With all the trouble and uncertainty in the world today, it’s sort of heartening to remember that there are still a few things that we can count on to remain the same, forever.
Like reactionary doofuses yelling pointlessly about nothing on YouTube for hours on end. And when they’re not yelling about nothing they’re yelling about each other. They’re basically internet versions of free energy machines, able to generate endless drama without any input from the outside world.
The latest bit of drama? Reactionary YouTube blatherer and Sarkeesian-botherer Sargon of Akkad — who is literally just a dude named Carl from Swindon — managed to get himself temporarily banned from Twitter for Tweeting gay porn at some of his fans who just happened to be Nazis.
Which raises the question: if you don’t want Nazi fans, maybe instead of sending them porn you should stop saying so many things that Nazis like to hear in the first place? Also, weren’t you recently bragging about the endorsement you got from the Nazi-esque thugs of the English Defence League?
These are a few of the pertinent questions raised in the following video on the controversy, put together by the artist known as Hbomberguy, an expert if somewhat hyperactive skewerer of self-important YouTube pontificators. (You may recall his classic takedown of The Sarkeesian Effect.)
Anyway, enjoy. It’s a nice respite from watching Trump destroy the world. Also COMULISTS!!!!!!
I will say I actually enjoy GameGrumps now that Dan Avidan’s there. He’s a really chill, nice person, and Arin’s really cool too.
I didn’t get into them until long after Jon left though.
As for Sagon getting banned: You knew what the fuck you were getting into when you signed up for twitter. You know the rules, and so do I.
If you break those rules, you can’t use twitter’s resources or their platform. It’s not their fault that you got banned, it’s your own. You broke a contract you agreed to when you signed up for the service. They’re well within their rights to ban you.
(but srsly twitter really needs to grow a fucking spine and deal with all these nazi shitheads and start applying their rules evenly across the board, so I can somewhat sympathize with that in that he’s another in a long line of twitter caring more about nazis than their other users, but at the same time, H. had a point in that he should really re-examine why his views attract so many nazi shitheads, but that would involve admitting that he could be wrong, and he’s apparently allergic.)
@PeeVee
Tomi Lahren! Yes, that was it, thank you. Though I guess I really could have just Googled it.
Sargon can still buy a Big Mac so I have no idea what he’s complaining about.
@numerobis
GamerGate was about using Anita Sarkeesian to turn gamerbros against feminism and broader progressive social movements. It’s a classic tactic of finding a population to engage on a political issue.
The feminist academic literature on video games includes concerns about the connection between violent media consumption and aggressive behavior, which some people think is a women’s issue because it could relate to domestic violence. At this point, it seems the evidence is strong enough that most researchers think you shouldn’t let your kids play M-rated games (or, at least, you should carefully choose which violent games they play, and violent games should be rare compared to nonviolent games).
That’s all a matter for debate, but GamerGate’s “leaders” promise that they can prevent that debate by moving discourse further to the Right.
Right. The Serengeti Strategy refers to finding *one* individual to attack, with the immediate goal of:
(a) tearing one person to shreds over whatever minor errors they may have committed, thereby discrediting the enterprise (climate change research; feminist critique of games; etc),
(b) scaring anyone else away who might want to push that enterprise forward.
Part (a) is to gain followers; part (b) is essentially terrorism.
Eventually their chew-toy goes a bit stale, so they choose a new chew-toy.
How can they not see that this is “cooties” for adults? “I will send them male people having sex like it a bad thing and they will feel icky”. That’s all it summarizes to! I shouldn’t be surprised that this stuff reduces to behavior that we see in very young children*. Those simple cognitive functions are still there doing what they do but in the context of more recent cognitive abilities. I find it disappointing but there is truth in the characterizations of childishness.
My parents tried that on me at least three times over the last week.
One example.Talking about “the reality of abortion” in really vague overwrought language while being completely unable to be explicit about direct about what was awful in graphic detail. I have anatomy texts that use thin sections of infant brains and I’ve studied 4chan for social patterns, I can take it (I told them as much). Why does it remind me of a cat inching towards something while pretending that it’s not?
*They have also used the “I’m not touching you” game by doing the whole “I would answer this but…” followed by some claim of moral superiority.
