Music Criticism in Video Form

All I know is other races were definitely casually on the table for derision and slurs in a super casual way, and that Jewish people were never (or rarely) part of that equation until South Park came around.

so there's something I've got to tell you about history

South Park is a disaster for the moral development of kids everywhere. It def normalized "edgy" racist and antisemitic jokes in my hometown, in the wild foothills of Middlesex County, New Jersey.

That sentence wasn't meant to apply to the entire world. Just my peer group growing up. If that wasn't clear, I apologize. If you want to defend South Park, by all mean be my guest.

mean=means, obv.

so there's something I've got to tell you about history

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, October 6, 2017 1:15 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

The alt-right existed before Gamergate. It didn't call itself "alt-right" but it was there. I grew up in a Twin Cities exurb in the 80s and it was all around me the entire time, from the kids who would attempt to put me back in my place by calling me a nigger, spook or jungle bunny to the Pink Floyd fans who thought the mental breakdown in The Wall was a spiritual awakening meant to be emulated to the country music fans who called rap "jungle music" to the people who thought Minneapolis was a den of crime because a few black people lived there to all of the people resentful of the casino on the reservation south of town. It was the exact same bullshit, only instead of expressed via a cartoon frog it was passed around in notes and through championing certain musical acts, often regardless of whether the acts in question would have condoned being a conduit for that type of messaging (Iron Maiden leaps instantly to mind).

The way the war is being waged is different because the weapons have changed but it is the exact same thing the country has been dealing with since before any of us were born.

I was 9 or 10 when South Park came out. I was also the only Jew in my class. I can echo brontosaurus comments verbatim.

It's wrong that to say all nerd media is infected with reactionary ideas but that world IS a battleground. It's not just incidental that so many women are harrassed when the centure into those spaces, specifically.

― Treeship

goddamn right it is a battleground. plenty of geek ladies, cis and trans, fighting to be heard.

can we change thread title to "the goddamn white supremacist fucks"

i don't let my kids watch south park. or the family guy. weirdly enough. they probably do when i'm not around though. they are the two shows i never want to hear in the house.

i don't have a ton of rules. in general. i did yell at rufus once when he was practicing "tears in heaven" after a guitar lesson. i told him no clapton.

doin it right

speaking of which, here's a little nightmare fuel I encountered last night:

You’re welcome https://t.co/wZgLhASeVV

— Pizza McRib (@PizzaMcrib) October 6, 2017

Doubtless it's garbage but

🔔🔔 T H E F A D E R R E S P O N S E 🔔🔔https://t.co/kXEaCeNdJC pic.twitter.com/cXy3V7K1wG

— thee anthony fantano (@theneedledrop) October 7, 2017

lmao 21 minutes

what's with the finger, is there crying

23 seconds, i can't do this to myself

saw enough to know that he's a fucking lying piece of shit who's going to keep doubling down on his lies because the people who follow him are idiots

he's pretty convincing in that video

He brushes over the videos with Sargon of Akkad and Amazing Atheist (lol), claiming that neither is alt-right because neither self-identifies as alt-right. That assumes overly precise definitions, as though there's no connection between Gamergate/anti-feminism and the alt-right. The clips of the interview with Sam Hyde add slightly more context, but Fantano's supposed resistance to the Lena Dunham rant was mild at best. If he was that offended, he could always have not posted the interview.

I'm lost on most of the meme humour stuff. It's painful hearing him explain his unfunny videos.

one would think the first reason not to watch anything this guy does is that he's insufferably uninteresting after like a minute and a half but good on y'all for digging deeper i guess

He brushes over the videos with Sargon of Akkad and Amazing Atheist (lol), claiming that neither is alt-right because neither self-identifies as alt-right. That assumes overly precise definitions, as though there's no connection between Gamergate/anti-feminism and the alt-right. The clips of the interview with Sam Hyde add slightly more context, but Fantano's supposed resistance to the Lena Dunham rant was mild at best. If he was that offended, he could always have not posted the interview.

I'm lost on most of the meme humour stuff. It's painful hearing him explain his unfunny videos.

Well, what does alt-right mean? The way it was defined on the alt-right thread was

They're an alternative to US right wing consensus - instead of being pro free markets, pro Christian morality or pro strong defense they are just pro white nationalism.

I was informed there that e.g. Breitbart and Trump are not really alt-right, that it does have a more precise meaning. When I was reading the Fader piece, I was sort of waiting for the reveal that Fantano had a publication credit in Alternative Right or plugged Christopher Cantwell on Youtube or was selling "Blood and Soil" T-shirts or something.

That said, after watching his defence, I tried watching one of the original controversial videos and didn't get that far, for this reason:

I'm lost on most of the meme humour stuff.

