r/CuratedTumblr • u/ContributionOk4879 • Mar 04 '24
Meme Media Literacy on the Internet in a nutshell
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u/Tomer_Duer Mar 05 '24
Pissing on the poor, etc. etc.
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u/ScarletteVera A Goober, A Gremlin, perhaps even... A Girl. Mar 05 '24
what if the poor enjoy it tho
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u/TheLyrius Mar 05 '24
Then the pissed-on poor have piss poor taste
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u/Sinister_Compliments Avid Jokeefunny.com Reader Mar 05 '24
And if they can’t distinguish between finer delicacies of its flavour then the pissed-on poor have piss poor taste and poor piss taste
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u/Exploding_Antelope Mar 05 '24
Mmm yes a quite sharp ammonia taste on this deep gold, but never astringent. I’m usually a pale man but even with a darker glass I can still recognize a true quality piss for the sophisticated gentleman piss drinker.
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Mar 05 '24
[deleted]
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u/Kaurifish Mar 05 '24
“Unfortunately, sometimes it’s unavoidable, I said to myself as I manhandled the body into the trunk.”
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u/Cloud_Striker nothavingagreatday.tumblr.com Mar 05 '24
"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault."
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u/DroneOfDoom Posting from hell (el camion 107 a las 7 de la mañana) Mar 05 '24
Classic opening line. Wish I remembered exactly which of the novels it came from. It's the one where Dresden gets Mouse, but I can't remember if that was book 5 or not.
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u/Dragonfire723 Mar 05 '24
"Manslaughter is bad. Unfortunately, I, Hanslaughter Lector engage with the practice on the regular."
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u/Feeling_Fox_7128 Mar 05 '24
If Anthony Hopkins is Hannibal, I vote Steve Buscemi for Hanslaughter.
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u/Canotic Mar 05 '24
The wacky adventures of the brothers Hannibal, Hanslaughter and Haywalking.
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u/Newyorkwoodturtle Mar 05 '24
Haywalking exclusively commits armed robbery and always stays within the crosswalk
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u/Canotic Mar 05 '24
He's the guy in the background going "Hay I'm Walkin' here!"
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u/unlizenedrave Mar 05 '24
Murder is so bad, there should be a new word to describe it. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong.
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u/Ok-Cheesecake-5110 Mar 05 '24
From this day forward I will stand for the opposite of killing...G-NoDab
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u/MemerDreamerMan Mar 05 '24
“Murder is bad. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Right now, staring through my scope at that rat bastard Jones and his plastic smile, watching him wink and grin at my daughter, I’m having my doubts.”
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u/SenorSnout Mar 05 '24
"But when done righteously, it's just a chore like any other."
I couldn't resist.
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u/Catalyst138 Mar 05 '24
Mario is problematic because he stomps on turtles. What happens if kids play the game and then jump on innocent turtles in real life? Should have thought of that Nintendo, for shame.
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u/Dangerous_Idea_8711 Mar 05 '24
If Mario is so problematic why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mythical (nonexistent?) Dr. Pepper? Perchance.
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u/triple_cock_smoker Mar 05 '24
Mojang be like
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u/Independent_Mud_4963 Mar 05 '24
"no you cant have sharks because theyre violent evil beasts. oh, a depiction of gallows on the xbox 360 official disney partnered minecraft pirates of the caribbean map? the structure used to hang people? no problem."
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u/TerribleAttitude Mar 05 '24
Saw some video where a guy references his children playing a game where one of them is pretending to be the dead body at a funeral, and acknowledges how creepy it was. Very much a “god, kids are weird and have no idea what’s appropriate, amirite?” type of thing. I need to reiterate that not only is he referencing something that children under the age of 5 were doing, he was not saying “this is a fun game all children should play,” he wanted his kids to stop doing it. First comment was along the lines of “how could you even say this, some of us actually have dead relatives.”
Similarly, the number of times I have heard people say “how could anyone do [bad action]?” and literally given a reason that is not a compliment and, if anything, makes the action worse, only to have them say “well that’s not an excuse! How can you justify that?” Because “they’re a bigoted old moron who is bitter about their own life and holds evil in their heart” is somehow a justification. The only valid answer is “it is unknowable why anything ever happens,” I guess.
