True
The Matrix being predicated on a climate disaster is also entirely lost, along with nonconformity in general.
Also AI is evil although that was like the main plot point
I don’t agree with this take at all. Agent Smith was definitely evil, the machines were victims of capitalist exploitation, which they just turned right around on humanity once they took charge.
I suppose that point is mostly explored in the sequels though.
Animatrix goes into this concept pretty in depth. Don’t know if that is considered fanfiction or correct Matrix lore.
Where is the trans element? I’m aware that the directors are but I cannot recall anything obvious in the film.
originally Switch was supposed to be trans but, you know, 1999 and it was too early for that as the Wachowski sisters stated. The red pill in the movie was literally modelled after the perscribed estrogen people that trans women took in the 90s (which makes the whole “red pill” thing today really funny). Theres’ also the whole “dead name” thing but that’s up for debate.
I think someone that didn’t make it into the movie cannot be cannon. The red pill thing is there but its really really subtle. Enough to be debatable. I’m not aware of what you mean by “dead name” in the context of the movie. It’s not shocking that a movie made in 99 didn’t really touch on that issue.
as far as dead name goes, and again this is debatable, it’s in reference to the characters no longer using their “Matrix names” in the “real world” i.e. Neo no longer goes by Thomas Anderson. People will reference the fact that Agent Smith constantly refers to Neo as “Mr. Anderson” thus constanly using his “dead name” in reference to Trans people being called their “dead names” after they transition.
As far as the character goes the Wachowski Sisters have said that originally Switch was supposed to be a woman in the real world and a man within the Matrix but it got nixed by Warner Brothers as being too controversial for the time.
The part in Matrix 4 where theyre like “do I really have to spell it out for you? We have to do this again?”
I guess I’m going to have to watch the whole series again.
🤌
We should be lauding Elon Musk for dispelling the notion that the wealthy have any inherent superiority to anyone else. He keeps proving it over and over and over.
Thank you Elon, for being yourself and proving, once and for all, that anyone can be a billionaire, all you have to do is benefit from the exploitation of apartheid.
Yep, Gates era billionaires had the good sense to maintain a vaneer of selfless philanthropic personality where each interaction with public was carefully crafted by PR experts. So the general public didn’t know who they really were like actual people.
But Musk landed on the scene and showed the world that billionaires are as stupid as—if not more because they are out of touch with the reality—as the regular person.
Gates after his PR rehab, that is. Society seems to be forgetting just how universally hated that guy was.
After the antitrust deposition where he came across as petty, arrogant, contemptuous — and clearly guilty — he disappeared for a while and returned with perhaps the greatest PR transformation of all time.
To be fair that’s just the nature of a deposition. Because it’s the other side grilling the defendant for hours trying to bait that person to make a slip up. You saw the same thing in the deposition tapes of Lil Wayne for example where they constantly asked him stupid questions until he got annoyed.
To be faaaaair!
A-to be faaaaair 🧐
Wait what? How is Gates seen positively? Microsoft was the worst tech company under him and did so much awful stuff …
Most people know 2 things about Bill Gates - he’s rich, and he donates a lot of money. They don’t think about it any more than that, and they certainly aren’t going to research anything about it, so they consider him “one of the good ones”
Why do you think I used words like “veneer” and “carefully crafted PR”?
God that is so much not what Gates is about and has ever been about. Even the veneer isn’t selfless, I don’t mean people are fooled I mean they don’t even bother looking at the top level. Because even the pr doesn’t hide that it’s all about profit and handouts to corporations.
The hilarious part is, he absolutely had the same PR team that the Gates and Jobs and Buffetts had.
And at some point in the Trump presidency, he just straight up threw them to the curb. Fired the lot of them, or at least stopped listening to a word of advice they gave. And he just started going on rants, tangents, and showing who he really was for all the world to see.
Nobody will ever know for sure, but best guess is his addiction to Twitter drove his need to be acknowledged and accepted by the general populace. He was a rockstar, and he got off on that feeling.
