“What would be considered”. Sorry
I help out with the youth group at church and one of the students is in the 10th grade and he is pretty retro (loves movies and tv shows from the 80s and 90s). He used to be a big Star Wars fan and lost interest due to "disney making it a princess product" as he puts it. He was asking me the other day how did all this happen or when did it start, and I couldn't pinpoint an exact person who started this but had some ideas.
What did start it all? I know Ghostbusters 2016 seems to be the first movie to actively be made to piss off fans (when the original director was trying to do Ghostbusters 3 and they screwed him over). With Star Wars, if they wanted to appeal to actual women who were fans they could've used Jaina Solo or Mara Jade.
Was it in gaming? I remember when gaming magazines seemed to have constant articles about women in gaming or about the "abuse" they received online as if they have never heard the language you hear where guys get together and hang out.
Comic books? I mean they literally made comics of women sitting around the table discussing feelings and as Eric July said "modern comics are made for 14 year old girls on tumblr who don't read comics"
So honestly who is patient zero or who is to blame?
Varies from hobby to hobby I'd say. As far as gaming goes, I think the infection really got going around the time of the Great Recession. Among other things Sark started up Feminist Frequency in 2009 and Tropes vs. Women in 2011, Bioware's last non-totally-pozzed games were from that time period (DAO - 2009 and ME2 - 2010), and the purge of known conservatives from gaming picked up steam not long after IIRC (ex. Martin O'Donnell, the original composer for Halo and an outspoken conservative, was drummed out around 2013-14).
Can't remember where exactly (it may have been KF) but I read a theory that Sarkeesian might've been the tip of the spear for Larry Fink et al. to sink the claws of ESG into vidya around the time of the Recession and try to puppeteer it into just another vector for prog agitprop. Knowing the results and how Feminist Frequency persisted for so long despite struggling to gain even 1k views on most of their videos for ages before finally shuttering for good only very recently (perhaps the ESG bux finally ran dry?), I'd believe it now.
I would imagine the rot must've set in much earlier with movies & comic books, if only because they were already mainstream entertainment mediums well before gaming really broke into the mainstream.
What pissed me off with Sarkessian was her admitting she didn’t even like video games. Didn’t know that about the Halo Composer. In comic books a lot of male writers were run out over the fact they slept with women who were of age or due to whisper networks
I like how lefties like to go " Anita was right", as she didn't even write her own stuff lol her boyfriend macintosh did it.
Bungie tried to boot O'Donnell, not pay him around $100k owed and steal all his company shares going all the way back to the beginning of the company too (likely worth millions). He had to sue them over it. They will give some excuse about disagreements over the music, but it seems like a weak argument. I could totally see all the trannies being mad at a conservative in the office.
John Carmack left id around then too after a few years as part of one of the big conglomerates. Right around the same time. If I remember right he's done quite a few things to piss off the lefties too.
I was wondering why they dumped him.
Buffy was the first overtly gurl power series for nerds. It was also one of the first IP centered about "subverting" expectations in an in-your-face way. Get it? Because blondes are dumb and useless in horror series but this one is strong and quipy. It also spawned the blight that's TV Tropes.
As for the troubled softboy nerd, The OC was one of the first series for teenage girls with one
I thought that show was popular along with Angel. I never saw it but I’ve considered binging it. Would probably skip over the lesbian parts
Oh. Ok. Like a Nora Robert’s novel
Angel's character was far deeper and dynamic in his own series than during his time on Buffy. Not that this should come as a total surprise, but the contrasting difference in how his character behaved was pretty stark.
Edit: I totally misread what you were replying to, but I still stand by my statement all the same. Additionally, Angel did probably have something of an equivalent following, but I'm pretty sure Buffy ended up with the larger numbers overall.
So they are both worth watching?
Even if the consequences of Joss Whedon's quippy writing style have ruined dialogue in movies and TV, yes, they're both really good shows.
Indeed. The first season of Buffy is a bit rough in some respects, just because it was new and probably a bit under budget, but season 2 is where it picks up and finds its style.
And there's a fair bit of good stuff to draw from the overall series. Both fun and a little insightful as it relates to how people try to deal with a lot of things they go through in life.
The same is true of Angel, but while Buffy touches on general topics and some specific to women, Angel touches more on challenges men might face in life. Pre-Clownworld of course. I'd even say that it touched on racial issues in some honest and interesting ways without being heavy handed about it. It does have one season that is widely lauded as having some of the weirdest worst plot twists imaginable, but in hindsight I still find that season fairly watchable.
This is generally pretty true for a lot of shows. The first season or two is a lot rougher in hind sight because you don't have the character history yet, etc, and the writers need to really learn to nail it.
