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I read an interesting article about 40K Space Marines last year, the problem with them is that some people just don’t get satire no matter how glaringly obvious it is
Starship Troopers is so badass!
My dad legitimately thinks that’s a great action movie. And to be fair, it is.
But he doesn’t understand the deeper meanings.
More meat for the grinder is totally just a bad ass thing to say! Not at all like an orphan crushing machine, for sure.
“The mobile infantry made me the man I am today” shows off two missing legs and one missing arm
All the teachers are injured and in need of prosthetics and assisting devices, all of them served.
As Rico’s dad said, it should be illegal to use schools as recruiting centers.
And while they all need a prosthetic, none of them have one unless it specifically pertains to something that will benefit their military job.
The front desk guy needs 2 legs and an arm, but only has an arm and is in a wheel chair. The arm helps his job stamping new recruits in. The legs serve no purpose but to make his life better, but unnecessary for the job.
Ricos teacher needs an arm, but while he’s teaching, he doesn’t have one. Once he’s back on active duty, he’s allowed a prosthetic arm because it helps the Federation. He doesn’t require an arm to teach.
If it’s not required for your specific position, you don’t deserve to be made whole. It’s a pretty fucked up society overall, and not nearly enough people understand that the humans aren’t the good guys.
Not only are they not the good guys, the military started a fight where none existed in order to justify its existence.
Buenos Aires was 100% a false flag, there’s 0 chance bugs in any system other than this one could have, in less than ten thousand years, encountered humanity and started lobbing asteroids at them.
Even if they had the knowledge of where humanity is from, and the ability to target asteroids in order to reroute them, they simply don’t have the technology to speed an asteroid enough to be a threat to another planetary system.
The military hauled an asteroid to hit a human population center. 100%.
In the book there’s an additional interesting scene with Rico and the recruiter: Rico runs in to the recruiter as he’s leaving the office. The recruiter does actually have prosthetic legs, and he’s walking out the door. Rico asks why he didn’t have them on before. The recruiter explains that his job is actually to scare away recruits. He’s supposed to show potential recruits his missing legs as a consequence of his service. That way those that aren’t really serious about it, those who are doing it because it just seems like a cool idea, don’t go through with signing up. He then explains that the government doesn’t require him to be a living warning sign in his off-time, so he puts on his legs and goes about his life that way.
Yeah, but the film is a glaringly obvious satire of the society it depicts, the book isn’t.
Making the aliens actual bugs in the movie was a mistake and washes the rest of the critiques inside the movie away with it.
I really disagree. The aliens being insects is perfect because it provides a justaposition with the human characters. The idea is that the insects are a swarm of mindless drones. Meanwhile, the humans are…well, also a swarm of mindless drones. Which is sort of the point of the movie. The fascist society they inhabit actively dehumanizes them and robs them of their ability to think for themselves. The visuals of the film reinforce this in the larger fight scenes: the mass of gray bodies that constitute the human forces all blend together into a single swarm, much like that of the insects. And by the end of the movie Rico is completely hollowed out as a character: literally just inhabiting the same role as Rasczak, and even parroting all of his phrases from earlier in the film.
Wut?! How can someone not understand Starship Troopers is satire? What about all of the propaganda cut ins?!
There really is no limit to how dense some dipshits can be. Hell, there are even fascist Star Trek fans, despite the show beating them over the head with stuff like this all the time!
It’s just a glaring lack of critical thinking brought on by our (sometimes willingly) ignorant masses. Satire is dead in this country because we didn’t have the capacity to comprehend it.
This country of Lemmy?
Is my American-centrism showing? My bad, but the majority of this problem is from here unfortunately.
I really blame the games industry as a whole for this. They keep making games with Space Marines as the protagonists, where their violence is presented as justified, when a lore-friendly space marine game should be like “No Russian” missions all the time and the resulting failure this causes to their Empire. This constant “whitewashing” of the lore, is what has attracted a ton of people.
