I tried answering you in the other thread and got no response, but okay, I'll try one more time. Minus the assumption of good faith this time.

First is definition. If you wanted a serious discussion, you wouldn't ignore requests for it. Honestly really incriminating, considering the language games most of us are familiar with from sjws. But that's okay, I'll use the broadest definition I can think of: illustrations of females.

Next, since we're engaged in a discussion of the broadest generalities, I'll remove a large chunk with broad generalities befitting the refusal to define terms: any singular image without narrative context can be enjoyed for craftsmanship or illustrative style.

The little interest possible now falls to images that bear narrative context. Broadly: metaphorical value, asthetic value, crude tonal display, and expression of incentive from another character's point of view.

I just thought it was weird that people were so into that topic that it reached a high reply count

'loli stuff' has been such a hot debate button online that I'd say it's practically bait. If you browse that thread, you'll probably understand why it draws such a crowd, but I'll summarize: both sides are fighting for their principles so hard that it makes it hard for negotiation to occur.

I can't really say when it became such a topic, but I started paying more attention to it in relation to culture war stuff having to do with imageboards being attacked.

Yes, I agree. It's made worse by older media not even handling credits properly; failing to credit certain types of workers or influencers. At least now it's not too hard to find and follow a money trail in modern media credits.

What I mean is the sort of situation we can see easily online now, where there's a definitive central creative lead, he means well, but he's surrounded by cretins trying to subvert him. It's sad, but a lot of creators can't seem to handle that kind of pressure; they cave in and compromise their own work.

It's not always the twitter-esque social pressure, sometimes it can be pressure from above. Even though the producer should be concerned only with profit, sometimes they meddle and the weird casting or bizarre event in a movie suddenly becomes "who really chose this? the director or some guy pulling his strings?". In the case that the creative talent is stripped of their control over the product, I don't expect to find easy evidence of it.

I like the argument you're building here, and crayet seems unable to participate. So how about me? I deny the notion that there exists a thing without reason.

Before I start, could I get a stricter guideline than "loli porn"? I will not ask you to provide an example for me to explain, as I assume you'd find that unpleasant (and potentially illegal, depending on your country). I could volunteer my own examples, but I'd potentially be wasting breath explaining a work that turns out to not fit the (currently unstated) criteria. We may as well disregard any image that holds no narrative context, because it would basically comes down to illustrative style or craftsmanship.

Even without more data, I can make some guesses based on my own experience with manga that isn't on porn sites. Broadly: metaphorical value, asthetic value, crude tonal display, and expression of incentive from another character's point of view. There's a lot of times where it's simply a bore or a symptom of a floundering artist.

I see. I don't think it's necessary. I've already recognized that it did not progress organically. I'll assert that maybe we'd all be happy if it were created with respect to the dominant culture, but then it'd be a plain old cultural product.

I'm perfectly willing to accept that there was ill intent involved in its creation, but it's simply too difficult to try to pick apart a product of multiple persons for the purpose of discerning motive. If every person involved had ill intent, that'd be one thing, but the presence of a single good intent demands an investigation of the weights of influence, which is exhausting. I find it far more efficient to use a different angle of approach.

Actually, I'll add on to my assertion: if pop culture were allowed to progress organically (without crutches or life support), then - even with a sinister initial state - it would eventually be forced to conform to the dominant culture, effectively defusing the majority of subversive elements. But also that this was impossible to occur because we have no system for preventing such subversive efforts, combined with the existence of even a single person willing to subvert it.

tl;dr: The initial state doesn't matter, because it suffered an inevitable subversion.

Thanks, it's interesting to see an old example.

You mentioned in another comment that you were considering doing some video stuff. You should post some here when you get it going. Just the knowledge of older media grants you a niche among the people you'd be competing with.

No. Why do you ask?

pop culture was essentially designed as a tool to subvert any kind of traditional morality.

I don't exactly agree, but I think it was inevitable in a way. If pop culture is made without respect to the dominant culture, it becomes a second culture. Two cultures can't really coexist within the same space; one must give ground to the other because cultural conflicts are inevitable without shared values.

