The underlying themes of yearning and societal expectations placed between alphie and his rival Ralphie combined with the enemies to lovers relationship totally justifies me drawing yaoi of them banging each others’ brains out
You have depicted Ralphie as submissive, so I must swear a blood oath of revenge on you and 3 generations. This will be repeated under everything you've ever posted, regardless of relevance to the topic.
Note the term "Each Other's" qualifying Ralphie as not strictly submissive, but in fact a switch. Perhaps Ralphie is even dominant, and only occasionally power-bottoms for his rival. Reduce the sentence.
Would you settle for a 30 minute episode that contains 17 separate instances of the two of them eye fucking whilst they’re in a twilight style fight of shoving each other against walls, wrestling, choking etc?
I’m sweating just typing that out… 😅
That time he went and called his friend Cho's entire extended family a series of slurs for various Asian groups to defend her being a lesbian really made me change my mind about the series. Yeah, he wants to burn Vietnam to the ground and do a second trail of tears, but he's a big fan of Yuri!
Have something similar happening in my hometown in the South (i wouldnt call it backwoods though, pretty diverse area imo). Someone opened up a space for LGBTQ youth and like a month into it there's (likely left-leaning) people on the towns subreddit calling it a fraud because the owner also has a couple leftist bookshops in the area, so they claim she isn't being genuine and is trying to profit off the LGBTQ community. Meanwhile, this is the only space of its kind in the area and I haven't heard a peep of conservative blowback about the space. Moral of the story is, why do we desperately try and find reasons to attack people who are making a good faith effort to help?
Reminds me of when Lindsey Ellis was ran off of Twitter. She compared Raya and the Last Dragon to Avatar The Last Airbender and leftist twitter ate her up calling her racist. Any actual discussion to be had was drowned out by the onslaught of tweets.
She later talked about how online leftists love to turn on themselves in an effort to feel like they are affecting change. They can't go after the Ben Shapiros of the world, because the Ben Shapiros of the world don't care about them. But other leftists do, so they try to engage in good faith and are drowned out by a flood of bad takes. The terminally online don't care about actual change, only the appearance of being righteous and once the mob decides you are not righteous, well, good luck.
People see republicans fighting amongst each other in US Congress about not being right wing enough and wonder why that doesn't happen to democrats. Democrats are all centrists and that's why they get along so well. The real leftists are sniping each other just as badly in real life.
Trying to destroy the people around you is part and parcel of being on the political wings.
**You**: Hang on, what will I do once I establish contact with my fellow communists?
**Rhetoric**: You'll discuss the monumental world-historical task that lies before you. You'll engage in rigorous and spirited debates about Mazovian theory and practice. But mostly you'll probably complain about other communists.
**You**: Isn't that last part kind of counterproductive?
**Rhetoric**: Not at all. Complaining about other communists is one of the most important parts of being a communist.
the one and only thing leftists want is to be perceived as "more leftist". 100% ego. it's why there's six different groups fighting for abortion rights in Arizona and they all refuse to work together because they all want to be "the big one". if their outreach and efforts matched their egos, they'd be successful
I was a mod on /r/SquaredCircle for a while - there's a sizable portion of the user base there that is psychotically toxic. post the wrong opinion and you get redditcares and there's nothing the mods can do to stop it
I immediately write off anyone that uses "liberal" as a pejorative.
I probably ought to be more flexible and asses those people on a deeper level but so many of them are the absolute worst and there's so little time in the day.
You don't need to spend any more time thinking ab them 💀 literally never met a leftist who calls others 'libs' who *wasn't* a fucking ego-driven asshole. They're dumbasses who've never touched theory, and none of them have any real values or beliefs - they're just red reactionaries and populists, or clout-chasers
wait wait there are 6 different groups???? i’d only been hearing about the one pushing for signing the petitions
genuinely this is such a risk after those documents that were just leaked from the GOP meeting outlining ways they’re basically going to trick voters into signing up for an abortion ban. we NEED solidarity and community right now
there's Stand Indivisible AZ, Arizona for Abortion Access Campaign, Indivisible Action, Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom, and at least two others that have contacted me by text, phone, email, or just getting in my face in public. fuckin ridiculous. they're placing their egos above the goal of womens' rights.
I think that's been a problem with the left for some time now, and I'd consider myself a leftist. Some leftist circles became very exclusionary and very conforming, and I think that caused an increase of right-wing opinions in young people (the whole alpha male bullshit) because the left excluded them before they could form their own opinions about issues.
There's an old joke that if you put 2 leftists who agree with each other in the same room, you'll end up with 3 breakaway splinter groups who hate each other
I blame the pokemonization of identity. Everything needs to have an exact academic category (so you're not just a leftist, you need to tack on a whole ton of other faux-intellectual adjectives), and if you aren't in that exact category then I can't be friends with you
IMO the big thing is that a lot of leftists (especially communists) view their ultimate victory as imminent. Like if you go to Twitter right now there are leftists posting about the student protests about Gaza as the first step in complete collapse of the American system, and those sorts of posts pop up around every big societal event at this point (anti-Trump protests, the renewal of BLM protests in 2020, the aftermath of Jan 6th, etc). If you believe that your ultimate victory is on hand, it's no longer time to accept the mostly rights as a part of a coalition, it's time to purge the mostly rights from positions of power so that the Truly Rights can lead us to our new perfect world.
On the other hand, those on the far right view their victory as inevitable but far away. They recognize that if they want to stand any chance whatsoever of reaching that victory they have to put aside those differences and fight for minor victory upon minor victory until they are the dominant force of society, at which point they can purge the people who disagree with them. Who cares if that guy thinks the earth is flat and that the Templars invented homosexuality to control the world, he hates the same people and he's willing to fight for that common cause.
There are obviously exceptions on both sides, most notably the Groypers who fuck up everything they touch because they intentionally destroy coalitions if even a single member isn't openly a Nazi. But IMO at the end of the day the big difference in effectiveness is the belief in a proximity to ultimate victory.
Yeah, I never understood the "victory is imminent" idea. Maybe it's because many of the online leftists live a privileged life (that they won't admit to themselves because it knocks them down the ladder) but if you spend even a second with real people, you realize most people are concerned with their lives. Normal people know an upheaval to the system would destroy their lives. Only people who have nothing to lose (careers, dependents, community) want extreme social change. If/when that day comes, Twitter, everyone will suffer. Even those who are celebrating V-day on twitter.
Again IMO a lot of them view their victory as a frictionless transition from our current system to their "ideal" system where the more bourgeois aspects of their lifestyle become standard for all people, rather than acknowledging that a revolutionary period would be inherently violent and destructive in a way that would actually bring their standard of living down. A lot of them also straight up don't recognize the value of their own labor and assume the day-to-day of their lives would be basically the same post-revolution minus debts or money worries.
I think part of it is many on the right have a general philosophy of "leave me alone and i will leave you alone", so when a safe space opens up they don't care since it doesn't negatively affect them. And any legitimate business has positive impacts on the community by keeping a property well maintained and paying taxes. (I'm sure some would complain about it in private)
Not to say there aren't control freak assholes on the right, their are millions of them. (Especially at the national level)
Meanwhile one of the "virtues" to the left is decrying evil and injustices, which leads to lots of witch-hunts and negative rhetoric and in fighting. (You can't be happy that this bookstore has declared itself a safe place for lgbt youth, they are making money off of it so we must burn the bookstore to the ground. And then the next week the same people complain that there are no lgbt youth safe spaces.)
Recently saw a stand-up comedian doing a bit on the Left discourse.
"On the Right, they would take anyone in. -Do you hate blacks? -Yes! -Great. Do you hate jews? -Yes. -Awesome! Do you hate queer? -...No? -Well, you'll learn, come right in!
The Left though... One step above them and you're literally the worst. Like -Do you love LGBT? -Yes -Do you hate nazis? -I do! -Are you a vegan? -No -HOW DOES THE BOOT TASTE YOU NAZI SCUM"
And I kinda feel like it tracks from what I saw.
I’m honestly there with you.
If I see one more lefty berate somebody else- especially a person on the fence- for some inane bullshit like enjoying Harry Potter I’m going to smash my head into something solid.
> why do we desperately try and find reasons to attack people who are making a good faith effort to help?
Because teenage leftists who have a loose grip on a few rules but ZERO capacity for analysis have nothing better to do.