I would LOVE to see a WH40k setting where the space marines are lore-accurate murdering an entire multi-billion hive-city for some minor heresy by a few thousand of the people on the 925th-sub-basement, and you’re playing random ganger Scumface Mc Spikearms who’s just trying to survive.
Apropos , the Necromunda video game was such a disappointment :(
yeah, agreed. But Rogue Trader was remarkably on brand.
There were a LOT of parts where you basically had to decide the life and death of tens to hundreds of thousands. And often, the ethical thing was NOT the in-game right choice. For example, you could allow refugees aboard, it gets you nothing, but some of them will try to sabotage you. If you kill them all, you even get piety points for killing (some) heretics.
I recall one of the developer replying to a comment that said “If I’m evil, I get cool items, if I’m good, I get nothing, why is that?” and they replied with “If you’re doing it for a rewards, you’re not really being good, are you now?”
“If you’re doing it for a rewards, you’re not really being good, are you now?”
This is moon logic. Yes, that’s how it works in the real world, but you aren’t in the real world. You’re playing a game.
You do in fact score points in the “people love me” stats if you do things like that. But the “people love me” path is far less powerful than the either of the “Religious fundamentalists love me” paths.
So a WH40K/Spec-Ops: The Line mashup.
The Line was an anti-shooter, in the sense that it felt like a generic third-person shooter while constantly hammering the “you shouldn’t be having fun playing this because war is awful and full of atrocities” messaging. It was actually a fairly decent critique of the shooters that were prevalent when the game was developed. It came out when games like Gears of War, Resident Evil, Mass Effect, and Red Dead Redemption were dominating the third-person shooter market, while the FPS market was dominated by Halo and COD.
Eh, I feel the message of Spec Ops was really sabotaged by the poor in-game systems.
There’s a mission where you have to defend a point, and you get the option to drop white phosphorus. But that mission is really easy, and you can easily play it for hours and hours, killing an infinite number of enemies. It doesn’t progress without pushing the button.
And then it berates you, the player, for pushing the button.
This feels really weird to me. I can see the point in the distance, but it really doesn’t work for me, since you can obviously just murder people till eternity as well.
And the game has several hidden “better ways”, like shooting the rope at the hanging, where it will reward you for doing it better. But it doesn’t have that option elsewhere, like the white phosphorus option.
Honestly, there’s a big disconnect between some of the scenes, and the heavyhanded message.
Contrast it with “no Russian”, which is a map that’s offered with zero commentary, letting you shoot unarmed civilians, but not punishing you at all if you don’t. And no matter what you do, the end result is the same. That’s a system that fits with everything in the game, it doesn’t have to swing a message in your face, and it doesn’t have to break with normal gameplay to insert elements required for the message.
See, I always thought this comparison falls flat, because No Russian and Spec Ops both give you the same amount of choice - either you complete the mission or not - and both give you no alternative way to proceed and no way to prevent it other than close the game. That Spec Ops makes you push buttons for the bad thing to happen rather than allow you to chicken out and be a passive rather than active participant is a point in it’s favour.
Yeah, this was on full display when Helldivers 2 launched. So many people just didn’t get the satire, and unironically leaned into the messaging.
For the unaware, Helldivers 2 is basically a Starship Troopers video game.
Starship Troopers the book was flat out propaganda. It’s only the movie that is satire.
The book is an exploration of and presents an argument for militarism. That alone doesn’t make it propaganda. While many of the sentiments, implications, premises in the book carry a clear bias, the book nevertheless invites the reader to engage with and reflect on the ideology rather than aiming to manipulate and indoctrinate the reader.
I’d say the earnest argument presented by Heinlein in ST is flawed and morally objectionable, but not a piece of propaganda.
So the book presents an argument for and has a bias towards militarism, but it’s not propaganda? Are you also going to tell me that Atlas Shrugged invites the reader to explore whether capitalism is good or not? Hard disagree.
I mean… yeah? I don’t agree with it, but I feel like its to detailed and nuanced to be merely propaganda. Propaganda would be shit like the Red Dawn remake or almost any movie involving the US military that tends to be to shallow to be anything but propaganda.
