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Casimir Radon
Aug 2, 2008


Gotta wonder if their Fox Nation poo poo will save them from cord cutting in the long run.

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SetSliRol
Apr 30, 2021

"The power of the Marfalump idea is it's one, simple idea. It's not about Pepsi or Star Wars. It's about a character that loves both."
I'm not sure it's possible to overstate how old and stubborn Fox's primary audience is, so I doubt it's doing much to keep up with cord cutting. I'm actually really curious as to how many people subscribe to Fox Nation because if you're already watching Fox on TV, that's probably all you already have on, and I don't think Nation has streams of their news channels - it seems to all be original content with their personalities. The young Nazis of today also don't really like Fox outside of Tucker and probably aren't really interested in Judge Jeanine looking at old mansions or COPs.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
It wouldn't really matter.

They churn these guys out like they were assembled in a factory, tell them what to say, trot them out, and there's along of list people willing to do that for nice paycheck. You only need the tiniest amount of charisma and even less shame to qualify for the job. Wave the flag, talk up guns, talk down anyone not white and bring up (parts of) the bible every now and then = instant America, gently caress Yeah.

Seriously, they mostly all sound like robots and they kind of are. There's a long line of hucksters right behind Tucker, and Hannity and we've been shown over and over how quickly the former leaders/heroes are forgotten (Palin, Coulter, Beck, O'Reilly...even Rush). Nobody talks about Rush Limbaugh at all anymore and he's a loving legend.

Just a never ending supply of used car salesman, carnival barkers, faith healers and televangelists.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

BiggerBoat posted:

It wouldn't really matter.

They churn these guys out like they were assembled in a factory, tell them what to say, trot them out, and there's along of list people willing to do that for nice paycheck. You only need the tiniest amount of charisma and even less shame to qualify for the job. Wave the flag, talk up guns, talk down anyone not white and bring up (parts of) the bible every now and then = instant America, gently caress Yeah.

Seriously, they mostly all sound like robots and they kind of are. There's a long line of hucksters right behind Tucker, and Hannity and we've been shown over and over how quickly the former leaders/heroes are forgotten (Palin, Coulter, Beck, O'Reilly...even Rush). Nobody talks about Rush Limbaugh at all anymore and he's a loving legend.

Just a never ending supply of used car salesman, carnival barkers, faith healers and televangelists.

I dunno, the primary reason why Fox seems to defend Hannity and Tucker like a deranged street fighter from any and all possible attempts to see them removed or even just censured is that they actually don't have a deep bench of talent lined up to replace them if either should falter. The next person in line for primetime after them is someone like Greg "my jokes don't have punchlines, they just end when I stop talking" Gutfeld(!).

SetSliRol
Apr 30, 2021

"The power of the Marfalump idea is it's one, simple idea. It's not about Pepsi or Star Wars. It's about a character that loves both."
Have you ever seen Fox News Primetime? It's exactly like Tucker but with a rotating list of hosts and instead of Tucker's 'just asking questions!!!' tone it's them getting really pissed off and whining more openly. At times it feels like the NXT to Fox's WWE; a place where they can grow and develop their talent until they're able to get their own slot.

Though, I do agree that they don't really have anyone that could fill Tucker and Riley's's schtick of more-or-less 'calmly' reading their opinions to you without getting extremely worked up. Tucker falters a lot but for most of his show it's hard to hear him raise or lower his voice, it's very flat and to-the-point. The closest I could think of is Jesse Watters but his default tone of voice is smarmy and he always has this dipshit smirk on his face, so it's hard to pull off the same format. The rest of the hosts are various degrees of lame, plain stupid, or cartoonish, with Levin and Judge Jeanine always sounding like a toddler arguing about bedtime with their mom and give seconds away from their head exploding from sheer rage.

Like others have said though, unless Tucker somehow out-sexcrimes Riley or says a slur on air, he's golden, but I do have a feeling that this Patriot Purge documentary he's releasing isn't going to go over smoothly once it goes live.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

SetSliRol posted:

Have you ever seen Fox News Primetime? It's exactly like Tucker but with a rotating list of hosts and instead of Tucker's 'just asking questions!!!' tone it's them getting really pissed off and whining more openly. At times it feels like the NXT to Fox's WWE; a place where they can grow and develop their talent until they're able to get their own slot.

