Other Forums Containment Thread

[Uncle]

[Taco Bell Tower]

We should probably press the brakes on making threads for every shitty take randos have on Twitter.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-horrible-tweets-about-the-madden-video-game-are-horrible-but-ea-is-actually-pushing-propaganda-for-the-nfl.533099/#post-79452554

Yeah, after the admins and mods said to stop.

[benjipwns]

I see just as many trucks out there with calvin from calvin and hobbes mischievously pissing on various things

I know the creator may not have wanted his creation to end up a symbol for the alt-right, but at a certain point you have to ask yourself whether your creation has become irrevocably tainted

if he had any ounce of self-reflection and responsibility in his body he'd hang up his pen and end his problematic comic for good

Not good enough in my opinion. Bill Watterson didn't endorse those Calvin peeing on things decals but they still exist. Gerry Conway created The Punisher but refuses to apologize for it by paying residuals to everyone who has suffered. We can't rely on Marvel or Universal to do anything because they're corporations and not the good kind like Disney or Sony or Tencent.

At some point we need to stand up on behalf of those most harmed by these things and demand these white men end capitalism and colonialism.

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/halo-infinite-ot2-craigslist.524925/page-218#post-79455062

think im gonna killmyself if i dont win a game soon, thanks 343, im like 6 and 102 in ranked, what a great game

Oh wait you're serious

https://www.resetera.com/threads/anybody-else-just-super-fucking-depressed.533111/page-2#post-79455608

god damn man just let it be random and quick  and painless at this point, fuck everything

343 just cancel Halo it's making people suicidal

[benjipwns]

 

[Lonewulfeus]

I identify as Demisexual (on the asexuality spectrum) and wish the best for you, OP. There's nothing wrong with you ✌️

Demisexuals just want to bone fat dudes right?

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/halo-infinite-ot2-craigslist.524925/page-218#post-79455062

think im gonna killmyself if i dont win a game soon, thanks 343, im like 6 and 102 in ranked, what a great game

Oh wait you're serious

https://www.resetera.com/threads/anybody-else-just-super-fucking-depressed.533111/page-2#post-79455608

god damn man just let it be random and quick  and painless at this point, fuck everything

343 just cancel Halo it's making people suicidal

Reminds me of that Splatoon guy

[Snoopycat_]

I identify as Demisexual (on the asexuality spectrum) and wish the best for you, OP. There's nothing wrong with you ✌️

Demisexuals just want to bone fat dudes right?

I think they identify as Demi Moore, so probably bald dudes

[Switters]

I identify as Demisexual (on the asexuality spectrum) and wish the best for you, OP. There's nothing wrong with you ✌️

Demisexuals just want to bone fat dudes right?

I think they identify as Demi Moore, so probably bald dudes

Or bald like Demi Moore in GI Jane doing nipple popping pull ups in a tank top... yeah, that's my sexuality.

[marrec]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/unvaccinated-joe-rogan-cancels-4-20-show-in-canada-can%E2%80%99t-even-%E2%80%9Cget-into-the-country%E2%80%9D.533189/

This is 100% a shoot but ERA as always will remain marks.

[Snoopycat_]

I'm 100% certain this thread isn't going to become weird or creepy the moment Messy rushes in with his expertise

https://www.resetera.com/threads/married-couple-advice-for-rekindling-sex-life.533258/

[HaughtyFrank]

Truly can't think of a worse place to ask this.

Maybe a covenant

[marrec]

Anthro-Con gotta be the worst place to ask that question

[Straight Edge]

I'm 100% certain this thread isn't going to become weird or creepy the moment Messy rushes in with his expertise

https://www.resetera.com/threads/married-couple-advice-for-rekindling-sex-life.533258/

In case you missed it, Messy can’t stop busting raw in his wife and was looking for advice in the “did you have sex this year” thread.

[Snoopycat_]

Ewww. Fritzl.

[BIONIC]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/did-you-have-sex-in-2021.533021/page-9#post-79468628

Been in a long term relationship with somebody who is likely ace and doesn't want to admit it. Haven't had sex in about 4 years.

I'm married, but we really don't have much sex. She doesn't really enjoy it. She does help me get off though, so that's nice, but it's really hard on my psyche knowing that I can't really please my wife.

A few months ago we did have a crazy week and conceived our second kid though, so that's cool

  but also 

[BikeJesus]

While still complete shit, reeee is slightly less shit without incelsheets shit takes in every thread.

Edit: nevermind, the cancer was in remission. It's back and making threads based on tweets as we speak.

[BIONIC]

She’s already back and spamming a few threads.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

It's funny that Moon cites Isabell Fall as one of those being erased by calling it "cancel culture" when it was those most in favor of "cancel culture" who originally led the jeremiad against Fall's "transphobic" story and those opposed who were the ones that criticized it.

There was a pretty interesting thread at the time that was blogposted that I'm just going to c+p here, because it's a pretty big fuck you to specific era posters.

Art does not exist to be evaluated on a scale of “harm” to “uplift,” and if we want to talk dog-whistles, that right there is a huge one: it’s deeply anti-intellectual, and it centers a form of toxic individualism that evacuates solidarity/difference in favor of moral purity.



Also, relevant from other recent intra-community trans Discourse: the fact that something triggered or hurt you, personally, is real— but that doesn’t actually make it bad, or wrong, or Harmful (tm) because you *are not the center of the universe.* Other trans folk who have different experiences of gender and the world might be deeply seen by the art that you think is morally bad and harmful personally. To some extent, we know why this is common: traumatic stress forces your focus to be survival oriented, internal, and evaluative. It’s hyper-vigilance! However, what it is *not* is healthy or productive— especially when turned relentlessly outward to hold others responsible for your bad feelings as opposed to processing them, or saying “ouch, not for me.” (Which is not to say artists shouldn’t be cognizant of other people’s pain and the larger social implications of their work, so please don’t reduce what I’m saying here to “fuck it, who cares.”)