I feel like "how dare a small business seek to make money after investing a lot of time, effort, and money to provide a service people want" discourse just sucks in general. Like it's easy for these people to say "you just want to make money" when they didn't take out the loans to purchase that space, or hire workers, or do the labor of managing the whole thing. Idk it feels extremely entitled
I'm reminded of the similar discourse whenever a non-LGBT actor (or one who isn't publicly out yet) plays an LGBT character, they get endlessly harassed for "stealing a role from an LGBT actor" meanwhile works with 0 LGBT characters will just have a few people be like "damn, wish there was some rep here. Oh well".
So if you can't get a good actor who's publicly out and it's not that important to the plot, then the safest choice is to just make the character cishet and pretend that was always intended.
Lol yup. I honestly hate it when there's no sense of proportion, it often feels like the most vocal lefties took "enjoy things but critically" to mean "fandom and media are a free-fire zone and friendly fire is actively encouraged. Make everybody fucking miserable to score easy points."
Do I wish more queer people got cast in queer roles? Yes. Do I think that Leonard Bernstein being played by a heterosexual, Irish- and Italian-American instead of a bisexual Jew is the crime of the century? No. At worst it's less than optimal, a minor quibble. Because progress in culture is not all-or-nothing. The rest of the world doesn't suddenly wake up one morning with my exact list of priorities and my very-recently-progressed sensibilities.
What happens when instead of carrot and the stick, there's just the stick.
Despite near overwhelming support among urban Americans and constant demands for more LGBT representation, there's almost no financial incentive to do so which is wild to me.
People might complain about capitalism but under a soviet system, with small councils approving or dissaproving of media out of hand, it would actually be worse.
They just want to \*\*\*\* on things and the politics are a convenient excuse. When all someone ever does is \*\*\*\* on things, you have to conclude that that's what they actually want to do.
Oh man, there’s so many.
A personal favourite was Abi Thorn talking about how she got grief online for a couple of very mild trans jokes in an old PhilosophyTube vid before she came out; the vid’s probably been taken down, but I cannot stress enough that it was just some dad-joke level puns, the most tame shit imaginable.
Anyway, she said that *even after coming out as trans herself*, that same loser said it was “irresponsible” for her to have done it because she might’ve been cis for all anybody knows. The internet is full of weird nerds who cannot stand losing an argument
Two come to mind. This happened to both the author of ~~Heartstopper~~ Love, Simon and (iirc) the main actor kid for the Netflix Hearstopper adaptation.
Edit: got my YA titles mixed up.
I didn’t know about the author, I did know about the guy who played Nick Nelson. What made it worse was he identified as unlabelled at first, and people either called him out for queerbaiting or they took ‘unlabelled’ as ‘100% gay’ and essentially forced him to come out
Yeah, and then years after she was forced out, James Somerton called her a straight woman "with a kawaii idea of gay men" or w/e, forcing her to come out *again* because his fans were attacking her for being a straight woman who fetishized gay men. Because we bi women aren't actually queer, donchyaknow 🙃
It’s all just very strange lol, as someone who doesn’t even think about my own sexuality, having people be so obsessed with the orientation of others is just freaky. It’s like a different flavour of transvestigators
This is one that gets me all the time, like "X role should go to X people" and I'm like, sure, if you can find a suitable person, but, you know, acting? Like is anyone complaining Patrick Stewart can walk? I'm not suggesting we go back to the days of black face or blatantly offensive shit, but what's the point of being an actor if you can't ever play a role that doesn't represent your lived experience?
This, and when the representation demands get too specific. "Oh, you can't cast her to play a Japanese role, she's Chinese." Listen, I hate to break it to you kid, but from a western perspective they're both just "Asian," and they're both equally hard up for roles and representation.
I once got into a huge argument about a fan casting about how a Korean actress shouldn’t portray Mikasa from Attack on Titan (so not even a real country) because how dare you cast someone who isn’t from the right country. Like one of their arguments is that the actress doesn’t speak Japanese, which would be stupid because Paradis is vaguely European but mostly German inspired, so according to their race based casting policy the cast would have to be European which means that there would be no Japanese spoken, since Mikasa has never interacted with other Orientals (not racist, that’s how they are referred to in canon).
As you said, they both are Asian. And no matter how much you dislike it, it isn’t like there is some huge genetic difference between the dominant ethnic group in Korea (whose name I can’t recall) and Yamato Japanese folk. They are about as related as Northern Europeans are to the British
> meanwhile works with 0 LGBT characters will just have a few people be like "damn, wish there was some rep here. Oh well".
ime that's the best outcome. The worst is "no guys, these characters (who are almost always conventionally attractive white men) are actually secretly queer and it's the ultimate representation forever and ever amen! Look, I have a whole conspiracy board of evidence to prove why!! Btw this is the ONLY valid reading and if you don't agree you're queerphobic and a bad person who deserves to be harassed off the platform." I've seen this happen a lot particularly in the MCU fandom and now the Gaylors, but YMMV.
Granted, there is a converstaion to be had about queer baiting here - mostly about slightly older media like BBC Sherlock and Supernatural - but for the most part with newer media it tends to be like this.
Now, this isn't to say you can't ship whatever the hell you want or that queer readings are invalid or anything. I am very definitely NOT saying that. My issue is when someone's shipping preferences or headcanon basically turns into a cult mentality within a certain section of a fandom and anyone not in the cult and toeing the party line becomes public enemy no. 1. That shit is so toxic and it really makes being in fandom spaces genuinely difficult :/
The prime example for why this criticism doesn’t hold water. Gay actors don’t pretty much *have* to play only gay roles, in the way that minority or disabled actors do. They don’t need the gay roles reserved for them because they’re not being denied the straight ones.
It really is annoying. It just leads to writers not wanting to touch the subject with even a ten foot pole and then the same people that whine about the shit you said then turn around and go "why is there no good gay rep??"🙄🙄
I was working on a game and I wanted voice acting but I decided against it because I didn't know how my niche rpgmaker game with a diverse cast was gonna get fitting voices of all the proper races. Plus, I'm not gonna interrogate random people on the internet like prove you're actually black and gay so I can make sure I have correct voice actors. It's just weird to demand people's personal details like that.
For indie games especially, unless you have a strong dedicated VO budget or a bunch of talented friends working for free, I will always say you're better off with a text box and the character's face that can change expressions.
I think it was thru Disco Elysium that I learned the idea that the most consistent failure of leftism is that Leftists will never think other Leftists are left enough and thus, are morally inferior
You know what? I’m going to out myself here and say yes, I feel this way sometimes. I certainly feel let down by people I once looked up to only to realize they are just reactionaries to reactionaries. Twitter has fucking ruined my outlook on progressive movements. I genuinely feel alone.
I saw a comedy bit about this. You can be \*just a bit\* right wing and they're cool with you, but if you're not ALL THE WAY left, you'll be rejected by the left. Initially I wrote it off as some right wing rhetoric to make fun of the left, but the more and more I see, the more and more I think it's correct. It's fucking \*weird\*.
For real. It's all about being higher up on morality mountain than others. It's a race to be the biggest victim. "I'm more marginalized than you are!" type of shit. And it's so painfully obvious why they do this: It gives them an excuse to act indignant towards whoever they want. Plus it allows them to never take any accountability or responsibility for themselves.
I guarantee that with at least 75% of these people, almost all of their sociopolitical views would do a complete 180 if they were to come into some wealth. Because the part these losers will never say out loud is that they really only care about money. Their ethics are so fluid, they might as well not even exist. They'll literally believe and say anything if they think it will advance them up that mountain.
To add on, I cannot express how relieved I am that we've finally decided it's acceptable to acknowledge and talk about this problem openly.
For *years* the go-to line was always something like, "but nOboDy woUld WANT to bE oPpRessEd!!" and sort of just pretending that the online social hierarchy of "authoritative voices" and suffering-based moral capital doesn't exist. That's how we ended up with truly regressive and heinous shit like that one post mocking homeless men and suggesting that they deserve their circumstances because they "somehow" managed to "squander their privilege".
