Remember when that one guy whose name we'll not recall tried to use "Ray Cyst" as a pseud?
Why must we assume that a turn to reactionary politics must be prompted by the left doing something wrongly or rudely or disproportionately? Perhaps the same thing would have happened in reaction to strengthening antiracism/feminism/etc. expressed with perfect clarity, politesse, and targeting; or put another way, perhaps ostentatious wokeness (which is certainly a real thing) is orthogonal to the true causes of the alt-right - at most a convenient scapegoat.
I've been thinking about "performative wokeness" with respect to the response to Confederacy. Two white dudes* want to make an alternate-timeline story about modern-day slavery. Sounds chancey! I'm skeptical. But left-wing Twitter has decided this is the worst thing and can't possibly be good and how dare they? What if it turns out these two white dudes are the Azor Ahai of Wokeness?
* The most famous two of six executive producers. Two other executive producers are PoC. And there's presumably an entire writing staff yet to be hired.
Why must we assume that a turn to reactionary politics must be prompted by the left doing something wrongly or rudely or disproportionately?
Because of the tidy storyline - the etiquette on the left is the only thing that anyone has a shred of hope of controlling. Any other explanation admits that the alt-right doesn't have a tidy storyline nor an easy answer.
Which is not to excuse it. Just saying that you nitpick those lower than you on the pecking order when you're terrified.
What if it turns out these two white dudes are the Azor Ahai of Wokeness?
This stuff tends to fall into such predictable patterns I think the twitterfolk you're talking about feel - rightly - like Cassandras.
I'm not sure how much info was available on the first announcement, but I'd say these fears were borne out with things like this
7.2: I saw that tweet and though, oh come on, we're condemning their f-ing bibliography?
Why must we assume that a turn to reactionary politics must be prompted by the left doing something wrongly or rudely or disproportionately?
That wasn't my assumption, and I don't think that's the position of the interview. They are slightly cranky about the online left, but they also identify Trump as the figure who caused the alt-right to become politically active.
Trump was the big explosive moment. Obviously there have been reactionary online for many years before Trump, but Trump's campaign was the moment where it all went completely mainstream. Gamergate was very significant in bringing together a whole cross section of people who were anti-political correctness, but a lot of these people weren't necessarily right-wing. They were cultural libertarians or free speech enthusiasts, but there wasn't a lot of political organizing. That changed with Trump. All the anti-PC stuff, the anti-immigration politics, the trolling campaigns -- Trump boosted all of that into the mainstream.
Also, one other reason why criticisms of the online left might come up in a conversation about the Right is simply that anybody who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about online politics may have opinions.
That said, I was slightly surprised by their shared crankiness.
I think I mentioned a while back that there was one hobby oriented message board where I sometimes hang out and is the main place where I interact with right wingers "in the wild".
I tended to share their dislike of some aspects of the ostentatiously woke left, but there was a vast difference in the intensity of our respective reactions. Where I look at a lot of this stuff and find it juvenile and annoying, the see a genuine existential threat to civilization. And I swear that's not an overstatement.
There was an odd frozen in time quality to their concerns as well. they tended to be very concerned about postmodernism and how it's supposedly undermining Western civilization (in fact, that forum is just about the only place where I see the word "postmodern" used regularly these days). Basically, a lot of what they write could have been published in The New Criterion circa 1993.
I agree with the term 'performative wokeness' -- you see the conflict on the left played out in places like LGM, where some commenters favour analysis and others favour emotive outrage. There are stupid debates about whether it is OK to punch Nazis or not; it's a waste of time and energy.
I also agree with the comment above that it's silly to blame the existence of the alt-right on emotional leftism.
The alt-right version of 'performative wokeness' is their 'performative tactics' -- stupid, technical discussions of aspects of violence, focusing on caliber, technical terms for maneuveurs, listings of abilities, skills, and performances related to violence, all in kind of an affectless manner. "These things exist" is what the discussion says, "and we're not calling for them, but they might appear if the Left insists on this or that."
Yeah, I don't see the looming end of Western civilization, and it's hard to take seriously people who support our current President, who has no evident respect for our traditions or civic values.
On the other hand, even when people are talking about Western Civilization, what they really mean is life as they experience it. We're all one bad joke away from #hasjustinelandedyet, ie, losing you job while you're unable to even communicate with the boss, which makes the stakes for dealing with, or even just being visible to, the humorless left (and I suppose the alt-right) a lot higher now than they used to be.
We're all one bad joke away from #hasjustinelandedyet
I guess so, but were also all one risky sex encounter away from getting AIDS.
you see the conflict on the left played out in places like LGM, where some commenters favour analysis and others favour emotive outrage.
These days, I don't see any need to choose.
It's a bit of a confusing taxonomy, because when people talk about the "alt-left" they are usually talking about Chapo Traphouse and its clan, who've made a shtick of skewering performative wokeness.