The other huge flaw with “the story harmed me” or flat harm-critique is the lack of acknowledgement that, if we’re using that metric, then your insistence on the story harming you is EQUALLY harming to the other trans folk for whom the piece was a revelatory story, or productive. It’s powerfully self-centered and not feasibly sustainable. This is where the whole “criticism is an art itself and has theory” thing comes in. Because Sedgwick wrote re: queer theory’s internal failings a long ass time ago about “paranoid” vs “reparative” reading practices.



What we saw here was a classic case of destructive/paranoid readings that (1) FORCIBLY OUTED A TRANS WRITER and (2) caused a lot of misery and stress across the board for everyone... but that stress has been processed unevenly. Paranoid readings are also a valid understandable response to a violent world that seeks to harm us! But they close in on themselves and each other like a fucking bear trap. Reparative readings are open to pain as useful and potential, and are by definition attempting generosity.



Generosity in critique MATTERS. And furthermore, here’s where I get mad as hell: direct-effects audience theory has been discarded for like 40 years for a reason, but it HAUNTS twitter discourse like a hideous revenant. This framing of art and culture is very conservative, pretty fucked up, & spooky to someone who does this stuff professionally. If your replies are full of people saying “hell yes this is critical theory RUN AMOK” I want you to think hard about that.



And regarding some subtweets: it is, in fact, some people’s job—a job for which they have trained extensively!—to do critical work. That does not mean your opinion doesn’t matter, but it does mean (as I teach students every semester!!) that when doing heavy lifting with art, perhaps the metric of “who is allowed to speak about rhetoric and discourse” is not *solely* an identity based category. That’s a dangerous game. All of us can read badly, or be missing the background that a piece is speaking from, and being trans is NOT a guarantee against that. I’m exhausted and upset by the idea that we can’t have things that dig into more than 101 level exploration of gender, or our pain and tropes and violence, because it won’t be perfect for Everyone. And a queer woman who has the background to engage with what rhetoric and discourse and criticism do, weighing in specifically on those things, is not out of line— and neither is a trans person speaking to their identity experiences. Both can coexist and be discussed with an ethical approach to critique that is not infuriating.



I’m extremely tired and frankly feel violated by the level of anti-intellectual rhetoric and vitriol that cropped up in this discussion, and I’m not talking about fair critiques of a story’s functions or failure to fulfill those. Shit got personal quick, in unproductive ways. In short: harm-based critique of art sounds reasonable on the surface but its application & implications are intensely problematic and almost impossible to ethically or properly deploy, particularly when applied not to, like, egregious hate speech, but affectively difficult art.



[One follow-up tweet response I made: “The point of the thread isn’t at all to discourage critique, particularly political or social critique, and I’m pretty direct about that— it’s to encourage that critique to engage with content & context rather than (to oversimplify) ‘it made me upset, ergo it is morally bad.’”]

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Seems like that Lindsay Ellis appreciation thread proves that you can in fact have a discussion about cancel culture without having to bring up 'intersectionality' and pay lip service to the lie that the worst proponents of cancel culture are the good guys actually.

But its getting dangerously spicy with the meta commentary that yes, era is a fucking toxic shithole hotbed of cancel culture, so its probably not going to survive much longer

Absurd but oh-so-expected that this kicked off over a movie that pretty much nobody cares or talks about anymore.

Registering an opinion, even an anodyne one, about certain types of media - mostly those owned and/or distributed by Disney - is like trying to defuse a bomb.

Because, in many respects, Gamergate tactics worked. And when you're "fighting the good fight" it is only common sense to adopt the tactics that work.

Whenever stuff like this happens people tend to question where the line is between nuanced criticism and a harassing dogpile. My dumb thought here is that I'm starting to think that there isn't one for anonymous lurkers like me: There isn't a way to participate in the former without enabling the latter. This is due to how everything online gets munged together and how excessive the volume of reactions is. Criticism and discourse simply don't seem to work well at the massive scales of social media and the internet.

But it makes it incredibly hard to acknowledge that there is this small group of people, including here on ERA, who have absolutely zero interest in any kind of discourse, any kind of discussion at all and simply want to, quite literally, signal their virtue to the outside world by tearing down anyone who is perceived as less than what they see as perfect.

No clue. I've seen several creators get banned on this site because of this tactic. Not all banned creators are undeserving of their bans, mind you, but it sure seems to be a hobby of some posters to catalogue everything they disagree with to use as a bludgeon against people who enjoy talking about those creators

Well said. It's one of the main reasons I've been stopping by Era less and less. It's exhausting just reading some people's stuff on here, I can't imagine having it directed at me 24/7 like Lindsay.

While it is tempting to blame this on the chuds, the original thread about all of this on Era also had people all too happy to run with the "If you squint," tweet as a sign that Lindsay was propagating harmful anti-Asian sentiment.

I see this kind of stuff on Era all the time. A content creator does something legitimately worthy of criticism, but not something worthy of total cancellation. But then, every time content from that creator gets posted, the same 2-5 people post "but what about X", even years after the fact. A constant effort to derail discussion and discourage future posts on their content. It's quite annoying.

Too much of modern internet discourse is built on the fastest and least charitable takes on what somebody else says for the sake of scoring internet points.

It is a tried and true tactic here that's designed to derail discussion and to eventually get the thread locked. Like you, I've seen that tactic used here constantly, and it is quite effective. Any sort of push back and you are quickly labeled as a shitty chud that shares that content creator's bad take. So, for the sake of your sanity and ERA account, you just keep quiet and let the derail continue until a mod eventually has to lock the thread and hand out bans. Thread successfully derailed and closed. Fans of content creator that responded to the derail are banned. The desire to post any other content from that creator is dulled.

I think opening the door to banning topics on Era was a pretty big mistake and has played a part in the hostile vibe here. So many threads are now flooded with that debate, with no end in sight and no decision reached people are happy with. It fosters all the nastiness that leads to problems.

Thread derails are allowed if it is grandstanding some moral position. There was a "John Cena visits children dying of cancer for Make a Wish and tells an uplifting story" thread that got derailed by Taiwan comments from his past. Like, here's something that is genuinely positive and uplifting, but users (and mods that allowed it) wanted the thread to be dragged into the same abyss of negativity that can't ever do something positive or interesting with the perpetual indictment of somebody's past actions and statements.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-economist-reveals-that-they-dont-understand-how-doors-work.533267/

Its a rhetorical phrasing that you cannot go back to a state where the door had not been passed through, not that people cant walk through doors, you fucking spanner.