Though, I do agree that they don't really have anyone that could fill Tucker and Riley's's schtick of more-or-less 'calmly' reading their opinions to you without getting extremely worked up. Tucker falters a lot but for most of his show it's hard to hear him raise or lower his voice, it's very flat and to-the-point. The closest I could think of is Jesse Watters but his default tone of voice is smarmy and he always has this dipshit smirk on his face, so it's hard to pull off the same format. The rest of the hosts are various degrees of lame, plain stupid, or cartoonish, with Levin and Judge Jeanine always sounding like a toddler arguing about bedtime with their mom and give seconds away from their head exploding from sheer rage.

Like others have said though, unless Tucker somehow out-sexcrimes Riley or says a slur on air, he's golden, but I do have a feeling that this Patriot Purge documentary he's releasing isn't going to go over smoothly once it goes live.

O'Reilly also tried to groom Watters to be a real big boy primetime host and be his heir apparent for when he retired and it was a colossal, gobsmacking failure on all fronts. The guy wasn't up to the challenge by any measure and once O'Reilly got the axe and wasn't there to put his thumb on the scale anymore, the Fox brass loving iced Watters' career advancement and hid him away in the lunchtime and weekend hours out of sight of anyone but folks who were waiting too long in a McDonald's line up or stuck in an airport boarding lounge between flights.

Mr Interweb
Aug 25, 2004

cody johnson just made this great video on conservative comedy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU

i think it does a better job describing the problems with conservative comedy than many other critiques from the left, which primarily criticize it as bad comedy because it punches down.

Twelve by Pies
May 4, 2012

Again a very likpatous story

BiggerBoat posted:

Nobody talks about Rush Limbaugh at all anymore and he's a loving legend.

I can think of a reason why nobody talks about Rush anymore. :v:

But that's the problem Fox News and right wing radio is having right now. They have a handful of big names and they're desperately trying to hold on to them, because that's all they have. Apparently the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show (Rush's replacements) have been getting ratings bumps in some places, but that's probably offset by the fact that a lot of stations that aired Rush didn't pick them up and instead replaced his show with Dan Bongino, Dennis Prager or Charlie Kirk.

The big names are kings because they got in when there weren't many options, but now there's lots of options and there isn't as much of a chance to hit it big. Keep in mind that the march of technology is hurting them too; radio was once the only choice you had to listen to something while on the road, now there's satellite radio or just tune your phone in to a podcast site. Fox News is still big because of cable subscriptions but as old people die off and young people have less interest in cable TV, they're going to start to sink too since the rising stars of right wing media are on Youtube, Twitch and Twitter.

And there's still a bit of an age divide too. Even if they're spouting right wing talking points, old people generally want someone old like themselves that they feel understand them and how bad Kids These Days are. And younger right wingers want someone young and cool who share their goal of building up fascism, not some old guy ranting about Kids These Days.

DarklyDreaming
Apr 4, 2009

Fun scary

Twelve by Pies posted:

And there's still a bit of an age divide too. Even if they're spouting right wing talking points, old people generally want someone old like themselves that they feel understand them and how bad Kids These Days are. And younger right wingers want someone young and cool who share their goal of building up fascism, not some old guy ranting about Kids These Days.

Shapiro is kinda bridging that divide but yeah, Fox News remains the big prestige venue and anyone under 50 is going to be the opening act, not the headliner

Casimir Radon
Aug 2, 2008


I read a Reddit thread recently where a number of posters talked about regretting ever being into watching Little Ben or Crowder, describing it as a cringey period in their lives. Hope they’re not flukes.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Casimir Radon posted:

I read a Reddit thread recently where a number of posters talked about regretting ever being into watching Little Ben or Crowder, describing it as a cringey period in their lives. Hope they’re not flukes.

I've seen people expressing similar sentiments lately about a bunch of right wing nerd YouTubers too like TheQuartering, Geeks and Gamers, Nerdrotic and ClownfishTV. Basically just embarrassed newly minted 20-somethings going "why the hell did I ever watch any of these dillhole clowns?" Hopefully its a signal that their time on the discourse-poisoning internet grift train is coming to an end, but we'll see.

Screaming Idiot
Nov 26, 2007

JUST POSTING WHILE JERKIN' MY GHERKIN SITTIN' IN A PERKINS!

