Vilageidiotx

Lets talk about JonTron and his possibly racist views.

I'll just start by saying I have absolutely no interest in JonTron, I don't think he is funny, and the only possible sentiment I have towards him is that I am glad that he is speaking up about his views because I hate it when people force their own ideology onto a youtuber without thinking (expecting a youtuber to vote a or b for some reason).

@Buddha

I think the implicated thesis is what people are alarmed by, not the statements as they exist when pulled out of that argument. When you have somebody like Jon Tron who isn't stating explicitly what his thesis is, it's not surprising people are going to wonder what he is getting at considering that particular list of facts.

Now I'm not even sure he is a racist...

@Garattee

I think the emotion tied to the word "Racist" makes people uncomfortable using it correctly. He's a racist. Doesn't mean he wants to build camps. Doesn't mean he wants to murder people.

If it makes people feel any better, most people are somewhat racist. We here probably aren't as racist as Jon Tron, and Jon Tron isn't as racist as, say, that Spencer guy what got popped in the jaw for being such a super racist. There are levels. Like a wise man once said...

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Vilageidiotx I honestly don't know. It really does seem like it's becoming a real thing. I mean like I said, so many comedians, won't go to college campuses anymore...

For your grandma being offended at that, sort of brings me to an observation. I think there has always been a movement of older generations of people, thinking the things young people do are secretly evil and corrupting them. Books, Music, Art, Hobbies, TV, Internet, Video games, Tattoo's. What have you...but I've never in a long time. Seen people in their 20's, and people who are NOT old...making this no longer an old vs new divide. I don't feel like going to deep into it. But when you have fucking people in their 20's telling me shit equivalent to someone decades older than them like a fox news anchor explaining that Watch Dogs turns you into a hacker. SOMETHING, is going wrong in the current world.

@SleepingSilence

That was always true too though. I'm not going to say people aren't stupid or overreaction about shit, I just think they more or less always have been that way. If anything we just hear about it more now, since we are plugged into this stuff pretty much constantly via the internet.

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I dunno what it is that's gone wrong, but I bet we can fix it by lighting whatever campus Milo visits on fire and pummeling everybody who shows up. I mean it's been working so far.

@mdk

What is the point of college if you don't get to light things on fire at least once, realistically. Politics in the twenty first century is a sport, and sports fans of all kinds need their riots.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Vilageidiotx Fair enough. I guess it sort of is just by simple definition that my discussion does sort of boil down too "back in meh day." I dunno, I just think talent has been lost and growing stale for a while now. I don't think Political Correctness necessarily is the ONLY reason. Maybe arguably not the biggest influence. But something in me just feels the way culture is now. That the new "funny" people just aren't bothering for a multitude of reasons. I mean that's one reason stand up comedy is dying in younger circles, people can't take jokes and don't want to offend and these people will grow up as the next generation of artists, musicians, comedians and such?

But that's beside the point. I just want to be able have something to watch again dammit. >.>

@SleepingSilence

I really think this "Young people can't take a joke" thing is super overblown. There are a few people who get offended and it is blown out of proportion. That was true back in the day too. My great grandma walked out on Blazing Saddles, incidentally, because it offended her.

That Chapelle special on Netflix garnered some controversy, but it's still highly rated and being watched the fuck out of.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Vilageidiotx

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Well that seems reasonable enough. :P

Sure it's there right. As childish as it seems when either political side does it. But I don't do them, mainly because boycotts usually end up getting the exact opposite done. (Aka backfire.)
Like chic-fil-a for instance. There is something/an idea that actually does more good. A 'buycott' actually spending money to somebody that did something good and you want to support. Those don't backfire and make people overnight millionaires...

Not one of his best ones, but I suppose I understand when you hear controversy of someone you barely know anything from, the thought of "Well guess I dodged a bullet." Can't really say much about that. (*likes another meme youtube video* I swear this past week has been full of them. o.o)

Well I believe comedy in general has changed. I'd love someone to make a Blazing Saddles of today. It straight up wouldn't happen...and honestly it really does seem like comedy has changed everywhere. New cartoons aren't even nearly as funny, nostalgia not withstanding. But that may be just because of the whole. "People who watched cartoons are now making the new cartoons, so they don't have as much experience." But seriously, most super comedic youtubers were chased off the internet. The ones that were more outrageous in past, stopped for fear of backlash or just ran out of actual ideas and became stale. And a lot of new stuff that took it's place, pales in comparison. There is still good stuff, it's just not as common to find anymore. There's probably plenty more political channels than ever before...so there's that. <.<

@SleepingSilence

Yeh, to me this totally sounds like nostalgia. Actually, if anything, I think youtube now is edgier than it used to be. It is true that hollywood comedy isn't impressive, but i think that's more a lack of talented directors like used to exist way way back, and it's exchanged for more talent in other fields. And I really don't think political correctness has anything to do with it. If anything, political correctness just produces more material to be subversive about.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Vilageidiotx I don't even know what I'm doing here anymore...but I want to ask you something then. (I'm bored okay? -.-)

Do you personally go out of your way, to not watch, support or do anything that involves people you find did questionable things? Like music, videos, art and writing...Maybe businesses/brands too?