Conservatives telling you to escape the matrix and join them is always the funniest shit, because like grandpa, have you thought about how few people basically shape your entire worldview right now?
This is the same guy who loves Iain Banks’ Culture novels while somehow remaining oblivious to their strongly leftist and anti-capitalist stance, and just sees “cool spaceships go pew pew”. He’s a complete moron.
I started reading that series recently. I was aware that Elon is a fan and named multiple SpaceX modules after Culture ships. Absolutely blew my mind and made me realize how dumb he is, since The Culture seems like the opposite of everything he stands for. Plus some very pro trans messages IMHO.
The Culture is Fully Automated Luxury Gary Space Communism, and all he saw was AI ships have funny names.
Set course… for Gary Space.
He also says he loves the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is extremely anti-corporate and portrays every AI as flawed, an asshole, or both.
Except the doors; they were perfect.
sighs with the satisfaction of a job well done 😮💨
He’s Veppers.
What if I told you that breaking down your entire worldview and building it back up from the ground up can still result in shitty beliefs because you refused to look inward and work on yourself and you’re still a shitty person?
True, but Musk never broke down his worldview. He was a shitty apartheid kid, he is a shitty bigot adult
They don’t care about the kungfu either. They’re mostly in it for the guns.
This reminds me of that guy who declared he wouldn’t be listening to Rage Against the Machine anymore because Tom Morello had become too political 😂😂😂
How about when a republican Tweeted:
"Bummed to learn that @deesnider, the man with the perfect song written decades ago about the attack on traditional, conservative American values… “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is riding the train in the wrong direction. How could it be that he sang for us but now fights for them?
And Dee Snider:
You think i wrote a song in support of “traditional American values”? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! You funny.
“Ms. Gore claimed that one of my songs, ‘Under the Blade,’ had lyrics encouraging sadomasochism, bondage and rape. The lyrics she quoted have absolutely nothing to do with these topics. On the contrary, the words in question are about surgery and the fear that it instills in people. … I can say categorically that the only sadomasochism, bondage and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore.”
-Dee Snider at the PMRC Congressional hearings.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/dee-snider-on-pmrc-hearing-i-was-a-public-enemy-71205/
Art is subjective, it’s funny how often it says more about the viewer than the person who made it.
Heck I always intrepreted the song Dream Thieves by Sonata Artica to be about betrayal at the hands of an oppressive authority figure…
It’s actually about music piracy, how it negatively effected the band’s income, with the implication that a fan who pirates music is disloyal as a true fan would want to contribute to the livelihood of a musician they like…
I don’t really agree with the intended message and I still like the song because of MY interpretation, but damn that does make the line “Download new lies on your scythe” make more sense in context
Personally I feel like “Piracy is always morally correct” and “Support Indie Creators whenever possible.” are not contradictory viewpoints. (Admittedly the song was written when digital media was a new concept)
Did they not see the music video for that song where a rebellious kid using the power of rock rebels against his authoritarian father? Turning into the effeminate-looking singer of the song in the process, a song by a band named twisted SISTER? Said father who is heavily implied to be a former US Marine?
Yeah that’s about as “Traditional American Values” and “Pro-Conservative” as a black lesbian burning down a Chic-Fila-A on June 1st with a molotov cocktail made from a bottle of Bud Light (It’s not very Left Wing, but the brand triggers the fuck out of Righties) while making out with her transgender undocumented immigrant girlfriend, who had a perfect 15 inch girl-cock boner the whole time, because she is non-op and does not desire Bottom Surgery nor feel she should get a procedure that would be more effective on someone who actually does have dysphoria down there… She does however hope to have implants some day, and will look into it after gaining citizenship via marrying her black lesbian lover… However said Black Lesbian Lover gets SSI on account of being epileptic and cannot marry anyone without it harshly affecting her benefits and jeopardize her already vicarous living situation, so the wedding is off until they can find a lawyer to show them the right loopholes.
