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Actually, fuck that, I *do* have something to say I didn't say in the old thread:
The people reactionaries call "SJW infiltrators" have always been there. Many of us have been around longer than the reactionaries.
The people reactionaries call "SJW infiltrators" have always been there. Many of us have been around longer than the reactionaries.
Feminists didn't "infiltrate" gaming, they just got harder to ignore.
People love to point to The Last Jedi as an attack from outside, as if Rian Johnson didn't grow up on Star Wars same as the rest of us.
People love to point to The Last Jedi as an attack from outside, as if Rian Johnson didn't grow up on Star Wars same as the rest of us.
It's just so blind and dishonest to ignore that a lot of people in your fandoms just *are* political and progressive and always have been, and they were talking about the politics of video games and Star Wars before you even knew what either WAS.
Very reasonable folks getting mad at me for a tweet thread from a month and a half ago that they still don't comprehend.
I promise you they did not find this by reading my timeline, they're sharing the same screenshot IMC posted when I got dogpiled for the same thread in August.
Just stirring up old shit with the same crap arguments.
Just stirring up old shit with the same crap arguments.
I have no new responses to this bullshit so you can just read my thread from the last dogpile:
Can we just talk about how "sometimes a platform is actually a gallows" implies, with the word "sometimes," that sometimes it isn't?
Does Gladwell have some idea of what makes a platform a gallows? Does he have a plan? Did Remnick?
Does Gladwell have some idea of what makes a platform a gallows? Does he have a plan? Did Remnick?
Fucking hell, liberals with their "Y works sometimes" so they just keep doing Y no matter how many times it fails with no correction.
The liberal response to "our methods are failing" is "I guess we didn't do them hard enough."
The liberal response to "our methods are failing" is "I guess we didn't do them hard enough."
Anyway, folks, remember to argue with your racist uncle at Thanksgiving because that's the one and only way to stop fascism.
coffee ($5) or help for the 
server cost ($10):
I'm having thoughts about the Condescending White Man brand of media criticism popular on YouTube - Plinkett, Yahtzee, CinemaSins - and how these characters are both fictional and aspirational for their intended audiences.
Thread incoming.
Thread incoming.
So I was thinking about this after watching @thelindsayellis' recent Q&A video:
In it, she mentions that useful media criticism is often a matter of having an emotional reaction to the media and putting into words what you think the media did to provoke that reaction.
The new @ContraPoints is phenomenal, and reminded me of this nugget from Andrew Solomon's TED Talk on depression.
This is the self-reinforcing misery incels are embedded in.
This is the self-reinforcing misery incels are embedded in.
Watch Natalie.
Also listen to Andrew Solomon. He's a pretentious fuck, but if you need a way out of self-loathing, he's articulate, compassionate, and thoroughly-researched, unlike a certain lobsterman.
ORWELL TOOK A BULLET TO THE THROAT FIGHTING FASCISM YOU JACKASS
Cheong is a disgrace to the name Ian.
Real talk: This is the ongoing attempt to distance modern antifa from historical antifascist movements as a means of condemning all efforts to stop fascism without appearing to endorse fascism itself.
Kicked off the week by typing "bloviating internet chodes" into a Patreon comment.
Incubus was a band that would throw out words like "zombified" or "combustication" in the same songs as "somnambulant" or"reciprocity," and, while I'm not really a fan anymore, I'd say this deeply influenced my writing style.
Or like that scene on Step By Step where Dana's professor, in reviewing her first college paper, says, "I'm going to give you one very big word and one short one: This paper is supercilious crap."
A E S T H E T I C
A E S T H E T I C
Help me out here, folks.
I feel like it's probably a Contra persona, but WHICH?
Realizing there hasn't been enough @rantasmo in this thread.
It took 6 different exports to finally get around the copyright bots. Thank you for your patience.
I did not make it out of this ordeal unscathed.
At this point people are just saying shit to me to see if I'll block them and then laughing when I do.
Really, blocking is a win-win.
Really, blocking is a win-win.
Bring some joy into the world.
Block someone.
Block someone.
(This has been my entire fucking day.)
Assholes found my thread after I went to bed last night and I've spent my morning sifting through hundreds and hundreds of notifications and blocking dozens of people.
So, hey, who wants to hear about common arguments?
1) All the Left does is politicize communities, and the reason communities shift to the Far Right is a reaction to Leftist infiltration.
Alum has a Mac build that doesn't launch.
Dead Synchronicity has a Mac build that starts to launch, hangs, and crashes.
Obduction has a Mac build that is unplayable.
The Witness has a Mac build that is playable but runs like shit.
Dead Synchronicity has a Mac build that starts to launch, hangs, and crashes.
Obduction has a Mac build that is unplayable.
The Witness has a Mac build that is playable but runs like shit.
Oh, and Rain World promised a Mac build in their Kickstarter and then never mentioned it again through their entire production cycle.
Sure would have liked to know this stuff before I spent money on all these games.
I was talking to some smart people the other night about political movements, and it got me thinking about differences in how the Right and the Left organize.
Thread incoming.
Thread incoming.
One thing the Right - especially the Far Right - does that the Left doesn't seem to do as much is politicize already existing communities.
We see this with gamers, furries, comics fans, Star Wars fans, sci-fi fans, etc. Any community with a large, Millennial, white, male population.
