Exposing the Grift: Go Woke Go Broke

[KnightTemplar]

I'm going to have to get the UK equivilent of HBO Max just to watch this.

 

[Darkballs]

There is always a central contention. My posts may be long, but that's only because they're more detailed and exhaustive in litigating that central contention.

I'm usually game to move on to accept a new, modified argument. But only if my opponent first admits he had to concede his original argument. If they don't, I'll do it for them. And yeah, I'm sure it's obnoxious. It's meant to be.

I wouldn't say it's obnoxious. It's more that it's incredibly stupid and usually a way for you to avoid points you can't debate. Take our previous disagreement the last time we spoke. You jumped into the middle of an argument regarding which political party had drawn up more legislation regarding immigration and the border. Your attempt to refute the argument that dems had done more recently, by pointing out a poll in which republican voters claimed to care about immigration more than democrats did. When several people attempted to explain how your rebuttal failed to even address the central point, you began spamming "concession accepted," and fled the thread.

Arrogance can't mask stupidity if people are paying attention to your actual words. And if you have to tell the room you won the argument, it's almost a certainty, that you didn't.

 

[lifelessheap]

Here, let me timestamp the video I put in the OP that you didn't watch before commenting that shows and names him in Japanese video games and show other sources that you can go and look up yourself:

LMAO. Even the Japanese government is angry over that game.

 

[Ruprecht]

I think media has been changing pretty dramatically. I would argue, if I had to argue something, that there isn't a hard line so it's disingenuous to argue this is definitely woke but this isn't.

If there are more films with female or black leads then any and all of them might be one guys version of woke. It's an agenda, or something. House of the Dragons is woke compared to GoT, Guardians has been displaying serious wokisms, but are they fully woke?

Who cares.

If it's good, good, if it's crap, people will point to agendas to try and explain why. Seems unnecessary and dishonest. In reality, it's probably just crap. Hollywood has been producing dogshit movies forever. TV sucked absolute ass in the 90s. It's better than its ever been APART FROM accessing content, and you're right on that one, it's all very oversturated and the market itself kinda sucks.

I'm sure it also depends on the specific audience/market.
Don't really watch or pay attention to movies and TV, but outside of that, video games with prominent "woke" themes seem to be tanking pretty badly, with the best sellers being pretty apolitical.
On the other hand the current scifi novels best sellers seem to feature "woke" narratives pretty heavily, but then it's a genre with an inherently progressive appeal.

 

[DoctorTaco]

Deadpool is pansexual. He'll fuck anyone who turns him on, regardless of gender.

I didn’t mean Queer, I meant queer, ya know? Queer in the over arching sense of the word

 

[Deleted member 585708]

I'm sure it also depends on the specific audience/market.
Don't really watch or pay attention to movies and TV, but outside of that, video games with prominent "woke" themes seem to be tanking pretty badly, with the best sellers being pretty apolitical.
On the other hand the current scifi novels best sellers seem to feature "woke" narratives pretty heavily, but then it's a genre with an inherently progressive appeal.

One video game that is massively woke is the Harry Potter one. I played that through pretty much all the way, and they really went hard on the woke with trans characters and all sorts of stuff. Very multicultural, too, heavy accents, etc, I think they were kinda taking the piss out of Rowling a little bit, but the audience for that is a young one and they're way more open to this kinda stuff. That one definitely didn't tank, but in general, yeah, games are a slightly different thing. You can be way more of a dick in a computer game and feel good about it.

Funnily enough I noticed that with scifi novels too and so at one point just for a change of pace searched out "bleak scifi" and boy the internet came through with Stephen Donaldson's "The Gap" saga. Wow, that was a change of pace and direction from the normal stuff.

 

[Ruprecht]

One video game that is massively woke is the Harry Potter one. I played that through pretty much all the way, and they really went hard on the woke with trans characters and all sorts of stuff. Very multicultural, too, heavy accents, etc, I think they were kinda taking the piss out of Rowling a little bit, but the audience for that is a young one and they're way more open to this kinda stuff. That one definitely didn't tank, but in general, yeah, games are a slightly different thing. You can be way more of a dick in a computer game and feel good about it.

Funnily enough I noticed that with scifi novels too and so at one point just for a change of pace searched out "bleak scifi" and boy the internet came through with Stephen Donaldson's "The Gap" saga. Wow, that was a change of pace and direction from the normal stuff.

