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I respect the Tasteful Understated Nerdrage dude more now for explicitly saying GamerGate is stupid. It may be belated, but it did come at the risk of him alienating all the dudebros who flocked to his Mass Effect ending critique during the ME3 backlash. He could have just totally ignored it and not run the risk of facing the Reddit tantrum, so good for him for clarifying his "position" when he didn't have to.
Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 02:28
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I still hold my belief that The Second Renaissance from The Animatrix was terrible for the same reason the sequels were awful: stupid world building on things few people cared about.
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Jan 21, 2015 05:40
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Yeah, The Simpsons seasons 10+ had plenty of awful episodes, but I always find nerd rage around how it's not good as it used to be to be remarkably grating. Even when compared to other nerd ragey things. I always see a pattern emerge when people talk about The Simpsons. 1. People talk about an awful episode and point out it's bad. 2. People try then go after a polarizing episode with its fair share of defenders. 3. People then try to trace the problem "all the way back" to the one episode that started the trend. And they use their magic hindsight powers to say some legit classic episode from seasons 3-8 was actually bad. Principal and the Pauper is category 2. But it's still a great episode. 
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Jan 27, 2015 05:38
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I purposely avoided MovieBob in everything except his movie reviews and Big Picture. I guess that's the sign to stop watching those even.
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Feb 12, 2015 18:01
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As much I frequently agree with his movie opinions more than most "internet critics", I've been put off more and more by his, from lack of a better word, "nerd rage gatekeeping". Yes, some of it is necessary, like telling Gamergate to gently caress off. But I'm still get more annoyed at the nerd strawmen he drums up when he shows the same lack of self awareness. I've even seen it hinted in things he did that I liked, but I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt more than he needs. Also, a lot of his jokes suck. Also, he should never appear on camera.
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Feb 13, 2015 02:15
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Can someone summarize what happened with MovieBob and why he's fired?
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Feb 14, 2015 05:14
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I'd still almost defend his ASM2 review, having not seen the movie myself, simply because I hated the prior Kurtzman/Orci film to death; and at that point there was no end in sight with Sony constantly making more passionless Spider-Man films just because. The studio couldn't have been more transparent with the cynicism of their Spidey plans; which could have been forgivable had the two films been decent (which they weren't). I only stop defending Bob when I remember how he righteously mocked other geeks' nerd rage.
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Feb 14, 2015 08:31
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Abrams ultimately OK'd the STID script despite not writing it himself. He could have said "No, this sucks." While I blame a lot on Orci/Kurtzman; Abrams could have demanded something better but didn't. From a structure/plot standpoint, virtually everything was wrong and incoherent about STID. I can't single out one or two things because it'll give everything else too much credit. And that's not counting the whitewashing. That's why I'm not thrilled about the new Star Wars. Brand loyalty is useless; so I'd only go see it if people say it's an A+ movie. If it's a B, I'll wait for the DVD and borrow it. That said, I'm pretty thrilled Justin Lin was tapped as a director for Trek. I liked how he built the Fast & Furious franchise; and has been pretty big in denouncing Hollywood's whitewashing.
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Feb 15, 2015 20:18
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I remembered the good old days when mocking Kotaku's lovely writing was a convenient punchline. And then GamerGate ruined it for everyone. Thanks a lot, Reddit. 
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Feb 16, 2015 14:25
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Speaking of irregular reviewers (well... more like video essayist), MrBtongue has a defense of Django Unchained, uploaded two weeks ago but I initially missed it. I imagine he has a day job; and he's mostly making these videos for fun. Maybe there's some reverse psychology going on, because I feel less guilty about sharing this guy's stuff because it doesn't brand itself as a clickbait channel that needs to constantly produce contentless content to stay afloat. Also, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a good man with a lot of thoughtful things to say. It's time to end this feud.
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Feb 21, 2015 07:56
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boom boom boom posted:Yeah. It's like the Star Wars prequels. Everyone knows they're bad, but usually can't articulate why they're bad.
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Feb 23, 2015 01:35
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I thought Plinkett's Generations review comes off as too geek spergy. It may have been Mike inaugurating that persona in that format, but I wouldn't recommend it as the first introduction to RLM. His other Trek reviews raise some good observations about the films, but lack a certain "killer point" that made the Star Wars reviews resonate really strongly. The Phantom Menace review really was groundbreaking in that manner. SFDebris handled Insurrection better, by flatly pointing out how screwed up the politics and the actual moral of the story are.