You're borderline Karl Pilkingtoning this like that dipshit who couldn't understand "have cake and eat it" because he 'had' a cake at a restaurant and ate it

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

[marrec]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-economist-reveals-that-they-dont-understand-how-doors-work.533267/

Its a rhetorical phrasing that you cannot go back to a state where the door had not been passed through, not that people cant walk through doors, you fucking spanner.

You're borderline Karl Pilkingtoning this like that dipshit who couldn't understand "have cake and eat it" because he 'had' a cake at a restaurant and ate it

ERA only understands rhetorical devices if they're delivered by someone wearing a superhero costume.

[HaughtyFrank]

It's funny that Moon cites Isabell Fall as one of those being erased by calling it "cancel culture" when it was those most in favor of "cancel culture" who originally led the jeremiad against Fall's "transphobic" story and those opposed who were the ones that criticized it.

There was a pretty interesting thread at the time that was blogposted that I'm just going to c+p here, because it's a pretty big fuck you to specific era posters.

That's a pretty good write up. So much of the media discussion on RE is so narrowly focused on this to the point where a deeper analysis isn't even allowed. That Mario shooting a waterhose at Rodin is harmful imagery is accepted like it's the word of god

[marrec]

It's funny that Moon cites Isabell Fall as one of those being erased by calling it "cancel culture" when it was those most in favor of "cancel culture" who originally led the jeremiad against Fall's "transphobic" story and those opposed who were the ones that criticized it.

There was a pretty interesting thread at the time that was blogposted that I'm just going to c+p here, because it's a pretty big fuck you to specific era posters.

That's a pretty good write up. So much of the media discussion on RE is so narrowly focused on this to the point where a deeper analysis isn't even allowed. That Mario shooting a waterhose at Rodin is harmful imagery is accepted like it's the word of god

Coincidentally, there is a kerfuffle brewing over the negative critical response to “Don’t Look Up” which is causing people like Briana Wu and Gita Jackson to retweet:

https://twitter.com/winter/status/1476597697893130240?s=21

Which isn’t as kind to their own criticism as they think it is.

[Raist]

Truly can't think of a worse place to ask this.

Maybe a covenant

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think you meant a covent/convent

[close]

[HaughtyFrank]

Truly can't think of a worse place to ask this.

Maybe a covenant

(Image removed from quote.)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think you meant a covent/convent

[close]

 

[Tuckers Law]

Truly can't think of a worse place to ask this.

Maybe a covenant

(Image removed from quote.)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think you meant a covent/convent

[close]

Probably the best part in such a truly awful movie.  If Ridley had any real balls, he’d have shown us David and Walter docking.

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/epic-store-gift-cards-are-hard-to-implement-because-they-are-based-on-stores-that-take-a-higher-cut-like-steam%E2%80%99s-30.532538/page-6#post-79415591

User Banned (2 Weeks): Antagonizing Fellow Member; Accusations of Shilling, History of Hostility

How does the boot taste

Dude's been banned so many times lol

[Lonewulfeus]

Reminder that Shane Black went out of his way to get an abuser friend of his hired multiple times.

Related to the long care post GreatSage posted.  Though in this case no one gave a shit and just kept posting on topic

[Jansen]

Seems like that Lindsay Ellis appreciation thread proves that you can in fact have a discussion about cancel culture without having to bring up 'intersectionality' and pay lip service to the lie that the worst proponents of cancel culture are the good guys actually.

But its getting dangerously spicy with the meta commentary that yes, era is a fucking toxic shithole hotbed of cancel culture, so its probably not going to survive much longer

Absurd but oh-so-expected that this kicked off over a movie that pretty much nobody cares or talks about anymore.

Registering an opinion, even an anodyne one, about certain types of media - mostly those owned and/or distributed by Disney - is like trying to defuse a bomb.

Because, in many respects, Gamergate tactics worked. And when you're "fighting the good fight" it is only common sense to adopt the tactics that work.

Whenever stuff like this happens people tend to question where the line is between nuanced criticism and a harassing dogpile. My dumb thought here is that I'm starting to think that there isn't one for anonymous lurkers like me: There isn't a way to participate in the former without enabling the latter. This is due to how everything online gets munged together and how excessive the volume of reactions is. Criticism and discourse simply don't seem to work well at the massive scales of social media and the internet.

But it makes it incredibly hard to acknowledge that there is this small group of people, including here on ERA, who have absolutely zero interest in any kind of discourse, any kind of discussion at all and simply want to, quite literally, signal their virtue to the outside world by tearing down anyone who is perceived as less than what they see as perfect.

No clue. I've seen several creators get banned on this site because of this tactic. Not all banned creators are undeserving of their bans, mind you, but it sure seems to be a hobby of some posters to catalogue everything they disagree with to use as a bludgeon against people who enjoy talking about those creators

Well said. It's one of the main reasons I've been stopping by Era less and less. It's exhausting just reading some people's stuff on here, I can't imagine having it directed at me 24/7 like Lindsay.

While it is tempting to blame this on the chuds, the original thread about all of this on Era also had people all too happy to run with the "If you squint," tweet as a sign that Lindsay was propagating harmful anti-Asian sentiment.

I see this kind of stuff on Era all the time. A content creator does something legitimately worthy of criticism, but not something worthy of total cancellation. But then, every time content from that creator gets posted, the same 2-5 people post "but what about X", even years after the fact. A constant effort to derail discussion and discourage future posts on their content. It's quite annoying.

Too much of modern internet discourse is built on the fastest and least charitable takes on what somebody else says for the sake of scoring internet points.

It is a tried and true tactic here that's designed to derail discussion and to eventually get the thread locked. Like you, I've seen that tactic used here constantly, and it is quite effective. Any sort of push back and you are quickly labeled as a shitty chud that shares that content creator's bad take. So, for the sake of your sanity and ERA account, you just keep quiet and let the derail continue until a mod eventually has to lock the thread and hand out bans. Thread successfully derailed and closed. Fans of content creator that responded to the derail are banned. The desire to post any other content from that creator is dulled.