Haven't played that one, I mostly play VR games these days, and the only one I've noticed that's extremely "woke" is VR chat, which is VR social media more or less (lots of user created content). It's a niche within a niche though.

Yeah, the inherent nature of speculating about the impact of technology on future society tends towards progressive. You certainly get conservative viewpoints in some aspects though. Especially subgenres of military scifi, dystopian scifi, apocalyptic scifi and all the space operas involving fantasies about space feudalism.

 

[Flower2dPeople]

Ubisoft didn't even bothered to panic wrestle and blame western gamers who were just using google translate to trash the game. They just straight up quit.

 

[Falsedawn]

Ubisoft didn't even bothered to panic wrestle and blame western gamers who were just using google translate to trash the game. They just straight up quit.

Ubisoft pulled out because their investors are currently in the process of trying to usurp the company from the Guillemot family. Not everything is tied to your stupid culture war. You should turn off the brainrot and go touch some grass.

https://aj-invest.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ubisoft-Open-Letter.pdf

 

[Flower2dPeople]

Ubisoft pulled out because their investors are currently in the process of trying to usurp the company from the Guillemot family. Not everything is tied to your stupid culture war. You should turn off the brainrot and go touch some grass.

https://aj-invest.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ubisoft-Open-Letter.pdf

Went to reddit for some details. Apparently the investors have been trying to takeover for almost a decade:

Major game company with a new extension of their franchise set in Japan(where everyone is upset except for those whose wives or GFs cheat on them) pulls out of Tokyo Game Show and it's not sus?

Also, I just finished a 35km bike ride with a 10 km hill ride in 1:20 less than an hour ago. Lol at "touch grass".

 

[Falsedawn]

Went to reddit for some details. Apparently the investors have been trying to takeover for almost a decade:

Major game company with a new extension of their franchise set in Japan(where everyone is upset except for those whose wives or GFs cheat on them) pulls out of Tokyo Game Show and it's not sus?

Also, I just finished a 35km bike ride with a 10 km hill ride in 1:20 less than an hour ago. Lol at "touch grass".

"Major game company" whose name is synonymous with a formula that's permeated *actually* all of their games since it was pioneered with Far Cry 3 you mean? Do you play games? Ubisoft is so formulaic that you can predict their games before they even come out. There's gonna be a big open world, there's gonna be a bunch of outposts, there's gonna be some tower mechanic that reveals on the map, vehicles which always control like shit, and if it's Far Cry then the villain is gonna have a major tragic arc that culminates in you killing them heroically. That's what they do lmao, it's no wonder their shares are in the shitter. It has nothing to do with any one game or any social movement, they make shit games and this time the investors might have the leverage to get the Guillemots out.

This is why I say to turn off that brainrot, because y'all start from a post hoc conclusion and keep framing everything under the goddamn son to feed your delusions. And it's always stupid shit. Like jesus christ a "WOKE!!!111" game didn't release with your coomer brain in mind, just mod the fucking thing and shut the fuck up.

Also for the record, lmao at posting your spin class logs.

 

[Bob Gray]

Is English not your first language Bob? If so we can cut you some slack for not being able to understand very simple language.

I mean, who are you even talking about? House of the dragon?

Who's wearing a woke blanket? What?

 

[Flower2dPeople]

"Major game company" whose name is synonymous with a formula that's permeated *actually* all of their games since it was pioneered with Far Cry 3 you mean? Do you play games? Ubisoft is so formulaic that you can predict their games before they even come out. There's gonna be a big open world, there's gonna be a bunch of outposts, there's gonna be some tower mechanic that reveals on the map, vehicles which always control like shit, and if it's Far Cry then the villain is gonna have a major tragic arc that culminates in you killing them heroically. That's what they do lmao, it's no wonder their shares are in the shitter. It has nothing to do with any one game or any social movement, they make shit games and this time the investors might have the leverage to get the Guillemots out.

This is why I say to turn off that brainrot, because y'all start from a post hoc conclusion and keep framing everything under the goddamn son to feed your delusions. And it's always stupid shit. Like jesus christ a "WOKE!!!111" game didn't release with your coomer brain in mind, just mod the fucking thing and shut the fuck up.

Also for the record, lmao at posting your spin class logs.

I'll give you that though, I stopped playing video games but I still work in the gaming industry. Some of the posters here already saw my artwork. And no, I will not post it here.

Didn't blame ignorant game designers even once. Also, someone is ignorant of strava. Must be a fatty. Lol at spin class.