Does programming count as a hobby? I waste my free time on it… There’s this funny stereotype, of a queer programmer with long, quirky socks, and maybe even a fursona. Despite being a small percentage, such types are often overrepresented online. It used to bother me a little.
Nowadays I’m so, so glad when someone I’m talking to is part of that group. It usually means I don’t need to worry about them being weirdly sexist, like women don’t suffer enough in STEM already, or insisting that we need to keep politics out of tech (i.e. they want their politics to rule, unquestioned).
(Need something more tangible? Look no further than uncle bob (skip to the bottom). I’ve seen his books in classrooms, in the office, and let’s not speak of online mentions. This is a relatively well-known, respected name in the industry. If you get to know people, you will meet many, many uncle bobs out there.)
Silly feelings on my part? Perhaps. One less thing to worry about, though.
It’s wild how on the orange website I can read entirely sensible discussions about tricky Bash semantics or whatever, while people in a parallel thread are seriously arguing the Trump admin’s repressions are dwarfed by… whatever “repressions” they think happened during Covid. And I don’t even click on the threads about disabilities (especially autism) anymore because it’s so predictably sad.
As someone who casually enjoys 40K, it has a tendency to attract some of the most rancid people. OSR has this problem too sometimes, but its not nearly as bad as 40k. And the general RC hobby. Part of the reason i don’t fly fpv drones as much as I’d like too, can’t stand the chuds at the airfield I’ve never met a more unhappy group of people, and they don’t even fly anything there either!
I am interested in survivalism but it seems like most survivalists are a bunch of god-fearing crazy racist motherfuckers.
Bushcrafting content has a fine line when it pushes over into doomsday prepper. I can get the ideas of having a bit of food/water stocked up for a normal emergency. But if you are preparing industrial quantities of things to survive for years in a bunker you should seek help.
“prepper” vs “Prepper” with a capital “P”.
The first learns and practices actual useful skills – gardening, food preservation, repairing their own things, etc. The later are dorks buying a ton of unnecessary shit shilled by right-wing influencers cosplaying as “entirely self-sufficient”.
Gardening, sewing, soldering, and communication are the most important doomsday skills
I remember when survivalists were predominately hippie types who feared a right-wing generated apocalypse - like corporatism collapsing the economy, or warmongers starting WW3. The back-to-nature ones learned self-sufficient organic farming, the tech ones bought nitrogen-filled plastic bins of grain, and they all grew weed. Then when rednecks joined the club it became more about homemade ammunition and defending the perimeter.
I think hippie ‘survivalist’ material can be foundbunder ‘homesteading’ more easily. Still a portion of exclusionary-supremacists and superstitious-dogmatics, but somewhat fewer in my experience. More sustainable growing techniques, with the guns chapter further back in the book. More mutual aid networking, less barrel frotting.
Whenever right-wingers show the slightest interest in anything the left-wingers flee with their tails between their legs.
left tends to be pro-social for solutions, right tends to be pro-violence for solutions, so… yeah…
Sadly there’s some truth to that. Moral perfectionism is so common among liberals, publicly expressing your interests can be a minefield.
Man, I was really invested in that in like 2016 but in 2018 was the election of Bolsonaro. Some time before, during the election and until now every fucking content creator or community around this hobby became a cesspool of right wing dickheads worshipping this fascist.
As someone from a small town in the pacific northwest, it feels like they always have been. It was just a case of the quiet part not being said out loud or them masking it enough those with lower exposure didn’t see it.
I drive a pickup, grew up hunting and fishing and I’m tall, pretty thick, tattooed all to hell and bearded… the amount of “hell yeah brother” followed by some vial, racist, homo/transphobic shit I have said to me is staggering. The moment of pushback has become a high for me. I’m almost baiting them from a conversation about tree stands and elk piss formulas into some fucked statement about trans athlete’s just too feel something.
