Art Fusco
  • Home
  • Scribe's Journal
    • NuTrek articles
    • Kevin Smith
    • Frank Kimball
    • Before First Contact
    • NCPD History
    • Local Newspaper Clippings
  • Store

False-Firsts: A rebuttal to Treksphere's article

3/29/2021

3 Comments

 
Picture
​There have been a lot of blind accusations going around. The one I'm addressing today comes from Treksphere.com  and it's called, "The Star Trek Fandom And Its Hidden Bigotry".

This article assumes the same old trope of "If you don't like this show, you're a bigot". The difference here is that this author assumes that some may be engaging in bigotry "without realizing it". Ok, I guess I can buy that. So what acts of bigotry is this author referring to? 

Critiquing a tv show. No, really. 

This person is arguing that critiquing a tv show can be seen as an unconscious form of bigotry. Even if the critique has to do with canonical or historical accuracy, it still supposedly dismisses marginalized groups in some sort of way, therefore it's bigotry. I DON'T buy this. Here is their first example: 

"When the characters of Gray and Adira were officially announced as the first nonbinary and transgender characters, so much of the discourse I saw by even well-intentioned fans were about how technically that wasn’t true because nonbinary and transgender characters existed in Trek before, so they weren’t the first. Examples of the J’naii and the Trill were brought up to defend that diverse representation was not just something only newer Trek shows did, but that older shows did it first."
Picture
To the author's credit, this is true. As a marketing stunt, the people who ran NuTrek announced, before the season three premiere, that Gray and Adira were the first nonbinary/transgender characters in Trek history. However that was inaccurate and many people, including myself, pointed it out. ​

​According to this person's logic, correcting a canonical error is bigoted because, "it dismisses the importance of this huge milestone (which was still a false-first), it undermines the importance of what it means to Trek fans from those communities to see people like them accurately represented onscreen, and it sucks the joy out of what should have been a full-on celebration of Star Trek living up to its principles."

Of course, had marketing not falsely claimed that Gray and Adira were "firsts" in the first place, there would have been no reason for any pushback. In other words, marketing was so quick to claim a false-first, that IT was really the one that sucked "the joy out of what should have been a full-on celebration of Star Trek".

​Yet, they're still blaming us because we enforced accuracy. I wonder if the author ever considered that these false-firsts actually take credit away from the hard work that shows like TNG and DS9 did to push the envelope? ​

The Actual Issue As I See It

​Respectfully, I think the author of this article just doesn't understand what our issue is with shows like Discovery and Picard. They think that when we talk about "wokeness" or "pushing an agenda", that we mean we don't want anymore diversity in our Trek, which is an utterly ridiculous conclusion. Then they come up with all other sorts of assumptions after that, before arguing against talking points that you never made.

Our main problem with these shows is that the writing feels like a dark Spanish soap opera, rather than the optimistic science fiction drama I had come to expect from classic Trek. Related to that is the cringy dialogue Discovery and Picard share. After that, the breaks in canon, and finally the visual aesthetics of the shows. Yet when we try to argue about the writing or canon or whatnot, they dismiss those arguments by entirely shifting the subject to that of diversity:

Ok, maybe showing the Klingon tits in the rape flashback wasn't the smartest move, but just look at all the diversity in Discovery! Look, we have the first gay couple! What's your issue with diversity? Why do you hate strong black female leads?
Picture
Somebody actually thought this was a good idea.
​Nobody is saying that diversity doesn't belong in Star Trek. Having a diverse crew is part of Trek's original DNA, and they've always tried to push the envelope in that manner. Yet they were also able to tell good stories at the same time. The diversity of those stories was never made apart of a marketing campaign until recently. If certain classic episodes made headlines after it aired, that's one thing... but marketing never made a big deal about it back then, whereas the Adira and Gray marketing happened well before the season aired. 

Perhaps this shift in marketing is why many people tend to conflate criticism of the show with anti-diversity. Perhaps this person has fallen for the articles that accused Discovery and Star Wars sequel trilogy critics of hating strong black females or female leads. Perhaps if these people were more open to discussing the aspects of classic Trek vs. NuTrek, rather than trying to blindly put labels on people who's points of view they don't understand, maybe they would get that we just want better quality story-telling than what Discovery and Picard have offered. 

They then move on to the treatment of Michael Burnham, "saying that the character should be removed from the show, that the show would be better without her and she should be replaced by what is often suggested to be a white male character."