Much like TNG, the first 2 seasons were rough (and there were some mediocre episodes after), but generally the writing quality picked way up and so did the actors as they settled into their roles.
Yeah, it is pretty typical. I guess I usually say it specifically because of how different shows and their first seasons stand out in really different kinds of ways.
For some it's because they're weirdly retro, others it's because they're very grounded and haven't picked up a formulaic approach, and for some it's a situation where later plots diverge so drastically from early ones.
With Angel though, I generally didn't feel like its first season was all that rough. It was maybe a little more toned down or smaller in plot scale, but it generally didn't stand out like a sore thumb like most first seasons do. Likely because it was a spinoff, so there was at least some familiarity, flow, and funding already established.
Why would anyone in 2023 when everything is whedon, want to binge on whedon? Aren't you sick of it by now!?
I don't even want to rewatch firefly at this point, and that's just 12 eps and a film, not 12 seasons.
Can you imagine how much worse Buffy would be if it was written to 2023's standards instead of 1998's?
Pretty sure it's been a rolling issue for thousands of years.
Feminists like to argue that " women have been sexualized in media and objectified by men overall for thousands of years", when they're the ones who started the sexual revolution in the first place lol. Over sexualized media only started after the sexual revolution happened. If you watch pre 70s media, there is barely any tits and asses shots. Feminists are the ones who made sexualizing women seem okay in the first place. I guess pin up art could count, but that isn't mainstream media and was mostly used for soldiers in war.
There's literally graffitti from ancient Rome of topless women, and of "[name] has a big dick". Before Christ. Sexualization has always happened, because that's basic human nature. The denial of it is an oddity: those saying that sexy women aren't sexy, and that horrific Frankensteinian creations ARE sexy. That's the modern odd trend.
Hmmm, good point.
Guess you are right but a lot I didn’t notice
One of the biggest sources of "modern feminism" as a movement has been the field of Psychology. Its popularization is what helped them convince people to accept a lot of things as "problems" for all of the Civil Rights movements. The most famous being the god awful Two Doll Experiment for black/white relations but that's a different topic. They'd create a story that painted an awful picture, let the media write a dozen bleeding heart stories about it, and then legislation would follow.
But given that, Karen Horney would absolutely be not just the Patient Zero but also the very model they would strive to emulate. From introducing the idea "womb envy" to treating all men as defective women to introducing "mommydom" as a way to control men, all stemming from her. One of the students of Freud himself, making her influence felt in the crib for the budding field, and she existed entirely to tear down his work and push her radical agenda.
Heck even the idea of using a contract to trap men in an abusive cycle to break them down, analogous to alimony and child support now, came from her forcing any client she was doing therapy on to sign a contract forcing them to see her for at least a year no matter what or face a steep penalty. During which time she would break down their psyche until she became their new "mom" and could then delve into their minds from there for her own purposes (under the guise of "helping them").
And from there, feminism itself would fractalize into every facet of society and from there hobbies. Including not talking about her much beyond a footnote novelty because of how bad she makes them all look.
I can't tell you Patient Zero, but I can tell you its COVID-equivalent "Hug A Chinese Person Day", when the problem existed, but suddenly went wild:
Big Bang Theory.
Worst thing to happen to nerds and introverts: It made them popular. Hired some male prostitutes, dressed them up in the skinsuit of geekdom. And it coincided with cellular phones becoming internet-accessible. A disease and a spread vector.
"Eternal September" has been happening for a long, long time, and that time varies depending on the medium, but September 2007 is a rough one indeed.
I actually like Big Bang theory at first and thought it was a good thing to bring nerdy stuff mainstream. Boy was I wrong. The worst thing to happen was people who liked the idea of comic books, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc but weren’t actually fans
Subreddits like men drawing women and feminists in general need to be kicked out of all hobbies. " You can't draw sexy women that is objectification!" Lol suck my dick. Funny how feminists have literal years of discourse of how nerds are sexist and evil for liking fake boobs, and that said fake boobs in fucking video games is a factor that causes sexual assault and women being objectified irl, meanwhile Chad ( whose knowledge of gaming amounts to Fifa and cod) is the one who is actually treating real women like pieces of meat left and right. Trust me, the type of guys that actually do assault and hurt real women aren't the type of guys to play guilty Gear and Senran kagura. I honestly will never take these cunts seriously as long as they defend women sexualizing themselves immensely on social media and onlyfans, but sexy women in video games are degrading and cause objectification of women because they're drawn and designed by men to appeal to other men. And yes, that is a real argument they make as to why Cardi b is "empowering" but tits in a game is a literal hate crime against women ("real women choose to be sexy but fictional women can't consent so it's just made by men for other men!"). Basically, sexualization ( which I thought was inherently degrading to women and gives men a bad societal image of women) is okay once a woman is doing it and commercializing off it.
