“Report here safely, stop. Do not play video games.” – John Wick
Proof once again you’re an un-person if you remember the 1990s, intact families, and Christmas. (as found)
Pop culture exists, and I often write about it. The reason is that it is pervasive, surrounds us, and can absolutely be used to manipulate human feelings and behavior, so, in a sense it is a form of programming about who and what we are. In essence, it can be a myth that evolves with us, sort of like intestinal parasites.
Pop culture has always been around, but it has transformed over the millennia of human existence. It likely started with Grug talking around the communal fire, telling stories of the clan, their origin, and the evils they defeated, and how he had to walk uphill both ways to get back to the cave when he was a child and that they didn’t have any of those new-fangled flint arrowheads when Grug was small.
Through this mechanism, the ideas that the clan had, its virtues, its norms, and even its fears were transmitted from one group to another. It told the story of the group. Their story. That narrative bound them together as one – they knew the deeds of their fathers and sang songs about the virtues of their fathers.
My eye got infected with COVID. I had Corona-Iris.
Control of that story, then, is very, very powerful, and Grug probably (rightfully) skipped the part where he pooped his wolfskin jockstrap the first time he had to fight someone from the Wilder clan. Grug’s stories and pop culture thus both provide and define the Overton Window – those ideas that are safe to speak about in a polite society.
An example:
The idea that JFK was assassinated by literally anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald acting totally alone was not acceptable to The Powers That Be®. What did they do? They invented an entire new term to disparage any idea that varied from the Warren Commission report – “Conspiracy Theory”.
Oddly, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into the JFK Lone Gunman theory in the late 1970s, they decided that, no, it couldn’t have been Lee Harvey Oswald acting by himself. The results of the Committee were mostly ignored. The smear of anyone with a different opinion continued, and if it weren’t for the Zapruder film, I imagine they’d probably try to convince everyone JFK killed himself because he hated Dallas.
I promise, I don’t know any dirt on the Clintons.
The cast of people who benefited from Kennedy’s death was huge: The CIA, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Mafia, LBJ, Israel’s nuclear program, the gun control agenda, and the Boy Scouts™ all benefited. Okay, maybe not the Boy Scouts©, but you get the picture. The only person I’m sure wasn’t involved was me, and that’s because I wasn’t born yet.
Beat that alibi.
But crafting that public opinion isn’t just for the CIA or whatever thinktank meme’d the phrase “Conspiracy Theory” into existence. Nope. Pop culture is largely put out by Hollywood™ and, increasingly game companies.
Hollywood™ (if I include television, which I should) was the biggest influence when I was a kid. Everyone in my grade was watching the same movies at the same time on the same station. If a James Bond® movie was on, you were watching that, because cable came to the vicinity of Wilder’s Mountain about the time I was finishing high school and you had three choices (no one watched PBS™) and James Bond™ was always going to be better than whatever else was on.
I’ve never played Warhammer®, so I’m really hoping that it doesn’t have a “Shoe” or I’ll feel more stupid than usual.
We watched the same television shows, too. And, I’ve related before, I remember wondering in middle school if there was a reason that the TradRight couldn’t be funny, since even in seventh grade I recognized that every comedy and drama on television was written from a GloboLeftElite perspective. Even in middle school I recognized that Hollywood™ was a Leftist enclave.
Television (and movies!) was a pipeline that was well in place as owned turf of the GloboLeftElite by the end of the 1970s. But a new medium was emerging, and the old monolith of the big three networks was fracturing.
The new medium was gaming.
I hear she wears Fruit of the Tomb™ underwear.
Gaming was, especially at the early parts, unabashedly libertarian, as was much of the infant Silicon Valley at the time. Games like Pac-Man™, Pong©, and that one with the plumber were big, and largely free of politics, which is to say skewed towards the TradRight in the opinion of the GloboLeft.
Games rose under Atari™, sank, then rose again, this time higher and higher with Nintendo™ and then Sony™ and Sega™ and finally the X-Box™. Each iteration brought more story and visual complexity to the games, but the consumer was mainly the same: young white dudes. Sure, women have always played games, but the biggest gamers have always been boys. Oh, and the Prussians. They invented wargaming when it wasn’t convenient to duel or kill someone just to pass the time (seriously, look it up).
