Category Archives: Humor

Want to prove that you’re a cool guy? Why not shout at pedestrians?

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A while back, I was walking along a sidewalk, when a car passed by and someone shouted something at me. I don’t know what they said, but when someone does something like that, it’s typically some kind of obscenity.

“Great, another one of those guys.” I thought. You know what I mean, it’s yet another half-wit who only has the confidence to shout some mean words at someone because he’s doing so from the safety of a moving vehicle, with no apparent means of retaliation from the recipient.

Then something interesting happened. As he was shouting, he was approaching a traffic light. And it had just turned red.

So there I was, with the opportunity to approach the vehicle, and ask the passenger what he said. I decided to take it. So I walked up to the car and did just that.

Curiously, the passenger of the vehicle didn’t remember saying anything to me. A case of face-to-face amnesia? Whatever it was he said, none of the vehicles two or three other occupants cared to remind him what it was.

So, what did I do after that? I just walked off. Apparently, something about being in arms reach made them lose their nerve. What they did after that, I don’t care, but they presumably sped off at the first opportunity while high-fiving each other over how they handled that situation.

What’s the point of this story? I don’t know. Maybe that there are three or four cowards living in Maryland somewhere. Also, shouting at people from a moving car seems like a pathetic way to try to prove to your friends how cool you are. And if they’re impressed with something that has no risk involved, then their idea of a good time is probably watching the same Monty Python skit a dozen times. Not that I have anything against Monty Python, but there are people out there that can watch the same routine many times and still laugh. I really don’t know why.

MTV and Buzzfeed on being a guy.

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mtv-guy-code

You might want to disable your gag reflex for this one. This involves Buzzfeed. It also involves MTV. And MTV wants to impose their sad ideas of what it means to be a guy on the rest of us.

MTV (more specifically, MTV2) has posted “14 Rules Of (sic) Guy Code That Can Never Be Broken“. That MTV, property of global mass-media corporation Viacom, believes that they are in a position to tell the rest of us how to conduct ourselves as men is, in itself, interesting. But it gets even funnier when you get into the actual content of the article.

Let’s get started.

1. GREET APPROPRIATELY
I. No hug comes without a bro handshake first.
II. No hug comes without a pat on the back after.

The bro hug is the culturally-relevant male greeting of the current half-decade, much in the same way as the fist-bump was in the previous half-decade. And like the fist-bump, the bro hug is mere years from being cycled out, only to occasionally be brought up again by your awkward friends who are a tad behind on things.

Considering the temporary nature of these fad greetings, it’s interesting that MTV is ascribing to it the importance of a rule to never be broken. One might even get the idea that they don’t honestly think that their list will even be relevant in five years, and considers it of no more value than its ability to market a vapid television program.

III. No high fives are given to overeager bros.

Shown in the article is an animated picture of a man attempting to high five a couple people who don’t even notice him. Some rules are self-enforcing.

2. CHOOSE THE RIGHT URINAL
I. No urinal encroachment.

While there is little dispute over this rule, if any, MTV can be criticized for playing it safe for including a nearly universally-known rule. There’s very little point in bringing it up unless there are some specifics to get into, such as whether to take the urinal that is two urinals down from an occupied one, or whether to take the furthest.

II. No short urinals, unless you’re a child or a man-child.

Very short-sighted, MTV. It’s obvious that they’re not thinking to accommodate those who, by reason of substantial length, would require a lower urinal. I’m disappointed, MTV.

III. No loud dick shaking.

I wasn’t aware that this is a serious issue, but apparently, in Viacom’s offices, it is.

3. DON’T LET YOUR GIRL RUN YOUR LIFE
I. No dance classes.

If I suspect that my girlfriend wanted to control my life, The first signs I’d look for would be the ones that are likely to come up sooner. Such as telling me how to put my socks and neckties away. Once it gets to the point of dance classes, the problem is already pretty far advanced.