Oh dear God help me this is becoming a short story…
(Not a threat or call to arms, please do not burn down any establishments chicken or otherwise, voting for Biden will be enough, thank you)
My wife’s theory was they only caught the first 20 seconds of the video and assumed the father was the protagonist.
That kind of requires an astounding ignorance of the tropes of what was considered “Cool” at the time… Meaning for a Republican that’s pretty damn plausible
Get this in front of AMC to get picked up for 5 seasons with 3 or 4 good ones
My favorite response the Morello tweet got was “what ‘Machine’ did you think he was raging against? The dishwasher?” Lol
Nah, definitely was a printer.
Well, in a way, raging against a printer usually is just raging against late stage capitalism with extra steps
It has to be a HP Printer.
Lol, yes. My dad worked for them and can attest, printer ink is peak late stage capitalism.
Touché
Pretty sure that’s canonically done to “Damn it feels good to be a gangster” and not RATM. Could have been an air conditioner though.
I’ve definitely raged against printers… (I’ll see you in hell Epson ink refills!)
My favorite response the Morello tweet got was “what ‘Machine’ did you think he was raging against? The dishwasher?” Lol
Epson didn’t refill itself!
the man with the perfect song written decades ago about the attack on traditional, conservative American values
Ah yes, the famously conservative hair metal singer whose stage getup was just shy of a drag performers. How could one forget this pinnacle of conservative values.
I’ve seen drag performers with less makeup than Dee Snyder. He was approaching “circus clown” in that song’s video.
That’s the funny part, and why he destroyed tipper gore’s dumb parental advisory witch hunt; He doesn’t drink or smoke, and is a family man. He’s much closer to conservative family values than people expect. Here he is recounting that time he made a fool of Congress
You should also watch his full congress speech if you have time
They saw it was from Twisted Sister and probably thought they were into incest like them?
The most stereotypical drag band aren’t conservative? What a shocker
This reminds me of people who accuse Star Trek of being too political also.
I saw one a while back where people were getting upset that X-Men had become “woke” lol
As a gamer, I am constantly rolling my eyes at people claiming that a gay character with a same-sex love interest being a minor character in a massive game makes it “Political” and “Forces an Agenda”
Especially as the “Non-Political Games” they stick to are always the most Leftist shit like BioShock (Why Libertarianism is bad and will always lead to someone destroying the world to stack the deck in their favor), Fallout (Blind Nationalism is meaningless and will force you into a conflict that causes you to lose everything you held dear), and Residnet Evil (America’s For-Profit Healthcare System creates company that are evil and cannot be trusted with people’s lives)
Funny, it seems like Right Wing Politics actually make game stories worse, like Dead Rising 3 (Vaccines are evil and a means to spy on you, also the President is an expy of Hillary… this is also where Dead Rising fell into a spiral with 4 finishing it off) and BioShock Infinite (Good game, but also another franchise killer with a story that pisses off everyone… One of the key points of the story? Black slaves revolting against their highly bigoted white owners are just as evil as the people who kidnapped them, took them to a city in the sky, and forced them to do all the labor)
“The only difference between Zachary Cumsock and Daisy Fitzroy are how you spell their name!” - Booker DeWitt being the dumbest man alive
God what’s another game with terrible Right Wing politics? Hard to say because most of them are budget title shitposts like the Kyle Rittenhouse game on Steam or the various “Play as Trump and save America” games on Steam
I actually can’t think of much media considered “Good” by anyone that’s right leaning at all aside from The Dark Knight Returns (Where humanely treating and rehabilitating criminals is seen as foolishly naive and the government is incapable of helping anyone… To be fair Reagan was President), King of The Hill (and even then Hank would be a solid never Trumper, don’t get me wrong, as much as I love Hank I don’t see him being much an LGBT Ally (Especially not to T’s) without breaking character), and… huh… I can’t think of anything.
Does that show Ben Shapiro’s people made to be a Pro-Right Cartoon, but failed when the super woke antagonist was… a far more likable character than the protagonist, and said protagonist was so accidentally queer-coded as a closested gay bear with a crush on the woke antagonist guy that it attracted a Leftist fanbase that ships the Protagonist and Antagonist together? To such an extent that it might as well be a canon pairing?