And what do boys like? Girls. Thus, Lara Croft™ and the Tomb Raider© series came into existence, complete with her huge . . . eyes. And shapely . . . hair. Lara Croft® was about as realistic as He-Man® was, but that was okay. She was an idealized version (through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy) of what a hot woman looked like.
But the GloboLeftElite have started a war against hot women. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because that women feel threatened by hot women. I will note that not a single feminist ever jumped out and said that Superman™ was an unrealistic body model, or has tried to get Brad Pitt out of movies and replace him with that guy that plays Paul Blart.
When He-Man© did a PSA, was he He-Man®-splaining?
No. They want to uglify women characters in video games. I think so that ugly feminist women feel better.
The latest? Jean Grey™, that buxom fiery-haired psychic that, ahem, inspired so many young men, has been redone. Yup, here it is.
Yes, hot Jean Grey™ has been turned into a plank of wood that looks like Melinda Gates. And who was responsible? Not sure, but Sweet Baby, Inc. (links below) have allegedly been busy as they can be with Jean Grey, gumming up the works to make sure that all of the GloboLeftElite talking points and propaganda is included in the game and that the women in the games are as ugly as the Sweet Baby, Inc. women feel that they are inside. And outside, I guess.
When I play a video game, I’d rather play a cool strong character rather than Archie Bunker. Do women want to play as a hot chick, or do they want to play as a woman with a body best described as “tubular and featureless”?
It’s not just video games. Dungeons & Dragons™ has said that they’ll be happy when white guys stop playing their games.
Okay, done. (meme as found)
Disney’s© latest Star Wars™ flop, The Acolyte, has lesbian witches creating a baby without needing no man via the Force™. The producer also said that if we didn’t like it, don’t watch it, and then when we didn’t watch it, blamed us for not being the audience she (yes, you guessed it) deserved. I guess that in Star Wars©, they don’t need no man to have a baby.
And since Sweet Baby, Inc., Marvel™, D&D®, Disney© and Star Wars© don’t need me, I won’t be there.
You can do what you want, but I’ll be skipping this round. I like Grug’s stories better, anyway.
As an OG, Original Gamer, from the ’80s, I find myself playing older games that are 10 or more years old, independent games or Japanese games that haven’t been totally tainted by the Wokeism.
As an functioning adult with a career and a family, the lack of hours to game weekly means that I can seek out games that can enjoyed over a longer time period, instead of inhaling the lastest fad every 3-6 months.
Also older games can be cheaper. After a couple of years you can get a decent AAA game with all the DLCs and expansions for half price or less if you watch the sales. It also means I can enjoy a less buggy product, that has many independent reviews, and will run on older hardware.
I’m a HOI4 and Stellaris autist.
I was a big fan of D&D and old war games back when I was a kid. Picked it up again a few years ago on a whim and couldn’t believe how lame and gay everything has become. In the 70’s we loved the game because we could simulate combat and world building fairly accurately . There was no drama except when one player wanted to ambush and slaughter another player and they didn’t speak to each other for about a week. .But now, the emphasis is ALL on the drama and role playing with almost no time devoted to the actual details or combat. I guess this is what happens when woke gender studies and theatre majors take over something that was originally built by STEM nerds.
As with everything else, the non-woke participants appear to have mostly just walked away and formed their own network. In this case many have published their own compilations and updates for the old rule sets while also creating new material to support the old rules. So there is no reason for most folks to have to listen to the woke nonsense anymore.
Ever since The Wizards took over, man…. I used to play a LOT of D&D (and Cyberpunk, and Top Secret, and Call of Cthulhu, and Dark Conspiracy, and Delta Green, etc), but once the Wizards got involved with their poncy d20 system (and the elimination of the THAC0), I smelled…something…in the evening breezes and gave the whole mess a pass.
I still have one of the transitional pamphlets The Wizards handed out, concerning how to integrate your existing characters into The New Universe We Are Building, and once you get a load of how dumbed-down the terms become under the new systems, well, it becomes clear that change for the sake of is nothing but a jobs program for retards who couldn’t pass the bar exam.
It’s really too bad. A lot of really cool stuff fell by the wayside, in favour of sensitivity meters that were made to go all the way to eleven. Or something.