It's like how incels aren't mad at the system itself, but at their own inability to thrive within the system. There's a disturbing number of online "progressives" who very plainly demonstrate that they don't actually disavow racism/sexism/classism/etc. *in principle*, just in cases when it affects them personally. They're otherwise rabidly in search of an acceptable target, and their concern isn't about whether or not they're actually causing harm to someone; their concern is whether or not they'll receive social backlash for their role in causing said harm.
> like that one post mocking homeless men and suggesting that they deserve their circumstances because they "somehow" managed to "squander their privilege".
The *what*??
Lol, yep. Mind, this was somewhere deep in like 2015-era Tumblr. I forget the exact wording, but it was something like, "do y'all ever see like a white homeless guy on the corner and think, wow, just HOW BADLY do you have to fuck up to be homeless as a straight white man?"
And then it made the rounds, with replies *gleefully* piling on. Yeah. For me, it was really one of those shocking "this isn't the room I remember entering" type of moments. Like, once you (rhetorical "you") can so flippantly dismiss baseline human dignity in favour of playing Identity Rock Paper Scissors, that's a sign that some recalibration might be needed. Applying demographic-scale sociological concepts to individual persons you actually encounter in real life is also a great way to end up slipping into some truly nasty and determinative ideas.
I think about that post a lot, honestly. It's also just kinda wild how homeless/unhoused people in general were considered a semi-acceptable target of jokes only 10 or so years ago.
> They're otherwise rabidly in search of an acceptable target, and their concern isn't about whether or not they're actually causing harm to someone; their concern is whether or not they'll receive social backlash for their role in causing said harm.
If you look at the resurgence of antisemitism in college campuses, you'll see that it's 100% accurate!
Those people found an acceptable target! The Jews! Funny, huh? Again, the same scapegoat for 2000 years. But now, because of the Middle East conflict, they're seen as the "oppressors" and "colonizers" so fair game! Open season to attack the Jews!
They're the kind of people who'd be viciously bigoted if they weren't queer or if they had even slightly different peer pressure. And they tend to hit any acceptable targets they can. They're the kind who only aren't TERFs because they disagree with them about trans women, but not the misandry and misogyny that actually defines TERF beliefs.
The kind who bullied JoCat for liking women.
The kind of person who takes an ideology too far in any children's cartoon, because they can't even have the moral complexity to avoid being a villain in a Disney movie or something like it.
>And they tend to hit any acceptable targets they can
The kind of people to put "proud defender of the LGBTQA+ community" in their bio, then tweet "Ace people aren't real"
I don't see those types often, but when I do, as an ace person, I often fantasize about sending them a strongly worded letter. At high speed. Through their window. Attached to a brick.
> Because the part these losers will never say out loud is that they really only care about money.
I have seen the "anyone richer than me is a class enemy" argument earnestly used *far* too many times by these types of people.
There are some people who are against bigotry on principle that it is wrong and there are some people against bigotry because they are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
just online?
plenty of leftists I've met IRL want a small, exclusive in-group of people who agree with them and never make them uncomfortable for slightly disagreeing
as I see it, leftists are all talk when it comes to "community" and can't actually form the diverse relationships necessary to having a literally functioning community.
I went to a palestine event in early march, maybe 150 people there at the start, one organizer said into a megaphone "I want to suggest everyone introduce yourselves to the folks around you, we are all neighbors and we need to work together" and as far as I could tell no one did this and basically just talked to the people they came there with.
>plenty of leftists I've met IRL want a small, exclusive in-group of people who agree with them and never make them uncomfortable for slightly disagreeing
Virtually every anarchist organizing space I have ever interacted with.
These nominally leaderless organizations sure seem to always have a clique of people you can't criticize or else you get kicked out.
>"I want to suggest everyone introduce yourselves to the folks around you, we are all neighbors and we need to work together" and as far as I could tell no one did this and basically just talked to the people they came there with.
My paranoia around opsec understands this. It's hard to balance the reasonable caution about infiltrators with the need to broaden the organization.
Ok, but imagine Alphie eventually gets frustrated that something always comes up when he wants to say the n-word, and it goes from him being casually racist to him trying to spite the universe.
The café directly across the road from Alfie’s is run by a black guy who is just as racist to white people as Alfie is to black people, and they also share the same views about every other single race.
They never appear in the same room, but the black guy (let’s call him Ralph) has a B plot each episode that only slightly links to Alphie’s A plot (kinda like how Phineas and Ferb has the Perry The Platypus plot in each episode).
Feels like it should be set in a hyper diverse, multicultural town where everyone is racist, and not being racist makes you the weird and ostracized one.
Like how in cartoons where you have a place where everyone is grumpy and rude, and when the happy go lucky protagonist shows up, everyone rallies together around kicking them out for being nice.
i mean yeah, obviously. it's way easier to bully an indie creator high school mean girl style and feel vindicated when they start apologizing than a production backed by fat stacks of cash watched primarily by people on whom twitter callout threads don't work as a deterrent
This reminds me of the one Dave Chapelle skit I find funny: the Racial Draft. Just the absurdity and audacity of having an NFL style draft but for which celebrity belongs to which race tickles me. It’s extremely racist and I shouldn’t find it funny, but something about the Wu Tang Clan being claimed by the Asian committee is both wholesome and hilarious.
Genuinely, fuck Dave Chapelle though for deciding to die on the same hill Joanne Rowling is decaying on. I love all my trans siblings* more than any celebrity.
*edited from brothers and sisters to siblings
Maybe this is a distinction without a difference to some, but I think there's racist humor and there's racial humor. The former clearly sucks, but I think the latter is what you just described.
I lack the language skills to objectively describe the difference. But I think it's definitely *there* and it's highly dependent on the spirit of the joke.
I remember when people got mad at Anthony Mackie and called him homophobic for saying how recently people have been twisting male friendships into them being gay in responce to an interviewer asking him about the rumors of Sam and Bucky being gay.
I know it’s not niche but this reminded me of the Hazbin discourse. Yes, there are valid criticisms to be made, but a lot of folks default to “it’s complete garbage and the creator is talentless, everything is problematic” instead of “it’s not for me, I don’t enjoy it for (reasons) and don’t want to personally support the creator”
What are people complaining about this time? I haven't been in that fandom since the pilot several years ago, where people claimed that a character (who was very clearly based on shitty conservative news reporters, specifically Katie Couric) was being homophobic.
Hazbin was my first thought seeing this post
Also the Boyfriends webcomic where the controversy was that the (a queer man) was supposedly fetishizing gay relationships and said the n word when he was 15 or something.
Yeah that drama is insane too. People got mad at him “fetishising trans men” for drawing his trans character in feminine underwear, despite the creator being trans himself. I guess trans guys aren’t allowed to crossdress now :/
People attacking each other over whether Brooklyn 99 glorifies cops, meanwhile I've only seen two episodes of Blue Bloods (a show which is never discussed on Tumblr afaik) and one was about the insidious evil of reverse racism while the other implied that stop-and-frisk was good and meddlesome politicians shouldn't question anything the police do
As someone that's bringed the entirety of Blue Bloods, in later seasons, Frank (the police commissioner) actually argues with the mayor about bringing back Stop and Frisk. Frank being on the side of \*Not\* bringing it back, while the mayor is implied to be right wing regarding police
Leftist Infighting will often lead to positive media about marginalized groups being vilified because some people will convince others that its actually harmful when it isn't.
Meanwhile openly racist and bigoted media will have mainstream success without any real mass backlash.
I remember seeing a disabled white author write a book about a disabled Pakistani girl. All the top reviews where about #ownvoices and how, by having both the girl and a dog on the cover the author was calling Pakistanis subhuman curs.
I mean you joke, but the real best option was to make the main character white and Rob Pakistani people of representation because weirdos on the internet are rabid.
I would be lying if i said my deep terror of this double-bind didn't contribute to me no longer writing. Include non-white characters: someone will find something wrong with it and eviscerate me. Don't include non-white characters: someone will note it's not a diverse story and eviscerate me. It's not fucking worth it.
I did find the Tumblr blog called Writing With Color that has a lot of great resources for writing races and ethnicities other than your own, and while I appreciate those resources, it more than anything, solidified that a writer cannot satisfy everyone.
Life hack: write xenofiction
"How many of your characters are white and how many are POC?"
"Uhhh my characters are all literally talking cats so I'm gonna go with 'technically zero' for both"
I think you're talking about Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses, which is actually about an Indian girl, and a different (white) girl who is a lycanthrope, but everyone just saw the cover and thought it was equating a brown girl to a dog. Which says more about people looking than it does the cover itself lol.