At this point, I suspect that the author is intentionally setting the bar low, and in so doing, inadvertently revealing something about himself.

II. No reading the same book together as a couples bonding activity.

Wrong. I can think of some books that can be read by couples. Such as the Bible. Also, The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox.

aom-maddox

III. No sharing her clothes even if they’re “unisex” and you like the “silky feel.”

Are you kidding? Is this really such a universal problem that it has to be included in a list of pointers on how to be a guy? It’s as though the author is seriously ignorant or thinks very little of his audience. Did it occur to him that a guy who would wear women’s clothes wouldn’t care about a guy image? Because it’s quite obvious that that wouldn’t be what he’d be going for.

4. DON’T LET YOUR FRIEND’S GIRL RUN YOUR LIFE

You know what? There are people out there that probably actually could use this list. If there is someone out there that has so little confidence that they’re being whipped by a woman that isn’t even putting out for them, they really could benefit from a list that sets the bar so low. Baby steps.

I suspect that the author of this list is projecting, by the way.

I. No dating your friend’s girl before, during, or after their relationship.

If someone else’s girlfriend is running their life, she is very likely the one that started it. What she hopes to gain from playing her game, I don’t know.

II. No telling your friend’s girl about your friend’s other girl.

Why would anyone do this? It’s obvious that he already made his choice, and should be ready for the consequences when the two inevitably find out about each other.

III. No asking your friend’s girl if she has any “biddies” to set you up with.

There are a lot of reasons why I don’t suspect that most people would actually do this, and they generally have to do with the fact that I think more highly of people than MTV does. But then again, MTV is aiming for a particular audience here.

5. PRANK RESPECTFULLY
I. No broken bones.
II. No hijacking their phones.
III. No resulting loans.

Why not level up and not prank? Most pranks involve acts that are illegal.

6. MANAGE YOUR PORN
I. No using your roommate’s laptop.

In general, it’s not a very good idea to use anyone else’s laptop for most purposes, considering that you don’t know what they’ve been doing with it. Not that I don’t let other people use mine, on the principle that it doesn’t hurt for a gun to have an additional set of prints.

II. No writing “reviews” on the message board.

The word “reviews” is in quotation marks, so I suspect it means pretending to be an art connoisseur. In some cases, this can be pretty funny.

III. No waiting up late for live shows to start.

Your mom wants you to get up early for school tomorrow.

7. EAT LIKE A MAN
I. No cutting your pizza with a fork and knife.

If someone cares whether you do this, they probably don’t make a very good friend. Seriously, who cares?

Also, on a related note, there are those who complain about Americans using chop sticks when eating oriental food, particularly Asian servers. We can make a deal: we can pretend to know how to eat with chopsticks, and in exchange, you can pretend that you’re serving real oriental food.

II. No thinking you’re cute if you get foam on your nose from a cappuccino.

It’s not about whether someone actually gets foam on their nose. No, the problem is whether someone thinks they’re cute for it. How is anyone supposed to enforce this? I have no idea, because I’ve never tried anyone for thought crimes.

III. No asking the waiter to cut your hamburger bun in half.

You don’t have to. Hamburger buns are served sliced in half. They pretty much have to be. Otherwise, it’s pretty hard to get the patty between both halves.

8. DRINK LIKE A MAN
I. No asking for a “brewski.”
II. No colored straws, mini umbrellas, or drinks named after movie characters.

It should be obvious at this point that this isn’t so much a list governing guy conduct as it is a list of a miserable person’s pet peeves.

III. No shouting “shots for everyone!” without buying shots for everyone.

Also, never throw your money on the table. People might think you have a lot of the stuff.

9. DON’T BE WEIRD AT THE GYM

So, someone who has never been to the gym is going to attempt to tell us how to behave at a gym? This is going to be a treat. Let’s see what important issues he’s going to touch upon.

I. No running with “toe shoes.”

Picard-Facepalm

II. No looking at your abs in the gym mirror.

Why would anyone want a visual indication of their progress in the very place that they work toward a goal?

