Amadan
I will be here longer than you
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Banned for mangling Warren Zevon.
No, but seriously, even if you think someone is trolling, don't respond like this.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
That's possible. Is it TDS, BDS, or Poe's Law? So when we see a post like this, which could be sincere, or could be a troll, we have to make a judgment call. Usually we err on the side of allowing suspicious "new" accounts enough rope to hang themselves.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I approved this, with misgivings, because it looks a lot like boo-outgroup trollbait. There is certainly an argument here and a point of view, and posting polemics about how only Trump will save us is allowed, but your user name and your "first" post under this new account has a familiar smell to it.
I am saying this so you are aware, we made a decision to approve your post, but we have doubts about your intentions. Usually people who want to create a new alt let us know about it and who they were previously if they want to convince us they are returning in good faith.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Direct confrontation happens, if you have numbers behind you and you are positioned appropriately on the progressive stack. But shaming and personal attacks only go in one direction. I think you're completely wrong that white women envy black women's comfort with direct confrontation. They are afraid of it. That's why white women (and progressives, more generally) lose against cancel culture. Because they are afraid to say "No" (or more pointedly, "Fuck off with your bullshit").
Similarly, “bravery to go against the crowd” and “immunity to personal attacks and shaming” are key pillars of the 21st-century worldview and ethos!
No, those are key parts of a popular delusion. Everyone (including here!) imagines himself a brave iconoclast, not afraid of speaking truth to power, not going along with the sheeple, definitely not an NPC. I totally worked out all my beliefs carefully from first principles and examine all evidence and do my own research and don't just take anyone else's word for it, especially not so-called "experts"! And I totally don't care what people think of me, ima gonna speak my truth!
This is bullshit, of course, for 90% of men and probably 99% of women. But we all like to imagine ourselves brave little cockerels strutting around unintimidated by popular opinion.
Yes, conservatives are delusional when they claim progressives are the conformist ones. But you (soy blue-tribe ex-progressive, by your own description) still seem perversely fond of the mythology you claim to have left behind, that progressives are the "radical" ones who aren't afraid to stand up and thrown down. The confrontation and conflict you describe is mostly petty infighting. No progressive would be brave enough to become a centrist or a heterodox classical liberal (like a lot of us here on the Motte) because he'd be booed, shamed, and forced to grovel unless he actually goes on the "I left the Left" grifting circuit (which requires basically leaving your entire social circle behind). Progressives don't do direct confrontation unless it's a struggle session (a bunch of people ganging up on the designated scapegoat) or in solidarity against an approved enemy (Trump, Israel, heteronormative late stage capitalism, whatever).
Gay pride parades are, exactly as you say, not even remotely transgressive anymore! They imagine themselves to be so- which is why you see people wearing S&M puppy gear or spreading their cheeks to show their rectums on Folsom Street, to try to retain some sense of actually "shocking the normies." But yeah, the early pride movement might have had some claim to be transgressive and brave, when they actually risked bottles and arrests. The vast majority of participants today would fold like cheap suits if threatened with physical danger or actual social disapprobation.
@TheDag's point (which I largely agree with) is that Trump appeals to the voter who wishes he could say "Fuck you" to his HR department and to DEI hires. Here's a guy who is constantly being called Literally Hitler and he doesn't care! Politicians don't do that anymore! The average Republican, even really conservative Republicans, will fold if accused of sexism or racism and mumble something about how unfair such accusations are. Trump doesn't care! He'll laugh and say "I love women! I love black people!" And then keep doing what he's doing.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
You can, if you can do so civilly. Which requires putting in a little bit of effort - not a lot, but more than just "You're a liar."
I modded him because he was almost certainly posting in bad faith.
I modded you because you had a choice between civility and sneering, and you chose the low road.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I am modding both of you, as you'd know if you looked before angrily reacting.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Most disingenuous what?
Whether you mean post or poster, report if you feel it's justified, don't just go straight to shit-flinging.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Make your point clearly and without low effort sarcasm, please.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
"You mad bro" is not a compelling argument, it's just an attempt to assert a dunk by projecting your own emotions. I am not angry, I'm annoyed at poor argumentation and boo outgroup, but I moderate my own disdain because I have to be the more charitable and gracious one.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
At least offer your own arguments rather than pretending you didn't just crib off of Dean. The rural purge of TV stations is not the same as these "reasonable takes" you are seal-clapping for, which do not appear reasonable or even attempting to engage with any other take to me, merely kneejerk Grand Unified Theories of Wokeness.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I don't believe for a moment that the replacement was done mainly because someone wanted to copy something from a comic.