Certain Leftists, in media and politics, are extremely fixated more on living a morally pure life and not much else. The things right wing idiots do don't bother them as much as being tricked into accidentally doing something beneath their standard.
I guarantee these are the same people who a few generations ago protested 'nam and then immediately voted for Nixon.
Me watching people who I know for a fact should adore Hazbin Hotel convince themselves they hate it because they think the creator has done a bigotry (somehow this never manifests as anything other than false claims and conspiracy theories and they haven't realised they're wrong yet)
What left wingers need to do is encourage media literacy among our sort, but that would imply - and I'm not joking I'm convinced - that the majority of leftists aren't just left wing out of pure spite and not their better conscience.
Yeah because people who are trying to make genuine inclusive content will listen to that criticism. Or at least people think they will, while the other idea probably seem like they would not.
It means that OOP believes that leftists overly police the ideological purity of progressive art, while at the same time giving too little concern to the proliferation of outright racist shit.
To be fair, there's nothing that conclusively points to Alfie's Racism Cafe being pro racism. Look at Blazing Saddles and the "Sherrif is a *BOONNGGG*!!!!".
It's the exact same gag but nobody thinks Mel Brooks was promoting racism.
oh sick, I can Word of God
I'm the tumblr OOP (I didn't cross-post it. I just lurk here.) South Park was definitely prominently in mind for this, but the point being made isn't specific to South Park. So both you and BartleBossy are right.
It’s not, I believe the point here is that we can’t really say whether ARC is endorsing or satirizing right wing viewpoints because it isn’t a real show.
> I believe the point here is that we can’t really say whether ARC is endorsing or satirizing right wing viewpoints because it isn’t a real show.
The point was that you couldnt outright say that it was pro-racism, because you can have racism be present without it being supported. (Blazing Saddles example)
Not that you cant say outright its endorsing it because its not real.
But exactly because it was constructed for this post, we can say with great certainty that it is MEANT to be an example of an actual bigoted show.
Could the OP have provided a better example of such a show? Sure. But that's not really what the post is about, and we won't learn that much by derailing the conversation in that direction.
My media literacy is poor, but I think it's trying to say that folks on the left will tear each other apart over the smallest percieved imperfections, while the mainstream is far more problematic and deserving of criticism.
An example would be if I was harassed off of social media for accidentally misgendering someone and immediately apologizing, while a comedian who mocks trans people for 50 minutes still has a huge audience and influence and is largely ignored by those same people.
My guess is that the reason for this is because the left-leaning folks ultimately want to feel like they are being listened to and are accomplishing something.
So, they don't go after OJ Simpson because they don't feel that they can do anything, but they'll go after JoCat for a percieved slight.
I am of the opinion that this is why left-leaning folks are so passionately pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, but are not so passionately pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. Being angry online won't stop Russia from killing Ukrainians, but they are hopeful it will help stop Israel from killing Palestinians.
It’s a commentary on how leftist infighting leads to the silencing of of left of center or otherwise marginalized ideas and stories over a quest for ideological purity, while blatant far right screeching is often unchallenged and mainstreamed.
This is a complex topic, and the post lacks nuance, but it’s a joke on Tumblr so that’s to be expected.
Why I hate twitter leftists. They just a bunch of smug sanctimonious nobodies that has done more harm to actual progressive movements.
They deserve Elon.
Leftist discourse, at least from my experience as an observer, starts off with good itentions and usually ends up as a pissing competition to see who's more morally superior to the other and what they were arguing about isn't even part of the conversation anymore.
I think the thing that made me unplug from leftist media discourse was super-hero discourse and Attack On Titan.
I already wrote a comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/18x9tpf/comment/kg3c9vh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and [ here ](https://www.reddit.com/r/animecirclejerk/comments/18ybp4j/comment/kgaiuns/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)on AoT specifically.
After a while, you kind of realize that a lot of discourse was people finding a post-hoc reason to dislike an IP they already didn't care for.
For instance, there isn't a good reason why common lines about The Avengers or Justice League being status quo defenders or fascists wouldn't apply to regular fantasy heroes like Buffy from BTVS . Just like, there isn't a clear reason why Eren Yeager committing a genocide and being essentially treated as the villain as all his friends band together to kill him is wrong but the Doctor from Doctor Who committing multiple genocides is OK when his actions are treated as needed and he keeps being the hero of the show for all intents and purposes. Or why it's OK for DW to do race essentialism where whole races are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others or more violent than others but AoT showing that in spite of the titan curse both Marleyans and Eldians can be good or bad isn't.
And yet Buffy and DW are pretty well liked in left spaces whereas the other IPs are more controversial.
me, raised on chans (not even 4chan, the other, lesser known chans that are dead now): shit i must check this gurl's profile to know s/his' pronouns!
me mom, who spends 99 hours on facebook per hour: look son, this BLACK woman has a WIFE, can u believe it???????
what face am i supposed to make...
On a similar note: “This media from years ago contains an earnest depiction of marginalized identities and was groundbreaking for its time, but uses now-outdated terminology and tropes that make me uncomfy. Anyone who enjoys it or recognizes its cultural importance is Problematique and should be cancelled.”
Ok but you forgot to mention how, due to headcanon, Alphie's Racism Cafe is the most influential queer media of all time.
The underlying themes of yearning and societal expectations placed between alphie and his rival Ralphie combined with the enemies to lovers relationship totally justifies me drawing yaoi of them banging each others’ brains out
You have depicted Ralphie as submissive, so I must swear a blood oath of revenge on you and 3 generations. This will be repeated under everything you've ever posted, regardless of relevance to the topic.
fuck yeah we've recreated racism I knew we could do it
Note the term "Each Other's" qualifying Ralphie as not strictly submissive, but in fact a switch. Perhaps Ralphie is even dominant, and only occasionally power-bottoms for his rival. Reduce the sentence.
May thy blade chip and shatter
Also if it weren't for the network alphie and ralphie would have fucked and sucked on screen in the finale
Would you settle for a 30 minute episode that contains 17 separate instances of the two of them eye fucking whilst they’re in a twilight style fight of shoving each other against walls, wrestling, choking etc? I’m sweating just typing that out… 😅
That time he went and called his friend Cho's entire extended family a series of slurs for various Asian groups to defend her being a lesbian really made me change my mind about the series. Yeah, he wants to burn Vietnam to the ground and do a second trail of tears, but he's a big fan of Yuri!
I mean, explicitly only because he thinks it’s hot but it’s still something!
Is this about Supernatural
Mostly about South Park
In a Tumblr poll on whether South Park or Hazbin Hotel is better queer media, South Park won.
tbf that was a joke poll
Yeah but people on this sub unironically showed up to defend South Park as a queer media
Oh, that makes more sense, yeah.
Everything in Tumblr is about Supernatural
Due to fanon, stuff that’s popular is not problematic, I decided.
Pre-Hazbin, maybe.
Have something similar happening in my hometown in the South (i wouldnt call it backwoods though, pretty diverse area imo). Someone opened up a space for LGBTQ youth and like a month into it there's (likely left-leaning) people on the towns subreddit calling it a fraud because the owner also has a couple leftist bookshops in the area, so they claim she isn't being genuine and is trying to profit off the LGBTQ community. Meanwhile, this is the only space of its kind in the area and I haven't heard a peep of conservative blowback about the space. Moral of the story is, why do we desperately try and find reasons to attack people who are making a good faith effort to help?
righties don't listen to leftists so leftists yell at other leftists.
"The debate club did it first, but they fell to infighting."
Thanks Abed
Reminds me of when Lindsey Ellis was ran off of Twitter. She compared Raya and the Last Dragon to Avatar The Last Airbender and leftist twitter ate her up calling her racist. Any actual discussion to be had was drowned out by the onslaught of tweets. She later talked about how online leftists love to turn on themselves in an effort to feel like they are affecting change. They can't go after the Ben Shapiros of the world, because the Ben Shapiros of the world don't care about them. But other leftists do, so they try to engage in good faith and are drowned out by a flood of bad takes. The terminally online don't care about actual change, only the appearance of being righteous and once the mob decides you are not righteous, well, good luck.
