Why Nerds Joined the Alt-Right
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video essay I argue that because of the mainstreaming of once ‘nerdy’ subcultures during the early 2000s, cis het white male nerds, who tied their entire ‘oppressed’ identity to their geeky niche interests, were especially vulnerable to alt-right political ideology, as the properties they knew and loved came under widespread scrutiny.
And how once everyone was a self proclaimed nerd, no one was.
Timestamps:
Content Note 0:00
Intro and Thesis 0:14
Part 1: What is a Nerd? 1:13
Part 2: The Plight of the White Male Nerd 8:18
Part 3: Mainstreaming of Nerd Culture and the Loss of the Nerd Identity 13:19
Part 4: The Nerd to Fascist Pipeline 17:50
Conclusion 28:53
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Videos Mentioned:
Innuendo Studios - How to Radicalize a Normie
• The Alt-Right Playbook...
Innuendo Studios - The Alt-Right Playbook
• The Alt-Right Playbook...
Non Compete - The Pewdie Pipeline
• The PewDiePipeline: ho...
Sarah Z - The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture
• The Rise and Fall of G...
--- ---
Music (in order they appear):
all music is from the TH-cam Audio Library
Prelude No. 4 - Chris Zabriskie
• Prelude No. 4 - Chris ...
Comfortable Mystery 2 - Film Noire - Kevin MacLeod
• Comfortable Mystery 2 ... - บันเทิง
As a nerdy black man I always found it strange how some nerds would embrace the same mean spirited, holier than thou elitism and brutality that our bullies gave us. You think their experience as nerds would make them more empathetic
i think some of them see it as a way to band together and hurt them back but worse. some i know are somewhere on the spectrum and just like things to be very orderly and for people to follow rules. its annoying that they even entertain the idea of facism. but thankfully im there to keep pulling them back to reality. also to be fair to the people im referencing they come from very conservative and strict parents who are all very devote in their belief that god is real. so they really are not falling far from the tree when it comes to thinking authoritarian leadership is okay. they worship a single god after all. but yeah it is weird to see these same people who were bullied to the point some had to fight back chose to support groups and ideals that are just terrible.
these are just my experiences with my friends and acquaintances over the years and is by no means indicative of everyone else. i too am on the spectrum but my intolerance of injustice took me a different way. its interesting how we can take different paths (but that might be why i was the one actually fighting people or standing up to bullies if they hurt my friends)
It's like a twist on that old Paulo Freire quote, _When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor._
Rather than developing empathy and building community with their fellow downtrodden, they just want to be the Bully.
If I remember anything from school, many bullies were bullied themselves.
The "gatekeeping" is a "trauma check". Someone entering into a nerds safe space without having "paid and entry fee in trauma and ridicule" is someone that might trash the only thing a nerd has to define themselves.
Love how alt left don’t think they’re fascist, alt right is completely different, also love how women never realize incels are created by them, hating men thinking that won’t affect men, imaging being bullied and then suddenly your fan anime is popular because women cosplay half naked
As a nerdy Black woman that’s really into anime and video games, I only share my passions with and join spaces that are dominated by people of color and women. I’m on a discord sever for Black women who love video games and it’s the only server where I haven’t seen or been called a slur.
Thats so sad that its even a possibility to be slurred esp in a space that ure supposed to feel welcome in, im so sorry that happened i hope the fandom space will become less rancid and hostile towards marginalised people and i hope ure doing good
That’s something I want to do more often. As a queer woman of color, I know that any time I engage with a male colleague about anime they will say something sexist or homophobic/transphobic without fail.
Not a woc, but I’ve been “exotified” by nerdy men enough times and always unsolicited that I just DON’T feel safe in nerd/geek spaces that aren’t a pretty wide range of ethnicities/racial identities/cultures and queer identities, and about a 50/45/5 mix of women/other gender identities/cismen-basically, no one group is a majority, but it’s certainly NOT cichet white folk and DEFINITELY NOT cichet men.
Which leaves 97.89% of my true social interaction online after vetting people out as “safe for me/safe for others (and therefore gently continuing to debug biases I’ve been raised with)
I love that we’re in a time where we can just make our own spaces and enjoy things peacefully with other people who are like us. It shouldn’t have to be like that. But I’m relieved that we have that option.
It feels like such a modern revelation to me these spaces even exist. I was very much the oddity at my school curled up in my own little corner reading some nerdy thing and was picked on, teased, and abused by other black kids (there were only black kids in my school) and then I figured out I was queer too (late bloomer in all things). In college I actually met my first fellow geeks, all white dudes and while I felt i could share my geekiness with them, I hid my queerness. Then I tried to explore my queer side, where I was the big dork again and found myself hiding my geekyness. Whenever I met a person of color or woman or fellow LGBTQ+ person who enjoyed the same geeky persuits, I felt like I found a unicorn. I was too poor to ever go to conventions, so it was random luck when I connected with fellow geeks. Now i feel the interwebs have really shown me there is so much diversity in Geekdom.
I shared a table with a guy in middle school who brought a backpack full of comics to class everyday (it was a multimedia class so it wasn't structured). I thought he was awkward and didn't talk to him for a quarter of the year. Then he noticed me glancing at one of his comic one day and asked if I would like to read it. He was so excited to tell me what it's about, the characters, and the wider universe. He would bring more of the series the next day and share it with me. Eventually, the other 3 people at our table also joined in and we were all just reading comics together.
This video made me think of him for the first time in years. I don't even remember his name let alone know what happened to him. I just really hope that he was still the same person he was in middle school, and that he wasn't sucked into these righ-wing rabbit hole of hate. It's a shame how White Supremacy, Capitalism, and Patriarchy can warp people. The world would be so much better if people were more excited to share space and resource rather than hoard them and try to be superior.
This is so wholesome
This type of comment is what makes the comment section a mine of diamonds.
There *is* a whole family of ideologies that also believe that the world would share space, resources, and blessings with eachother...
It's called Socialism ✊️🚩
@@AG-AG All neat concepts, but the real meat & potatoes lies in the execution.
Sharing such resources and spaces is something we're all going to have to learn to do on our own terms.
My favorite is being told by gamers I'm invading "their" space: by men who were born 20 years after I started gaming. Playing Atari with my friends and NES with my dad and brother back then didn't make me a ”girl gamer,” it just made me a kid. Cutting homeroom to play Duke Nukem with my friends did make me a bit different, though. :) Especially since we had to pretend we were "fixing" the school's computers to get out of class. We rebooted or plugged it back in then had fun until the bell.
Best of all was the Mortal Kombat machine in my dorm lounge. I used to play against this one dude who I ended up dating. Then marrying. We still game together (with my brother), and the graphics are so much better!
Guys will read this and think "Hell yeah".
❤
Love how alt left don’t think they’re fascist, alt right is completely different, also love how women never realize incels are created by them, hating men thinking that won’t affect men, imaging being bullied and then suddenly your fan anime is popular because women cosplay half naked
This is coming from women who in the 80s and 90s were pissing on the same guys as "losers" and "nerds". Now that it is popular suddenly u all want in and we should welcoem u?
Sod off !
I think we know you’re a trans woman and you married your brother
Words can't even begin to describe how hard I rolled my eyes at "Nerd blackface" .
Right lmao like Im a self proclaimed nerd/geek or whatever but “nerd oppression” is no where near comparable to racism
i've literally used those words when i was younger, and i am for real cringing at my past self for that
Fr not the equating systematic oppression to getting bullied in school for ur interests as is if its comparable 😭
I wonder which subset of the nerdbase came up with that term...
eyes rolled so hard they almost pop out of your skull? been there
having been beaten up for these weird interests growing up, the desire to gatekeep feels intensified, like "this is special and mine, because i suffered for it, you dont get it for free"
its a weird, warped sense of belonging im glad im getting rid of, theres joy in sharing the things that make us happy
Correct, until you hear the word "problematic " at least twice a game session. I'd say these people should start their own game night....but no one would show up. And in the words of Tolkien "evil cannot create, only corrupt"
I wish you luck on your journey. Imo the most important thing is always keeping in mind consent and intent. Your intent matters, but so does the consent and approval of everyone else at the table. Both matter equally always. Always intend well, and always be mindful of the mindset of those around you, their experiences, traumas, joys, etc, to know how your actions will impact them to best carry out your intent.
They will respect your past as long as you respect theirs, and hopefully you can keep that gate sacred while also welcoming new people through it. Turn gatekeeping into a proud occupation, where you welcome those who wish to pass through while sharing your knowledge of the wonders beyond.
Love how alt left don’t think they’re fascist, alt right is completely different, also love how women never realize incels are created by them, hating men thinking that won’t affect men, imaging being bullied and then suddenly your fan anime is popular because women cosplay half naked
Don’t do this please
Don’t gatekeep it’s fucking weird
Can we have a little gatekeeping? As a treat?
I never thought about how whenever I think of “nerds” I usually picture an annoying white dude yelling about minorities on a show/movie. Despite my friend ground being a diverse group of nerds. I remember trying to look at reviews for this niche magical girl Japanese game and seeing a bunch of videos about how “the Japanese are going woke” in regards to one of the game devs saying they want to cut some fan service from the game to advertise to a larger audience. 😭 looking at all the comments agreeing with the video was jarring. It was kinda like a secret side of the internet I’ve never seen before.
This happens so much in the anime game space.... its hard to wanna keep playing then when any adjustment for a wider audience is attacked as censorship and wokeness...
Off-topic, but can you tell me what the magical girl game was? Was it the Blue Reflection series? I'm just asking because I love magical girls!
I love when they blame "woke localizers" as if its not in the original game. My favorite example is in ai the somnium files a scene where they talked about the lgbt community and people were like "this game was ruined by localization" but when you turn on japanese audio the line literally has LGBT in it. an english speaker with zero knowledge of japanese could hear the girl say lgbt in japanese.
@@Silvermoon424 how’d you know 😭😭😭 I was only looking into it cause it had yuri as well so I was like hmmm interesting
Unfortunately Japan is going woke. In a very slow pace but it's still depressing
thank you for calling out how racist fandom is. for so long ppl didn't say anything and im glad ppl started speaking up.
also, your drawings are so cute 💙
I was extremely shocked at how "nerd" communities (doll, film, cosplay, anime, gaming, etc. ) were filled with weirdos.
The commercialization of nerd culture has truly brought out people's demons.
@@lauren6509 frs
I love your videos!
Love your channel! I legit stopped consuming Korean media because of all the racism.
AH it's Harriyanna!! I've learned so much about the intersextionality of various fan communities from her channel!