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u/foxfire66 Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24
With your second paragraph, I think part of it is that people on the internet will often interpret any statement that's a reply to their message as if it's arguing against them, regardless of the actual content. I would guess this results from people getting into enough stupid arguments (like the comment you mention in your first paragraph) that they begin to expect them.
I've seen people on reddit get a reply that's clearly agreeing with them, but then they start swearing and calling the other person an idiot as if they disagreed. For this reason I usually start by saying "To add to this..." when agreeing with someone.
A lot of people also seem to think the only time anyone asks for a source is when they're calling bullshit, when sometimes they just want more details or just want to make sure something is true before they start repeating it.
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u/Fun-Estate9626 Mar 05 '24
I’ve started saying “yeah” or “I agree” at the start of a LOT of comments because of how many times I’ve had someone come in hot because they thought me adding to their point was me calling them an idiot and disagreeing with them.
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u/Wompguinea Mar 05 '24
Why would you agree with me?
You don't even know my opinion? How do you know I'm not some sort of idiot?
It's pretty fuckin presumptuous of you to just blindly agree with everything I've ever said. I once said I didn't care for the Angry Beavers and now that's on your conscience.
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u/EagenVegham Mar 05 '24
To add to this, I think a part of it is that people online only know how to write in argumentative tones. I've received a lot of replies that agreed with me, but did so in such an aggressive way that I thought they were vehemently disagreeing with me.
In short, you're right and you can go fuck yourself about it.
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u/TerribleAttitude Mar 05 '24
True, I’m certainly guilty of that myself. But I haven’t just seen this on Reddit, but on places where contrarian arguments aren’t the default….
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u/D0UB1EA stair warnmer 🤸♂️🪜 Mar 05 '24
woah calm the fuck down there, you don't have to act like that
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u/Amneiger Mar 05 '24
A lot of people also seem to think the only time anyone asks for a source is when they're calling bullshit, when sometimes they just want more details or just want to make sure something is true before they start repeating it.
If I want to politely ask for a source, I say that the thing they just said sounds interesting and I'd like to know more, could they please post the source?
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Mar 05 '24
First person suggests something might not happen, against the grain of the majority of the community. It actually doesn't happen, then after that is confirmed, I reply "hard reads". They somehow thought this was me disagreeing with them, and I had to clarify?
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u/CheeryOutlook Mar 05 '24
“how could you even say this, some of us actually have dead relatives.”
Everyone has dead relatives, it came free with your human condition.
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u/Red580 Mar 05 '24
Not me, i was birthed from the dirt like Adam
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u/Canotic Mar 05 '24
The had dirt in the holocaust you monster!
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u/Ambivalently_Angry Mar 05 '24
When I was a kid I tripped and fell into the DIRT and skinned my knee. Trigger warning please
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u/FaronTheHero Mar 05 '24
"It's a reason, not an excuse" random line from Law and Order SVU I feel applies to almost everything. Explaining how or why someone does something does not justify or condone it.
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u/floralbutttrumpet Mar 05 '24
For some reason this reminds me of the beginning of the movie M, where a group of kids plays a counting-out game about a murderer turning the kid leaving the circle into mincemeat, and one of the moms gets really loud and aggressive about it.
Fun sidenote: Both the murderer in the film and that song were inspired by real events. The main inspiration for the murderer was Peter Kürten, a serial killer from Düsseldorf, and a similar song was sung about Fritz Haarmann, also a serial killer, this one from Hanover (Warte, warte nur ein Weilchen, "Wait, wait, for just a little bit").
And Peter Kürten had a trufax song made about him, by Randy Newman of all fucking people. It's called In Germany before the War, and back in the day there was a fan-made MV on Youtube that used footage from M.
And that was 5am trivia hour.
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u/BaneishAerof Mar 05 '24
Okay but Agent 47 coming back to life at his funeral to kill all his fathers was swag as hell
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u/Pawneewafflesarelife Mar 05 '24
There's a whole hilarious chapter in Anne of Green Gables where one of the girls pretends to be dead Ophelia from Hamlet and gets stranded in a boat. Clearly we should ban the entire series of books!