BEATS SELLING MERKINS.

nine-gear crow posted:

I've seen people expressing similar sentiments lately about a bunch of right wing nerd YouTubers too like TheQuartering, Geeks and Gamers, Nerdrotic and ClownfishTV. Basically just embarrassed newly minted 20-somethings going "why the hell did I ever watch any of these dillhole clowns?" Hopefully its a signal that their time on the discourse-poisoning internet grift train is coming to an end, but we'll see.

Eh, half of them are only embarrassed because they want to trade the dogwhistkes for foghorns.

Bel Shazar
Sep 14, 2012

Casimir Radon posted:

I read a Reddit thread recently where a number of posters talked about regretting ever being into watching Little Ben or Crowder, describing it as a cringey period in their lives. Hope they’re not flukes.

Do they listen to Peterson and Rogan now?

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
I'm still baffled that Ben Shapiro ever had fans. Fuckin black hole of charisma. Bear of a man. Dry wife.

Chloe Jessica
Nov 6, 2021
Pick 2.0
the best thing about Ben Shapiro is that for a while, every year around exam times, there'd be a wave of Reddit posts along the lines of "I used Ben's debate techniques in my paper, why did I fail?" and the replies, summed up, were "the answer is in the question"

Twelve by Pies
May 4, 2012

Again a very likpatous story
I wonder if people like TheQuartering are starting to lose steam because they're overstepping their bounds a bit. What I mean is channels like his started out as Gamergate poo poo and talks about how politics should stay out of beloved game franchises like Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid, and SJWs shouldn't censor boobs in games. It seems like a natural progression to go into full alt right poo poo but I wonder if the people who originally were attracted to him really did only just give a poo poo about video games and keeping women/minorities out of them and started getting irritated at the drifting into just another chud ranting about SJWs in general.

I guess it could also be his tendency to just make up poo poo and present it not even as truth, but "Hey maybe this is happening but it also might not be who knows!" Thought Slime did a video a while back about that and it's still going on now apparently, since when I was looking up stats for TheQuartering's channel I saw one of his recent videos which was "Eternals getting SUSPICIOUS help from Rotten Tomatoes" where I'm sure he went into one of his usual "Hmm early reviews weren't good but later reviews are better is Rotten Tomatoes purposely only putting good scores to increase its average? I don't know either way and don't have any proof and am not accusing them of anything but maybe they are, it's possible!" Normal right wing media doesn't give a gently caress about accuracy or accusing companies/people of doing bad poo poo wrongly, they just say things like "Dr. Fauci gave sacks full of money to the Wuhan lab to create coronavirus and then murdered puppies on his way home" and don't care to add things like "allegedly" or "we're just asking questions" they just flat out say it and don't give a poo poo. So it's possible they're tired of him being too scared to loudly proclaim the truth or whatever.

Of course, it would also be nice if teens/young adults were actually growing up and seeing that channels like his are a bunch of hateful bigots who only care about weaponizing nostalgia to assist the rise of fascism, and don't want that to happen. I'm a pessimist though so I'm not too hopeful of that one.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
I love how I can just go to Snopes' main page and learn instantly what kinds of insane poo poo are making the rounds in RWM just by reading the headlines. Often, I can tell too by the conversations I overhear in the company lunch room.

Barrel Cactaur
Oct 6, 2021

Its funny just how much the divide of the toy isle drifted down. The only reason its an issue at all is because retailers over-categorized toys in marketing and store layout and Nintendo said 'put it on the blue shelf' when they released the NES. And that made GAMER™s male. But not the ones that are mad about it, for them its just a codeword about someone who isn't precisely identical enjoying and supporting their favorite product with a broader variety of content.

And yeah media literacy is tragically under-taught compared to other topics, especially for video because video up until YouTube usually had a much more transparent divide between education and entertainment outside of Murdoch zone. Its also much harder to take an internally inconsistent position in non live media where someone can literally look up the page. Meanwhile so long as you leave a topic or two between hypocritical statements in video its harder to notice. Add to that its become normalized for videos to not have any kind of deep citations at all and to often breathlessly repeat news blogs that take the FWR:FWR:FWR: Anonymous source in X stuff as evidence. Yuck.