Hold up. Wait a minute. While I agree that there is a wish to remove the character of Michael Burnham from Discovery, NOBODY has suggested she be replaced by a white character. They don't even show proof or links to back this accusation: They just blindly suggest it in order to add some gravitas to this non-argument. If they ever did decide to remove Burnham, I don't think anybody would care who they replaced her with, as long as that character had a proper hero's journey and character arc, as well as decent dialogue. 

The author goes on to directly ask us, "consider what you are saying and where you are coming from with that statement. Do you judge male characters, especially white male characters, the same way you judge her?"

Judging White Male Characters Like I Judged Burnham

​I thought that the new Christopher Pike was too submissive to be a Starfleet captain. As the temp captain of Discovery, this would be his extent of interactions with Burnham in season two:

Pike: Don't do a specific thing, Commander. That's an order. 
Burnham: I'm gonna do that thing anyway, sir. 
Pike: Well... *Smiles and shrugs*


Don't get me wrong, Anson Mount's Pike was a slight improvement upon Hunter's version... but if he's not going to even enforce his orders against a mutinous character like Burnham, then what good of a captain is he? If she tried that with Sisko or Picard, they would have both put her in the brig. 

Also, I have several issues with Ethan Peck's Spock. While I have no issues with the actor himself, I just don't see him as Spock. Maybe if they ever gave him some decent dialogue or a decent story, that opinion may change, but until then, I kinda wish they just left the Spock character to rest. 

Maybe you're sitting there thinking, "but did you judge white male characters the same way then, as you do now?"

Yes. Meet the "Gary Sue" of the classic Trek franchise: Wesley Crusher. Lord, I really wish the people who wrote this article had read about how Wesley Crusher was hated back then. 
Picture
"Shut up, Wesley!"
They go on to work off their imaginative idea that we want Burnham replaced with a white man and asks us to consider, "what does it say about Star Trek if it were to remove a Black female lead from her own show, especially if it were to replace her with a white male actor?" and then goes on a rant about something nobody actually suggested. 

Honestly, who the heck is suggesting that? They provide no links to back up these claims. They really need to do better than to indirectly suggest that my friends and I are low-key racists against black female leads. Once they start accusing people of that, they've become the very toxic thing they claim us to be, and I doubt any of us really want to engage with people who have a false premise about us. 

Conclusion

Let's face it: Michael Burnham is not a very good character. For three seasons, she's been mutinous and insubordinate, which is not my idea of a strong female - or male, for that matter. So what is my idea of a strong black female? Meet my mother. ​​
Picture
mama
​I was born in the country of Panama. My mother's DNA came from the continents of Africa, South America, and a little bit of European Spanish. As a result, her complextion is a bit darker than my father's or I. 

My mother raised me in my teenage years as a single mother. It wasn't easy for her. She didn't have formal education and English wasn't her first language. Her heavy accent kept her from getting possibly lucritive jobs, which relagated her to house-keeping positions in hotels and casinos. Yet, through all that struggle, she somehow managed to raise me until I left for the Navy. That is my idea of a strong black female lead. 

Later on, my mother would permanantly lose her sight and for a few years, I was her partial caretaker. She's still alive, but has moved back to Panama to be closer to family. Michael Burnham wouldn't be qualified to be my mother's guide, much less captain a ship. Yet, they suggest my problem with Burnham isn't the contrived writing that would have her fall onto a planet's surface from space and not have her suffer internal organ ruptures over it. They think my problem is bigotry. How can anybody reason with people like this? 

They conclude their article by saying, "Because I still believe that the Star Trek fandom, of all fandoms, is a place where bigotry, outright or hidden, can be defeated because of the principles this franchise carries in its core." 

Yet, there is no bigotry issue here: It's just a tv show. I am a fan of the 1986 Howard the Duck movie. I first watched it when it came out. I was three and loved that film. But when I later learned that the film bombed and nobody liked it, I didn't accuse any of them of hating ducks or holding prejudices, I just watched a couple of videos where they explained their side and was like "alright, that's an opinion that's going around". Not "how can I shift this topic to race and bigotry?"