Do you not watch Disney movies, because Walt Disney himself was Anti-Semitic? For example. Maybe avoid most music altogether. (because man, oh man. Some artists are legit scum bags.) I suppose this could go on forever, but I just wanted to know if that's what you do...

And on a slightly less serious topic...Do you have anyone on youtube you LIKE watching? Being serious, it seems fewer and fewer youtubers exist now that do entertainment as a profession. Everyone left is a shallow husk of what they used to be. And just nobody seems funny or interesting anymore, beside a very select handful of people. (though this is literally the first time this sank in as deep as it has. Why all the good comedic people have left? I understand why now...completely.)

Also a legit shame you won't be able to give him a chance, I actually also didn't like his brand of humor at first. Seemed a bit childish. But gave him a legit try, watched more than one or two videos. And I think why he has a fan base in the first place, is just how much effort he puts into a single joke. Putting in effort for humor really is hard to find nowadays. Least imo, it is.

@SleepingSilence

I won't buy clothes from wal-mart because i've had so much rip in the past.

No, I generally don't get involved in boycotts. I commented as I did because I always find it funny how so many big boycotts happen with things I don't really care about to begin with. Happened with Chic-fil-a too. I have played with boycotts in the past, but like you said, being truly serious about it would mean boycotting so many things that my life would become a fucking disaster. I'm not against the idea personally though. If people want to boycott stuff, that is their business. I thought that was supposed to be the perk of market forces after all, that you could vote with your dollar and all that.

As for Jon Tron, I never watched his videos for the simple reason that I never watched his videos. I think I seen the one about lion king actually, and it was okay, but I didn't really follow up. I do watch Critikal videos occasionally, and Dunkey. Also CharlieWinsmore back when he did stuff. But yeh, youtube isn't very priority for me. Just looking back at my history, in the last couple of days it's mostly just shit I watched embedded in other websites, a few music videos, and this thing.

I will say that I don't see youtube has having changed in terms of comedy. Perhaps it isn't that the comedic people have all left, but rather some have left to be replaced by others and you haven't grown new attachments? That's more old age than politics. It's like how I caught myself the other day watching old clips of Reno 911 and realized it was the same sort of shit I made fun of my parents about with them watching The Andy Griffith show reruns.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

I do think JonTron is a racist. I don't think he hates black people though, those are two different things. I think he attributes things to race that are not attributable to race. That's what racism means really.

And I will not watch Jon tron videos now. I also didn't watch them before. Never was my cup of tea.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Later someone was telling big-daddy Right-Lib when he returned about "the anarchist" who was just there and he made comments about how "special" those sorts of people are.

@Dinh AaronMk

what room some ron paul fucboi got to talk shit? right libertarianism is that phase american highschool boys go through when they are trying to convince themselves it is super easy to succeed and they won't have to really work at it that hard, since everyone complaining is just nonsensically lazy.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

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This is a thing too that's not restricted only to video games. Movies, TVs, and even music (or music videos) do it too and have been for decades. It could be argued ever since the 1980's made being gay hip and acceptable and a discussion worth having on TV it's entered into every accessible medium or every mainstream accessible medium.

It may have started off as that campy thing that certain characters were rolled up in to be "funny" or strange, but homosexuality is now an acceptable thing to market in the post-sexual revolution world.

Maybe it isn't always well-written, in which case you can hem and haw over it. But zero'ing in on the "omg its homosex panda ring" perhaps the better thing to say would be, "they could have handled the writing between these characters to explore the fact". It might even be suggested that writers for video games are the nerd types who grew up on Rambo and Lord of the Rings where romance isn't really a core element of the plot so it any time its handled in anyway it's done so awkwardly. But beyond making a joke about it it may be a low blow to go further, especially given that now-a-days writing for mainstream video games doesn't have much pressure to be particularly intriguing or insightful because it has to now sell to highschoolers and College bros.

We still get a few very well written games, like Witcher and New Vegas. But I have a running bias that anything advertised on Facebook and shit is going to be concentrating more on the spectacle of things going on than the art and wonder of world and plot. I doubt we're going to anywhere like...

Though if someone were to try something of any considerable depth, analytical or otherwise in video games someone'll bitch and moan about the game trying too hard to sound smart in the same way they're trying too hard to be progressive and they need to be more Berry Goldwater.

But on the point about games being art once upon a time: I would say Undertale is that sort of art game. And even without a AAA marketing strategy and elements included to give it broad appeal it writes in some gay plots, lesbian and otherwise.

@Dinh AaronMk

Mainstream media in a market-based system becomes diluted by pandering pretty much always, so long as it is truly mainstream. And in every one of those cases, niche markets rise up parallel to the mainstream, sometimes producing art, sometimes just pandering to a more specific demographic. Video Games are at that point now, with small developers getting way more attention then they did ten years ago. I think Minecraft started that trend.