 

[deviake]

I think you're casting too wide of a net for labeling something "woke". I mean, "Aliens"?

Like I said, theres some subjectivity to it. You'll find some people complaining just because of diverse casting. I think in general, as a criticism, the idea is you're putting political soapboxing/agenda ahead of making a good product. In a way it's more about the creative talent, or lack thereof. A good story and product will utilize it's themes well, and a bad one will hammer you over the head and the story/characters will suffer.

So, let me use an analogy. You know how nobody ever had a problem with female heroes like Sarah Connor? Princess Leia? Ripley? More recent example would be Ahsoka, Furiosa. But, on the inverse side you have Rey Skywalker, Galadriel on the Amazon LOTR series, etc? One one hand you have characters that are generally well done, versus characters that are poorly executed and thus they become an example of "Woke ruins everything". You could have made a LOTR series and had Galadriel and people would have loved it....if the quality of storytelling were good and the character was handled by people who knew what they were doing. But one of the biggest signs of quality in storytelling is subtlety. Theres absolutely no subtlety with a lot of these products, and it leads to very obvious agenda driven, clumsy execution. Whereas if a talented creative team can get together they can use similar themes, but it would work for the story they tell because they prioritize that above hammering their "message".

It's sort of like watching a really good movie that can inform everything to you incredibly well using creative ways without relying on a character that enters the scene just to give an exposition dump to "explain" everything to you. Ever watch one of those? Where a character just drones on and "explains" everything that the writer thought had to be explained to you, the viewer, and it really drags the movie down? It's kind of like that, except with a political message.

On top of that theres certain obvious things that are pretty much tropes now that tell you thats what you're going to get. Dumb male characters, all the bad guys are white while the rest of the cast is super diverse, etc. And then tons of double standards. i.e. race swapping white characters for more diverse races while changing a characters race to white is "white-washing" (even though the term, historically, means something entirely different)

I don't think so. I think if Aliens was made today there'd be people calling it woke but it'd probably still smash the box office because it's awesome. It checks A LOT of political boxes but it's really well made.

To be honest I think saying there's some subjectivity to it is a tremendous understatement. To even have this discussion I have to ask what woke is and I get no answer or a different one from many people. IIRC there was a thread after some conservative who wrote a book about it and she couldn't even define woke when put on the spot. Judging by Sherdog and snippets I see from social media it varies from people whining about identity, to complaining about race/gender swapping, to people who just seem to be mad at non-white characters, to blowhards like William who whine and incite divisiveness by calling out "the message" constantly and even straight up misconstruing scenes in shows and movies to push his "message", to people who just say they see clear and corny political messaging.

As far as those characters the internet was around back then so I can't say, plus, kinda to my point, those movies were good. As far as Furiosa I'm pretty sure I saw people on here complain about it/her and I remember rumblings of whining about Fury Road being feminist when it came out. People also lost their shit about a black stormtrooper which made no fucking sense at all. John Boyega was harassed (dunno how much in real life but definitely on the internets), it's common for black people though they don't always talk about it and I've never seen any evidence that racist/sexist/homophobic losers are the reason for a project tanking, but at the same time they do catch a lotta shit.

Edit: I gotta add in Barbie here. There was a meltdown about it but it still made shit loads of money. I've not seen it but heard it's good and the politics, wokeness or whatever was overblown which doesn't surprise me.

Rey/those movies and the LOTR series sucks. To be fair I've not watched RoP, looks like ass though. The SW sequels still made a shit ton of money though they fell off quick, with Rise making half of what TFA made. But again, dog shit. There were definitely white feminist politics in TLJ but that whole movie sucked a barrel of wangs for SO many reasons lol. Lil Johnson made a movie where everything was the opposite of what people wanted to see, on purpose. It was one giant fuck you to the audience from a little troll. I digress lol, anyway.

I agree with subtlety in story telling 1,000%, it's a great sign of quality. Diversity is more lauded and appreciated ever before which is why companies prioritize it, but if the story is trash and the people making it suck, it just comes off as ham fisted and paper thin liberal politics, which some companies/producers use as a shield when they put out dog shit, like with the new Charlie's Angels or The Acolyte, which is fuel for grifters like William and his cohort.

Completely agree with the character's on the nose exposition too, I hate that shit.

