the alt-right

of course the internet created a situation where norms were continually reinforced, even policed, creating conditions for backlash.

This really isn't a description of the internet that I recognise - there are subcultures where that happens because, well, because a shared set of norms is part of the definition of a subculture. But it isn't even "this is Tumblr", more "this is the bit of Tumblr that gets a lot of press because it's a demographic that people who write opinion pieces consider exotic" - and there's lot of other bits of the internet.

internet-focused racists and the far right

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-chronicle-of-predation-appetites-and-power

once he started blaming L.A. for his problems and lack of success (rather than the fact that he was trying to peddle an image of either a Marlon Brandon-type biker or a vampire who i think was supposed to be eerie but came off like Count Chocula)

I am HOWLING

he claims he was now doing grad school at Harvard but his photos felt suspiciously generic.

in college, he was pretty much an Elliott Rodgers type of guy, minus a bit of the bitterness but with a lot of received wisdom about women. he was always trying for this manly self improvement shit, trying to conquer the female question, etc via lifting and being a real bro and not really achieving his goals in whatsoever. my most key memory of him was how he did me the solid of borrowing my copy of "Sublime" by Sublime and playing it so much, handling so frequently, that he ended up scratching it so that it wouldn't play anymore.

this guy just photographed the fired google kid

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/magazine/the-annie-leibovitz-of-the-alt-right.html

is the NYT clear on what's "coded" and what isn't anymore

But he had recently gotten himself into trouble over a series of coded anti-Semitic tweets. (“Jews control the News,” he wrote in one; in another he referenced the “JQ,” or “Jewish question.”)

lol no they seem very confused

Rmde

next up: he's going to photograph the jogger who randomly pushed a woman in front of a bus in London

i agree w the key point of this generally bad article that south park set the stage for this shit somewhat

https://theestablishment.co/how-south-park-helped-empower-the-alt-right-a65abcc88c9b

sometimes i think my biggest beef with SP, besides not being nearly as funny as even its apologists on the Left insist, might be giving two generations of morons space to shit on climate science they don't understand, waving it all away as "lol ManBearPig"

South Park probably helped greasing the slide but the majority of the points aren't totally convincing. They certainly use Cartman to be gleefully sadistic but they also use him as a punching bag and a representation of the worst people, then there's odd things like using him to say that Family Guy is too cruel. Stan and Kyle clearly represent Parker and Stone.

There's a similar problem with gangster films in no matter how awful and pathetic they make the gangsters look, some people are still going to think they're awesome.

They did ManBearPig but there was also "We didn't listen".

i mean, i'm a moron who doesn't necessarily understand it all, either, but i'm not relying on a cartoon by two libertarian d-bags as my sociopolitical bible

fair, but i'm not sure that's the general takeaway. kinda like how ppl w/ really identified with/ cheered Archie Bunker, but more EXTREME

I think it's more fair to say South Park is an earlier manifestation of some of the same impulses. Correlation not causation, etc.

They did ManBearPig but there was also "We didn't listen".

weren't they both "lol global warming panic, the weather hasn't changed" episodes

I kind of enjoy SP's dedication towards taking the dumbest possible stance on political and social issues, though I do wonder if nowadays they've changed their "actually both sides are equally bad when you think about it" attitude

I might be wrong but I taken "we didn't listen" as a jab at climate change deniers.

As indefensible, boring and dumb I find a lot of stuff in South Park, occasionally they had something to say that was more interesting than I think Simpsons would have done.

They seemed quite explicit about Trump being way worse than Clinton.

haven't seen the episode in a decade but I thought that one was poking fun at the hysteria

What hysteria?

the whole "global warming is going to kill us all" thing

Huh? I have seen almost nobody publically take Climate Change as seriously as it has to be taken.

The problem is not a cartoon but rather damaged people constructing a worldview around a cartoon.

well yeah. its just what the cartoon appeared to be mocking. it's idiotic.