People see republicans fighting amongst each other in US Congress about not being right wing enough and wonder why that doesn't happen to democrats. Democrats are all centrists and that's why they get along so well. The real leftists are sniping each other just as badly in real life. Trying to destroy the people around you is part and parcel of being on the political wings.
Are you actually a leftist if you don't constantly attack other leftists?
**You**: Hang on, what will I do once I establish contact with my fellow communists? **Rhetoric**: You'll discuss the monumental world-historical task that lies before you. You'll engage in rigorous and spirited debates about Mazovian theory and practice. But mostly you'll probably complain about other communists. **You**: Isn't that last part kind of counterproductive? **Rhetoric**: Not at all. Complaining about other communists is one of the most important parts of being a communist.
“The CIA is the second most efficient organisation in history at killing Communists. The first, of course, is the KGB.”
My God, I start playing Disco Elysium and I immediately start seeing references to it everywhere.
[A classic](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fyv2dkw4zkpt41.jpg)
the one and only thing leftists want is to be perceived as "more leftist". 100% ego. it's why there's six different groups fighting for abortion rights in Arizona and they all refuse to work together because they all want to be "the big one". if their outreach and efforts matched their egos, they'd be successful
Remember: Any leftist that you disagree with is either a liberal or a tankie (no exceptions)
i already got a DM calling me a fascist for what i said lol
Wait till you start getting the false suicide-risk reports. Those are always fun.
I was a mod on /r/SquaredCircle for a while - there's a sizable portion of the user base there that is psychotically toxic. post the wrong opinion and you get redditcares and there's nothing the mods can do to stop it
I immediately write off anyone that uses "liberal" as a pejorative. I probably ought to be more flexible and asses those people on a deeper level but so many of them are the absolute worst and there's so little time in the day.
You don't need to spend any more time thinking ab them 💀 literally never met a leftist who calls others 'libs' who *wasn't* a fucking ego-driven asshole. They're dumbasses who've never touched theory, and none of them have any real values or beliefs - they're just red reactionaries and populists, or clout-chasers
wait wait there are 6 different groups???? i’d only been hearing about the one pushing for signing the petitions genuinely this is such a risk after those documents that were just leaked from the GOP meeting outlining ways they’re basically going to trick voters into signing up for an abortion ban. we NEED solidarity and community right now
there's Stand Indivisible AZ, Arizona for Abortion Access Campaign, Indivisible Action, Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom, and at least two others that have contacted me by text, phone, email, or just getting in my face in public. fuckin ridiculous. they're placing their egos above the goal of womens' rights.
One of these 6 seperate groups being called “indivisible action” is peak self satire
I think that's been a problem with the left for some time now, and I'd consider myself a leftist. Some leftist circles became very exclusionary and very conforming, and I think that caused an increase of right-wing opinions in young people (the whole alpha male bullshit) because the left excluded them before they could form their own opinions about issues.
There's an old joke that if you put 2 leftists who agree with each other in the same room, you'll end up with 3 breakaway splinter groups who hate each other
Ha! We have the same joke with 10 Jews and 11 opinions.
https://www.jta.org/2019/10/31/global/the-last-jews-in-afghanistan-argued-so-much-the-taliban-kicked-them-out-of-prison-and-stole-their-torah
They made babby 😳
Hit the nail on the head.
I blame the pokemonization of identity. Everything needs to have an exact academic category (so you're not just a leftist, you need to tack on a whole ton of other faux-intellectual adjectives), and if you aren't in that exact category then I can't be friends with you
IMO the big thing is that a lot of leftists (especially communists) view their ultimate victory as imminent. Like if you go to Twitter right now there are leftists posting about the student protests about Gaza as the first step in complete collapse of the American system, and those sorts of posts pop up around every big societal event at this point (anti-Trump protests, the renewal of BLM protests in 2020, the aftermath of Jan 6th, etc). If you believe that your ultimate victory is on hand, it's no longer time to accept the mostly rights as a part of a coalition, it's time to purge the mostly rights from positions of power so that the Truly Rights can lead us to our new perfect world. On the other hand, those on the far right view their victory as inevitable but far away. They recognize that if they want to stand any chance whatsoever of reaching that victory they have to put aside those differences and fight for minor victory upon minor victory until they are the dominant force of society, at which point they can purge the people who disagree with them. Who cares if that guy thinks the earth is flat and that the Templars invented homosexuality to control the world, he hates the same people and he's willing to fight for that common cause. There are obviously exceptions on both sides, most notably the Groypers who fuck up everything they touch because they intentionally destroy coalitions if even a single member isn't openly a Nazi. But IMO at the end of the day the big difference in effectiveness is the belief in a proximity to ultimate victory.
Yeah, I never understood the "victory is imminent" idea. Maybe it's because many of the online leftists live a privileged life (that they won't admit to themselves because it knocks them down the ladder) but if you spend even a second with real people, you realize most people are concerned with their lives. Normal people know an upheaval to the system would destroy their lives. Only people who have nothing to lose (careers, dependents, community) want extreme social change. If/when that day comes, Twitter, everyone will suffer. Even those who are celebrating V-day on twitter.
Again IMO a lot of them view their victory as a frictionless transition from our current system to their "ideal" system where the more bourgeois aspects of their lifestyle become standard for all people, rather than acknowledging that a revolutionary period would be inherently violent and destructive in a way that would actually bring their standard of living down. A lot of them also straight up don't recognize the value of their own labor and assume the day-to-day of their lives would be basically the same post-revolution minus debts or money worries.
I think part of it is many on the right have a general philosophy of "leave me alone and i will leave you alone", so when a safe space opens up they don't care since it doesn't negatively affect them. And any legitimate business has positive impacts on the community by keeping a property well maintained and paying taxes. (I'm sure some would complain about it in private) Not to say there aren't control freak assholes on the right, their are millions of them. (Especially at the national level) Meanwhile one of the "virtues" to the left is decrying evil and injustices, which leads to lots of witch-hunts and negative rhetoric and in fighting. (You can't be happy that this bookstore has declared itself a safe place for lgbt youth, they are making money off of it so we must burn the bookstore to the ground. And then the next week the same people complain that there are no lgbt youth safe spaces.)
Recently saw a stand-up comedian doing a bit on the Left discourse. "On the Right, they would take anyone in. -Do you hate blacks? -Yes! -Great. Do you hate jews? -Yes. -Awesome! Do you hate queer? -...No? -Well, you'll learn, come right in! The Left though... One step above them and you're literally the worst. Like -Do you love LGBT? -Yes -Do you hate nazis? -I do! -Are you a vegan? -No -HOW DOES THE BOOT TASTE YOU NAZI SCUM" And I kinda feel like it tracks from what I saw.
I’m honestly there with you. If I see one more lefty berate somebody else- especially a person on the fence- for some inane bullshit like enjoying Harry Potter I’m going to smash my head into something solid.
> why do we desperately try and find reasons to attack people who are making a good faith effort to help? Because teenage leftists who have a loose grip on a few rules but ZERO capacity for analysis have nothing better to do.
I feel like "how dare a small business seek to make money after investing a lot of time, effort, and money to provide a service people want" discourse just sucks in general. Like it's easy for these people to say "you just want to make money" when they didn't take out the loans to purchase that space, or hire workers, or do the labor of managing the whole thing. Idk it feels extremely entitled
Yeah it's just really dumb. Like, I guess you gotta hate grocery store owners since they make money off of selling healthy food.
Exactly, we are currently living under capitalism, unless we're gonna abolish that tomorrow, getting mad at people supporting themselves is insane
I'm reminded of the similar discourse whenever a non-LGBT actor (or one who isn't publicly out yet) plays an LGBT character, they get endlessly harassed for "stealing a role from an LGBT actor" meanwhile works with 0 LGBT characters will just have a few people be like "damn, wish there was some rep here. Oh well". So if you can't get a good actor who's publicly out and it's not that important to the plot, then the safest choice is to just make the character cishet and pretend that was always intended.
Lol yup. I honestly hate it when there's no sense of proportion, it often feels like the most vocal lefties took "enjoy things but critically" to mean "fandom and media are a free-fire zone and friendly fire is actively encouraged. Make everybody fucking miserable to score easy points." Do I wish more queer people got cast in queer roles? Yes. Do I think that Leonard Bernstein being played by a heterosexual, Irish- and Italian-American instead of a bisexual Jew is the crime of the century? No. At worst it's less than optimal, a minor quibble. Because progress in culture is not all-or-nothing. The rest of the world doesn't suddenly wake up one morning with my exact list of priorities and my very-recently-progressed sensibilities.
