The Gaming Den

Here's the movie pitch (spoilered for width)

I can't wait for that movie to come out. That looks hilarious.

Shatner wrote:Music video wherein vikings battle via rock-off/giant mecha

Heh, it's on page 4 of this thread but bears reposting. I downloaded that vid off youtube and showed it to my kids for entertainment many times when they were pre-speech.

One of these days, I will write an epic game of technomantic vikings powered by Rock.

Prak_Anima wrote:One of these days, I will write an epic game of technomantic vikings powered by Rock.

A Brutal Legend mod with a Viking faction would socket neatly into place.

I'm thinking a tabletop rpg, which will definitely draw on Brutal Legend as one of it's sources of inspiration.

Not youtube, but Colberts response to the people being upset about his racism is hilarious. Not because of the actual defense, but because of the part where he parodies his usual joke about not even seeing race thusly:

"I am not a racist. In fact, I don't even see race. People tell me I am white, and I believe them... well... because I just spent six minutes explaining that I am not a racist. And that is about the whitest thing you can do."

I loled. Literally.

I was under the impression that the tweets that had upset people weren't actually posted by him. Or is this an unrelated thing?

He did a bit making fun of the Washington Redskins' pisspoor attempt at good PR (they made a charitable foundation and put Redskin in the name) by talking about a character he never used (literally, he made him up for that bit) that was a racist caricature of asians, saying he was going to start a foundation named after the character, Ching Chond Ding Dong.

The guy in charge of the twitter account for his show tweeted a link to the video of the bit, but the description talked about Ching Chong Ding Dong completely out of context, so someone thought it was actually a thing.

There are also a bunch of people with the slightly more legitimate position of "Dude, you can't fight racism by being racist." I say slightly because you totally can fight institutionalized racism by pointing out the absurd racism of others through allegory, and a bunch of the people of that position are Tumblr "Social Justice Warriors" who are known for having members who are prejudiced against white, heterosexual cis-males.

Colbert mocks the serious positions of other people by imitating them in order to demonstrate their absurdity. That's his entire shtick. Anyone taking that seriously has their head up their ass.

They're from Tumblr, this is the community that thinks it is totally okay to pretend having crippling mental disorders is just great. Head in ass is kind of a prerequisite.

Meikle641 wrote:I was under the impression that the tweets that had upset people weren't actually posted by him. Or is this an unrelated thing?

Ignore everything Prak said because he is an idiot.

The tweet was not made him. The tweet was a direct quote of words that came out of his mouth about the "Ching Chong Ding Ding Organization for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever" but without the context of talking about the Redskins organization that makes the joke even more obvious.

The character is not new and made for this event, the character is specifically a racist caricature of Asians that he invented in 2005 specifically to parody Bill O'Rielly saying racist shit about Asians.

Now, obviously people who take what Colbert says seriously are idiots. But the person who started the complaints did not believe that Colbert was being serious. She specifically said in interviews that she doesn't think that a racist parody joke is an appropriate method of addressing the initial racism. Or to quote Cracked's summary, "She derided the entire bit, having no faith that those who could appreciate a satirical message in support of Native Americans could have the same capacity to want equality for all minorities."

Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, has been catching flak here and there for the name of his team since... forever. He finally decided he'd try the "throw money at it" approach, and opened a charitable foundation with Redskins in the name. Colbert did a bit on it, with the punchline being a joke about opening the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals. The official comedy central account retweeted an almost straight rip of the punchline out of context with a link to the bit: “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.” (Kaelik beat me to it, but yes, Colbert does have a character that is a racist caricature of an Asian, and he trots it out whenever he wants to make fun of racism by taking it to absurd extremes).

Suey Park is an "activist" on issues of feminism and racism. I say "activist" loosely because she is really just one of those morons on tumblr that misogynists and racists point out when they want to strawman and discredit egalitarian movements. Suey Park is without a shadow of a doubt harmful to the causes she champions, and the best thing she could do for them is shut the fuck up. She saw the tweet and started the #CancelColbert trend. Colbert responded dismissively with what was basically a technicality: pointing out that wasn't his account. Even though it was quoting him. I mean, yes, he probably isn't the one that made the stupid decision to post something offensive out of context, but it is still an almost straight quote, so it's not like it addresses the outrage.

Eventually, everyone realized it was from a bit, what the bit was, and that in context it wasn't offensive at all and they shouldn't fucking care. A couple of people were left arguing the position they'd entrenched themself into because being wrong is hard and ego-bruising (mostly people deep in the tumblr echochamber, insulated from the damning realization that they are fucking crazy).

Suey Park gave an interview defending herself that was batshit insane. Read it, and know that this is a perfectly mundane example of the Lovecraftian horrors that lurk in the depths of tumblr. Highlights:
1) She hasn't seen the bit.
2) She has no problem with the bit.
3) She started the hashtag to satire racism on the left.
4) You're racist for getting Colbert's joke and not her's.