Of course you don't, it doesn't fit your priors and it's not conflict theory, and you never bother to familiarize yourself with a topic before offering the most superficial and uncharitable conflict theory projection. However, if you've actually been tracking either the Marvel comic book universe or the MCU, you'd be aware that copying things from the comics, including obscure characters and plotlines that only those deeply into the comics lore would recognize, is something the MCU does quite frequently. Sam Wilson (originally The Falcon) is probably second only to Black Panther as the most recognizable black character in the Marvel universe. This isn't some arbitrary "Make Captain America black" racecasting stunt, it's a very predictable storyline based on everything that happened in the latest cycle.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I'm not religious, but you articulate the very human feelings on both sides very well.
What I would say, from a stoic perspective (and what I would say if I were still a Christian) is that it's not your job to decide if their repentance is sincere, and you're only harming yourself by stewing about all the fun they got to have before they found God.
That's not to say you need to take such conversions at face value. Sincerity (or lack thereof) will usually reveal itself.
I can understand being resentful of girls who slept with other guys but want you to put a ring on it first. Maybe she's just using you as an orbiter and fallback, or maybe she really does feel psychically damaged by her earlier experiences. I suspect Callista Flockhart really does regret her earlier ED and wants to spare other girls from going through that. But you can't know what's in their hearts. If you don't want to forgive people, well, you don't really leave open a path for redemption, do you?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Wait, we are talking about two separate claims here. One is the desire to punish incels. You can want to punish incels and still want to make money. Losing money is not a necessary condition for the existence of that motivation. A movie can be a humiliation ritual even when it makes bank.
Sure, and I said I don't doubt they might take shots at their ideological enemies in a movie they expect to be successful. What I don't find plausible is the claim some are making here that they will make a movie for the purpose of taking shots at their ideological enemies, with making money a secondary or non-consideration.
However, deliberately choosing a strategy that they must know by now is at least suboptimal at making money
This is the part I also doubt. Lots of would-be experts think they "know" whether or not a movie will be good and that it's obvious (always in hindsight) that it will be a bomb, and thus conclude the makers of the film knew they were making a bomb and didn't care. I doubt very much that anyone deliberately chooses a suboptimal strategy. I think a lot of people are just high on their own supply and/or bad at actually making good films and knowing what will be well-received.
I remember muttering before the first Black Panther movie came out that it would be a woke disaster. All the usual suspects were pretty sure that this movie about a C-list black superhero was going to bomb. If it had bombed, the same folks here would be proclaiming that it was obvious it was going to fail but Hollywood didn't care because woke. @Jiro would have confidently asserted that nobody puts a black man on the screen unless you're trying to be woke.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
They replaced Captain America with a black man. I don't think he's supposed to be gay, but surely it counts as a woke replacement.
Sam Wilson has been part of the Marvel Universe since the 1960s, and he (and several other people) have taken turns as Captain America repeatedly in the comics.
There is woke race-casting, but not every case of a black person taking on a role is it.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
You keep claiming they're saying these things only in response to be told their product is shit, is this an important part for your argument, or are you just trying to portray me as unreasonable?
I think I only said that once? No, it's not an important part of my argument, though I think reactiveness does describe a lot of these incidents. They get screamed at by fans angry at space lesbians or black hobbits, and react by saying "Fuck you, maybe you aren't the audience for this." I have never denied there are a lot of woke Hollywood people and they do like to troll and antagonize "deplorable" fans; I don't think they actually consider those people to be a significant part of their fanbase (and indeed, the people screaming about "Woke Disney" probably aren't).
I would like to once again ask why you think it's ok to for you to call anyone that disagrees with you "ridiculous", while providing zero evidence yourself?
Since we keep going back and forth about exactly what the other person is claiming, here's my claim:
Hollywood is very woke. They like to make woke movies. They also like to make money. I submit they like to make money more than they like being woke (at least the really important people, the people who make money decisions, do). Will they choose to make a woke movie if they think it will make money? Absolutely. Will they choose to give a middle finger to fans they consider deplorable, if they think they will still make money? Maybe (but I think the Big Men in Hollywood are less woke than the frontline people, the writers and actors popping off on Twitter). Will they intentionally create a product they know is bad, just to shit on deplorable fans? I do not think so. Will they make a shitty product aimed at fans they don't like, which they actually don't expect to be profitable, and not care, because it pleases them so much that it will piss off the right people? No. I think that's ridiculous. This goes directly back to the OP, and the claim that Joker 2 is a "humiliation ritual." That is, the entire production chain created this movie, knowing it was crap, not expecting it to be profitable, just to "punish" a bunch of incels who supposedly were the primary fans of the first movie. Just to say "Oh, you liked that movie? Fuck you." It is ridiculous.
Additionally, I think most of the people involved in making these things genuinely believe they are making a good product. I think the writers of The Acolyte and the Rings of Power, and so on, probably think their stories are great! Maybe some of them are hacks who don't care, but it does not fit my mental model of incentive-driven human beings, even woke ones, that anyone is deliberately choosing to tell a bad story they expect to be unpopular and lose ratings just because they want to add lesbians or black elves.
