General Discussion

[DangerousPuhson]

I thought you said you were in advertising. My mistake.

I said my college major was in Advertising - and like most people, my job has nothing to do with my degree, and I've already forgotten 95% of what I learned in college.

Plus even if my job was in advertising, you do at least realize that propaganda and advertising are different things, right? "Marketing" is not "Mind Control". "Graphic Design" is not "Subliminal Messages". Making a TV commercial that says "come shop at Target" is quite different from one that says "your taxes are high because of leftists and illegal immigrants".

Like, if your job is writing code, am I allowed to declare you a hacker criminal whose opinions are thus invalidated? If you're a pharmacist, can I call the cops on your drug dealing? Because that's the treatment you're giving to me (which I suppose tracks for someone with paranoia issues).

 

[squeen]

you do at least realize that propaganda and advertising are different things, right?

Sliding spectrum. I don't think typical propaganda is MKUltra either.

Boy! I'll tell ya. The conclusions some folks jump to when you say unorthodox things!

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Sliding spectrum. I don't think typical propaganda is MKUltra either.

Boy! I'll tell ya. The conclusions some folks jump to when you say unorthodox things!

Tell me about it. You say something innocuous like "I majored in Advertising in college", and suddenly they declare you a Deep State propagandist trying to mind control the electorate.

You know what else is a sliding spectrum? Sanity.

 

[The1True]

Well, the girls made me sit through the Captain Marvel & the Barbie movies.

Oh my god Squeen. It's OKAY. You ARE kenough.

 

[The1True]

This explains so much really.

Can we unpack this, because I'm having real trouble understanding people's current hatred of their civil services.
I mean, shit just doesn't function without one, y'know? Like, these sovereign citizens driving on roads built and maintained by the government claiming they don't have to abide by the government's laws or pay their share for the maintenance of this fundamental infrastructure. It's fucking confusing for me.
Truckers absolutely fucked up my town a couple of years back and the general attitude was "yeah, fuck the capital and all the freeloaders working there" and it absolutely boggles my mind. Sure, there are some overpaid dipshits who do absolutely nothing all day but occasionally impede their hard-working colleagues, but how is this any different from any other business. My wife, and many of my friends are civil servants, and these people work their butts off to keep their nations running.
Seriously.
Look at all the privatization that went on in the 90's and the resulting corruption, incompetence, and waste, and tell me that THIS time it's going to work for realsies you guys.

 

[Beoric]

 

[Beoric]

Seriously though, private business is good at some things and crappy at others. Government is good at some things that business sucks at, but isn't good at business. That gets completely screwed up if you ask private business to take on government functions (governments should be provide services to maximize the public good, whereas businesses provide services to maximize their own benefits), or when governments are forced to act like businesses (which causes government services to break down because the wrong things are being prioritized).

Generally, and allowing for individual exceptions, public servants have chosen a career with lower prestige and lower pay than they could get with the same credentials in the private sector because they believe in what they are doing. I applaud anyone who devotes their life to serving the public.

I have more to say on this but I'm running late.

 

[squeen]

It's the size of the government & agency capture that irks and how it has taken over everything since globalization hollowed out US domestic industry (except print-printing, finance & real estate). Wealth concentration and a managerial class that feels too much like the Old World aristocracy. The American Revolution, a Bill of Rights (that brilliantly & solely limits government's power over it's own people), and the radical experiment of self-governance by the common man is a historical anomaly---constantly in danger of becoming just a speed-bump.

Whatever the system, there are those who will attempt to game and rig it. Sometimes the powerful succeed. Perpetual one/uni-party rule (looking at you California) is always a looming possibility. US debt is at $34T and increasing by $1T every 100 days, rapidly becoming existential. Global debt has ballooned across the board.

Likewise, US politicians revel in foreign affairs because overseas there are no courts with jurisdiction over them. The door to corruption is thrown wide open without a proper backstop. US, as the world's leader, has been headless for the previous 4 years. Unelected bureaucrats and special interests ran rampant---chaos ensued.

While, the state of the West is not terminal, but you must really have your head in the sand to not recognize we are living through a transitional period in history. The post-WWII global pax-americana era is ending, and no one is certain what will emerge next.