The dumb male character I've seen in Ghostbusters 2016 (I didn't watch it but that's what it looked like) but I haven't seen much, however I'm very selective with what shows and movies I watch these days. The white guy being bad I dunno about, white dudes being a big bad villain is nothing new (and white people are still the majority of the population with white men still being overall the richest and most powerful), the bigger change I've seen with with women and minorities being featured more often, more prominently, and more humanely as time goes on. Race swapping I've but not noticed as much as others seem to make a big deal out of, and from what I understand there's different Spidermans/womans and other characters like The Flash aren't a singular person. The queen of England one or whatever struck me as corny and amusing but I wasn't offended nor going to watch that anyway lol. I know The Witcher and House of the Dragon did that too, no one seemed to care much, though from what I understand The Witch has problems (that have nothing to do with that).

Quality defeats both "go woke, go broke" and "our/show movie failed because of hateful people! Men don't wanna watch movies with women in them!", statements that both seem to be categorically untrue IMO, or at least we can point to a lot of examples that suggest otherwise.

 

[deviake]

I'll give you that though, I stopped playing video games but I still work in the gaming industry. Some of the posters here already saw my artwork. And no, I will not post it here.

Didn't blame ignorant game designers even once. Also, someone is ignorant of strava. Must be a fatty. Lol at spin class.

Hope you had a good ride sweetie

 

[deviake]

I wouldn't say it's obnoxious. It's more that it's incredibly stupid and usually a way for you to avoid points you can't debate. Take our previous disagreement the last time we spoke. You jumped into the middle of an argument regarding which political party had drawn up more legislation regarding immigration and the border. Your attempt to refute the argument that dems had done more recently, by pointing out a poll in which republican voters claimed to care about immigration more than democrats did. When several people attempted to explain how your rebuttal failed to even address the central point, you began spamming "concession accepted," and fled the thread.

Arrogance can't mask stupidity if people are paying attention to your actual words. And if you have to tell the room you won the argument, it's almost a certainty, that you didn't.

Pretty sure I've seen him defending some dude allegedly sexting minors too? Not 100% but I know him and GearSolidMetal have defended some dubious people. I also watched him get dunked on by multiple people about Portland, he got like city boundaries mixed up or something like that (not exactly but in that area) and people were explaining it to him and even circling and highlighting stuff, he just kept arguing, was pretty funny

 

[Madmick]

I wouldn't say it's obnoxious. It's more that it's incredibly stupid and usually a way for you to avoid points you can't debate. Take our previous disagreement the last time we spoke. You jumped into the middle of an argument regarding which political party had drawn up more legislation regarding immigration and the border. Your attempt to refute the argument that dems had done more recently, by pointing out a poll in which republican voters claimed to care about immigration more than democrats did. When several people attempted to explain how your rebuttal failed to even address the central point, you began spamming "concession accepted," and fled the thread.

Arrogance can't mask stupidity if people are paying attention to your actual words. And if you have to tell the room you won the argument, it's almost a certainty, that you didn't.

Pretty sure I've seen him defending some dude allegedly sexting minors too? Not 100% but I know him and GearSolidMetal have defended some dubious people. I also watched him get dunked on by multiple people about Portland, he got like city boundaries mixed up or something like that (not exactly but in that area) and people were explaining it to him and even circling and highlighting stuff, he just kept arguing, was pretty funny

Both of these recountances are inaccurate. For example, per the Portland thread, I was accused of citing a budget figure for the Portland Metro area, but in fact, my figure was for the city only, which I then showed, plainly, yet those who were defeated on that point tried to save face over an objectively irrefutable fact by projecting an assertion onto me through inference which I never expressed.

Of course, the only thing that would generate this level of off-topic ad hominem and animosity is the frustration of repeatedly losing debates.

 

[Ruprecht]

I don't think so. I think if Aliens was made today there'd be people calling it woke but it'd probably still smash the box office because it's awesome. It checks A LOT of political boxes but it's really well made.

Alien set up Aliens for success with the Ripley character, despite being a departure in genre.
Funnily enough Alien got a lot of negative reviews, but not for preaching feminist politics or some underlying theme of reproductive rights, so much as being an old school creature feature in comparison to the newer styles of Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[Darkballs]

Of course, the only thing that would generate this level of off-topic ad hominem and animosity is the frustration of repeatedly losing debates.

You want me to bump any of the Project Veritas threads for you, sport?

 

[Madmick]

You want me to bump any of the Project Veritas threads for you, sport?

Concession accepted.