I think opening the door to banning topics on Era was a pretty big mistake and has played a part in the hostile vibe here. So many threads are now flooded with that debate, with no end in sight and no decision reached people are happy with. It fosters all the nastiness that leads to problems.

Thread derails are allowed if it is grandstanding some moral position. There was a "John Cena visits children dying of cancer for Make a Wish and tells an uplifting story" thread that got derailed by Taiwan comments from his past. Like, here's something that is genuinely positive and uplifting, but users (and mods that allowed it) wanted the thread to be dragged into the same abyss of negativity that can't ever do something positive or interesting with the perpetual indictment of somebody's past actions and statements.

(Image removed from quote.)

They are so close to a breakthrough

i don't know what else to add other than the toxic brigading / disproportionate 'cancellation' behavour will only get worse



the internet rewards negativity, fuels anger and eliminates nuance



but we all know that

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/days-after-lamenting-his-plight-nascar-driver-at-center-of-lets-go-brandon-chooses-to-embrace-viral-slogan.533339/
Ree: Bunch of conservation cowards who are too chicken to say fuck Joe Biden!
Also Ree: 

[nobody of note]

The Ellis thing also spawned this massive wall-of-text over in Constructive:

The Lindsay Ellis thread prompted me to finally set down a bunch of things more broadly about the community I’ve been mulling over for a while. This is long, scattershot, and verbose so who knows if anyone will read it, but here it is.

I don't have any idea what the solution is, or even if there is anything approaching a solution. In fact I think there's a degree to which the broad focus of this community is likely unmaintainable in the long run. Lots of people have weighed in on this and have their own perspectives, so I can’t claim to have the One True Diagnosis, but this is what it seems to me is the cause of a lot of issues.

It didn’t happen out of malice or because anyone was lied to, but for better or worse this message board consists of many different and disparate sub-communities, many rooted in distinct subcultures and geographical regions and cross-sections of identities, and all of whom have internalized the desire and expectation that this should be their place, that they should get to control what’s acceptable and what isn’t.  And the problem – well, one of many – is everyone is going to have somewhat different heuristics and priors for what those should be, which inherently comes from being a diverse and multi-cultural community – but if everyone also has the expectation that their set of acceptable/unacceptable things is the OBJECTIVELY CORRECT ONE AND THE BOARD NEEDS TO RESPECT THAT, well then, discussion is functionally impossible. Everything devolves into different sub-groups trying to legislate what the acceptable range of posting behavior is, and so everything becomes a meta-discussion about what should be allowed instead of discussing whatever the original topic was.

Obviously, there are some broad things we (hopefully) all agree on – no epithets, no derogatory language, no advocating for actively harmful policies, etc. But dive into even more complex and granular issues and a lot of people just seem to want to apply the exact same 100% moral certitude to their particular perspective and anyone who doesn’t agree is an interloper with bad intentions and therefore not welcome.

There was a thread a while back I found really revealing of this. It had to do with some common prepared dish in Asian countries, which in some areas is often called “Dirty _____” (I don’t remember exactly what). And so a heated debate arose over the use of that phrase, because from one particular cultural context and upbringing, the word is a derogatory epithet that evokes feelings of other-ization and demeaning of their culture, and from a different cultural context, the name is benign and doesn’t have any unpleasant connotations and is just what people growing up are used to calling the thing. I wasn’t familiar with the dish or either specific culture’s relationship with it, so I’m not taking a stance on it and don’t want to rehash it. But trying to look at it from the outside, it struck me that this was basically a microcosm of all cross-cultural misunderstandings, and both perspectives on it made perfect sense from within their specific cultural contexts. Not knowing anything about the subject other than what was discussed in the thread, it was hard for me to conclude that either perspective was right or wrong. Because that’s how language works inherently: it’s contextual, it’s multi-faceted, it’s highly dependent on the speaker and the receiver, and it carries different connotations depending on all of that. Language isn’t math, what it means it isn’t universally definable or tautologically true.

But the discussion got heated with lots of users getting very mad at the way the phrase was being used and then other groups trying to defend the use of it, and ultimately there was a staff post that read something like “Calm down, there must be a middle ground to discuss here” and I actually laughed (in a sad way) at that, because it was abundantly clear from reading the way the discussion proceeded that no, there most certainly was not, not that was going to be found by the participants of that discussion anyway. Each side was adamant that their specific framing was the objectively correct one and the rules of the board needed to respect that, and trying to find or allow for that middle ground was simply unsatisfying to both groups.

And this is basically how so many users here engage with the question of what this community is supposed to be and who it’s for. I’m not arguing that either side was wrong to want that – obviously any group of people is entitled to want a space they consider safe and amenable to their concerns. But if there are multiple groups in a space who all think they’re entitled to that, well then what can we do? It’s simply not physically possible for everyone to get what they want. At least one party is going to feel excluded, and often, as in the case above, every party will, because the mere existence of people arguing from the opposite context about something they associate with their cultural identity is troubling to them. It wasn’t just a debate over what to call a goddamn street food dish, it meant that there were people here who didn’t understand or empathize with “my” culture and what it means to me and who weren’t willing to listen to me about it. And that’s simply unacceptable.


And because this is an enthusiast forum devoted primarily to what is essentially a broad form of mass consumerist entertainment, this also manifests in the way we discuss the way we consume media. And I get wanting to vote with your wallet, and what the value of trying to encourage boycotts and activism in the name of valid causes is. That’s been a time-honored tradition of all people, especially marginalized groups, to try to make their voices heard when they weren’t and yes, does constitute an exercise in free speech.  But – and I’ll readily admit this is a difference of degree, not of kind, and I am not at all sure how to draw a precise line between these – I see a difference in tone and extremity between wanting to encourage that behavior, and flat-out demanding that other people also participate or not participate in the exact same way.