Alt-Right types don't simply siphon members over to Stormfront, they try to shift the entire community Rightward.
Alt-Right types don't simply siphon members over to Stormfront, they try to shift the entire community Rightward.
Sometimes I consider starting a video series called How Many Of His Comments Can Ian Read Before He Hates Humanity.
Today would have been a very short episode.
Today would have been a very short episode.
Compliments don't actually do much for me. What makes me happiest is when people use my work to springboard intelligent and/or hilarious discussions with each other in comments.
It's why the toxic ones are so odious, because they make other conversations nearly impossible.
ArenaNet set a precedent of firing employees for being, by some vague definition, discourteous to fans on their personal Twitters on their days off, and the men cheering this don't see this as a massive overreach because they know they will never be held to the same standards.
They know full well "Your boss can fire you for being rude on Twitter" only applies to women.
This is like when gamers try take Anita down for being "angry" and "hateful," no matter how calmly she speaks, despite the default mode of male games criticism being profane yelling about shit that doesn't matter.
They don't have to live by the rules they impose on others.
They don't have to live by the rules they impose on others.
I went to a panel at PAX East Ave discovered Jessica Price is one of the most brilliant people working in games, so some company with more respect for its employees had better snatch her up immediately.
Also search "ArenaNet" if you wanna find people to preemptively block on here, it's proving quite the honeypot.
fucking autocorrect
Getting upset at Scarlett Johansson being cast as a trans character is just getting upset at Hollywood being Hollywood.
Big n... — "You gotta fight capitalism with capitalism" is a shit take. curiouscat.me/InnuendoStudio…
Big n... — "You gotta fight capitalism with capitalism" is a shit take. curiouscat.me/InnuendoStudio…
Hey, guess what? Movies - and I know many may not be aware of this - often have more than one role in them! I know, it's wild!
So if you need stars to get a movie greenlit, you can cast famous cis people - stay with me here - in the cis roles.
So if you need stars to get a movie greenlit, you can cast famous cis people - stay with me here - in the cis roles.
for sources on this claim please refer to this list of every movie ever
Democrat political strategy:
Step A) Refuse to stoop to Republicans' level
Step B)
Will someone please fucking tell me what Step B is?
Step A) Refuse to stoop to Republicans' level
Step B)
Will someone please fucking tell me what Step B is?
"Republicans want to stick children in cages and then go about their day-to-day lives like normal people. Our political strategy is to give them exactly what they want. THAT'LL SHOW EM."
Every time they say "when they go low, we go high," I want to demand, "and then what?!"
They go low, we go high, and what fucking happens next? How do they respond when we go high? What policy does going high implement?
They go low, we go high, and what fucking happens next? How do they respond when we go high? What policy does going high implement?
I'm trying to get through this interesting yet flawed essay on Lara Croft and it's prompting so many distracting thoughts that I can't focus on it, which means it's time to do #IanLivetweetsHisResearch.
(No, this does not mean I'm abandoning the other thread on The Reactionary Mind, I'm just doing a lot of research in tandem these days. Normally I wouldn't start a new thread before completing the current one, but I'll never get through this essay if I don't.)
The essay is Lara's Lethal and Loaded Mission: Transposing Reproduction and Destruction, by Claudia Herbst, and it's the first chapter in the collection Action Chicks, edited by Sherrie A. Inness.
It's been a hot minute, but it's time.
I've made some room to properly get into The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin.
#IanLivetweetsHisResearch
I've made some room to properly get into The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin.
#IanLivetweetsHisResearch
The first chapter begins with a T.S. Eliot quote arguing that, in the end, you can't judge a party by what it says its aims are; a party will reveal what it's trying to accomplish by its actions.
Sometimes the party itself isn't sure what it's doing.
Sometimes the party itself isn't sure what it's doing.
Robin then begins with his view of history as being full of unequal power relations and the tensions that arise between them.
Man-woman, worker-employer, government-governed.
Man-woman, worker-employer, government-governed.
Having finished The Authoritarians, it's time to start a new thread of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch. Today I am finally getting past the introduction of How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley.
Having slogged through some proper academic writing in my day, Stanley's writing is blessedly accessible. But after Altemeyer's light tone and constant dad jokes, Stanley's reads as pretty dry.
So far the introduction is full of a lot of quotations about the nature of democracy, from Victor Klemperer to Elizabeth Anderson to Plato. OF COURSE Plato.
We are in the penultimate chapter of The Authoritarians and Altemeyer is starting to address the elephant in the room: how does authoritarianism correlate to political affiliation? #IanLivetweetsHisResearch
Altemeyer sent his RWA survey to over 4,000 politicians, and got about a 25% response rate, mostly from state senators and lower legislators. Here's the data.
On average, Republicans scored 40 points more authoritarian than Democrats, though, notably, Democrats covered a much wider range of the scale.
Though the average was lower, they spanned from the least authoritarian to higher than the Republican average.
Though the average was lower, they spanned from the least authoritarian to higher than the Republican average.
Alright, it's been a while, but let's do #IanLivetweetsHisResearch. Today we're reading Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians, which you can nab for free here: theauthoritarians.org/Downloads/TheA…
It's a whole-ass book so I'm just gonna share the things that jump out at me from what I've read so far and what I read this morning. Might come back to it in future livetweets.
Also shoutout to whichever follower recommended the book to me, You are lost in a sea of old notifications but it was a good recommendation!