Don’t forget romance novel covers
"Muh romance novels aren't mainstream, and don't have the same cultural significance and impact on people as video games do" as it's one of the best selling book genres ( and what a surprise it's mostly women who consume them!). And it's funny too because I read that actually 14% of romance novel readers are male (which is probably the same percentage of women who seriously play video games like men do and not candy crush), and yet no man is advocating for men in romance novels to be less sexualized for the female audience. And if you ever read those books, you should never let women tell you that men's fantasies are degrading and gross. The shit that goes on in women's smut books is something else lol
I’ve read some and you are right. I remember when 50 shades came out I was in a majority female call center and I read them out of curiosity. Needless to say if a book like that was made to appeal to males there would be screeching. I have no problem marketing romance novels to women. I just wish stuff made for guys could be marketed to guys
And that movie made a shit ton at the box office because of chicks lol. And I love this famous internet quote
True
Or romance novels in general.
Yes, encouraging sexual fantasies involving dark triad protagonists, monsters, and various other creatures will have no effect whatsoever to women's brains, but porn is evil and degrading and wrecks men's psyches and expectations and should be shamed as an addiction at any opportunity.
Boy, I could go on a rant about that...
Yep. Doubt Epstein or Andrew Tate watches anime or play video games lol.
Women driving then women voting.
Michelle Mouton wasn't too bad.
Everything has been going downhill for a long time. Gaming, I'd say mid 2000s was when it got obvious.
Tabletop gaming is in the last 7 or 8 years.
TV? Probably 20+ years.
Started with the 19th amendment.
Funny also how they post shitty "Hawkeye initiative" edits of men in women's outfits in video games ( for example, they will make a shitty edit of a man wearing cammys leotard for example) to show " how do you boys like it if you were sexualized in media!", as if anyone told them they couldn't make their own shitty fujo bait yoai games with men dressed as gay strippers in them, while they're the ones demanding that people they can't draw sexy women because of ideological and moral faggorty reasons ( men seeing chun lis ass will contribute to them objectifying women irl!).
Women hate competition(even made-up competition) and think men will respond like women to other handsome men.
When, y'know, we just don't fucking care.
To feminists, handsome muscular men in media aren't sexualized but a " male power fantasy" for the male audience to self-insert into. Men in media can only be sexualized to them if men are sexualized the exact same way women are ( shots of their dicks and ass and wearing women's lingerie). In fact, feminists think it's an injustice that men aren't sexualized the same way women are in media. The problem is that these people tend to forget that men and women aren't the fucking same, and therefore what men like in women isn't the same as what women like in men.
the existence of liberalism
These people aren't liberals. Liberals believe in total freedom of expression and that people should be allowed to make whatever media that they want, no matter how offensive and sexual it may be. These people are radical sex negative feminists, like Andrea Dworkin for example. They really hate male sexuality and would probably remove men's libido from humanity if they could. They will forever seethe over the fact that men like women's asses and titties. I wish people would call these people out for what they are, man hating feminists, rather than liberals or whatever term boomers use.
Feminism birthed from liberalism though.
It's a far left ideology. Feminism is literally incompatible with libertarianism since feminism advocates for state measures and authoritarian rules to be pushed by the government in their favour. Their whole ideology is crying to daddy government to get what they want, which is what liberals are against. Hell, regarding the topic in this thread, feminists would absolutely love to ban any media they deem "sexist", which liberals are very against. Overall, feminism is an ideology that believes in equality of outcome, which liberals literally oppose greatly.
The idea of opening up men's domains to women is inherent in liberalism though. Marxist types just came along and added more force to the notion, not that liberalism doesn't become forceful in its own right anyway.
I dare say, I think Felicia Day was almost certainly one of the harbingers.
Not that I hold a lot against her personally, but the level of fandom and worship the woman got was foretelling of what was to come. And the more popular she got, the more we saw a lot of the woke-wannabe crowd jumping in too. Will Wheaton, as just one notable example.
This was also the key timeframe when gaming and nerd related fandoms started going mega mainstream. Investors saw those dollar signs and everyone was trying to jump on the bandwagon, no matter how little they knew about the subject matter.
I'll also say that in some respects, that last season (especially the last episode) of Buffy was one of the most cringetastic and totally unsubtle early examples of modern feminist propaganda that I ever saw.