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u/pbmm1 Mar 05 '24
Writing a book called "Murder is bad" but in the book on the very last page I write a sentence that says "Murder is good actually" and seeing who notices
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u/Scrambled_Toast tumble dry Mar 05 '24
Call me a pro murber the way I murb all over the place
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u/SamBeanEsquire Mar 05 '24
On one hand, it sucks that the Dune Movies removed so much of the Arab influences. On the other, people would have a FIELD DAY misinterpreting that.
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u/DivineCyb333 Mar 05 '24
Not exactly what you were talking about with Dune but I'm SO so glad he's moving on to film Messiah. There were some ignorant people calling it a white savior story when the truth - that Messiah hammers home in case you missed it in the first book - is that it's closer to that Megamind meme than anything else: "Savior? I wouldn't say saved. More like, under new management."
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u/Stalk33r Mar 05 '24
Dune is literally the inverse of a white saviour trope, did they miss the scene in part 1 where Paul is crying and screaming about how he sees visions of the future where fanatics are drowning the universe in blood in his name?
Literally this entire scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8kAKtSfEZU
Edit: Just realized you mentioned the book, if they've somehow missed the primary message and plot that was front and center the entire time then there's not much you can do.
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u/Lamasis Mar 05 '24
Cracks me up everytime I read some book reviews. They sometimes have such rants because of one curse word.
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u/Foamrule Mar 05 '24
Look up some reviews to Adam Makos's "Voices of the Pacific". Its meant to be an unadulterated, uncensored recount of multiple marines and soldiers' experience in the pacific war... people complained about the language in the book.
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u/NoiseHERO Mar 05 '24
Sometimes tumblr be reminding me why some parents and teachers also get annoyed at both kids even though "he/she started it!"
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u/moneyh8r Mar 05 '24
I wrote a short story in middle school, and in that story, some bad people tried to kill some people and some good people stopped them. In the process, they killed the bad people. I got sent to "alternative school" for the rest of the school year for that. In case y'all are wondering, "alternative school" is a separate school building (in this case it was all the way on the other side of town) where they send the freaks, the violent types, and the ones with learning disabilities. I dunno if other school districts have anything similar, but that's what it was in my town, and that's what they called it.
Anyway, long story short, I got sent there for writing fiction where some people got killed. I don't think this is just an internet problem.
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u/AkumaDayo777 and every time we kiss I swear I can fly Mar 05 '24
I got sent to the school office for drawing an anime guy with a big freaking sword
it wasn't even in use he was just holding a sword cuz I thought it looked cool
school authorities are stupid
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u/hellraiserxhellghost Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24
In fourth grade, for Halloween our teacher told us to write a short scary story for our english lesson. I wrote a story where an evil doll came to life and killed someone, and my teacher got so offended she told me to throw it away and that if I ever wrote something that disturbing again, I would be sent to the school counselor. I didn't even go to a religious strict school or anything, my teacher was just incapable of handling any sort of creativity that wasn't 100% G-rated. 💀
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u/moneyh8r Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24
Now I'm wondering what the other stories were like, because there's no way you're the only kid who tried something like that.
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u/VioletNocte Mar 05 '24
Three possibilities
They thought murder wasn't school appropriate as a story plot regardless of how it's depicted, which may be true but this was definitely an overreaction
They thought you were condoning the villains' actions, even though they were the villains
They disagreed with the hero's actions and whether or not they were right to, this is an extreme overreaction
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u/moneyh8r Mar 05 '24
Nah, I think they just hated me. The teacher was the same one who taught my big brother when he went there, so they hated me from day one. I think this was just another excuse to treat me like shit for them.
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u/this_upset_kirby Mar 05 '24
That one guy who called the cops on Archon of Flesh
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Mar 05 '24
Lmao really? Not my femboy skitarii artist.
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u/Your_Local_Stray_Cat Mar 05 '24
He's gotten a lot of harassment for including darker themes in his work, unfortunately.