I'm at ground zero of performative wokeness, what with being on an elite private university. It's indeed tiresome and obnoxious, and in particular small, rarified environments can be harmful, but it's hardly a threat outside, say, our department's student-faculty liaison committee meeting. I also don't see any way that the irritating left could lead someone to become alt right unless they already were alt right, but pretending not to be so they could get laid. "Someone called me transphobic for saying 'transgendered' instead of 'transgender'. I guess I'll become a Nazi now" isn't to me a plausible thought process.* (Turned off from politics entirely, less leftist, I could all believe. Alt right not so much.)
* After typing this out, I do see how someone who has an authoritarian personality could swing from far left to far right, and I think that's not that uncommon. TBH the most awful offensive Nazi-istic thing I've ever heard someone (who wasn't an elderly German) say was from the ringleader of our ostentatiously woke department clique, in an attempt to bully another student.**
**They took over our student union and turned it into a bully-fest purity party. After a few years of increasingly poor behavior, they had leadership wrested away from them by actual adults. They actually stomped out in a huff and now claimed our union is racist and sexist and hates women and POC, which is super ironic because the new leaders are all people of color, half of whom are women, and most of whom are from "The Global South."***
***I've noticed ostentatious wokeness correlates very strongly with class and with being from an English speaking country.
I'm starting to think that maybe I shouldn't kill time waiting for the start of meetings asking everybody for their favorite quote/scene from Clerks.
Everyone goes for the Star Wars bit, right?
Everyone I work with goes straight for the sex with dead guy.
That's the scene my mom walked out of the movie at.
Seconf day back in Arrakis, jet-lagged and in pain. Doctor said it was the worst case of shingles she'd ever seen, the flight was excruciating. Didn't think you could get it unless you were over 60 which I'm well short of. If you had chicken pox do yourself a favor and get the vaccine.
Also returned to my apartment and the AC was turned off! Mold spots all over my marble floors where the humidity condensed. Had to spend an hour disinfecting my floors before I could rest in my 90+ degree apartment. Just thought I'd vent a bit before getting ready for my first day back at work.
Yikes. Sorry to hear all that, Barry.
Oh shit that's an awful couple days.
I had to describe the online left accurately as I saw it, and the right was in an absolute state of panic about the fact that they were seeing all of these things happening on college campuses: speakers being shut down, platforms being denied, large groups of people ganging up on dissident voices.
I used to support the establishment but ever since Gamergate I've been outraged by the lack of platforms given to dissidents like Ann Coulter.
OK, I'll bite. I don't think being annoyingly performatively woke is per se an issue at all - annoy away - but if you go beyond straight protest and criticism to the extent that you're trying to get people fired (or trying to get them subjected to institutional procedures that might get them fired, or trying to pressure them to resign) for what they say, you should reserve it for the very worst cases. Like, actual Nazis. (Except for where what is said is proof of incompetence, etc.) And you shouldn't be trying to no-platform relatively mainstream figures like Richard Dawkins, as opposed to telling him he's a fuckwit. It's illiberal. It's not the end of civilization, and for all I know it isn't representative of any trend, but to the extent it occurs it is a bad thing. If anyone thinks its bad enough of a thing to excuse the alt-right, they too are fuckwits.
24
Man, that sucks! Hope you recover quickly. FWIW, my husband had shingles a few years ago, and the doctor said that people who are stressed are highly susceptible, so it's not just old and immunocompromised people. Grad students are a higher risk population, and my guess is people with stressful jobs would be as well.
Yeah, I got shingles at 35 and when the doctor asked if I was stressed immediately burst into tears. That was an awful month, but I broke up with Lee as soon after it as I could, so there was decidedly upside.
Did you infect her on the way out?
Two questions:
(1.) Is there a definition of wokeness anywhere? Is it in any way different from 90's political correctness?
(2.) Re: shingles. A friend of mine got them at 37. I never had chicken pox. I got vaccinated at 28 (had to pay a lot out of pocket because student insurance didn't cover it), and then I had a titer for a job showing that I had no detectable immunity, so I got another shot 3 years ago. My current hospital's occ health department wouldn't do the titer, so I don't know how well it took. I've read that they don't recommend more than 2 times and that some people seem to show immunity even in the absence of antibodies (where is Cryptic Ned when you need him?), but I wonder whether I can get shingles from the varicella vaccine?
Barry- That just sucks; I'm sorry.
Just went to the clinic since concern was expressed that I might be contagious even though I know I'm not and the doctor told me to go straight home and remain for 3 days and wear no pants until my sores heal (it's at my belt area, add a 12 hour flight and you can imagine).
Now I'm even more concerned about those spores on my floors.
Jezus, Barry. Find a way to spoil yourself!
I've noticed ostentatious wokeness correlates very strongly with class and with being from an English speaking country.
People from other classes and countries where many other languages are spoken have more important things on their minds.
18,30: I think that Nagle's story is a bit more complicated than what you're portraying. She's not claiming that people got annoyed by the "woke" left and immediately became alt-right Nazis.
Her narrative is that if you're in the age range of around 16-22 and have a propensity to question recieved wisdom (not to mention a sense of humor), then the dour groupthinky atmosphere that can be found in some prominent corners of the left would make the anything-goes-transgression-for-transgression's-sake style that characterized the early days of 4chan and related places look pretty attractive. Then, because transgression for transgression's sake is kind of a dead end, the whole subculture was easily taken over by MRAs and white supremacists.