Granted, I only recognized how godawful this was after I started to notice that the very same tone, theme, etc. was being repeated over and over throughout almost every piece of feminist-pushing woke media.
I don’t have anything against Felicia Day either because I think she is a legit nerd. My biggest beef is the fake geek girl. The kind that wears an Avengers shirt and then cries about toxic males because someone asked them what comics they liked.
When I was in my teens my friends and I would roll out the red carpet for any girl who showed even the mildest interest in nerdy stuff
Aye, I distinctly remember instantly developing a huge crush on this one girl in college who just happened to mention she was into D&D after class. Admittedly, I already thought she was cute as hell, but that right there definitely perked up my interest and confidence.
Alas, I discovered she had a boyfriend so that stopped me in my tracks pretty fast. Especially since I only met her through one class we were both taking.
You mix a lot of different industry together in the query, they would all have different dates and entrypoints,but they all would hail from the culture which has its start in academic and government, first infection would likely be the film industry since it had the large production requirement and the ability for government to easily interfere and ensure that approved messaged get into it. Comic books would have been in a similar vein. Gaming itself only grown large and infected enough around 2008.
But patient zero was always red xD.
Patient zero didn't lead to the epidemic. The centralisation of social media with the advent of Facebook/twitter and their feed based algorithm is what I'd consider the beginning of the end. Let me explain:
These platforms are setup to reward cheap emotionally reactive content. The sheer volume of shock posts also drowns out other subjects. So the result is that you got a population that's hooked up on the same system, seeing the same thing and these things are mostly reactionary bullshit. Who thrives in an environment like this? The loudest crybabies. Slowly, everyone gets "woken" up to their laments and call to actions are made. If you oppose said resolutions, you easily get publicly shamed because, after all, that itself is good content.
Meanwhile, businesses start using tools to analyze the platforms' data. There's never been a better way to sample public opinion at this scale in human history. Whether accurately or not, they start thinking that the trendier topics are what people care about and want. Again, the platform rewards shock so what comes on top are the laments of the crybabies and their call to action... So this leads businesses to adapt their strategy consequently. The statistics tell them that they should pander to cause XYZ and so they do.
Entertainment is the first industry to fall because their products live and die on trends more than they do out of their own artistic merit. They are the first to tune in to the feed and adapt to what they see there. What do they see? Cries of discrimination. What do they do? Adopt the "solutions" proposed by the loud ideologues.
And this my friend, is how it started.
Very well stated. Thanks
Underrated comment. I hadn't considered it before but your argument is convincing.
The women themselves, which is why I don't care about their sports being invaded, reap what you sow. Your average woman might not be a raging feminist, but I've noticed it time and time again that if prompted, an average woman will mostly agree with a feminist talking/viewpoint, I've come to a realization that while Imp does take it too far sometimes, at the core of the issue, he is right about them.
I remember scratching my head when they started shoving the “girl gamers” message down our throats. Even back then I knew certain games just didn’t appeal to women in large numbers
I would say it started with disney star wars and ghostbusters really. Before that we had the resident evil movies and underworld series with op female stars aswell but they didnt shy away from casting hot actresses and show them in sexy outfits back then. Since that is gone there isnt much left to these type of movies. We still maybe get something like Atomic Blonde or Peppermint with a relativ op women but they also casted good looking women for that which can also get hurt sometimes even if some of the melee fighting looks ridiculous when they throw guys arround twice their size. Now its just bad writing/casting and no fanservice and weak/stupid men.
I’m a little more bitter about Star Wars having been a life long EU fan. They could’ve used Mara Jade if they were so gung ho about women.
That is a good point. If Ghostbusters 2016 had been hot women I suspect the backlash wouldn’t have happened but they did screw over the director of 1 and 2.
Smoking, and we have Freud’s cousin Bernays to thank for it:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Education was patient zero. When schools were comixed together and no longer segregated between men and women. This marked the beginning of the downfall.
In modern times, gaming + STEM/tech was patient zero though. I feel like as soon as gaming was breached, everything else was child's play given how male-only gaming was seen as by everyone.
What annoys me is the nauseating ads and constant push for women in STEM. By all means if they qualify then fine but this is why every scientist or engineer is a woman on tv, or at least it seems like it. They can’t accept that some fields attract more men. You don’t see any push to get men into being pre-school or kindergarten teachers
Without going into the pre history and communist infiltration of academia...
Elevatorgate. Before gamergate in 2014, there was 2011's elevatorgate in the new-atheist community.
"But that's not a hobby"
Yes it was. It was a nerdy group of internet atheists on message boards and forums and youtubers. It was as much a hobby as a non-hobby can be. One that had uniquely set itself up as opposed to God and so had left itself uniquely vulnerable to ideological takeover. It was also very male, very nerdy, very cliquey.