But yeahhh that commercialisation of nerdiness seemed to also invite the exclusionary and oppressive parts of commercial interest too; the pandering to status quos, the tolerating intolerance to keep people buying, fanning the egos of the most privileged members who can give corporate the most money. The efforts of various movements are improving the corporate acceptance of more intersectionality, but there's always a mob of people complaining about little steps towards representation.
When everyone's a self-proclaimed nerd.. *insert Syndrome's laughter* no one will be
best comment here
Ikr, idk why some people still act like watching Marvel and DC movies and watching anime/reading manga is still an underground thing that makes you special or whatever; because both the superhero genre and anime/manga is a very mainstream (and dare I say "Normie") thing nowadays.
As someone who is not too into superhero genre or anime that much, I still remember watching a lot of superhero cartoon when I was younger along with the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. And I remember catching some episodes of Pokemon when I was younger along with watching Ponyo and The Secret World of Arrietty.
I feel syndrome and tai lung would be best friends. Sitting in a bar saying. I don't feel appreciated! I did all the work. And what did you say to me?
"go home buddy"
" go home buddy"
Worth noting that the original fascists (as in the italian aristocrats who founded the ideology) were also basically failson shutins convinced of their own inherent superiority over everyone else. Lack of sincere emotional connection is a very good predictor for violent extremism
How do you know that? The first fascists were italian soldiers who fought and were radicalized in the first world war. You could hardly call them shutins.
@@prikkeldraad7112 these soldiers are the people who installed Fascism for their overlords, not the overlords themselves.
@@KratomFlavoredAdidas Have you ever read a book about italian fascism? I literally graduated on the history of fascism, and no, fascism's origin as produced by disgruntled and vengeful soldiers is the one thing historians agree about. Over 90 percent of the founders of Italian fascism themselves fought in WWI, including most of its leaders such as Mussolini, Danunzio, Bianchi, Giunta, Davazanti all fought in the war. It may give you some emotional satisfaction to call them shutins and losers, but it is no more than historical misinformation. Read Stanley Payne's A History of Fascism. And if I somehow missed it, give me evidence rather than statements.
@@prikkeldraad7112 i once met a historian who insisted that the original italian fascists were futurists first and foremost, that the anti-intellectualism and traditionalism were merely smokescreens to appeal to rural voters. it was part of a rant of his, on how he thought george orwell did a better job than umberto eco at detecting proto-fascism
Makes sense. Who else has the time + resources to stew in their own bitterness long enough to make an ideology-casserole? Marginalized folks are BUSY.
I’ve always found it odd that Whenever some channel screams how a bad movie or tv show has gone “woke” they always seem to be blaming the group of people the show has represented inaccurately rather than the bad script or other factors but no it’s always the fault of someone wanting diversity.
It's projection. These people don't actually care about stereotypes, they are racist themselves.
It's because they are children, wanting to ban who are different than they look
@@falconeshield No. This is completely inaccurate. The youtubers (at least the ones that I watch) denounce not only their character's distinct appearances, but also other flaws in the movies, such as poor quality and a mediocre plot. But of course, all of you just interpret it as "mUH WacISM!!1!"
@@JotaInu then why do the same channels embrace things like bane being white when he was South American in the comics it’s pick and choose with them
@@Yo1297 Odd, considering that I've never seen anyone defend that before.
I am a female nerd and I almost went down the alt-right pipeline. It happened around the Syrrian refugee crisis when my male nerd friends were preparing to shun me for defending the refugees, and I was shown Sargon of Akkad and crap like that. I stayed for a while out of fear of losing my peer group, but left it all when I started to see just how insanely bigoted all these people were, and I having internalised sexism so was quick to lick the boots of my male betters.
Congratulations on getting yourself out of there, it can’t have been easy
I'm glad you got out! You can't see the forest from the trees, so the fact you managed to see it for what it was before it was too late is impressive.
You’re a very strong person to disassociate yourself with toxic people like that.
Pretty disgusting post considering the women victimized during that crisis, you're just spitting on their graves right now to morally grandstand for your own religious beliefs.
Sometimes you need to back away and reconsider your associations, and that's hard to do, especially for people who don't know if they'll fit in anywhere else. Layer on further marginalization by sexism, racism, etc, and it can be a real mess. I'll live and die grateful for my philosophy prof, who spent three years pointing out my shit habits and reactions as a pale dude.
Just think how poorly Revenge of the Nerds circa 1984 aged.
I watched that movie for the first time a few months ago and I was so disgusted by the behaviour that was passedoff as romantic... yikes
Hence why I don't want to watch that film-the incellyness will trigger me!
That movie gives off hentai vibes…and shouldn’t of ever been made.
Another movie I go out of my way to avoid.
One word. Porky's
A lot of fandoms and communities have become so toxic I no longer can associate with them. It can be really isolating
We need a fandom for people that dont associate with fandoms because other people are toxic
I know what you mean. I can’t participate in any fandom without at least one person making a toxic remark.
@@suburbantimewaster9620 Same, especially if the creator is a facist to cough cough Vivziepop
@@Mrcleanfrfr I looked her up and isn’t she the creator of Hazbin Hotel, which had a lesbian couple? Not accusing you of lying but I’m curious. Has she recently done something to prove she’s alt-right?
If you study groups and movements throughout human history you’ll see this is a common theme. That’s because in those things the leadership let power get to their heads and get a god complex. The followers are constantly looking for validation and trying to earn brownie points to get higher up on the totem pole and be in favor with leadership.
That’s why I’m not enthused to be part of a movement or group.
This video makes me think a lot about Harriyanna Hook's content, which primarily critiques misogynoir in Fandom and media, thank you for furthering this discussion in your video
Same here, Harriyanna Hook actually made a comment on this video agreeing with the same thing you said
Love how alt left don’t think they’re fascist, alt right is completely different, also love how women never realize incels are created by them, hating men thinking that won’t affect men, imaging being bullied and then suddenly your fan anime is popular because women cosplay half naked
I want to find it, but youtube comments suck so much now for finding comments.@@mysticalquilava
I've always found it ironic that Star Wars has some of the most toxic fans when many of the movies feature themes about people from diverse background coming together to defeat a totalitarian regime. Even some "fans" within the Tolkien fandom moved toward more extreme ideologies and have said some really worrying and racist things about the diversity in the "Rings of Power." Despite my love for manga and high-fantasy when I was younger, I have sadly moved away form the wider world of fandom as I just do not feel comfortable in some of these spaces anymore. I hate being told I'm stupid for loving certain shows or characters the "geek overlords" deem below them. I also love playing sports as well and am tired of some rich white-male geeks saying that I'm a just a "fake geek woman."
Conservatives are famously incapable of media analysis. Full Metal Jacket is notorious for driving military registration, and American History X is very popular with neo nazis
It's such a curse* on the show/film/whatever that draws those malevolent gazes from self-declared Fandom-randoms. Like, I'm iffy on Tolkien & I can't even tell if I'd enjoy Rings of Power bc the reviews are so skewed by the frothing-mouths so bothered by "woke" --- which appears to mean anything to anyone, from "just being polite" to a dawning full-blown communal utopia (which...I wish! Yes, please!) --- they scream about "politics" without acknowledging review-bombing before the thing is even released is being way more political than any show made under capitalism could be, & I can't even get a glimpse of the aesthetic or storytelling qualities to discern if I'd find it interesting.
* I'm dumb lol I just realized this is what they want --- to make it such an ordeal for the creators + audience that they never cast anyone other than dudes as the Main Character of any story that gets told, unless it's a story "for" a subgroup of the rest of us, in which case it'll get no budget or resources & will be segregated from Hero Stories, just off in a corner somewhere so the dudes don't have to look at us.
I know what you mean. I enjoyed Captain Marvel and can relate to the bad father, gaslighting and being ridiculed by people for my dreams. Every time I try to defend the movie, I get ridiculed and told there’s something wrong with me. Even when I point out the movie made a ton of money, there are still people making excuses for why. Yet Morbius, a movie that starred a white man and bombed, doesn’t get anywhere near as much hatred.
@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 I talked to someone on TH-cam about that and they had a theory that seems somewhat legit. She said that, when Hollywood makes a movie starring a woman or a minority, they take a chance on nobodies in the hopes that the movie will bomb so they can say people don’t want movies starring women or minorities. Which would explain why they not only released Black Widow during COVID but took a chance on premiere access. Brie Larson says that Hollywood needs to have women writing women and, for She-Hulk, they hired women who had never seen a law show while giving them an unreasonable deadline. Even though Captain Marvel made a ton of money in the box office, the Marvel suits are using Alt right anti-Captain Marvel videos to prove she’s not liked. That way the Hollywood executives can claim that it’s not that they don’t want to be more diverse, it’s that the people don’t want it. With Black Panther, they ended up hiring people who generally cared about what they were making. So that backfired on them.
I've never seen "Rings of Power" and don't plan to, but one thing I found really disturbing was when the dwarf princess character was released, and all these LotR reddit bros wouldn't stop whining about how awful it was that she didn't have a beard, because Tolkien dwarf women canonically have beards.
Honestly? There was no way they cared that much about whether or not the character had a beard. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy diverges in a number of ways from the books, and nobody ever complains about those. The dwarf princess in "Rings of Power" was portrayed by a Black woman, and "she doesn't have a beard" seemed like, well, a beard for them to complain about the show being diverse without having to look like racists or misogynists.
As a geek who happens to be a woman, this video really hit hard. The misogyny is getting out of control to the point where the trailer for The Marvels got flooded with hate comments and anyone who has something nice to say about it gets called a bot. Though they won't admit they're being misogynists and, when they're called out on it, they'll mention movies like Alien and Kill Bill to insist that they like women-led movies. What's worse is when women and people of color join in with the alt right fascism. Is there any chance you can make a video about that? I'd really love to see your thoughts about women and people of color joining in to discriminate against themselves. Even about how they use certain movies to try to prove to people that they're not racist or sexist.
How can you blame them? Every western movie and video game now is infected with the woke mind virus, it's all about virtue signaling, blackwashing every successful past movie because they can't be creative and invent new concepts, insulting women by taking away their character growth with feminist madness (eg Mulan), censorship everywhere which censors creativity (hence why manga now outsells the entire western comic industry). And after they do all that, they still cry that they are the victims and that there's misogyny, misogynoir, anti blackness, racism, bigotry and so on and so forth.
FACTS
I swear to god, if i have to hear from one white male who dropped out of film school, calling Kill Bill or Aliens as prime examples of "a strong female character" to justify their misogyny against other female-led works. It's interesting how they choose those movies, often directed by white men, that happened years ago and can't find any "good" female characters in recent movies
Blame that on disney and their constant hate for their fans, especially Male fans
@ihatepower 45 what do you mean Disney hates everyone. They're attempting to appeal to a group in the worst way possible and making everyone feel shit
@@ihatepower4580 Oh, like you don’t hate the women fans.
