As more people progressively talk more and more about the election, it may come at a surprise to many of you that, especially after promising for more political articles, I haven't mentioned the star of this year's show -- Donald Trump. In fact, I don't think I've mentioned him a single time either in private or public conversations until this article. Well, now that I'm finally making this, I might as well mention the reason that I haven't brought him up until now: I don't support him.
Trump is a stupid genius. Though his policies and statements may sound dumb, he knows how people work. He knows how to manipulate groups as small as an individual campaign opponent and as large as international news media. You see, Trump doesn't need to convince people to vote for him -- well, maybe a little -- but for the most part, he already has a very large, very loud group of people playing as his marketing card for him. It's the people who criticize him.
Yes, I'm talking about YOU (well, unless you're a Trump supporter, but I guess I'd still be talking about you?). You who post day and night articles and shitty memes on Facebook and Twitter on how Trump is literally the next Hitler. You who can only seemingly talk about how bad Trump is as a starter discussion for anyone in any environment. You who's punchline to a shitty joke is simply the name "Donald Trump". You constantly seem to be looking for reasons why he tends to be so popular, but you've checked everywhere but one last place -- yourself.
Let me explain this via an example. Very recently, a ton of drama and controversy was drummed up over Kanye West via a series of tweeting rants that made him look dumbfoundedly delusional. Also and coincidentally very recently, Kanye West's new album, Life of Pablo, came out. Or, was it really a coincidence? I mean, what are the chances that Kanye's rants begin shortly before the release of TLOP and end shortly after the release of TLOP? I mean, it's sure convenient -- after all, those rants have gotta have a bunch of people seeing his name, only to find the album itself, then having a listen to it to find out what this guy is all about...
...In case you haven't realized it yet, Kanye's controversy was planned -- by Kanye himself. Now, I'm not saying he faked it; Kanye is a pretty genuine person, and would think of the type of crazy shit that was mentioned in those tweets. However, he could've asked Mark Zuckerberg for money any time he wanted (most preferably in person or perhaps as a PM on Facebook) but instead decided to say it live as apart of one of his rants, live to the world. And so, people thought it was stupid. And further so, people decided to talk about it. People decided to talk about it a lot. And because people decided to talk about it a lot, The Life of Pablo ended up being the most successful digital only album of all time, despite also being the most pirated.
What Kanye West used -- and what Donald Trump is using -- is a technique called Large Crowd Manipulation. LCM (not to be confused with Least Common Multiple) is when an already popular figure appeals to the act of controversy by stating particularly dumb ideas or goofs that the public will find stupid, thus strengthening their popularity for some time before people finally get over it. Of course, for Donald Trump, people haven't gotten over it -- and its because he pulls a particularly controversial stunt every few weeks or so. Could it be, perhaps, that this is a case of Trump using LCM to its maximum effectiveness? In reality, yeah -- probably. It's very likely that, when Trump does these stupid things, he himself understands the stupidity of it, and that's how he's able to get ahead so easily.
Now, here's the real kicker -- there's nothing we can do to stop him. Think about it, how do you stop someone from being so popular? You stop talking about them. But to get people to stop talking about Trump, given the massive amount of people who are talking about him, is just straight up impossible. Even if we were to reach this message out to every single individual who talks about Trump all the time, many will likely forget about this message and continue to talk about him a few days later regardless, thus kickstarting the trend once again. Trump in a lot of ways has America in the palm of his hand, and he knows this -- despite a large amount of America not. He won the Republican party nomination the day it started -- and he may very well go on to do it in the general election. A reasonable person would see Trump's claims and policies as absurd, but only a fool would refuse to recognize that his campaign is perhaps one of the most ingeniously designed campaigns ever run.
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Friday, May 20, 2016
Thursday, May 5, 2016
In Response to The Hollywood Reporter
Ah, fuck. Here we go again.
I promised I wouldn't do another article about this sort of stuff. Ever since the ol' gamerampage-Battlefront scandal a few months back I had finally decided to throw in the badge and retire from this rage inducing, cherry-picked outrage garbage. Gamergate sucks -- it has and always will. Like, really? Gamergate? Are videogames that important to you? Why does this movement against radical feminism even have the word "gamer" in it in the first place? Didn't you all agree that the word "gamer" sucked anyway?