The culture-war that we often clash on is not the cause, it's just a side-effect.

 

[squeen]

Oh my god Squeen. It's OKAY. You ARE kenough.

More than anything, that message: You go be Ken all by yourself (kenough), and I'll go be Barbie by myself (and visit my gynecologists to get off!?!), was the truly saddest, most anti-human, message of the movie. Mental poison for a lonely, isolated world.

Men & women need each other. Love and family matters more than just about anything else.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

"you only named 3 films and you would need to list 9,871 films (a majority) in order to make this claim."

"You have a problem with 3 films. You form an opinion on these 3 films. You make a sweeping claim about the entire industry based on these 3 films. You will need more than 3 films to prove a trend. There are 19,740 films to choose from - I included a hyperlink to them all. Find the trend, or shut up with the conspiracy nonsense."

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I am not a libertarian. I made 17,649 comments about politics around all discussions from 2003-2024, and only 3 could be interpreted as being supportive of sovereign citizens. Unless you can find more comments than this, that's only ~0.0002% of all my comments. This does not a majority make. When you contextualize my comments, sometimes you can realize how unlikely they really are to support libertarianism.

Nice to see you again. This creative mockery, this truly genius piece of mimicry... you're such a smart guy, with such a big dick!

I have a ball. Perhaps you'd like to bounce it?

 

[Beoric]

Clearly my saying that being a federal worker and doing this explained much meant that comment was enough for others to generalize off of it without any data produced supporting the generalization. Inapplicable to myself as the generalization is.

Ok, I'm curious. If your comment here

As a federal worker...

This explains so much really.

was not intended to insult DP by implying a negative view of civil servants as a class, what were you trying to convey? From the context it seems unlikely that you were lauding DP for being a civil servant, so how did The1True and I misinterpret this?

If you wanted only to disparage a particular quality you associate with civil servants, why did you not say so? How are we to do anything but generalize when referring to an apparent generalization on your part?

Please don't think about my dick. I do not consent.

I'll give you mad props for this, though. Kudos, nicely done.

 

[squeen]

Find the trend, or shut up with the conspiracy nonsense."

Nope. How about you go through the 19,740 films and compile the counter-argument?

How stupid.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

It was not a "data fetch quest" - It was a "please back up your crazy assertation with facts, because you sound like a loon shouting at clouds". That is not an unreasonable request.

If someone things I'm not paying sufficient homage to government employees, so be it, that doesn't bother me.

There's "not paying sufficient homage", and then there's what you did, which was to act like a total dismissive asshole because I work a completely normal profession, one that happens to have a great deal of insight into the discussion - it's different.

Fun fact: You are being a piece of shit. Sorry if you think that statement is not paying "sufficient homage" to you, but so be it, that doesn't bother me.

Nope. How about you go through the 19,740 film and compile the counter-argument.

How stupid.

You want me to find films that aren't about feminism and "woke topics"? Fine. I mean, I gave you the much easier task of finding a couple extra examples from a huge pile of films I linked you to, but sure, I'll approach this thing from the other side and link everything that *isn't* crazy madness.

Let's see how fast before I hit the post character limit. Then maybe you can shut the fuck up with the crazy Deep State conspiracy bullshit about brainwashing America with good vibes and inclusivity.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The Life of Chuck

Anora

A Complete Unknown

Mufasa: The Lion King (depends if you consider diversity in casting to be "woke")

Nosferatu

The Substance

Wicked

Heretic

Twisters

The Brutalist

Conclave

Gladiator 2

A Real Pain

Moana 2

Flow

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Kraven the Hunter

Speak No Evil

Babygirl (chick flicks aren't woke btw, they're just made specifically for women, so I count them)

The Order

Y2K

The Assessment

Deadpool & Wolverine

Paddington in Peru

Alien: Romulus

The Wild Robot

Smile 2

Civil War (this film is like pure anti-woke, you'd love it)

I'm Still Here

Dune Part 2

Eden

It Ends With Us

2073

Parthenope

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Small Things Like These

Venom: Last Dance

The Beekeeper

Trap

Longlegs

The Penguin Lessons

On Swift Horses

Juror No.2

The Count of Monte-Cristo

Freaky Tales

Furiosa

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

Transformers One

Carry-On

The Apprentice (a film about Trump just for you squeen!)