Yeah does that show can’t? Sorry I don’t remember the name
Anything else?
Nope that’s about it, it’s almost like Conservatism is a backwards ideology that can only bring destruction in its wake and deep down we all know that it inevitably leads to fascism.
I also find it funny how much stuff gets called “Woke” when it really isn’t…
Like the Tomb Raider prequel-disguised-as-a-reboot where it’s called woke because Lara’s sexualized less. Which while true, is only to an extent, she still has the largest chest in the game (To the extent that it looks like she has implants, especially in scenes with other female characters) and every camera angle is throwing her delicious cake in your face (Which appeals to my bisexuality, just cause I’m female doesn’t mean I don’t like fanservice), and personality-wise… Lara spends a large amount of the game helpless, looking up to a male role model, with her combat prowess being based more in acting on a combination of fear, instinct, and adrenaline than anything else. She’s constantly shown as being in a state of fear to such an extent that some parts of the prequel/reboot trilogy dubbed “Survivor Trilogy” might as well be a Horror Game, and people who work on Horror Games for a living agree since Lara Croft’s the most recent addition to the big Horror Crossover game Dead By Daylight!
Oh and her iconic weapon is a makeshift bow (You’d think she’d start carrying heavier ordinance in the sequels), she never even gets her trademark Dual Pistols (the first game implies she hasn’t earned them yet… but they’re not in the sequels at all), a weapon of last resort crafted in desperation.
Meanwhile Original Lara is a wise-cracking adventure seeker never backing down from a challenge, with her iconic weapon being a stupidly large amount of ammo fired out of two guns she keeps on her person at all times, ready to fight. This weapon speaks more to someone ready to kick ass and take names.
Original Lara is often seen outdoing her male peers with her biggest rival being another woman, as if to say that literally no man can be her equal.
If we put them side-by-side, it’s actually Original Lara that feels more like the typical “Strong Female Lead” they complain about, but it’s the reboot that’s woke?
For the record, I like the Survivor Trilogy, but Original Lara is still my favorite Lara. (And you bet your ass I bought the Classic Lara skin the second it was available for DBD) We need more chicks who are “Basically the female equivalent of Duke Nukem”, and only Lara and Bombshell (from Ion Fury) come close to that bill. (And well original Lara is more recognizable from a visual standpoint, reboot Lara doesn’t stand out as much to the point that I sometimes get her mixed up with REmake 3’s version of Jill… My autistic face blindness doesn’t help)
Sorry I kind of went on a tangent there. I LOVE LARA~!
Does that show Ben Shapiro’s people made to be a Pro-Right Cartoon, but failed when the super woke antagonist was… a far more likable character than the protagonist, and said protagonist was so accidentally queer-coded as a closested gay bear with a crush on the woke antagonist guy that it attracted a Leftist fanbase that ships the Protagonist and Antagonist together? To such an extent that it might as well be a canon pairing?
Oh my god, this blew right past me! What show was this?
I agree with all of this except what you said about Hank Hill… I think he would be very uncomfortable at first, then get to know them on a personal level, and then become cautiously accepting by the end of the episode.
And while King of the Hill features a bunch of right wing characters, I don’t think I’d consider the show itself right-leaning. It respected its characters but also constantly made fun of them regarding their beliefs. Like when Hank would say Bobby isn’t alright, I didn’t get the impression that’s what the show wanted to say; the show respected Bobby as much as it did Hank. And Peggy and Luanne.
True, but there were plenty of episodes where Hank Hill is shown being in the right for combating “New-fangled Liberal Nonsense”, like the episode where they ban transfats to be more like NYC, or the episode where he finds it disrespectful to tone down the details of “The Alamo”… There are also plenty of episodes where the opposite happens and Hank realizes he is indeed stuck in the past and the ideals he holds close are not best for everyone, or maybe even anyone.(Like when he realizes an overly strict parent of boy scouts is overly strict for a reason, or when he realizes that growing roses is a legitimate sport that requires practice and discipline)
Like when Khan moved in.
