Support NeoGAF

[Tertullian]

I'd like to believe it. It certainly feels like we've won some battles in the war progressive totalitarians are waging on us. But I dunno man. Progressives are really good at the long game, and they have absolute control over e.g. the HR department of pretty much every major corporation in the United States. You can't get complacent about these things. It feels like we have to win 10 battles for every one we lose in order to actually make some cultural progress.

 

[Muffdraul]

Cliff notes: per the Vanity Fair story, allegedly, he met his lifelong muse when she was 16 and a runaway from a crazy abusive situation and he was in his 40s, randomly at a motel pool a la No Country.

Here's something interesting I discovered when I read the book, after loving the movie for 10+ years: Moss meeting the girl at the motel pool wasn't in the book. In the book, he picks up a teenage hitchhiker, they travel together for a couple chapters, they bond, he gives her a chunk of the money, she expects him to want her to 'earn it,' he says no, she's sort of playfully offended he doesn't want to boink her. Ultimately they do stop at a motel where they meet their fate. But the Coen bros decided to jettison all of that and replaced it with the motel pool scene. Can't be a coincidence, they must have consulted w/ McCarthy on it.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

Wasn’t making a value judgment on Woody Allen’s personal life, which is messy any way you look at it. Just talking about the cultural tides since the statement is unusually reasonable and mature for Hollywood, and would normally prompt a witch hunt against her.

Any rational person got that, you don't need to explain.

Too many folks these days need feeding, like a baby.

Our school system has a lot to answer for.

 

[TheCed]

The left does need to fix itself.
If it can stop canceling itself, that's a good start.

Extremes are never good.

 

[Raven117]

Our school system has a lot to answer for.

I understand that there are profound challenges in the public school system, but my god, the failure of schools (or, something sinister, if one wants to go that route) is absolutely catastrophic.

There are generations of kids now who have not been taught how to think, or more specifically, how to think for themselves.

And worse, this failure has also crept into the college level. Where conformity is rewarded with accolades and open doors, and thought, challenge, is completely stamped out.

It’s just…. Fuck man it’s depressing.

I’m glad I grew up when I did. It felt like the last breath of reason before the digital age took over.

 

[thefool]

We've clearly passed a chasm, what took many decades to build, social media allowed for a rapid expansion and the crowd now is big enough that you can't clearly antagonize it (if you're online regularly you know exactly what i mean). But the crowd still don't hold any power, so we're living a time where one group has to abide by the other's rules and it's a very delicate balance. The real change will only come when the new wave of young conservatives gets into positions of power.

 

[Liljagare]

Cultural happenings come and go, it is often a loud minority that gets a voice all of a sudden, later then they find themselves obsolete and no longer valid or news worthy. I think the internet seems to prolong the staying power, and effect though.

/Regards a happy Punk.

 

[Liljagare]

I understand that there are profound challenges in the public school system, but my god, the failure of schools (or, something sinister, if one wants to go that route) is absolutely catastrophic.

There are generations of kids now who have not been taught how to think, or more specifically, how to think for themselves.

And worse, this failure has also crept into the college level. Where conformity is rewarded with accolades and open doors, and thought, challenge, is completely stamped out.

It’s just…. Fuck man it’s depressing.

I’m glad I grew up when I did. It felt like the last breath of reason before the digital age took over.

It has happened before, will happen again. 50's - late 80's weren't exactly peachy, anywhere.

People tend to forget though.

 

[BlackTron]

I understand that there are profound challenges in the public school system, but my god, the failure of schools (or, something sinister, if one wants to go that route) is absolutely catastrophic.

There are generations of kids now who have not been taught how to think, or more specifically, how to think for themselves.

And worse, this failure has also crept into the college level. Where conformity is rewarded with accolades and open doors, and thought, challenge, is completely stamped out.

It’s just…. Fuck man it’s depressing.

I’m glad I grew up when I did. It felt like the last breath of reason before the digital age took over.

It's pretty much the most un-American thing I can possibly imagine to send kids to school and teach conformity.

 

[kruis]

I understand that there are profound challenges in the public school system, but my god, the failure of schools (or, something sinister, if one wants to go that route) is absolutely catastrophic.

There are generations of kids now who have not been taught how to think, or more specifically, how to think for themselves.

And worse, this failure has also crept into the college level. Where conformity is rewarded with accolades and open doors, and thought, challenge, is completely stamped out.