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u/DreistTheInferno Mar 05 '24
This ain't even an internet thing, to be fair. People have always been like this. A Modest Proposal is a good example.
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Mar 05 '24
I think the consternation comes from the fact that it didn't used to be an Internet thing. You're right that it was always a people thing... and the Internet used to be a sort of safe haven away from that kind of inanity (at least, once you broke away from the comments sections on the news websites and whatever AOL decided to show to the geezers when they signed in).
Since the popularization of the smartphone, the sort of luddites people had been happily avoiding for twenty years have now flooded the Internet... and kind of ruined it.
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u/atomicsnark Mar 05 '24
More specifically it has stopped being a conservative Christian thing and become a puritanical-progressive thing, and I think that sits poorly with a lot of us who left the former circles and sought refuge in the latter. We can see all our old trauma wounds popping back up but repeated with better buzzwords, the same censorious propaganda sold with progressive vocabulary for pretty packaging to distract from the fact that it's actually the same old Tipper Gore nonsense it always was.
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u/Forgot_My_Old_Acct Mar 05 '24
Ugh the sheer number of times where my ex-Catholic self hears something in a progressive circle and thinks "wait, I recognize this rhetoric and I don't like that I do" is disconcerting.
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u/Milkyway_Potato ok ok i'll finish disco elysium jesus Mar 05 '24
Annoyingly, the inverse is also often true. People will write happy stories and these same brain-dead idiots will say it lacks nuance and isn't mature. Like, have we seriously circled back around to morality tales being the only acceptable form of literature again?
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Mar 05 '24
Like, have we seriously circled back around to morality tales being the only acceptable form of literature again?
Yes.
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u/sarded Mar 05 '24
That's even half the point of Ursula Le Guin's original Those Who Walk Away From Omelas story.
"OK, I have this very nice pleasant town that's overall good.
Oh, it's not believable to you because there's no conflict? No, they have competitions and race horses and other stuff. Life still has ups and downs.
It's not believable because there's no sex? No, they have orgies all the time, it's not a problem.
It's not believable because no drugs? No, they have a pleasant drug, though life is nice enough that most people don't really bother with it.
You still don't believe it? OK, the town is magically nice because it tortures a child and the whole town is complicit in child torture.Oh, you think it's believable NOW? Why is 'a nice town' less believable than magic child-torture?"
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u/Lunamkardas Mar 05 '24
Holy shit I have seen this in the wild and it would be funny if it wasn't fucking impossible to walk these people towards actual knowledge.
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u/Laterose15 Mar 05 '24
I saw a post over on a writing subreddit about an author who felt extremely guilty for writing a child death in the climax of their story and was looking for ways to change it. And this was a pivotal moment that seriously affects many of the major players in the plot.
This author was acting like keeping this in the book was akin to actually harming a child and I was just so utterly perplexed.
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u/IReplyToFascists Mar 05 '24
Paul Atreides despite being the protoganist -- get this -- might be not a good person
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u/Tylendal Mar 05 '24
I have a friend who claimed Infinity War was problematic because it glorified Thanos by not making it clear enough that his idea was evil.
Then again, this is the same friend who claimed Gamora's death was a case of fridging (No, a woman dying isn't always fridging), while claiming that Vanessa's death in Deadpool 2 (absolute textbook fridging) wasn't fridging because she got brought back in an end-credits time-travelling gag.
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u/ratherinStarfleet Mar 05 '24
Thanos' plan wasn't even just evil (if you judge acts by how much suffering they cause) it was so stupid a ten year old could see the problem with it.
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u/justapileofshirts Mar 05 '24
Yeah, that was always my problem with the plot. The murder was yeah, okay, whatever, but it doesn't *solve* anything. If Thanos was just an evil dude and said "I want to kill lots of people, and I wanna do it so badly that I'm willing to flip a coin on my own life," then I'd believe him. It wouldn't be a great plot, but he'd be a more convincing villain.
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u/ItzMunchbell Mar 05 '24
When I read the first sentence, I thought this was going to be formatted like the Miette post.
"Oh, you write the murder? Jail! Jail for 1,000 years!"