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Feb 23, 2015 16:59
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I agree with people here that FemFreq beyond adequately serves its purpose by making Feminism 101 critiques, and even the most mild and harmless criticisms of pop culture causes MRAs poo poo themselves, long before GamerGate is a thing. In addition to that, despite building a "feminism brand" in such a toxic environment, she didn't have any social media meltdowns often associated with people with a geek feminism brand. This is also an achievement. My only issue (and I know I've said it before in other threads), which I've had long before her Kickstarter, was that she fully embraces the whole You Can Like Problematic ThingsŪ rhetoric, which I often see constrains media criticism. I don't disagree that nothing is perfect, but geek culture often downplays the cynicism of creators because of imaginary goodwill that fanboys and girls believe exists. Considering how there's always untapped talent ready to step in, I wouldn't mind if occasionally racists or sexists lose their jobs if they consistently continue to make racist or sexist content. I'm not talking about single ambiguous examples where a creator could be afforded the benefit of the doubt. I'm talking about creators who consistently make racist/sexist poo poo, don't learn from any backlash, and only see their careers rewarded. I often feel like companies are able to ignore criticisms of lovely things that they know they're doing, yet posture themselves to absorb as much goodwill as possible when they do something long overdue. (None of the blame; all of the credit.) I still don't get the impression that film, television, music, or video game industries are batshit afraid being perceived as racist or sexist, but I often wouldn't mind if they were.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:23
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OldTennisCourt posted:I feel like the only person who really really really likes Into Darkness. I've seen people spit pure venom at it and I found it to be a really fun sci-fi action movie. I guess I can see that that's almost the opposite of what Star Trek should be, but I find Star Trek in general to be intolerably boring most of the time so I guess I'm biased. Everyone has their own example of a movie that embodies everything that's wrong with film in the past 10 years or so. A film that goes beyond being flawed but having all their numerous problems synergizing into a new tier of aggressive mediocrity. For some it's still Transformers. Others may pick The Amazing Spider-Man or The Man of Steel or The Lone Ranger. For me it's easily STID.
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May 24, 2015 22:53
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I think most of my posts from the last critic thread were related to how much STID sucks. I feel the only real summary of what's bad about the film is "almost everything". Because once you try to unpack it, defenders of the movie start acting like Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men by saying "you're wrong about this... and that... and that. Therefore you're wrong about all your points and Star Trek Into Darkness is a good movie." Was it this thread or the CD thread or the TVIV thread where someone tried to argue the making Khan white somehow made the movie better? And the awfulness isn't limited to just the writers. When it comes to the staging of some scenes, the technical directing wasn't bad, but a director like Abrams should have known from reading the script that it was awful. The buck (at least should have) stopped with him. Good directing could elevate an average script, but a really bad script makes it a bad apple from the start. There were many things wrong with Khan as a character, and it was exacerbated by the whitewashing. (And pre-release statements by the studio insisting that Cumberbatch wasn't playing Khan, which silenced all the "Is this whitewashing?" thinkpieces bloggers were putting out.) Combine that with forgettable set pieces, lazy references patchwork, a mosaic of plotholes, a shallow and extremely belated Bush/Cheney "commentary"... just everything sucks. I wasn't even laughing at the unintentionally funny moments at the end because the movie lost me well before that. Star Trek '09 was a fun movie, but after STID, I have little desire to go back to it knowing in hindsight they had no real story plans following a reboot. I'll admit getting Justin Lin as the director and Pegg as a co-writer was probably the one gesture Paramount could have done to make me a little bit optimistic about another movie.
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May 25, 2015 01:17
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That MovieBob gamer rant was surprisingly good (and even generous towards the people he's criticizing) so of course the YouTube comments are hilarious and terrible.
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Jun 2, 2015 07:11
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I generally agree with how stupid the South Park-ish "truth in the middle" mindset is; but I'm still put off by all the people who kneejerk apply that criticism to anything and everything that doesn't validate their worldview. "Jon Stewart says he hates how cable news has turned partisan politics into a shallow spectator sport! ... Truth in the middle! South Park!"
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Jun 8, 2015 01:39
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People are annoyed by Sandler because they tried to "ignore" him and he won't go away.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:13
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This is the first time I was aware of who Max Landis is and what a big douchebag he is. I hate the world even more now.
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Sep 1, 2015 04:51
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Having not seen The Visit, Pixels, Terminator Gen, or Fantastic 4, I'm still inclined to give a pass on MovieBob's whining in those reviews at least. There have been very few positive opinions of those movies to begin with. And we're talking about M. Night Shyamalan here in his latest review; whose continuing ability to put out a new film only makes me more annoyed for every wannabe filmmaker who wished they could have his job. My main complaint about the Visit review is his one positive line about the Wachowskis, who I think have also outlasted their 1999 goodwill a long time ago. I rather see Movie Bob double down on his manchild nerdrage than simply go through the cycle of drumming up nerdrage, then yell at his audience for taking that nerdrage too far. Maybe it's just me. I kind of think Really That Good was his attempt to check his own negativity, but it's being spun here as him still whining about how great his childhood was.