This was the first domino, the first attack, the first effort that the new-feminists made on internet hobbies.
It wasn't the first infiltration, they'd been worming themselves in for decades prior of course. But it was the first conflict and attempted immune response as the host finally realised there was a viral infection.
Wut
The argument is Look at clint eastwood or arnie, would he ever cry or be emotional? No. Or on the few times he did, it was intended to be very rare and very impactful, to show how utterly broken they were by the events. A few tears at a funeral, max. More likely they drown themselves in some booze at the pub and punch someone though.
Die hard is still manly by 2023 standards, but there is a definite shift away from stoicism and remaining cool, towards displays of emotion and crying. He's less manly. It's a shift
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/bruce-willis-john-mcclane-under-siege-coolest-man-on-earth-1551833
And this has been commented on before. You can see him being praised for showing that action heroes can be emotional.
" Bruce Willis as John McClane showed that you could cry, whine, feel pain and still be the coolest man on Earth NEWSLETTER (£)It seems absurd now that a guy thinking he should have been more supportive of his wife would be groundbreaking. But it was"
Compare it to action movies that came before it and yes, it's going from a 0/10 to a 2/10 feminine. We just struggle to see it when everything released is now 9-12/10
I’ll have to look up that episode
I need to rewatch. I don’t remember that. I do remember it is where Carl Winslow established his “friendly cop” role. Lol
He shot a kid? Or is that a head canon thing? He is one of my favorite TV dads. After the GOAT Ward Cleaver of course. I actually enjoyed those recent progressive commercials with him
Ohhh. I haven’t seen it in a very long time.
Ohhh. That is true. Although he does seem to play the same character. He was a cop in Ghostbusters if I remember and he was a Chauffeur in Crocodile Dundee but same demeanor
The argument is look at clint eastwood or arnie, would he ever cry or be emotional? No. Or on the few times he did, it was intended to be very rare and very impactful, to show how utterly broken they were by the events. A few tears at a funeral, max. More likely they drown themselves in some booze at the pub and punch someone though.
Die hard is still manly by 2023 standards, but there is a definite shift away from stoicism and remaining cool, towards displays of emotion and crying. He's less manly. It's a shift
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/bruce-willis-john-mcclane-under-siege-coolest-man-on-earth-1551833
And this has been commented on before. You can see him being praised for showing that action heroes can be emotional.
" Bruce Willis as John McClane showed that you could cry, whine, feel pain and still be the coolest man on Earth NEWSLETTER (£)It seems absurd now that a guy thinking he should have been more supportive of his wife would be groundbreaking. But it was"
Compare it to action movies that came before it and yes, it's going from a 0/10 to a 2/10 feminine. We just struggle to see it when everything released is now 9-12/10
refresh and stop in quick succession still gets you past 50% of paywalls
https://gamerant.com/die-hard-john-mcclane-fresh-action-hero/
It's everywhere. Another recent one and one from 10 years back. Search for 'john MacClare emotional' or something brings a tonne up. Gunna have to sort through to find in amongst all the articles about bruce willis's emotions regarding his PPA, but this is at least a widely discussed idea.
https://www.vulture.com/2013/02/die-hards-john-mcclane-everyman-to-superman.html
Is it revisionist? I don't think so. There's something to it and they're pointing to something that is different between die hard and other movies of the same or earlier eras. Is it just a different style? Is it a reflection of an existing trend rather than the catalyst? Perhaps so. But I do agree that there is a difference. It's just hard to see from here in 2023 in a sea of marvel slop.
pop culture magazines are unlikely to use that terminology or criticise it for being that way. They're going to praise it for being relatable and an everyman because of how he was less stoic and showed more emotions.
Which is fundamentally feminine to some degree. Not the ideal masculine.
Aliens 4 turned Ripley into a super mutant bad ass hero type.
You're little sister.
Seriously, when has this not happened?
I’m the youngest so no little sister but there were times as a kid where my friend and I would be playing war games with GI Joes, Army men, etc and his little sister would want to play dolls so we told her no. She would then get their mother involved so then she got to play and of course the gi joes became spouses for her various Barbies
Woke was born in the student protests of 1968. So yes, it was mature in the 80s and 90s, but normies were unaware or deluded enough to think nothing was happening ("college isn't the real world" ... durp)
But even Norman Lear stuff wouldn’t fly today. Like George Jefferson being made to look stupid due to his racism. Granted, All in the Family is made to have Archie look like a fool but there were times when Meathead looked stupid. Plus he abandoned his family