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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I was on the internet this week

That was your first mistake.

It is clear that what educational and social institutions want are meek, inoffensive and productive men who do not question the rules of society. This is in direct contrast to what young men want, which is to be outspoken, to be popular with women, to be socially and economically successful. No role model ever produced or selected by the state could manage this, particularly not when operating under the notion that it must maintain women's liberation, which itself requires the stifling of men. I question for how much longer this approach will be kept in place.

Market forces will kill any initiative like this. There is no demand for role models that don't teach young men what they want to learn (at least from the young men themselves).

The same thing happened with injecting progressive politics hamfistedly into tv, movies and video games. The market will just flow around and find what it demands elsewhere.

Market forces will kill any initiative like this. There is no demand for role models that don't teach young men what they want to learn (at least from the young men themselves).

The same thing happened with injecting progressive politics hamfistedly into tv, movies and video games. The market will just flow around and find what it demands elsewhere.

Market forces are not all-powerful. For example, video games are an utterly male-dominated hobby, and most men would prefer to look at beautiful women ceteris paribus, yet large western studios have done everything in their power to eradicate attractive women in AAA releases to appease their loud contingents of leftist female employees. It's not a total ban, indies and Japanese games still have attractive women albeit with large pushback from woke forums like Resetera, but the difference overall is still quite notable.

appease their loud contingents of leftist female employees

You would think so, but apparently not. It has little to do with female appeasement, and has far more to do with trans appeasement.

How did you dig up such a horrendous youtuber...

For all Functionalpurposes Truth is inversely proportional to pleasantness.

If it is true and known it is not new information and you won't pay attention to it, it's already known... If it true and inoffensive and unknown, then scientists, academics, and hobbyists have been competing for it for hundreds of years and you're basically trying to out-arbitrage the stock market.

But if its true and violates every societal value then it's going to be suppressed, you can discover troves of new (to you) knowledge by just seeking out the most hateful, unpleasant, immoral sources.

Truth Hurts.

Truth tellers are people who hurt you.

He's a good guy and has interesting things to say. Doesn't his voice sounding like a thousand nails scraping a chalkboard remind you of better times before the Internet got commercialized, when the "you" in Youtube actually stood for average schlubs, and just anyone could show up on the internet, and make some sort of a splash?

It took him about 30 seconds to blame Nancy Pelosi, Democrats in general, and "academia" for ruining Lara Croft. I mean, he isn't holding up literal applause signs, but it's not what I'd call interesting.

Not "I'd post that on the motte" interesting (which is why I don't), but he does have an interesting angle every once in a while.

large western studios have done everything in their power to eradicate attractive women in AAA releases

I don't know how anyone can believe this unless their primary source is Internet controversies, rather than playing video games.

Here are some popular games released by large American studios with attractive women: Cyberpunk, Street Fighter 6, and Overwatch 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider (et al), League of Legends (et al), Red Dead Redemption 2, Fortnite, Alan Wake 2.

I'd buy the claim that there are more, less attractive women in modern western games than there were 10 years ago, but I don't know how you can claim the The Woke are preventing American corporations from making games with attractive women at all.

Could you show me a AAA game with more than 2 women where none of the women are attractive?

Perhaps the way I wrote my earlier comment lacked nuance, so I'll add it here. There more fanservicey female is basically extinct from western AAA games these days. At best, large Western studios are going for what could colloquially be described as "safe horny". Your example of Tomb Raider exemplifies this, as the original protagonist was pretty openly sexualized, while the later incarnation is perhaps conventionally attractive, but almost always fully clothed. A few games like WoW actively removed some of their sexualized elements, while I think basically anyone who plays games will notice they've generally become a lot less common than they once were. Some men don't like this type of titillation, while others (like me) enjoy it in doses, and some actively seek it out. No matter your opinion though, it's undeniable that there's a market for it, a market that is now almost exclusively served by non-Western studios with games like Xenoblade 2, Nier Automata, and others. "fanservicey female characters" is basically Stellar Blade's only claim to fame, yet it's looking like it's going to be a huge hit no matter the gameplay simply because of this. Of course the woke side of gaming threw a giant fit about it.

So Western games still have a fair share of non-sexualized but conventionally attractive females. But even on that side there are problems, as going for "realistic" women means subpar implementations end up looking like gremlins in ways unique to Western implementations. One example of a game where no women were attractive was Mass Effect Andromeda, as even though the female protagonist was based off a pretty good looking woman, the end result looked like she had crippling autism since they didn't get the animations right. Another example is basically any game involving Debra Wilson. She seems like a perfectly nice individual, but she's pretty plain to start with, and she ends up looking like a total gremlin in the games she does mocap work for.

I play a lot of Warhammer: Darktide, and it's a running joke in the playerbase that it's impossible to make an attractive female avatar.

I think that's more of a deliberate setting choice rather than being downstream of politics; it makes sense in-universe that the rejects would be ugly and it's not like the male characters you can create are any better looking. Everybody in that game is ugly.

Cyberpunk comes from Poland. Street Fighter 6 comes from Japan.

Thanks. For some reason I thought Microsoft owned Capcom

The same thing happened with injecting progressive politics hamfistedly into tv, movies and video games. The market will just flow around and find what it demands elsewhere.

Which is why we have all the non-progressive TV, movies, and video games..... oh, wait. It turns out that solving the coordination problem allows you to beat the market.

I should have been more clear. They can flood the 'market' with unwanted role models, but the kids won't absorb their values. They know what a man is, intuitively.

Which is why we have all the non-progressive TV, movies, and video games..... oh, wait. It turns out that solving the coordination problem allows you to beat the market.

Progressive movies keep tanking at the box office. People are increasingly turning to alternatives like anime and k-drama. Wokeness doesn't control the whole world (yet; growth mindset!)

And just supply-side issues. What conservative wants to be an actor, TV writer, comedian etc.? Everything I know about political psychology suggests that these professions should repel the vast majority of conservatives: insecurity and family-hostility in return for wild adventures and living in a world of creative ideas.

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