The group of people who go on protests at my university had a sign I used to love that read “I’d stop being vegan to eat the rich.” As a vegetarian, I echo this message re: President Tango.
@WWTH
That poster is amazing. If you don’t mind, I think I might print it off and stick it on my wall with my actual communist propaganda poster.
Relevant picture is relevant: (No, I was NOT Google image searching communist cats to print out and put on my wall, how very dare you make such an accusation.)
http://media.themalaymailonline.com/uploads/articles/Is+Your+Cat+a+Communist.+Always+be+mindful+and+vigilant_3a988b_3804688_1809.jpg
@Some Sort of Username
Ah, that was indeed it. Thank you.
I wish I could enjoy GameGrumps and other “people talking about stuff while playing video games” formats now that I can barely get an opportunity to play video games myself, but I guess I get too easily invested in listening to people being funny and dorky and goofy and nerdy to have my heart broken by them suddenly going on a sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic rant. It happens way too often for my liking in all contexts, but there’s something insidious about the gamer boy culture in particular.
*Sigh*
Holy shit this is exciting! XD They are my favorite Let’s Play webseries. I often listen to their show when I’m trying to relax enough to fall asleep (I suffer from unpleasant and unrelenting intrusive thoughts. It’s probably something I should really seek out the assistance of a good cognitive therapist on, because it’s been out of hand for months now)
Anyway, I’m hypersensitive to sexism, racism, and most forms of general unpleasantness towards large swaths of people and GameGrumps is one of the only shows that rarely steps on my toes. I have heard Dan Avidan make some irritating comments on how over-sensitive Millennials are, but on those rare occasions where he starts sliding off the rails Arin is very good about redirecting the conversation, and Danny is sensitive enough to pick up on subtle cues and allow for a change in subject.
And I can’t help but love Danny in spite of his flaws, because he is such a sweet-tempered, easy-going person with a lot of empathy for marginalized groups. Much of his ignorance seems to stem from the fact he’s in his late thirties and doesn’t keep up much with progressive dialogue concerning various issues. Arin is cool because he prefers to play female characters (especially female characters who wear pink) when the option is available to him and readily recognizes and makes fun of the insulting tropes that are so often coded into female characters.
I did start watching the show when JonTron was still around, but I didn’t miss him much when he left. I didn’t find his particular brand of loud, obnoxious freak-outs for comic effect to be all that entertaining (even as I live for those moments where Arin has a videogame-related rage tantrum, but Arin paces them better. Compared to JonTron, he came across as very calm). And now that Jon has become part of the alt-right and has had a few twitter meltdowns, I avoid all content by him like a plague. Also, this apparently happened. http://voxxyvoo.tumblr.com/post/156484573209
With that bit of excitable fan gushing out of the way, I’m going to go back to the pattern I’m making for my next gen of knitted pussyhats that will say “Don’t Grab Pussy”. I just finished roughly mapping out the text on graph paper, and the next step is knitting another pussyhat so that I can compare the graph lay-out to the way the actual knitted stitches would fall on a physical hat.
Once I have a workable, clearly written pattern for the text I’ll make sure to share here!
numerobis said:
This put me in mind of a quote posted in the classroom of one of my high school Social Studies (late 70s, don’t know what we call that now) teachers that said: “Murder is illegal, writing about it is not. Sex is not illegal, writing about it is.”
@Paradoxical Intention:
Barry Kliban did a picture once of two cats in padded coats with one wearing the classic hat with a star on the front. One of them said ‘Mao’. The other was looking at a trail of droppings in front of a mousehole in the wall, and said ‘Mousie Dung’.
(Let’s see if this works, twitpic does some weird stuff.)
Twitter doesn’t care about their users. You’re not a consumer, you’re the product. It’s the advertisers who buy your eyeballs and data that are their consumers – that’s why Twitter only moves against shitheads when they get bad PR from it, because that might make their real market demographics walk out.
Not gonna lie… I think it’s damn hilarious that Sargon has been tweeting porn at Nazis.
It took him a little while to notice all of them congregating inside his fanbase though. Or perhaps now that that they’ve become far more outspoken, he has no choice but to notice/address it. :/