So, I could accept that pop culture was made with good intentions, but that some naivete doomed it to the path it took. Of course, all things being organic, we would not have given nearly as much ground to the pop culture. I just don't think it's necessary for it to have been so ill-intentioned at the start.

it has actually been percolating in the culture for well over 100 years.

Could you give an example from 100 years ago? Video not necessary, but I find the claim hard to accept at face value. My best guess would be some european stuff having to do with wartime propaganda.

Nothing playable yet

I'd be shocked if you had a demo already. It'd be a big success just to get everyone to agree to a specific idea in the time that's passed, let alone assignment of heirarchy or tasks.

If you do manage to make a demo, please do make a new thread to share it.

Looking up the few events you mention gives me more information about Canada than I can count on from american media. Really quite a shame, I often dreamed of moving to Canada when I was younger, as I like cold weather and open spaces. We've all got a mess in our homelands and I know there's no easy escape now.

I had no idea that Canada was previously using imperial units. Thinking back on it, they really fed us a lot of pro-metric crap in school. Big strawmen arguments for grooming kids, "it's superior because of these things that aren't useful", "we're the only country not using metric so we're uncivilized". Surprised it hasn't gotten pushed harder here with how bad our education's getting with Common Core. They put it on our labels next to our normal units, but still can't even stick to the premise of metric's superiority by saying 1.5 grams (god forbid 15 decigrams) instead of 1,500 milligrams. Looking it up again, I see it's been rebranded as "International System of Units". I never really thought about the political angle of it previously.

[I had a bunch of other stuff written, but decided it was pointless rambling after rereading it. We've strayed so far from the original topic, haha. May as well call it here.]

Cool, glad to hear. I hope they can also serve as useful data sets for you outside of regular musical enjoyment.

I'm normally an album listener, so I apologize if you hit a poor example with these (as each has multiple albums I discarded): Dream Theater [I consider them to be masters of musical transition and a great example of what music theory can accomplish], King Crimson, Genesis (Peter Gabriel era). I miraculously even found a modern one-off example in Native Construct. You might not hear many examples of interesting meter from those, but at least the complexity of the music should express a basis for my point.

I thought it'd be rude to cite examples unprompted, so I tried to avoid it.

Now imagine raising human babies in a lab, and formally teaching them only one word at a time, and any utterance they make outside of tests doesn't count.

It'd be fascinating if they seriously went through the standard procedures and reported the results. I personally believe there's a lot of unethical testing and experimenting being done out there behind closed doors - and that's really unfortunate, but if the suffering is going to happen anyway, I'd like the data to be released so maybe someone can learn something (but then you'd have to fire/convict those involved, so that's why it's not released). It's only a real problem when you start excusing it, whether for results, convenience, or ideology. (excluding the occasional guy driven by curiousity, that's a whole other issue)

More on the point, though, how far would you be willing to extend the ability to socialize/play/practice? Would you extend it to insects? Bacteria? It's a strain to my imagination to apply it to those two groups. Especially bacteria brings up a large amount of new ethical issues. The thought processes involved would be widely ridiculed, so I can certainly understand the lack of effort towards testing it (risking career credibility).

The expected rigor of the scientific process is kind of a double edged sword. I respect it for making reproducable results, but sometimes I think it makes simple questions into complex chores. Ideally, you'd just have the individual pursue it, but if my question is something seemingly silly, like whether a leopard likes playing frisbee catch, I'd have to get my hands on a leopard first because I don't expect silly things to get reported publicly.

Or rather, this time around I'm wondering if it isn't all smoke and mirrors, a magician's distraction from something actually important.

This is a constant nagging worry for me. Especially when I hear about something occurring from a recent time period where I know I was trying to pay attention, then I look it up and it turned out I completely missed it at the time. Sort of a losing game, but I keep coming back to the table for another round.

It's interesting to hear about the surge of problems occurring in Reagan era. I'm fairly convinced of the "long march through the institutions" strategy being employed, but that carries a number of implications with it. I hadn't really considered that it might be happening in a scale larger than the USA, for instance; I thought maybe whatever nefarious group was hopping around for soft targets. So now I'm led to consider it more closely tied to globalist interests.