That's not an excuse! For the people who were part of the early chan culture, allowing themselves to be woed by Nazis is on them. But the story Nagle is telling is more complex than "I was a middle of the road liberal but the some obnoxious lefty called me out over something and I realized that Hitler was right after all".
38
Sure, but I think it's understating the key elements a bit. The link between being annoyed/wanting to troll humorless leftists to turning to Nazism (or whatever you want to call modern white supremacist fascism) isn't obvious or natural at all and it's the pretty key move. Whatever the original motivation for participating in 4chan was, there's, as you note, no excuse for turning to alt right politics, and at a certain point describing these men as naive becomes a pernicious denial of white male responsibility. Thousands of men collectively threatening to rape and dismember prominent women on the internet have to realize, at the moment they're sending sexually violent death threats, they've crossed a bright line where the fig leaf of contrarian trolling is impossible.
Secondly, alt-right people may claim their motive for turning to the alt-right are annoying social justice warriors, but I'm highly suspicious of taking that at face value. Misogynists and racists always blame the victims for 'forcing' them to hate them, and I don't see this as any different. Women and POC taking up space at all on the internet is a threat to these men, regardless of how obnoxious the content of the tumblrs might be. Also, the fantasy of an objectively less powerful group as constituting an outsized threat is also part of the fantasy of white supremacy and misogyny.
Anyways, if the last thought isn't clear, I don't see how you turn to the alt right if you don't already at some level view women and POC as lesser than you. I think it's right that those sort of views might not have come out explicitly in people without Trump or Breitbart or online MRA communities, but I don't think you can turn to the alt right out of nothing. I do think it's also the fault of the MSM for not loudly decrying this stuff and instead slowly normalizing it. Reading Breitbart should have been as stigmatized as reading Stormfront, but instead it seems that we're going in the opposite direction.
(I'm opposed to violence and I'm not a big fan of much campus ostentatiously leftist behavior, but I'm less concerned by Middlebury students shouting down Charles Murray (although the violence was horrible) but because it's actively alarming that explicit Social Darwinism still has a veneer of respectability. People who would be ok with a holocaust denier being shouted down and run off a campus are up in arms that a man who wrote a book about how black people are inferior and should be sterilized wasn't given the time of day of respectable people.)
Are you sure they're still opposed to Holocaust denial?
41
Well, we have learned from the Trump administration that Hitler never gassed his own people.
This is an interesting topic. What I worry about is how numerous are these guys? I've run into young people who are familiar with the term 'cuck' but I don't sense a real movement here yet. I am I too optimistic?
I think you are neglecting one aspect of the alt-right -- their emphasis on powerlessness. A lot of what they do is political, but they define it in aesthetic terms: 'lulz', provocation, just making a joke. Unlike the original far right, their personal emphasis is on loserdom, not becoming powerful (though they will talk about that as well). Insisting that it is political, or that it matters, is being a square (to use a term from an earlier era). In that sense, I think the term 'alt' is appropriate, these aren't for the most part earnest dorks who march with Nazis, they're people online who think it's funny to rile people up by being racist, sexist, homophobic jerks, and then naturally end up voting with the racists, sexists, and homophobes.
I don't know the alt-right very well, but certainly the regular reactionary right is very focused on defining what they do as a response to provocations, need for self-defense, or somebody else's fault because reasons. They didn't do it and if they did do it, they had no choice. Unless 'it' is good, of course. Then they did it with the Anglo-Saxon ancestry in the library.
I've run into young people who are familiar with the term 'cuck' but I don't sense a real movement here yet.
That must be a bunch of fun or awkward conversations you are having.
Anyway, I don't buy the self-proclaimed emphasis on powerlessness as anything but a false flag.
48
And also a way to maintain the moral high ground while being objectively a monster, the same way an abuser convinces himself he's a great guy and would be an awesome partner if only his girlfriend didn't keep making him hit her.
38: I was mainly objecting to the use of dissident.
I also had shingles in my 30s. We're a stressed-out bunch! But I think I'm the only person that didn't think shingles was that awful.
I also had shingles in my 30s. We're a stressed-out bunch! But I think I'm the only person that didn't think shingles was that awful.
If you're willing to read a few thousand words on the topic and the book specifically from an alt-right sympathetic perspective, and definitely a right wing one, kantbot has such a piece.
http://thermidormag.com/angela-nagles-wild-ride/
Part of what is going on is that there is a revival of socialism on the left. These guys, including I think angela nagle, are mainly concerned with certain policy proposals and consider personal virtue of the David Brooks or of the "performative wokeness" variety to be mainly be of non-political interest. This causes endless debate on social media between the new socialist left and the "be a good person" left. Generally the socialist left tries to point out that the "be a good person" left are insufficiently focused in policy solutions to problems and the "be a good person" left try to paint the socialist left as sexist, racist or what ever. there is one on facebook today about mr softee trucks.
Barry, that's terrible! I hope you feel better, and that sounds not only difficult but like it could easy feel incredibly lonely.