Here is an example of Park's methodology*: "Suey Park should stop raping people." Is that a thing Park does? I don't know. Is that a thing I believe she does? No. I just want to call attention to rape as an issue. If you feel that it's inappropriate to accuse Suey Park of rapes I don't believe she has committed in order to spark a discussion about rape, then clearly you don't care about rape victims.

*Alternative theory: she is full of shit. Having not seen the bit, she reacted before even attempting to determine the context and is now frantically trying to justify her actions after the fact and failing miserably.

I really hate the "sparking discussions" canard, particularly because it skirts so close to the truth. Getting people to talk about an issue really is a small victory, but if you do it by making yourself look like a belligerent, witch hunting bully, the discussions will mostly be about how you and your cause are dumb and bad and wrong. And while that is probably true of Suey Park herself, the causes she is hypothetically supporting are not. And they lose social credit every time she or someone like her pulls this canard, and on top of that, everyone who is actually trying to start a discussion has to put up with the fact that the act of "starting discussions" now has connotations of trying to disclaim responsibility for starting a failed lynch mob.

Kaelik wrote:

Meikle641 wrote:I was under the impression that the tweets that had upset people weren't actually posted by him. Or is this an unrelated thing?

Ignore everything Prak said because he is an idiot.

The tweet was not made him. The tweet was a direct quote of words that came out of his mouth about the "Ching Chong Ding Ding Organization for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever" but without the context of talking about the Redskins organization that makes the joke even more obvious.

me wrote:The guy in charge of the twitter account for his show tweeted a link to the video of the bit, but the description talked about Ching Chong Ding Dong completely out of context, so someone thought it was actually a thing.

Ok, so I was slightly off in that Suey Park did understand that the bit was parody. But otherwise, that's basically what I said.

The character is not new and made for this event, the character is specifically a racist caricature of Asians that he invented in 2005 specifically to parody Bill O'Rielly saying racist shit about Asians.

I apologize for not having an encyclopedic knowledge of Colbert bits from before my house had satellite.

Now, obviously people who take what Colbert says seriously are idiots. But the person who started the complaints did not believe that Colbert was being serious. She specifically said in interviews that she doesn't think that a racist parody joke is an appropriate method of addressing the initial racism. Or to quote Cracked's summary, "She derided the entire bit, having no faith that those who could appreciate a satirical message in support of Native Americans could have the same capacity to want equality for all minorities."

Good to know the precise facts. Again, I apologize for not keeping up on stupid internet drama.

Prak_Anima wrote:Ok, so I was slightly off in that Suey Park did understand that the bit was parody. But otherwise, that's basically what I said.

No, what you said was that he posted a link to the bit, which is of course false and completely misleading, since the bit itself is in fucking context because it has the Redskins in it. He did not post a link to the bit, which was the "problem" to the extent a problem exists. So what you did is post about a tweet without fucking reading the tweet.

Prak_Anima wrote:

The character is not new and made for this event, the character is specifically a racist caricature of Asians that he invented in 2005 specifically to parody Bill O'Rielly saying racist shit about Asians.

I apologize for not having an encyclopedic knowledge of Colbert bits from before my house had satellite.

Then you posted about a clip without watching the fucking clip. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of Colbert anything, because for the most part I don't watch Colbert. But unlike you, before trying to explain the issue to other people, I actually watched the fucking clip in question, in which Colbert specifically talks about his fucking Ching Chong character, and shows a goddam clip of him doing the Ching Chong character which is dated 2005, and hey, by the way, he looks much younger.

So if you had watched the video or read the tweet before trying to explain the video or the tweet to other people, you would not have been wrong on literally every account. But you didn't, so you were, because you are a fucking idiot.

Kaelik wrote:He did not post a link to the bit, which was the "problem" to the extent a problem exists. So what you did is post about a tweet without fucking reading the tweet.

To be fair, the original tweet is deleted. The only places to read it now are articles about the controversy, which very well might cut the link on their own for readability's sake. I also thought the original contained a link, because @ColbertReport was a network-ran promotional account and why the fuck wouldn't you throw in a link to the show's internet presence while promoting it on the internet? But you are actually right, and the original tweet was completely without link. That is an amazing oversight.

Alright, I misrembered. I'm sorry for my horrible crime, Kaelik.

the original tweet, screencapped:

Don't get me wrong, he should definitely have included the link, but as far as dumb twitter mistakes go, why would you hashtag the one group of people who are most likely to be offended by your out of context joke?

#Asian? Really?

DSMatticus wrote:Suey Park gave an interview defending herself that was batshit insane. Read it, and know that this is a perfectly mundane example of the Lovecraftian horrors that lurk in the depths of tumblr.

Best part of that interview:

Suey Park wrote:Wait, can you ask that question again, I got distracted real quick, there was a bird outside my window.

On topic, I've recently discovered a group called Starbomb has a series of video-game themed songs with a twist that made me smile:

It's Dangerous to go alone NSFW!

Regretroid NSFW!

Also the same guys recorded the most awesome song about dinosaurs and lasers ever: Dinosaur Laser Fight NSFW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCy7m6PRq9E

Wow, now I'm sad I never finished Shadow of Destiny. This is Deadly Premonition tier for sure.