Sociopath Community

Turncoat said: 

Quietbeef said:

Someone who's given real thought and care to a cause and aims to make changes through their art, can typically represent it better than creating a piece of media that has nothing to do with it and then awkwardly inserting some childishly superficial commentary on the subject. It betrays how little thought they actually gave it, how little it mattered to the story they were telling.

I'd argue this is more about if they are or aren't willing to take chances with their material, as even executive meddling can ruin an otherwise pure story if the ones producing it don't think it's such a good idea.

The ones who are more willing to take risks still risk themselves simply being a bad writer, and said badly written material can look interchangeable from slapping disenfranchised labels onto box office bait for a quick dollar. The only determining factor is if there's any room to gamble on it's potential quality or not, and if not for Youtube we'd likely not even be seeing anything that isn't overtly sterilized otherwise.

 

Though I am curious, in what way do you feel like the social agenda they pushed betrayed the original series? I imagine it would have to be more than casting women and non-white people. Did they do something with the story that really undermined the message of the original?

Watchmen felt like a macho grit piece of work, I can understand how that'd change the feel of it. It came out during the mid-eighties, and when compared to other pieces out around the same time it captures a feel that I'd argue would be completely lost in the modern era.

Much of what made Watchmen good was how hard the plot goes (ignoring how hard the movie softened it). People bleed after brutal meaty hits of combat, they are rude and gruff in a seasoned way that's significantly more old fashioned than what we see now, the idea of gender roles is much more 'traditional' in the behaviors of the characters in relation to their point in history to the point of making their female characters who are stuck in such patriarchy an interesting struggle story of their own... modernizing it will lose much of the original artistry. 

Of course I'm saying all of this having not seen the TV spinoff, but the original Watchmen is a work of art that I'd argue is best left untouched. If they actually stuck to the grit of the original work as a baseline I don't think many companies would see it as capable of selling nowadays either. 

That may be true, but I don't think it's impossible for a good writer who's given real thought to the issues to take something of that nature and utilize its strengths to tell a different grim story about the reality of a newer society.  In fact, I'd be really interested to see something like that done well.

Turncoat said: 

Turncoat said:

We're entering an age of fanfic spinoffs not too far off from shit like Star Wars Episode 7, and we have been for a while. Even Fifty Shades was originally a fanfic and that shit's like six years old now.

Ah jeez, I remember not being too happy with The Last Jedi. I've been avoiding the new movies. One of the people I live with tried to convince me that The Mandalorian is good, but I am distrustful.

Crow and I semi-recently ran through episodes VII-IX, it's hot garbage to the point of B-tier quality. I recommend it if you're looking for something so-bad-it's-good, and it's not as bad as 'Solo' was. 

I still haven't seen The Mandalorian beyond around 1/3 of the first episode, but even just that much was significantly better than the new Disney films. That being said, that just means it's better than sheer laughable trash. On principle I am majorly disappointed with the Baby Yoda gimmick, as he was meant to be left purposefully ambiguous even as far as not being given a species name.

Even if they do a good job it shits on the mysticism.

I agree, Mandalorian, from what little we saw, looks like it's at least worth giving it a couple episodes' chance.  The rest is trash.  Though now that we're on the subject, great example of exactly what we've been talking about: L3, the SJW robot clearly written by old white men, in Solo.  Jesus Christ, if there was ever an example of trying to cash in on a cause. lol  What a mess.

I've seen some corporate power plays on anti-PC culture, like this Tweet from BK on International Women's Day:



Unsurprisingly, not everyone thought it was "based."

My thought process: 

A) 'Women belong in the kitchen' from a fast food chain, I see what they did there they're both about food! Haha how clever.
B) Wait... but women aren't typically going into a Burger King kitchen unless they work there... is this even relevant to anything? 
C) I suppose it could be construed as 'women should work for us', making it really about equal opportunity for women framed in a mockup of a sexist comment. 
D) Wait wtf are they trying to say? 
E) Could this be taken by someone else to push an unrelated agenda, and should I care about that..? 
F) This must have been a quick, rushed decision. 

---

This one's arguably clever in how it gets more twisted and strange the more you think about it, good marketing, but it's risky for it's room for misinterpretation, bad marketing. 

 That was roughly my thought process as well. lol

Tryptamine said: 

Turncoat said:

I don't even know if they could combine the two concepts, 'the audience' might not be ready for it.