Anyway, the point is that I quit. However, I guess the old idiom(?) rings true -- a good content cop never stays away for too long.
What brought me back was an article that was published by apparently an actual notable website. Hollywood Reporter, a website whose major viewerbase is made up of what I can only assume to be underpaid soccer moms and college students with those special vibrant color hair dyes, recently released an article discussing the fact that the new trailer for Ghostbusters had now become the most disliked youtube video of all time. And yes, their case is just that (as of this moment) 674,142 people (myself included) just happened to really hate women.
Now, its 10 o clock on May 3rd, 2016 when I'm writing this. That being said, I'm not even going to bother going to the effort to make a deeply worded response to this dumb article. Instead, I'm going to use other people's opinions -- those who posted on the youtube comments -- and just pick out the ones I feel like generally respond to my feelings on the trailer itself:
(click the images to expand them if they're too small)
Alright, so that's the general stuff out of the way. Let's get to the article -- but, before I do, I want to address an obvious point I've never really addressed in one of these before: the fact is that 99% of people recognize this is bullshit and thing the "misogyny" argument is retarded. Let's be real with ourselves -- this isn't some giant threat to society that we've cracked it up to be. It is simply some extremely vocal minority that the media has been utilizing to get a few quick views while spreading fear of a "censored society" to the masses. In a few years, it's very likely that the movements will die out, and the colleges and universities that have decided to follow through with the stupid demands of these movements will finally concede and remove them. I'm sure some aspects will always be the same and continued to be argued about in the years to come, but I think the main reason I hated shit like Gamergate was because it picked very underground, specialized, and possibly even fake articles of "the atrocities committed by radfems" in order to seem like its a bigger deal than it is. This is the same strategy many anti-muslim forums have been making as well, focusing exclusively on the violent acts of islam and completely blocking away any possibility of something positive. Anyway, that mini-rant over, that doesn't change the fact that this is still a stupid article, and I'm still replying to it.
Oh, come on dude. I haven't even gotten to read the article yet and I'm already being bombarded by dumb shit.
Now, I feel like the "film is a victim" argument was addressed by the youtube comments above, so instead I'm going to focus on something else: nerd culture? Nerd culture? What in the god damn fuck is a nerd culture? Is it culture as in like, Mexican culture? Is there nerd festivals? Do nerds come together to commit rituals and sacrifice to their holy nerd god? Is there a some subgenre of music called nerdwave? I admit, I get pretty mad when the word "fandom" is used, but "culture" sounds even worse to the point where its borderline offensive. I still can't help myself from laughing everytime I read a post that says "gamer culture". Like nigga, how you even type that shit and be serious? How does that word come out of your mouth and your first thought is "Oh yeah, that fits perfectly towards the situation." I mean, then again, this woman is saying that bad trailers = sexism so I guess word choice is the least of our worries.
Secondly, what the fuck is a nerd in this context? Ghostbusters is like, a pretty damn popular movie. Like, its a classic. A serious classic. Everyone has seen Ghostbusters. This movie isn't like, some underground classic that has only been seen by a small Tumblr minority. This is a pretty well hyped release. Also, it has nothing to do with comic books, or Star Wars, or any of that shit. Hell, what does the word "nerd" even mean? What constitutes a "nerd" over a "normal human being"? What makes you special for being a "nerd"? For now, I'll just assume that by nerd culture she means Star Wars, Marvel, and the like. Here's a few points on that:
The first problem I'd like to deal with in this statement is the formatting. Like, good lord. It's real easy to fix this problem. It took like like 30 seconds to find where this continues off of in the actual piece, since in that its surrounded by all the other garbage. Secondly, don't both these statements mean pretty much the same thing? Can't "looking dire" still fall into the category of "something strange"? Anyway, I'm assuming the first part is supposed to be the right answer, but unfortunately for us, the author of this opinion chose wrong.
It's because the trailers themselves weren't bad. Both the Fantastic Four and Batman v. Superman trailers opened up the possibility to new interesting ways of telling the stories in their respective franchises, and although the both ended up failing horribly, the trailers themselves aren't bad. Unlike this one.