Also, nobody who is worth their salt has ever thought that Kirk could NEVER be bisexual, it's just that it's never been established in any sort of way, so the idea is a bit of a stretch. They go on to try and infer that Kirk's character would have been bi, but in a way that suggests that my straight ass could have also been bi. I honestly feel like quoting Captain Picard when he hears a bad argument: 
Picture
​Discovery has some legit firsts: First Woman/African American lead in Trek, First openly gay couple in Trek. Those are things nobody can take away. Why pretend to try and out-do yourselves? Congratulations: Your show is diverse. Now focus on good story-telling so that maybe you can justify the existence of these characters. Pretending things like Burnham being the first black female captain in Trek, when she clearly wasn't, isn't the way. Finding out how to make compelling stories about her captaincy could be though. There's nothing bigoted about this. Once CBSAllAccess/Paramount+ crossed the line and declared false-firsts, they disrespected Trek's history and should have expected the appropriate push back. 
3 Comments

A Boy and His Turtles

3/24/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
After rewatching the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first episode, I wondered about the little boy who had bought and lost the turtles to the sewer, so I wrote his story.
"​When I was 7, my parents took me to the zoo. That's where I saw my first turtle (it was actually a tortoise, but I didn't know the difference back then). He was big and old, but I'll never forget how he was able to put his head in his shell. I wanted one... I wanted two! I begged my parents to buy me some turtles and they told me that if I saved up my allowance, I could go buy some turtles at the pet store. 

So I saved up my allowance for three months. I had to give up many ice cream truck visits, but soon I had enough money to buy a couple of turtles. I went to the pet store and made a bee-line to the turtle aisle. They had many types, but then I saw a small bowl that had four of the tiniest turtles I've ever seen floating inside. The pet store clerk told me that they were all newly born siblings. 

I didn't want to separate the brothers, but I only had enough money for two of them. This made me feel bad and the clerk noticed. He made a deal with me to take all four turtles if I paid him back later. Elated, I took the deal and I took the turtles. 

I was so excited walking home, I didn't even pay attention to my surroundings. New York streets are full of cracks and holes to trip on, but I was focused on my new pets. I was staring at the tiny turtles swimming in the bowl and thinking of what to name them. I thought of calling them Curly, Larry, Moe and Joe after the Stooges, but then thought no, that's stupid. 

That's when I tripped. Before I knew what was happening, the bowl flew out of my hands and shattered on a drainage grate. At first the little guys were still on the grate, but all four turtles fell into the sewer before I could reach them. I tried to look inside the grate, but only saw pitch black. As soon as I had bought them, I had lost my turtles. 

I cried the rest of the way home. My parents asked me what happened and I told them. Feeling bad, my father promised that he would pay back the pet store clerk and buy me a new turtle. A few days later, I got a new turtle - not a baby one, but a turtle none-the-less. I decided to name him Pisanello, after an old renaissance painter, after seeing one of his sketches of a turtle. 

I took care of that little guy until I was an adult. As a teenager, I took a job at the very zoo where I saw my first tortoise and really learned the job. I loved working there. I then went to college and studied zoology and marine biology. 

One night I was walking home from school when I thought I saw something in an alley way. I went in and a man with a knife came to me and demanded my wallet. Frightened for my safety, I reached into my pocket to grab my wallet when the street lamps gave a spark and went out. I could hear commotion, but I could only see shadows and silhouettes. For some reason, the silhouettes looked like people wearing turtle shells. 

My mind was playing tricks on me. Instead of reaching for my wallet, I reached for the tiny flashlight on my keychain. I turned it on to see my would-be mugger tied up and the turtle-like silhouettes gone. Seeing my opportunity to escape, I ran out of the alley and called the police when I got home. Strangest thing. I took a short break from school to get turtles out of my mind for a while. 

I now run a turtle conservancy, saving hundreds of threatened turtles and tortoises by creating safe habitats for them. I'm proud of what I do, though I can't help but to sometimes look back and wonder what became of those four baby turtles. Are they still together? Are they still wondering the sewer? Would they remember me? 

I guess I'll never know."
0 Comments

Mental Gymnastics - How to politicize a fandom

3/14/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture

"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury..."

​When I was in the Navy, I learned that nuclear technicians have a tendency to overthink a problem when there are much simpler solutions. We called the phenomenon "nuking" a problem. ​The article entitled "In Plain Sight: How White Supremacy, Misogyny, and Hate Targeted the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy and Won" is certainly nuking it. ​​
​While it's research and length is initially somewhat impressive, it's obvious from the start that the author(s) wrote that article already believing that the problem we have with the films was it's diversity. Within their first paragraphs they speak of how The Last Jedi was "a film that dares to move culture into a more diverse and hopeful future. And in response, the film has been faced with an organized hate campaign against it."
And now they will manipulate the facts to meet this bias. I read the entire article and I wanted to point out a few things:  