Yeah I like anime, some anime but I have long noticed that there's a lot of anti-blackness in the anime community.
Flashback to those tweets complaining about African characters in anime/manga because it ruined their escapism.
@@NIHIL_EGO Yikes!!!!!!!! 😬
I immediately thought about the time people drew one of the black Pokémon gym leaders as an ape during the release of Pokémon sword and shield just because people where excited about her design and cosplaying her /:
@@Andrea-rc1gz It's not even as if we didn't already had dark-skinned gym leaders already. Black and White had Lenora, X and Y had Grant...
There’s anti blackness in every country of the world….even black ones
I feel like "woke" is just being nice to people or caring about others at this point. Also a lot of these alt-right people call themselves "awake." So... is being awake good or bad to them?
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Gotta love the trainwreck when "get woke, go broke" meets "wake up, sheeple" 😂
@@emilyrln I’d also like to point out that Morbius was NOT woke but still went broke.
@@suburbantimewaster9620 the woke-broke correlation isn't as strong as they so desperately want it to be XD
out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone has tried to run numbers on that correlation-come up with some kind of wokeness rubric (e.g. has a female protag, has POCs, passes the Bechtel test, etc) and then plotted that against the financial return (ideally also somehow accounting for advertising, which would be hard since those numbers aren't released)… like, there could be science to be done here!
@@emilyrln Someone tried to calculate the money for the advertising of Black Widow to prove the movie failed yet didn’t calculate the money the movie made through premiere access. They also failed to see that Black Widow not only came out shortly after the pandemic but people had easy access to download the movie for free thanks to premiere access. Yet the movie still did better than Morbius, which had none of these things working against it. Sorry for mentioning Morbius again but it’s my go to when I want to prove that a movie can follow the standard comic book formula and still flop.
Will never forget talking to two white dudes about D&D and one of them randomly went, “Yeah well, we’ve liked D&D for a long time, since you’d get beat up for liking it. Before it was cool.” I said, “I’ve liked it since I was a kid, too.” After that, they immediately respected me more? In my head I was thinking _Damn I literally got the shit beat out of me for being disabled._
I dont understand why thats an issue?
@@GusOfTheDorks Because we were having an innocent conversation about D&D and then these dudes felt like they had more of a right to it than me due to what happened to them. I got my ass handed to me a few times in school so I completely sympathize with their experiences, but being a victim of bullying doesn’t make anyone more nerdy; it’s a weird thing to glorify the experience of bullying. You also never know who you’re speaking to. They said it to me like it was something that I, a young woman, could have never been through myself, meanwhile I got beat up in elementary school for being in special ed.
@@elfsongtavern Yeah, I still dont understand what the issue is. I think your getting very strangly fixated on the being beat up part. Tjey arrnt saying they like people who got beat up, they're saying they liked it a long time ago, back when there were reasons to discourage people from liking it.
Seemed like a simple innocent joke, I didnt even notice anything wrong with what they said, gatekeeping bullying is funny
This did not happen
Nerds are often protective of their works without being aware they're doing it. See Tolkien nerds and any alteration from the books (good and bad; the Balrogs, for instance, don't have wings in the books, and Faramir is a much nicer person).
Also, several people pointed out (around the time John Boyega was cast in the _Star Wars_ sequels) that the white reaction to the original _Star Wars_ trilogy was incredibly vitriolic, pointing out how the Empire were mostly white men and the rebels was a diverse alliance of people and species, so this kind of vitriol has existed for at least half a century. Fun!/s
Boomer conservatives: "We were racist about Star Wars _before_ it was cool!" 🙄
@@emilyrlnpointing out the bad guys were all white, and the good guys were diverse...yea man so racist
If you dont know what you're doing with Tolkien then don't fuckin touch it, it's a simple concept. Also Balrogs were described as being the vague shape of a man, twice the size of one and covered in shadow. Lots more than just the wings. Hardly any Tolkien nerd complains about this to any great deal because Peter jackson did something you progressives will never do, show respect for the source material
@@PattyOflan88and who's the judge of "knowing what you're doing with it?"
Is somebody making a change to the source material to fit a new medium somebody who "knows what they're doing with it?" Is somebody cutting out or reworking certain story elements for brevity somebody who "knows what they're doing?" Is somebody who intentionally drastically alters certain character arcs or personality traits to fit the broader themes of the story "somebody who knows what they're doing?" Is somebody using The source material to essentially criticize itself "somebody who knows what they're doing?"
To me, it seems like the determining factor of whether somebody "knows what they're doing" is a subjective decision on whether or not you personally like the decisions being made, which is far from objective.
Have you considered that maybe not everybody respects the source material in the same way that you do? Or perhaps that they don't respect the source material, and that that's just as valid an interpretation of the material?
Like, a great example is the starship troopers movie. The book itself is pretty well written, but it's absolutely batshit insane. You could probably do an accurate adaptation of the book, but you would fundamentally be missing that batshit insanity because it would just become a pretty stock standard sci-fi military movie. The unhinged beliefs of the author being expressed through the work is what makes starship troopers unique.
Instead of trying to adapt the surface level materials, Paul verhoeven decided to adapt the weird political ideology, one of the core defining traits of the book, and heighten it to the point of parody. Because guess what, in order to do a good parody, you have to fundamentally understand the source material.
Sometimes, the best way to respect a source material is by engaging it honestly and addressing its flaws. Instead of putting it on a pedestal, you just treat it as a story.
@@pennyforyourthots you're why fandoms need to gatekeep
As somebody who was on this pipeline years ago back in middle school as the loner kid who desperately wanted to be seen as an intellectual, the primary reason was that i felt inferior in every way to ppl around me and directed my insecurity towards minorities (particularly queer communities).
The main reason i feel that i got out of this hole before it became too deep is that somebody, who i initially felt a lot of hatred towards for making me feel insecure, befriended me and, for the first time, i felt like i had been genuinely seen for the first time in my life.
I wanna be able to do the same thing to ppl like middle school me and give them the opportunity to feel worthy of being valued as a person.
JUST ADMITTING THAT TO YOURSELF AND THE WORLD (COMMENT SECTION LOL) IS SUCH A HUGE STEP!!!! I'm personally glad for you, becuz trust me, THAT is an empty path. You could open up a program near your hometown, or create an app that focuses on that problem. You are going to change ppl's lives for the better!!..........................Just like your friend changed yours......
Good luck and Godspeed on this journey.
Yeah a lot of us have fallen into the alt right pipeline, I did too in middle school, just because of cool nazi edits that made me like them. A group of friends of mine also posted right wing memes.
If you told younger me I would be a leftist in 2024, he would call you a slur but here we are 😂
I still don't like this video though, I guess I'm sort of centrist then?
This whole convo also rings true for the Tim-Burton-outsider crowd. They’re much closer to the status quo than they perceive and have some of the same reactions when marginalized people show interest in things they like. Luckily they’re a smaller group and much less violent irl compared to nerds
This. The whole idea of an aesthetics from which Black people are excluded isnt as "edgy and radical" as they think it is. Old Burtonverse is another flavour of w. supremacy.
@@moustik31I missed this wtf happened here? Is it from the 90s?
@@falconeshieldHe doesn't want poc characters in his work unless it "calls for it". He even said the Brady Bunch becoming "politically correct" and diversifying the cast ruined the show for him 😬
Daily reminder: His best and most popular film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, barely actually involved Tim Burton as he was busy throughout most of its production.
I'm tired of people acting like he single handedly made that film, when really he just made the basic idea for the story and some other stuff here or there. The rest was left to his team.
Thank them for that movie, not Tim Burton.
@@beanpasteposts Based Tim Burton. Artists should be allowed to depict whatever they want however they want, except for illegal stuff. If a director wants a 100% white cast, he should be allowed to. If he wants a 100% black cast, same deal.
It's just shocking to me how certain fans of fantasy, Comic Books and Anime could hold so much anger and strife towards other groups of people. I mean, In so many series the common themes are fighting for peace, standing up against the forces of evil, getting along with others who are different, the struggles of a hero or heros who are judge by society just because they are different and so on. With all these themes and messages in basically some form or another in so many series, how can someone not pick up any of it? How can they not realise they are being the "bad guys" In all the stories they read? Are the only things they get out of these stories, flashy colors and cool fight scenes?
They see all those things, but they've totally flipped the script and made themselves to be the underdogs hated by a judgemental society, who must fight the faceless, conformist enemy. At least, when they're not just openly championing the villains.
Because the lead character is almost always a dude, and most importantly a white dude. He's the hero fighting for justice, so therefore what they do can't be wrong either, because they're the hero.
@@TheGrayMysteriouswell not really. While yes there are people in the "cis white het male nerd community" that are straight up against other genders and races that is not the reason why most nerds don't go woke. I too am one of them. I would call myself a centrist but by your standards I'm probably a fascist so whatever. Anyways I was playing one niche game that not many know and I was part of one server. It was cool and nice. First came the special pride outfits, I and most didn't mind. They were optional and rarely did anyone actually wear them. I heard that the admin team had a bit of a cut and new wave was to come. There were many changes that 1. sanitized the experience 2. destroyed fun parts of the game in name of politics.
I and most didn't mind but then there came a ban on gendered "slurs". So I accidentally (you know how banter is) said the b word one too many times and bam I'm banned. I could appeal it but I didn't even want to. The server wasn't fun. It was sterile and smooth with safeties everywhere. There weren't any edges. But I found another one. Not the best one. Maybe not so popular. But it had IT. The game was fun again. Yeah there were a few r words and n words tossed around but at least I wasn't banned.
What I mean by that is that the normies want things normalized and safetifized. While that is ok, instead of integrating the original community you push them out in your righteous woke conquests. The online spaces i liked all lost their charm after the SJWs came in and wanted everything catered for them and for their righteous enlightened woke ways. They came to civilize us right wing plebians on what is moral or else. And while many submit many choose else. Not out of spite or racism but because we want OUR spaces to be OURS and not everyone's.
imagine this, you've developed an IP and people love it, then a whole bunch of new people come in after scoffing at it thinking its beneath them but now its popular, those new people demand so many changes that its completely unrecognizable from the original and then those new people play the victim when the original fans want it back to how it always has been and telling the new people to just come up with their own stuff
@@bobergamer1963 But they arent your spaces in the first place, they are EVERYONES spaces, you dont get to gatekeep your niches to people, and if the comunity changes, well, that sucks but you just have to accept it, theres nothing you can really do there
I haven't made it to the end but the yugioh card section hit me cause I was that kid in high school. I loved yugioh but got mocked by everyone even my childhood best friend at the time, who also enjoyed the game but was "to cool" around others to like it. Heck, I was even mocked by magic the gathering players because they saw the game "for kids."