Her narrative is that if you're in the age range of around 16-22 and have a propensity to question recieved wisdom (not to mention a sense of humor), then the dour groupthinky atmosphere that can be found in some prominent corners of the left would make the anything-goes-transgression-for-transgression's-sake style that characterized the early days of 4chan and related places look pretty attractive. Then, because transgression for transgression's sake is kind of a dead end, the whole subculture was easily taken over by MRAs and white supremacists.
That's my default assumption, and why I thought it was interesting that she described the end-point as, "they're against the idea that problems in society are socially constructed or even that most of our experiences are socially constructed." It's an odd sort of transgression that concludes with the idea that everything is constructed of absolutes.
The link between being annoyed/wanting to troll humorless leftists to turning to Nazism (or whatever you want to call modern white supremacist fascism) isn't obvious or natural at all and it's the pretty key move.
...
... the same way an abuser convinces himself he's a great guy and would be an awesome partner if only his girlfriend didn't keep making him hit her.
I think the truth of that depends a little bit on how large a circle that you draw around the "alt-right."
Part of how I read these conversations comes out of my arguments here with Lord Castock about whether or not contemporary geek culture is terrible (his position), or if there are terrible elements, but still much to appreciate (my position, which is based on my own experience with geek culture growing up, and which may or may not be an accurate now).
When I read these articles about the alt-right, it makes me wonder if something like the Penny Arcade Dickwolves saga isn't just an ugly episode but exactly the sort of thing that pushes some people towards the alt-right (and other people towards a position that is more socially conscious and more critical of geek culture.
If the alt-right only encompasses, "modern white supremacist fascism" then I agree, any protestations about how it's a reaction to the left feel disingenuous (and, FWIW, makes it easier to argue that it's a small element that's distinct from the bulk of online geek culture). On the other hand if you think, as I sometimes worry, that the sort of penny-arcade tolling is a close relative of the sort of "anything-goes-transgression-for-transgression's-sake" that is part of the alt-right culture then, it doesn't seem disingenuous to say that some of the people participating (and others who are observing and somewhat sympathetic) do so with a sense that they don't wield much power or that they do enjoy thumbing their nose at what they perceive as sanctimony.
That's not a defense, just explaining why I don't think the question of, "what, exactly, are we talking about when we talk about the 'alt-right'?" is a simple one.
(1.) Is there a definition of wokeness anywhere?
I doubt it. FWIW, I somewhat messed up the link in the OP, here it is again
The post is clearly not making a definition, just processing his personal experience and perceptions. It's interesting to read the comments which replicate, in miniature, the debate between people saying, "it's important to have sympathy for people" and others saying, "it's important to make a public statement so that observers will know that we, as a community, don't approve."
Wow, I just can't get that link right, can I . . . ?
mr softee
I'm assuming that has something to do with cucks again?
I take it these are what are called "edgelords".
This looks very interesting https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/hes-spent-almost-20-years-funding-the-racist-right-it?
60- Thanks, I guess half a million gets you a lot of racists. (At the Cracker Barrel?) But still a pretty small number in the big picture, even if a lot of people are absorbing some of the language.
The Cracker Barrel only gets you racists that like chicken fried steak.
Cracker Barrel, along with coldplay, is one of the things that I am surprised has a lot of black fans.
I was surprised at how many black people went to Stone Mountain. I guess it's just the park.
Barry - get well soon. As others have mentioned upthread, you can get shingles whenever your immune system is lower than normal. I had stress-induced shingles in my late twenties (getting students through their exams while preparing to switch continent, being kicked out of our apartment two months before the move and facing an uncertain future with my then longterm partner). It truly, truly sucked and as well as the direct effects - in the arm, in my case - it was very debilitating and I was weak and exhausted for several weeks.
Really rooting for you to feel better soon and hoping you have the opportunity for a period of genuine rest.
63: Lee loooooves Cracker Barrel and always wanted to stop there on road trips, whereas I wasn't sure whether we were still supposed to be boycotting them since the early '90s or whatever. She also takes our children to Chik-Fil-A, which Selah claims is Mama's favorite restaurant. Shrug. She definitely never caught shingles and is typically the poster child for good things happening to awful people except today she took her dog, who's been living with me for the last two years since she left but is not going to be manageable for me after my tonsillectomy later this week, and the dog immediately peed on her carpet when they reached her apartment. I had previously assured her the dog hadn't had any accidents in the house, which was even true. I guess not anymore! But other than that we're still in the version of reality where she never suffers and I never get a lucky break.
Here's hoping for better versions of reality for Barry and Thorn.
I have a co-worker who loves Chick-fil-A, which is surprising given their politics and how they identify but they apparently feel some personal connection based on going there growing up.
I've still never eaten at one but the locations I've seen in the Bay Area are always busy. SO MUCH FOR THE INTOLERANT LEFT.