Vote Cthulhu in 2024: Why settle for a lesser evil?
I am glad I kept all of my original AD&D stuff from the 80s and hauled it around in boxes whenever we moved. I sometimes thought of getting rid of it but never did, and I am glad I didn’t.
Oh, very much agreed, sir. I have done the same, and ironically have all the books etc I ever wanted, but have lost touch with the people I used to play with.
I check The Dragon’s Trove every so often to see how the values are increasing, just for fun… I will keep lugging this stuff around, especially since now my kids want to know why Daddy is so protective of those books up there on that high shelf?
Time to teach new players the old ways.
Ditto.
My stuff is way old. I’m not looking to update.
Yeah, I killed a buddy’s character (or two!) on quests. Chaotic Neutral, baby.
It is certainly notable that there has been no feminist outcry about unrealistic male body images in games or movies through the ages. Before I came along to rock her world, my wife had teenybopper posters on her bedroom walls of all the “cute guys” from TV that she was infatuated with. And there sure are more than enough young female fans of pro wrestling. They aren’t there for the clotheslines (laundry isn’t womens’ work anymore, after all) but for the big, sweaty hunks.
But that’s perfectly okay, apparently. And do you know any woman whose head wasn’t turned hard enough to induce whiplash when Brad Pitt appeared all grimy and ripped in Fight Club? We’ve watched it half a dozen times and Mrs. Harbinger still doesn’t know if there is a plot to it. Nor does she care, because…Brad Pitt needs her to take him home and make him a sammich.
Yes, indeed, we are being ruled over today by the fat girl who didn’t get invited to the prom. If she ain’t gettin’ hit on, no one is gettin’ hit on.
You forgot the nerds that were in the Audio/Video Club in HS. They might be even more complicit than the Fat Girl Club.
The Fat Girls played nerd games with guys for only two reasons:
A) So they could meet guys.
B) To learn how to be guys.
Over time from 1975-present, B has overtaken A by a ratio of 95:5, the exact inverse of where it was at the outset.
Computer geeks will correctly recognize this as “programming”.
Way back before I retired, when the Lord of the Rings movies were recent, I was talking to a woman at work about them, and what she immediately wanted to talk about was Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn). I still laugh when I remember her saying, “I’d do him in a minute, and I wouldn’t even ask him to take a shower first.”
‘Yes, indeed, we are being ruled over today by the fat girl who didn’t get invited to the prom. If she ain’t gettin’ hit on, no one is gettin’ hit on.’
Yoop. Right on the button. That is precisely who rules over New Amerika and the West in general.
Results speak for themselves. She’ll finish you off, too, if you let her.
Exactly. Crabs in a bucket.
You present your alibi (of not yet being born) to clear your involvement with jfk’s vist to Dallas RIGHT AFTER the meme of the successful time travellers.
Interesting freudian slip-up perhaps?
sincerely,
carolinaTURTLE
D’oh! And I thought I was off the hook!
“My eye got infected with COVID.”
If someone watches gay porn, do they risk catching visual AIDS?
(ba-dum-tis!)
The Weather Channel hasn’t been absorbed by the new narrative, which is good. I like weather charts with babes explaining, and don’t care if their prediction isn’t right.
Women have never cared if they are factually correct, which is why weather chick is the only job where women out-perform men.
Bikinis are useful.
My best friend, who is a far, far better Christian than me, once explained:
“When God wants to punish someone He simply hands them their steering wheel.”
No muss, no fuss and it’s not long before they’re past the ditch and up a tree.
Uninvolved yourself with these creatures as much as possible. They won’t survive without your money. They won’t be able to open jars with their weak little vegetable fueled arms. They won’t understand why the switch on the wall won’t make the lights come on and won’t be able to call their surrogate daddy-fix-it.gov to fill out a restraining order when the morlocks creep up from the dark.
Starve them of legitimacy and the rest will follow. Monetary sanctions and in extreme circumstances deprivation of pulmonary integrity via firearms may be necessary. Your mileage may vary.
That is so very true. His will, not mine.
Point Of Order:
Your meme has been pre-hacked.
You posted a picture of Larry Croft.
But he identifies as Lara.
Oh, one other thing:
How has the “Don’t Need No Straight White Males” approach worked out for Bud Light?