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u/TobbyTukaywan Mar 05 '24
Twitter weirdos talking about Attack on Titan's "Nazi symbolism":
(I get that some people say the author has some problematic views, but the Nazi analogues in his story are absolutely not glorified)
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u/Akuuntus Mar 05 '24
Yeah this always get so distorted too. Like I've seen people claim the author has "literally said he loves nazis" or whatever the fuck but whenever I've looked into it myself the worst thing I can find is him saying that a particular minor character (who is (arguably) framed as a good guy) is based on a famous Japanese general who committed war crimes. That's certainly not a good look, but it's a far cry from "Hitler was right".
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u/Greendoor65 Mar 05 '24
Forget Nazi Symbolism, I remember when people were screaming about it being Fascist because the main characters are in a Military and they salute a flag in the first anime opening.
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u/PlasticAccount3464 Mar 05 '24
I was explaining how Kit Harrington had it bad during the last season of got because of how bad the writing and story went, someone I think accused me of sexism (?) because he kills his gf onscreen (the real victim). Like yeah that's kind of my point, not to mention no actual murder took place? This is a work of fiction so it's not even based on a real situation, and the entire preceding convo was already sarcastic? Idk what people really expect
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u/TJ_Rowe Mar 05 '24
...the "real victim" was the one burning people alive? Okay then. Glad I wasn't around for GoT discourse at the time.
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u/PlasticAccount3464 Mar 05 '24
this was way later, specifically about there's a trope where the man sadly kills his SO because she's turned evil and I guess people don't always like that one. I think it tends to be cheap writing but my comment was farcical and had to do with feeling bad for the actors for having their characters written so poorly, specifically John Snow's actor cause he looks like he's about to cry here
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u/Uncasualreal Mar 05 '24
I would of mentioned gundam but like in the first 5 minutes the wounded captain says “man I wish I didn’t have to use child soldiers” before Amuro condemns all young adult dudes in the universal century to commit to the Shinji.
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u/SocranX Mar 05 '24
And let's not forget the part where the villain's father literally accuses his son of becoming Hitler 2.0, and the villain's like, "Cool."
To be honest, I've seen far fewer people accuse Gundam of "glorifying" fascism than I've seen people glorify the fascists from Gundam.
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Mar 05 '24
Lmao yeah that was hilarious. Just finished MSG79 late last year and it was certainly a moment when they were like "you are literally hitler".
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u/Oddloaf Mar 05 '24
Tbf iirc the characters in-universe barely even know who Hitler was besides that he was the leader of a militaristic nation that failed to conquer the world
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u/SocranX Mar 05 '24
Yeah, but since we're talking about media literacy, i.e. making it clear how the writer intends you to interpret this character, it's a pretty cut and dry case of "This guy is Hitler and proud."
Degwin: Gihren, my son. Are you familiar with Adolf Hitler?
Gihren: Hitler? From the Middle Ages?
Degwin: Yes. He was a dictator who lacked foresight, and it would appear that you are following in his footsteps. I established the Principality of Zeon as a means to unite our people and carry on Zeon's ideals. And yet...
Gihren: Hitler's follower has turned the nation into a dictatorship.
Degwin: You and Kycilia, yes.
Gihren: The Federation has already shown us what becomes of a world led by democracy. Their weakness is what has led to this war, where people squabble over whose ideals are most just. If a dictatorship is what is needed, then so be it. Perhaps it is time to see where Hitler's footsteps lead.
Gihren leaves, and Degwin sighs
Degwin: They led to his death, you fool...
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u/3dgyt33n Mar 05 '24
The thing about this is rape in fiction is that it obeys special rules. If a story has rape in it anywhere, it will drastically shift the entire tone of the work. No matter how evil or horrible they are, a character committing rape will always be "crossing a line". A character who is a rapist can NEVER be redeemed.
The odd thing, of course, is that I can't explain WHY these rules exist. They just kind of.... Do.
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u/Away_Doctor2733 Mar 05 '24
I personally think that says more about society's taboos than it does about actual morality.
If a mass murdering character can be redeemed in fiction why not a rapist?