-Blackadder-
Jan 2, 2007

Game....Blouses.

nine-gear crow posted:

Also unlike folks like John Voight, Adam Baldwin, Gina Carano, Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain, Kelsey Grammer is able to maintain a relatively active career by realizing that his opinions are considered ghoulish by the general public and is a good enough actor to hide them when appearing out in broader public spaces and can still appear to be genial and good humoured, while the rest of these fuckers are all miserable pricks all the time now.

William Bear posted:

Also, I forgot Robert Davi was a right-wing crank. Dammit, Halo and The Goonies (and License to Kill) were half my childhood. :negative:
Man, I grew up on Lois & Clark and saw Dean Cain being nasty to somebody on Twitter awhile back, and I swear I about teared up and turned into the kid from the Superman III bar scene.

"He can hear me, he's got super-hearing." :smith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dboFAS6hp8s

PhazonLink
Jul 17, 2010
Ben and all the original regressive wonderboys are astroterfed as hell , have dark money , and have both old and new institutional support behind the scene.


The youtube pateron peeps are just tools to push the myth if selfmade supastars.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Twelve by Pies posted:

I can think of a reason why nobody talks about Rush anymore. :v:

But that's the problem Fox News and right wing radio is having right now. They have a handful of big names and they're desperately trying to hold on to them, because that's all they have. Apparently the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show (Rush's replacements) have been getting ratings bumps in some places, but that's probably offset by the fact that a lot of stations that aired Rush didn't pick them up and instead replaced his show with Dan Bongino, Dennis Prager or Charlie Kirk.

The big names are kings because they got in when there weren't many options, but now there's lots of options and there isn't as much of a chance to hit it big. Keep in mind that the march of technology is hurting them too; radio was once the only choice you had to listen to something while on the road, now there's satellite radio or just tune your phone in to a podcast site. Fox News is still big because of cable subscriptions but as old people die off and young people have less interest in cable TV, they're going to start to sink too since the rising stars of right wing media are on Youtube, Twitch and Twitter.

And there's still a bit of an age divide too. Even if they're spouting right wing talking points, old people generally want someone old like themselves that they feel understand them and how bad Kids These Days are. And younger right wingers want someone young and cool who share their goal of building up fascism, not some old guy ranting about Kids These Days.

Those are good points but I can't shake the idea that there people waiting in the wings who simply aren't household names yet and America (and the world really) seems to be overflowing with people willing to say or do anything for money. I think we just don't know who the "stars" are yet but they'll show up I'm afraid.

The real trouble they have to my eyes is not the aging demographic (lots of under 30 and 40 year olds stormed DC on 1/6) so much as the reality that it's getting harder and harder to double down and generate the shock and outrage needed to generate publicity. Like, they've kind of hit the bottom with that poo poo. When Rush was doing his "feminazi, environmentalist whackos" shtick, it was kind of revelatory. Ann Coulter defending McCarthyism and her "shocking and outrageous" bullshit. Glenn Beck and his crazy chalkboard. Milo. Sarah Palin's folksy ignorance. Joe Arpaio's "let's horse whip all (dark skinned) criminals" - all those creeps - culminating in electing the pussy grabber who called immigrants rapists.

Now there's just nothing left out there that remains in order to lower the bar much further that can buils on the concept of The Conservative Rebel that makes it so attractive beyond simply calling every Democrat a socialist. Which is about all I hear. I mean...there IS...but you're kind of at the point where it would take un-apologetically referring to a large bloc of voters as N*****s and F*****s for any of it to land as hard as it would have to. Which I'm not convinced is entirely impossible but thank god that most of the country seems to be over most of that poo poo.

Still, we have a disturbing number of Qanon types in the halls of government right now and the ratio of decent people vs. psychotic weirdos is much smaller than I would prefer.

Chloe Jessica
Nov 6, 2021
Pick 2.0

BiggerBoat posted:

Those are good points but I can't shake the idea that there people waiting in the wings who simply aren't household names yet and America (and the world really) seems to be overflowing with people willing to say or do anything for money. I think we just don't know who the "stars" are yet but they'll show up I'm afraid.

this is something that's crossed my mind a fair bit... if i was willing to completely murder my moral integrity and violate every ethical principle i have, i could jump on the Republican grift train as a "one of the good ones" trans woman who supported their bullshit and be wealthy for the rest of my life (right up until they put me against the wall with all the other useful idiots).

poverty is a hell of a drug.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Twelve by Pies posted:

I wonder if people like TheQuartering are starting to lose steam because they're overstepping their bounds a bit. What I mean is channels like his started out as Gamergate poo poo and talks about how politics should stay out of beloved game franchises like Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid, and SJWs shouldn't censor boobs in games. It seems like a natural progression to go into full alt right poo poo but I wonder if the people who originally were attracted to him really did only just give a poo poo about video games and keeping women/minorities out of them and started getting irritated at the drifting into just another chud ranting about SJWs in general.