Though I fell out of the game due to my area no longer supporting it, I still look back fondly on it, I also met my actual best friend from going to tournaments.
But as an adult, I've been mocked for liking manga having people refer to it as a "picture book." Also my love of pokemon, drawing, video games and anime has also been targeted more than once.
These are just a few examples of being targeted for being enthusiastic about something.
Where do you live? It seems like inclusive need culture is popular where I grew up in the PNW. My hubby grew up in Texas, and basically everything different was mocked.
I love how these people say it's a picture book
When a lot of these picture books are absolutely not for kids at all.
Interesting. I was in elementary school at the time when the anime aired and it was VERY popular to like Yugioh, especially among boys. I loved it, too. Strange to see that in high school (and probably in middle school as well, I presume) it was something to be ashamed of.
@@kyndramb7050 I grew up in Canada, most likely this is an issue that everyone, everywhere needs to face.
It's easier to mock the thing you don't understand rather than to try and understand it.
@@dianaharris7506 Agreed, though it can go both ways. I've known someone who was worried about their daughter liking anime because she has heard/seen(not sure which) the r rated stuff, then assumed all of it was.
Meanwhile manga/anime is just a medium used to tell a story rather than being limited to a specific genre.
Imagine if people thought the same way with musical instruments, like a guitar could only be use in country (for example) and nowhere else.
I'm a nerd who goes way back. I'm old enough to remember when the first Star Wars movie came out. By the early 1980s, I was fully into computers and video games. I remember Revenge of the Nerds. Back then, it felt empowering to have this one piece of media that showed nerds coming out on top, and the group of outcasts of which I was a part all loved it. Now that I look back on it, it hasn't aged well, and I now see it as a festival of cringe even though I still appreciate the validation it gave me at the time. Perhaps because I'm not a cis-het white male, I have always been resistant to the nerd culture to alt-right pipeline, but my close cis-het white male friends from back then have also resisted it, and one of them, who used to lean conservative, has gone far left in recent years, as he saw the alt-right for the toxic disaster that it is. Thankfully, not all nerds have been drawn into this cesspool.
A few years ago, I watched Anita Sarkeesian's videos after hearing about all the controversy surrounding her. Though I might disagree with her about some specifics, I think she made numerous valid points, and I don't understand why so many people felt so threatened by her. She merely pointed out some of the troublesome aspects in much of the media that we enjoy. It's still possible to enjoy something while understanding that elements of it might be problematic or cringeworthy. For example, I love the music of Richard Wagner, but I also understand that he was a colossal anti-Semitic jerk and that his repulsive attitudes might filter into his operas. I also love the cartoons from the Golden Age of Hollywood, but many of them are loaded with racist and sexist themes. I can still appreciate the good points and artistic quality while recognizing that they are a product of their time and will therefore include ideas that are repugnant by today's standards. It isn't a threat to my identity if someone points out something icky in a piece of media that I like. It's better to recognize the icky stuff and come to terms with it than to pretend that it isn't problematic in the first place.
Anita Sarkeesian actively lied about many of the games she criticised and spread misinformation left and right. Her claim that you would get "extra points" for murd3ring pr0stitut3s in GTA is the most well known example of something she made up.
It is one thing to criticise a trend at large, and another to actively lie about the content you're covering as a way to dishonestly push your political agenda.
And then The Boys happened where there was a scene with an isolated nerd who got radicalised by a Nazi superhero until he shot a store clerk because he wanted to be part of power.
I love The Boys, but it deeply saddened me that there were apparently fans of the The Boys watching it and only realizing in Season 3 that Homelander was a bad guy the show was making fun of. Like, how do you watch the first 2 seasons of The Boys and not realize Homelander is a piece of shit?
@@gregvs.theworld451 I remember watching some clips of the boys on TH-cam, and oh my goodness the comments are filled with a bunch of bigots.
@@kittykittybangbang9367 Sadly, that doesn't surprise me. I'm content to watch the boys knowing I can properly analyze media, and also rest easy knowing I'm not a piece of shit fascist, and stay the hell away from less savory corners of the fandom (I think the subreddit is alright last I checked, although I haven't checked recently.)
Ironically, it had an alt right following because the show was making fun of ultra liberals. They lost that following after learning the show was also making fun of ultra conservatives.
@@gregvs.theworld451 my former friend only saw season 3 of the show because he thought soldier was cool and thought that Homelander was going to be a male version of Brie Larson Captain Marvel until saw the show. He saw himself in Homelander and Blue Hawk, and didn’t realised that Soldier Boy was a villain. When he found out about Stormfront being a Nazi villain, he hates The Boys more than Disney.
When I was 16 I stopped being racist, sexist, and transphobic because I started weightlifting. It gave me a sense of personal strength.
Interesting. When I was young I was nothing of that. After I grew up I turned all those -ists.
@@serenityssolace I had it pushed on me since childhood. By the time I reached the age of reason I could tell most of this stuff was nonsense. But around 2013-2014, the internet became really racist, and males my age were often groomed into becoming right wing. I was one of them.
Gladly that phase didn't last that long, because I like to be strong, not represent myself as some victim being put down by the blacks and jews. We are being put down, but by other white people, who demonstrably control most of the economy, politics and social clout.
I am your demographic opposite --- a disabled older woman --- but weightlifting gave me a similar feeling of empowerment.
Thanks! I didn't know bodybuilding did that! Cool!
Yeah I remember there with cries of white genocide because there was a black Stormtrooper. And they tried to make Rose the new Jar Jar Binks, maybe they were mad because it was an Asian woman who didn't fall in love with the first white guy she saw.
100%
I don´t think their "problem" was "oh there´s a black stormtrooper", no. The real "problem" for them was more like: "Oh, there´s a black actor playing a crucial role in the movie as one of the main actors. It´s the end of our world."
I don't like Rose very much but no fuckin way was she the new Jar-Jar
@@torstensommer4319 don't excuse them, majority of the complaints had to do with race 😂
i remember when in the fallon show peoples claped when he said whites peoples are a minority in usa.
On the subject of the controversy surrounding Rue's casting in The Hunger Games, I just want to point out that Yhara Zayd has a very good video going further into it, as well as racism in fandom spaces
people were shocked about that threw me, I read the hunger games in high school, and how do you misunderstand satiny brown skin as a character description?
@@alorapendrak9752 I think a lot of readers don't pay attention to descriptions, especially a short one like Rue had, and just assume white. Then they get upset when their vision of the character is challenged, but for whatever reason they don't go back and check (maybe they don't own the book?). Also there are some characters who _have_ been race-swapped from white to POC, so it's not a wholly unreasonable conclusion to jump to. Why they refuse to accept direct textual proof and keep digging in their heels is beyond me, though. Probably emotional investment and the feeling that something is being stolen from them, even though it was never theirs to begin with. Being the default is one hell of a drug, and the invisible knapsack is full of syringes before it's unpacked.
They were mad black ppl exist.I bet their nerd ass won’t say shit to me in public though
God I remember that madness. First introduction to systematic racisim I saw online.
@@falconeshield Does that mean taking white characters and making them black is systemic racism?
That always threw me in nerd spaces. People dont talk about their lives, jobs or views, they want to escape into their hobby. I had to learn this the hard way playing magic the gathering with white guys being the only person of color in the room, and even though i was treated different as a black woman, it was never acknowledged because politics and ruining a safe space for them to find refuge in.
How long did that last? I grew up the only Arab in a small Irish town in the 90s, beyond an initial bit of culture shock seeing so many white faces and visa versa, after the initial excitement died down, it never amounted to anything in the long term. I was bullied purely because I had no interest in sports etc at the time and preferred playing video games.
Why would you want to talk about politics while in those spaces though? Groups of hobbyists typically like spending that time talking about the topic of the hobby,
did you not see the other topics above? @@carlcascone1202
also there is privilege in not even wanting to discuss these topics, though someone might make a racist joke, be sexist towards me because I won a game or have terrible running jokes about women. Its not cool that these are allowed but what I mentioned above isnt@@carlcascone1202
@@only_you45 have a nice day!
once womens safety is no longer your concern you start the hellscape slide into only you matter.
Huh?
this is why i regularly check on wtf my little brother is doing online bc ik how the internet likes to prey on little nerdy boys. Anyone who’s been on the internet, especially youtube from 2010-2016, knows how easily they can be sent down the wrong rabbit hole and im not gonna let it happen to him
Sounds rather authoritarian....dare I say fascistic
@@PattyOflan88so let him get taken in by nasty people, to become a nasty person, that's your solution? You know, some people seek to guide their children on a good life path, and we ought to know when they are hanging with a bad crowd. We are supposed to stand back while strangers with ill will teach them to hate their families and others? No, it's not authoritarian to help your children avoid danger, it's responsible.
@@jocelynhunter2359 define "nasty", that's entirely subjective ya know?
@@PattyOflan88 it's not really. If we are talking about people who by definition are nasty to various types of people, then it follows they are nasty people, at least, whilst they persist in doing that.
Yee, understandable. I personally would feel very uncomfortable being that nosy with my little brother, but instead I just talk to him and game with him enough to have a solid read on his perspectives and whatnot.
He has a good head on his shoulders and I trust him to tell the fascists to fuck off if encountered.
It also helps that our dad is a giant, angry, dysfunctional, and self isolating fascist, so... pretty easy to see any hint of that and immediately be like "ummm, yeah, no, I'm good! ✌🏼"
Haven't even watched this yet but, based on the title alone, I know this is gonna be a banger
Edit: 25:41 "The key in keeping you inside is that you continue to think that you're at the periphery, at the tip of the iceberg, that all of this hateful rhetoric isn't hateful at all, that there's still more to discover; and that, in the grand scheme of things, this is all a perfectly normal way of seeing the world.
That's how the alt right ensnares you, and how conspiracy theories work: They make you _think_ that you're in on a secret, that you have the answers, when, in fact, you're someone else's puppet."
This hits SO HARD
Based on the title I knew it would be leftist brainrot and I was right. But that quote does go unbelievably hard.
Except conspiracy theories are based, all my homied hate the pedophiles that control the world, we all hate the government and the powers that be 🔥
I'm glad the only fandoms I consider myself a part of are fairly low key (Muppets and the Planet of the Apes franchise). But it's interesting to look back on what it was like being a "nerd" 30 years ago compared to today, because I felt much more comfortable talking about my likes and dislikes back then. Now it feels like I have to watch what I say in case someone takes it the wrong way (especially online).