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Sep 11, 2015 03:07
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Okay, I've defended a lot of MovieBob's whining in the past, but I'm remembering why MovieBob can be so grating.
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Nov 6, 2015 05:27
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I'm watching the SF Debris bit on SWTOR. I never played it, but I did play KOTOR1&2. I'm not an MMO player; only watching part one so far and hearing him rant about time sinks and traveling issues; I'm once again thinking "Why couldn't they just make a KOTOR 3?" even though I already know the answer to that. What a waste of goodwill. Red Letter Media's initial popularity helped me rid of whatever denial I had that made me loyal to Star Wars as a brand. Just take whatever memories I had with the good stuff and move on. It didn't help that much, at that same time, learning another beloved aspect of the Star Wars property, the KOTOR games, was being revived so it could be steered toward the direction nobody really asked for. (Conveniently, this was also the same time I was getting on board the BioWare backlash as well...)
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Dec 1, 2015 04:31
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Red Letter Media is the only time someone can talk about Star Wars and not make me want to zone out immediately. I too would hope they just use it as a platform to address the re-re-revisionism of the prequels. I thought RLM settled it already and we all moved on. But nope... Star Wars fans gonna be Star Wars fans.
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Mar 10, 2016 15:58
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RLM's Mike and Jay are kind of like the self-aware guys I want to agree with. MovieBob is like the self-unaware guy I actually end up agreeing with. I'm not going to lie; I think it'd be funny as hell if DC's plans for a Cinematic Universe revenue stream crash before it takes off. So it'd be cathartic if RLM confirms Dawn of Justice is not worth watching.
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Mar 24, 2016 00:13
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I'm pretty jaded by the whole Cinematic Universe thing and I barely give Marvel a pass because their movies are usually decent. I'm just sick of super heroes at this point.
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Mar 24, 2016 02:30
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I'm cynical enough to think this is the new normal. Maybe if Warner Bros. keeps slipping up they'll see diminishing returns, but they'll only keep retooling if Marvel keeps making money. I feel particularly jaded because I was a superhero fan for much of high school and college, only falling out of love with comics after college. Hollywood only realized just how big a goldmine superheroes were at the same moment I wanted very little to do with it. Movies feel like a glorified TV show now. Also around the same time, I realized I simply didn't like Batman as a character, period. And then that character got handed over to a polarizing actor that I hate. But that's another story. OldTennisCourt posted:I guess personally I don't understand the whole idea of wanting the MCU or DCU to fail. I can understand not watching them, but actively hoping interest wanes and they fail and superhero movies disappear just seems so loving weird. How does them being popular affect anything? Plenty of other poo poo gets made you can watch and enjoy. I'm indifferent to her, but people might feel the same way, especially in geek circles, about the regular hype cycle of superhero movies. Also, Hollywood is always terrible so many wouldn't mind it being regularly humbled. Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 03:12
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That 24 death video was great. The show was screwed up. And we were all screwed up for loving it. I still love it.
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Apr 28, 2016 17:56
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BigRed0427 posted:Speaking of which, I was thinking some more about his 24 video. THe show itself is obviously a product of its time, but is the Jack Bauer archetype itself still relevant? Season 1 Bauer was not too much unlike a lot of 90s heroes, where you saw them occasionally stretching or breaking the rules just to show they're no nonsense guys who will do what it takes to get the job done without the Cheney/Ashcroft/Gonzales overtones. We'll see how a the Bauer archetype works without Jack now that we're getting a Bauer-less 24 series soon.
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Apr 30, 2016 02:34
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Tarquinn posted:Makes sense. Tetris, Welltris and Hatris.
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Sep 16, 2016 22:14
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You guys do get that the tangent was sort of done tongue-in-cheek too, right?
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Dec 13, 2016 18:34
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Seriously, watch Freaks and Geeks. I largely only observed the Ghostbusters "controversy" from afar, and I'm not a fan of AVGN. I understand the need to keep the "bro" wing of nerdom in check, and the urge not legitimize the misogyny that was obviously riding on the reboot's backlash. I got the impression that Rolfe only highlighted the so-called legitimate reasons people aren't thrilled by the movie, without decisively denouncing the nasty sexist shitstorm. I think doing the latter is way more important, because a movie is just a movie. As silly as it sounds, I'm still a huge fan of RLM, but I'm getting really frustrated at Mike and Jay's weird take on both the Chinese audience and whitewashing. I'm just confused* why a huge fraction of nerdom is able to understand that Hollywood (deservedly) should be hated as a cynical, out-of-touch, culture that's only concerned with the bottom line; but are reluctant to use its substantial record of modern racism as further fuel to demonize them. Like toothless gestures of "diversity" are painted cynically by these geeks, but Hollywood's actual racism is not. Like, the people who run Hollywood are the One Percent. And the One Percent is racist as hell. *I'm actually not confused. I'm being rhetorical. Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 03:28
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Yeah that Ep7 review bashing Ring Theory and Plinkett's quick Rogue One review editing out the character moments in A New Hope just shows how much better Mike still is at this than many of his imitators.