The "alt right" is an amorphous term. It seems like right now only white nationalists embrace it but colloquially it is used to deacribe the whole reactionary online sphere, where people are not so interested in conservatism as a political or moreal philosophy but really interested in identity issues.

The buzzfeed article showed that Breitbart, at least, courted overt white nationalists and drew on their rhetoric, tweaking it only mildly in order to hold onto the members of their audience who weren't ready to go as far as calling for an "ethno state." But the themes are the same with all these people. White people are being "replaced." This demographic trend is a liberal plot. Feminism has undermined the stability of society and oppressed men in the process. Another liberal plot is destroying freedom of speech so ordinary/white Americans can't fight back. Etc.

A lot of the toxic nihilism of the meme humor comes from this overall place of hostility for "liberal" America and its norms and pieties. It's deeply antisocial. I feel like the producers of this kind of content are hazy on what kind of world they'd like instead but they definitely feel that, as (mostly) white men, they've been thwarted from claiming their inheritance or something. It's very adolescent but also really dangerous. She gets a bad rap around here but Angela Nagle's book on the alt-right, Kill All Normies, is really good at peeling back the psychology of these new white supremacists.

Anyway, Fantano was obviously trying to become a part of this world in order to drive "engagement" on his channel. Whatever is in his heart, he was playing with fire and it's good he was burned. The only acceptable attitude toward the alt right is contempt. They're not cheerfuly irreverent South Park nihilists or something, they're a hate movement that sometimes hides behind "comedy."

Uhhhhh I heard enough from friends telling me to stay away from that Nagle book but if it got Treeship talking about "the toxic nihilism of meme culture" then it kind of sounds like my shit

The 183,000 people that spent their Friday night or Saturday morning watching a 20 minute video where a nerd defends posting pictures of black people in fake nooses or whatever all need to be on an FBI watch list

What about those of us who spend entire work days arguing about it on a message board?

"well he says he's not a hipster, so that must mean he isn't" - people in 2008, probably

he is really articulate about really dumb stuff. wait, does he post here...

Whiney you spent 20 minutes going through my post history so you could “out” me as a They Might Be Giants fan idk if you should be telling other people what to do with their time

I watched it last night while making Spanish tortilla for a couple of friends. He is very articulate but is as always missing the point. The tortilla turned out great, FBI thought so too

I like the idea of “cheerfully irreverent nihilists.” What’s the proportion of people who bought books with Bob Dobbs on the cover who have committed suicide by now, I wonder?

This thread has made me think a lot about social contexts where people don’t pursue aimless disagreement and Parkinson bike shedding

"well he says he's not a hipster, so that must mean he isn't" - people in 2008, probably

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Saturday, October 7, 2017 10:50 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol Katherine please tweet this

my kid was defending this guy to me last night. he thinks of him as a Bernie bro who hates Trump and says he's never seen anything racist on his channels. i told him i thought he was a dope. and not funny. generational clash! i dunno, i'm not supposed to be down with the meme generation. as an old.

Yeah, one of my biggest fears is that my son is way to credulous regarding this shit

*too

but doesn't he explicitly endorse bernie and hate trump tho?

if he likes norm macdonald too i hear that pretty much guarantees he's alt-right

I like the idea of “cheerfully irreverent nihilists.” What’s the proportion of people who bought books with Bob Dobbs on the cover who have committed suicide by now, I wonder?

― El Tomboto

yeah, whenever i read slogans like "kill all normies" i think about how the church of the subgenius did it earlier and better.

i've lost touch with nearly all the subgenius people i knew in the '90s, but i don't know of any who've killed themselves, or killed anybody else for that matter. the ones i know are, like me, now middle-aged cranks.

"i told him i thought he was a dope. and not funny"

wait, i didn't tell my kid he was a dope and not funny. i said that about the youtube guy. but you guys probably got that.

https://i.redd.it/753iz00pwjqz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/h4iW9Bv.jpg
https://i.redd.it/w6ue1iiwsfqz.png

I hope you didn't spend all weekend drawing that.

"hides the fact that his article is edited"? uh do these people have any idea how anything works (spoiler: no)

engages in political discourse to strengthen his values

I hope you didn't spend all weekend drawing that.

― grawlix (unperson), Monday, October 9, 2017 10:12 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As long as it was less than 20 minutes he's fine

I assume you probably lean a little alt-right if you've ever watched more than one episode of Rick & Morty

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, October 6, 2017 12:09 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me, a genius: You probably wouldn’t get Rick & Morty
Also me: *curses out min wage employee over sauce I’m pretending to be nostalgic for*

— Chase Mitchell (@ChaseMit) October 7, 2017