No Star Wars in their timeline

They start with a "Timeline of Outrage" that begins in 1984 when Rush Limbaugh started his radio show. 
​Wait... Rush Limbaugh? What does this have to do with Star Wars? 
​The problem with this timeline is that these events aren't reliant on each other and have nothing to do with the Star Wars franchise. Rush Limbaugh starting his radio show in 1984 did not cause or lead to criticism of the Last Jedi in 2017. 
They follow Rush until 1996 when Bill O'Reilly starts his show - another unrelated event which has nothing to do with criticism of Star Wars or the sequel trilogy. In fact, none of this timeline is relevant to their argument until 2006 when YouTube launches. 
​They also seem to be missing very important events between 1999 and 2005. Namely the release of the prequel trilogy. In fact, they don't even mention the Disney buyout in 2012. Instead they talk about how Breitbart launched "Breitbart tech", further trying to link things that have no links. I searched the article for key words like "phantom" "clone" "revenge" "sith" "empire" and "vader". There is absolutely no mention of the prequel trilogy, or the original trilogy for that matter.
​Why would they leave out the 2012 buyout? I mean, Disney's ownership of Lucas Film is a large factor in how people saw the direction of the franchise. It was big news when it happened and was met with a mix of joy and dread. None of that history is in this article. 
There's no Star Wars in their timeline.
The author(s) of this article sees the Star Wars fandom through a strictly political spectrum, rather than as a group of people who remember being taken to a galaxy far far away as children. Why else would someone use this political media history instead of the history of how Star Wars fans reacted to the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy? Possibly because realizing that fan criticism of the franchise had started as far back as 1980 - 4 years before Rush Limbaugh had a radio show - would ruin their entire argument. 
Let's make a timeline that makes more sense.