If I understand you correctly, you believe that they do this, and they do it regularly, and that every "woke" product in recent years that has (arguably) failed, from Joker 2 to Star Wars to Star Trek to Rings of Power to the latest MCU offerings, fell into this category: products that were made with little or no thought to profit, only to whether they would send the right (virtue) signals. And that the money men signed off on this, because they were okay with shitty virtue-signaling that doesn't make money.
Is that correct?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I'd say that if you think that "throwing all their money into a bonfire and basking at the flames as it all burns" is not only a reasonable standard, but apparently the bare minimum, for the claim "they are not primarily motivated by profit", I think you are the one being hyperbolic and irrational, which makes your claims of projection extra-ironic.
Obviously I do not think anyone literally burns money (I dunno, is making cigars out of $100 bills still a thing)? I do think your claim amounts to people willing to knowingly and intentionally waste millions of dollars in their industry making a shit product just to piss off people they don't like. Your evidence that this is a common practice - standard procedure in Hollywood even - is some actors and writers saying snarky things when told their product is shit.
Is there any field where you hold yourself to this standard? To me it looks like the same type of argument as "trans women aren't winning at every competition, so it's not a problem they're competing with women" that Darwin used on you once.
I can't help you when you make wild and ridiculous leaps of logic like this. Can you show me one unambiguous example of what you are claiming? That is, a major production that was made (by the admission of someone big enough to be credibly responsible) for the purposes of saying fuck you to the fans and without any consideration for being monetarily successful?
This claim is trotted out regularly as if it's evidence in itself, but it has literally no backing.
I cannot prove what is in the hearts of Hollywood producers. Neither can you. So we can both only guess, and my claim is based on what motivates most normal human beings (especially amoral and greedy ones); your claim is based on assuming that they are alien-like caricatures.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
True, but there is a difference between killing something because you don't care that the (wrong) audience likes it, and funding something you expect to fail just so you can stick a thumb in the audience's eye. The equivalent here would be just... not making a sequel, despite the obvious potential, rather than making a sequel that's deliberately shitty because you're angry at the people who liked the first one.
I also doubt that the Joker became a hit on the strength of angry disaffected young white men, even if some movie critics think so. Thus, I am very skeptical of the narrative that the studios said, "Whoa! We'd better fix this!" when they saw who bought tickets the first time.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Cool, so tell me how would the world look different if you were wrong about this?
If I were wrong about this, we'd see nothing but woke replacements and writers and directors being overt about their intentions, no retrenchments or cancellations by studios when a property fails to earn, and massively budgeted productions like "Captain America: Gay As You Want To Be." I am saying you are not wrong that wokeness is a pervasive influence in Hollywood; I am saying you are hyperbolic and irrational about the degree to which every single person top-down prioritizes petty vengeance against their ideological enemies over profits or even production quality. I suspect this is projection, because it's what a lot of the people being so shrill about this would do if they were in charge: fuck money, let's rub the hottest culture war we can in our enemies' faces. It's not a rational way to view the world, but it's emotionally satisfying.
When you get to the level of big Hollywood moneymaking, you care more about money than whether you pissed off some incels on Twitter.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
It kind of reminds of Cop Rock. I actually watched this when it aired.
It was awful. So hilariously bad no one could believe they actually produced this. But at the time, I had to give them credit for at least trying something original. Hollywood so rarely comes up with an original idea, I can't blame them too hard when they fail.
So yeah, when I heard about a Joker musical with Lady Gaga, I thought it sounded insane, but also maybe crazy in a good way?
Unfortunately not, but I still think the idea that they did this to punish fans who liked the first movie is even more crazy. "We made a blockbuster hit, but the wrong people liked it, so let's make a terrible movie that says fuck you to all the people who made the first movie profitable" is a thought that only makes sense in a dark fetid place.
Even when people are hostile to the original work and its fans, they aren't trying to tank its success or being indifferent to it. Take Paul Verhoeven, who made the original Starship Troopers movie and famously despised the book, thought Heinlein was a fascist, and probably would have been quite happy to say "fuck you" to Heinlein fans. He still made a movie that he thought would appeal to an audience that didn't care about fidelity to the book. The movie was hilariously bad* but not because he was trying to make sure Heinlein fans wouldn't like it.
* Actually I liked it and thought for all Verhoeven's blinkered misunderstanding of the book, he did capture some of its essence, even if unintentionally. It was bad in a campy, so-bad-it's-good way. Ironically it's now kind of a cult classic, spawned multiple sequels, and has been criticized for being too pro-military. All of which I bring up by way of saying, a simple black and white model of reality in which the entire creative team says "Hey kids, let's put on a show - and say fuck you to any bad people who might like it!" is an example of how conflict theory can degenerate to a childish understanding of the world.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Sure, but in a non-dysfunctional ecosystem, that just means that these people will eventually be replaced by people who are. The question is: why is the entertainment ecosystem so dysfunctional?