The (formerly) Boy Scouts?
007?
Playboy?
Star Wars?
Sports Illustrated?
Marvel?
And on and on.
“An evil ruler will burn down the whole kingdom, just to rule over the ashes.” – Sun Tzu, probably
Yup, nothing but ashes.
Hehehe – I think you’ll like tomorrow’s post.
The whole post was excellent. But it took only those five words, plus ellipsis, to make me spew coffee at the laptop screen. Well played!
Thank you, sir!
This book has a detailed analysis of the JFK assassination. The illustrations, even in the printed copy which I have, are poor but FWIW …
https://archive.org/details/FryTheBrainTheArtOfUrbanSniping
Phil B
On it!
I gotta confess, I never got into video games. I have, however, spent WAY more time than I care to think about on mental games of chess and poker. These are two games that I think every schoolkid in America should be taught and played in league play. Chess teaches logic. Poker teaches dealing with emotions, particularly fear, greed and disappointment. All these are essential skills far more important than thumb reflexes – and skills I have really not even begun to master myself. But I’ve had a lot of fun trying.
Poker is best if you don’t care about the outcome. Chess is best if you do.
“I think it’s because that women feel threatened by hot women.”
Very true. There were studies to prove that men were evil sexist nazis against women in hiring practices, and as often happens reality ended up being the opposite of what the Leftists predicted. Men for the most part hired based upon meritocracy, for both sexes. Women ignored resumes if the guy was really hot, or if the woman being considered was better looking than the woman doing the considering.
===
Back in GGate1 some guy got his account banned for this tweet:
https://i.ibb.co/3y8m8xN/feminist-hypocrisy.jpg
Bingo. I think I’ve used that before. Great meme.
Yes, pop culture absolutely matters. And much of it is propaganda. Always has been to a degree. But previously it was not so deliberately hostile to and destructive of the dominant culture.
I remember as a kid watching “All in the Family” with, well, my family. My mother said, “I know we’re supposed to hate Archie and think he’s a stupid bigot, but a lot of the time he’s right.” That was probably the first time I started thinking of TV and movies as propaganda. These days, I look at the demographics of the “creatives” and it’s not at all surprising the vicious hatred that not only oozes but actively sprays out of their work.
Anyway, here’s a direct quote from The Pretty Korean Girl (in response to the Dove Soap commercial about the chubby chick who plays a video game heroine in a costume that has both a girdle and some neck guard to hide her double chin. Yes, a SOAP company stuck their fat oar into this culture war swamp.)
“I prefer to be a beautiful Asian lady in gaming and not a fat lesbian. The world has gone crazy.” PKG is non political to the point of obliviousness, and even she is not only Noticing, but sick of this crap.
Just like Ron Swanson was supposed to be evil.
They disenfranchised, demeaned, and degraded boys and men the past fifty years. Quite deliberately and incrementally. An outlet for that NRG was requisite.
Vid games are what they created to distract the boys and men from, well, their Endless Beatdown. Due to their offensiveness and their privilege but mostly, due to their maleness. Can’t have that in gynocracies!
The vid games allow the Evil Toxic Males vents for frustration, violence, sexual urges, so forth. They can Accomplish and they can Defeat Evil, but only in Pretendville. Not in the real world. Where it’s actually needed.
And they wonder why boys aren’t signing up to .mil
John, I have been following the Entertainment/Gaming burndown for about two years now. It is endlessly fascinating to me, how a company will simply cast away a known audience for a mythical one that does not exist. And there are a lot of great content creators documenting it.
I do not understand why the market continues to support these companies. The only thing that they understand is money – or the lack of it. Somehow hoping this game or movie will be different seems a fool’s paradise. And to the comments above, older video games remain eminently playable and there is enough older material for games and people’s imagination to create a lifetime of RPGs without ever buying another supplement.
My big dream? WOTC/Hasbro goes broke and someone that actually loves the Old AD&D picks it up.
We can just make our own. We don’t need them.
“The market” consists primarily of Wall Street investors. You know, Leftists. For them, the message is everything. They already have money. What (((they))) truly desire is the destruction of Western Civilization. You know, the culture that once was called Christendom.
Money will buy you power. Power will get you money.