III. No group stretching except for extremely tight circumstances.

If an activity makes the author feel uncomfortable, he doesn’t want you to do it, either.

10. BE A GOOD GROOMSMAN
I. No skipping out on the bachelor party because you have a work thing.

While skipping out on a close friend’s special occasion is usually not a good thing, what I find disturbing here is that the author refers to gainful employment as a “work thing”. Believe it or not, a person’s career is usually very important to them. It’s not just their source of income, it’s how they justify their existence among other people. When someone greets you, it’s not rare of them to ask what you do for a living, and assign you a value based on your answer. Men see other men based on what they do with their lives. Because of this, people usually make sacrifices to their hobbies to further their career. Even if it means playing video games for a few fewer hours a day.

II. No making a long speech about how lonely you are.

I suspect that the author identifies with the temptation to do so.

III. No catching the garter.

Understanding this peeve requires understanding the superstition that the man who catches the garter is the next man to marry. The joke is that marriage is avoided by men because if they’re not married, they can keep right on sleeping around. Being married doesn’t prevent a man from doing that. The fidelity is implied. But if a man doesn’t intend to be faithful to any woman, you probably shouldn’t trust him for advice on how to be a better man.

11. KNOW HOW TO TAKE ALL-BRO PICS

MTV wants every guy to be a photographer. Why? I don’t know. Look, some people are better than other people at certain things. It’s why the concept of “pros” exists. If there’s an expert photographer in the group, you have them take the picture, not just any guy in the group.

I. No demanding that everyone look serious and tough.

Why not? It might make a funny picture.

II. No touching if no one else is touching.

Again, if the author feels uncomfortable with something, he doesn’t want anyone else doing it.

III. No forgetting your beach shirt.

MTV wants you to include a Hawaiian shirt in your EDC.

12. REGULATE FLATULENCE

Now those left-wingers want to regulate farting. Them liberals and their regulation of everything is going too far!

I. No denying it.

Unless you didn’t actually do it, right? Fart transparency isn’t some huge issue that I’m aware of. So, who cares? Considering that it’s a natural process with very little if anything in terms of consequences, why should anyone care who does it?

II. No forcing it.

This proves it. MTV is made up of fart hippies who only want their farts to be all-natural. Next thing you know, they’ll be demanding organic farts and gluten free farts. And don’t get me started on vegetarian farts. Those are nasty.

III. No talking about it like it’s art.

For some people, farting is art. Skilled farters exist, just as we have skilled belchers.

13. NO DICK SELFIES
I. No dick selfies for your girlfriend.

The one who would primarily be interested? I thought this was a list for guys. Now you’re trying to tell our girlfriends what they should be interested in?

II. No dick selfies for yourself.

If a person takes a dick-pic for himself, his consent is implied. Just who is he going to upset?

III. No dick selfies for your political future.

As it turns out, MTV is not too left-wing for an Anthony Wiener joke. Though, to be fair, that’s one bandwagon that’s hard to stay off of. Think about the level of impairment it would take to mistake an MMS message for social media. What a world-class blunder.

14. MAINTAIN YOUR BROMANCE

I was a little concerned that someone who would write up a list telling us not to stretch with assistance would be too sexually insecure to give us a few pointers on bromance. Let’s see what wisdom he has to impart.

I. No driving separately to the game.

What game would this be? If this guy is going to give us pointers on how to fart, one would assume that he’d make more than an implication that every man is interested in sports, which isn’t really true, anyway.

II. No being too busy for Mario Kart.

Again, sometimes, people make sacrifices to their hobbies for their careers. A person’s career is important. After all, a person needs money to pay the bills, and to have hobbies like Mario Kart to begin with.

III. No reservations about personal space.

Unless you’re having your picture taken. Or stretching.

THE AFOREMENTIONED ARE OFFICIAL TERMS OF GUY CODE, TO BE UPHELD IN GUY COURT.