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Dec 28, 2016 19:26
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I'm not even sure I even heard of JonTron until this whole thing blew up. I guess I'm a little bit behind the loop because I often never hear of these "youtube celebrities" until they're tied up to the internet culture wars. What are the earlier works that he did that people liked? Don't link to them. Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 22:22
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Moviebob is frustrating because I generally find his movie reviews of new releases agreeable from a "semi-self aware, informed geek" POV, and they don't venture into weird contrarian CD logic. Also, his politics, on the surface, are decent. He's an unashamed basement-dwelling geek that wants nothing to do with the gater/geekbro crowd, and takes extra steps to make clear their mindsets aren't welcomed. But then the cryptic, weird poo poo surfaces. His futuro fascist scientific jingoism and weird brand of progressivism that belongs in the late 19th century, for example. And his contempt for the uneducated, etc. I don't look into his video game stuff at all. This thread has already brought up that Other M opinion countless times.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:27
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I think Anita Sarkeesian is okay. I think she holds back because she doesn't want to offend creators or indict the video game and entertainment industries. I kind of wish she did. My issue with her is that she frames her issues too often as "constructive criticism" when I want destruction. But yeah, she's okay. She's been unfairly accused of practicing "true Scotsman" feminism. And people accuse her of not being a "true Scotsman" feminist. Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 17:01 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 16:51
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I think I never heard of Laci Green until this thread and the D&D thread. Before Googling, I first thought she was some apolitical gamer personality who then decided to pivot to the red pill crowd by pretending she's a real life Vivian or something. After Googling what she was originally famous for, her fall seems more tragic. Christ.Absurd Alhazred posted:In other news, in a video to probably be available to non-patrons soon, Lindsay Ellis, never one to shy from controversy, tackles cultural appropriation.
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Jul 16, 2017 07:38
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I was only curious whether her position on CL evolved since its release. I didn't mean to start a full re-litigation of the use of yellowface in that movie. My issue was not the technical incompetence of the makeup; though it didn't help. I was, and perhaps still am, really annoyed at the condescending tone white liberals defending the movie took, which I guess included Lindsey, which was enough to turn me off to her for a few years since I had no obligation to follow these personalities to begin with. Like, when white people who are typically sympathetic to the "SJW" crowd are suddenly are triggered into mocking them when those SJWs are Asian. (See also: Kimmy Schmidt.) And people gave the creators a ridiculous benefit of the doubt here. "If we're going to make a Cloud Atlas movie, we'll have to do X. If we do X, then it makes sense to do Y. If we do Y, then it makes sense to do Z. And if we do Z, of course it'll have yellowface on Jim Sturgess." As if the logic that lead us to yellowface wasn't esoteric or contrived. Like, people wouldn't admit they used yellowface (and whiteface and brownface and everyotherface) because they wanted to do it, but because they had to. As if white people in dreadlocks were required by law to adapt the book and to adapt it that very specific way.
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Jul 17, 2017 17:41
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I understand what Lindsey meant by saying things shouldn't be considered either a "good thing" or a "bad thing". But I'm often okay with saying a bad thing is bad. Cloud Atlas is "bad enough" to be bad in my book. It's part of the yellowface canon. Like I've seen the theme of the transience of identity used to justify the whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, and I think it's a lazy new age 90s defense. I'm not trying to single out Lindsey for this. I'm more of a fan of her now than a few years ago. Her essay on Pocahontas was alright, even though I think she played up the "Disney is making some progress point a bit further than I would have.
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Jul 17, 2017 19:47
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Puppy Time posted:But does that make the entire thing Bad, or just "a Thing that has some bad stuff in it"? Is it so bad that we have to dismiss whatever good aspects it has, all because of a problematic choice? That's why I put the words "enough" after good and bad. Like, I'll give the benefit of the doubt for things that are plausibly accidentally "problematic" (another word the internet has killed). But yellow face on the dude from 21 wasn't an accident that the Wachowskis walked into.
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Jul 17, 2017 21:48
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cosmically_cosmic posted:Really now that I think about it, they should have just Animated it. But then they lose the effect of the same actor. Unless they kept the same voice actor, but then is it offensive to have that voice actor play an Asian? I need to lie down... There's your answer. I think we could hatch a hundred other ways they could have made the movie that could have been better than what they actually did.
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Jul 18, 2017 07:54
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