Timeline of Star Wars critique

​A New Hope (originally just called Star Wars) was released in 1977 to very positive reviews, making $775.8 million at the box office from an $11 million budget. Roger Ebert praised  the film with one minor criticism, "​And perhaps that helps to explain the movie's one weakness, which is that the final assault on the Death Star is allowed to go on too long. Maybe, having invested so much money and sweat in his special effects, Lucas couldn't bear to see them trimmed."
​The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980 to mostly positive reviews, though there were some negative comments beginning to pop up. Ebert had a problem with Chewbacca, saying he was "thrown into the first film as window dressing, was never thought through, and as a result has been saddled with one facial expression and one mournful yelp". 
​The Daily Telegraph, Eric Shorter wrote “(T)hey assure us that their latest offering is only episode five in a nine-part saga ... Meanwhile what we get on the screen is the usual emphatic pride in machinery and paucity of characterisation that marks so much space fiction. Who are these people? What are they up to? Why is it so hard to care what happens to them? If you ever saw and committed to memory Star Wars such questions may seem naively exacting, since this episode reintroduces many of the figures and fantasies from the earlier film.”
Pauline Kael wrote "I’m not sure I’m up for seven more Star Wars adventures, but I can hardly wait for the next one."​
So by 1980, four years before Rush Limbaugh starts his radio show, people were already complaining about certain aspects of Star Wars. Yet the author(s) believe that Limbaugh led to Breitbart which led to Gamer-Gate, which was something that centered around a relationship gone bad. They claim all of that created some blueprint for hating the Last Jedi, or the Sequel Trilogy. What a stretch of the imagination. The cognitive dissonance one needs to maintain to try and hold up this myth that the only people who didn't like the movies were bigots, and the lengths they go to twist the facts to fit this narrative is colossal. 
​Return of the Jedi was released in 1983 and while financially successful, there were some mixed reviews:
"Although it was great fun re-watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back again on the big screen, Return of the Jedi doesn't generate the same sense of enjoyment. And, while Lucas worked diligently to re-invigorate each entry into the trilogy, Jedi needs more than the patches of improved sound, cleaned-up visuals, and a few new scenes." - ​James Berardinelli
​Most of the negativity came from the reveal of the Ewoks and even today people still go back and fourth over whether or not it was really good. In a recent Vice article from 2018 mentions that Return of the Jedi was "derided as a lazy re-write of A New Hope that relied on the same plot device (the Death Star) to drive the action, suffered from the return of George Lucas’ stilted dialogue, used Ewok teddy bears to shamelessly sell toys, and employed the tired “nature versus technology” moralizing."
​Hmmm... that sounds... familiar. 
The movies ​were later remastered and re-released in theaters, starting with A New Hope in 1997. While the purpose was to clean up the movie's quality and special effects, George Lucas made a number of changes to the films, including the infamous "who shot first" scene between Greedo and Han Solo. This upset many fans who remembered seeing Han shoot first in the original release, but now see Greedo shooting first. Ever since then, a "despecialized" cut of the original Star Wars trilogy has been floating around the internet. ​
Then in 1999,  the Phantom Menace came out to some pretty negative reviews except now, the internet existed, which meant that now anybody could start a web page and blog about what they thought of the movie. Not just professional critics like Ebert, who, while praising the technological achievement of the film, wasn't into the scene where Anakin had to say goodbye to his mother, "The film's shakiness on the psychological level is evident, however, in the scene where young Anakin is told he must leave his mother (Pernilla August) and follow this tall Jedi stranger. Their mutual resignation to the parting seems awfully restrained. I expected a tearful scene of parting between mother and child, but the best we get is when Anakin asks if his mother can come along, and she replies, "Son, my place is here." As a slave?"​
While the original trilogy did receive criticism, that criticism paled compared to the criticism this movie received, which seems to have had an effect on some of the actors. The boy who played Anakin in this film, Jake Lloyd, was bullied in school after playing this role which led him to quit acting. Even today, people have a hard time seeing the future Darth Vader going "Yippee!"
However, the biggest complaints were about Jar Jar Binks. His clumsiness and his silly speak seemed to rub fans the wrong way. They hated him. They went as far as to accuse George Lucas of racial stereotypes, which both Lucas and Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar Jar, denied. Years later, Best opened up about how playing that character affected him negatively to the point of suicidal thoughts. 
Attack of the Clones came out in 2002 and the complaints continued. Ebert was clearly losing interest in the films. He gave only 2 out of 4 stars and wrote "​as someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was amazed, at the end of "Episode II," to realize that I had not heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue. And the images, however magnificently conceived, did not have the impact they deserved."
By Revenge of the Sith, the criticism became brutal. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote: "Drink the Kool-Aid. Wear blinders. Cover your ears. Because that’s the only way you can totally enjoy Revenge of the Sith — the final and most futile attempt from skilled producer, clumsy director and tin-eared writer George Lucas to create a prequel trilogy to match the myth-making spirit of the original Wars saga he unleashed twenty-eight years ago."
"Heralded for its savagery (my God, it's rated PG-13), the film follows Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen - to merely call him wooden is an affront to puppets everywhere) as he loses his limbs and his conscience and takes on the evil mantle of Darth Vader."
Ebert said, "The dialogue throughout the movie is once again its weakest point: The characters talk in what sounds like Basic English, without color, wit or verbal delight, as if they were channeling Berlitz." 
George Lucas had originally intended to make 9 movies, but after the criticism of the prequel trilogy, he had seemingly changed his mind. While he had seemed to grow weary of the criticisms, to his credit, he never attacked the fans. However, after talks with Disney CEO Bob Iger in 2011, Lucas sold Lucas Film to Disney in 2012, who promised to make the last three films. 
Meanwhile, in that other timeline, they're talking about how Steve Banon took over for Andrew Breitbart when he died in ​2012, as if this is what starts the road to criticism of The Last Jedi, lol!

Addressing lies

​There also seems to be a lot of lying in this article. For instance, the author claims ItchyBacca has published "a slew of white supremacist articles on their blog". That's not true at all. The funniest part is that while there are links in every other sentence in that article, there is no link to his Disney Star Wars is Dumb page, probably to discourage you from checking for yourself.
​Just to make sure, I went on his page and read every article this year that had the word "white" in it. What I found was that he points out tweets where people are dismissing others arguments because they came from a white person. He'll often ask things like "But one has to wonder if Cavan has performed the exercise whereby you take any of Krystina’s comments, and exchange the word “white” for any other ethnicity. Though it’s debatable that he would learn anything from that even if he did."
I've found articles such as "E.K. Johnston (Star Wars Author)Wants White Women To Stop Ruining Things". Yet I see no indication that he thinks white people are superior, nor is it even implied - consciously or not. The author(s) states that ItchyBacca's site "gets to the heart of what hate against The Last Jedi, in particular, is really about: the battle to preserve “white” culture." 
The only thing that I get from reading these articles is that ItchyBacca is a conservative who feels like he's publishing hate speech from liberals who like the sequel trilogy, and are trying to use race to dismiss those who don't. He does resort to name-calling at times, but that's a far cry from "a slew of white supremacist articles".
Another lie has to do with an attack on a Furry convention in 2014. The author(s) wrote, "It should also be noted that during this same year, a chlorine bombing attack at Mid-West Fur Fest linked to Nazi radicalization in the furry community put 19 people in the hospital."
​The problem is that the gas attack occurred in 2014 and was never "linked to Nazi radicalization in the furry community". In fact, according to the Wikipedia page of the event, nobody was ever charged with the attack. However, the author(s) try to use a 2017 Vice article that made a loose reference to the 2014 attack as an excuse to link the bombing to "Nazis" without any evidence.
​Honestly though, what the hell does what happens at a Furry convention have to do with criticism of The Last Jedi? None. Yet, rather than use their mental gymnastics to try and further link the two, instead they quickly move onto "How Far Right Hate Turns Into Fact", or in other words: 

