the alt-right

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.

And I think some gamergaters are weeaboos and pretty hardcore into games.

pretty easy to make an argument that the bulk of indie games aren't serious/real games

not making that argument, but it's makeable

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

― Robert Adam Gilmour

used to be you would make a game and then sell it. now you come up with a pitch and then you sell that, and you don't bother to actually finish making the game. i know most players don't get past the first couple hours of a game anyway, but even if i don't finish a game (i usually don't) i like to know that the game in question at least is finishable (if it's that kind of game).

I kinda like that this mixture of wild over-ambition, hucksterism and genuine craft exists but yeah most of it is not gonna be looked back on fondly

back towards the topic- one of the things that puzzles me about the alt-right is its hostility towards the existence of games they weren't going to play in the first place.

like, when that twin peaks ripoff game came out a couple weeks ago, a lot of people got super mad about it (or a few people got mad about it super loudly, hard to tell these days) because the pc was a black woman. this is ridiculous. is there anybody outside the margin of error who honestly enjoys playing "walking simulators" but simultaneously insists that their player character only ever be a white male?

I think they may have a "domino effect" concern, that's the nicest construction you could put on it.

asking for logic from these guys is a fool's errand tbh, but yeah as nv says their fear is basically that any game which isn't about bald white space marines shooting stuff helps the games industry get one step closer to producing nothing but entirely conflict-and-challenge-free games starring disabled black transgender socialists

gears of war 5: ceasefire

Save the Whales III

dude ecco the dolphin ruled and these dweebs need to stfu

CuckQuest 8: Trigger Happy

Now that I think about it there aren't many video games that star or feature libhomo characters or have libhomo themes.

though I guess "libfag" would probably be the proper alt right term

The entire concept of "real gamers" IS THE PROBLEM DUMMIES

There's no such thing

true

real gamers vote in the 90s pc gaming poll

unless they are not into 90s pc games, that is also of course cool

I think kickstarter has done some good things for games. A lot of developers have their heads up their asses and completely ignore the audience that made them big in the first place. A few of these high profile kickstarter games are basically like "capcom and konami won't pay for this but their old fans will"

Re: Spiked et al., O'Neill did write this recent piece critical of the alt right: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/hounding-leslie-jones-anti-pc-gone-mad/

kickstarter talk going a bit off topic yeah but i do think video games are relevant here since gamergate was such a major mobilizing moment for these ppl

I think kickstarter has done some good things for games. A lot of developers have their heads up their asses and completely ignore the audience that made them big in the first place. A few of these high profile kickstarter games are basically like "capcom and konami won't pay for this but their old fans will"

― Robert Adam Gilmour

i don't know i don't think "mighty no. 9" isn't exactly a vindication of this way of thinking.

and even if igavania turns out to be good, is it really a great triumph for kickstarter to provide funding for cookie-cutter sequels-in-all-but-name to formulaic game franchises? (note that i love the igavania games and if his new game is good i will probably buy it and play it.)