Obviously a lot of this is driven by massive anxiety and learned powerlessness, and because we live in a late-stage capitalist dystopian hellhole ruled by uncheckable corporations who insist that our only good in the world is to consume what they deign to serve us, and where the most power any of us seem to have over anything is the ability to consciously choose what products we exchange for this stupid shared abstraction called money, it’s very easy and tempting to imbue our decisions with a certain moral dimension that makes my decision clearly better in some sense than yours.  “I don’t like thing, therefore I don’t buy thing” becomes “I don’t like thing and I think it is OBJECTIVELY WRONG TO BUY THING, so I don’t buy thing AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU AND IF YOU DO YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.”

And again, this is what literally all boycotts are so I can’t claim them to be categorically invalid. I don’t eat at Chic-fil-A (though it helps that I also almost never eat fast food) and won’t buy anything Harry Potter-related ever again. But do I then have the right to walk up to a person who wants to consume said thing, and demand that they stop? I mean, I have that right clearly, in the sense I also have the right to walk down the street calling people names, but is that helpful or useful in any way? How certain can I be that the particular matrix of consumer decisions in my life I’ve arrived at is unimpeachably and quantifiably the correct one, so obviously so that I can cast aspersions against everyone who makes different decisions?

Yes, this is sounding a bit like starting down the obviously stupid “Well you participate in society too!” meme, and that’s not my intention. I’m trying to navigate an admittedly fuzzy and difficult train of thought here. I guess my framing would be:

Everyone is entitled to, and in fact should, direct their particular resources and energy toward (or away from) the causes and issues they feel are most pressing.
Everyone should feel OK trying to leverage the various mechanisms of political and social action we have to encourage wider social adoption of whatever that is for them. It’s OK to bring up issues, it’s OK to try to raise awareness, it’s OK to do petitions and protests and boycotts, etc.
No one should be made to feel ashamed or accused of hypocrisy because they’ve chosen to direct (or stop directing) their resources in service of a particular issue or cause, just because they, you know, still engage in capitalism and participate in society and didn’t do it for every cause equally. That way lies nihilism. No, everyone should feel totally comfortable doing what they can in that regard.
…..But it has to be acknowledged that there’s an extent to which the (totally understandable!) desire for more activism and support and engagement often crosses over some nebulous line into thinking you can demand the same from people, that you’re entitled to it, that once you have declared a certain action to be Morally Correct, everyone else is then obligated to follow suit or else they will be labeled Not A True Ally And A Bad Person.

And I just don’t see how a community larger than 3 people that normalizes that mindset can possibly maintain itself without eventually eating itself into a hollow husk.  It’s simply not tenable or sustainable for a large group of people to all (virtually) walk around in the same area thinking that they have that power over everyone else around them and getting angry at everyone who doesn’t do the thing that is so obviously and trivially the correct thing to do.

Are you still entitled to want what you want, and to want to belong to a community you find supportive and helpful instead of dismissive and uncaring? Yes of course! Everyone wants to find that! But if your approach to trying to find and cultivate that community is one that focuses on purity testing and judging people on the basis of particular decisions they make – well, OK then. Have fun with that and see where it gets you. Eventually people get the community they want, one way or another.

So (and thank you for reading this far), I think everyone here would do well to take a step back from time to time, and especially before hitting Post Reply 2 seconds after reading something, take a moment and seriously ask themselves a 2-part question:

What are the outcomes you hope to see happen broadly regarding commentary and activism (on any subject, take your pick) in online spaces including this one?
Are your actions and the way you engage with people in that space conducive toward that goal?

I don’t know, maybe people will do this and end up behaving the exact same way because yes, that kind of community is affirmatively what they want. But I hope not.

As for how do you encourage and incentivize people to do that instead of firing off angry hot takes at everything they read? That one I have no idea.

Super long and I fully expect to see it ignored, but I generally enjoy when the members put in the introspection staff refuses to.

[Boredfrom]

It didn’t happen out of malice or because anyone was lied to,

BS

Since Gaf, there has been a lot of malicious assholes and disingenuous jerks.

[HaughtyFrank]

Someone else from the constructive thread

Lindsey Ellis said something that she shouldn't have, and people of Asian descent had a right to critique what she said and start a discussion around it, just like people of Asian descent had a right to think it was nothing. I'm not Asian, so I'm not going to tell people where to fall on that issue either way, and it's not my place to comment on it.

It's a longer post, but for me this absolutism negates any further point he might make

[Propagandhim]

Still obscene that this is all over some movie critic calling a children's cartoon derivative.  There's no bottom.

[Boredfrom]

Orayn should really quit the Internet:

We are ruled by monsters who use insider information to improve their portfolios while they decide on the acceptable level of civilian deaths from the plague that they're deliberately letting run wild. They are completely detached from anything resembling the human condition and live in total luxury and comfort while the rest of us suffer and die.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nancy-pelosi-buys-millions-of-dollars-in-call-options-in-google-roblox-disney-micron-salesforce.533381/

The guy sounds borderline suicidal this past two years.

[Lonewulfeus]

Orayn should really quit the Internet:

We are ruled by monsters who use insider information to improve their portfolios while they decide on the acceptable level of civilian deaths from the plague that they're deliberately letting run wild. They are completely detached from anything resembling the human condition and live in total luxury and comfort while the rest of us suffer and die.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nancy-pelosi-buys-millions-of-dollars-in-call-options-in-google-roblox-disney-micron-salesforce.533381/

The guy sounds borderline suicidal this past two years.

Where’s he wrong though?

[Boredfrom]

Orayn should really quit the Internet:

We are ruled by monsters who use insider information to improve their portfolios while they decide on the acceptable level of civilian deaths from the plague that they're deliberately letting run wild. They are completely detached from anything resembling the human condition and live in total luxury and comfort while the rest of us suffer and die.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nancy-pelosi-buys-millions-of-dollars-in-call-options-in-google-roblox-disney-micron-salesforce.533381/

The guy sounds borderline suicidal this past two years.

Where’s he wrong though?

I didn’t say he was wrong in this one, just that sounds unusually depressing suicidal even for RE standards.

[Lonewulfeus]

Orayn should really quit the Internet:

We are ruled by monsters who use insider information to improve their portfolios while they decide on the acceptable level of civilian deaths from the plague that they're deliberately letting run wild. They are completely detached from anything resembling the human condition and live in total luxury and comfort while the rest of us suffer and die.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nancy-pelosi-buys-millions-of-dollars-in-call-options-in-google-roblox-disney-micron-salesforce.533381/

The guy sounds borderline suicidal this past two years.

