Well as most of you know, a few weeks ago Netflix released highly questionable promotional material for the film “Cuties” and received considerable backlash for it. Well it has released, and from clips I have seen floating around, it’s about as bad as we thought. I, like most people am not against raising awareness of an issue like child exploitation and sexualization of children, but it does seem like this has gone the wrong way about it doing it.

I might just be a little too forgiving, but I am willing to give the director the benefit of the doubt that she had good intentions in the creation of the film, but I cannot myself support the direction she took in actually meeting that vision. 11 year olds dancing like Cardi B in her WAP music video is not the way to spread awareness about an issue, especially not in a fiction work. I’m not one to be a moral Puritan, and most of the time I don’t care what people want to do with their lives as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else, but Cuties has some blatant red flags and blaring problems with its execution and at least accidentally functions as severe pedobait.

I know this discussion is had fairly often, but I was watching ShortFatOtaku’s stream about the DrKarlyn v. ShoeOnHead “debate”, and wanted to share a bit of my experiences I have had as someone who used to see themselves as being on the left.

Pre-Trump, I was fairly apolitical, but growing up in the South, I had lots of interactions with the “religious right.” As an atheist that supports equality, at the the time I thought that I must be center-left, because I had misconceptions on what the right stood for. It was about this time that I started running into the “woke” Tumblr types and would see some of their ridiculous posts about gender, diversity and racism. I laughed at these thinking they were a bit far out there, but dismissed them.

Soon afterwards GamerGate happened, but I wasn’t really aware of it at the time. I still played games and hung out in various communities, but I wasn’t aware of all of the stuff going on with journalism at the time. Some friends at my high school had shown me Feminist Frequency, but I just saw it as some weirdos who had no idea about gaming, not as a potential threat to the hobby. I stayed fairly apolitical during this time, but that didn’t last long. While spending time online, I started to see more and more “woke” nonsense and started watching “Feminists DESTROYED with FACTS and logic” compilations. I was made aware of Milo, Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, and Project Veritas. I started going down what some people call the “rabbit hole.” I started watching “Skeptic” YouTubers including Shoe. I started watching Tim Pool and the Quartering daily, and made my way onto half-KiA as a lurker. I had begun to take the “red-pill” and was getting slightly obsessed. I didn’t like what I was seeing, but I needed to see more and more.

Eventually I made my way over to our Sub as a lurker, still, and became aware of more, that the half-KiA mods wouldn’t allow because it didn’t relate to gaming. I still see myself being closer to the center than to the right, but I feel like I can never vote for the current left, because they are so far gone. It is very cliche, but I feel like I was pushed away from the left which led me here. I’ve been around the sub for a while now, but only became active recently.

I haven’t seen a discussion about it here yet, and wanted to add to the interaction on the board, so I was wondering how you guys feel about the game. I feel like I am about halfway through with it so far, and am enjoying it quite a bit, and have had few issues with it so far. No forced diversity and all of the characters I have met so far have interesting qualities that make them likable. When I heard complaints about Yuna and Masako, I got a bit worried, but they seem to have legitimate motivations and are well written so far. I might just suffer from being a bit of a weeb, but I enjoy the environments and gameplay, even though it can be a little repetitive. The various stances and the ability to choose to do stealth or go in “guns blazing” help diversify the gameplay enough that I don’t get bored of it. It’s one of the better new games I have played, and don’t regret picking it up.