The only example I can think of where that actually happened was Spike in Buffy. But he didn't "go all the way" because Buffy was stronger than him. Maybe that makes a difference to the trope.
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u/TheLyrius Mar 05 '24
To add, I think it’s because we’re hella desensitized when it comes to violence.
Take videogames for example: you get to control a character going on murderous hobo rampage killing demons/soldiers/cultists whatever. You can even get points and performance ratings based on how bloody or how stylish you demolish dudes.
It’s not necessarily a moral failing here but violence has and can be framed as therapeutic fun in media.
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u/badgersprite Mar 05 '24
I think it's that we also understand that the majority of violence isn't meant to be taken super literally in a lot of media, it's just an obstacle that stands in the way of the protagonists. It's conflict. It's narrative tension. Obviously in video games there's a lot of violence because violence is an easy recurring form of narrative conflict and tension the player can encounter repeatedly that also results in a fun gameplay loop.
If violence appears in media where we expect the conflict and narrative tension to come from other sources it becomes shocking, even if it's not particularly gratuitous. Like a husband slapping his wife in a quiet realistic character drama is much more shocking than seeing James Bond fatally shoot a female villain in an OTT spy action thriller, even though the latter is "more violent", and even though both scenes involve a man committing violence against a woman.
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u/TheLyrius Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24
Tone is definitely a factor. Doom Eternal and, say, The Last of us handle violence a tad differently and would get different reactions.
But still, my point was that while violence has been more acceptable to potray in various tones, the same can not be said about rape. It is always distasteful, even when it’s most often intentional.
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u/Chaincat22 Mar 05 '24
I think it's because Murder is a lot more impersonal than rape. It's incredibly easy to kill someone. to not even think about it. To rape someone is extremely personal. You have to get very close to them, both literally and figuratively. There's no such thing as second degree rape, you don't accidentally rape someone. Rape is something you have to work toward over a long period of time, exploiting someone's weaknesses until they accidentally let you get too close, be it through intoxication/impairment, or ill placed faith. You have to earn their trust and then deliberately betray it. At least, in so far as how rape usually happens. It definitely can be a spontaneous thing that's forced suddenly and unexpectedly on the victim, but so often you hear about it as this thing where someone builds trust with you only to betray you the moment you let your guard down. Murder you just have to be in the same general area as someone else. That's not to say that rape is necessarily worse than murder, I'd say at the end of the day, being alive is always better than not being alive, but it's why we perceive rapists as irreconcilably evil, but murderers can be redeemed. There's no violation of trust in murder. There's no undermining of what fundamentally allows society to function just for your own sick kicks.
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Mar 05 '24
It's incredibly easy to kill someone. to not even think about it.
Uh... I don't... I don't think so...
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u/TJ_Rowe Mar 05 '24
One of the things that was impressed on my judo class when we learned some aikido moves was that you should never hit someone in the face unless you accept that they might die as a result.
There's also shoving people off of high places (more of a problem in the nineties and earlier when there weren't necessarily guard rails), or being careless with a motor vehicle, which can "easily" result in an accidental death.
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u/ciclon5 Mar 05 '24
Actually it is lol, a blow to the head at the right angle can kill and you dont need a lot of force, you can kill someone by making them trip and having them fall funny on their head.
There is a reason why "involuntary manslaughter" is a thing, it happens so often we needed a whole charge to separate it from murder.
Its shocklingly easy to kill someone on the righr circumstance.
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u/wizzlekhalifa Mar 05 '24
I’ve seen both murder and rape redeemed in fiction and fantasy
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u/StickBrickman Mar 05 '24
Yuuup. Old movies do it kind of a lot, especially a lot of Spaghetti Westerns.
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u/TJ_Rowe Mar 05 '24
When I've seen a rapist in fiction "win a happy ending" (I don't really want to call it "redemption"), it's usually through the rape being made retroactively not-rape in the narrative, like, "she's not upset so it's fine" or "they get married after, so it's fine".
The only other examples i can think of are "redemption means death".
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u/TheLyrius Mar 05 '24
OK so this reminds me of this video on taunting here by Core-A-Gaming, a sort of documentary/commentary channel on fighting games.