Where’s he wrong though?

I didn’t say he was wrong in this one, just that sounds unusually depressing suicidal even for RE standards.

Bruh, this thread is from yesterday/today.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/anybody-else-just-super-fucking-depressed.533111/

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/days-after-lamenting-his-plight-nascar-driver-at-center-of-lets-go-brandon-chooses-to-embrace-viral-slogan.533339/
Ree: Bunch of conservation cowards who are too chicken to say fuck Joe Biden!
Also Ree: 

Dude drives for his underfunded family team and his sponsorships were drying up over something he didn't do or have any control over, so good for him trying to make lemonade from lemons, I guess. I am skeptical that this deal will work for the entire season.

Edit: For anybody that actually cares about Nascar, this tweet:
https://twitter.com/mearn/status/1476582710042890241

appears to refer to this one:
https://twitter.com/A_S12/status/1476581571801014279

[Uncle]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/epic-store-gift-cards-are-hard-to-implement-because-they-are-based-on-stores-that-take-a-higher-cut-like-steam%E2%80%99s-30.532538/page-6#post-79415591

User Banned (2 Weeks): Antagonizing Fellow Member; Accusations of Shilling, History of Hostility

How does the boot taste

Dude's been banned so many times lol

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1474955912473415683

[Tim Sweeney's] explanations make sense, and as I’ve never deployed gift cards or similar retail items in stores until such time as a retail expert disagrees (not an era retail expert, a real one) it’s not clear why I wouldn’t believe him.

hasn't he been caught lying, downplaying, overstating, PR-speaking dozens of times? including during his massive court case with Apple?

epic ALREADY SELLS FORNITE GIFT CARDS

"I'm not an expert so I just always believe the first rich ceo I see speak about it"

 

[Cryo]

the *new* lindsay ellis thread seems to have some posters communicating intelligently on what occurred. thank you for not posting in there, excel.

[Uncle]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/days-after-lamenting-his-plight-nascar-driver-at-center-of-lets-go-brandon-chooses-to-embrace-viral-slogan.533339/
Ree: Bunch of conservation cowards who are too chicken to say fuck Joe Biden!
Also Ree: 

Dude drives for his underfunded family team and his sponsorships were drying up over something he didn't do or have any control over, so good for him trying to make lemonade from lemons, I guess. I am skeptical that this deal will work for the entire season.

Edit: For anybody that actually cares about Nascar, this tweet:
http s://twitter.com/mearn/status/1476582710042890241

appears to refer to this one:
http s://twitter.com/A_S12/status/1476581571801014279

when I first saw reference to LGBcoin I naturally assumed it was lesbian gay bi coin, leaving off the T to be trans-exclusionary 

[porkbun]

the *new* lindsay ellis thread seems to have some posters communicating intelligently on what occurred. thank you for not posting in there, excel.

Give her five minutes, they just ran out of toilet paper in aisle 5.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/days-after-lamenting-his-plight-nascar-driver-at-center-of-lets-go-brandon-chooses-to-embrace-viral-slogan.533339/#post-79490465

NASCAR is nothing but trash, get rid of it

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

He just started 23XI Racing with Denny Hamlin and Bubba Wallace as the driver.

[close]

[Uncle]

https://doesthendnlive.tumblr.com/post/616065697387364352/p-hi-would-you-like-to-explain-why-lindsay-ellis

hi! would you like to explain why lindsay ellis is problematic? i'm genuinely not trying to be agressive, i'm a fan of hers and i want to be aware of the content i'm consuming! thanks!

I would provide receipts but she deletes tweets and I really don’t care to give her videos views, so if you know the videos and tweets I’m talking about you can find them for yourself if you like and use your best judgment. I used to enjoy how she put film theory/analysis into an accessible YT video format with a left-leaning lens. But around 2 years ago, either I started waking up or her takes started getting worse.

The first red flag was the “I’m Sorry St*phenie M*yer” video. Her thesis was Tw*light Wasn’t Bad Actually We Were All Just Misogynistic to Teen Girls. To be fair, a lot of the contemporaneous pushback was based in misogyny. But in the video there was little to no acknowledgment of the extremely troubling issues that PLAGUE the series (100 year age gap, abuse, Jacob/R*nesmee messiness, blatant anti black and anti Native racism, sexism, homophobia etc). To this obtusely privileged and self-important take, a bunch of POC of course said DO NOT CITE THE DEEP MAGIC TO ME WITCH I WAS THERE WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN because we have *been* saying for years that the books are fucking wack.

She later tried to backpedal by saying she didn’t feel comfortable speaking over Native and black critics by going into the Quileutes, Laurent, the Confederate propaganda etc, but that excuse just seems hm inch resting considering the fact that she made a whole other video essay on indigenous rep in Pocahontas AND Moana using arguments previously made by POC. So we thoroughly have Lindsey and her huge platform to thank for this edgy white feminist Tw*light Wasn’t Bad You’re Sexist Renaissance that’s been going on for 2 years and she won’t even take responsibility.

After that was the post-GOT video, which I haven’t watched but have heard about. To my understanding she also rolls over the colonialism in Dany’s storyline and blames a lot of shit on Starks being “xenophobic” and “isolationist” despite tweeting super positively about the show’s horrendous writing throughout the final season until Dany burned King’s Landing. Anyway I won’t get into it because I just don’t think it’s fair for me to do so without having watched, but it’s takes like these that have rendered me unable to take Dany stans seriously since like 2017. Then there was also the “Woke Disney” video decrying Disney’s attempts at diversity, which suspiciously popped up around the time that Halle Bailey was cast as the first black live action princess.

