By David Futrelle
On February 10, Twitter was filled with gloating tweets from assorted amateur and professional far-right culture warriors, all happily celebrating the poor showing of the film Birds of Prey, which they had collectively decided was a terrible insult to comic book fans and men in general because Harley Quinn’s outfit in the film wasn’t as sexy as theoretically possible. This is the state of the culture war now.
Then someone on Twitter, for some reason, decided to stir the pot a little bit, trollishly trying to gin up some sort of phony conflict between Birds of Prey and the not-yet-released Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
Then a couple others retweeted this tweet as if it were their own. Then a couple more did the same, and so on and so forth, and before long the #Birds of Prey was filled with dozens of identical tweets.
People began riffing on the original, with the riffs getting more and more absurd with each new incarnation.
It was obvious from the start that this whole “campaign” against Sonic was what is commonly known as “a joke,” and not intended to be taken seriously by anyone.
Indeed, the first Tweets were tweeted out four days before the Sonic movie even opened, and anyone who took a second to look at the original tweeter’s account would have seen that she’s a hardcore Animal Crossing stan who mostly posts jokes and who (as far as I can tell from scrolling through several days of tweets) never posts anything having to do with feminism.
But the right-wing outrage merchants took one look at the tweets and saw a great opportunity. And so the videos began the appear, loudly and indignantly decrying this supposed feminist campaign to destroy the Sonic Movie with evil feminist lies.
There were a lot of these videos, with the most popular, from the (literally) Nazi-adjacent Tim Pool, boasting nearly 190,000 views (so far); several others have seen tens of thousands of views.
I have not, god forbid, watched all of these videos. (I watched all 27 minutes of Tim Pool’s and portions of a bunch of the others.) But the ones I sampled were indignant in their tone, seemingly taking for granted (without bothering to do more than ten seconds of research on the subject) that the anti-Sonic tweets were indeed some sort of serious feminist campaign to take down a movie that I doubt most feminists are even aware of. They’re fighting a straw man (or straw woman) that they seem to be truly convinced is real.
But maybe I’m not giving them enough credit. Surely they’re not all as gullible as that. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say not that they don’t know they’re fighting an imaginary enemy but that they simply don’t care that they are — at least so long as the clicks keep coming.
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I was recently reading some furry political discourse on Twitter (as one does) and there was general condemnation of people cosplaying as police dogs at cons. Apparently, the police dog thing is a popular vein of humor for people whose fursona is a German Shepherd dog.
(I’m not sure if “police dog” usually means anthro dog in police dog gear, or anthro dog in police officer uniform)
Well you could’ve done proper research and figured out that the birds of prey vs hedgehog fight was a joke and never had anything to do with Sonics’ success nor the feminists outrage.
The outrage is because the “incel gamer” community or “basement dwellers” were right from the start – do the movie properly or risk flopping.
People are comparing Sonic to what Zack Schneider did to DCEU – he went with his vision instead of what the fans would’ve liked and ruined the entire franchise probably for the foreseeable future. Sonic listened to fans, spent 38 million for the redesign and oh wow! It’s doing pretty well.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, but I don’t understand this attitude at all. There’s room for all sorts of films. A given film shouldn’t be seen as a repudiation of another film, I don’t think. If you don’t like a certain film, maybe someone else does.
@Dormousing_it
True, but that is what the alt right fails to understand. They are so used to everything catering to their desires that they see anything that isn’t made specifically to appeal to them as a personal affront. They’re upset that there are things being made which aren’t engineered for conservative cishet white men, so they melt down about how that’s an attack on them. And then by projection they assume everyone else hates anything that is aimed at their demographic and created this fake outrage that only really seems to have fooled their fellow alt-rightists.