If you’ve never heard of Guy Court, it’s a program on MTV2. Viacom saw the potential for marketing through social media, and decided to throw a list on how to be a guy onto a social media outlet, even if it happened to be Buzzfeed, which is populated largely by teenagers who think that they have the world figured out. Even if they didn’t know how.

By the way, Guy Court was cancelled after only 12 episodes in less than 2 months. It seems people don’t want to take advice on how to be manly from MTV. Not that MTV’s audience would be ideal for marketing such a message.

All things considered, this list of guy code rules is pretty pathetic. How about it? Should I make a list of rules on how to be manly? Not that I’d expect everyone to follow it or even take it seriously, but I think I can write something up that would be far more entertaining than Viacom’s sad attempt to market their programming.

Webcomic Review: Classes

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classes webcomic 1.png

I did not alter this.

Today, I did something painful. I’ve read through another bad webcomic. This one is called, “Classes”. It’s a name that’s strangely fitting, because it’s one thing I can recommend to its author.

Classes is easily the whitest webcomic I’ve ever seen. Don’t believe me? Read any page of the webcomic for yourself. Such as this one, which happened to be the most recent one as of this posting. Then do your eyes a favor and return to this page, quick.

I can assume that the reason why this webcomic is so white is because the author is trying to make it stylistic. Most pages don’t use panels; the comic reads from top to bottom with sequential drawings. It’s an interesting idea, but the result is a webcomic that hurts my eyes. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded narrowing the many super-wide margins, because as it is, Classes is like staring into an LED flashlight.

classes webcomic 2

He’s not alone.

If you’re a non-Japanese artist and you want to draw in the manga style, go right ahead. I don’t mind it. I’m not one of those super-snooty weeaboo freaks that think that only the Japanese can do the style right. But be aware that not everyone who attempts to draw in the manga style is good at it. In fact, there are people out there that draw in the manga style for the wrong reasons.

When some people see the manga style, what they see is something stylistic and visually appealing that they’d enjoy drawing and that their audience might enjoy seeing. They would be the people drawing manga for the right reasons. When other people see the manga style, they see a formulaic and easily-replicable art form that they could use as the visual vessel for their poorly-written stories with minimal effort, which they can sell by saying that they’re being stylistic. They would be the ones that decide on the manga style for the wrong reasons.

Yes, I know that there are high-quality manga out there. Some of the best ones have a simplistic and messy style, such as those drawn by Ueda Hajime, while others pay heavy attention to anatomy and composition. Those manga aren’t a problem. What’s problematic is when the manga style is used as an excuse to put less effort forward.

A novice artist might discover the manga style, then start drawing his characters with rounder faces that look flatter when viewed head-on, and drawing pointed chins that often disappear when a character’s profile is viewed. Part of the style. But then you notice that they’re drawing each of their characters in the chibi (simplified and child-like) style, and you suspect that they’re cutting corners, as Japanese artists typically only use the chibi style in certain circumstances. Even that can probably be sold as being stylistic (not that Teen Titans Go is off the hook).

But look closer, and you’ll see the mistakes. Okay, you probably don’t have to look close. The art has a rushed look to it, like manga is going out of style, and someone is in a hurry to make a quick buck off of it, even if they don’t know how.

One of the biggest mistakes that novice manga artists make is drawing the eyes as blank and shallow. Unless the character you’re drawing is in some catatonic state, the eyes should always look deep and expressive, even when it’s clear that everything else about your character is heavily chibified. Consider this example:

Umaru eyes

To make your manga characters really pop, you get the eyes right, even if you get nothing else right. There’s a reason for this: when people look at other people, their gaze is naturally drawn to the eyes. When looking at a person’s eyes, it’s easy to determine their mood and sometimes even their intentions. Because of this tendency, manga style is easy viewing because the eyes are larger and easier for viewers to find.

How does Classes do eyes? See for yourself:

classes webcomic 3.png

If you’re curious, that’s how the eyes for characters in Classes look by default.

