the alt-right

jock is a real high school kinda thing. i think people use "jock" as a way to describe athlete asshole dudes from high school or maybe college. most of them, politically, seem relatively quaint and innocent in their conservatism. based on my rural IL upbringing, at least. the alt-right is a lot different. i don't think jocks are nearly as stunted emotionally as a lot of the alt-right dudes.

w/ the caveat that my entire knowledge of american high schools comes from television + film my impression is that jocks are a caste of athletic male students, particularly in team sports, who have high class status and are v popular. i'm guessing like there are ranks there and being QB is better than being an OL. i think jocks can be nice or jerks.

i love high school movies but they all seem to be taking place on an entirely different planet. v much liked my handful of football-team friends in high school and they did not seem to enjoy any awesome status. girls maybe tended to prefer them to my computer lab friends but this seemed neither mysterious nor unjust. subsequent political developments have not complicated this view.

the internet proved nerds are worse than jocks when given a chance

^^^^^

Yes and, a key 80s nerd fantasy was that in later life, you would be like a jillionaire running a company or whatever, and you'd have the power to, like, fire the dumb jocks who bullied you.

And you'd finally get the cheerleader.

Looked up "jock" for definition and gay porn and gay dating sites was the main result. Also insulting definitions of the stereotype but I've definitely heard people being called a "nice jock". Like Kevin in Daria I guess.

I despise geek/nerd culture but I really don't think there is a trend of them being nasty in the majority. Most of them are okay.

i dunno man i'm pretty sure the majority of super-villains are nerds so

I was going to say something about how teen movie stereotypes can't be mapped onto real-world politics but then realised that the handful of male Trump supporters on my FB friends list are all hyper-athletic gym-dwellers. (One went to uni in the US to play hockey.) So hm.

jock in my neck of the woods meant someone athletic who is not too bright, overly stereotypically masculine, rough/aggressive/boorish/loutish, insensitive, and loud. they definitely existed in my schools. there were always one or two who were the more sensible ones, though

getting your info from high school movies is probably not the best idea, especially if they're hollywood movies. they are caricatures of real people and cliques appear much more divided. characters are one-sided, simplistic and extremist for the most part, because people want to be entertained and love a "good story"

i rarely if ever saw jocks bullying nerds at my schools. nerds were getting picked on by morons who were not jocks. the jock mantra was "pick on someone your own size." the only thing i remember clearly is once a white dude, who was bigger than average but not athletic/jock big, and who had mostly popular jock friends (a few of them dressed like cowboys) pushed a black-looking mexican music nerd, who had a smaller frame, out of his way and told him he would tie him up to the back of his truck and take him for a spin. but white dude carried a cowboy complex and dressed as one a lot. clearly motivated by white cowboy's racism more than anything else, though. he didn't bother the real nerds

also nerds may do bad things on the internet, but it's because it's easier and seemingly more "anonymous." in real life, nerds do bad things by passively resisting any action and just smirking, but i've never seen them physically do something harmful. i'm talking math and science nerds here, though, not weirdo semi-antisocial ilx pop culture nerds

I was going to say something about how teen movie stereotypes can't be mapped onto real-world politics but then realised that the handful of male Trump supporters on my FB friends list are all hyper-athletic gym-dwellers. (One went to uni in the US to play hockey.) So hm.

Then, I might only know that these guys are Trump supporters because they post about it loudly and aggressively. I could have quieter non-jock Trump-loving FB friends. (Actually, I'm pretty sure one guy is, who was a geek in middle school and teaches English in Taiwan.)

What are we calling geeks who play loads of sport btw

depends what you're calling a geek. someone who is obsessed with a particular thing/hobbie?

What are we calling geeks who play loads of sport btw

― imago

british

(Actually, I'm pretty sure one guy is, who was a geek in middle school and teaches English in Taiwan.)
― Spiritual Hat Minimalism (Sund4r), Wednesday, October 12, 2016 2:33 PM (five seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I taught abroad and this is definitely an archetype of a certain group of expats

i rarely if ever saw jocks bullying nerds at my schools. nerds were getting picked on by morons who were not jocks.

Bears reposting

academic nerds who play loads of sport go to stanford, iirc

geeks (in the obsessive hobbyist sense) who play loads of sport end up on ultimate frisbee teams

never

they just sound like sport nerds to me. i know a couple people who geek out over sports who are harmless and have suppressed their inner jock inclinations, because they can't get away with it in the real world. but they tend to be passive aggressive to non-jocks

'sport nerds' is an unfamiliar concept to me

To me too. The only thing that brings to mind is maybe people who don't actually play but obsessively study hockey statistics. Not sure anyone calls them "sports nerds' though.

http://www.theonion.com/article/walking-sports-database-scorns-walking-sci-fi-data-1442

that's true

i guess what i'm getting at is people who play lots of sports as a hobby are probably not good at anything so they just like the idea of sport and talking about it on a theoretical level, while pretending that they know about it from practising it, but surely if you play lots of sports, you probably haven't had time to study a single one deeply enough

I can never stay awake through sports OR most sci-fi. I am obv a failure at relating to my fellow man.

there's totally sports nerds in high school, like dudes who ended up as stat keeper or managers etc, also there's literally a whole industry of analytics built around sports nerds

A friend posted this the other day, it was put up at a university in my home town where he works:
http://i.imgur.com/kFcxtEo.jpg

1. This is at a heavily engineering school in the middle of nowhere in the midwest.

2. It's like 3:1 male to female

3. If you ignore the ~15% who are international students (primarily from China and India), the student body is probably 95% white. There's not really any significant non-white population for at least 4 hours in any direction.

