpreted the authors’ perspective on the Morpheus dood.
I tend to read most things with an optimistic lens, though, so that may just be me.
Arthur Chu is a heck of a lot more than just somebody who called himself an SJST. He has used his Jeopardy fame to bring attention to lots of injustices that the anti-SJW crowd believes to be non-existent.
https://www.salon.com/writer/arthur_chu_2/
I believe the following post was one of his first pieces of SJW writing (and the first thing I read by him). No doubt this brought him to the attention of the anti-SJWs.
https://www.salon.com/2014/10/30/that_creepy_guy_from_the_internet_how_gamergate_shattered_faith_in_the_geek_community/
Check it out. Good stuff.
Wouldn’t go as far as to say, ‘asshole-ville,’ but I did find it a bit sus. Just a bit too easy to brush off the whole, sometimes truly ‘vile’, red pill scene as, ‘just blowing off steam.’ Plus the whole, ‘Ghomeshi was a feminist, so maybe red-pillers aren’t really so bad‘ defence, is an irrelevant, relitavisering, straw-man argument and half.
Just a bit too pat and yet another example of, The Grauniad, turning to to some pretty dubious click-baitery, these days.
Apologies to GIlbert and Sullivian “As someday an victim must be found, I got an little list, an little list of people of who won’t be missed. These perpetual SJWs supporters. all the cucks, Anita Seekrsit and Briana Wu, these people won’t be missed, oh they won’t be missed”
I am working on a groundbreaking paper laying out how Beards destroyed the Roman Empire and are a threat to higher civilization itself.
But I don’t judge … so if you and your wife are ok with you being a mindless trend-following zombie & enemy of all that is good an decent , then by all means continue …..
I’m just sad I’ve not made the list.
@ lkeke
In all fairness if there’s one group famous for silencing people it’s librarians. 😉
@Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III
I want to defend Batman and Superman FROM Zack Snyder.
On the topic of Vox Day, here’s a little gem of his post a FSTDT a few days ago
http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=117889
“If the definition of rape is stretched so far to include women who have not given consent, then I am absolutely a serial rapist. So, too, is every man I know. And if that makes me a rapist, I shall endeavor to somehow survive with that upon my conscience.”
@FrickleFrackle
People were initially disliking MGS2 because they wanted to play as Snake, and they got Raiden (to be fair, he wasn’t supposed to be constantly whiny, his american VA didn’t really get the memo on that one). But that was the entire point, as MGS2 being a post-modern deconstruction of the genre. The bait and switch was entirely deliberate, but went way over people’s heads. Nowadays, MGS2 has been more or less vindicated as people now ‘get it’.
Personally I’ve always loved it, “Raiden, turn the game console off right now” is one of my favorite moments in video games. I had just played that game for about 3 hours straight when I got to that part. Then ‘colonel’ says “honestly though, you’ve played the game for a long time, don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” and I was like “shit, he’s got a point”, turned off my PS2 and just sat there contemplating what just happened.
Although MGS3 is definitely my favorite from the series, MGS2 had a profound influence on me for showing just how powerful a video game story could be and the lengths to which it can mess with and surprise the player.
Trend-following? I’ve had a beard since… Hrm. Senior year of high school, so… 1987. Those zombies are just trying to be as cool as me.