Similar, but also remember that by the 10th season ole Hank was a lot more open minded than when the show started lol
Because when the show started Hank was still a characture from Beavis and Butthead, and the writers grew him into something pretty awesome.
as much as I love Hank I don’t see him being much an LGBT Ally (Especially not to T’s) without breaking character)
Hank meets a trans woman who tries to explain being trans to him, and he just doesn’t get it. He has a mental block. He insists that she’s a beautiful young woman and he also likes her “brother” quite a lot.
In another episode he helps Bobby buy a bra so he can dress up as a woman.
Yeah, but like you said he didn’t understand the concept… and as for the latter example it was for Powder Puff Football and he even stresses that Bobby can basically “Never dress like this again” afterward
I can imagine Hank being ignorant, stubborn, and dismissive, but I can’t imagine him being directly hateful. I think his behaviour at the grocery co-op is a good indicator. Hank got along perfectly well with potheads, hippies, and vegans, as long as he was able to teach them the value of hard work.
If I meet Hank Hill I’d tell him “I ain’t no woman and I ain’t no man. And if I catch you running your mouth to the contrary, I’m gonna kick your ass. You can call me Mx. Mindtraveller, and refer to me with the pronoun “they”. Understood?” And that would be that. He’d mess up, of course, and I’d respond with a stern look and a faint growl, and he’d get the hang of it sooner or later. The key to these kinds of men is simply speaking their own language. You have to demonstrate your rugged individualism and ability to fight for your own dignity, and you need to phrase bigotry as a violation of the social contract and of good manners.
The only people who Hank really gets mad at in the show, are those who are violent towards women and children, and those who lack the determination and good sense to accomplish what they set out to do. Hank respects people who can look after themselves.
Fair point
Yeah I put it there with the whole thing with Kahn “So are you Chinese or Japanese”. Super shit, but you know they would have happily drank with him in the alley if their personalities didn’t otherwise clash.
Hell ya! You said it
We need more chicks who are “Basically the female equivalent of Duke Nukem”, and only Lara and Bombshell (from Ion Fury) come close to that bill
I’ve long been a fan of Samus Aran!
I really wish Other M had a version where all the story beats were removed entirely
That’s the one I haven’t played. Then I had to look up who this weird “Adam” character was in some of the following games…
I remember the plot was odd, but reading a random wiki didn’t make the story really stick for me.
When I played Metroid Other M I went from “Oh shit, Adam’s here. This is going to be awesome.” to “I’m fucking glad you’re dead Adam.”
(Adam was in Metroid Fusion as an AI upload where he was said to be Samus’ ex-husband and that she liked him due to him being the one man not intimidated by her being a planet destroying killing machine shaped like a woman)
Black slaves revolting against their highly bigoted white owners are just as evil as the people who kidnapped them, took them to a city in the sky, and forced them to do all the labor
That pissed me off soooo much. Really soured the game for me. The imagery of worshipping the founding fathers was the best part.
It’s funny, it’s so rare in a work of fiction that I can point to the EXACT moment that I stopped caring about the narrative in a piece of media.
It’s centrist “BoTh SiDeS” nonsense
Wow. I couldn’t even make it halfway through the first BioShock game, I found it way too tedious and boring. Like playing an Ayn Rand novel
I know the “both sides” thing is something we’re all sick of now, but there’s no way Levine could have imagined what 2020+ would look like. Not to say that isn’t something that’s always happened, but man 2012 didn’t have it to our current degree of insanity. Also I always figured the Vox were modeled more after the Russian revolution which… yeah… Stalinism was the end result, so it fits. I think that’s the crux of the bad writing. You model the Vox after real world socialist uprisings, but they’re predominantly black in a crazy racist planation in the sky. Now you’re borrowing context from two real world things, and need to be careful about what you’re saying, intentionally or not, about each of them. You have a responsibility in your messaging now. Given how it landed with you, I’d say they didn’t do a great job.