Sonic caved to online demands for changes thereto, whereas BoP didn’t, and now the former seems to be doing better than the latter. Now, the internet is going to attribute Sonic‘s success to having caved to online demands for changes thereto, and BoP‘s failure to not having done so, and is going to bring up the two movies every time it demands changes to a movie. Worse, studios might actually start believing it, and might indeed start caving to demands for changes, up to including reducing the roles of women and POC. Indeed, this may have already happened with Rose Tico in RoS (not that this actually stopped anyone from whinging about the movie anyway). It is for this reason that, even though I didn’t like Sonic’s original design any more than anyone else, I am incredibly nervous that having redone it may have caused more harm than good.
Fan behavior in the past decade has been abhorrent, and the absolute last thing that content creators ought to be doing is rewarding it.
Oh dear. All seems a bit silly. And gullible.
I hesitate to say it but I was playing Sonic almost 30 years ago. I occasionally still play it. My coordination is so bad I almost always fall off something and die.
@Naglfar:
I suppose you’re right. It must be nice, to see yourself as the default human being\sarcasm.
Kinda reminds me of the fuss my stepfather put up, more than 35 years ago, when an employee manual at the company he worked for, was rewritten with gender inclusive language. For example, he/she, or s/he, instead of “he”. It was long overdue at the time.
@ABars
Agreed. It seems like this kind of thing started with GamerGate, when misogynistic assholes started harassing creators and commentators enough to scare the industry into listening to them too much.
@Dormousing_it
A modern parallel to that is how TERFs, far-rightists and other assorted reactionaries are currently melting down over the use of “they” as a singular third person pronoun. What I find particularly interesting about their meltdowns around “they” is that most people use singular “they” out of habit without even noticing, it’s just when someone asks for that pronoun to be used that reactionaries have tantrums.
@Lakitha K Tolbert:
[ambles over to nearest rightwinger]
[leans in to whisper in ear]
“sonic the hedgehog’s skin isn’t white.”
[watches slow dawning of horror on rightwinger’s face]
[snickers]
@Talonknife, Kupo:
Capitalists exploited some workers! See page A4. In local news, dog bites man; continued on C3. International: Middle East a mess. See D4. Sports: Some team won some game yesterday, and some other team lost. More sports coverage on page E1. Horoscope: Sun predicted to rise in east tomorrow morning. Details on back page.
[sigh]
When will things even improve enough for something like this to be newsworthy?
@Naglfar:
Try the science fiction aisle. Especially under female authors, e.g. Ursula LeGuin.
[sigh]
@Buttercup:
[Bad Guy puts a key on a table, near the edge]
[Fluffy white Blofeld-cat pricks up ears and starts padding toward the table]
Bad Guy: “This is a communique from Crimson Jihad. You have heard from your own expert. You have seen the Holy fire with your own eyes. Do not force us to destroy this city. And do not try to use force against us. I can trigger this bomb instantly. All I have to do is turn that key –”
Henchman: “What key?”
Bad Guy: “That key right th — WHERE IS THE KEY?!”
Cat: *meow* *bat* *jingle jingle*
Bad Guy: “NOOOO!”
[key falls from 40th-storey unglazed window in half-finished skyscraper]
[straight down a sewer grate, natch]
@Dormousing_it:
Still erasing nonbinary people. [sigh] Baby steps, I guess …
@Victorious Parasol:
Congratulations, and good luck. Cautious optimism seems warranted.
I mean, I also liked the movie, but it definitely bombed. (Its opening weekend was even lower than Justice League, which was also a bomb.) I don’t think the expectations were unreasonable – it’s a blockbuster superhero film set in the DCEU, and it failed to turn in the box office studios expect from that sort of movie.
I don’t think right-wing trolling was a factor here though. Mostly I think it was the R-rating. What in the world were they thinking?!
@Aaron
My biggest issue with MPAA ratings is that they consider nudity, sex, and swearing to be worse than graphic violence, which to me seems backwards.
@Surplus
Hopefully if “Bernie the Socialist” gets elected will Americans start being more conscious of exploitative capitalism. Hopefully.
The whole world though has embraced or is embracing the mentality of the New Right. It stinks and I wish we could do something about it but it’s practically hopeless. They’ll attribute religion to justify their bigotry or the power of the free market to justify exploitation.