I guess it could also be his tendency to just make up poo poo and present it not even as truth, but "Hey maybe this is happening but it also might not be who knows!" Thought Slime did a video a while back about that and it's still going on now apparently, since when I was looking up stats for TheQuartering's channel I saw one of his recent videos which was "Eternals getting SUSPICIOUS help from Rotten Tomatoes" where I'm sure he went into one of his usual "Hmm early reviews weren't good but later reviews are better is Rotten Tomatoes purposely only putting good scores to increase its average? I don't know either way and don't have any proof and am not accusing them of anything but maybe they are, it's possible!" Normal right wing media doesn't give a gently caress about accuracy or accusing companies/people of doing bad poo poo wrongly, they just say things like "Dr. Fauci gave sacks full of money to the Wuhan lab to create coronavirus and then murdered puppies on his way home" and don't care to add things like "allegedly" or "we're just asking questions" they just flat out say it and don't give a poo poo. So it's possible they're tired of him being too scared to loudly proclaim the truth or whatever.

Of course, it would also be nice if teens/young adults were actually growing up and seeing that channels like his are a bunch of hateful bigots who only care about weaponizing nostalgia to assist the rise of fascism, and don't want that to happen. I'm a pessimist though so I'm not too hopeful of that one.

There's also the fact that these people feed on giant pop culture outrages and that was has for the most part receded since The August That Never Ended. Hambly himself has repeatedly said he's always on the look out for something he can try to make into the next Last Jedi to gin up outrage clicks because that was his and his fellow travellers' high water mark and now his channel and his QAnon, But For Pop Culture friends' channels are slowly dying because the things people are willing to get mad over are becoming smaller and more insular. He's flat out said he thinks his career is going to be dead in a year, maybe two at the most because people aren't getting pissed off enough about enough things in large enough numbers for him to sustain himself anymore and he's eyeing the exit desperately.

The last big hit these guys had was the new He-Man cartoon and how some folks got mad about there being girls and people of colour in it, and how the main thrust of the story was "This is an examination of how important He-Man is to Eternia by taking away He-Man for a while and showing just how hosed the universe is without him". And while they got a good high off it for a week or two, the overwhelming response in the longrun shook out to be "Wow, this show is actually pretty cool... lol, who the gently caress gets mad about a He-Man cartoon? What a bunch of losers."

Basically the only thing that sustains them right now is the rampant media illiteracy in the United States and elsewhere so that people even dumber than they are will believe their made up or barely half-true bullshit as gospel.

nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Nov 8, 2021

Twelve by Pies
May 4, 2012

Again a very likpatous story
Oh man, the new He-Man cartoon, lots of "As a black man I'm offended that they added a black character to this show" and "There was already a black character in He-Man, there didn't need to be a second one!"

Makes sense that they're having trouble finding things to provoke enough outrage in people, even He-Man is pretty niche as far as things go, certainly not on the level of Star Wars. They're also probably not going to be able to pull any outrage from Star Wars, at least not for a while, since I would imagine even if Disney makes a new trilogy they're probably going to try and copy the original trilogy even more, leading to less things that those channels can classify as "woke."

Same with video games, the last big name game they were really able to gin up the "SJWs ruining games" thing on was The Last of Us 2, which didn't really stick. Outside of that they're stuck complaining about Sony censoring small no name games very few people give a poo poo about.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Twelve by Pies posted:

Oh man, the new He-Man cartoon, lots of "As a black man I'm offended that they added a black character to this show" and "There was already a black character in He-Man, there didn't need to be a second one!"

Makes sense that they're having trouble finding things to provoke enough outrage in people, even He-Man is pretty niche as far as things go, certainly not on the level of Star Wars. They're also probably not going to be able to pull any outrage from Star Wars, at least not for a while, since I would imagine even if Disney makes a new trilogy they're probably going to try and copy the original trilogy even more, leading to less things that those channels can classify as "woke."