90% positive? Last time I checked, Facebook only had a like button -- no, scratch that, three like buttons. Where are you getting this 10% negative from? Are you just reading the comments and are going "Hmm yes, by my calculations it seems that relatively 90% of these comments are positive"? I literally just saw an embedded Facebook video like a few minutes before writing this. Unless its some secret hidden Facebook Gold membership feature, I'm pretty sure you're making this shit up. I would also like to point out how straight up conspiracy theory this article is getting, which apexes in the next point.
I think there's an assignment you do in late elementary school here in America where they show you a graph of the popularity of one thing and a graph of the popularity of another thing, and you're asked if that means that graph A caused graph B. It turns out that is false, and that is your introduction to faulty causation.
I feel like this statement is yet another example of faulty causation. The author is implying that amount of largely dislike videos starring females is the direct cause of a large increase in sexism, when that isn't necessarily the case. Still, let's take a look at the videos in the playlist she mentions.
Huh, well, would you look at that. She's right. There is a female majority. However, there is one thing she failed to notice.
THEY'RE ALL MADE BY THE SAME THREE FUCKING PEOPLE
You can't just say it's all females when there's only three god damn females on the list and its just multiple of their videos. I'm pretty sure you need more diversity in order to make that point anything but moot. If you do continue down the line of disliked videos, an interesting pattern develops -- all of the downvoted female videos are critically and popularly panned songs made by popular contemporary female artists who have a history of being critically and popularly panned. In fact, its not just women, either -- most widely despised male artists are also on this list. Hell, I don't even think there is a female majority in these videos. It seems pretty split between males, females, and viewbotted childrens videos.
Anyway, I've now spent an hour on this post, which passes my "actually putting hard work in" time limit. I promised I wouldn't spend too much time on this, so it looks like I'm outie for now.
In case (for some terrible reason) you want to read my gamergate trilogy, you can read it here, here, and here.
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
I promised I wouldn't do another article about this sort of stuff. Ever since the ol' gamerampage-Battlefront scandal a few months back I had finally decided to throw in the badge and retire from this rage inducing, cherry-picked outrage garbage. Gamergate sucks -- it has and always will. Like, really? Gamergate? Are videogames that important to you? Why does this movement against radical feminism even have the word "gamer" in it in the first place? Didn't you all agree that the word "gamer" sucked anyway?
Anyway, the point is that I quit. However, I guess the old idiom(?) rings true -- a good content cop never stays away for too long.
What brought me back was an article that was published by apparently an actual notable website. Hollywood Reporter, a website whose major viewerbase is made up of what I can only assume to be underpaid soccer moms and college students with those special vibrant color hair dyes, recently released an article discussing the fact that the new trailer for Ghostbusters had now become the most disliked youtube video of all time. And yes, their case is just that (as of this moment) 674,142 people (myself included) just happened to really hate women.
Now, its 10 o clock on May 3rd, 2016 when I'm writing this. That being said, I'm not even going to bother going to the effort to make a deeply worded response to this dumb article. Instead, I'm going to use other people's opinions -- those who posted on the youtube comments -- and just pick out the ones I feel like generally respond to my feelings on the trailer itself:
Alright, so that's the general stuff out of the way. Let's get to the article -- but, before I do, I want to address an obvious point I've never really addressed in one of these before: the fact is that 99% of people recognize this is bullshit and thing the "misogyny" argument is retarded. Let's be real with ourselves -- this isn't some giant threat to society that we've cracked it up to be. It is simply some extremely vocal minority that the media has been utilizing to get a few quick views while spreading fear of a "censored society" to the masses. In a few years, it's very likely that the movements will die out, and the colleges and universities that have decided to follow through with the stupid demands of these movements will finally concede and remove them. I'm sure some aspects will always be the same and continued to be argued about in the years to come, but I think the main reason I hated shit like Gamergate was because it picked very underground, specialized, and possibly even fake articles of "the atrocities committed by radfems" in order to seem like its a bigger deal than it is. This is the same strategy many anti-muslim forums have been making as well, focusing exclusively on the violent acts of islam and completely blocking away any possibility of something positive. Anyway, that mini-rant over, that doesn't change the fact that this is still a stupid article, and I'm still replying to it.