I’ll give the author of Classes this much: she does choose her colors very well, and the shading is okay. Still, it’s pretty obvious when an artist chooses a semi-chibi manga style to hide the fact that the artist has a difficult time drawing things such as clothing. Yes, I know it’s challenging to keep track of things such as pressure points and how they would affect how a fabric wrinkles. But if a person doesn’t bother with that, the clothing can look like it’s skin-tight, or even floating in place.

As for the story, Classes is about a group of children who join a military academy that uses elemental magic. It’s about as cliche as it sounds, but because it’s in the anime style, there’s bound to be an extremely dangerous and competitive shounen-style field examination led by a severely disinterested proctor. Is that in there? Yep.

And while we’re discussing worn-out conventions, this thing where the characters are color-coded by the elemental magic types that they use is beyond stale. Sometimes, I suspect that writers do this to keep things straight for themselves. Is it too much to ask that writers express the creativity necessary for their characters to deviate at least slightly from the standard archetypes? Even the personalities of the characters seem to follow the color-coded conventions. For example, one character uses the ice element and has blue hair. No prize for guessing that she’s aloof and distant, that would be too easy. Once you’ve figured that out, it’s not much of a leap to imagine that she’s an overpowered child. It’s almost as though Classes was optimized for TV Tropes.

The main character is Kiwi, a young girl who is unrelatably irresponsible. If you thought Giga from Boss Rush Society was bad, Kiwi will make you wonder how even a fictional universe can host a creature so prone to bad decision-making.

I know that giving your characters flaws can make them more relatable, but going too far with the flaws can have the opposite effect. To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here, Kiwi missed her own graduation just to goof off, and ended up missing out on gaining magical powers. She was allowed to graduate anyway, and was allowed to take the field exam without them, which goes to show that some people wanted her to die. She was also responsible in part for a huge disaster during the exam, wherein she was provided with just the substance needed to do so by chance.

Also, to give you a heads up, the narrative is sometimes broken without warning by non-canon sequences featuring the dog doing things like gender-swapping experiments. It’s tricky enough guessing the genders of some of the characters already, so these sequences didn’t help. They add nothing to the comic except to pad it out, which can really hurt if you just want to get it over with so you can get to writing a review about it.

I think it’s about time I got around to giving this webcomic its score. I’m a little surprised that I went out on it as much as I did, but Classes made some mistakes that brought to mind some problems that I’ve been noticing in creative communities, so I took an opportunity to vent a little bit. I know what some of you may be thinking: “But Raizen, webcomics like this are free. You get what you pay for, right?”

You know what else is free? Malware. And malware does take something away from people: their time. Time is something that a person only has so much of, and once they spend it, they don’t get it back. If someone doesn’t enjoy something, they feel like their time is wasted. A moment enjoyed is not wasted. Based on this criteria, I can give webcomics like Classes a score that reflects how I feel about the time I’ve spent with them. And on that note, here’s the score for the webcomic: Angry out of ten.

angry manga out of ten

Which, if you prefer numbers, would be a 3.2.

 

Is Call from Mighty No. 9 secretly a Powerpuff Girl?

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Call_Artwork

Pictured above is Call, a character from the recently-released Mighty No. 9 (released in 2016).

While many people are aware of a Cartoon Network cartoon known as The Powerpuff Girls, what isn’t so widely known is that there was a short-lived anime adaptation of the show called “Demashitta! Powerpuff Girls Z” (released in 2006, and yes, that’s what it was called). The show lasted for two seasons with 52 episodes, and was criticized for (among other things) that the adaptation was too far a departure from the original show. The show incorporated Majou Shoujo genre elements including transformation, though the theme of the show was science, not magic.

The following is a screen capture from the show, showing one of the three main characters (both the people shown are the same character). Shown in front is Momoko Akatsutsumi, and in the background is her alternate persona, Hyper Blossom.

Akatsutsumi.Momoko.full.427928

Notice any similarities?