56
I would certainly not include all of geek culture as alt right, I think. (I'm not sure of your earlier arguments, or what counts as geek culture, and I'm definitely not an expert, although I'm sort of at the fringes.) And there also is a trolling, libertarian chaotic left. Things like the copyleft movement, Pirate Parties, etc are not at all affiliated with and can be a bit hostile to the "tumblr left" scene, but they are definitely leftist, and often do a lot to take on the alt right on the internet.*
I guess I would draw a line around people who engage with and tolerate alt right behavior (overt racism, misogyny, calls for violence), but claim to not identify with it. I do think we're at the point where if you passively tolerate something evil, you're part of the problem. So I'd say men who tolerated gamergate and/or contributed to harassing women online but claimed they were just doing it to troll are part of my definition of alt right. I would also say that men who post racial slurs or pictures of dismembered women on mainstream sites are part of the alt right, even if they'd claim not to be.
*My husband studies internet trolls professionally, and I once asked him why there's such particular, overwhelming and focused hate for Sweden. (I have some reasons, but they didn't seem to explain the intensity and amount of hatefulness directed at Sweden in particular). My husband said that a large part of the reason is because Sweden is ground zero for left wing trolls, and they spend lots of time fucking with the alt right.
after my tonsillectomy later this week
Hope it goes well. I had mine out at about age 6 - my main memory is that it was rather nice to have a medical excuse to lie in bed reading Asterix and eating nothing but ice cream for a few days.
Talking to my husband about whether all of geek culture is problematic, he says that he and his (geeky) friends talk about this, and they're conclusion is that a premise of geek culture is complete acceptance of social weirdness. There's a way that's nice, but it also means there's absolutely no space for correcting people's behavior or calling people out. In practice, this means tolerating and welcoming all sorts of anti-sociality or bad behavior, including racism and sexism.
My husband studies internet trolls professionally
Please tell more! Why? In what capacity? Are the Carabinieri going to save the world?
70: Selah is to have her tonsils and adenoids out middle of next month, right after turning 5 and just in time to be cleared for school again in time to start kindergarten. She was initially frightened enough she thought she could refuse surgery but then woke me at 5:30 the next morning to say she'd agreed to it but thought she thus needed to start tasting popsicles that will be cool and soothing immediately, so she needed me to go to the store as soon as it opened. (Reader, I didn't.)
BEEN GROKE STAY GROKE
71: There was a widely-circulated blog post a couple of years ago that made the point of nerd culture never being exclusionary meant that in other ways nerd culture would end up being exclusionary. I can't for the life of me find it, though.
77: Was its basic premise that you basically need to choose between people who make people uncomfortable (by e.g. sexually inappropriate behaviour) and the people made uncomfortable by them (e.g. their victims, who justly refuse to share a space with them) and by "including all" you are implicitly choosing the first group and excluding the second?
This idea that nerd culture is intrinsically anti-exclusionary is bizarre to me when we're a few years into a concerted no-girls-allowed movement in video gaming and related nerddoms.
Nerd cultures can be open, but it's certainly not necessary; if anything the focus on a small library of useless knowledge can lead to cliques and dick-measuring. (Oh, you think you're a real gamer girl? Then tell me the order you fight the Four Fiends in Final Fantasy IV [as they call it in Japan] the second time you fight them only, and all their weaknesses.)
But you're right that some nerd communities try to have an open-door policy--those who know they're weird and understand the importance of accepting weirdness. But being uncritically accepting can allow unsavory sorts into the community. Hence the non-empty intersection of furries and neo-Nazis.
I had my tonsils out aged four, in Belgrade. I had been promised ice cream for my recovery but when I emerged from the anaesthetic it turned out that socialist medicine condemned ice cream as a bourgeois deviation (or, more likely, it wasn't actually available except for hard currency) and I was given camomile tea instead. The shock, the betrayal, coloured my view of human nature forever.
THIS IS WHY COMMUNISM IS EVIL AND FOREIGNERS CAN'T BE TRUSTED
I had my tonsils out aged four, in Belgrade.
Opening line of the latest "Very Young James Bond" spinoff novel.
77: I believe you're referring to the famous "Geek Social Fallacies" essay.
....and all their weaknesses.
They are human and they need to be loved, just like everybody else does.
73
He wrote his masters on the pragmatics of trolling on 4chan /b, and he's thinking of publishing it as an article.
77/84
I will look that up.
I had a thought, and I feel like a lot of this sort of acceptance, plus right wing (bad faith) conflation of calling out racism as as bad as racism, is related to a major pet peeve of mine, which is our cultural tendency to essentialize behavior as identity.* Accusing someone of racism (an action) is only as bad as actual racism if you assume that "racist" is an unchangeable identity. (Like, there's a set of Racist-Americans, who are "born this way," and discriminating against them is the same as discriminating against women or POC). This is a major problem I have with identity politics on the left (there's a lot of important and good stuff, but there's also a tendency to double down on the existence of labels and a sense of immutable identity, esp. with gender and sexuality stuff, in a way that gets pretty problematic**), AND it's a way the right has taken up identity politics. Suddenly, any and everything is an identity, and thus criticizing it is wrong and offensive, which is not true of criticizing people's behavior. Even if people don't consciously acknowledge this, the only way calling out antisocial behavior becomes offensive is if on some level you've essentialized 'antisocial' as your identity, in a way that I think is unhelpful.
*At the most innocuous, I'm annoyed by people who take up a hobby and then become "an Xist," rather than a person who does X. (e.g. artist, writer, runner). Obviously, it's not my business if people do this and if it helps them enjoy an activity, then more power to them, so I recognize this part of my pet peeve is solely on me.