It’s just…. Fuck man it’s depressing.

I’m glad I grew up when I did. It felt like the last breath of reason before the digital age took over.

The most astounding part is that those kids believe they're fighting the system, that they're a force of good and building a better, more compassionate world - and all the while they're laying the brickwork for a dystopian world where freedom is a four letter world.

 

[INC]

No. Then you're no better than they are.

Reap what you sow

 

[INC]

See, this is what I'm afraid of. I don't want the ideological cudgel being passed back and forth every so many years. As an evangelical Christian, there's a lot in this world I dislike but I'm not going to cancel people with whom I disagree or whom I may think are behaving immorally... and yet, within my own church, there are members celebrating recent election results and salivating at the idea of being able to wield the cancel hammer against the "other side". I hear a common refrain of "Let's see how they like it", or a variant thereof.

People keep talking about this being a pendulum. If it is, I want it to be a broken one that sits dead center of the grandfather clock and doesn't keep wildly swinging back and forth.

He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her

John 8:7

 

[Mikado]

I'd love to imagine that this is a return to a market populated by Rational Actors.

At the end of the day, customers who exercise their "consumer power" by actually purchasing/engaging positively with the brands have more business value than people aren't users of the product, aren't purchasing it anyway, and are just complaining. You'd think that as a vendor, I would want people who do buy my product to have more influence on how I run my business than people who don't?

It's possible that in the analyses of the the post Budweiser/Harley Davidson fallout, they realized they already had loyal customers - Why alienate them for people who will never be their customers anyway?

 

[Raven117]

It has happened before, will happen again. 50's - late 80's weren't exactly peachy, anywhere.

People tend to forget though.

No, not super peachy. You are right. But there was real learning happening.

It's pretty much the most un-American thing I can possibly imagine to send kids to school and teach conformity.

Right? Intellectualism has been hijacked by conformity (all as accelerated with social media). “Believe this… you are smart…. Believe that… you are stupid.” Just parrot out the talking points ad rehersed, and wham! You are smart and automatically accepted into whatever crowd.

The most astounding part is that those kids believe they're fighting the system, that they're a force of good and building a better, more compassionate world - and all the while they're laying the brickwork for a dystopian world where freedom is a four letter world.

It’s really mind-boggling. And they just can’t see it. That said, this problem has plagued humanity since the beginning. Now, it’s just on steroids with social media. These are the types that were the Purtains. The inquisition.

Freedom is messy. A big, beautiful, clusterfuck of greatness.

Some folks just can’t accept this.

 

[Humdinger]

Reap what you sow

What's that old saying about an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind? If we just repeat their mistakes, we are perpetuating the problem, not solving it. In fact, it would amplify the problem, because we'd be endorsing cancel culture by using it against them. It would also turn us into hypocrites, since supposedly we are against cancel culture.

 

[MayauMiao]

I gotta hand it to those devs; their stupid game just lives rent-free in some people's heads.

Remembering a DEI disaster like Concord will help us to buy better games.

 

[Jenov]

I'm not saying to cancel her of course but she does not believe in trans women are women at all.

Because they’re not

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Here we fucking go motherfuckers, we're going to have an anti-woke TV news network soon

I hope this time the motherfucker doesn't overpay unlike the shit he pulled with Twatter

 

[GloveSlap]

You'll know it's really over when everyone that was neck deep in it quietly pretends they were never a part of it.

 

[LegendOfKage]

Here we fucking go motherfuckers, we're going to have an anti-woke TV news network soon

I hope this time the motherfucker doesn't overpay unlike the shit he pulled with Twatter

It would be hilarious if he not only bought it, but then he made it into the most balanced, least divisive, most accurately reported network on television. A true throwback to when journalism was a lot closer to reporting both sides of every issue as objectively as possible, but perhaps mixed with some modern longer form podcast style interviews as well.

It'll sadly never happen, though. I got my hopes up for twitter, and I think Musk made a lot of mistakes even there.

 

[FunkMiller]

Here we fucking go motherfuckers, we're going to have an anti-woke TV news network soon

I hope this time the motherfucker doesn't overpay unlike the shit he pulled with Twatter

Pretty sure there's laws against members of a government administration outright owning a traditional media organisation.