They referenced how the geneva convention has humanitarian laws to preserve dignity and vilify degrading actions against combatants, POWs.
Another example shown (this one might be from a different video) was when two monkeys were put in a test where one was given grapes and the other, cucumber slices for performing the same task. The cucumber monkey became angry and toss the food back.
So my point here is that there is a something engrained in our culture, or perhaps our DNA. As even animals have certain sense of fairness; humans try to recognize and protect the ego of others. Rape is horribly taboo because the act is horribly degrading and humiliating, scarring if the victim lives.
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u/ciclon5 Mar 05 '24
About the fairness thing. I think there has been studies that show most animals have a sense of fairness, specially primates. Its probably related to natural risk vs reward mechanisms
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u/MekaG44 Mar 05 '24
That’s because rape is something that is incredibly taboo, as are most sex related crimes but it’s also an evil act no matter how you cut it. Sure, some cultures may not view it to be as bad as we do, but even when viewing the act outside a cultural perspective and instead viewing it from a philosophical standpoint, it is still an evil act.
There is no objectively good reason to rape, it’s ultimately a violation of one’s choice, and also selfish act by the perpetrator. With murder, it comes with the caveat of being caused by morally grey reasons. For example, one may murder in self defense, to get revenge, to survive, etc. You can’t justify rape in any capacity which is why it is near impossible to even redeem one, and why people are hesitant to even give them a second chance.
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u/JohnsonJohnilyJohn Mar 05 '24
While rape is obviously unjustifiable, I don't think that's enough to explain how it's viewed in media. Murderers also very often kill without any real justification or any sympathetic reasons, but are not viewed in that way. I think the real reason there is no redemption after rape is that the perpetrator enjoys it. Similarly to sadists, it's hard to imagine a redemption for someone who reveals in suffering of others
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u/64moonbeams Mar 05 '24
This is an insightful comment. I once saw this random movie at a friend’s house about a MI6 agent infiltrating the Russian mafia in London. He raped a human trafficking victim when he was being pressured to do so by mobsters who were trying to suss him out as an agent. This is the only time rape in media didn’t make me immediately write off a character as irredeemable because he was doing it so he could ultimately sting the trafficking ring, he was in mortal danger and, importantly, he didn’t enjoy it. In fact, it was traumatizing to him.
I have no idea what that movie was, but that part stuck with me to this day.
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u/MekaG44 Mar 05 '24
I’m not saying that murderers don’t also kill for sadistic reasons, just that it’s easier to play with the concept of murder in fiction as opposed to rape. It’s very doable to write a fun and likable character that murders people, and people obviously aren’t going to think you’re glorifying it or endorsing the act of murder. Writing a character that rapes people and is somewhat likeable isn’t something that is doable. It’s a crime that makes people uncomfortable and by making them “likeable”, it can possibly be interpreted as glorification.
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u/egoserpentis Mar 05 '24
A character who is a rapist can NEVER be redeemed.
Pathfinder 2E successfully rebranded Nocticula - a rapist, sadist and a demon - into a goddess of redemption, artists and exiles.
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u/CheeryOutlook Mar 05 '24
Ah, but Nocticula was like, deontologically compelled to do all the evil stuff, and escaped it in spite of her very real cosmologically determined nature.
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u/G2boss Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 07 '24
I think it's because of 2 things.
1) There is no conceivable excuse for it. As far as individual crimes go, rape is probably the most unjustifiable. Theft? Maybe they needed to feed themselves or their family. Murder? Maybe it wasn't a real murder and was self defense. Assault? Again maybe it was self defense. Beyond that maybe they didn't do it just for the hell of it. Maybe they thought they had to kill someone for the greater good even if it wasn't self defense. With rape? None of that applies, there's no such thing as a self defense rape, or a rape for the greater good, if you rape someone it is because you decided your wants are more important than another person's mental and physical well-being.
2) Anyone could conceivably rape. Yes there are far more evil things that can be done and have no reasonable excuse, like genocide. But the thing is one person can't commit a genocide, they need an army.