Some days I’ve had enough. Only reason why I’m not doing anything illegal I feel is because I want to save my own ass.
I lurk too much, but I felt like saying something to do.
But isn’t ironic that the alt-right crowd, a group known for disowning furries of any kind (even alt-right furries), are doing their damnedest to prop up a very furry movie against a super hero movie.
Somebody needs to stage an intervention with that Pool fella…
https://twitter.com/theserfstv/status/1229968667531563008
@rv97
Not cool.
@Naglfar
I have a feeling we’re going to have to make that world — again and again — because the bored, life-loathing adherents of the alt-right might not ever give up trying to tear down that world.
@Dormousing_it
I remember those days. I used inclusive language in a term paper, and my teacher informed me that it was unnecessary. (And I’m sure undesirable — to him.)
I don’t think this is the whole reason these folks are trying to make Sonic vs Birds of Prey a thing. It’s because everyone complained about Sonic’s original design and they changed it, while these guys complained that the BoP ladies weren’t dressing sexy enough and they didn’t change it.
According to the narrative they’ve created, they were the ones (rather than *everyone*, including Sonic’s original creators) who complained that Old Sonic was weird, so any success Sonic has is because the filmmakers submitted to the will of the Angry Internet Men, while BoP’s weak showing is the punishment it earned for defying them. Therefore all media must cater exclusively to them, and their gratification is the sole determinant of success or failure. It’s all about making themselves out to be culturally dominant.
Thanks for a whole new list of YTubers to block.
These guys don’t need to manufacture outrage…they’re BORN outraged. It’s the only emotion most of them are even remotely capable of.
And in case I didn’t make myself clear in my previous comment, I was talking about the right-wingers.
Birds of Prey was mid budget by the standards of today. Relying on my imperfect memory, about $84 million. It will do fine, not spectacular, on the evidence of the opening weekend. Won’t be as good as the Harley Quinn animation that’s on now. Margot Robbie is superb.
I…was not aware that, as a woman and feminist, I was supposed to hate and despise Sonic as some icon of manly pride and dominence? While it is find the first Sonic design repulsive, even with the fix my opinion is “meh, that’s a thing that exists”. The games were fun though, still are.I
I wanted to see BoP long before I heard I was supposed to want to see it out of my deep feminist hatred for all things penis-having. Ironically, I’m hearing that from mra/incel types and not from.my fellow feminists.
I think @Jessie has it; they think they had some leverage in the Sonic movie, contrasted with BoP where they had none. Hence they have a stake in Sonic’s success as a demonstration of their influence, regardless of the film’s actual content.
@Artie
That is odd, innit? MLP is second only to Sonic in terms of sheer furry fandom content.
I just find it incredibly funny that these dudes are championing Sonic of all movies, when the fandom of said IP has had a reputation as being disgustingly perverted degenerates for the longest time (at some times it felt like about half of the scorn leveled at the furry community was specifically aimed at Sonic fans). Wonder when the alt-righters will realize the level of their self-own and either will furiously backpedal their support or try futilely to “reclaim” Sonic for God-Fearing White Anglo-Saxon CisHet Manly Men(tm) everywhere.
Nice to see I’m not the only one either. In any case I don’t really care for either movie. I’ll maybe catch them on Netflix or something sometime in the future. AFAIK in any case BoP is severely hampered by many factors (awards season release, R-rating -because people are still squeamish babies scared by it, it seems- , sequel to a successful-but-panned movie, part of a very inconsistent -at best- movie universe), while Sonic has factors that help it (high-profile family movie in the dead of winter, PG-rated -I think- , very recognizable IP, lots of publicity around the original design fiasco and subsequent better-received redesign, Jim Carrey being goofy for the first time in years, not actually terribly, terminally bad unlike most videogame movies) so one outperforming the other has likely much more to do with those than anything else, Frog and Bad Combover-worshippers be damned.