 

[Woggleman]

Cancel culture to me just seemed like the left wing version of the moral panic of the 80s and 90s. I can't stand self righteous hypocrites on either side.

 

[Joshmyersbv]

Not a fan of Asmongold but he is right to an extent. With Trump winning the election and popular vote it made people realize that they aren't the only ones thinking how crazy shit has gotten.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It would be hilarious if he not only bought it, but the he made it into the most balanced, least divisive, most accurately reported network on television. A true throwback to when journalism was a lot closer to reporting both sides of every issue as objectively as possible, but perhaps mixed with some modern longer form podcast style interviews as well.

It'll sadly never happen, though. I got my hopes up for twitter, and I think Musk made a lot of mistakes even there.

To be fair, trying to run a social media network is like trying to run an insane asylum

Every social media network gets shit on all the time for one reason or another and I think he's done his best with Twitter considering the circumstances

 

[poodaddy]

Cancel culture is alive and well.

See black person, review bomb, comment about woke propaganda. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Toons]

I think it's important to note that cancel culture only ever had power when the values of a particular artist's audience come into conflict with that artist. So they're always beholden to the values of THAT audience.

People like Louis CK, Neil Gaiman, and Aziz Ansari are vulnerable because their audience are liberal, feminist, and moralists about such things, so they were cancelled fairly easily over relatively minor transgressions compared to some others.

But if you're someone with a right leaning, mostly male audience, no amount of rape allegations are going to detail your career. Andrew Tate continues to have an audience, Donald Trump got reelected. Russell Brand even repositioned himself as a right wing Christian specifically to survive rape allegations. To get cancelled on the right you need to like, be nice to a trans person or something (Budweiser).

But if your audience is broad enough to include a bit of everyone then you get impacted by this stuff but not killed by it. R. Kelly and Bill Cosby really only got fully cancelled when they went to jail. Dave Chappelle got a lot of shit but he never lost his Netflix deals. JK Rowling has weakened some of the fandom but there are just too many Harry Potter fans for her to be fully cancelled.

Yeah, this. Kanye west is another big example. Plenty of big artists are still very much willing to work with him, even after his identifying himself as a nazi.

But JK is hardly an example of this trend. She was never going to be separated from HP as an owner of the brand, and HP is far too lucrative for a corporation to side against her on this. Corporations don't have values. They have audiences they want to sell things to. They'll go whichever way will make them more money.

The people they HIRE however, is where you get more specified interests and directives.

A lot of people seem to also erroneously believe that "cancel culture" is exclusively a "left" thing, but thats not the case either. As I imagine we'll be seeing to the jaguar reaction both sides are very much willing to target people and companies.

 

[Toons]

Here we fucking go motherfuckers, we're going to have an anti-woke TV news network soon

How does that solve the problem lmao?

What the TV news needs is not more one sided agenda driven BS. It needs balance and honesty.

 

[FunkMiller]

How does that solve the problem lmao?

What the TV news needs is not more one sided agenda driven BS. It needs balance and honesty.

No, no. It’s all fine if it’s a guy on OUR SIDE doing it.

 

[SlyDoughnut]

I only think it's going to get worse. Once GOP start banning books nation wide, rather than just in state. And the wide spread cancelling Elon does of anyone who disagrees with him is only going to increase.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

I know that this website isn't political but with Trump winning the election there was a clear shift regarding a lot of these things.

Without the Trump political commentary I think it's more a sign of societal shift than Trump/political. The same already happened in UK etc and likely soon Australia too.

Thank fuck we are getting out of the crazy authoritarian shit. Hopefully more balance than just see-sawing of the scale extremities.

 

[YCoCg]

Here we fucking go motherfuckers, we're going to have an anti-woke TV news network soon

Isn't there already such things? Things like Fox News, etc?

 

[winjer]

The left does need to fix itself.
If it can stop canceling itself, that's a good start.

Extremes are never good.

At least in Europe, there is a rise of Left Conservative parties.
These are parties that are economically left wing, meaning socialist leaning. But that don't subscribe to the craziness of identity politics.
So they focus on worker rights and oppose Neo-Liberalism economics. While also opposing all that non-sense about sexual identity and that everything is racism.

And for our American members, please remember that socialism is not communism. And that Liberalism in Europe means economics.
So if you are going to comment on this trend, please take these aspects into consideration.

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

.

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Isn't there already such things? Things like Fox News, etc?