**e.g. 'kink' as an identity, rather than a proclivity or a behavior
I had my tonsils out at the age of 7, and there were rumours at school about ice-cream, but in fact the next meal I was offered was breakfast and consisted mainly of toast. I likewise felt betrayed, and also bullied.
At least there were no death panels.
I had my wisdom teeth out in Australia, and instead of milkshakes I was fed this horrible flavorless treacle pudding. I also felt cheated.
This thread is causing me to examine my tonsil privilege.
Don't poke too far or you'll vomit.
75-76: I would so definitely wear a Groke AF shirt. Possibly every day for the rest of my life. (I should finish my grime embroidery project is what I should do, I suppose.)
I can be pretty sure from a prior procedure in the same facility (Mara stuck a small rubber band in her ear and it could only safely be removed under anesthesia) that "can you keep down a popsicle?" is their test that you're awake and functioning. Popsicles are recommended because you're hydrating and keeping your throat cool, better than ice cream because of the juice content. Selah should be back to regular food the Ft after surgery if not before, but still needs to stay home with me a full week as she heals.
Check your "Haven't had to move a 1,200 pound manatee corpse from an underwater tunnel where it had been lodged for many hours" privilege.
92: as a substitute, can I suggest a Bean?
https://www.beanwithme.com/
Ha! Tonsillectomy at age 6. The hospital supplied plenty of ice cream.
Barry, that's a fucking nightmare! I hope you recover quickly.
(All you people have made me fearful of shingles. But, I tried to get the vaccine and was told it wasn't indicated because I'm too young. Grrr.)
which is our cultural tendency to essentialize behavior as identity.
Yes, there's something important about this -- like, there's a truism that you can't convert people away from racism etc. by telling them it's a bad way to behave, and so objecting to racism/homophobia is 'virtue politics' or preaching to the choir, but can't possibly have any good effect. Racists/homophobes/sexists are ingrained, and you can maybe threaten them into keeping it under wraps, but only at the expense of making them crazy with bottled up rage that will come out whenever they get the chance.
And I don't think that's true, globally. Some people are like that, sure. But some people, you can tell them 'that was a shitty thing to say, and you're outside community norms in this community that you need to function in', and they'll change their behavior and eventually change their minds. It's not impossible to educate people.
96: Shingles can be mild and harmless. I had a mild case at 17 -- a couple of square inches of rash, and weird tingling but no real pain. And my father had a similarly mild case in his seventies.
I was thirteen when I got chicken pox. And I came down with it on the last day of school before summer break. We were taking a class trip canoeing down the local river when the symptoms hit me.
92 should have been GROKE embroidery. It was going very well and I sort of stalled out. I could make it groke af myself, really.
Thanks all for the well wishes up thread, it means a lot. Just spent all day sleeping in and wearing no pants in the hopes the rash and sores will begin to heal.
Buttercup's husband should be able to get a few articles out of bob at the very least.
I also had a very mild case, last summer. It was mostly very itchy.
I would certainly not include all of geek culture as alt right, I think.
No, nor would I. For me the questions are either (1) are there parts of mainstream geek culture which feed into the alt-right (note the previous post, linked from the OP, which talks about how much gamergate expanded the profile of Breitbart)? (2) Is there a penumbra of people who don't support the alt-right but nevertheless think they are unfairly maligned, and that some of the things that the alt-right objects too are unreasonably sanctimonious?
Phrased that way, neither of those questions are precise enough to have a clear answer. They are partially rhetorical questions. I just feel that as I read more about the links between the alt-right and trolling, I'm not sure that mainstream geek* internet culture should have an entirely clear conscience.
I had a thought, and I feel like a lot of this sort of acceptance, plus right wing (bad faith) conflation of calling out racism as as bad as racism, is related to a major pet peeve of mine, which is our cultural tendency to essentialize behavior as identity.* Accusing someone of racism (an action) is only as bad as actual racism if you assume that "racist" is an unchangeable identity.
I had a similar thought, which is that, from the perspective of the right (and, quite possibly, for a significant number of moderate but not politically engaged people) saying that somebody said or did something racist is seen as a complete conversation stopper. They have the reaction of, "what I said/did might not have been perfect, but now you've just blown up, and there's no chance of us hashing this out reasonably." Whereas on significant parts of the left there's a sense that discussions about whether or not something was racist may be difficult and painful, but they are intended as discussions, and there's value in working through those questions.**
* FWIW, I suspect that "geek" is not the most important identifier, and that really what I'm talking about covers most predominately male online communities, and geek culture provides the largest of those.
** Incidentally, I give credit to unfogged for helping clarify my position on, "people can say something racist without being a racist" and "everybody is a little bit racist." There were some threads, several years ago, which demonstrated that it is possible to have that conversation.
I saw The Taking Of Pelham 123 on Friday (yay, Film Forum), and then in a continued fit of nostalgia watched a bunch of Barney Miller over the weekend. And it was weird -- while both were definitely not politically correct by modern standards, the jokes that kept on surprising me were jokes where the racist was the butt of the joke, in a way that wouldn't happen now.