Me too. I barely talk about stuff I like unless it's on a social media group or if someone connected to the show/movie tweets something. I'm looking forward to the Electric Mayhem series 😄
Jane and Jodie are my favorites on Daria 😁
Join the club! When I complain that characters are being rewritten, lore retconned and Californian, progressive politics are brutally forced into everything regardless of it not fitting I get called a white supremacist which is, I suppose, an incredible achievement for a man who's name is Sujad.
@@Sujadfacts bro, facts. But they'll disregard this comment even though they claim to put people like you on a pedestal....till you take one step out of line that is
I used to be big into the Skeptosphere, sort of teetering right on that edge of the alt-right pipeline. Then I eventually came across HBomberguy and a lot of other more lefty video essayists and I kind of saw how weird I was being. How a lot of what I saw as just normal was baked into me as a white teen guy (at the time) living in the deep south. Right around that time, Star Trek Discovery started and boy oh boy the Trek fandom had a schism. Not as publicly messy as the Star Wars one, probably due in part to Trek's overall focus on diversity, but it was again a whole "look in the mirror" moment for me. Of getting mad because I wasn't sure how to feel about something and someone told me to be mad about a black woman. And there's a part of me that wonders if I still would hold the sociopolitical views regarding social justice and equality that I do now if I hadn't been snatched out of that gaping maw at the very last second. Part of it was leaving home, sure, that whole way the world opens up and you gain perspective, but I don't know. Maybe I'm lucky, I got out before I was irreversible.
I'm glad you came over to our side of the aisle, friend! 😊
Logicked had a fun time with atheism plus
It was so bizarre watching the "skeptic" community fall for a cheap & obvious con-man when Trump was running. & yeah, the ST Discovery backlash was awful. The racist reactions were so bad that when talking w/ friends I *still* feel compelled to clarify that I disliked the show due to bad/inconsistent writing and not because of the cast diversity, lol. (the characters were all quite likeable, I just wish the stories had been more episodic and the writing wasn't so melodramatic). 🖖
@@MiqelDotCom I know how you feel. I have to make the same clarification when I say that I don’t like The Last Jedi. Apparently it’s possible to hate even the bad stuff for the wrong reasons.
@@suburbantimewaster9620 Lol, did you dislike all 3 of the new ones or mostly TLJ? Rise Of Skywalker was so goofy it had me laughing out loud in the theater!
Anyhow, the proliferation of hateful fandom content on TH-cam really bugs me. Hundreds of far-right pipeline channels whose only gimmick is to HATE everything new that comes from the franchises they supposedly are fans of, and blame every perceived flaw on "wokeness". Ugggh. I can't understand how people fall for that garbage.
I love manga anime and of course art, and as a Mexican American it's really hard to have a chill conversation with fandoms that had the same interests as I because of how bad, toxic or even way too defensive that I had to not mention it at all nor I can like something but not like the fandom of it.
Which makes sense and sad since theirs no peaceful moment with this.
I'm glad you made this video.
@Maytal Acedo
What about Tokusatsu? What are your thoughts on that Japanese medium?
In moment of praise, the Japanese view Chapulin Colorado (that Chespirto protagonist) as a tokusatsu character.
That's the issue with any fandom their are toxic communities in it, there's really creepy community's in it, but most of the fandom usually just want to spread their interest in media.
Well right, because those people are there to talk about manga and anime. Not identity.
@@GusOfTheDorks then why do you get upset when someone of a different identity is included in your media or community spaces?
@@rosegolden8959 What? I never said I am.
I was one of these guys in college back in the gamer gate Trump election era. What's sad is that the algorithm will never show a video like this to people like these. What helped me was my older brother sending me videos different than my feed that helped slightly modify my algorithm.
I almost fell into this rabbit hole. I was the kind of kid that was watching “feminists destroyed!!” Content back when I was in my tweens. Eventually I became a similar way until I realized how bad my mother is when it comes to politics, and that she aligns with a lot of “anti-woke” rhetoric. Simply put, her being terrible at politics is what made me disassociate from the right. Now, I’m practically what you could consider to be “ultra woke Commie”😂
underrated comment
Feminism actually sucks.
(Also: putting a sickle and hammer in your nickname is cringe)
It stopped for me the second they started openly bashing gay and trans people. That's when I knew they didn't have my best interests in mind and that's when I gtfo'd
bro went into a worse path
@@xnnoahPOV: You are typing with Cheeto dust fingers
Just about the video itself and not on the content, the thumbnail and title choice were excellent, very eye catching and true to what the video is actually about, nice job!
I’m someone who’s always considered myself a “nerd”. Im a queer, half Asian, likely neurodivergent woman, and I’ve found a lot of comfort in fandom. It really sucks that so much of nerd culture is overwhelmingly white and male.
Imagine saying this for anything else, lmao 🤣.
You're a vicious racist, lady.
@@TheJoemanJoenice that you bring that up. It's odd how the statements left makes turn into the worst things when you just swap around races and/or genders.
They're everywhere and it's exhausting. Leave something for the rest of us
Why does really suck lol nerd culture was started by white men and if not white men it’s Asian men would u go into rap culture and say oh this really sucks that it’s mostly Black and male like tf
@@falconeshieldyour the one who comes to us tho lol and then bring all your brainwashed communist propaganda into white and Asian male spaces like leave us alone tf we don’t care about u and wdym leave something for the rest of us u didn’t start nerd culture
This is literally what happened to my brother. I am a Latino with strong features and my brother is white passing and very pale. He use to be funny and then he suddenly started liking nerdy stuff and eventually he became conservative. He talked about how he hated Disney remakes, our country and thinks it’s dirty, he makes fun of our indigenous people and language that he never once tried to connect with and always makes racist misogynist and ableist jokes. Not a day goes by without him saying the r word or how much he hates Mexicans. Guys if you have a family member into nerdy stuff please make sure they never get into this rabbit hole because they will never get out and you won’t even know who you’re looking at anymore. EDIT: I JUST finished the video and on that note about calling out your loved ones, you can guess why me and my sibling don’t talk to him anymore lolll
he needs to wake tf up,did he think he would be accepted by nazis being while he is a mixed person?
Man this feels bad man. I've seen personal friends just fall down the alt right pipeline. It just feels like there is nothing you can do about it. On I side note, people like this just makes it harder to criticize something in good faith. Like I actively really dislike the star wars sequel trilogy (and most of Disney star wars in general) due to the nonsensical plot, strange story beats,, and their willingness to just straight up throw away long established lore. I hate it when I try to look up discussions on it, I just get recommended people talking about SJWs and how much they dislike women and "woke" content. Its honestly pretty infuriating.
I'm a conservative, and I feel the exact same way. The star wars trilogy doesn't even feel woke at all to me, it's just like someone decided to call it that and everyone just ran with it. Don't get me wrong, they're Horrible, but I don't see a preachy leftist message being any significant part of that. They're just poorly made movies, period. Same with Rey being a Mary sue, somehow she is designated as the textbook example of that, whereas I see her as mostly just being a run of the mill, if not quite bland, protagonist archetype.
I think people criticize the wrong thing, its not diversity they hate or even race swapping for example. Its the intentions behind why they wrote the character into the story is usually what sets people off. Of course bad writing as such in the star wars sequels and a clear lack of passion for their craft also hurts media.
same or similar feeling here, being a history/linguistics/archaeology/literature guy... I can't look stuff up nowadays without the algorithm assuming I'm some kind of white guy incel who fantasizes about bringing back awful iron age shit so I can be a patrician who bangs his slave women or some garbage
@@idnyftwyeah far leftism is pretty racist
@@idnyftw The other day I was trying to research Sulla, the ancient Roman dictator that murdered thousands of his political rivals and broke the republic, and found a video where he was unironically praised for his similarity to Augusto Pinochet.
Any historical topic will inevitably be twisted by malcontent freaks.
I get called a nerd or geek often for the field I am in (wildlife sciences) and I will admit, it is my favorite thing to talk about. Yet, it seems so very far away from this type of community. The mindsets in my field like this at all are mostly just the old men who people are waiting to die off so we can make changes to legistlation and such...
I feel like terms like geek or nerd kind of fall flat surrounding how many things it can just encompass, especially because it so heavily relies on one's community. I knew someone who was obsessed with MMA (he was a fighter) and when he talked to people in my field he was completely out of his element. By the definition of geek presented here, he could debatably even fall into that category.
I love how we have to hand-hold and babysit white cishet men through life because so many of them just plug their ears and stomp around instead of just, listening and being empathetic.
If by that you mean listening to marxist socialist woke propaganda, then they are the ones that are being truly oppressed and have to hand hold babysit all other labels of people. They are the last embers that keep western civilization afloat and hold democracy in place. Protecting the entire free world from communism. Without them we would be in dark ages again
This. Omg. Exhausting.
Facts
It's always these mfs. They have one bad thing or nothing in their lives and now they hail hitler.
I know and, when we point out sexism in their fandoms, somehow we’re being too “sensitive.” Talk about major hypocrisy.
I’m Latino, not white, but the way you talked about how nerds get pushed into the pipeline in part 4 of the video kinda hit me like a bus. I’m autistic and so it got me bullied a lot by both boys and girls in middle school. Since you mention how the patriarchy plays a role in this, I’ll mention that I would end up focusing on the girls that bullied me more than the boys that did because I had these ideas that girls are meant to always act kind and never question anything or act up at all. I would internalize these thoughts and it would end up making me resent the girls that bullied me more than the boys that did, so when I started to hear about feminism at around 13 years old I’d dismiss it as just “women wanting to be angry and annoying” when it wasn’t the case at all. I started to get into “anti woke” or “feminist/SJW gets owned” stuff because I thought it would make me feel better about how I was treated by girls, when in reality it only made my perception of many things warped. Fast forward to high school and some friends that I had that were girls would start to notice me acting sexist or bigoted, and so they would start to confront me and call me out for it. I got into fights and arguments several times with them because I still had the idea that these sexist beliefs were correct because I thought that I faced how all women act when it was just a group of bad people that happen to be women. This was when I started to question these beliefs and so I realized that this way of thinking was wrong the whole time. Through this I would end up realizing that I was queer and I would start feeling more positive and happier about myself. I think that it was also the fact that I found myself in a friend group of people that were also neurodivergent and queer that finally made me comfortable of realizing these things about myself and realize how wrong that things I believed in before were.