Pretending peaceful pushback is hateful and violent

​Spoiler alert: All "How Far Right Hate Turns Into Fact"​ talks about is the hashtags, boycotts, downvotes and other methods we use to get heard. They do list a few other things, but "an alarming media culture that puts profits over facts" is more of a societal condition than what someone would do to turn hate into "facts". "(T)he use of socks, bots, and super users" is an interesting one. The article it links to claims that over 50% of "those tweeting negatively was likely politically motivated or not even human". Yet it also claimed that "most fans aren’t so dissatisfied with The Last Jedi that they’re going to boycott any new Star Wars films."
Yet Solo lost money. 
​Finally, "a lack of education about how to navigate online spaces, especially those under political attack" talks about downvoting and review-bombing. I'm not exactly sure why they see it as a problem because both sides actually do it. In fact, YouTube welcomes this and uses it to help their algorithms decide what to feature. If I like something, I may upvote it and leave a comment. If I don't like it, or if it is somehow offensive to me, I may downvote it. 
​If you put out a video claiming the Earth is flat, or that some race is superior to another, or that The Last Jedi (or Star Trek Discovery) is good, I will probably downvote your video. Furthermore, if a corporation does something to upset me (like fire Gina Carano), I have every right to boycott that corporation. I have every right to encourage others to boycott it as well. I have every right to let them know how disappointed I am, through these peaceful methods of hashtags, boycotts and downvotes. When Solo lost money, it was the free market speaking. Not racists. 
It's not white supremacy to have a negative feedback about a tv show or a movie. It's just fandom. In this case, a fandom that has been around since 1977 who simply misses the great story telling that brought the original Star Wars to life. We've been complaining about certain aspects of the franchise since 1980. The only difference was that our political beliefs didn't factor into our entertainment back then. To some it still doesn't. 
There is way much more "data" that they analyze, signifying nothing. When I realized that the bias in this article is so nakedly on display - the labeling, the linking of events that have nothing to do with one another, and the lack of actual Star Wars history, along with the outright lies - I realized that I didn't have to work too hard to debunk this. I don't need to nuke it to know it's bullshit. 

Why would they write this?

So why did this group put out this hit piece on YouTubers who are critical of the sequel trilogy and in particular, The Last Jedi? While I'm sure there is still some good in these people (Luke never gave up on Vader), there seems to be a trend of using racism, sexism, etc. as an excuse to dismiss people who disagree with them on just about any sort of issue. Originally, that type of crap was isolated to the topics of politics and religion. The reason why politics and religion are so difficult to discuss for some is because people often judge each other's morality over such topics. That somehow has permeated to pop culture. You don't like a show that has bad story-telling? It must be because you're an alt-right Nazi who hates diversity and not because of the bad story-telling. Utterly ridiculous. 
I realized that some of these people think that going on Twitter and calling people racists was a form of activism. Real activism is hard and will take its toll on a person, so this is easier for them. They think that finding people who use terms they think are dog whistles, or constantly mocking them for thinking the wrong way, is somehow the equivalent of actual activists who work tirelessly against all hope to organize in order to change the laws for the better. 
This faux-activism they've been doing though became so vitriolic, that I began reading physical threats in the comments of YouTube videos. I soon began writing the occasional article about how Star Trek Discovery fans treat those who dislike the show. This eventually led those Discovery fans to do their best to label and black list me from Star Trek community pages on Facebook. All it did though, was push me towards the very channels they're now trying to libel as white supremacists. I've seen actual racism as well as real activism. This is not the way. If they want to be real activists, they can go get arrested for a good cause. ​​
1 Comment

      Do you see this?

    Submit

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    December 2022
    April 2022
    October 2021
    July 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    September 2013

Proudly powered by Weebly