A flag for abortion activists.

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Abortion activists are celebrating in the streets after the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law. They certainly seemed to find it a great day to be alive. However, there doesn’t seem to be an official flag to represent abortion activists. If they had such a flag, they could wave it around each time they reach a milestone.

And, appropriately enough, the abortion movement is reaching a very special milestone. As of 2012, the number of abortions performed in the United States is estimated to be over 51 million.¹ This is closing in on 56 million, the lower end of Dyadkin’s estimate of the number of people killed by the Soviet Union.²

Therefore, it seemed appropriate that the abortion movement’s flag be modeled on the Soviet flag, with a slight modification to reflect their intrinsic values:

abortion flag

Instead of a hammer and a sickle, this new flag has a scalpel and a suction tube. Doesn’t that just say it all?

Citations:
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States (Yes, it’s Wikipedia. Turn your nose up, if you must.)
2) http://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kill-1111789

EDIT: While doing research for this article, I visited a page for International Business Times. The following screen capture shows the video that automatically loaded with it, with the title of the article just above it:

appropriately enough, this was the video that loaded

Appropriate, isn’t it?

Did the Pokemon Company make a Donald Trump pokemon?

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Yungoos

Take a gander at the pokemon pictured above. Its name is Yungoos. Does it bear a resemblance to someone who has been appearing in the news a lot lately?

Pokemon games typically feature a Normal-type pokemon that isn’t very strong on the very first route. The first generation had Rattata, the second had Sentret, and so on. It looks like the seventh generation’s Rattata is based on Donald Trump.

Don’t believe me? Check out that hair. Then, if that weren’t enough, check out that determined grimace. See it yet?

Also, check out the flavor text that goes with this pokemon:

Yungoos is a big eater that is never satisfied. The majority of its long body is given over to its stomach, and its digestion is swift, so it’s always hungry.

So, what’s the joke, here? If Yungoos is based on Donald Trump, then this bit of text suggests that this Donald Trump pokemon is greedy. In a somewhat similar fashion, Donald Trump has a reputation as an aggressive entrepreneur that shows little sign of satisfaction.

But that’s not all. There are more hints in the flavor text:

Yungoos is not a Pokemon that is native to the Alola region.

Donald Trump’s grandfather was a German immigrant. And there’s more:

It was brought to the region to help deal with the explosive population of a certain other Pokemon, and now Yungoos are commonly seen around the Alola region.

Of all things, Trump’s strong stance on illegal immigration got a reference. But I do feel a little curious. What is the identity of the pokemon that Yungoos was brought in to “deal” with?

I don’t really expect Yungoos to become the official mascot of the Trump campaign, but I can imagine Trump supporters putting this thing on a campaign sign. Actually, that kind of thing is much easier to imagine with image editing software:

trump supporters pokemon yungoos

If its evolved form is a Hillary Clinton pokemon, that would ruin it.

Why does The Big Bang Theory irk me?

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BBT no.png

If “smugly thinking that you are so smart because you found something out by using the internet” had it’s own TV show, that show would be The Big Bang Theory (BBT). Its fan base actually fancies themselves as among the nerds just for watching a show that was written to appeal to grandiose fantasies of being nerdy, as opposed to being unattractive and lost in bad television without the intelligence.

That’s the appeal of the show. That’s what makes people continually come back for more of it: that the viewers think that they’re so smart for living in the 21st century, and this is the show that pats them on the back for it.

People are not scientists just for watching a show about people pretending to be scientists. That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to imagine having to explain to anyone over two years old. But here we are today, witnessing another new low in humanity’s race to the bottom.

Think I’m overreacting? Here’s a clip from BBT. Keep in mind that this wasn’t some random clip from some hostile viewer out to make BBT look bad by sarcastically adding a laugh track every time the show fails at humor. The video was posted by CBS as representative of the kind of humor that the show has to offer:

There’s a reason this show has a laugh track. Without it, viewers would have no idea when the writers want them to laugh, and the show would just be one stale, awkward delivery after another.