I am glad I found a video like this because it really does explain what caused the alt right pipeline to get as big as it did
It can be a self-reinforcing meme-set.
Crazy how female nerds go the opposite direction. For them there's a nerd to Wicca to bi-sexual pipeline.
Ugh why did you have to call me out like this? Lol
The way "Nerd Blackface" made me criiinge ew lmao
Older generations (who used to actually get bullied for this kind of thing) can easily tell you the difference between a geek and a nerd. A geek is pop culture smart and a nerd is book smart. These days people use the terms interchangeably, and I can understand why since being either one could earn you a beat down after school in the 80s. Having actually lived through that era it's strange to see the things I enjoyed in secret go mainstream to the point of oversaturation and even used as recruiting tools for the alt right.
Ugh. I’m a nerd. I need to think about this
"You know those behaviors we have that drove people to fringes? The solution is to double down on it and blame the victims we bullied for it."
She is literally pipelining me into being a Not see because I loathe being lectured by someone who is not my race/sex about how hateful and priveleged my race/sex is, and then saying the only solution to who I am is OSTRACISM
The only thing that gives me peace is sorting by Newest and seeing that there are people who understand how much this made me want to throw up
@@hahasamian8010 we were pretty close to a post-racial society, but at some point in 2014, we reversed course and decided that we needed to focus more and more on our labels. People used to think that it’s the person that decides if they’re good or bad, now it’s if they’re a certain race or gender or a multitude of things that determines if a person is good or bad. It’s maddening because I used to not look at someone and immediately focus on their race. And I wish I could go back to those times.
I know it's hard, and it may feel like I'm asking you to ignore injustice, but try to just ignore stuff like this... Instead, be the change you wanna see in the world. If you want a world where people are open-minded and don't judge based on race or sex, try to be that type of person first.
They want this to be a war. Don't let them make it one; don't let them make you angry. If you want peace, spread peace 💝
I can tell this video frustrated you just as much as it did me. I hope you feel better soon! Wishing the best for you 💖
@@hahasamian8010 blud trying to use goofy ahh passive-aggressive gaslight tactics fr fr no cap 💀💀💀
@@orionSpacecraft Do you know any of the words you said
by the time i got called a slur for the third time (lgbt woman) in discord servers for the fandom im in, i gave up trying to find one that wasn't full of gatekeepers and made my own that was mostly focused on fanfiction. i found more niche servers as well around different creators for different subgenres of fanfic, and these little bubbles that are mostly the artists, the fanfic authors, and the ones who enjoy them just as much as we love creating them are the servers i feel the most comfortable and safe in. the bigger the server the harder it is to manage and pick out the bad apples, but i like being able to have my server and keep it a safe place for all the people i've gotten close to over the years. if you don't feel safe, make your own space, make it to your liking, trust me you will be so much happier.
I love how you, Innuendo Studios, and Three Arrows have seperately reached similar observations on how people became radicalized.
The one thing people also need to know is that those people can still be brought back from the brink. Its just a matter of approach and respect.
The latter half of your comment is spot on, and I wish more people understood this part. It's one thing to KNOW why a problem exists, or at least have a theory about it, but being tactful with your actions thereafter is arguably MORE important. Treat people with empathy and respect, and you can actually change some minds and fix some issues (that, if we're being honest, most rational people want fixed).
You won't "bring people back" (make them think like you) when you aren't even capable of understanding _what_ they believe in the first place or of realizing just how extremely unappealing and abrasive leftism is to any self-respecting white man or woman.
Problem with adaptation is that it sucks, not because the audience is racist
One Piece has a diverse cast and it turned out okay
So diverse that the creator made people who spend ninety percent of their life in an oceanic setting out in the sun, whiter as time went on. Yup, diverse as can be.
I think Witcher fans are a very good example of this. I am a big fan of the Witcher games and the books are incredibly special to me (I highly recommend them). I think the show is enjoyable. However, I think most Witcher fans are quite annoying. They adhere to a political neutrality (like you mentioned in this video) that makes them really miss some very obvious plot point and the over all meaning of the story. This also results in rampant racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. in that community (in the subreddit, for instance). White supremacists are among them
If anyone wants to learn more about this, I recommend the 4 part TH-cam series by Sophie from Mars about the series, especially the episode about the fanboys.
It's really interesting that you say this about the Witcher fans, because I have had such a different experience in the fandom, though that could be due to the fact that I'm coming from the fanfiction side of the pond, so to speak. I don't read reddits or anything like that, but I have read a LOT of Witcher fanfic, and while yes the source material is still very white, I had seen more stuff written about and by neurodivergent and queer (I'm using that as the blanket term, as someone who uses it as a term for herself rather than spelling out specifics) folks and their takes on the characters than I have in many of the other fandoms I've been into. Though now I'm wondering if that's more of an era thing, as I'm seeing it more frequently in other fandoms as the years pass...
I'll be checking out that series, though, thank you for mentioning it!
@@jrj5893 Not only the source material is very while. The whole origin of that material - eastern Europe - is very white. And there is nothing wrong about that. We do share history of colonialism, white guilt, slavery with USA.
It is surprising that with this all race-swapping, not even single place was left for an actor of Slavic origin.
I'm not looking forward to the Netflix One Piece adaptation for part of that reason. It has a lot of themes that some of the Fandom seems to have ignored.
I have a feeling that, seeing it removed from its normal cartooniness, will see it in a new light and get angry seeing social commentary in their show.
@@lonesaviorOne Piece has surprisingly pro monarchy sentiments despite it being about sea pirates but on the whole it's very ahead of its time. Any character who's coded queer doesn't die for example in one piece
I´ve been a Witcher fan for 20+ years. I remember waiting for the 5th book to be released before I started reading. No game existed back then. I was disappointed by the games (and still partially am - I hate Triss romance (Shani is even worse idea), Nilfgard bad, Avallach good, Eredin is joke in books, etc.). I think the vast majority of fans don´t understand the meaning of the story. I´m far less gatekeeping and more tolerant now, but still, the Witcher is a masterpiece of postmodernism and postmodernism is notoriously hard to understand. But it is very easy to pick parts of postmodern work you enjoy (moral ambiguity, complex characters) and avoid others (obvious feminism, Geralt being kind of boomer).
This is a very disturbing Truth. Your coverage of this is extremely important.
I saw it all happen in real time. They were the first built in audience for 4chan. Things went downhill very quickly.
I am a long time nerd that is a fan of geek culture (sci-fi, fantasy videogames etc.) but everything you pointed is the reason why I have started to disassociate myself as a nerd and nerd culture. I even stopped considering myself as part of the Star Wars fanbase due to it's recent Toxicity.
The sad part of your pipeline is that I was optimistic and thinking the opposite would happen.
A group marginalized in their youth because of how social norms treated them. I thought with the rise of the Internet, online communities, and these nerdy properstes becoming more mainstream combined with understanding the feeling of being treated as outcast that us nerds would have been more welcoming, inclusive, and open to ideas and people of different backgrounds and cultures (I mean this is what the Star Trek franchise originally stood for).
Instead the exact opposite happened where nerds are are no better, if not worse, than their past so-called oppressors.
This is especially fitting now that John Carmack (co-creator of Doom) participated in a sci-fi convention that is against "woke propaganda"
Good for him, people have been trying to ban and censor his games for decades
@@vg_grover4828 Anyone who ever worked with him also highlights how much insufferable he is to work with so it checks out.
@@vg_grover4828 ...so he goes all-in on censoring anyone who objects to reactionary indoctrination?
I always hated this "woke propaganda" shit... Is making marginalized people and groups more accepted and included a bad and inflammatory thing??? Like what??? They can't see the irony in their own ideologies...
@Laurencsik István the minute poc is shown in media its automatically labeled as woke it could be a new character and it would still be called woke it's insane
This is a nice video, thank you. I think to an extent there was a split round about the time Gamergate happened, a similar thing happened with atheist channels which were gaining a lot of traction back then.
I am a cis-het white male who stuck with my principles and remained left-wing or left leaning. But even so I found I had a lot of work to do, it became more evidently clear after the death of George Floyd when I saw so many black creators say (directed at white people) "It's good that you support us now, but in a month or two you will forget or turn on us again", and they were absolutely right. It took barely any time before BLM became a 'terrorist movement', and a lot of so called 'centrists' didn't want to associate with it all of the sudden.
That was a real moment of growth for me, because I had to admit to myself that although I identified as left-wing, I did gravitate towards that centrist position from time to time. Then I realised I had to put my money where my mouth is, and remember that it's not about me, it's not good enough to simply declare my support and virtue signal, I have to do more and stop being such a coward because it's easier than standing up for marginalised people or accepting my own faults.
BLM is a terrorist organization and George Floyd a criminal. Doesn't mean he deserved what he got, but the messiah-nization he got was disgusting
you have nothing to do because you are white, whites peoples are awesome and are the start of the biggest economic, medical and technologic boom who happened in history of humanity. you don't need to do anything more or less than a black or asian. just live your life and be yourself
Ironically, the movement you deem peaceful, was what ended my "liberal" phase. Getting mobbed and surrounded and being pelted by trash, it makes you think twice about who you are associating with.
@@haydricht6899 how fickle you were. The most violent people I know are all Conservative
I fell down the alt-right pipeline when i was younger; luckily Natalie Wynn saved me from being a total fascist. Nowadays i'm an anarchocommunist with egoist leanings, and i still have intrusive thoughts of fascist talking points etc when i talk with my friends (mostly Black and AFaB) about political/social topics
Always remember that the first thing you think is what you’ve been conditioned/told to think, the second thing is what you really think.
That has helped me so much with intrusive thoughts, especially when they get political and I KNOW it’s the bullshit part of my brain picking up on the vast amounts of nonsense and information we’re bombarded with. The negative things stick in there harder and it’s a case of identifying them and putting them to the side. Even then, sometimes I have to talk down my thoughts and sit and try and hash them out and deconstruct them on the spot.
Keep at it, friend. It’s a long road, but you can only be patient with yourself.
To be fair, Natalie was a former alt-righter before either waking up from it or a simple rebrand. I intend to believe the former.
@@rexzs794 Thanks for the tip I can actually use, Internet Comrade!🤩
@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 any time, friend. It’s genuinely one of the most helpful pieces of advice I’ve ever been given. I hope it helps you gently challenge yourself in ways for the better. 🖤
@Lyra this you? th-cam.com/video/JJmvMyptrxo/w-d-xo.html
Having loved video games all my life, I've run into so many men like this. The insecurity that leads to tying one's own self worth to a piece of media can end up twisting someone in wild ways. I had a formerly good friend start treating me like garbage and saying some borderline Incel-like things after I made a couple valid criticisms of a game and stopped playing it (around the time its company was revealed to have done a lot of terrible things, and tbh continues to do terrible things lol). And he wasn't even white! He'd even seen the times I'd been harassed and creeped on in the game's community, so I thought he'd have understood... but now I think I let some of his own iffy behavior slide over the years, *sigh*.