Borderlands

Queer (ok, this one might actually count for your side of things, but I'd still argue that wokeism is different than using gender as a film subject)

The Return

Fight or Flight

Blink Twice

We Live in Time

The Friend

Better Man

Subservience

The Fall Guy

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Abigail

Sacramento

The Crow

The Rule of Jenny Pen

Horizon: An American Saga

Presence

Terrifier 3

Despicable Me 4

Challengers

Wolfs

The Last Showgirl

Magpie

Road House

The Shrouds

Greedy People

Saturday Night

MaXXXine

Rebel Ridge (sounds like this would be more your kind of movie)

Oddity

Here

Dead Mail

Pushpa: The Rule part 2

Joker: Folie a Deux

The Day The Earth Blew Up

Madame Web (probably woke)

Winter Spring Summer or Fall

Emelia Perez

Inside Out 2

September 5

Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim

The Girl With The Needle

Megalopolis

Kinds of Kindness

The Room Next Door

Lucky Bashkar

Elevation

Absolution

Ask Me What You Want

A Quiet Place: Day One

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Shall I continue, or do you maybe now understand why I linked a page with 20,000 films on it so that you could show us which films were culprit, as opposed to this stupid fucking approach here of listing every non-culprit film?

"Aliens exist you guys! I saw their cities on a planet!"

"Wow! Tell us, what planet are they from?"

"Not Jupiter, not Saturn, not Mars, not Venus, not Mercury, not Neptune..."

 

[squeen]

I can only speak to a few I've seen or know enough about:

Furiosa (nope)
The Fall Guy (nope)
Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim (nope)
Dune Part 2 (nope)
Twisters (nope)
The Apprentice (nope)
The Beekeeper (nope)

which leaves Deadpool & Wolverine --- and that was lambasted by critics (not audiences) for not being too regressive and crude. Ironically, those are also the two superheroes that originally (1980/90's) broke the code of "good guys don't kill", which was itself a small cultural creep.

So, for the ones I've listed, it was 87.5% with some degree of tainting the basic (humanistic) story with irrelevant modernist cultural/political propaganda. Try as you might, you can't unsee it. You're going along, enjoying a work of fiction, and then...like the Matrix's "girl in the red dress"... it jolts you out of the narrative with an anachronism. Propaganda is 10% lie/message wrapped in 90% truth/story.

You can keep screeching at me to "shut up" all you like, but I find your thinking so naive that I'll always dismiss you (if I bother to reply at all). You'd be better served by just ignoring me like @Beoric and @The1True.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Covering discrimination or femininity as a theme isn't propaganda. Gender-swapping characters isn't propaganda. Casting minorities for roles isn't propaganda. Passing the Bechdel Test isn't propaganda.

I genuinely believe that you don't know what the term "propaganda" means. Like for real, you'd probably call this post "propaganda".

 

[Beoric]

This is getting into dead horse territory a bit, but someone needn't be a "sovereign citizen" type to be non-plussed with government functionaries for casual go-fetch me data quests for the most minor thing. Go talk to 90% blue voting (I understand in Canada the colors are switched) southern california folks whose homes have burned down what they think of all the data fetch questing they're being asked to do in order to clear debris and rebuild.

If someone things I'm not paying sufficient homage to government employees, so be it, that doesn't bother me. To conflate me with libertarians for doing so is a gross insult.

It's a bit of a catch 22, because if claims are being granted without proving them, a lot of the same people who are grumbling about government inefficiency, will instead be grumbling about the government allowing fraud.

 

[squeen]

It's a bit of a catch 22, because if claims are being granted without proving them, a lot of the same people who are grumbling about government inefficiency will be grumbling about the government allowing fraud.

Here is the essence of the bullshit:

1) everyone is talking casually, throwing opinions around
2) someone has an opinion outside the echo-chamber consensus
3) elaborate proof is demanded or name-calling and outrage ensues

It's ridiculous for a casual environment. The proper reply is: "Oh, that's an wild take on things. I don't agree." Folks of a certain persuasion, especially over over the past decade, has felt the need to shout down dissent least their house of cards implode.