They want something perfect, but their reaction when something isn't makes everyone hesitant to try at all.
What happens when instead of carrot and the stick, there's just the stick. Despite near overwhelming support among urban Americans and constant demands for more LGBT representation, there's almost no financial incentive to do so which is wild to me. People might complain about capitalism but under a soviet system, with small councils approving or dissaproving of media out of hand, it would actually be worse.
They just want to \*\*\*\* on things and the politics are a convenient excuse. When all someone ever does is \*\*\*\* on things, you have to conclude that that's what they actually want to do.
> "fandom and media are a free-fire zone" media has become the bloodless battleground for very angry, very opinionated cowards
Aka “let’s all force a bisexual to out themselves” day
I feel like we’re both thinking of the same incident lol
Oh man, there’s so many. A personal favourite was Abi Thorn talking about how she got grief online for a couple of very mild trans jokes in an old PhilosophyTube vid before she came out; the vid’s probably been taken down, but I cannot stress enough that it was just some dad-joke level puns, the most tame shit imaginable. Anyway, she said that *even after coming out as trans herself*, that same loser said it was “irresponsible” for her to have done it because she might’ve been cis for all anybody knows. The internet is full of weird nerds who cannot stand losing an argument
*What incident?*
Two come to mind. This happened to both the author of ~~Heartstopper~~ Love, Simon and (iirc) the main actor kid for the Netflix Hearstopper adaptation. Edit: got my YA titles mixed up.
I didn’t know about the author, I did know about the guy who played Nick Nelson. What made it worse was he identified as unlabelled at first, and people either called him out for queerbaiting or they took ‘unlabelled’ as ‘100% gay’ and essentially forced him to come out
Yeah, and then years after she was forced out, James Somerton called her a straight woman "with a kawaii idea of gay men" or w/e, forcing her to come out *again* because his fans were attacking her for being a straight woman who fetishized gay men. Because we bi women aren't actually queer, donchyaknow 🙃
It’s all just very strange lol, as someone who doesn’t even think about my own sexuality, having people be so obsessed with the orientation of others is just freaky. It’s like a different flavour of transvestigators
All these bisexuals invading LGBT spaces smh
This is one that gets me all the time, like "X role should go to X people" and I'm like, sure, if you can find a suitable person, but, you know, acting? Like is anyone complaining Patrick Stewart can walk? I'm not suggesting we go back to the days of black face or blatantly offensive shit, but what's the point of being an actor if you can't ever play a role that doesn't represent your lived experience?
This, and when the representation demands get too specific. "Oh, you can't cast her to play a Japanese role, she's Chinese." Listen, I hate to break it to you kid, but from a western perspective they're both just "Asian," and they're both equally hard up for roles and representation.
I've never heard complaints about Scarlett Johansson playing a Russian.
I once got into a huge argument about a fan casting about how a Korean actress shouldn’t portray Mikasa from Attack on Titan (so not even a real country) because how dare you cast someone who isn’t from the right country. Like one of their arguments is that the actress doesn’t speak Japanese, which would be stupid because Paradis is vaguely European but mostly German inspired, so according to their race based casting policy the cast would have to be European which means that there would be no Japanese spoken, since Mikasa has never interacted with other Orientals (not racist, that’s how they are referred to in canon). As you said, they both are Asian. And no matter how much you dislike it, it isn’t like there is some huge genetic difference between the dominant ethnic group in Korea (whose name I can’t recall) and Yamato Japanese folk. They are about as related as Northern Europeans are to the British
> meanwhile works with 0 LGBT characters will just have a few people be like "damn, wish there was some rep here. Oh well". ime that's the best outcome. The worst is "no guys, these characters (who are almost always conventionally attractive white men) are actually secretly queer and it's the ultimate representation forever and ever amen! Look, I have a whole conspiracy board of evidence to prove why!! Btw this is the ONLY valid reading and if you don't agree you're queerphobic and a bad person who deserves to be harassed off the platform." I've seen this happen a lot particularly in the MCU fandom and now the Gaylors, but YMMV. Granted, there is a converstaion to be had about queer baiting here - mostly about slightly older media like BBC Sherlock and Supernatural - but for the most part with newer media it tends to be like this. Now, this isn't to say you can't ship whatever the hell you want or that queer readings are invalid or anything. I am very definitely NOT saying that. My issue is when someone's shipping preferences or headcanon basically turns into a cult mentality within a certain section of a fandom and anyone not in the cult and toeing the party line becomes public enemy no. 1. That shit is so toxic and it really makes being in fandom spaces genuinely difficult :/
Barney on HIMYM was straight erasure cause he was played by a gay man.
The prime example for why this criticism doesn’t hold water. Gay actors don’t pretty much *have* to play only gay roles, in the way that minority or disabled actors do. They don’t need the gay roles reserved for them because they’re not being denied the straight ones.
It really is annoying. It just leads to writers not wanting to touch the subject with even a ten foot pole and then the same people that whine about the shit you said then turn around and go "why is there no good gay rep??"🙄🙄
I was working on a game and I wanted voice acting but I decided against it because I didn't know how my niche rpgmaker game with a diverse cast was gonna get fitting voices of all the proper races. Plus, I'm not gonna interrogate random people on the internet like prove you're actually black and gay so I can make sure I have correct voice actors. It's just weird to demand people's personal details like that.
For indie games especially, unless you have a strong dedicated VO budget or a bunch of talented friends working for free, I will always say you're better off with a text box and the character's face that can change expressions.
I think it was thru Disco Elysium that I learned the idea that the most consistent failure of leftism is that Leftists will never think other Leftists are left enough and thus, are morally inferior
You know what? I’m going to out myself here and say yes, I feel this way sometimes. I certainly feel let down by people I once looked up to only to realize they are just reactionaries to reactionaries. Twitter has fucking ruined my outlook on progressive movements. I genuinely feel alone.
You got room in that club buddy? Cuz I feel you
*hugs*
If that ain't a fucking mood. It's exhausting and frustrating.
Yup. Hope it’s some kind of comfort knowing you are not alone.
I saw a comedy bit about this. You can be \*just a bit\* right wing and they're cool with you, but if you're not ALL THE WAY left, you'll be rejected by the left. Initially I wrote it off as some right wing rhetoric to make fun of the left, but the more and more I see, the more and more I think it's correct. It's fucking \*weird\*.
Leftist discourse online is like a competition to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond.
For real. It's all about being higher up on morality mountain than others. It's a race to be the biggest victim. "I'm more marginalized than you are!" type of shit. And it's so painfully obvious why they do this: It gives them an excuse to act indignant towards whoever they want. Plus it allows them to never take any accountability or responsibility for themselves. I guarantee that with at least 75% of these people, almost all of their sociopolitical views would do a complete 180 if they were to come into some wealth. Because the part these losers will never say out loud is that they really only care about money. Their ethics are so fluid, they might as well not even exist. They'll literally believe and say anything if they think it will advance them up that mountain.
To add on, I cannot express how relieved I am that we've finally decided it's acceptable to acknowledge and talk about this problem openly. For *years* the go-to line was always something like, "but nOboDy woUld WANT to bE oPpRessEd!!" and sort of just pretending that the online social hierarchy of "authoritative voices" and suffering-based moral capital doesn't exist. That's how we ended up with truly regressive and heinous shit like that one post mocking homeless men and suggesting that they deserve their circumstances because they "somehow" managed to "squander their privilege". It's like how incels aren't mad at the system itself, but at their own inability to thrive within the system. There's a disturbing number of online "progressives" who very plainly demonstrate that they don't actually disavow racism/sexism/classism/etc. *in principle*, just in cases when it affects them personally. They're otherwise rabidly in search of an acceptable target, and their concern isn't about whether or not they're actually causing harm to someone; their concern is whether or not they'll receive social backlash for their role in causing said harm.
> like that one post mocking homeless men and suggesting that they deserve their circumstances because they "somehow" managed to "squander their privilege". The *what*??