This is so well done. Also, Jesus gamergate started almost 10 years ago wtf I feel old.
You're feeling old already? Don't look back in 20 years lol
I would probably call myself nerd-adjecent. Many of my interests overlap with traditionally nerdy things, but I'm not into things like fantasy, coding, or superheroes. As an autistic person, i try to hide my interests and tend to mask heavily whenever I'm not at home. One of my teachers, who is a wonderful person and one of my mentors, told me I'm, "Just like Sheldon Cooper," after finding out that I'm autistic. She meant it as a compliment, but it hurt. I try to be emotionally aware, am not really interested in STEM, and do my best to cover up my 'nerdy' interests. Yet, that assholeish, entitled persona is what people associate most with nerds and autistic people.
Exactly
I find it interesting these default "schools" in the example are always diverse, lol. I went to an all black school pretty much until High School and even my High School was pretty heavily black. (Baltimore, MD is a heavily black city, so it wasn't like they were designated that way, they just were....even the teachers were more likely to be black then white or any other race). And so being black really didn't really isolate me the way being a weird nerd (with probably undiagnosed neurodivergency) did. Oh, and I was a fat kid and hadn't quite figured out I was gay yet. That figuring out didn't happen til college. I was teased and bullied for existing. So when I got to college the white kids who actually liked some of the geeky things I did honestly felt like a saving grace. I was actually afraid to mention any geeky thing I enjoyed in black company and the weird thing was it felt most safe to do so in no-black company as I had never been made fun of for it there. And non black company included also a few Asian friends I made in my college/young adult life. It has been weird to see, as geek culture becomes more main stream, that flip for me. In college I also did meet other black young people who identified as geeks or nerds, so 1- I found out they actually exist. 2 - As the whole Geek/Nerd thing went more mainstream, suddenly the white male dominated spaces did start to feel more unsafe. Which they hadn't in college (I'm almost 45, so it was years ago for me). So I feel like I've felt that flip/change in such a different way. And that yeah, as long as certain folks had lead ownership in certain spaces, I was welcome there. But as soon as people of color and queer people started showing more visibly in Geek/Nerd culture media, the community turned rabid. It's been a sad change to see.
This is such a well put together video essay -- thank you for making this
Though I'm not nerd, I am aware of many who fit this description. They are definitely at risk of becoming entrapped or enticed to extremism as you have revealed here.
The most dangerous of this type of extremism involves the morbid idolization and fascination with *guns*
Why would liking guns make someone an extremist?
@@GusOfTheDorks
Notice my comment says: At *risk* of becoming *entrapped* or *enticed* to extremism.
@@GusOfTheDorks
You'll have to contemplate what the last message means, also; to answer your own question, for yourself:
The most dangerous of this type of extremism involves the morbid idolization and fascination with *guns*
@@SunnyIlhalike what I see in the hood?
@@usualdosage7287
Whatcha'y'all see in da hood.
Don' be playin wit no guns in da hood.
If da hood got too many guns,
getchoself out dat hood.
I think there's a side of intellectual meritocracy kinda vibe there that leads you to things like objectivism, which promotes libertarians, which has become just Republican without the obvious racism.
This is an old problem. My husband says that he got death threats in 1987 for disliking "Star Trek: the Next Generation." He lost several friends from fandom over this one issue.
Sometimes I wonder if people who spew these type of rhetorics have actually engaged with the work itself. Most of the time, those who scream/gatekeep the loudest about something are "protecting" a franchise that has a positive message about inclusivity, justice, love, and not letting hatred take a hold on yourself. It is really sad to see people not acting what they preach
I don't think inclusivity is wrong. But what we are currently seeing is not inclusivity, it's just blatant ignorance. We are talking about characters like Aragorn or Galadriel who have established personal histories, families, skillsets etc. To blatantly change them is exactly the same as changing Martin Luther King to being white. I won't accept the "but it's all just fantasy" argument. It is someone's clearly articulated vision. Being it fantasy also does not mean you can just ignore any logic. Even fantasy worlds have rules and logic. So, why e.g. are some dwarves in the Rings of Power black and some white even though they are living in the same underground environment for thousands of years? I can't believe they are somehow immune to basic biology.
Sure some people are just toxic no matter what. But the majority knows a good work when they see it regardless of the prevalence of people of colour, etc. Yet even this majority cannot stand when people are parasitizing on famous names and end up distorting the worlds.
You don't like LotR? Okay, then write something different and people will either like it or not. But reworking the established franchised because you know people will watch it for the Name is really just parasitismus.
There was a 66 year old woman screeching about a trans fisherman in a torney, UK. Like, if you're worried about upper body strength you're an old woman. STFU and play
@vojtechmuller3270 You know, your comment made me think about fantasy fans who pick and choose when they want their fantasy series to be realistic and when they're okay with magical ridiculousness. They wanted "realism" when one too many Black people were in a scene (because obviously there are no Black people in fantasy settings) and then turned around and accepted whatever supernatural rules the series made up.
A particular experience I'm always surprised with is I'm a huge X-Men fan. I've been reading the comics since I was a child ;I'm 25 now. I'm also gay and half Puerto Rican. My mother's side is where I get my Puerto Rican from and she's whom raised me so very much grew in an ethnic household. Now Xmen is a big minority allegory. They're literally persecuted regulated in contained due to how they were born. Magneto was a holocaust survivor so whatever for the second time his people were getting met with genocide that's why he snapped and became a radical. So X-Men has always been on top of like showing gay rights and minority rights and just how people suffer because of bigotry. Even on a governmental level. And yet you still have racist white Fanboys who are confused whenever most of the cast of X-Men or women or people have some corn of minority at least not American. And it's like bro obviously you've never read a comic book and if you did do you have any reading comprehension ;because Xmen is all about human rights and everyone being treated like a person. The arrogance and ego that you find within racism that somehow find their way into nerd spaces even more so spaces for the whole concept of the comic. is about minorities suffering ;and overcoming ;and getting stronger together. While maintaining peace with humans to the best of their ability.
Magneto worked with Nazis in one comics
@@EthnoNationalist sight your source cause I call bs. Magneto is a whole ass Holocaust survivor
@@witchivy5905 Magneto believes that mutants need to rule over men (how strong this viewpoint comes across depends on who's writing him) because he knows that they're capable of genocide. It's core to his character, which is why his sudden allegiance to Hydra, an organization with ties to Nazis, came as a bitter surprise to fans.
sources "vox outrage over marvel magneto and Nazis"
@@witchivy5905 youtube won't let me respond
Your videos are really good and I think it’s important that you directly addressed the group who might’ve needed to hear this the most
I'm old. Back when, "nerd" and "geek" were insults, until we wore the terms like armor. A lot of us bled actual blood in the Nerd-Jock Wars. Seeing "nerd" culture become mainstream? To me, it means we won. It also means we have the responsibility to protect and aid the new bully-targets. "Aim here. Start with words. Get it all on camera." That sort of thing.
I was too busy being a nerd to fall into the Alt-right. That and I am the type.of person happy to see the things he loves get more popular. I see no problem with discussing the things I love and dissecting it. I understand that some people only care about the surface and going deeper into something they love turns them off. Let people enjoy things the way they do.
I was the type that was happy too when things I like got more popular. (Anime). Nowadays I learned to regret that. Cause once the exposure is big, the woke mind virus will show it's imperialism and pillage the Japanese culture, norms and enforce their ideology on Japan😢
You deserve a medal!!!! Gold star!! "Let people enjoy things the way they do." Except ketchup.
@@serenityssolace to me "the woke mind virus" is the people who blame wokeness for everything they don't like. Who see it everywhere yet can't even explain what woke is. Seems to me Woke is just an excuse, a reason to hate something without a real reason.
They are obsessed with Wokeness. I don't even see it as real.
If I ever get to the point where I mindlessly hate everything and blame a boogie man like "woke" or "SJWs" or "political correctness" then I will betray who I am now and who I have always been. There are too many things to look forward to for me to ever be a pessimist and to ever blame a boogie man for things I don't like.
@@serenityssolaceyou’re being satire right?
@@Imxel21 I'm absolutely serious. Aren't you aware of all the outrages happening over video games lately? Since Sony and Square Enix for example moved their HQ to california, suddenly they try to push down our throats more and more of this ideology
As a former right winger. Literally getting head pulled me out. Like all alt right men, my hatred stemed from my failure with women
As a neurodivergent lady nerd who is Latina and Queer, I getting fucking tired
Sadly, at this point is not just cishet white abled neurotypical men anymore (I mean bad enough, but then at least you could trust other fandom people). As you said, bigots actively use fandom to recruit people, and TERFs are no different. The amount of white, abled, neurotypical cis lesbians who are the most abusive, biphob, aphob, transphob, ableist and racist person imaginable I met in fandom... As a bi autistic woman I feel super unsafe, because these people made me know very clearly that they don't consider me and who I feel represented by human or worth of any respect. They claim because they are of a marginalized group they can't be bigots, but in truth they use it as an excuse to get more and more aggressive with their bigotry. If they can use their bigotry for a ship war, the better (*cough* She-Ra fandom *cough*). The idea that because you face one part of oppression you can never be oppressive or wrong in any other way is hell of an shield.
Sorry, could you add some more labels? This wasn't specific enough.
Alright bud, you tried too hard on that one, it's too obvious.
There is no such thing as bisexual
your just brainwashed
I think there is one element missing from this: people being told they don't belong. What pushed a lot of people I knew in 2012 to the right wasn't the original gamergate story or anything stemming from Anita Sarkeesian herself, instead it was the universal labeling of anyone that might simply disagree with her on any point as a mustache twirling misogynistic villain or as a straight up Nazi.
Same thing for the Five Guys posts for gamergate. People are were given false information, and when they tried to act on that false info in good faith they were labeled as freaks who hate women and cast out. The only people willing to take them in were the same people distributing the false information.
While I agree with all your comments about why Nerd/Geek culture is such a toxic stew, I do feel that there is one aspect key to the culture that you haven't pointed out.