What'd be really interesting is to know if this 10-20 year skip in agenda-pushing (the fallout takes years to settle each time, so maybe it was an intentional strategy) has been a regular trend, but we'd need some sample reports from the 60s-70s and I don't have any connections that old. Then again, we had a big tech thing with the internet and cellphones, so maybe it forced some moves to be made.

I enjoyed reading your post, it has some interesting ideas in it about language. I can only point out a couple of things.

Why is it necessary to explain things in a merit basis? The world would be a way cooler place if everything ran on merit, sure, but I hope you understand that that isn't the reality we're stuck in. I think you compromised the legitimacy of your argument by not entertaining non-merit alternatives.

Are you a student of music theory? I have some complicated feelings about the theory that stem from an observation of how many aspiring musicians end up hobbling their own talent by treating the theory as gospel. I can't say the theory is wrong, but I can't say it's right very easily (especially when you have big successes like The Protomen who actively tried to do everything their music teachers said not to do). I'm not trying to lump you in there, but I have to ask because some of the stuff you said about your experience in song writing make me think you're totally unaware of experimental genres or even progressive music. I want to emphasize the progressive genre here because it's pretty much based around playing with rhythm and meter (and I am 100% sure you've heard bands that failed to do this while being labeled progressive, because it's common).

the number of up-votes is a little disconcerting.

I upvoted him for helping spur some interesting discussion, even if I think he's very wrong. Seeing his comments sort of reaffirms my guess that he's just mistaken at a foundational level rather than a potential bad actor.

I'd add one more simple thing to your list, the "fuck you dad" phenomenon, where a child does whatever they can to spite the care and warnings of their parents. A sorry sight, made much worse when a person fails to self-reflect as they exit their rebellious stage.

Yeah, it occurred to me while trying Spitting Image that I may as well go back and give the Muppet Show another chance. Satire isn't a great starting point for me to learn about british politics. But I enjoyed the puppets just for the craftsmanship. The aging wasn't all that bad - it's sort of insightful to another era and it's always interesting to see comedy from other cultures.

Does any of this nonsense echo?

Your description sounds unfortunate enough. It's interesting to hear about such experiences, but I think I'd be foolish to feel any ease about modern affairs in response.

So put your human conceit aside before asking me shit like this.

I think you've made some assumptions about me and my point. I was trying to address a psychological process with some notes of evolutionary theory. If you don't care to engage that kind of topic, that's fine, but I wanted to try to clear up that misunderstanding first.

playing, pranks and gametime is always a form of life practice

Supposedly it's only social animals that engage in these, but I never really hear about the flipside for how animals outside that group engage in practice.

Hm, I didn't think anyone else was putting effort into puppets back then. I'll see if I can find some of that Spitting Image show. I'll also look for those other shows you mentioned, as I get little exposure to foreign comedy.

Would you say the Reagan criticisms and mockeries were warranted? That'd be my next guess to differentiate between him and Trump.

even other species seem to find jump-scares and slapstick amusing, when they do it to you.

This is an interesting point to me. I recently was introduced to the idea that humans are distinguishable from animals in our ability to have complex and intentional reactions to fear. An animal is practically limited to adrenal responses (fight, flight, freeze), but a human can break away from the responses a bit more cerebrally to engage in an informed strategy. You could then say that jump-scares are a bestial fear (and also that there are more ways to make humans feel fear than animals). Perhaps there's a similar explanation for slapstick and humor?

I never really paid attention to Genesis outside the Peter Gabriel era, so this was my first time seeing this video. The pop references haven't aged well, but it looks like some Henson puppetry, so it was very obvious they wanted a satirical tone since it got the viewer prepped for seeing ugliness and helped stage up bits of humor. I wasn't cognizant back then, so I do wonder if Reagan had to deal with some of the shit Trump did.