That said, it isn’t all of us so I don’t want to gate keep survivalism and general outdoorsiness. Always willing to teach a flytie, how to dig a shit hole and the easiest way to catch water with a tarp.
Same boat here (PNW big bearded dude). I actually got handed a 'White Pride’s card last week. Before I had the full beard nobody ever said racists shit to me unless it was accusatory. Now they think I’m on their side.
Doesn’t help that I’m into survivalism, permaculture, and off-grid living. I’m constantly fighting the algorithm that wants to feed me ultra conservative bullshit.
The algorithm is insane for that crap. I’m in a band with a bunch of other 40 something dudes and the shit they get in their feeds is wild. I’m too paranoid to raw dog the Internet or have conventional social media so I miss most of the hateful crap. The screen shots they share in the group chat are wild.
One of the guys owns a roofing business and that’s likely the most toxic feed I’ve seen. Its a miracle he isn’t fully maga-activated.
What’s funny is that while Vikings are mostly remembered for their warrior culture, their success as a diaspora came more from their merchant and sailing culture. THEY were the ‘immigrants.’
I used to enjoy conspiracy theories, because I thought it would be cool if they were true.
Things like cryptids, aliens, etc…
But now all the conspiracy groups are filled with stupid right-wing science deniers.Same. I have always loved it as a fictional genre, and as a fun sort of “what if” form of escapism for life in general. We’ve pretty much taken all the mystery out of the world, so that kind of stuff filled that void for me for a long time. But then it turned into a pipeline to recruit people into right-wing paranoia, and now I can’t really enjoy it anymore.
I’ve had so many conversations come to a grinding halt while doing RC stuff, because I realize the person is not only veering the conversation to intentionally toward certain topics, they’re expressing right-wing opinions or shoving religion in my face. I’ve left RC events because they opened with a prayer, or because I’ve seen too many red hats in the crowd.
I’m sure it’s also because of the state I live in, but it’s a little disheartening to see so many people in my hobby who would gladly stone me to death in the street once the government allows it.
Also weirdly mountain biking has me fucking confused. So many magats on my trails, and it was my impression that cycling in general wasn’t as popular amongst the “anti-woke” crowd. Along with other things they view as a threat to their big metal death boxes that run on dead Dino and plant juices.
Lastly, blacksmithing. I do mostly bladesmithing, but like to try all aspects of it. This hobby is rampant with right-wing nut jobs and I’ve stopped watching MANY content creators over the years because they started making personal vlog style videos when Biden got elected bitching about how awful and hard it is to be a straight white male in America.
also target shooting but that’s a hot topic no matter which way you look, but here’s a reminder that armed minorities are harder to oppress
never partake of inebriating substances no matter what type while handling a firearm in any capacity. I’ve seen too many people at an outdoor range with a beer can beside them. This should get you banned from the premesis.
Warhammer 40k. I like to paint little green guys and then move them around a battlefield.
A good half of the poeple in this hobby are almost entirely irredeemable
You’re the third top level comment to say 40k but no one has explained what type of people are attracted to this hobby?
Neo-nazis for whom the satire of the setting is completely lost. Also a fair mix of incels, racists, and all around bigots
Blacksmithing/bladesmithing.
I spent must of my youth fascinated by knives, still am, and this got me into classical metal working. By the time I was 18 I had built a pretty decent working forge in my mom’s backyard.
Shortly after 9/11 I took a week long class in bladesmithing in Arkansas. Outside of Blade Forums and the occasional knife show, I’d never really interacted with other knife people. Not a whole lot going on in my large northern city.
The way those bastards talked openly about anyone that wasn’t white or Christian turned my stomach. I pretty much kept to myself, it hung out with the one chill hippy from Oregon, or the eternally gob-struck British blacksmiths apprentice (You sell GUNS in a GROCERY STORE?!)
I learned a lot on that trip. Nowadays I don’t bring up my knife hobby because I sure as shit don’t want to be mistaken for one of those ignorant cretins.
I’m a white, Christian, male firearms enthusiast from Texas.