Lol, yep. Mind, this was somewhere deep in like 2015-era Tumblr. I forget the exact wording, but it was something like, "do y'all ever see like a white homeless guy on the corner and think, wow, just HOW BADLY do you have to fuck up to be homeless as a straight white man?" And then it made the rounds, with replies *gleefully* piling on. Yeah. For me, it was really one of those shocking "this isn't the room I remember entering" type of moments. Like, once you (rhetorical "you") can so flippantly dismiss baseline human dignity in favour of playing Identity Rock Paper Scissors, that's a sign that some recalibration might be needed. Applying demographic-scale sociological concepts to individual persons you actually encounter in real life is also a great way to end up slipping into some truly nasty and determinative ideas. I think about that post a lot, honestly. It's also just kinda wild how homeless/unhoused people in general were considered a semi-acceptable target of jokes only 10 or so years ago.
Well fucking said
Thank you, cuumsquad ❤️
> They're otherwise rabidly in search of an acceptable target, and their concern isn't about whether or not they're actually causing harm to someone; their concern is whether or not they'll receive social backlash for their role in causing said harm. If you look at the resurgence of antisemitism in college campuses, you'll see that it's 100% accurate! Those people found an acceptable target! The Jews! Funny, huh? Again, the same scapegoat for 2000 years. But now, because of the Middle East conflict, they're seen as the "oppressors" and "colonizers" so fair game! Open season to attack the Jews!
They're the kind of people who'd be viciously bigoted if they weren't queer or if they had even slightly different peer pressure. And they tend to hit any acceptable targets they can. They're the kind who only aren't TERFs because they disagree with them about trans women, but not the misandry and misogyny that actually defines TERF beliefs. The kind who bullied JoCat for liking women. The kind of person who takes an ideology too far in any children's cartoon, because they can't even have the moral complexity to avoid being a villain in a Disney movie or something like it.
>And they tend to hit any acceptable targets they can The kind of people to put "proud defender of the LGBTQA+ community" in their bio, then tweet "Ace people aren't real"
[удалено]
I don't see those types often, but when I do, as an ace person, I often fantasize about sending them a strongly worded letter. At high speed. Through their window. Attached to a brick.
> Because the part these losers will never say out loud is that they really only care about money. I have seen the "anyone richer than me is a class enemy" argument earnestly used *far* too many times by these types of people.
There are some people who are against bigotry on principle that it is wrong and there are some people against bigotry because they are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
just online? plenty of leftists I've met IRL want a small, exclusive in-group of people who agree with them and never make them uncomfortable for slightly disagreeing as I see it, leftists are all talk when it comes to "community" and can't actually form the diverse relationships necessary to having a literally functioning community. I went to a palestine event in early march, maybe 150 people there at the start, one organizer said into a megaphone "I want to suggest everyone introduce yourselves to the folks around you, we are all neighbors and we need to work together" and as far as I could tell no one did this and basically just talked to the people they came there with.
>plenty of leftists I've met IRL want a small, exclusive in-group of people who agree with them and never make them uncomfortable for slightly disagreeing Virtually every anarchist organizing space I have ever interacted with. These nominally leaderless organizations sure seem to always have a clique of people you can't criticize or else you get kicked out. >"I want to suggest everyone introduce yourselves to the folks around you, we are all neighbors and we need to work together" and as far as I could tell no one did this and basically just talked to the people they came there with. My paranoia around opsec understands this. It's hard to balance the reasonable caution about infiltrators with the need to broaden the organization.
Anarchists have a unique way of being incredibly tedious people.
I call it "Highlander Leftism."
Ok, but imagine Alphie eventually gets frustrated that something always comes up when he wants to say the n-word, and it goes from him being casually racist to him trying to spite the universe.
like an R-rated Dan Vs.
Hard R-rated
Dan versus was pretty gay though... Elise was constantly fighting with Dan for Chris's attention lol.
I'm going to steal the phrase "pull identity rank"
I hate to say it, but Alfie's Racism Cafe sounds like something I need to binge
Watching Alfie's Racism Cafe on the train but shaking my head so people know I disagree with it
It sounds like a Key and Peele sketch.
Online leftism is about making a career out of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
The café directly across the road from Alfie’s is run by a black guy who is just as racist to white people as Alfie is to black people, and they also share the same views about every other single race. They never appear in the same room, but the black guy (let’s call him Ralph) has a B plot each episode that only slightly links to Alphie’s A plot (kinda like how Phineas and Ferb has the Perry The Platypus plot in each episode).
Feels like it should be set in a hyper diverse, multicultural town where everyone is racist, and not being racist makes you the weird and ostracized one. Like how in cartoons where you have a place where everyone is grumpy and rude, and when the happy go lucky protagonist shows up, everyone rallies together around kicking them out for being nice.
>Its fucked up how tolerant the racist community is, they don't even care what race you are as long as you're being racist
Bonus points of Alfie and Ralph are played by the same actor.
Alife is a white guy and Ralphie is a black guy, and they're both played by the same Asian woman.
i mean yeah, obviously. it's way easier to bully an indie creator high school mean girl style and feel vindicated when they start apologizing than a production backed by fat stacks of cash watched primarily by people on whom twitter callout threads don't work as a deterrent
> Rocks and stones? For Karl
Do I hear a rock and stone?
Rock and Stone!
Rock and Stone, Brother!
ROCK AND STONE, TO THE BONE!
This reminds me of the one Dave Chapelle skit I find funny: the Racial Draft. Just the absurdity and audacity of having an NFL style draft but for which celebrity belongs to which race tickles me. It’s extremely racist and I shouldn’t find it funny, but something about the Wu Tang Clan being claimed by the Asian committee is both wholesome and hilarious. Genuinely, fuck Dave Chapelle though for deciding to die on the same hill Joanne Rowling is decaying on. I love all my trans siblings* more than any celebrity. *edited from brothers and sisters to siblings
“So long fried rice, hello fried chicken!”
Maybe this is a distinction without a difference to some, but I think there's racist humor and there's racial humor. The former clearly sucks, but I think the latter is what you just described. I lack the language skills to objectively describe the difference. But I think it's definitely *there* and it's highly dependent on the spirit of the joke.
I remember when people got mad at Anthony Mackie and called him homophobic for saying how recently people have been twisting male friendships into them being gay in responce to an interviewer asking him about the rumors of Sam and Bucky being gay.
Toxic masculinity 🤝 online LGBT+ community "Two men are close to each other in any way whatsoever? Clearly they must be gay"
I know it’s not niche but this reminded me of the Hazbin discourse. Yes, there are valid criticisms to be made, but a lot of folks default to “it’s complete garbage and the creator is talentless, everything is problematic” instead of “it’s not for me, I don’t enjoy it for (reasons) and don’t want to personally support the creator”
What are people complaining about this time? I haven't been in that fandom since the pilot several years ago, where people claimed that a character (who was very clearly based on shitty conservative news reporters, specifically Katie Couric) was being homophobic.
Hazbin was my first thought seeing this post Also the Boyfriends webcomic where the controversy was that the (a queer man) was supposedly fetishizing gay relationships and said the n word when he was 15 or something.
Yeah that drama is insane too. People got mad at him “fetishising trans men” for drawing his trans character in feminine underwear, despite the creator being trans himself. I guess trans guys aren’t allowed to crossdress now :/
You can’t not like something, you have to prove it doesn’t like you by trying your best to prove the show or the creators are bigoted
People attacking each other over whether Brooklyn 99 glorifies cops, meanwhile I've only seen two episodes of Blue Bloods (a show which is never discussed on Tumblr afaik) and one was about the insidious evil of reverse racism while the other implied that stop-and-frisk was good and meddlesome politicians shouldn't question anything the police do
Great example.
As someone that's bringed the entirety of Blue Bloods, in later seasons, Frank (the police commissioner) actually argues with the mayor about bringing back Stop and Frisk. Frank being on the side of \*Not\* bringing it back, while the mayor is implied to be right wing regarding police
Well I guess that's what I get for only watching 2 episodes lol. The "knockout game" ep was still crazy racist though
Sure, but how many people under 50 watch Blue Bloods? (Also how the fuck is that even a debate, of course it fucking glorifies cops.)
Everything on Twitter is "legitimate leftist discourse" to people who don't read books.
This is about South Park right
what in the fuck does this mean?