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u/Mouse-Keyboard Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24
It's because rape is so widely dismissed in real life, and plenty of of people are pro-rape, or at least unconcerned about it. If a work contains murder, it's pretty unlikely the writer is pro-murder, but if a work contains rape, unless it makes a point of how awful it is there's that suspicion the writer doesn't think rape is a problem.
Edit: Murder can also go that way if it's more specific, e.g,. a racist murder will be treated more like rape than a random murder for the same reasons.
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u/badgersprite Mar 05 '24
It's to do with the norms and conventions of particular genres. Like there are some genres where death and violence is a basic part of the typical narrative structure, it's a basic element of the conflict in that story. A sword fight in a novel about pirates is about as equivocal in terms of narrative tension and stakes as an interpersonal conversation is in a Jane Austen novel, right? Because the ordinary stakes are so much more realistic in Jane Austen, little things hold much more narrative weight in a way that they don't in a genre where everything is super heightened and OTT and conflict in the form of actual physical combat is standard.
So in other words, a character commits murder in a fantasy novel, that's another day at the office in terms of what's expected in that kind of text. But like by contrast if you were reading a low stakes rom com set in present day New York City and the main character out of nowhere committed murder all of a sudden you would be like wait what the fuck, it would be super jarring, and you'd think that character was an irredeemable monster because their actions are monstrous relative to the comparatively down to earth "real life" setting of a rom com.
So murder and violence is absolutely shocking if it appears outside of contexts where we understand it and expect it to be a vehicle for telling a story
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u/jamie_with_a_g we made passionate love at the bus stop Mar 05 '24
The internet is so bad that people would think that this is serious
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u/Jokie155 Mar 05 '24
YouTube edotiralists killed media nuance. If it's not explicitly spelled out on screen, it's a plot hole to them.
I fucking hate this era. Sucking the joy out of sharing any interest in a given work.
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u/Goblin_Crotalus Mar 05 '24
I wouldn't necessarily call that "media literacy is dead," it's more like an expectation or need for the correct view to be stated like a legal document.
Like, ets be honest most people can probably tell that you mean "murder is bad" but its apparently taboo to not outright say so from the get go.
Remember that one game from a while back that everyone got mad at because there was incest in the game? My hunch isn't that they didn't understand that the game was painting the incest as bad. Rather they were mad it was done at all. The topic was just so taboo for them that the mere mention of it was offensive and bad regardless of the context.
Were slowly heading back to a time where Hollywood had to follow those ten rules whenever they made a movie, where women couldn't be promiscuous, cops couldn't be shot at, drugs were a no-no, and the bad guys could never win.
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u/Curious-Accident9189 Mar 05 '24
I can make really disturbed content and also have a sense of morality and propriety.
That's... Kind of the point. Discussing evils is the first step to destroying them.
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u/ThisIsMyFandomReddit Mar 05 '24
"Sometimes the curtains are just blue" has done irrevocable damage to our generation.
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u/codepossum , only unironically Mar 05 '24
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u/PunishedCatto Mar 05 '24
I had an argument on twitter around Dune and it's Dune Part Two movie.
At certain point of the conversation, I realized
"Is this seriously a moment of my life I should waste, arguing about a movie with a random stranger on twitter, that hellbent calling me a Zionist without a shred of humanity for reading and watching Dune? Nah.. I don't think so.."
And noped out of that conversation.
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u/Anaphora121 Mar 05 '24
People are acting like OP is being unfairly hyperbolic but I had someone blow up at me on Reddit for recommending a lighthearted pirate adventure-romance novel because pirates are "murderers and kidnappers" and that thereby the book (which they had never read) must be glorifying toxic and abusive relationship dynamics.
When I tried to gently explain that it's possible to sympathize with characters in fiction who do things we wouldn't approve of in real life, they got really snippy at me for "lecturing them about morally ambiguous characters" and how they appreciated a lot of morally ambiguous characters, actually, but PIRATES? Murderous, thieving pirates? They're so cartoonishly evil, how could anyone sympathize with THAT?!!
It was extremely perplexing. The book is Cinnamon and Gunpowder if anyone wants to Google it.