4. The undergrad population is super heavy with LARPer / gamer / neckbeard / fedora types. The kind of place where is almost always at least one guy on campus who goes about his daily business in a Gandalf cloak and staff

5. A good number of the rest are libertarian good old boys who love guns and trucks and such.

6. The logo really looks like a KKK hood

7. The funniest(?) part is that the area is chock-full of descendants of Finnish immigrants and I have never been anywhere with as much (non-racist) pride in people's European heritage. There are stores full of Finnish pride related shirts and hats and bumper stickers and "parking for Finns only" signs and shit like that.

I never really thought of most sports as macho. There's boxing, American football, soccer and maybe basketball but most of the rest don't seem that way to me.

xp sure, but the way it was being used here made me think it was referring to some wider & more archetypal band than just 'dude who reads sabermetrics blogs and gets way too invested in the office fantasy football league'

Hockey dudes can be p damn macho.

north american hockey is way more aggressive and faster

european hockey is pretty tame, so i can see the confusion

can see why rugby wouldn't make the macho sports list over football

I always forget rugby exists, even though people at my school did it.

With all the exposure we have to Japanese culture, it's weird sumo wrestling is never mentioned.

joygoat: MTU?

yes indeed

How many members of the alt right describe themselves as opposed to the "enlightenment"

I wonder if there's anything to the idea that some geeks watch genre movies (fantasy and sci-fi in the main) / tv/games/comics and get so wrapped up in them that, aside from dressing up as the characters, or doing other traditional geek culture things, they end up thinking the simplified ethics and/or philosophy in these tv shows and movies are substantial, and would/should work in real life? And if this has anything to do with this alt-right movement?

A plump, curly-haired woman took a step out from the others. Her round face was red with anger as she screamed. "Stop the hate! No war! Stop the hate! No war!"

"Move or die!" Richard yelled as he picked up speed.

The red-faced woman shook her fleshy fist at Richard and his men, leading an angry chant. "Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!"

On his way past her, gritting his teeth as he screamed with the fury of the attack begun, Richard took a powerful swing, lopping off the woman's head and upraised arm. Strings of blood and gore splashed across the faces behind her even as some still chanted their empty words. The head and loose arm tumbled through the crowd. A man mad the mistake of reaching for Richard's weapon, and took the full weight of a charging thrust.

Men behind Richard hit the line of evil's guardians with unrestrained violence. People armed only with their hatred for moral clarity fell bloodied, terribly injured, and dead.

^ Terry Goodkind right? Even where the author isn't a Randian, that style is pretty common - mooks being mown down by heroes, etc. Meanwhile the 'proper', 'serious' films and books are boring because they don't have swordfights and spaceships. So the hypothetical geek goes looking for more of the same sugar rush, they end up living on a diet of it, it ends up informing their perceptions of real life, idk? Especially if they don't see any violence in real life to get a reality check.

+ being part of a small core of 'fans' might lead naturally to liking the idea of a small elite who know what's up versus the blinkered masses?

The problem with all this is that last night I watched and enjoyed Predator and Predator 2 and as usual it's the old 'when I enjoy this stuff I know I'm indulging in silly sadistic jouissance but when they watch it ...'

I wonder if there's anything to the idea that some geeks watch genre movies (fantasy and sci-fi in the main) / tv/games/comics and get so wrapped up in them that, aside from dressing up as the characters, or doing other traditional geek culture things, they end up thinking the simplified ethics and/or philosophy in these tv shows and movies are substantial, and would/should work in real life? And if this has anything to do with this alt-right movement?

― Never changed username before (cardamon), Wednesday, 12 October 2016 23:35

I don't know if it's much different than regular action, war and cowboy films and games. Barring Kaiju and disaster films I've seen more superhero stories than anything that show cities being wrecked as if it's nothing.

True, although does it matter that action, war and cowboy movies don't have quite the same 'fan club' in-group thing going on that seems to come with sci-fi and fantasy? They strike me as more 'standard issue', common cultural touchstones I guess. No less wacky and prone to shoving right-wing ideas in your face, but they'll do it in a significantly different way?

(The other problem with all this is just how widespread the love for sci fi and games and all the rest of it really is, compared to how narrow it's traditionally assumed to be. That really does seem like a relic now considering the viewer figures for GoT and various genre blockbusters? Just because there's a self-identified geek culture which views itself as a weird minority doesn't mean it actually is.)

There are a lot of arguments that superheroes are more of a troubling construct and a lot of fantasy and science fiction can have similarly fascistic or entitled worldviews while war and cowboys are based on real situations, but you can probably present them just as badly. There's vigilante films which can be pretty nasty.
I heard the newest Mel Gibson film called "dadsploitation", the best genre name I've heard in years.

Cowboy stories do seem more politically self aware for decades though.

The kind of place where is almost always at least one guy on campus who goes about his daily business in a Gandalf cloak and staff

Going to go out on a limb and say it's not this guy. In fact, I'm bemused by eg Gamergate because these people are just not very good geeks - the usual morals of geek media is co-operation, working together, tolerance - the idea that it's all power fantasies is weird and/or out of date.

i think RAG is right that these "gamers" aren't real gamers. they're AAA gamers who think they're gamers. real gamers love all the recent indie stuff - even if a particular game isn't their bag no real gamer would complain that games are ruined atm.

aren't there like 5 threads about this already? i feel like this isn't a "real thread" about the "real alt-right"

no you're right no more gaming talk from me only neo-nazi meme talk from now on

i think RAG is right that these "gamers" aren't real gamers. they're AAA gamers who think they're gamers. real gamers love all the recent indie stuff - even if a particular game isn't their bag no real gamer would complain that games are ruined atm.

― Mordy

oh come on their position is that they're the _only_ real gamers and everybody else are "filthy casuals".

and tbh i think kickstarter is doing some pretty serious damage to games right now

I know this is getting off-topic but I'd like to hear about why kickstarter is damaging.