It'd be an equality piece if the race/sex equality fighters were roughly as flawed, but showing them as flawed is likely to be taken as sneak-attacking the LGBTQ cause. Much of why the white men in Watchmen could be made into such gruff, disturbed characters while translating as a good story in the modern age is over how they are themselves white men, make them women of color and critics will likely see it as an insult or stereotype of some kind.

Absolutely the mainstream is not ready, it would be attacked as bigoted.

For all of the merits and good things of the equality movement in its infancy...gay marriage finally being federally legalized by Obama, nationwide implementation of body cams on police, more attention to hiring and wage discrepancies (arguable topics, but the left has won here), etc., it seems like things are developing into something regressive. Defunding of police. Not jailing people who assault others or destroy property during a riot. Coming down on people for old jokes they had that used to be acceptable. Racial humor in stand-up comedy used to be pretty good and socially fine in the 90s and early 2000s. By 2015, even Amy Schumer was catching heat for old jokes.

I think summing up the entire current state of the movement by its extremes and missteps is a disservice to what it's done and continues to do on the whole.  If you're going to wrap up all the myriad of important social issues into one mammoth movement, and then define it by instances like comedians being criticized for old jokes, I think on some level you're looking for it to be in the wrong.

Also, just a tangent, I'm curious what you have against defunding the police.  You realize our police are massively over-militarized, right?  Defunding doesn't mean disbanding.  It just means redirecting some of those funds into social programs that will ultimately mean less for the police to do in the first place.  Including cases that should never have been shoved off on them, like dealing with the mentally ill.  The idea is more like dividing resources into a more accurate system of smaller, targeted organizations, rather than throwing one big, fat payheck at one big, fat organization, that can honestly only train its members to do so much.  We have a sloppy system, simple as that.  It needs an overhaul.

Turncoat said: 

Tryptamine said: 

For all of the merits and good things of the equality movement in its infancy...gay marriage finally being federally legalized by Obama,

Trans is the new gay, they're largely ignored now. 

Makes one who's prone to the slippery slope wonder what comes after trans.

Depends where you live.

Tryptamine said: 

QuietBeef said:

Ah. In that case perhaps I misunderstood your intention. However, while I could argue that the tweet is technically virtue signaling, I wouldn't really look at it that way. I mean, he's a politician. Taking a side on social issues and making that opinion known to the wider public is literally part of his job.

I see what you mean. It struck me as him being like, "hey, I'm feminist!" while making a dumb joke.

lol Technically it was that too.  Which is why I said I could argue that it's virtue signaling, in that virtue signaling is sort of in the job description of a politician.  I'd simply classify professional virtue signaling as a very different thing from personal virtue signaling.  It doesn't sprout from the same self-righteousness.  It's utilitarian, just like I'd say the feminism of this new Charlie's Angels movie probably is.

QuietBeef said:

However, I would hardly chalk any of that up to political correctness.

It seems dangerously brewed in to the extent that CNN is dropping pieces like "Opinion: There is no 'White culture'," "White people are already experts on racism," "'Am I racist?' You may not like the answer," "This is what it looks like when toxic White privilege is left unchecked," and "Robin DiAngelo: How 'white fragility' supports racism and how whites can stop it" while racial "wokeness" started peaking.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/health/white-fragility-robin-diangelo-wellness/index.html said:

(CNN)— If you're a white person in America, social justice educator Robin DiAngelo has a message for you: You're a racist, pure and simple, and without a lifetime of conscious effort you always will be.

You just can't help it, you see, because you've been swaddled in the cocoon of white privilege since you came sputtering out of your mother's womb, protesting the indignity of it all.

You may be indignantly sputtering right now at this insult to your humanity -- for how can you be a racist? You have black colleagues you consider friends; you don't see skin color; you never owned slaves; you marched in the 60s; you even protest today against the uniformed "bad apples" that use the power of their authority to smother minority lives and minority rights.

"How dare you say I am anything like them?" you grumble, as you pull the cloak of your bruised and fragile feelings around you.

And there -- with that simple act -- you personify the theme of DiAngelo's best selling 2018 book, "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism."

Vice is putting stuff out like "Twelve Types of White People I’d Like to Call the Cops On," "A White Curry Professor Taught Me That White People Ruin Everything," "Justin Bieber's Dreadlocks Show How White People (Still) Steal Everything," and "White People Keep Posing As People of Color for Clout" (Manish Krishnan sounds lovely).