I could put such satire in its own category, but now that I think about it, it's pretty close to the rare horror+comedy (dark humor). Though normal dark humor tries to get a laugh where a person is held in a serious outlook ("I shouldn't laugh, that man is dying"), a satire goes a bit in the opposite direction by trying to get the viewer to take a comical scene seriously (the scene in the video with the man preparing to eat his own tongue is farcical, but he basically just committed suicide on camera). So I'd say that that video is technically both humor and horror, even though most viewers probably don't get much of a reaction watching it.

What do you think of slapstick humor? I think there could be a connection with jumpscare-type horror. They're both things that can occur through one's normal day, and each forces a feeling to emerge briefly. I was reluctant to state the bit about comedy needing truth because I think slapstick may be an exception.

I'm working on a theory for this, but I'll express some highlights. Basically, comedy and horror cannot be produced without certain insights into the human psyche.

Comedy's a bit easier to explain. It often revolves around absurdity and satire. The secret sauce is timing, which most directors fail to understand. A great script/routine is trash without the timing to sell jokes/gags. I don't think I'm the only person that's thought "That would've been way funnier if they had held back the punchline just a little longer".

Horror has some distinct subgenres, but I'm only going to refer more directly to fear. I have an interest in fear, so I love a good horror film. The foundation of fear is something like "This is wrong", then either followed by "I know why it's wrong" or "I don't know why it's wrong, but I am not eager to learn". There's a big difference between real life scares like almost dropping your keys down a sewer and outlandish scares like being confronted by a monster. I think part of the difference may be imagination/creativity; getting mugged can be pretty bad, but a creative person can imagine a mugging much much worse than the average guy's experience with it.

Some ideological soapboxing is practically a trope in the genre, but it's always able to be overlooked for the sake of the thrill. I'd be perfectly content to watch a horror film about how evil drumpf gassed mexican babies and bullied china pooh, IF the horror elements are spot on - but I'm suggesting that's impossible because our modern breed of ideologue is too caught up in their dogma to consider the feelings of other people.

So, simple explanation: horror is not being handled by people with imagination.

Edit, alternative angle: a lot of people are being emotionally repressed to the point that they lose understanding of humor and horror, among other things. Such a person would be unable to differentiate between their various emotions, effectively becoming emotional beasts that can only consider "is thing good? if no, then bad" with a side of wondering what daddy told them to feel.

That even applies to how-to stuff. Ugh, not another YouTube video on how to fix something where I have to skim through 10 minutes of how to use a screwdriver and the guys rants on which screwdriver to have. Can't I just have a good old service manual?

This drives me crazy, and I don't even look up maintenance stuff regularly. Just simple information you used to be able to pick up on google with some odd guy's blog, now you either got to go browse videos or hope some wiki has useful data. I definitely sympathize with anyone trying to do something a little involved, like fixing a machine (especially with how you can't just go down to radioshack for spare parts anymore).

If I'm a total novice, the lecture on tools might be useful, but what about the intermediate user? There's no index or glossary on that video. Is skipping around to random points in a video the intended experience?

my mind immediately goes to worshipping the Hollywood elite

That's basically my view of them, but I know it's not totally like that - just like how you can really like a certain actor because of their performances.

I feel left behind on the phenomenon, as I stopped listening to podcasts many years ago and never liked the youtube thing. I hear disturbing things about related activities, such as streamers acting as a friend simulator. Yet I can't really complain about any of it because it does seem more organic than traditional media and traditional celebrities (the introduction of endorsements and sponsorships are pulling it back towards how it used to be, though).

volunteering my time to a local org instead.

This is something that is a terrific idea in theory, but at least I am a little too..demoralized to dive into headfirst. So if you do this, would you please share some of your experiences with it here? It's a potential morale booster.

As for your actual topic, I can't say much since I have no clue who/what those names reference. I assume it's ecelebs? If it's ecelebs, then I think it might have something to do with having a person to rally behind. Sadly, not every man can be a leader, so those men have to make due with finding someone/anyone to follow.

Implying that they could bolster their forces with the names of people like OP depicts? I'm not terribly concerned about that, those kinds of people swarm to the fire like moths.

That's enough for me. I just now recalled that you were able to link directly here from reddit. Yet I thought they blacklisted all the win sites..? I must have been mistaken.