Now, I feel like the "film is a victim" argument was addressed by the youtube comments above, so instead I'm going to focus on something else: nerd culture? Nerd culture? What in the god damn fuck is a nerd culture? Is it culture as in like, Mexican culture? Is there nerd festivals? Do nerds come together to commit rituals and sacrifice to their holy nerd god? Is there a some subgenre of music called nerdwave? I admit, I get pretty mad when the word "fandom" is used, but "culture" sounds even worse to the point where its borderline offensive. I still can't help myself from laughing everytime I read a post that says "gamer culture". Like nigga, how you even type that shit and be serious? How does that word come out of your mouth and your first thought is "Oh yeah, that fits perfectly towards the situation." I mean, then again, this woman is saying that bad trailers = sexism so I guess word choice is the least of our worries.
Secondly, what the fuck is a nerd in this context? Ghostbusters is like, a pretty damn popular movie. Like, its a classic. A serious classic. Everyone has seen Ghostbusters. This movie isn't like, some underground classic that has only been seen by a small Tumblr minority. This is a pretty well hyped release. Also, it has nothing to do with comic books, or Star Wars, or any of that shit. Hell, what does the word "nerd" even mean? What constitutes a "nerd" over a "normal human being"? What makes you special for being a "nerd"? For now, I'll just assume that by nerd culture she means Star Wars, Marvel, and the like. Here's a few points on that:
- The female version of Thor was criticized primarily for the writing of the comic, not for its depiction of a female Thor.
- Much of the problems people have had that involve these changes are mostly due to censorship, the most popular example being the Batgirl cover that was recently banned as some saw it as "implied rape" (what?)
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which featured a main female character and a main black character, was criticized by primarily Rush Limbaugh and the rad conservative krew, not by the majority of people much like this trailer is. The trailer which first featured John Bodega (? idk the british dude from attack the block just google it) had very little dislikes in comparison to likes, and the main outcry at that time was for lore reasons, not problems of race.
The first problem I'd like to deal with in this statement is the formatting. Like, good lord. It's real easy to fix this problem. It took like like 30 seconds to find where this continues off of in the actual piece, since in that its surrounded by all the other garbage. Secondly, don't both these statements mean pretty much the same thing? Can't "looking dire" still fall into the category of "something strange"? Anyway, I'm assuming the first part is supposed to be the right answer, but unfortunately for us, the author of this opinion chose wrong.
I feel like this statement is yet another example of faulty causation. The author is implying that amount of largely dislike videos starring females is the direct cause of a large increase in sexism, when that isn't necessarily the case. Still, let's take a look at the videos in the playlist she mentions.
THEY'RE ALL MADE BY THE SAME THREE FUCKING PEOPLE
You can't just say it's all females when there's only three god damn females on the list and its just multiple of their videos. I'm pretty sure you need more diversity in order to make that point anything but moot. If you do continue down the line of disliked videos, an interesting pattern develops -- all of the downvoted female videos are critically and popularly panned songs made by popular contemporary female artists who have a history of being critically and popularly panned. In fact, its not just women, either -- most widely despised male artists are also on this list. Hell, I don't even think there is a female majority in these videos. It seems pretty split between males, females, and viewbotted childrens videos.
Anyway, I've now spent an hour on this post, which passes my "actually putting hard work in" time limit. I promised I wouldn't spend too much time on this, so it looks like I'm outie for now.
In case (for some terrible reason) you want to read my gamergate trilogy, you can read it here, here, and here.
---
Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Uncharted 4 Apparently Contains Hint at New Crash Bandicoot Game
A post by shortsFortallpeople on NeoGaf seems to imply that Naughty Dog might be planning something with the Crash Bandicoot series soon. The image, now deleted but described by NeoGaf users, shows a copy of an old PS1 Crash Bandicoot game in the upcoming Naughty Dog game Uncharted 4. Naughty Dog, during the PS1 generation, was the developers of the Crash series, but the franchise would end up being sold to Activision by Sony. This isn't the only instance of a hint at a new Crash game, however -- Naughty Dog's corporate profile on social media was recently changed to a new model of the character, as well as Playstation executive Shawn Layden wearing a Crash Bandicoot t-shirt at the latest Playstation Experience event. It seems that if there's plans for a new Crash game, it will likely be announced at this coming E3.
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis
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