That’s a tough combination when I’m also extremely leftist.
Why only a “male firearms enthusiast”, what about the female firearms? Maybe your not as big of a leftist as you thought.
One’s sex is not a political stance…
It’s an Oxford comma joke. The way it’s structured reads like “male-firearms” enthusiast, as in an enthusiast of “male firearms”.
I think Christian Leftists are based and cool, you’re basically THE Christians who care about what Christ actually wanted for us, but also because you’re on the Left you run into r/Atheist type chuds all the time, meaning you work with people who are hostile to you because you know that it’s the right thing to do.
That’s pretty based and cool.
I’m not Christian myself, I learn more Buddhist in my spirituality, and even then I’m more agnostic on my ideas about God, but there’s a lot I legitimately respect about the faith.
Try being a Warhammer 40k enjoyer. Some people forget that humanity are STILL BAD GUYS in 40k.
People who like Rick and Morty.
People who look up to Rick.
People who like American Psycho because it is a brilliant satire of the sociopathy of the elite.
vs
People who like American Psycho because ‘I’m just like Patrick Bateman, fr fr.’
…
Its the same with Fight Club, Falling Down, Taxi Driver…
Its possible to enjoy and be a fan of these movies without actually idolizing a psycopath… maybe you sympathize or empathize with them to varying degrees, but you don’t hold them up as idealized character role models, you realize these are all very flawed, often tragic characters who … basically become villains in (semi?) plausible ways, that showcase how brutal and broken society is…
But, so many people do actually idolize these trainwreck characters that now we’ve spent basically the entire era of internet based cultural dominance/exchange where any kind of admiration of these ‘cautionary morality tale about a disaffected man’ type movies is just immediately, often instantly viewed as a red flag by a whole lot of people.
Rick and Morty bangs and had some subtle anti-capitalist elements to it.
But yeah Rick is a nihilist with severe empathy problems. Although he is showing some very minor character development.
Honestly all the characters in that show suck. Except that one girl morty time-looped himself out of marrying. She seemed normal.
Oh and Planetina. There is only one solution to earth’s pollution.
I’ve only seen a few episodes, but isn’t that part of the joke of the show?
Weirdly, I haven’t seen a lot of people who think The Gang in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia are cool role models. I guess the difference might be that Rick is canonically a genius where The Gang are canonically morons.
I feel this - I really like Norse mythology and I’m super pissed that it has been stolen by racist shitheads.
Modern day Asatru practitioners of good firth have to run constant vigilance against supremicists creeping in. Some folks make it in to good groups from cruel groups and have trauma to work out from being around that vitriolic perspective.
A lot of the effective work comes down to actively communicating openness and inclusion for practitioners from all backgrounds that are willing to do same.
IOW Norse pantheon worshipers talking and walking as equal and allied with POC and queer folks all the time makes the right jerks uncomfortable.
Oh, you play video games…?
That could be literally anyone these days, though. My mom plays video games.
I know but unfortunately moms can be racist, too.
Yeah, but at that point it’s not a red flag anymore. If everyone plays video games, it doesn’t have predictive value anymore until you get into specifics genres or even specific games/franchises.
But…Isn’t that the whole point of this post…? Playing video games doesn’t mean you’re a shitty person but there’s enough shitty people into the hobby that you need to get clarification? Why phrase it that way when we’re making the same point?
It’s silly to blame “gamers” when gamers encompasses potentially the entire planet with every belief.
Blame conservatives who happen to be gamers. It’s the same fucking people, every time.
Not as bad, but people interested in Ancient Greece / Rome / classical studies tend to be somewhat conservative. It’s (to some extent) the only part of academia which is overtly conservative.
But yeah, you can do a lot worse, that’s relatively mild
Really? With all the gay sex?
The Roman empire is the first reich according to Nazis
So it is also the first red flag
Holy Roman Empire is the first Reich. That however was a medieval Empire, which was holy, so the pope can fuck off, Roman as in someties doing some Rome Larps and actually an Empire.