The latest fuckery was her and Jenny N*cholson claiming all sorts of, again, obtusely privileged and blatantly untrue nonsense in support of R***o, such as that most women who like and create content for SW are R***os, that R***o hate is rooted in misogyny, that R***os aren’t racist, that Finnreys are part of the “alt left,” that John Boyega cyberbullies R***os…. And finally, she thought it would be funny to tweet about how she wanted to read R***o-themed fic about Harriet Tubman and the master she escaped from. TL;DR, generally I find it very suspect that this woman who cultivated her platform around media literacy only seems to believe in it when it’s convenient for her, and she uses “woke” and “witty” language to present lukewarm/bad and self-contradictory takes as whip-smart feminism and media commentary.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

asterisking completely random words like reylo 

bemoaning her deeply problematic takes on game of fucking thrones while saying "oh by the way I didn't even watch it"

Long post incoming. So here’s the deal, I actually used to like Lindsay way back when but as I’ve become a more critical thinker I found myself not needing her. I started to notice the racism in her fandom and just her own general racism.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

Gotta love how she uses big words to sound smart. It’s all just word salad and excuses, you’ll see this as a pattern with Lindsay.

Some natives liked it. Name them Lindsay. Who is this other side you speak of?

Funny she didn’t seem to care to imply that Native Americans who liked Pocahontas were on the “wrong side” for liking the movie. I fail to see how just bringing up racism, the confederate sympathies, or Laurent would make her uncomfortable. Oh I know why

Back to the tweets where she contradicts herself and tried to gain sympathy from these two Native American women.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

She’s absolutely right once again. It makes no sense. Pointing out racism is pointing out racism. It’s not shaming anyone for liking it. I am sure Lindsay knows this but continues to pretend she’s a martyr.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

So basically she’s bullshitting and saying the context was different when she was doing the Pocahontas video 🙄 um… how? Because one you stole from WoC and one you didn’t?

And again for like a fourth time, if you’re pointing out racism you are not implying these Natives you listened to are somehow wrong. You’re just stating a fact. Twilight’s portrayal of Native Americans was racist, full stop. The fact that it’s up to debate with you shows your fucking white feminism.

And like I’ve noticed a thing with white people. They’ll look for that one PoC who says otherwise to a general popular opinion on something being problematic. In this case I’ve heard plenty of Native Americans especially from Quileute people talk about how much the portayal of their people hurt them. I haven’t heard of these people who felt seen by twilight. You are either lying or these people are a minority and even so, why are you listening to them when you don’t seem to do that anywhere else?

How come you don’t listen to the minority portion of women who think r*ylo is racist? Oop

(Image removed from quote.)

End scene.

Being unable to apologize which is a staple in white feminists. They will never recognize racism when they see it but simultaneously act as an authority.

Her media criticism is very shallow tbh despite having studied film and always comes from the lens of a white women with a certain amount of privilege. I recommend putting her in the dumpster tbh.

[clothedmacuser]

Edit:

wait, era is making fun of them.  Man, this is what happens when you keep excel away.  I hope mods are watching

[Uncle]

Edit:

wait, era is making fun of them.  Man, this is what happens when you keep excel away.  I hope mods are watching

they are indeed watching and told everyone in the thread to keep it up 

[Potato]

https://doesthendnlive.tumblr.com/post/616065697387364352/p-hi-would-you-like-to-explain-why-lindsay-ellis

hi! would you like to explain why lindsay ellis is problematic? i'm genuinely not trying to be agressive, i'm a fan of hers and i want to be aware of the content i'm consuming! thanks!

I would provide receipts but she deletes tweets and I really don’t care to give her videos views, so if you know the videos and tweets I’m talking about you can find them for yourself if you like and use your best judgment. I used to enjoy how she put film theory/analysis into an accessible YT video format with a left-leaning lens. But around 2 years ago, either I started waking up or her takes started getting worse.

The first red flag was the “I’m Sorry St*phenie M*yer” video. Her thesis was Tw*light Wasn’t Bad Actually We Were All Just Misogynistic to Teen Girls. To be fair, a lot of the contemporaneous pushback was based in misogyny. But in the video there was little to no acknowledgment of the extremely troubling issues that PLAGUE the series (100 year age gap, abuse, Jacob/R*nesmee messiness, blatant anti black and anti Native racism, sexism, homophobia etc). To this obtusely privileged and self-important take, a bunch of POC of course said DO NOT CITE THE DEEP MAGIC TO ME WITCH I WAS THERE WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN because we have *been* saying for years that the books are fucking wack.

She later tried to backpedal by saying she didn’t feel comfortable speaking over Native and black critics by going into the Quileutes, Laurent, the Confederate propaganda etc, but that excuse just seems hm inch resting considering the fact that she made a whole other video essay on indigenous rep in Pocahontas AND Moana using arguments previously made by POC. So we thoroughly have Lindsey and her huge platform to thank for this edgy white feminist Tw*light Wasn’t Bad You’re Sexist Renaissance that’s been going on for 2 years and she won’t even take responsibility.

After that was the post-GOT video, which I haven’t watched but have heard about. To my understanding she also rolls over the colonialism in Dany’s storyline and blames a lot of shit on Starks being “xenophobic” and “isolationist” despite tweeting super positively about the show’s horrendous writing throughout the final season until Dany burned King’s Landing. Anyway I won’t get into it because I just don’t think it’s fair for me to do so without having watched, but it’s takes like these that have rendered me unable to take Dany stans seriously since like 2017. Then there was also the “Woke Disney” video decrying Disney’s attempts at diversity, which suspiciously popped up around the time that Halle Bailey was cast as the first black live action princess.

The latest fuckery was her and Jenny N*cholson claiming all sorts of, again, obtusely privileged and blatantly untrue nonsense in support of R***o, such as that most women who like and create content for SW are R***os, that R***o hate is rooted in misogyny, that R***os aren’t racist, that Finnreys are part of the “alt left,” that John Boyega cyberbullies R***os…. And finally, she thought it would be funny to tweet about how she wanted to read R***o-themed fic about Harriet Tubman and the master she escaped from. TL;DR, generally I find it very suspect that this woman who cultivated her platform around media literacy only seems to believe in it when it’s convenient for her, and she uses “woke” and “witty” language to present lukewarm/bad and self-contradictory takes as whip-smart feminism and media commentary.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

asterisking completely random words like reylo 

bemoaning her deeply problematic takes on game of fucking thrones while saying "oh by the way I didn't even watch it"

Long post incoming. So here’s the deal, I actually used to like Lindsay way back when but as I’ve become a more critical thinker I found myself not needing her. I started to notice the racism in her fandom and just her own general racism.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

Gotta love how she uses big words to sound smart. It’s all just word salad and excuses, you’ll see this as a pattern with Lindsay.