Same with video games, the last big name game they were really able to gin up the "SJWs ruining games" thing on was The Last of Us 2, which didn't really stick. Outside of that they're stuck complaining about Sony censoring small no name games very few people give a poo poo about.

They got mad about Black Widow, the Disney+ Marvel TV shows, Shang-Chi and Eternals lately too but all of those did great numbers for Disney even in the midst of a pandemic, so their actual influence power is something akin to a thimble of piss in the ocean. They're all just incredibly loud self-reinforcing assholes.

Mr Interweb
Aug 25, 2004

you know in retrospect, one of the most surprising things about gamergate is that it took this long for the Right to weaponize video games in the culture wars. video games, like all media, are inherently political, and yet aside from a handful of cases, like the mortal kombat situation, and the GTA hot coffee mod incident, there really wasn't a lot of effort on the Right's part to indoctrinate kids/manchildren

Mr Interweb
Aug 25, 2004

nine-gear crow posted:

They got mad about Black Widow, the Disney+ Marvel TV shows, Shang-Chi and Eternals lately too but all of those did great numbers for Disney even in the midst of a pandemic, so their actual influence power is something akin to a thimble of piss in the ocean. They're all just incredibly loud self-reinforcing assholes.

didn't black widow and eternals underperform?

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Mr Interweb posted:

didn't black widow and eternals underperform?

These days "underperforming" for Disney still equates to making them a shitload of money, so that's a relative metric, but apparently Eternals really does kinda legitimately suck divorced from the usual "there's women, people of colour and LGBT+s in it and I'm mad" reasons these asswipes just replay on an infinite loop about everything.

Zeroisanumber
Oct 23, 2010

Nap Ghost

Mr Interweb posted:

you know in retrospect, one of the most surprising things about gamergate is that it took this long for the Right to weaponize video games in the culture wars. video games, like all media, are inherently political, and yet aside from a handful of cases, like the mortal kombat situation, and the GTA hot coffee mod incident, there really wasn't a lot of effort on the Right's part to indoctrinate kids/manchildren

The "Hot Coffee" outrage wasn't a right-wing thing. Hilldog herself led the charge on that one.

azflyboy
Nov 9, 2005

Mr Interweb posted:

you know in retrospect, one of the most surprising things about gamergate is that it took this long for the Right to weaponize video games in the culture wars. video games, like all media, are inherently political, and yet aside from a handful of cases, like the mortal kombat situation, and the GTA hot coffee mod incident, there really wasn't a lot of effort on the Right's part to indoctrinate kids/manchildren

I think that's down to two main factors.

1: The right probably didn't understand video games until relatively recently. When Mortal Kombat and Hot Coffee came out, internet access still wasn't super common, the "young guns" like Shapiro and Kirk weren't a thing, and talk radio was dominated by old white dudes that couldn't articulate much past "video games bad!" (same thing for their audience), so ginning up outrage over those specific things was much harder than it would be today.

2: The Hot Coffee and Mortal Kombat controversies both involve things (degrading women and excessive violence) that conservatives secretly love, and the outrage over them blended in with almost identical talking points conservatives had been making about TV, music, video games and movies for years (too much violence! too many boobies!), so what outrage there was over them just blended in with the background noise of general "conservatives don't like opuoat culture" talking points.

Mr Interweb
Aug 25, 2004

Zeroisanumber posted:

The "Hot Coffee" outrage wasn't a right-wing thing. Hilldog herself led the charge on that one.

did she? i remember hearing something about her making a comment in the 90s about video games being violent, but not aware of her commenting on the hot coffee situation. i thought it was a rightwing thing cause (among other instances) i saw adam sandler from G4 take on like 4 fox news hacks in a segment once (it was also one of my first encounters with fox news).

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Mr Interweb posted:

you know in retrospect, one of the most surprising things about gamergate is that it took this long for the Right to weaponize video games in the culture wars. video games, like all media, are inherently political, and yet aside from a handful of cases, like the mortal kombat situation, and the GTA hot coffee mod incident, there really wasn't a lot of effort on the Right's part to indoctrinate kids/manchildren

Not really, no, I don't think. I feel safe saying that over close to 100% of the video games I've ever played in my life, politics never entered into any of them at all. I'm doing a quick mental checklist here and I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that really supports your argument. What have I got here?