Please tell me what non-dysfunctional ecosystem I can go live in where this happens.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Ya know, you're not wrong, but this is a thing that happens constantly, and it's not because of a dumb woke conspiracy to force humiliation rituals on us.
My comparison is the government: why do government officials and politicians make so many empirically bad decisions? Why do many of them seem to be very bad at their jobs? Most of them are not stupid, and at least some of them actually want to be successful in managing the government and the economy. You can say some of them really are ideologues and just want to hurt their enemies (probably more true in government than in Hollywood), but most don't actually set out to be villains or incompetent.
The simple answer is that there are no adults in charge, and most people are just... not good at what they do. Ego and ideology do get in the way, but I believe in both Hanlon's Razor and Clark's Law.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Sure. The odd bit is that what's happening now is that Hollywood is incredibly IP-heavy compared to the past and even IPs with a track record are suddenly bombing despite us knowing they can appeal to their audience.
Actually, let me push back on that: the MCU was not destined to print money forever if only the writers could keep from going off the rails. Every trend, no matter how hot and moneymaking, fades eventually. There is a parallel in their source material: comics in the late 80s and 90s were extremely hot for a hot minute, and everyone was opening a comic book shop, every publisher was printing sixteen variant Collector's Item #1 covers of each new Spiderman/Superman/Spawn reboot, and Wolverine was guest-starring in cross-over stories in every damn title in the Marvel Universe.
That ended. It ended partly because of burnout, partly because of boring economic reasons, and partly because you just can't keep people excited about Wolverine forever.
Hollywood is of course a deeply and ironically uncreative industry (but then so are comic books, and book publishers, and gaming). When they see a cash cow, they will try to milk it until it's dead and they are trying to squeeze milk out of leather.
Your mention of Coppola actually speaks to my point: people think Joker 2 failed because it is an anti-profit go-woke-go-broke studio project to insult white men. If Megalopolis failed because Coppola is a megalomaniac who made a bad movie, presumably they don't think Coppola knew it was bad and didn't care, or never wanted to make money from it (though he probably would have been willing to make it anyway even if he knew it would lose money, because this was a passion project). But Coppola used his own money. I guess a very woke Coppola might have made a passion project to say fuck you to white men, but most people are not that crazy. I think it's much more likely the studios thought Joker 2 would be successful, and if it pissed off a few incels that would be an added bonus.
I don't think it has "always been" like this.
I am usually the one who contradicts the catastrophizers, the doomers, and accelerationists by bringing up whatever American history book I have most recently read to point out that we had extremely hot culture wars in the past, with politicians literally assaulting each other on the floor of Congress, with ideological camps deriding each others' partisan cures for epidemics, with very real, widespread and sometimes laughably blatant voter fraud, etc.
But at least in my lifetime, we mostly grew up with the idea that we might live in a two-party system with drastically opposing ideas, but nobody actually wanted to delegitimize and disenfranchise the other side. If you lost an election, that sucked and you could be unhappy about it, but you set about trying to win the next one.
The Motte being the place it is, most people perceive the Democrats to be the villains here, and right now, they are, because they are in power and because the left has the upper hand in the culture wars. But it was during the Clinton years when I first noticed a radical shift amongst right wingers; Clinton was not just a bad president, he was illegitimate. He was a monstrous, degenerate, nation-ending catastrophe. Liberals were traitors. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter rose to prominence on the strength of their invective.
This wasn't a particularly unique period in American history and I am not (quite) saying "Republicans started it," but I am saying that was about the time when I noticed, in the modern era, an end to our civic-minded Schoolhouse Rock version of American politics where Republicans and Democrats could still grill together. I know for certain that Congress was a more congenial and bipartisan body (and a lot of people criticized it for that, arguing that bipartisanship was bad because it meant making compromises and concessions with the enemy - well, those critics got what they wanted).
So I feel what you are saying, and what your National Review article is saying. I feel it every time I talk to my liberal friends. I feel it when I visit my hobby boards which have become essentially a chorus of daily agreement about leftist talking points. That someone could be a good person and still vote Republican is basically unthinkable. That you could be a liberal and remain friends with a Trump supporter is considered a logical contradiction, like saying you're a Jew who's friends with a Nazi.
I have seen liberals arguing that packing the court is a perfectly legitimate measure, that controlling free speech on the Internet is essential to combat disinformation, that the Constitution is fake and gay, and it's very clear that:
This makes me sad and frustrated and gloomy, but while I am not going to say Republicans started it, I'm not not saying that either.
No, seriously, you can probably pick whatever ideologically-motivated starting point fits your narrative, but it didn't used to be like this.
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