Not only does this show give people a false sense of intellectual grandiosity, it actively misleads them. The clip above briefly mentions Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic church. Myths about Galileo’s persecution have long been thrown around, but recently, I heard someone mention that Galileo was excommunicated. My BS detector went off, so I later did some research.

What I found out was that Galileo was not excommunicated. At worst, he was put under house arrest.

When you think about the great acts of religious persecution throughout the ages, what do you think about?

  • In the year 1915, entire towns of Armenian Christians were killed by invading Young Turks, in what is today known as The Armenian Genocide.
  • In the 1940s, millions of Jews were killed by Aryan supremacists in what is known today as the Holocaust.
  • Rudie poo house arrest.

Galileo was under house arrest because he presented a theory that was in conflict with the Catholic church’s then-popular geocentric ideology, which, contrary to popular belief, was taught nowhere in the Bible, but instead found it’s way into Catholic thinking due to the influence of Platonic philosophy. But you don’t hear pseudo-intellectuals firing their mouths off about how Platonic philosophy is leading people astray.

Galileo wasn’t excommunicated. He decided to remain a Catholic. He did so because that was what he believed in, not so some fifteen-year-old with a superiority complex can later dump on what he stood for.

When it comes down to it, people aren’t actually interested in science. They’re more interested in thinking themselves so smart because they own smartphones. Yeah, those things which are made to be as simple to use as they can be so that just about anyone could use them. Touchscreens are among the most straightforward interfaces known to mankind, and smartphones usually have just one button on the front of them. Don’t feel so smug just for being able to use something like that.

If people were interested in science, we’d see more people forming hypotheses and then rigorously testing them using the scientific method and documenting their observations, and reading long research articles published in periodicals. It seems like people are far more interested in bad television.

When most people say that they like science, what they really mean is that they like playing games on their cell phones.

Stealing jokes does not make you clever.

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joke thieves are not clever

Earlier, I overheard someone say something about how he trolled supporters of Donald Trump.

What did he do? He approached some Donald Trump supporters and told them some inspirational quotes, then told them that Donald Trump said those things.

Naturally, the Donald Trump supporters said that these inspirational quotes sounded nice. No surprise there. They were inspirational quotes. They sound nice by design.

I don’t believe that the guy actually approached Donald Trump supporters and attributed inspirational quotes to him. For one thing, I know the guy well enough to know that such an activity was well outside his range of usual activities. But my main reason for not believing him will become clear by the end of this post.

After the theoretical Donald Trump supporters said that the quotes sounded nice, he told them that the quotes actually originated from Adolf Hitler.

Still waiting for the punch line? Sorry, that was it.

Believe it or not, Adolf Hitler was capable of sometimes not sounding horrible. There was a reason why the guy had a following. Being a hateful, genocidal maniac doesn’t make for a very attractive political leader.

Now for the main reason why I don’t believe that this guy actually approached Donald Trump supporters about anything: In 2013, a Pinterest user posted pictures of Taylor Swift with inspirational quotes. You probably already see where this is going. On August 30 of that same year, the same Pinterest user was called out for attributing Hitler quotes to Taylor Swift. She was trolling.

After that, legions of copycats started popping up and doing the same thing, as though the rest of us don’t also have access to the internet and could have read about the same joke on Reddit.

Look, Donald Trump is a political figure. If you don’t like him, point out what’s wrong with what he stands for.

But if you’re an unclever hack, try taking credit for someone else’s prank that you read about on the internet. Why would anyone else have heard about it?

Anita Sarkeesian abandons Kickstarter project, Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games

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If you’re an SJW, today might be a good day to crawl into your safe space, because Anita Sarkeesian has abandoned her Kickstarter project, Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games.

Of course, she’s selling it as “moving on to something else”, but the rest of us know what’s going on. Her project has been thoroughly exposed as a sham, and she’s decided to lick her wounds and try something else.

