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Comment by kinghtown | Hacker News Reader

He likes to do alt right click bait and I mainly ignore him these days.. like I would tag him as a leftie and I mainly agree with him in terms of how obnoxious and cynical corpo-hollywood is in its execution of inclusion and diversity (to be clear: I want more diversity in entertainment) but he does play it up quite a bit and exaggerates “the message” thing he pushes. Months ago, I watched a ten minute video/rant on Loki where he complained about forced inclusion and gender politics ruining the show.. though I finally saw the show this week and I found it to be very good and no where near as annoying as he made it out to be.

He’s part of an alt right baiting group of youtubers like Nerdroitic who all flirt with this notion of white culture being under siege. Like I don’t believe any of these guys swing that way (as in MAGA) but they like the views on their channels.

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For some time YT was convinced that guy was the main thing I needed to watch (other than cooking), so I have seen a fair amount. He's generally right about plots. I wanted to think some of the more obnoxious stuff was mostly a joke, but eventually I decided he's serious about it. He may not actually be a racist, but he has convinced me he is actually a sexist. Given that, his judgment seems a bit less accurate than I thought initially.

Others may disagree. The last straw for me was his review of "Captain Marvel". Granted, that is not a great movie. I watched it after seeing one or more of his five reviews of the film (at this point I'm not sure which it was?), however, and his complaints didn't really seem to apply. Or maybe they applied, but not really in the emphatically gendered way he seems to think? Annoying male characters are just annoying, but somehow annoying female characters are the downfall of society? Really? You do realize that typically the same writer is writing characters of both sexes?

Yeah I find myself agreeing with him when it comes down to studio meddling or missed opportunities but his commentary on anything related to feminism or gender related issues/casting is a mixed bag.

Like his whole thing about “the message” misses the forest for the trees. Yeah, Hollywood, in particular the gatekeepers controlling content for Science Fiction and Fantasy, are obnoxious and breaking many beloved franchises but the real problem is that mainstream entertainment could never become the hero we need to advance culture because the industry is inherently corrupt and greedy anyways and, in the main, disinterested in high art and culture. How could the engineers of disposable, crowdpleasing entertainment ever with a straight face pretend to be educators and philosophers? Anyone who finds hollywood lacking should consider moving on to art house cinema and literature. The endless whining peppered with unaware sexism is pretty lame. If the critical drinker really cared he’d use whatever cultural cache he has to steer his audience towards good things.

He just posts what gets him views. Most of his criticism is way blown out of proportion. I think you're looking too much in it. When someone has an opinion, it doesn't mean he is left or alt right..

It seems like these creators and others like Tim pool, have found a sizeable niche audience that really supports them (in part they are alienated by the mainstream and the alt right welcomes them).

It’s weird how hippies have become conservatives if they didn’t go woke.

>>It’s weird how hippies have become conservatives if they didn’t go woke.

Except they dont... Conservative has a very specific political meaning, and to consider everyone that is "not woke" either conservative or alt-right shows a massive ignorance of the political landscape

Classic Liberal, or libertarian people still exist, we are here. The 1990's and 00's the battle was against conservatives wanting ti suppress speech, blame violence on video games, and all other manner of BS.

Today it seems the far left has also taken up the mantra of speech suppression, and blame video games for all manner of social ill's,

It is the Horseshoe Theory of politics manifest in reality..

One can be "not woke" and at the same time, not conservative...

the " sizeable niche audience" is actually the sane people, the middle of the road people, the people that think both Extreme Conservatives, and Extreme "Leftists" are crazy....

As a bike riding, pot smoking, liberty minded hippie, perhaps becoming was the wrong word, but I have more in common with conservatives than the progressive activists.

When you say “except they don’t” and I am part of that group that has, my existence proves you wrong. But perhaps it was just my poor use of language

The key is in the way you're looking at it: "I have more in common with conservatives than the progressive activists"

You didn't compare conservative activists with progressive activists, or conservative activists with progressives.

If you're comparing the mainstream views of one side with the extremes of the other, (or worse: a caricature of the other side that you've been told about) then of course you're going to find the other more extreme.

No I’m seeing the mainstream left get bullied into becoming the activist left and the moderate leftists like myself are now suddenly closer on the spectrum to moderate conservatives, because the bulk of the left wing went to the left extreme.

Stop trying to reframe my experiences.

I wasn't reframing what you said. I quoted you verbatim.

What is an example of something that the mainstream left supports now that is extreme in your view?

Also: do you not see the mainstream right being pulled to the right by its activists?

Leftists, following Marx, have material concerns. They DGAF about video games or pronouns. Perhaps "progressives" is the word to use, because there certainly is a noisy group of identity politicians who have sold what little dignity they once possessed to Capital, and we do need something to call them. Selling one's dignity to capitalists and war pigs is not a leftist thing to do, so they certainly aren't "far left".

you are correct in that they are a distinct group, however even if they are "selling out to capital" which I don't think they are, they are still very much Authoritarian Socially, and "left" Economically

So while they "Cultural Marxists" or Identity Marxists as they call themselves, may be different from your preferred economic marxism, they are still IMO part of the "far left Authoritarian" quadrant of say the political compass

Does anyone call herself an "Identity Marxist"? I suspect actual cultural Marxists like Lukács, Gramsci, Benjamin, or Hall would be quite interested in studying the phenomenon of applying that label to people who have never considered the ownership of the means of production.

This is a problem with this whole line of thinking. We should be able to criticize identity politics as it is, for its excess and harmful effects. (Likewise, we should be able to praise it, for any praiseworthy qualities it might be observed to have.) Shoehorning in an association with Marxism is either a rhetorical crutch or a baseless slur. Marxism isn't a synonym for "bad"; it is a particular school of criticism.

I might be able to live with the term "Identity Stalinists"...

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