Walter Matthau is the cop protagonist in Pelham, and you're supposed to like him fine. But he repeatedly makes himself look like an idiot being kind of racist -- it's not intended to present him as the devil incarnate, but as a bit of a hapless clown. That's a joke you don't hear so much anymore in that tone.
That's one of my all time favorite films as anyone who's seen my Twitter sci can surmise. I wish I could have stayed in NY while Film Forum did that NYC in the 70s programming. If Le Trou is still playing there I highly recommend it, probably the best prison break movie I've ever seen.
But he repeatedly makes himself look like an idiot being kind of racist -- it's not intended to present him as the devil incarnate, but as a bit of a hapless clown. That's a joke you don't hear so much anymore in that tone.
Because now you always have to portray racists as THE WORST. Pitiless, ruthless agents of destruction, agents of a massive and powerful conspiracy stretching across the country. And then you wonder why people start to find it appealling. Back to my "no one wants to be a frostbitten Obergefreiter" hobbyhorse again, I'm afraid.
Yeah, I'm not sure which side the impetus is for making every racist event a super big deal is from. In a lot of contexts, I think it's the right doing the equivalent of flopping for the referees -- "OMG, you implied that something might be racist, the world has just ended. Learn that you cannot think of having an opinion about whether something's racist unless you're prepared to defend it as if it were the most important thing in the world."
But maybe part of it is a left that would object to rooting for Matthau despite his being kinda racist and kinda sexist.
103: You can prevent catch bob with zinc.
A better man than me would now make a pun linking Pelham 123 with the act of no-platforming.
105.1: I recall lots of Barney Miller jokes about his wife being Nebraskan. Except I think that was actually Welcome Back, Kotter.
Hrm. In the episodes I've watched, she's hassling him to leave the dangerous city and buy a chicken farm in Montana, but I don't think she's supposed to be from anyplace with farms given that she describes chickens as "All cute and running around with their fur still on."
Yes. I started to write the comment and then remembered it was indeed Welcome Back Kotter, but wrote it anyway.
Anyway, I have completely demented levels of nostalgia for NY of prior decades, given that I still live here. It's amazing how little the streetscapes have changed in forty years -- you could reshoot the aboveground parts of Pelham 123 no problem if you had the vintage cars and replaced the signs.
You could probably do it more cheaply in Toronto.
But in a manner that would inspire me with inarticulate rage.
My first time in NYC (of three total) was maybe 1983 or 84. We stayed at the Essex House because we may have looked like farmers, but dad did very well for himself. There were lots of people grooming themselves in the park across the street, which was vaguely menacing to pre-teen me.
There were lots of people grooming themselves in the park across the street, which was vaguely menacing to pre-teen me.
Those were pigeons, dude.
Way to be racist, dude. Casually erasing the rat population?
Back in my day, Disney had yet to invent the tween.
I kind of like Barney Miller, but to me it really drives home how limited are the possibilities of a network sitcom, and that sets for filming TV have gotten much much better in the last ten years.
114: Interesting. When Cronenberg made Cosmopolis (2012) most of the (Midtown) streetscape mentioned in the (2003) novel wasn't there anymore. They shot in Toronto.
|
It's amazing how little the streetscapes have changed in forty years
You could probably do it more cheaply in Toronto.
You might enjoy this video which talks about how, in mainstream movies Vancouver is used for a lot of generic "city" backgrounds but, only shot as "Vancouver" in indie films.
(Part of the excellent "every frame a painting" youtube series)
|>
119: hey, I wasn't the one who said he found them "vaguely menacing".
123: Yeah, this stayed between City Hall and 28th St, with one exterior shot of Gracie Mansion. Gracie Mansion hasn't changed, and there are a lot of streets downtown that haven't changed much at all. Midtown, there's been a lot more flux.
122: Oh, definitely. It's like watching a filmed stage play. Zero physical realism.
But again, politically... Brooklyn 99 is a modern cop sitcom, and I look at it and think "Nice job with the politically sensitive diverse casting." And then I look at Barney Miller from the seventies, and Brooklyn 99 is actually slightly whiter. It's not as though there hasn't been any political progress, but we are still having fights that were old in the seventies.
Possibly relevant is the work of Garry Winogrand
You found an image with Harris or Jack Soo.
128: Or Amenguale. The first season cast is middle-aged white guy, old white guy, young white guy, black guy, Japanese guy, Puerto Rican guy. I guess Brooklyn 99 isn't much whiter, percentage-wise -- more white characters, but a larger cast overall.
Amenguale? I mean, white in the sense of non-black, but written as very actively Puerto Rican.
The nuances of that didn't really hit me when I watched the show as a kid.
128,130-- Huh. I was actually just looking for set images. You are right about this one-- getty has a bunch of great images from the show. Following the "Barney Miller Show" link on the photo leads to lots of great actor photos.
Possibly idiosyncratically, I have realized lately that for me, being filmed on a soundstage or even worse a few sets like Barney Miller really detracts for most of the stuff I like watching.
He was paler than my grandmother and nobody ever said she wasn't white even though they couldn't pronounce her name.