This reminds me of a post I read on /leftypol/. In it, an anon was responding to an alt-right, super-conservative visitor who was asking why any of it matters, why bother for some socialist paradise where we don't work and we own all the means of automated production, or why no one there bothers to get a job or something; I forget the specifics. In any case, the anon responded to him by spelling out that all the classic arts, literature, and everything traditional he stands for were invented by people who didn't labor in the sense they went to factories and worked 12 hours a day to make bread. All the art, literature, and what not from the time of the cavemen were made by people who had the time to because society provided for them, or these individuals worked only so much to provide for themselves and their community because there was no other expectations on them to do so.

He cited his family history as Appalachians and that during his grandfather's time all the family and cousins would get together at the end of the day and make and perform music. Everyone could play an instrument and his grandfather had a piano he would play during these affairs. But eventually, the capitalist world caught up and the family could no longer hang on doing that. The farm went under, the family had to separate to find work elsewhere, and now even working eight hours shifts no one had the time, money, or energy to learn to perform folk music as they had and these days no one in his family can do as they did and pursue their old art.

@Dinh AaronMk

To that guy's question: a person can have a job and be a leftist. I have a full time job, that pays well and doesn't give me shit, and I'm perfectly content with it. Doesn't mean I have to pay homage to capitalism in some religious way. My leftism comes from a complete lack of faith in capitalism's permanence going forward. I think people have fallen for this bizarre black-and-white fantasy that, because Leninist Communism collapsed, capitalism is now the permanent system of human civilization for all time and always. If you even spent a moment thinking about alternatives, you are a heretic. And that is alarming. If you make something sacred, even necessary criticism becomes a heresy. If I thought that I'd have my current quality of life for the rest of my life (barring biological impediments), and that everyone else would be slowly raised up to the same level, then yeh, I'd be a political centrist. But from what I've read and seen, I think we are running headlong into peak-capitalism, when my life and the lives of most everyone else starts getting worse.

Some art is produced by working folk. You do get stories like the conditions in which Steven King wrote Carrie. But it is generally true, and not even a controversial idea really, that part of the function of the working class is to make a class of people who experience and create culture possible. Shit, the idea was pretty much mainstream until the 19th century. I'd even bet that similar things are whispered in garden parties by our own rich and famous today, even if it is less fashionable in a democracy to admit it.

"So, Aaron...

so i guess this is a zizek thread then?

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Vilageidiotx I'll start by cleansing Overwatch. Tracer may be fast but she can't hide from my gorilla-kin character forever. The real question is, what will be our 'Kristallnacht' equivalent.

@Buddha

It'll start when they make a gay duke nukem.

"It's time to kick ass and suck cock, and I'm all outta cock!"

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I honestly believed at this point that even the people that bitch about safe spaces are having their own safe spaces being infiltrated by things they don't like. Or this whole bullshit affair is just a projection of group A being mad group B dares exist in their media while the same group is mad group C is there and wants representation like them.

They just need to realize they're equally bullshit and we need to chill out and realize we live on the same planet orbiting the same star. If you're mad LGBT people are in video games, I'd hate to see you in real-life.

@Dinh AaronMk

Eh, safe spaces is one of those political phrases that took on a ridiculous life of its own. There was an extreme group in the minority of the sociological left that took the idea to bizarre extremes, like suggesting classes be segregated to keep black people from suffering the presence of white people, or stuff like that. And yeh, that was fucked up, but it was such a fringe thing that it wasn't a major threat.

Now safe space is just some piece of jargon both sides throw at each other so that it's completely lost all meaning.

What I always found funny about it is the accusation that women or gays in video games are pandering. Of course they are pandering, because that's what successful companies do; they pander so they can expand their market. Maybe there was a time when video games were purely artistic, in the sense that they were made without marketing in mind by people concerned souly with creation, but that time was long long ago. Video games are a big market, and in the last ten years or so they've became completely mainstream. Used to be you marketed games to that "core market" of young men because breaking out of that market was unfeasible. But now it is completely feasible to increase their marketing base by enlarging the demographic they appeal to. So of course they are going to do that. It isn't a concerted attack on conservative values, it's bland marketing pure and simple. They were doing that before, specific to their base, it's just that nobody complained because they were the ones being pandered to.

Same schtick with the "War on Christmas" that you hear about every year. People see seasonal products marketed in a secular way, replacing "Christmas" with "Holiday" and shit like that, and they think that it's an atheistic scheme, when really it's a corporate decision to try to sell flashing lights to Jews.

The left is not the only force at play when it comes to the erosion of tradition; I'd even argue it isn't by far the most powerful force at work to that end. It's capitalism that wants everything to be marketable to everybody, and it has been capitalism that has, both for better and for worse, most completely dismantled the conservative traditions of the first world. Conservative tradition pigeon-holes markets, and capitalism does not want to remain cooped up in traditional limitations.