Anita has raised $158,922.00 on the project’s Kickstarter page. Whether she has any plans to refund any of the 6,968 backers of this project is unknown.

I’ve constructed the following graphic to help illustrate the progress that the project has made since it was first launched three-and-a-half years ago on May 17, 2012:

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Anita attended California State University, Northridge (which has a surprisingly high 52.9% rate of acceptance) where she majored in communications, which involved analyzing media for narrative. So when Anita takes in over a hundred thousand dollars to play thousands of dollars in video games, she’s doing what she went to school for. She’s not the only YouTube personality who comments on the content of video games, but I think she managed to do pretty well for herself in making as much money as she has.

The purpose of Anita’s series was to demonstrate that there is sexism in video games. Many video games do portray women in some pretty unrealistic and even outlandish ways, and in some cases heavily sexualizes them. Nobody really needed a social critic to point any of this out. The thing is, practically no one cares. Everyone who plays video games knows that they’re an expression of somebody’s fantasies.

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Anita complains anyway, because as she sees it, video games normalize certain stereotypes. As Anita sees it, someone is needed to speak out against stereotypes against women because gamers are impressionable, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Of course, Anita is wrong.

One reason I prefer to stay away from radical feminists is because they tend to be extremely negative, sometimes assuming that complete strangers are criminals, particularly men. Most people don’t need to be told that almost no men actually have a desire to rape. Most of us recognize rape for the act of violence that it is. Of the men that actually have done it, most of them regret the act instantly. Even laws written primarily by men place rape on the same level as murder in terms of seriousness. Such laws have been around for a very long time, even in times believed by feminists to be the height of patriarchy. To the rest of us, this is obvious. To radical feminists, however, each man is potential rape waiting to happen. I have a hard time stomaching that kind of negativity.

I’m in favor of freedom of expression, even if what is being expressed is something I don’t personally agree with. I’m certain that Anita has heard of the game, Grand Theft Auto. It’s a bombastic game in which the protagonist is rewarded for committing outrageous crimes. However, the popularity of the game didn’t result in a surge in automobile thefts. This is because people know better, and aren’t so easily influenced by the expression of someone else’s fantasies, even if they enjoy the gameplay mechanics and play the game for hours a day. And even if someone steals a car because they learned to do it from a video game, it’s the car thief that’s held accountable, not the video game. The people who made the video game were exercising their protected freedom of expression.

So, what’s Anita working on next? She started a new crowdfunding project concerning the role of women in history. One can hope that the project won’t be nearly as divisive, unconstructive, and misleading as the one that she just gave up on (though this is Anita Sarkeesian we’re talking about, here). The initial fundraising goal of her new project is $200,000. That’s interesting considering that her previous project had a goal of only $6000. If she asked for thousands of dollars to play a bunch of video games, why is she asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to do research that one can do with the simple assistance of Google?

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Believe it or not, women didn’t get their rights because a bunch a firebrands were shrill enough. Women got equal rights with men because men decided that society would benefit from it. What this means is that the feminist movement in it’s current form isn’t just divisive and as a result counterproductive. What it means is that feminism, in it’s current form, has been unnecessary all along.

Update (4-10-2016): Anita has made a video update, but she made it available for backers only. I found out about it because I was curious as to whether the project has raised more money or gained new backers since it was announced that Anita was moving on to something else. It wouldn’t have surprised me if it did, but as it turns out, that wasn’t the case. The video that was posted was not on one of the topics in Anita’s outline for her campaign, so in that regard, the video didn’t do anything to give her backers what they paid for.

It’s obvious that the reason she posts videos for backers only is because she’s far more sensitive to criticism than she lets on. Criticism (which Anita mistakes for “harassment”) is a normal and natural part of the experience of  publishing content on the internet, and is to be expected when what is produced is of inferior quality. Anita is taking measures to hide her content from her critics because she can’t take it anywhere close to how well she dishes it out (though she’s not very good at that, either).