The tough thing about being the only person I knew of with Italian relatives was never being able to eat the abominations that most of the midwest performs with pasta.
This guy, for those who weren't watching TV in the Seventies.
You wouldn't think it from looking at me, but my grandma was on the olive-skinned side of things.
But they gave Andy Samberg's character a Hispanic surname! Does that count for nothing?!
Peralta? I thought he was supposed to be Italian.
140: I'd guess half-Jewish, half-Italian. The name doesn't sound Jewish but I'm pretty sure there has been something or other about bar mitzvahs or a high school crush with a name that ended in "-stein." Wikipedia informs me that I'm almost right.
Nine main characters. Five non-Hispanic white, two Hispanic, two black. Six male, two female. Eight heterosexual, one gay. But I feel it skews things a bit to count Hitchcock and Scully as main characters. They technically are, but weren't in the first season, and are more one-dimensional joke characters than the other seven. Exclude them and the show is majority minority.
OT: Is gmail really slow today? Sometimes the internet here is for shit, but everything not-google seems to be working fine.
So, either tied with Barney Miller (which is 50-50 even), a close win, or a close loss, dependeing on whether you count Hitchcock and Scully, ignore them, or count the two of them as a single character.
It just struck me because I had actually looked at Bk99 and had thought in an uncomplicatedly positive way that they'd done a nice job with diverse casting. And they have! But it's kind of weird that it's still noticeably good forty years after a similar show that was just as good.
141 correction: three women among main characters, not two. Not sure if that's pretty bad, or just realistic for a police station. What are the gender demographics of those like?
I don't see any evidence that Peralta is an Italian name, except via Spain-to-Italy migration. After coming up empty on en.wikipedia, I checked it.wikipedia and found the name described as a noble Iberian family line with Sicilian and Piedmontese branches, but no modern notable Italians with the name, just people from Spain and the Americas.
But half-Jewish half-[white]-Hispanic makes sense, thanks for the link.
Up your nose with a rubber hose.
The next huge online storm will be over the BBC's decision to have the Doctor played by a cis woman when the character is clearly trans.
The tough thing about being the only person I knew of with Italian relatives was never being able to eat the abominations that most of the midwest performs with pasta.
What do you have against mayonnaise and canned black olives?
I saw someone online complaining that white feminists were the worst, because they were celebrating a cis white woman Doctor.
Basically unrelated, but: I saw an interview with Michelle Gomez about the casting. She said said that she herself was honored to play the first female Time Lord in the show's history. Why must you hurt me like this, Michelle?
148: Actually, I eat a great deal of both of them. Just not together or with pasta.
I get annoyed with Italians and people of Italian ancestry who get on their high horse about authenticity with pasta and risotto, when it's quite clear that both traditions originated with peasants asking, "We've got some pasta/rice. What can we afford to throw in with it to make it taste of something?" And the answer is whatever is to hand.
My grandma was very openly a transplanted Sicilian peasant. She was not at all opposed to eating cheap. She would unhesitatingly use corn oil for every day cooking because that's what was on hand. Her sauces were almost all made starting from tomato paste because that's the best tasting tomato you can get a rural Nebraska if you don't grow your own (and for 10 months of the year even if you do).
Until you've seen a tuna-noodle casserole, I don't think you realize how low this high horse is.
Peralta isn't just a Spanish name, it's a very famous California family. A huge tract granted by one of the last Spanish governors to Don Peralta, land which now makes up Berkeley, Oakland, and little towns adjacent to them.
I knew that already, but looking it up I see that title was litigated to the US Supreme Court in the 1850s. (I'm sure I mentioned many years ago that I'd had a run of 3 unrelated cases that turned on holdings that arose from the statute of March 3, 1851, dealing with Spanish/Mexican land grants in California. Not the Peralta case though.)
Timeline: http://www.peraltahacienda.org/pages/main.php?pageid=71&pagecategory=3
This is not to say that there is not plenty of good food in Nebraska. But if you aren't in a city, maybe order the steak.
Today, everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food. Right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.
153. I'm not arguing with your grandma, I'm arguing about the people who have nothing better to do than write long articles accusing other people of getting it fundamentally wrong in the proportions of ingredients they call for in a ragu.
I've eaten excellent tuna noodle casseroles in my time.
158: Still, you have to stop the poor saps from rinsing the cooked pasta under running water here.
I was explaining macaroni salad to my husband. I'm a bit sad I didn't film it, because Italians reacting to descriptions of Midwestern pasta dishes could be a popular YouTube channel.
154: After a generation, what the Peraltas hadn't ceded to the rich Anglos who effectively stole their land, they sold to pay the Anglo lawyers who defended them.
161: It's already a popular Twitter feed. I'll pull it if you don't already have it.
161: Everyone knows that Andrew Cuomo's girlfriend makes lasagna with cottage cheese and Campbell's Tomato Soup, right? That's not why I hate him, but it does make me happy to think of him suffering.
I blame you guys for mentioning Sandra Lee and thus making me go re-watch her Kwanzaa cake video.
One of the Spanish colonial governors of New Mexico was also from the Peralta family. There's a bunch of stuff named after him.