Fox News is heavily biased, just in different ways

People outside of the US don't really understand but there is literally no news source in the US which isn't openly biased in some way. Objective coverage of news doesn't exist in the US, period

 

[YCoCg]

Fox News is heavily biased, just in different ways

People outside of the US don't really understand but there is literally no news source in the US which isn't openly biased in some way. Objective coverage of news doesn't exist in the US, period

But if Musk buys MSNBC then what makes you think things won't be biased?

 

[AfricanKing]

Dont judge a person's lifestyle with their views.

I cant personally take advise from someone who doesn't shower or bath

 

[Unknown Soldier]

But if Musk buys MSNBC then what makes you think things won't be biased?

Nobody knows but if you are still betting against him after he somehow turned Twitter around then I'm not sure what to tell you

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

I cant personally take advise from someone who doesn't shower or bath

 

[YCoCg]

Nobody knows but if you are still betting against him after he somehow turned Twitter around then I'm not sure what to tell you

Why is it always the motherfuckers who don't use Twitter who say this? Twitter is still as biased as ever, it's just now for the other side and the aggressive push on political content is worse than ever.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Why is it always the motherfuckers who don't use Twitter who say this? Twitter is still as biased as ever, it's just now for the other side and the aggressive push on political content is worse than ever.

Are you implying I don't actually use Twitter LMAO

 

[YCoCg]

Are you implying I don't actually use Twitter LMAO

You musn't, or must be biased yourself if you think anything has improved under Musk other than the pendulum just swinging to other side and political content being gamed by the system.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

You musn't, or must be biased yourself if you think anything has improved under Musk other than the pendulum just swinging to other side and political content being gamed by the system.

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

 

[YCoCg]

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

Don't try that shit with me, I acknowledge twitter used to be left leaning but at least before I could avoid politics stuff seeping into my things. Now it's right leaning and every damn buzzword and "thing you should be angry at" constantly seeps into pages now, not to mention the AI "curation" instead of trends being completely politics obsessed.

 

[Goalus]

Cancel culture is alive and well.

See black person, review bomb, comment about woke propaganda. Rinse and repeat.

Whose fault is that?
It's the fault of those who started it.

 

[TheInfamousKira]

I have to say, the downright hatefulness towards trans people in here is most disagreeable.

Changing your actual biological reality is essentially impossible as of today, but for a small amount of people, doing the closest to it that we can today is the best outcome for them. Sure they're still men or woman as they were born, but calling them what they transition into is just human kindness. We're talking basic human decency.

I will agree with y'all any day of the week that JKR has a right to express her opinions and getting all performative about all harry potter related things is turbo-retarded. And the way the transmovement has taken over the rainbow movement is distasteful. And about cancel culture, and all that. I will agree with y'all to that. But not giving basic human decency to fellow humans? That's where you lose me. LGBTQetc people have a right to live and be happy. Even if you dislike them on principle.

Right to live? Check.
Freedom from opinions? Nope.
Freedom to change the English language? No.
Right to gain better opportunities than others because of "lived experience," BACK OF THE BUS
Right to demand ANYTHING of others beyond what is legally required of all citizens? POOL'S CLOSED

 

[SentientStone]

Psyop has worked, now everyone, forget about Epstein.
You see, like Vince McMahon it was the times, and... Diddy... baby oil... funny.
Boys will be boys.

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

The most astounding part is that those kids believe they're fighting the system, that they're a force of good and building a better, more compassionate world - and all the while they're laying the brickwork for a dystopian world where freedom is a four letter world.

 

[Kacho]

The left does need to fix itself.
If it can stop canceling itself, that's a good start.

Extremes are never good.

Absolutely. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian have put out some interesting content regarding the problems with the left.

 

[CGNoire]

See, this is what I'm afraid of. I don't want the ideological cudgel being passed back and forth every so many years. As an evangelical Christian, there's a lot in this world I dislike but I'm not going to cancel people with whom I disagree or whom I may think are behaving immorally... and yet, within my own church, there are members celebrating recent election results and salivating at the idea of being able to wield the cancel hammer against the "other side". I hear a common refrain of "Let's see how they like it", or a variant thereof.

People keep talking about this being a pendulum. If it is, I want it to be a broken one that sits dead center of the grandfather clock and doesn't keep wildly swinging back and forth.

This so much.