Sure, political correctness is generally observed by the media to avoid being lampooned. But this specific breed of political correctness is something rather new.

Clickbait is the new journalism, in many ways.  However, despite the intentionally inflammatory titles and comments, I think many of these probably have some decent underlying points.  I mean, let's not pretend that some amount of subconscious racism is not a thing for a whole lot of people.  Or that any consistent social privilege within a society doesn't affect the way people see themselves and others, and furthermore how they treat eachother.  Even things I strongly disagree with policing, like cultural appropriation, have merit in their own context.  Not necessarily at the level of political action, but at the very least, it's understandable they might gripe about it, and under the free speech their opponents supposedly treasure, they have every right to be publicly disgruntled.

In a strange way, this is both sides demanding the other be PC.  The right uses inflammatory titles and comments as clickbait all the time, and then insist it's fine under the banner of free speech and the fact that these racist and misogynist catch phrases and memes are merely a means to express a real point.  The same could be said for outlets that use leftist inflammatory phrases.  But then those are held up as proof that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Honestly, all I see here is a collective social decay into team-sports-style politics, and a rather predictable one at that, coinciding with the dawn of the internet.  The real issues are what matter, the real policies, the real lives people face.  I'm not impressed by clickbait. lol

QuietBeef said:

That such cheap, unintelligent media is trying to tell us what to think.

This is pretty much the essence. The formula is a painfully obvious manipulation. With The Boys, some of the most powerful characters are women, especially in season 2. There are even some blatant "gurl power" moments where I thought, "alright, this feels a bit like they're playing up to feminism," but it didn't feel forced, so it was alright.

 Yeah, definitely.

Out of curiosity, did you ever see the movie Cuck?  If so, what did you make of it?

QuietBeef said:

L3, the SJW robot clearly written by old white men, in Solo.

...dear god I looked her up and her full name's L3-37 (leet). 🤦



Conceptually it could have been great, even keeping to the feminism = droidism relevance, but it's like she was a catchphrase machine, catchphrasing shit from far into the future no less. 

Tryptamine said: 

Turncoat said:

Are the issues only being expressed sociologically in the show, as to be safe?

How 'mixed' are the relationships? This tends to be a red flag for legit progressive versus pseudo-progressive views, much like Finn in Star Wars.

I'm not sure what the first question means. As for the second one, the emphasis didn't seem too heavy or present. Unless you count Dr. Manhattan, who ended up making himself look more black while he dated a black woman.

Lol wtf? 

QuietBeef said:

The Watchmen series for instance, Tryp said the rest of it was basically quality material, but the moral message itself was shoddy and awkwardly inserted, which seems like good writers who forced a strain of material into their story that really wasn't part of the vision, or their area of strength or inspiration. That sounds like the perfect example of what I'm talking about, slapping the logo of moralism onto an unrelated piece of media, without actually exploring it.

We won't know that until we watch it. 

Lets see the first episode tonight. ♡

That may be true, but I don't think it's impossible for a good writer who's given real thought to the issues to take something of that nature and utilize its strengths to tell a different grim story about the reality of a newer society. In fact, I'd be really interested to see something like that done well.

Closest we have to 'taking risks' within modern boundaries is shit like Euphoria and 13 Reasons Why, and even there I have a problem with numerous tropes they play on to establish said constraints overtly.

Variety is how you make a free mind, while the illusion of variety is how you brainwash someone passively towards 'normalcy'. We see it with Christian-targeted media all the time, and it works even with the media itself being low quality trash. 

I think summing up the entire current state of the movement by its extremes and missteps is a disservice to what it's done and continues to do on the whole. If you're going to wrap up all the myriad of important social issues into one mammoth movement, and then define it by instances like comedians being criticized for old jokes, I think on some level you're looking for it to be in the wrong.

The bipartisan divide seems super prone to doing this towards their opponents, even Alice when she was still here was trying to go on about how BLM as a movement is the accumulation of everything said and done in it's name, which is fucking madness. 

Defunding doesn't mean disbanding. It just means redirecting some of those funds into social programs that will ultimately mean less for the police to do in the first place. Including cases that should never have been shoved off on them, like dealing with the mentally ill.

Yeah... cops if anything are making the mental illness issue worse, and prisoners risk modeling off of it if it has any success in the prison yard.