Some natives liked it. Name them Lindsay. Who is this other side you speak of?

Funny she didn’t seem to care to imply that Native Americans who liked Pocahontas were on the “wrong side” for liking the movie. I fail to see how just bringing up racism, the confederate sympathies, or Laurent would make her uncomfortable. Oh I know why

Back to the tweets where she contradicts herself and tried to gain sympathy from these two Native American women.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

She’s absolutely right once again. It makes no sense. Pointing out racism is pointing out racism. It’s not shaming anyone for liking it. I am sure Lindsay knows this but continues to pretend she’s a martyr.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

So basically she’s bullshitting and saying the context was different when she was doing the Pocahontas video 🙄 um… how? Because one you stole from WoC and one you didn’t?

And again for like a fourth time, if you’re pointing out racism you are not implying these Natives you listened to are somehow wrong. You’re just stating a fact. Twilight’s portrayal of Native Americans was racist, full stop. The fact that it’s up to debate with you shows your fucking white feminism.

And like I’ve noticed a thing with white people. They’ll look for that one PoC who says otherwise to a general popular opinion on something being problematic. In this case I’ve heard plenty of Native Americans especially from Quileute people talk about how much the portayal of their people hurt them. I haven’t heard of these people who felt seen by twilight. You are either lying or these people are a minority and even so, why are you listening to them when you don’t seem to do that anywhere else?

How come you don’t listen to the minority portion of women who think r*ylo is racist? Oop

(Image removed from quote.)

End scene.

Being unable to apologize which is a staple in white feminists. They will never recognize racism when they see it but simultaneously act as an authority.

Her media criticism is very shallow tbh despite having studied film and always comes from the lens of a white women with a certain amount of privilege. I recommend putting her in the dumpster tbh.

(Image removed from quote.)

...and this whole "controversy" is why you don't YouTube and you don't let your kids YouTube and you call anyone who uses YouTube for anything other than videos of movie and video game trailers, funny videos of people hurting themselves, minor DIY/instructional stuff and dashcam footage of bad driving a fucking moron.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/lindsay-ellis-appreciation-thread.147998/page-8#post-79494158

I remember this and finding it spot-on - in fact, I relate to all of it quite a bit. Sadly, it seems she wasn't entirely "liberated" from giving a fuck after all.

No one said "the left is the issue", but this whole post is basically #notallleftists and handwaving the role and responsibility that "the leftist side" played in the mobbing. Because saying that it's only the bad faith, far-right assholes who are responsible for the mobbing, is completely false and disconnected from reality.

Morrigan is still cunthurt over people bringing up her neogaf posts.

[Uncle]

I don't see any solution for the hell these people have created for themselves

option 1: cancel Lindsay Ellis for saying horrible horrible things adjacent to a now-forgotten children's movie, lose her unique voice and perspective, someone who had a wide reach and at one point was a strong proponent of your cause (and did plenty of cancelling on her own), and prompt the bad actors to move on to scrutinize the next target to cancel

option 2: circle the wagons and protect Lindsay Ellis, proclaim the people harassing her are all bad faith actors, proving publicly that you'll look the other way as long as the sinful person is someone you like enough, otherwise known as the B-Dubs Hypocrisy Special, which leads to the person being quietly shadowcancelled anyway by everyone embarrassed by this behavior

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/pick-your-favorite-gaming-company-of-2021.533186/#post-79459496
 

[nudemacusers]

watching resetera try to throw mystery 'lefties' (read: berniebros!!!!) under the bus for all this not-cancel not-culture is deeply hilarious

[nudemacusers]

I mean honestly speaking isn't the Asian community's response somewhat irrelevant?

Don't blame us Asians for harassing Lindsay Ellis off of the internet.

You wanna be mad that she's gone from the internet, then look at your own communities, and leave [most of] us Asians out of it.

It's comparable to dropping the n word by mistake in front of a bunch of black people during the BLM protest period.

oh resetera you stepped in it now 

[Taco Bell Tower]

Incelsiorlef lore?
https://www.resetera.com/threads/cnn-why-you-should-upgrade-your-mask-as-the-omicron-variant-spreads-kristen-rogers.532357/page-8#post-79504997

If they are as ad hoc reusable as the others, which we don't know, because they're not officially made to be reusable

Point stands 77$ is untenable i grabbed your basic 3 layer disposable general purpose non medical 100 pack at 9.99

Double up when I go out. Which I barely do.

I work nights with 10 people max with tons of social distancing, and most I do other than staying at home is going to a few video stores (some in malls) or best buys, and costco every so often rarely longer than 30 min in any store

[Taco Bell Tower]

It's comparable to dropping the n word by mistake in front of a bunch of black people during the BLM protest period.

oh resetera you stepped in it now 

Royalan:

It's not. At all.

[Averon]

The community that ERA comprises, going back to the GAF days, spent a decade or more helping build this toxic atmosphere they now bemoan in that Lindsay Ellis thread. They gleefully took part in numerous online mobs to wreck people's lives on the perceived notion that that person is some racist/sexist/transphobic chud. Hell, they were part of at least two online mobbings that we know led to suicide: a porn star who was accused of being homophobic due to her, at the time, reasonable concern of catching an STD from a gay performer due to there being an STD outbreak within the gay porn community at the time; and of course there's the Alec Holowka incident.

They are now tasting the bitter fruit they spent a decade to help cultivate, and they don't like it now that they are forced to eat it as well.

[Straight Edge]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/did-you-have-sex-in-2021.533021/page-10


Messy getting jerked off

No problem, and genuinely thank you for being one of the few cishet people that has consistently and long term shown you truly do support and care for the trans community it is noticed and meaningful.

Thanks, it's the least I can do I appreciate all of your insight and have learned a lot thanks to you.

[D3RANG3D]