evensong

Got a source for this? Can't find anything with reverse google image search.

That's awesome, congratulations! Today I wallowed in self pity and read about cancer for about ten hours. I have an exam tomorrow and I have more or less resigned myself to the fact that at this point, it's out of my hands. If I don't know it by now, I'm ****ed, so I'm in bed watching TV and internetting. As a subject, pathology really ****s with your head. I caught myself thinking "well, 60% five year survival rate isn't THAT bad" and then realised that no, actually, it's a ****ing dreadful prognosis. Don't get cancer, guys. And especially don't smoke. That **** gives you basically every cancer. Even bladder cancer! How does that even work? I don't know!

Well, Disney being cartoonishly evil isn't exactly a new thing.

Right, see my previous point about "a rose by any other name" - make it the exclusive definition of racism or consider it systemic or subconscious forms of racism, either way, the systemic discrimination doesn't disappear! I actually kind of agree that it's silly pretending you can't be racist against white people: a lone white kid at a school being bullied for being white is still subjected to racism. But it's incredibly important to also recognise that the racism he's experiencing is, to a large degree, a consequence of a larger systemic kind of racism, where poc and white people are, to a very large degree, geographically and socioeconomically segregated as a result of many, many variables - historical, biological, sociological and so on. Just like defining racism as prejudice+power is convenient for those who want to pretend you can't be racist against white people, defining racism exclusively as the Klansman variety is highly convenient for those who use it to feel not-racist, even though it's pretty much indisputable that we all carry some degree of racial prejudice with us* - we're hard-wired to categorise ****, it helped us survive for thousands of years, and pretending we've somehow evolved past it despite clear socioeconomic indicators that we haven't is pretty silly. We can recognise our nature and work against it, or pretend it doesn't exist because it's convenient and benefits us. If we want to pretend that we're interested in creating a level playing field with equal opportunities for all, however, where we judge people by their character, we can't ignore this problem.

Also, why is he drinking a thimble-sized coke?

Well, amusing doesn't mean guffaw worthy, mind you. But what was off-colour about the jab, there ? Nothing especially wrong with it, it's just a really lazy and dumb joke. A person fulfils a stereotype? Yeah, you're hilarious.

Hopefully you survive the trauma. Was amusing and is a common dodge by those people on Twitter (can't expect much from that kind though ) I don't think I'll ever cease being amazed by what people find funny...

So instead of saying something useful or interesting, you opted for accusing people of ad hominem arguments through an ad hominem comic? It's five in the afternoon and it's still early for this ****.

Alright, I get you. I kinda disagree, though. Admittedly I haven't watched that much of A. Sarkeesian's videos, but I don't recall her ever saying that it doesn't influence behaviour - her deal is cultural criticism, and as far as I know she's never said that culture doesn't influence behaviour, neither explicitly nor implicitly. That would be a totally ridiculous thing to say. At least to my mind, there's a huge gulf between Jack Thompson's arguments (is he still around? I remember he was a big deal in like, 2006?) and Sarkeesian's. Thompson's arguments are/were explicitly about censoring and prohibiting the release of certain games, he claimed direct connections between playing games and real violence, as well as people using video games as "murder simulators" in which they practiced murdering people in real life. All these things are ridiculous claims, and not really on the same level as examining the cultural impact of video games. I've never heard Anita Sarkeesian explicitly call for prohibition of any games, and I would be surprised (and disappointed) if it turns out she has.

Well, yes, that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to explain how video games change the way we think, namely as part of our broader cultural tapestry. It affects both the way we think and, consequentially, how we act. Do you disagree that culture affects how we think and act? Edit: I guess I'm kinda struggling to understand what you're saying here, could you explain it briefly? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you here.

Also, Moby **** was about seamen.

I kinda disagree. Talking about "steps" seems weird to me when we're constantly steeped in our culture. We've never not been exposed to this stuff. There isn't a linear progression between watching a dumb thing on TV and adopting a dumb opinion, the program is just a drop in the cultural ocean, constant around us. Because of this I often think discussions about single instances of sexism or racism are more symbolic than constructive - we're missing the forest for the trees a lot of the time. It's much easier to talk about single crystallised aspects of our culture instead of looking at where it's coming from, but it's also a lot less useful. Talking about "mind control" is a ridiculous reduction of what's going on here. It seems common to think that anyone critiquing culture from a feminist/anti-racist point of view has in mind some pure, self-contained soul that gets corrupted by racist or sexist culture, and that we must purge our culture of anything that can taint this fragile core inside of us through censorship. That's not what anyone is trying to do, that would be insane, because that core doesn't exist. This is the point: Our minds are already controlled. Not by anyone in particular, but by the cultural influence of our society. That is our default state. There is no pure internal atom of reason. So this is the point of cultural critique: we are all affected by the culture that surrounds us, and figuring out how it affects us can tell us something about ourselves and our society. If we also have an idea of what we want our society to look like - we generally do, as most people prefer level playing fields and all that - it can also tell us something about where our culture is headed, and lets us talk about what we can do to influence it. An analogy: We can picture mind control as being pressganging. Cultural criticism is not about pressganging, it's about trying to explain that we are all already on a ship, and we can try to figure out collectively how the ship works and how to get it where we want to go. Of course, you could sit down on the deck and pretend you're on dry land. It'd probably a lot more comfortable, but you'd be deluding yourself.

Yeah that's a silly thing to say, I agree. It influences both. Culture influences the way we perceive the world, our perceptions inform our opinions, our opinions inform our actions. It has a real effect on the world and people around us.

It's not especially controversial in psychology today that everyone harbors some amount of racial prejudice, for the most part unconsciously. Some people are in a position where the cumulative societal prejudice works in their favour. Recognising that this gives them some measure of advantage, while giving disadvantage to others, doesn't seem that crazy to me. I guess defining "racism" as encompassing that idea exclusively seems a bit narrow, but a rose by any other name, right? Call it systemic racism if you want, it's still a real thing, it still works in our favour, and it still affects people in ways that make it ridiculous to claim society is currently a level playing field. If you disagree that white people are privileged at all: Here's a thought experiment. You're walking home from work late at night in New York. A police car rolls up and tells you to stop. In the interaction that follows, would you want to be black or white, or do you think it wouldn't matter?

Yeah, no, **** this bull****, especially the IP stuff. Restricting ability to shape individual country copyright laws, restriction of fair use, stronger patent laws for medicine... Not a fan, not at all.