Also Booker’s view of it fits. He’s a drunk, gambling, Pinkerton who sold his daughter. He’s going to be a jaded misanthrope. Oh yeah and the part where he is also Comstock. Everything is there for us to know this is not a character we should be rooting for. But while these are facts about him, they never really make it into the “feel” of booker. So the information is there, it’s just not great writing.
In contrast Elizabeth is really well done. She starts naïve and pure (if only because of the whole fucked up locked in a tower bit), and Booker does genuinely “lead the lamb astray”. He’s the reason she gets exposed to everything, and as a result rains fire from the sky. While we know booker is an asshole but doesn’t feel like one, we definitely feel Elizabeth getting darker. I also think it’s a great touch that the one that saves Elizabeth is, Elizabeth. Booker can’t even take credit for that one.
I’m rambling now, I have a lot of mixed feelings on the game. It’s got some really great and well done parts, and some serious blunders.
Nah, that wasn’t a “looks bad now” thing, it looked bad any time. Saying that people rising up against their oppressors are just as bad as the oppressors is bullshit in any era. One can claim that that was just Booker’s point of view and the game wasn’t saying he was right, but the narrative did nothing to imply that he was wrong in any way, especially considering you were encouraged to mow down the slaves who were revolting just like you did the slavers previously. And having them dress like this? What were they thinking?
The line from bookers perspective is entirely appropriate (he’s an asshole), the narrative reinforcing it should have been handled better. That being said, the reason the “both sides bad” bullshit is such a prevalent fallacy is that there are instances where it’s true. I already mentioned Stalin, but revolutionary France got pretty messed up as well. Thats why it short circuits the whole “is it true in this case” reasoning. You can absolutely find cycles of violence in every nation, and you can talk about them in a way that doesn’t cheapen the suffering that brought them on. When talking about BLM and literal nazis saying “there’s good people on both sides” is bullshit. Saying “robes Pierre was kind of an asshole” is not. The game did a pretty shit job of that.
I have to be honest, I always saw the costumes as just red and scary, but I see your point. Looking at them in isolation I get it, but knowing they were mostly black didn’t make me think “klan”. If anything I saw it as a red cap analogy. There’s probably a bunch more I missed to. Thanks for pointing me to a re-look before I go mouthing off about it some more. I definitely need to take a better look.
smh Tom Morello talks so much about politics these days you’d think he has a degree in it
I love when I learn things from sarcasm.
He attended Harvard University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Morello
Back when I used to watch Bill Maher’s show before I couldn’t take him any longer, Morello was on, and some right-wing guest said something like, “white guys like you and me” to Tom Morello and he just slowly and calmly told the guy that he’s black in such a disarming way that the guy had absolutely nothing to say in response and it was awesome.
Any more assumptions you idiots want to make about Morello and his band?
This is like the video of Trump folks blaring Rage Against The Machine screaming “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”, and not seeing the irony.
Or the people bashing Tom Morello for “getting political”.
Former Republican speaker of the house Paul Ryan said he was a RATM fan. The same guy who gave people Ayn Rand novels as Christmas gifts.
Tom Morello’s perfect response: “Paul Ryan Is the embodiment of the machine our music rages against.”
Elon Musk: Trump is doing the critical thought and analysis for me, but I did the rest of that.
They really should have made Switch change gender when they were in the Matrix. As it was, they being the only one to wear white in the Matrix, it was a good other option but it would have made for a better story if it was able to be the way the writing suggested
I don’t normally advocate for such things, but I would not complain if a “special edition” version came out where Switch was digitally altered to be a different gender in either the Matrix or reality.
I hate when people say they want to build up their belief system on critical thought and analysis… But they are religious or conservative idiots. Like come on.
“Logically we can…”
I hear this all the time as well. It’s so absurd as if basing their bullshit on conservative ideology and the Bible makes it logical.
Then they will claim Christianity is not a religion, but “fact”.
Original meme was based, but so vague it just validated everyone who reads it