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/11/alt-right-shindig-neo-fascists-plan-giant-rally-to-support-confederate-flag-what-could-go-wrong/

i mean, i'm a moron who doesn't necessarily understand it all, either, but i'm not relying on a cartoon by two libertarian d-bags as my sociopolitical bible

when you say this, yes, of course, nobody would do that. but when you consider that a show has been on tv for 20 years, that some people who weren't even born when it started are now voting age, that now there is an entire generation raised by it, that it has achieved Walmart-level of cultural ubiquity (yes, Wal-Mart, who they "eviscerated" sells their DVDs, plushies, t-shirts, keychains, etc.) , clearly it has had some wide-reaching impact. even if it isn't specifically on issues themselves it has promoted nihilism, cynicism and other toxic ideas and attitudes.

whenever the SP debate crops up a lot of the criticism is that people are missing the jokes or too stupid to get the satire. this is beside the point. if they are selling a product that is so mass marketed that ironic racism can be taken the wrong way, they need to address it. now that they have made their careers off the public, they have a responsibility towards that same public.

fwiw also their attack on Trump was very weak, they just ran w the "he doesn't really want to run!" thing the whole story, and the Canadian Trump thing was only for one show. PC Police was a far more involved storyline.

I hear they're totally avoiding politics for their next season

of course, nobody would do that.

oh i think that idiot Stephen miller (the other one) and his "SouthPark Repubs" kind of do do that.

I hear they're totally avoiding politics for their next season

would prefer they just avoided making a tv show altogether

so much to answer for

like, there's a direct line ime between SP's ridiculous libertarian shitbag politics and that recent Google manifesto, techbro culture was weaned on SP

It's the "we mock both sides!" crap that skewers the idea you should care at all about institutions or politics and makes people assume there are small differences or things are all, if not equally bad, just bad.

I have a friend who is relatively level-headed but if I made some point about the debates pre-election or a specific issue he'd mention "oh it's like X and Y, always complaining about.." where X and Y were whatever caricature of the candidates South Park had created. Yeah, no, you can't laugh off particular issues when depending on how votes go, it could mean survival or death for people that don't live they way you do. If you're white and straight and not in poverty and you're laughing off racial or sexual politics, fuck off

I hear they're totally avoiding politics for their next season

i think it is smarter to focus on the characters more and this is their strength. storytelling focus more on the town itself and these characters we love. back to the heart music.

whenever they used a political topic, say BLM, school shootings, or Syrian refugees/Whole Foods(?), it felt exploitative. and not just of the fictional refugees living in a Whole Foods parking lot (makes you think!). it felt like an act of creative desperation. like Homer becoming a Hip Hop producer it feels like a contrivance to seem relevant.

why change now, they've been doing that for 20+ years

trump's presidency basically turning america into a real life SP ep and oh NOW you want to "avoid politics"

haha yup

Anyway, fat Nazis

The Daily Stormer ran a story complaining that American neo-Nazis are too large to be taken seriously pic.twitter.com/FFwcgnTEjA

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) August 11, 2017

trump's presidency basically turning america into a real life SP ep and oh NOW you want to "avoid politics"

you have it the other way around. America has been acting like Trump for over two hundred years. Hillary lost cos she was a bad candidate and ran a bad campaign. the overall election was so negative that most people didn't vote, so only hardcore fans voted for their candidates, and the media wants you to believe that there has been a crazy paradigm shift to sell your eyeballs.

xp before & after

http://cdn-live.warthunder.com/uploads/16/f98e9cb498fb1bf4fcbd979ebff90a960964ea_lq/goering.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e8/a7/41/e8a741956832b95d24aeffde0f416442--historie-world-war.jpg

I recommend this dietary regime for all american nazis

I'm with Οὖτις and Adam on the South Park thing

It might be 'smart' but it's smart as in smart-arse libertarian 13 year old boy smart

With a definite hard-edged elitism going on - there's a small group in the know, who are smart, and everyone else in the village is dumb

So there is nothing we could possibly gain from talking to the angry, dumb, adults - angry people/dumb people (the same) have nothing worthwhile to tell us

i think the thing w/south park is it's a show that makes me feel kinda bad for some reason, like how i felt reading the Gavin Mc1nnes era of Vice Magazine. which it bears a similarity to in how it kinda alt-ed all kinds of bigotry and seemed to think empathy was for suckers or i guess now cuckers.

though i think it was more part of the shifting landscape than one of the main causes of it.

angry people/dumb people (the same)

I call them 'anger dummies'.

I call the big one "fighty"

my South Park anecdote -

one grad school summer i interned in Boulder, CO. i found a random craigslist place and thought everyone would be cool...actually i remember i already blogged about all this shit years ago on another thread. but to cut to the chase, they were all climate hoaxers, one of them told me that his biggest dream was to own a yacht, and south park was on 24/7. ever since then i associate SP with total dipshits

You guys watching this march on UVA?