The reason media analysis is so terrible in that subculture, despite their obsession with a product, is that for whatever reason for years, Geeks/Nerds prized minutiae over actual analysis. An example of this can be seen in the Star Wars fandom, where so many geeks pride themselves on being able to name every character that ever appears in a property, even if they just stood in the far corner for less than a minute, but when you try to explain how George Lucas intended Star Wars to be an allegory for the Vietnam War, with the Empire being the USA and the Rebels serving as the Viet Cong, either you get a lot of blank faces or they accuse you of injecting politics into the story. Never mind how all art is political to begin with.
This kind of obsession with minutiae and trivia is akin to bragging about knowing the exact number of leaves on a tree but being able to say nothing about the overall structure or health of the organism. Meanwhile, if someone does come along who can talk about these things, but does the unthinkable like, say, gets the number of leaves wrong, well, that proves they're clearly a fake fan of that tree.
If you can't meaningfully take apart and analyze the themes of a story, it becomes much harder to analyze and weigh out the real-world thoughts and opinions of others. Yeah, I've heard of the whole "The curtains are blue" meme, and it can be annoying when the English teacher insists that every aspect of the story is symbolic, but the truth is that every detail that winds up being mentioned is the product of authorial intent, and it's worth speculating on what is behind this intent. It could be as simple as "The writer thought it sounded really cool" with no deeper reason intended, but again, they chose to mention it for a reason, and it's worth speculating why.
It's dumb because one of the first and one of the most influential sci fi works, war of the world, was a critique on colonialism
media analysis is terrible in fan culture period, I don't think it has anything to do with alt-right
Gamergate really ruined geek culture and 10 years later it still hasn't recovered.
I still play and enjoy video games and anime but I will not be friends with most anime fans and gamers.
True. I hate many gamers and film buffs are very conservative
That's because nobody will have you as a friend.
Great video! Another interesting factor is that this mid 2000's radicalization period happened at the tail end of (ironically) a right-wing moral panic against consumers of nerdy media - starting with the satanic panic and carrying through to the early part of the school shooting era, in which many of the older generation started to associate nerdiness or video games etc with a hidden propensity for mass murder. The mainstream interest and subsequent serious media criticism came right near the end of that era. That satanic panic/mass shooter era had helped prime these people to see outside criticism of their media as that direct attack on their personality that you mentioned... Because the other stuff actually had been a deep and alarming personal attack.
The nerd/video game moral panic never really developed into anything other than very very sporadic instances of state violence directed towards nerds, but it was seen by nerds as a sort of looming potential threat.
It was very easy for fascists to propagandize nerds in that environment.
That's a great connection I hadn't made! Kind of like how fascists point out the evils of capitalist exploitation but then blame it on marginalized groups. The harm can be real, but the cause is a lie meant to reinforce entrenched power dynamics and systems of oppression.
Funny how the link between games and shooters stopped when the kids of the panickers started playing video games
"one of the worst aspects of nerd media going mainstream was tying your morality to what you consume" yes "but thankfully this has died down", alas, have you seen the weaselling of terf+swerf ideals into shipping fandoms? cus it's at the peak still. I do think it's a similar problem. it just targets more marginalized people for the entirety of it, both the people boosting it and the people targeted by it.
Growing up in nerd spaces in the early 00s was rouuuuugh as a half Black person. The amount of ‘it’s just a joke, lighten up’ after dude dropped the hard R I got…shit was exhausting and I only repicked up a magic deck in my 30s
Really interesting video, your points about the ableism, sexism and racism in TBBT were spot on and about how they let Sheldon get away with being as sexist (amd bigoted in general) as possible with no consequences or effort from him to learn/grow and viewers somehow started defending him and taking his side and acting like he wasn't that bad and hating on Bernadette and Penny, proving the sexism of Sheldon, the show and many of the viewers.
Yeah, it's like there's no Cancel Culture on The Big Bang Theory! What is it, an alternate universe?!
Yeah, I don't know how Sheldon and Howard kept their jobs (never mind all their accolades and opportunities that they didn't deserve) and didn't get arrested and why there weren't more plots about women getting restraining orders.
You do realise that that Sheldon got away with as much as he did because everyone understood that he simply doesn't understand his negative attitudes are hurting the people around him? You do understand that that's not a character failing, it's a literal disability that he gradually improves upon during the show? Do you think a blind person should be guilt tripped because they didn't see someone and walked into them? Can't defend them, being blind isn't a defence according to you.
@@Sujad The analogy about being blind isn't at all related to what I was saying though and there are so many instances in which he proved that he did know what he was doing and genuinely did view himself as superior not to mention how often he treated women as inferior and actually did want to hurt others.
@@heatherstephenson3559 Because he is superior. I'm no fan of TBBT by any stretch of the imagination but Sheldon was two or three decades ahead of his time. They even make an Elon Musk joke, about him using Sheldon's maths to launch rockets. He also viewed the men around him as inferior as well. Are you going to call him a misandrist for that?
7:30 - you mentioning this brings up a good point- why is it that female-targeted intrests don't get respect until boys/men get into it? I'm all for guys taking an interest in female-coded things without being ridiculed for it, but why are said things worthy of ridicule to begin with?
Because they're girly: Probably them
Misogyny
homophobia and mysogyny
as a trekkie, i have to disagree with you that fandoms _necessarily_ don't discuss interpersonal topics like politics or experiences. between the prime directive and the slashfics, sharing ideas about politics and experiences are very much at the _core_ of trek fandom.
it's why none of this "infiltration" crap cracked us. we just keep telling them star trek doesn't work like that. they get mad about it, but they can live long and prosper for all we care.
The recent Star Wars show, The Acolyte, really became a litmus paper for me. As soon as anyone starts to complain about "wokeness', "DEI", "just give us good writing instead of MODERN POLITICS", I understand there's no way to have a sane discussion with this person.
I BEEM WAITING FOR THIS ONE
i hope you like it!
Didn't Anita Sarkeesian rip off a whole lot of kickstarters? I remember seeing a video where she basically raised $150K for so many videos and only did the bare effort with only 3 videos then bolted.
I'm still upset for KMT. Star Wars did her so dirty. I hope she rises + thrives. Thanks for raising awareness & suggesting practical steps, & esp for being trans-inclusive in a time where that needs to be explicit.
KMT? The Kuomintang party? What?
Don't forget Daisy. She too got shafted. Not her fault her character changed in every movie
This needs to be discussed more. From video games to movies... I've never seen dudes so upset over literally nothing. I'm no nerd or geek but I have loved SW & superheroes like Batman for years...when a Black character comes about in one of this universes as a focal point, not a side character...these cats go bananas. I've distanced myself from a lot of these type of content creators though. It's not that deep to me & I'm damn near 40 years old...furthermore, I can't sit & listen to bigotry masked behind "wokeism" or "love of the source material". 🤷🏾♂️
I'm what you'd call a cis white male and I've been a 'nerd' as far back as I can remember. I'm also old enough to have seen Star Wars in early 1978 (UK release) aged 13. Even at the time, even though I loved it and became a lifelong fan, I thought it was strange that there were aliens and droids but only two women and no non white characters at all! I'm also a fan of LOTR, but had exactly the same questions. And the less said about Lovecraft the better!
It was my love of 'Geek culture' that opened my eyes to oppression in general and with it the positive benefits of seeing yourself in the life and experiences of 'the other'.
I can't bring myself to understand these neo fascists who seem to have infiltrated fandom seemingly from within. As you point out "What does it take to make good people do bad things?" Unfortunately it seems to be 'permission'.
I really enjoyed this video essay. Many people don't recognize that black men can also be nerds. We are constantly in positions to prove our intelligence, then re-prove our intelligence. This becomes very frustrating over the years.
I could never get into nerd culture, because I always felt like I was bombarded with insults based on my appearance and people excusing it because they all called each other those names. I feel like people wanted to yell at me for not knowing something and I was always fixated on something that's not nerdy but not cool either. I feel alone as no one really gets me and I cannot share my obsessions and stuff. I do NOT feel like screaming in a library about anime, yet I do not feel like partying and doing sports. I like some pop culture and some nerd culture, but my fixation is Eurovision and Reality TV.
Cheyenne your videos are always HITS!! A+ tier video essays every time!
I haven't even watched the video but it's pretty simple. Fascism gives people an easy answer to a complex problem.
It gives hope to the hopeless. Doesn't matter if it's based in lies and deception but answers it gives with a caveat of inspiration and hope... IDEALIZATION in a sense. The romantization of the idea a strong MEN (it's usually men, a fraternal figure of sorts. Sometimes a strong women is allowed as a second in charge, as long as she knows who's "the man") will point the north and help us "fix" everything we perceive wrong with us. Strengthen us were we perceive ourselves weak. And it's usually brings the simple solution that everything people perceive wrong with them and with society can be fixed by brutalizing [insert powerless group in here]. That "they're all the real cause of all evil and all that's wrong" that in fact our perceived weakness is because of [insert powerless group in here] as well.
The idea that "we ain't actually weak and pathetic". (((THEY/them))) "convinced us that we're weak so they could rule us"...
It's the demonizing of 'the other' that we all know about, but in facism, the other always being too weak to actually fight against it in any meaningful way.
It prays on the weak and insecure, tells them they've been lied to, that they're actually far stronger than they could ever imagine (which is partially true as all good lies are) and then points them their enemy (the ones who were behind the lies they were ever weak). And then tell "if we get rid of them, THEN all the weakness and insecurity you feel will be gone". And it tell then over and over again, until they start wondering if it's true.
Fascism is the weaponization of fear and insecurity. And it starts with seeding and feeding anger and resentment while shinning a bright face that can supposedly solve all of those problems.. Supposedly.
Of course they can't solve all those problems. No no... Fascism is only good at demonizing and brutalizing of minorities. It can never actually solve anything. It's an extremely poor thought exercise. It's childish at best. Horror inducing at worst.
thank you for always taking up the difficult topics!
Your description of "nerds" is just a description of hyperfixations in autism
that’s what i thought!
There are a lot of neurotypical people who share some traits of autism. Being diagnosed with ASD is holistic and not based on one or two traits.
And OCD
WHAT A MASTERPIECE, I was just thinking about this topic the other day, Good Work Queen👑
Great video.
I think a factor other people forget in the nerd-to-fascist pipeline is the the internet leading to the effective death of in-person meetups and subculture. With the way things worked when I was a teenager, you had to actually go to stores or cons if you were into something nerdy. This brought you into contact with other people and their interests... So even if you just were into comic books, you'd run into a guy with a cool t-shirt and the next thing you know you're asking your local record store to import some South American heavy metal band's first album. Not that there weren't issues in the scenes back in the day but you were at least sort of conditioned to realize there's a degree of diversity.
But when the became the main way to do everything, that eventually died. So people more or less obsessed over one thing and almost one thing alone.