GTA and maybe MGS?

Tarezax
Sep 12, 2009

MORT cancels dance: interrupted by MORT
Any game that has a story is political at some level because stories are inherently political. It might be extremely shallow and not worth mentioning, but it's still there.

Chloe Jessica
Nov 6, 2021
Pick 2.0

nine-gear crow posted:

They got mad about Black Widow, the Disney+ Marvel TV shows, Shang-Chi and Eternals lately too but all of those did great numbers for Disney even in the midst of a pandemic, so their actual influence power is something akin to a thimble of piss in the ocean. They're all just incredibly loud self-reinforcing assholes.

and this exact same argument applies to the Twitter outrage crowd they get so up in arms over. they're loud, but they have no power, and "camcel culture" is a myth.


BiggerBoat posted:

Not really, no, I don't think. I feel safe saying that over close to 100% of the video games I've ever played in my life, politics never entered into any of them at all. I'm doing a quick mental checklist here and I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that really supports your argument. What have I got here?

GTA and maybe MGS?

Mass Effect, Fallout, Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls, Pokémon Black & White, Final Fantasy XII... all just off the top of my head.

if you don't see politics in your media, it's because you're not looking or because you don't know how to recognize it.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



A lot of indie games or smaller titles are political

Things like Spec Ops: The Line (which in fairness is basically yet another adaptation of Heart of Darkness), or Papers Please are some good examples but far from the only ones

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

Mr Interweb posted:

didn't black widow and eternals underperform?

I think "performing" and "underperforming" with respect to cinema box office has to have new standards in the post Covid era. Not sure we know what good and not good is yet, and how much it will improve back towards the old standards. I suspect we will never reach the old numbers as far as in person theater attendance.

A good comparison is the new Bond movie which seems like it was generally well received and the film I most hear people at work talking about going to see in person. It did 55M of opening weekend business for a fall opening. Compare it to, say, Skyfall in 2012 which also had a fall weekend opening and did 88M of business. Spectre did 70M of business in a fall weekend opening in 2015.

Obviously all films will make up some of the revenue in streaming rights but I will guess they will not hit their old numbers.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

azflyboy posted:

I think that's down to two main factors.

1: The right probably didn't understand video games until relatively recently. When Mortal Kombat and Hot Coffee came out, internet access still wasn't super common, the "young guns" like Shapiro and Kirk weren't a thing, and talk radio was dominated by old white dudes that couldn't articulate much past "video games bad!" (same thing for their audience), so ginning up outrage over those specific things was much harder than it would be today.

2: The Hot Coffee and Mortal Kombat controversies both involve things (degrading women and excessive violence) that conservatives secretly love, and the outrage over them blended in with almost identical talking points conservatives had been making about TV, music, video games and movies for years (too much violence! too many boobies!), so what outrage there was over them just blended in with the background noise of general "conservatives don't like opuoat culture" talking points.

I would add a third: most of the young, vocal conservatives at the time were classical-studies weirdos like Sargon or Ben Shapiro, or starfuckers like Milo Yiannopoulos. Modern video games, having been invented after the Renaissance and often being produced by non-white people, were to be ignored by all young men of proper minds.

Even Yiannopoulos had been talking poo poo about video games as a medium until something like two weeks before he was forced to realize it was a potential culture-war flashpoint.

Tarezax
Sep 12, 2009

MORT cancels dance: interrupted by MORT
Final Fantasy VII literally starts you off as a mercenary working with an ecoterrorist organization trying to bring down a dystopian corporate government

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Tarezax posted:

Any game that has a story is political at some level because stories are inherently political. It might be extremely shallow and not worth mentioning, but it's still there.

If you guys say so. I don't recall ever really feeling that way though and I'm pretty old with a lot of video games under my belt. I'm honestly struggling trying to think of a game I sunk any time into where the political overtones (or even undertones) entered my mind while playing it. Maybe a couple of them if I absolutely reach but mostly no, not at all.

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nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Tarezax posted:

Final Fantasy VII literally starts you off as a mercenary working with an ecoterrorist organization trying to bring down a dystopian corporate government

And then they went and kicked it up to 11 in the remake by making President Shinra straight up look and talk like Donald Trump.

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