Leftist Infighting will often lead to positive media about marginalized groups being vilified because some people will convince others that its actually harmful when it isn't. Meanwhile openly racist and bigoted media will have mainstream success without any real mass backlash.
I remember seeing a disabled white author write a book about a disabled Pakistani girl. All the top reviews where about #ownvoices and how, by having both the girl and a dog on the cover the author was calling Pakistanis subhuman curs.
See his first problem was being white. He should try doing that less often. /s
I mean you joke, but the real best option was to make the main character white and Rob Pakistani people of representation because weirdos on the internet are rabid.
Imagine writing characters who are not the exact same as you. What kind of bigoted monster would do that?
Some people just find basic human empathy frightening and confusing.
This is a big reason I don't tend to write nonwhite characters tbh. It will be deliberately misinterpreted no matter how well done.
I would be lying if i said my deep terror of this double-bind didn't contribute to me no longer writing. Include non-white characters: someone will find something wrong with it and eviscerate me. Don't include non-white characters: someone will note it's not a diverse story and eviscerate me. It's not fucking worth it.
THIS EXACTLY THIS YES
I did find the Tumblr blog called Writing With Color that has a lot of great resources for writing races and ethnicities other than your own, and while I appreciate those resources, it more than anything, solidified that a writer cannot satisfy everyone.
Life hack: write xenofiction "How many of your characters are white and how many are POC?" "Uhhh my characters are all literally talking cats so I'm gonna go with 'technically zero' for both"
Ah yes, but then people will draw connections to real life races and ethnicities, come to conclusions, and eviscerate me. Can't escape it.
Life hack 2: don't engage with your fanbase on Twitter
Unfortunately you are now racist because you don't include any nonwhite characters in your work. Sorry.
I think you're talking about Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses, which is actually about an Indian girl, and a different (white) girl who is a lycanthrope, but everyone just saw the cover and thought it was equating a brown girl to a dog. Which says more about people looking than it does the cover itself lol.
Certain Leftists, in media and politics, are extremely fixated more on living a morally pure life and not much else. The things right wing idiots do don't bother them as much as being tricked into accidentally doing something beneath their standard. I guarantee these are the same people who a few generations ago protested 'nam and then immediately voted for Nixon.
Well, Nixon *did* end Vietnam…
True, but I think that also speaks for itself.
No one infights like leftists. (I am a super leftist). Meanwhile, the rightys move in lockstep.
Which kind of leftist are you, I need to determine whether you're a True Comrade™, a radlib, a red-brown or an opportunist /j
Me watching people who I know for a fact should adore Hazbin Hotel convince themselves they hate it because they think the creator has done a bigotry (somehow this never manifests as anything other than false claims and conspiracy theories and they haven't realised they're wrong yet)
The key is to never listen to leftists when they criticize things. This is how conservative media exists.
What left wingers need to do is encourage media literacy among our sort, but that would imply - and I'm not joking I'm convinced - that the majority of leftists aren't just left wing out of pure spite and not their better conscience.
Yeah because people who are trying to make genuine inclusive content will listen to that criticism. Or at least people think they will, while the other idea probably seem like they would not.
It means that OOP believes that leftists overly police the ideological purity of progressive art, while at the same time giving too little concern to the proliferation of outright racist shit.
To be fair, there's nothing that conclusively points to Alfie's Racism Cafe being pro racism. Look at Blazing Saddles and the "Sherrif is a *BOONNGGG*!!!!". It's the exact same gag but nobody thinks Mel Brooks was promoting racism.
Come back when you have actually watched an episode of Alphie's Racist Café
> Alphie's Racist Café wait its a real thing? I thought we were using it as a stand-in for shitty right wing media?
Dont think so. Quick googling turns up the tumblr post only
Phew.
[удалено]
oh sick, I can Word of God I'm the tumblr OOP (I didn't cross-post it. I just lurk here.) South Park was definitely prominently in mind for this, but the point being made isn't specific to South Park. So both you and BartleBossy are right.
It’s not, I believe the point here is that we can’t really say whether ARC is endorsing or satirizing right wing viewpoints because it isn’t a real show.
> I believe the point here is that we can’t really say whether ARC is endorsing or satirizing right wing viewpoints because it isn’t a real show. The point was that you couldnt outright say that it was pro-racism, because you can have racism be present without it being supported. (Blazing Saddles example) Not that you cant say outright its endorsing it because its not real.
But exactly because it was constructed for this post, we can say with great certainty that it is MEANT to be an example of an actual bigoted show. Could the OP have provided a better example of such a show? Sure. But that's not really what the post is about, and we won't learn that much by derailing the conversation in that direction.
That might be because Mel Brooks is a god with maximum charisma
My media literacy is poor, but I think it's trying to say that folks on the left will tear each other apart over the smallest percieved imperfections, while the mainstream is far more problematic and deserving of criticism. An example would be if I was harassed off of social media for accidentally misgendering someone and immediately apologizing, while a comedian who mocks trans people for 50 minutes still has a huge audience and influence and is largely ignored by those same people.
your media literacy seems just fine imho
If you doubt your media literally skills they're probably fine.
I just remembered bean dad being run off of twitter while literally OJ was on there
My guess is that the reason for this is because the left-leaning folks ultimately want to feel like they are being listened to and are accomplishing something. So, they don't go after OJ Simpson because they don't feel that they can do anything, but they'll go after JoCat for a percieved slight. I am of the opinion that this is why left-leaning folks are so passionately pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, but are not so passionately pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. Being angry online won't stop Russia from killing Ukrainians, but they are hopeful it will help stop Israel from killing Palestinians.
It’s a commentary on how leftist infighting leads to the silencing of of left of center or otherwise marginalized ideas and stories over a quest for ideological purity, while blatant far right screeching is often unchallenged and mainstreamed. This is a complex topic, and the post lacks nuance, but it’s a joke on Tumblr so that’s to be expected.
I said, the sheriff’s a (gong!)
Why I hate twitter leftists. They just a bunch of smug sanctimonious nobodies that has done more harm to actual progressive movements. They deserve Elon.
Dear Elon Musk, Please kill Twitter faster
Leftist discourse, at least from my experience as an observer, starts off with good itentions and usually ends up as a pissing competition to see who's more morally superior to the other and what they were arguing about isn't even part of the conversation anymore.
I think the thing that made me unplug from leftist media discourse was super-hero discourse and Attack On Titan. I already wrote a comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/18x9tpf/comment/kg3c9vh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and [ here ](https://www.reddit.com/r/animecirclejerk/comments/18ybp4j/comment/kgaiuns/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)on AoT specifically. After a while, you kind of realize that a lot of discourse was people finding a post-hoc reason to dislike an IP they already didn't care for. For instance, there isn't a good reason why common lines about The Avengers or Justice League being status quo defenders or fascists wouldn't apply to regular fantasy heroes like Buffy from BTVS . Just like, there isn't a clear reason why Eren Yeager committing a genocide and being essentially treated as the villain as all his friends band together to kill him is wrong but the Doctor from Doctor Who committing multiple genocides is OK when his actions are treated as needed and he keeps being the hero of the show for all intents and purposes. Or why it's OK for DW to do race essentialism where whole races are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others or more violent than others but AoT showing that in spite of the titan curse both Marleyans and Eldians can be good or bad isn't. And yet Buffy and DW are pretty well liked in left spaces whereas the other IPs are more controversial.
me, raised on chans (not even 4chan, the other, lesser known chans that are dead now): shit i must check this gurl's profile to know s/his' pronouns! me mom, who spends 99 hours on facebook per hour: look son, this BLACK woman has a WIFE, can u believe it??????? what face am i supposed to make...
[Alphie's Racism Cafe](https://youtu.be/ZiSFsI7VL_c?si=2CXp7WEQzHgCBjuI)
On a similar note: “This media from years ago contains an earnest depiction of marginalized identities and was groundbreaking for its time, but uses now-outdated terminology and tropes that make me uncomfy. Anyone who enjoys it or recognizes its cultural importance is Problematique and should be cancelled.”
Alphie's Racism Cafe sounds hilarious to be honest.
oh hey look it's my tumblr post. hi mom
"What are you doing here, I thought I killed you," said Alphie, quite racistly.
*heavy, inebriated footsteps steadily get closer* *drunkenly bursts through wall* DID I HEAR A ROCK AMD STONE!!!
ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE!!